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JUJDING LIST MAR 1 1922,
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
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THE JOURNAL
OF
PHILOSOPHY
EDITED BY
FREDERICK J. E. WOODBRIDGE
AND
WENDELL T. BUSH
JANUARY DECEMBER, 1921 ) Q S
1921
PRESS OF
THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY
LANCASTER, PA.
VOL. XVIII, No 1.
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
SANTAYANA AND MODERN LIBERAL PROTESTANTISM
TDROFESSOR SANTAYANA'S work has come in years when
thinking men have agreed, in general, upon the necessity of
readjustments in the theory of religion and ethics. To many
readers his restatement is especially significant as an attempt to
indicate (rather than discuss) how the doctrines and forms of an
old theology and of a still older mythology, may in a sense be
retained in a new world characterized by reason. To other readers
the work is noteworthy as a step toward setting ethics free from the
restraints imposed by alleged authoritative institutions, and even
from necessities supposedly inherent in physical nature. The
author's literary style calls up before one the picture of a river
for the most part, smoothly flowing; sometimes so profound that
its surface is quite dark, but as often tossing up a spray of epigram
to glisten in the sunlight; occasionally, it must also be said, bear-
ing in its current and sweeping out to sea something which has
long served as a landmark of conduct or as a foundation of faith.
He challenges the ancient claims of religion to the possession of
literal truth and moral authority. For him the historic formula-
tions of faith in an objective sanction of the religious experience
are not expressions of any actual conditions, but are rather reflec-
tions of things not seen as yet, things whose true meaning lies in the
fact that they are desired and dreamed. And correspondingly, the
moral pronouncements and demands of organized religion are un-
warranted; they express not what must be, but what may be. For
Santayana there are objective factors involved in all thought and
effort; but these provide starting-points and abiding conditions
rather than sanctions. The sanctions of religion and morality are
not existential, unless the subsistential can be said to exist; they
are not actual, unless the possible is in a sense actual; they are not
real, except as ideals are real. In religion, as in other human pur-
suits, the bases of things are of less importance than their ful-
filments. The "life of reason" consists in an organization of ex-
5
6 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
periencc with reference to ideal ends. In primitive nations magical
rites and mythical interpretations of nature and society marked the
beginnings of this organization. Particularly in Greece, myths
about the gods served political and ethical ends. But during the
Christian centuries, owing to an influx of Aristotelian metaphysics
and oriental mysticism, the older religious mythology, with its
ethical function, has been sublimated into a non-verifiable doctrine
of the existence of God, with attendant anomalies in the doctrines
of creation, providence and redemption. This metaphysical and
mystical influx Santayana would purge away, restoring the ancient
quality of the myths in a philosophy freed from any implications
concerning the external existence of its objects, a philosophy in
which Christian theology would be rendered into a dramatic repre-
sentation, a poetic symbol for the ethical virtues of piety toward the
past, spirituality toward the ideal future, and charity for one's
contemporaries.
It is difficult to meet such an argument with anything but assent
it exposes so much extravagance and punctures so many pre-
tensions, it offers so much in the way of emancipation, and of an
unspoiled, Grecian-like view of the world. In favor of it there is
the testimony of many who, making a virtue of what they deem to
be a necessity, find that the values of religion and ethics which once
involved existential concepts, survive for them as poetry with a
beauty enhanced, because no longer subjected to the contortions
and mutilations once suffered for the sake of conformity to a world
of existences, and with an ethical effectiveness increased, because
frankly including elements of the imaginative which are able to lift
one above any too narrowly empirical levels and goals.
II
But there are other thinkers for whom existence is itself a cap-
ital element in value, and for whom ideal fulfilments seem too pre-
carious, if all they have in the universe, beyond their own inherent
excellences as ideals, is a kind of natural spring-board from which
to leap up. One leaps up from a spring-board, but one afterward
comes down. The men who do not follow Santayana might not
deny that ideals are worth while for their own sake, regardless of
God or freedom or immortality ; but they would hold that any given
ideal, if it can be objectively sanctioned, must be said to have at
least an added value. Among these men are the theologians and
their position is bound to be more and more interesting as the
argument develops. It must be admitted that among them San-
tayana is slow to attain adequate recognition but fifteen or twenty
SANTAYANA AND MODERN PROTESTANTISM 1
years is not long in the history of thought. Sooner or later the
question will arise; What do, or what can, the theologians say?
The question has fresh significance not with regard to those
theologians who say what they have always said, but with regard to
the more liberal thinkers who would greatly modify, but still, in
the large, justify the historic claims of the Church. For these
latter, it would have to be argued, first, that the case of Santayana
v. the theologians is a case, so to speak, not in law but in equity
one which should be tried, not according to the letter of ecclesi-
astical standards, but according to the spirit of contemporary
thinkers, as yet not formulated into anything like dogma.
If this change of venue be allowed, attention ought to be called
to some facts which it may be well to have on record for purposes
beyond that of the present case, because critics of the Church so
often fail to allow for them. The liberal Protestant thinkers are
not troubled by the fact, for instance, that Hebraism took over
Babylonian and Persian myths. Nor are they disturbed to think
that Christianity took over a Hebraist Bible, or a Roman polity, or
a Greek philosophy, or any other fruit of pagan custom or bar-
barian genius. It has never been any humiliation to Christianity
to acknowledge its manifold indebtedness; the theologians, in fact,
glory in this assimilative capacity of the movement and look to see
it absorb other human values and achievements as it goes along.
Modern Protestantism knows, again, that the ancient arguments for
the existence of God, for his attributes of omniscience, omnipotence,
and so on, and for the persons of the Trinity are to be reckoned not
so much among men's logical achievements as among their psycho-
logical data the facts are that men have tried to find God by think-
ing of him along these lines. But these unmanageable arguments
are now seen to mark the limits of thinking rather than to consti-
tute the fruits thereof. The liberal Protestants, no less than San-
tayana, accept these modifications of older views.
Of the chief points wherein they differ, one is made by those
whom Santayana might call mystics, and the other by those whom
he might call fanatics, but the Republic of Philosophy is a free
country, in which epithets are not necessarily epitaphs.
First, a point easily allied with mysticism, though really inde-
pendent of it. The liberal Protestant can still say that Santayana
does not disprove the essential doctrine of theism; he shifts the
ground of discussion, but he must still leave room, for faith, whether
the theologian can find anything positive to put in that room or not.
Reason, says the theologian, need not expect to exhaust the content
of religion because religion belongs essentially not to reason, but
to the wider realm of life. Reason is, after all, a dissection and a
8 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
fixation of reality; and the world of reality, in its basis as well as
in its fulfilment, is at least as likely to be personal as to be im-
personal. Jt is possible, perhaps even unavoidable, in thinking to
separate the concomitants, and to say that everything social, per-
sonal, or teleological is in us, and that the rest of tin- world is
impersonal and mechanical: or, as Santayana puts it (Reason in
Religion, p. 249) "the value of existences is wholly borrowed from
their ideality, without direct consideration of their fate, while the ex-
istence of ideals is wholly determined by natural forces, without direct
ion to their fulfilment. Existence and ideal value can, there-
fore, be initially felt and observed apart." But the Protestant
thinkers would regard this as a dubious way of dealing ultimately
with the world. They hold that, however convenient such distinc-
tions may be for certain purposes, there are other values which
such a distinction cuts through and destroys. If this be mysticism,
or anti-intellectualism, or absolute idealism, they would say, make
the most of it; but one has to choose between some such inclusive-
ness of reason's distinctions within a living unity, or, on the other
hand, a stopping short of an abstracting reason before any ade-
quate account has been rendered of the concrete world.
So the first point of the theologians, albeit negative, would be
that, with all Santayana says, there is still room for faith in an ob-
jective sanction of religious experiences. The second point would be
that liberal Protestantism has something positive to offer as a content
of faith. It is necessary here to be pious in the Santayanian sense,
but it is also no more than just. Men for whom the absurdity of a
Hamlet with the Prince of Denmark left out has passed into a proverb
must in an estimate of Christianity afford more than a passing men-
tion of its founder. For the Protestant theologians, accounts with
Jesus of Nazareth are not settled when he is called the hero of an
epic or one of the characters of a drama. There is no question among
the theologians that myths galore have gathered around the historic
character; there are wide differences of opinion among them as to
how much in the records is picture and how much is frame. Many
of them make the mistake of thinking of Jesus apart from the move-
ment to which he gave the chief formative impulse; but some, like
Troeltsch, would think of the two together and it could then be said
that not in Christ alone, but in Christendom, we have a great con-
crete social process which, like the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic, may
show that the ocean of history is not altogether an unresponsive
tumbling of waters. The liberal theologians regard the Christian
movement as so significant that they can conceive nothing else worthy
of the faith which, as we saw, they regard as possible than that
SANTAYANA AND MODERN PROTESTANTISM 9
the movement is the human working out of a trans-human process,
which they go on to identify with a superhuman plan. So far as the
argument goes, it would appear that they might be content with a
4 'religion of humanity," in which God could be thought of as "the
common will." But, because the movement of Christendom is worth
more to them than anything else in the world, they think of the rest
of the world as involved with it and under the same auspices. Either,
as idealists, they proffer a demonstration that it can not be otherwise,
or else, as pragmatists, they say that the chance is worth taking, and
that the belief progressively verifies itself. Value judgments, and
processes by other names that mean the same, are the basis for a
claim of a substantial truth and an attendant moral authority for
the pronouncements of the Church. The Christian writings are held
to be true in the sense that, although often cast in the forms of myth
and legend, they record what are held to have been actual experiences
with a superhuman power ; and they are held to have moral author-
ity in the sense that, although often formulated in outgrown and
impossible precepts, they contain a fund of accumulated experience
which can not be disregarded because it is linked up with that super-
human power, which either controls or aspires to control the universe.
Santayana apparently has in mind efforts like those of the prag-
matists when he says (p. 206) "An oracular morality or revealed
religion can hope to support its singular claims only by showing its
general conformity to natural reason and its perfect beneficence in
the world." The pragmatist theologians would reply that not all this
is necessary that the claims of Christianity to the measure of truth
and authority noted above would be justified, even if not absolutely
established, by showing that these claims do not contradict the re-
quirements of reason, and involve an increasing measure of benefi-
cence in an evolving world.
Ill
If the case were tried before a judge gifted with insight it might
very well be adjourned pending the gathering of fresh evidence
and its reformulation; for both Santayana and the Protestant
theologians exhibit the same weakness namely, a failure to thor-
oughly consider the problem afforded by the material universe.
In the case of Santayana, the problem is indeed considered ; but
the fact that he recognizes it leaves him open to a criticism of incon-
sistency. He says, in a passage above cited, that "a complete de-
scription would lay bare physical necessities in the ideals entertained
and inevitable ideal harmonies among the facts discovered." Again
(Reason in Society, p. 192), "The community recognized in patriot-
ism is imbedded in a larger one embracing all living creatures.
10 y///; JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
While in some respects we find sympathy the more complete the
Dearer home we remain, in another sense there is no true companion-
.sliip except with the universe." Once more (Reason in Religion) :
"Human life, lying as it does in the midst of a larger process, will
surely not be without some congruity with the universe (p. 249)."
"Why should we not regard the universe with piety? . . . Where there
is such infinite and laborious potency there is room for every hope
(p. 191)." But he does not follow out such possibilities, and it may
be urged that it is somewhat premature to relegate all objective
sanctions to the realm of poetry before such possibilities have been
explored.
The older theologians disregarded the material universe as a
thing evil and unworthy ; the newer theologians, as we saw, adopt it
into their theistic systems without any very close examination.
They ground their arguments for objective sanctions elsewhere, and
fail even to try out the constructive possibilities of materialism.
If it could be shown that there is ground for holding that the
structure of the universe or perhaps better, the structure of a uni-
verse large enough and detailed enough to correspond to the fields
of the sciences is like the structure of our bodies or our brains or
our societies, we might have the benefit of considerations which are
now scouted or disregarded. Such a structural resemblance if it
could be demonstrated would not show in Fechnerian fashion that
the universe has a soul, or a mind, or a consciousness; but it might
show that such a soul or mind or consciousness as we manifest in
our most significant social movements that is, in our religions is
a kind of concentrated essence of the world-process, a focusing lens
which unites in one image what would otherwise be a flood of im-
perfectly correlated rays. It is conceivable that thus the natural
basis might be shown to have more kinship than Santayana allows
with the ideal fulfilment.
GEORGE P. CONGER.
UNIVERSITY or MINNESOTA.
INTELLIGENCE AND BEHAVIOR
IT is now approximately four years since the appearance of the
volume entitled Creative Intelligence, in which a group of
writers undertook to set forth certain views concerning the nature
and implications of intelligence. The doctrine of intelligence em-
bodied in this book has recently been subjected to a keen and dis-
criminating analysis by Professor Lovejoy. 1 The quality of the
i Thia JOURNAL, Vol. XVII., pp. 589-596 and 622-632.
INTELLIGENCE AND BEHAVIOR 11
criticism is so unusual in its insight and judicial temper that it
can not be passed over in silence. It is easily the most penetrating
criticism that has come from a hostile camp since the appearance of
the book.
Before attempting to discuss the points raised by Professor
Lovejoy, I wish to say that I have no authority to speak for any of
my colleagues. Moreover, I have no desire to undertake a defense
of the book in question. So far as Professor Lovejoy 's discussion
of my own essay in that volume is concerned, I am disposed to
concede in advance that he has put his finger on a real weakness or
worse. My present purpose is rather to contribute something, if I
can, to the clarity of the points at issue, and in doing so to emulate
his example of hewing to the line and letting the chips fall where
they may.
The fundamental contention of Professor Lovejoy 's articles, as
I read them, may be briefly summarized as follows: The pragmatic
doctrine of intelligence, with its emphasis upon the quality of
' ' creativeness " is an assertion of the efficacy of consciousness in the
control of behavior. Negatively the doctrine is a rejection of the
' ' self -stultifying idea ' ' that thinking is ' ' a vast irrelevancy, having
no part in the causation of man's behavior or in the shaping of his
fortunes a mysterious redundancy in a cosmos which would follow
precisely the same course without it." 2 This assertion of efficacy,
however, is coupled with a second contention, for which the critic
is unable to find sufficient warrant, viz., the denial of interaction
between mind and matter. To all appearances, this denial means
that the pragmatist, in his iconoclastic zeal, must needs saw off the
very branch on which he is sitting. How can mind be efficacious if
interaction be excluded? The denial of interaction, so it would
seem, is not based on a study of the facts, but springs from a
prejudice against the belief in the existence of psychic "entities"
or "states" which may become interpolated in the chain of causes
and effects. Hence the attempt is made to give an account of in-
telligent behavior without having recourse to such entities, an ac-
count, however, whieh rests on a confusion, or, as the critic mildly
puts it, on an "incomplete analysis." The point of departure is
the contention that conscious behavior can be explained in terms
of body and environment, without the intervention of a third order
of fact as distinct links in the causal chain, to wit mind or psychic
state. Intelligence is just a name which designates a peculiar form
of control on the part of the environment. Presently, however, it
appears that "control by the future" need not involve any explicit
reference to the future ; but this admission is not seen to carry with
2 I&id., p. 632.
1U THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
it the implication that conscious behavior has been robbed of its
distinctive trait. "It is a description of 'intelligence' from which
all that makes intelligence 'intelligent' has been expressly excluded
as non-essential."*
As 1 have already intimated, Professor Lovejoy's criticism poe-
sesses more substance than just plausibility. Before Ko'mg into de-
tails, however, I beg leave to give a brief restatement of the position
under discussion, in the hope that a different distribution of em-
phasis will help to clear up the meaning of the doctrine and thus
furnish a more serviceable point of orientation. The central
feature of the doctrine is the contention that "consciousness" is
identifiable with a certain unique type of control ; in other words,
that it involves a certain peculiar kind of stimulus. As a simple
illustration of such stimulus let us take the hearing of a noise. The
noise is, so far forth, just a noise, possessing various properties or
qualities that are appropriate subject-matter for the physicist. But
in addition to these qualities there is a further trait or quality,
which is commonly left out of the reckoning, but which is of vital
importance in the present connection. The noise causes the indi-
vidual concerned to cock his ear, to turn his eyes, perhaps to get up
and step to the window in order to ascertain the meaning of the
noise. The noise has an indescribable "what-is-it" quality, an "in-
herent incompleteness," which is as much a part of the noise as
heard as is any of its other traits. The limitations of my vocabu-
lary do not permit me to go much beyond lame phrases, of the kind
just used, to indicate this unique quality. A still more roundabout
phrasing of the matter is that the noise is such as to set on foot
activities which are directed towards getting a better stimulus.
The listening and the looking are directed towards the end of com-
pleting the present incompleteness. So far, I submit the statement,
bungling as it is, is just a statement of fact. It is precisely this
elusive trait which Professor Mead, 4 if I interpret him correctly, has
identified with the psychic and which furnishes the clue to the
peculiar type of behavior that is labelled in pragmatic doctrine as
consciousness.
The illustrations of this "psychic" element are naturally taken
by preference from situations of doubt and uncertainty, in which
the "unfinished" character of the stimulus, the "blur" which at-
tention seeks to eliminate, is sufficiently prominent to foe recognized
and abstracted without difficulty. It is true that on the level of
experiences in which adjustments are relatively unimpeded this
Ibid., p. 626.
"The Definition of the Psychical," Decennial Publications of the Univer-
sity of Chicago, Vol. III., Part II.
INTELLIGENCE AND BEHAVIOR 13
peculiarity of the stimulus is much less in evidence. By hypothesis,
however, the conscious stimulus is conditioned throughout upon a
conflict of reactions which require continuous adjustment, so that
the type of procedure remains the same. If we accept the dictum
of psychology that attention is coextensive with consciousness, there
is warrant for the view that consciousness has to do with just this
curious "incompleteness," by virtue of which the present stimulus
makes provision for its own successor. And if we bear in mind
that the incompleteness is intrinsic to the stimulus, or inherent in
it, we seem to have come upon a trait which constitutes a genuine
differentia of the psychic and which makes it possible to draw a sharp
line between conscious and mechanical behavior. In so far as a
stimulus is of this sort, behavior becomes "forward-looking"; it
becomes behavior that is "controlled by the future." The stimulus
that is sought is one that will adjust the conflicting reactions; but
the process of securing this stimulus is always to some extent a
matter of discovery, of trial and error, the empirical filling-in of an
antecedent framework or outline.
Prom this standpoint it is clear that the status of the "psychic"
iii the scheme of things is different from that which is assigned to it
in traditional doctrine. The psychic becomes a distinguishable
aspect, but not a separate link, in the chain of causation. What we
find here is, to all appearances, a concomitant and simultaneous de-
velopment of stimulus and response, which calls for a category dif-
ferent from that of ordinary cause and effect as based on temporal
sequences. The relation of stimulus and response is rather analogous
to the relation of gravitation among physical bodies, or to the rela-
tion of the two poles in a magnetic field. For this reason the posi-
tion under discussion undertakes to combine the assertion that in-
telligence is efficacious for conduct with the denial of interactionism.
Behavior is conscious or intelligent, not because there are psychic
links that get themselves inserted in the series of events, but because
the process as a whole presents a specifiable differentiating trait.
The point at issue here can perhaps be given more substance and
outline in connection with Love joy's comments on Dewey's charge
that representationism violates the "continuity of nature" and is
based, in the last analysis, upon "supernaturalism." In Lovejoy's
view this charge is more relevant to Dewey's own position. Repre-
sentationism is, at worst, a minor offender, since "after all, mere rep-
resentationism is a function which, though external to the system
dealt with by the physical sciences, does not disturb that system, or
limit the applicability of the laws of those sciences." This is more
than can be said for Dewey's doctrine, for "the control of 'things'
14 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
by a unique, non-mechanistic process of 'intelligence' nay, the
creation of new content of reality, the introduction into the physical
order of genuine novelties, by man's reflection and contrivance
this is not a mere external addition to, but an interjection of a for-
eign element into, the system of nature known to physical scien
This reply, as it seems to me, misses the point of the original criti-
cism, which is directed towards the status of the mental or psychic.
If I may venture to interpret Professor Dewey's meaning, his insist-
ence on continuity is not in the least intended to rule out the possi-
bility of new agencies or forms of activity. On the contrary, his aim
is precisely to accord them proper recognition and to make provision
for the advent of novelty, wherever it may occur. Nature is genu-
inely creative, not simply at the moment when consciousness arises,
but all along the line. The product of hydrogen and oxygen is some-
thing that is wet ; the chick, when hatched, exhibits a multitude of
attributes or qualities that were not to be found in the egg. In all
these cases we are in the presence of facts that are not reducible to
their antecedents. The wetness that results from the combination of
oxygen and hydrogen is undeniably a novel trait, yet it is continuous
with the antecedent situation from which it emerges, in the sense that
it occurs as the result of an orderly process of change taking place in
this situation. In the case of representationism, however, if I read
Professor Dewey's meaning aright, no room is left for any such
change. The objects concerned necessarily remain wholly indiffer-
ent, so as to protect the integrity of knowledge, and the change is
located elsewhere, viz., in a hypothetical "mind" or "conscious-
ness." The accusation of "supernaturalism" does not have refer-
to the advent of novelty as such, but to the belief in a novelty
which is so "external to the system dealt with by the physical
sciences" that all the king's horses and all the king's men are unable
to put the disjecta membra together again. As against such dis-
continuity Professor Dewey's plea for continuity is pertinent and
deserving of serious consideration.
This elaboration will perhaps se**ve to explain, at least in part,
why instrumentalism is so reluctant to bring in mental states or
psychic existences in accounting for conscious behavior. Its concern
being with this distinctive character of the stimulus and the corre-
sponding type of behavior, it can not afford to give countenance to
entities or existences the chief purpose of which, so far as I can make
out, is just to translate this distinctive character into mechanical
equivalents. Traditional theory has always started with the assump-
tion that physical objects are necessarily characterized by stark
This JOURNAL, Vol. XVII., p. 623.
INTELLIGENCE AND BEHAVIOR 15
rigidity and close-clipped edges, so that their mutations naturally
fall within narrow boundaries. This restriction inevitably created
the temptation to assume that consciousness must either be reducible,
in materialistic fashion, to a mode of motion, or else be recognized as
a totally different kind of entity, after the manner of dualism. The
result has been the creation of an elaborate psychological stock-in-
trade, consisting likewise of hard, finished products ; so that, instead
of gaining insight into the distinctive quality of conscious behavior
we merely fell heir to the dreary problem of the relation of mind and
body. The offense of concealing the true nature of the facts was not
mitigated, but merely glossed over, by the insistence that psychology
is concerned with mental processes and not with static entities, for
the reason that this refinement had no relevancy to the peculiar and
essential quality of the process involved in conscious behavior. Until
this quality is recognized and emphasized, we are without a signifi-
cant clue; when it is properly evaluated, the emphasis shifts in-
evitably from mental states in the traditional sense to this peculiar
type of control as exercised by objects. As Professor Lovejoy rightly
suggests, the principal quarrel of pragmatism should be with ' ' mech-
anistic naturalism. ' ' My point just now is that we do not get off the
plane of mechanistic naturalism in our dealings with the facts of
experience unless we give a new interpretation to conscious behavior.
As was intimated earlier, however, Professor Love joy's criticism
is, in part, well taken. The illustration of the razor to which he refers
at some length is undoubtedly incorrect and misleading. The state-
ment, indeed, that the perception of the razor as sharp is conditioned
by the reinstatement of an antecedent reaction to a cut is presumably
correct. But, as Lovejoy points out, the import of all this is simply
(a) that the response is, in fact, adaptive, and (&) that the present
response is the effect of a previous response in a similar situation.
To put it differently, the response is ' ' anticipatory ' ' only in a meta-
phorical sense, i.e., from the standpoint of a bystander, and so pro-
vides no distinguishing trait for its classification as conscious be-
havior. The justice of this criticism must be admitted. It is pos-
sible to go still further and argue that even if we assume an anticipa-
tion of an injury, we still have not reached an explanation of con-
scious behavior. Whether the quality "sharp" be perceived directly
or be present as something that is indicated, i.e., 'present as absent,'
we still are concerned with objects, sensuous or conceptual, and not
with behavior. To cite another passage from the essay in which the
razor illustration occurs: "A quality such as 'sharp' or 'hot' is not
mental or constituted by consciousness, but the function of the qual-
ity in giving direction to behavior is consciousness." 6 This function
e Creative Intelligence, p. 256.
16 THE JOURNAL OF I'H/LOSOPIIY
of the quality is precisely what the illustration leaves out of account. 1
The reaction to "sharp" figures in conscious behavior, not simply
because it is a present reaction to a future injury, but because this
reaction, through conflict with other reactions, gives to the stimulus
the "unfinished" or "incomplete" character previously discussed
and so induces the search for a better stimulus. It is this search
which is "forward-looking" or "controlled by the future"; and, so
far as I am able to see, it possesses this trait independently of any
explicit reference to the future. The illustration in question fails to
distinguish between "anticipation" which is either metaphorical or
conceptual in character and "anticipation" as descriptive of the
"unfinished" stimulus, and so far justifies the strictures which Pro-
fessor Lovejoy passes upon it.
If we keep our eye upon this unique character of the stimulus, we
get perhaps an indication of the direction in which we must go for an
er to Professor Love joy's question as to the conditions that de-
termine the development of a conscious situation. "By virtue of
what property or relation does one possible bit of content get at-
tended to, taken account of, perhaps taken up into the organized plan
itself, while other bits are ignored or eventually excluded T" 8 It
requires no argument, I take it, to show that the stimulus of the given
moment necessarily varies with the situation, since no two instances
of reaction are precisely alike. It follows, therefore, that the
"better" stimulus which is demanded in order to harmonize the con-
flicting reactions will likewise vary. In the razor illustration, for
example, if the reaction to "sharp" is to be harmonized with a con-
flicting reaction of reaching and grasping, the solution lies in picking
it up so as not to cut the fingers ; if the conflicting reactions are those
connected with an effort to break a rope or string, the razor offers
itself as a suitable tool ; if the perception of the razor occurs as an
intrusion upon some other process to which it is irrelevant, the ad-
justment is perhaps best achieved by permitting the object to drop
from view. I have no desire, of course, to give an appearance of
simplicity to processes which are, as a matter of fact, discouragingly
complex, but neither am I able to convince myself that the endless
gradations and colorings of what James calls the fringe are insuffi-
cient, in principle, to account for the entire range of conscious
behavior.
If this interpretation of conscious behavior be conceded, we may
hope that other seeming difficulties will shrink to smaller dimensions
7 This function of experienced qualities or objects is described more at
length in the essay, pp. 246-250.
This JOURNAL, Vol. XVTI., p. 629.
INTELLIGENCE AND BEHAVIOR 17
on closer approach. We need not, for example, take serious excep-
tion to Lovejoy's contention that concepts are "mental entities," in
the sense that they may be "actually given at any moment in any
context of experience, but can not be regarded as forming a part, at
the same moment, of the complex of masses and forces, in a single,
'public' space, which constitutes the world of physical science." 9
That concepts exist in some form and that there is a discernible dif-
ference between them and physical objects is an indubitable fact.
The important issue is not whether concepts exist, but whether the
classification of concepts as "mental" is to be made to accord with
the foregoing theory of conscious behavior. If construed in the spirit
of instrumentalism, concepts are essentially substitutes for sensuous
objects; in Dewey's language, they are "tools" or objects occupying
the peculiar status of being merely suggested objects. So far as
conscious behavior is concerned, they function in much the same way
as physical objects, in that they likewise present this distinctive "in-
completeness" by virtue of which they control behavior in such
fashion as to make it a quest for a more adequate stimulus. There is
no ground for Lovejoy's contention that if concepts are admitted to
their legitimate place, "it follows that, rightly construed and con-
sistently thought through, pragmatism means interactionism. ' ' 10 Un-
less we abandon the category of interactionism we are back on the
level of mechanistic naturalism, from which the position of instru-
mentalism is intended to provide a means of escape.
I trust it has been made clear why I can not regard philosophy as
under the obligation to furnish ' ' a more serious and thorough exami-
nation of the psychophysical problem than it has yet given us." 11
The problem itself looks suspicious. If mind is the sort of thing it
has been supposed to be in the past, then indeed there is no escape
from the mind-body problem and the weary manipulation of cate-
gories such as interaction and parallelism. But if this is not the case,
it may well be that the road of progress, to adapt a saying of James,
does not lead through the psychophysical problem at all, but around
it. At all events, it is worth while to put the suggestion to a serious
test.
B. H. BODE.
UNIVKBSITY OF ILLINOIS.
., p. 629.
10 Ibid., p. 629.
"76i., p. 632.
18 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOI'llY
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Lehrbuch dcr Loqik auf posiliristixclifr Cnindlnrtr init Beriichsich-
tigung der Geschichte der Logik. Tn. ZIEIIEN. Bonn: A.
Marcus & E. Webere Verlag, 1920. Pp. viii + 866.
The positivistic standpoint is concerned with the given, and
Ziehen's "binomistic" analysis of this reveals (1) R-elements (a
kind of known bio things-in-themselves) interacting according to the
law of causation, and (2) the same R-rltiwuts entering conscious-
ness by way of sensation, according to the law of parallelism. Our
psychological experiencing, however, is variable and untrustworthy,
liable to all sorts of confusions and mistakes. 1 On these there is
only one natural check the law of the singularity of becoming, the
"gignomenological law of identity." According to this law, it is
factually impossible for us both to think A and not to think in a
single moment i. e., in the duration of a single act of thought.
This natural check is, however, only momentary, and if our devel-
oped thinking is ever to give us a system of ideas, on the accuracy
of whose correspondence with the interrelations of the R-elements
we can rely, it will be necessary to rise above the fluctuating level of
psychological experiences which are only to be trusted in isolated
moments, and standardize our thinking in terms of logical norms.
This is done by extending the element of -'identity" which we
find in the simple momentary experience, so as to apply it to the
complex constructs which constitute most of our ideas. We cut off
certain contents from the flux of experience, and arbitrarily endow
them with an ideal uniformity, i. e., an identical core of meaning.
which is fixed by a definition. As abstracted once for all from the
continuity of becoming, such a general idea is more than a summing
up of a certain group of past experiences. It has "transgressive"
character, i. e., constitutes a type, and contains "vacant places" to
be filled by similar experiences arising in the future. The concept
is thus a standardized or logical idea. Judgment is like a complex
concept, consisting of at least two standardized ideas bound to-
gether, not by the accident of a fluctuating psychological associa-
tion, but in a standardized or constant way, with at least partial
coincidence in space and time. This coincidence in turn is, of
course, standardized, t. e., withdrawn from the flux of chance asso-
ciations, and fixed by tho mind so as to conform to the ideal de-
mands of the principle of identity. So too with inference, which is
a series of standardized judgments leading in a single direction
1 Alienationen. Ziehen regards the quatcrnin tcrminorum as the type of
fallacy par excellence.
BOOK REVIEWS 19
and culminating in a conclusion which sums up the series in a
standard way, also according to the demands of the principle of
identity. Corresponding to these standardized processes are stand-
ardized objects or "things," which, at least in the first instance,
represent hypostatizations or mental fictions. Fictitious, however,
as they may be, they are yet essential if we are to think laws
constant, uniform relations between the R-elements whose inter-
action according to definite laws constitutes reality. For constant
relations imply terms which are themselves constant, and while the
terms may be, as least in part, fictitious, the relations are not.
Thus we see that, by the thorough-going use of the principle of
identity which is found in our fragmentary thinking, we are able
to construct standardized thought-complexes which are at least
capable of representing the uniformity of law in the world of
reality; furthermore, since (1) the elementary psychological experi-
ences are the R-elements reflected in sensation, and since (2) the
principle of identity, by the use of which we have built up our
logical thought-complexes, is a " gignomenological' ' principle, i. e.,
a principle according to which the R-elements themselves behave,
it follows that our logical thought-structures, to a considerable ex-
tent at least, can correspond to the inter-relations of the R-elements
which constitute the real. Precisely in such empirical correspond-
ences, and not at all in reference to a priori standards, consist truth
and knowledge.
To investigate the possibility of such correspondence on its
material side i. e., to consider how far the results of our thinking
represent adequately the factual situation is, in detail, a question
for the special sciences, and, in principle, a matter of theory and
criticism of knowledge. It is only so far as the R-elements are (1)
correctly apprehended by our senses, and (2) correctly standard-
ized in accordance with the principle of identity, that we attain to
material truth or objective validity. Logic, as a science, is con-
cerned wholly with the second of these requirements, viz. the various
applications of the principle of identity in such a way as to stand-
ardize our thinking. Logic is thus formal rather than material,
and may be characterized as the science of concrepancy and dis-
crepancy, or as the study of the formal uniformity of thinking, in
virtue of which it is either correct of false.
Of the volume in which Ziehen lays down these positions and
deduces their consequences in detail, the greater part is taken up
by what we should call "prolegomena." There is an introduction,
a history of logic (part I), an epistemological Grundlegung, a psy-
chological, a linguistic, a mathematical (part II), and an autoch-
thonous Grundlegung (part III), before we finally come to the logic
20 THE JOURNAL OF rillLns<H'UY
itself (part IV). This deals with the concept, judgment, inference,
proof, and theory of the sciences (chs. 1-5). The writer apologizes
for a eertaji i-ondeiisitMm in this portion of the work, and lays the
blame upon tin- rising cost of printing, promising, however, to pub-
lish elsewhere and at greater length what has here been abbreviated. 2
The impression made upon the reader -by these various divisions
in which the subject is treated, is one of stupendous erudition. The
book contains, in principle, a psychology and a theory of knowledge,
as well as a logic, and a history of logic as well as a systematic logic.
In every field, the views of other thinkers are referred to individ-
ually, voluminous references are given to the literature, and
wherever the writer takes up a definite position, it is always after
discussion of alternative positions as maintained by other writers,
and with full reasons assigned for not accepting such alternative
positions. The views thus discussed range over the whole field of
the history of logic and epistemology, from Plato and Aristotle
down to the German publications during the War Period. Authori-
ties most frequently referred to are Plato, Aristotle, Wolff, Kant,
the lectures of Schroeder, and the logics of Sigwart, Wundt, and
Benno Erdmann. With an only slightly lesser degree of frequency
he refers to the Stoics, Sextus Empiricus, Petrus Hispanus, St.
Thomas, Leibniz, Arnauld, Baumgarten, Hegel, and Mill, as well as
to the work of Husserl, Ueberweg, Bolzano, Brentano, Meinong,
Trendelenburg, Heinrich Haier, Krug, etc. The views of these
writers receive consideration on all topics of importance, and in
more special cases the more special literature is further cited. The
general tone of the book is thus one of simple omniscience.
That countless volumes from German libraries have "lain be-
fore" Ziehen, is beyond doubt. That he has either made, or has
caused to have made and classified, countless extracts from these vari-
ous volumes, is also beyond doubt. But that a single human being,
who has spent a good part of his life publishing in other fields, should
have been able personally to read and assimilate the whole of this
vast material, seems antecedently improbable, and a careful examina-
tion confirms the suspicion that some of the apparent erudition is ex-
ternal and superficial. The student can not help observing that much
of the historical part is concerned mainly with establishing the pre-
cise words used by the various authors, but that little or no attempt
is made to penetrate behind the terms used, to what the author means
by them. This is especially the case with the Greeks and Scholastics,
but in the case of the moderns also, Ziehen permits slight differences
> As an example of such condensation, c/. p. 741, where, after a very brief
statement of the syllogistic rule re two particular premises, he adds, in the text,
"For thorough-going exposition, see Ueberweg, p. 351."
BOOK REVIEWS 21
of phraseology to blind him to essential resemblances of standpoint
between the view he is criticizing, and the view he is defending.
Thus Locke is taken to task for his "extreme sensualistic standpoint,
whlich gives no possible basis for the development of a scientific
logic" (113, cf. 154). But Locke, as is well known, 8 believes in a
world of interacting substances, which become known to man via
the simple idea, and the "modes" which constitute science are ex-
tensions of the simple idea by means of a standardization of the prin-
ciple of identity. The content of knowledge is derived from the
substances, and the form is an extension of the formal principle
inherent in the simple idea, so that the modes, while arbitrary in the
sense that they are mental constructs, still follow the main outlines
of reality. The resemblance between this position, and the basic
position of Ziehen himself, is so close, that if a scientific logic is im-
possible on Locke's principles, it must also be impossible upon
Ziehen 's, for he similarly founds knowledge upon sense-data given
to us in isolated "moments."
So too in the case of F. H. Bradley. It is difficult, in spite of
the frequent references to chapter I of the Principles of Logic, to
believe that Ziehen can ever really have read the whole of that
chapter. Thus, he criticizes Bradley 's well known formula for judg-
ment, on the ground that in ' ' This is an oak, ' ' not only ' ' this, ' ' but
also "oak" refer to reality (!) (620). Furthermore, in his treat-
ment of analysis and synthesis, he displays complete ignorance of
Bradley 's very important demonstration of their inter-connection.
In actual fact, there is a fairly close general resemblance between
Bradley 's idea of the "reference to reality," and Ziehen 's own ac-
count of the existential element in judgment (632).
In the case of Plato, who is referred to very frequently, there are
sins of commission and sins of omission. Thus, we are informed
that while Plato has no technical terminology, dianoia is his frequent
equivalent for Urteil. To the best knowledge of the reviewer, diano-ia
is nowhere employed in this sense. As a rule, it is the equivalent of
"mind" or "intellect" used in a somewhat general sense. In a pas-
sage to which Ziehen perhaps refers (Rep. 511), it means the intel-
lectual attitude of the scientist, Verstand as opposed to Vernunft,
in Kant's terminology. Ziehen appears to be wholly ignorant that
authorities like Bonitz and Natorp regard doxa, doxazein, and
kindred expressions, as the nearest equivalent to Urteil. Again, in
dealing with the "co-ordinate" view of affirmation and negation, he
claims in a historical note that the view probably goes back as far
3 Cf. Lodge, The Meaning and Function of Simple Modes in the Philosophy
of John Locke, 1918, ch. V.
22 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
as Aristotle. The treatment of negation in the Sophistes sufficiently
proves that the view discussed goes as far back as Plato, but Ziehen
appears wholly ignorant of this. What is still more astonishing, is,
that he quotes Natorp in the same note, but appears to be unaware
that Natorp rests definitely upon the Platonic treatment in the
Sophistes. In general, it may be said that, in dealing with Greek
writers, Ziehen tends to rest upon poor authorities (Zeller, Gomperz,
Lutoslawski).
There are many similar ignorances. Thus, in spite of a careful
analysis of Mill, he misunderstands Mill's treatment of the "repre-
sentative idea" theory, and appears wholly ignorant that the famous
"methods" (as has been pointed out by S. H. Mellone) are not orig-
inal, but are derived from Herschel. Even with present-day writers
in Germany, he is at times in error. Thus to state that Wundt ' ' re-
turned to the ancient tradition" of formal logic (203) is, in a sense,
true, but misleading, and hard to reconcile with the further account
of Wundt 's work (209), as well as with the preface to Wundt 's
Logik. But the criticism of Wundt, as making analysis the sole char-
acteristic attribute of judgment (367) is worse than misleading, as
it is plainly contradictory in spirit and in letter to p. 162 in Wundt 's
Logik, where it is explained that judgment is the analysis of a
thought (Begriffszusammenhang) which has arisen (genetically) by
synthesis a position closely resembling Ziehen 's own. So again,
even in the case of Erdmann, Ziehen appears wholly ignorant that
he has Erdmann against him on the value of treating the concept
"at the head of his theory." Not only Plouquet and Gruppe, but
also Erdmann is to be counted among those who relegate the doc-
trine of the concept to the Methodenlehre.
These examples furnish, perhaps, sufficient evidence that Ziehen 's
omniscience is in part merely apparent. But let us leave these ques-
tions of erudition, and turn to the logical doctrine itself, and take
the distinction between concept, judgment, and inference, as a test
of Ziehen 's powers of analysis. The relation between the concept and
judgment, Ziehen treats as follows: Judgment can be considered
cither as a process taking place in time (without prejudice to its
logical, *. e., standardized, character) , or as the result of such a pro-
cess. The concept, however, is considered as the result of a process,
never as a process. The difference between them is thus, that judg-
ment possesses the characteristic of succession, whereas the concept
does not. This difference is established by refusing to compare con-
cept and judgment from a single standpoint. Regarded as processes,
the process of concept-formation and the process of judging are
indistinguishable (p. 372). Regarded as results, the concept at
BOOK REVIEWS 23
any rate the composite concept and the judgment are indistinguish-
able (604). Yet the concept is declared to be psychologically and
epistemologically prior to the judgment (453). How the flat oppo-
sitions between these standpoints are to be reconciled, is nowhere
made clear.
On the relation between judgment and inference, he is scarcely
more satisfactory. The following distinctions are twice enumerated :
(1) Inference always consists of a number of judgments (at least
two), while the (compound) judgment, though it may be analyzed
into a certain relation between two judgments, still, as judged, ex-
presses essentially a unity i. e., apprehends, in a single act of
thought, the relation between the two contained judgments. (2) The
judgments which together constitute an inference are so related that
they lead to a single judgment (the conclusion) which "dominates"
the series. (3) The element of succession is peculiarly prominent in
inference. The principle of distinction here is identical with the
principle by which Ziehen endeavored to distinguish between concepts
and judgments. He regards the judgment as a result, and inference
as a process, and refuses to compare them from one and the same
basis. He is, of course, far too good a psychologist not to know that
every judgment, as actually judged, is reached by inferential proc-
esses which sum up evidence derived from experience, and terminate
in a sort of conclusion, so that, as processes, judgment and inference
are indistinguishable (702). Similarly, the result of inference viz.,
the conclusion, in which, the ground M being "eliminated," we are
left with 8 is P is explicitly recognized as a judgment : so that, as
results, judgment and inference are indistinguishable. But he stead-
ily refuses to recognize the essential identity of conception, judg-
ment, and inference, and utterly fails to see the serious inconsisten-
cies into which his persistent refusal leads him.
On induction, he is weak. He believes that nothing essentially
new has been discovered since the work of Mill (sic), and makes the
formal distinction between (1) conclusions which are on the same
level of generality as their premises (equations), (2) conclusions on
a lower level of generality (deductive reasoning), and (3) conclu-
sions on a higher level (inductive reasoning). There seems to be no
insight into the nowadays well known fact that all our thinking is
both inductive and deductive, and consequently his treatment of the
Archaeopteryx as an example of inductive reasoning from a single
instance, is puerile and out of date. His work in this field is formal
and conventional.
So much by way of negative criticism. In spite of these and
similar deficiencies in respect of logical penetration, and in spite of
24 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
occasional lapses from the hi^h standard of erudition which he has set
himself, there is still a definite place for his book. With it copious
masses of references to the literature, it is a perfect mine of useful
information, and in matters of detail, it is full of suggestions and
points of view which are substantially new. Thus, the graphical
treatment of the various types of opposition between concepts leads
to results which are new. The treatment of definition, for all its
wearisome elaboration of detail, is largely admirable (especially in
the summary) , and largely new. His recognition of the value of two
particular, two negative premises, of the value of arguments from the
affirmation of the consequent, etc., etc., is largely new in print,
at any rate though his conclusions are hardly as far-reaching as the
case admits; and generally, throughout the book, there are to be
found numerous passages which are either distinctly novel or dis-
tinctly illuminating. These are so numerous that it is impossible,
within the limits of a single review, to treat them adequately. The
value of the book, therefore, for students in our graduate seminars,
is beyond praise. But if we look further and ask, is the book of so
great value as to be esteemed above the books we already use Erd-
mann, Wundt, Bradley, etc.f we must answer in the negative.
Ziehen's Lehrbuch will have to be considered, but only as one
learned treatment among other treatments, of which none is more
learned, but some are more profound.
RUPERT CLENDON LODGE.
UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY. April,
1920. Sir Thomas Wrightson's Theory of Hearing (pp. 101-113) :
E. G. BORING and E. B. TITCHENER. - Wrightson presents many in-
teresting mechanical and physiological facts concerning the nature
and action of various parts of the middle and internal ear. These
facts are of value but have not yet been developed into a theory of
hearing. On the Non-Visual Perception of the Length of Lifted
Rods (pp. 114-146): Louis B. HOISINGTON. - The perception of
length arising from the lifting of a rod depends on the relations of
the following impressions intensity, time, pressure gradient and
muscle strain. The perception of length can be synthetically pro-
duced. A New Form of Stimuli for Lifted Weight Experiments
(pp. 147-151) : SAMUEL W. FERN BERGER. - The use of hard rubber
weights is suggested rather than wooden ones that vary in weight or
metallic ones that give intense temperature sensations. The Psy-
chological Examination of Conscientious Objectors (pp. 152165) :
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS 25
MARK A. MAY. - The conscientious objectors were found to be supe-
rior in intelligence. There were three noticeable types, religious-
literalists, religious-idealists and socialists. The Vowel Character
of Fork Tones (pp. 166-193): A. P. WEISS. -The long u sound
predominates for low tones while the i sound is found in high tones.
The Vocality of Fork, Violin and Piano Tone (pp. 194-203) : ESTHER
L. GATEWOOD. - The u and I qualities are easily found in the low and
high tones respectively. Religious Belief and the Population Ques-
tion (pp. 204-207) : WESLEY RAYMOND WELLS. The more religious
have the highest birth rates which is evidence of its biological value.
A Note on Pen-Lapses, Initiated Visually (pp. 208-209) : JUNE E.
DOWNEY. -In composition the cue is acoustic-vocal-motor. Appa-
ratus Notes From the Psychological Laboratory of Clark University
(pp. 210-211). -Protractor for color mixing, artificial daylight and
exposure apparatus for memory experiments are described. Notes
from the Cornell Psychological Laboratory of Cornell University
(pp. 212-214) : E. B. TITCHENER. - Descriptions of the following
pieces of apparatus are given: (1) Electromagnetic control of stop-
watch; (2) curve tracer; (3) models for the demonstration of sen-
sory qualities; (4) sewing machine motor. Note on the Experi-
mental Study of Attention (p. 215): K. M. DALLENBACH.-BOO&
Review (pp. 216-27). Julius Pikler, Anpassungstheorie des Em-
pfindungsvorganges: C. C. PRATT. Book Notes (pp. 218-219).
William McDougall, An Introduction to social psychology. Elida
Evans, The Problem of the Nervous Child. Th. Ziehen, Lehrbuch
der Logik. Charles G. Shaw, The ground and goal of human life.
J. C. Bose, Life movements in plants. Stewart Paton, Education in
war and peace. Herbert E. Cushman, A beginner's history of phi-
losophy. R. F. Alfred Hoernle, Studies in contemporary meta-
physics. Herbert Ellsworth Cory, The intellectual and the wage
workers. C. A. Richardson, Spiritual pluralism and recent philos-
ophy. Edward Carpenter, Pagan and Christian creeds. Leonard
and Bianchi, La Meccanica del cervello. Michael Ornato, Aphasia
and associated speech problems.
Alexander, Hartley Burr. Latin-American Mythology. (Volume
XI. in The Mythology of All Races, edited by Louis Herbert Gray
and George Foot Moore.) Boston : Marshall Jones Co. Pp. xvi +
424.
Naville, Adrien. Classification des sciences : les idees maitresses des
sciences et leur rapports. (Troisieme edition, entierement renou-
velee.) Paris: Felix Alcan. 1920. Pp.322. 10 fr. 50.
Nazzari, Rinaldo. Principi di Gnoseologia (Teoria della Cognizione).
26 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPJI Y
Turin: G. B. Paravia & C. 1920. Pp. xxiv + 272. L. 16, 50.
I'i.-anl. Maurice. Valws Immediate and Contributory, and their
Intn-rHation. New York: New York University Press. 1920.
Pp. x + 197. $3.
Rivers. W. II. K. Iii>tinrt and the Unconscious: A Contribution to
a Biological Tln-nrv >f the Psycho-neuroses. Cambridge University
Press. 1920. Pp. vi + 252.
Sweetser, Arthur. The League of Nations at Work. New York:
Mat-mil Inn Co. 1920. Pp. 21.1. $1.75.
Thalhoimer, Alvin. The Meaning of the Terms: "Existence" and
"Reality." Princeton, N. J. ; Princeton University Press. 1918.
Pp. 116.
Walston (Waldstein), Sir Charles. Eugenics, Civics and Ethics.
Cambridge: University Press. 1920. Pp. 56.
NOTES AND NEWS
Beginning with this issue, the Editors, in response to repeated
suggestions, have shortened the title of the JOURNAL to the form
which is currently used in speaking of it, and which is more con-
venient for citation. The change in name implies no change in
policy. That remains the same and may be expressed again, as
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY enters on its eighteenth year of publi-
cation, in words quoted from the first page of its first issue: "This
journal does not protest against the spirit of specialization which
makes our modern science and scholarship solid and strong, but it
does protest against the prejudice that a detached specialization can
give us the last word and can make correlation superfluous. It de-
sires to stand for the unity of knowledge, aims to consider the
fmuL-miental conceptions which bind together all the specialistic
results, seeks to inquire into the methods of science which bind
together the scientific workers, and into the center of its sphere it
puts philosophy. ' '
A MEETING of the Aristotelian Society was held on December 6.
Professor T. P. Nunn, Hon. Treasurer, in the chair. Professor W.
P. Montague read a paper on "Variation, Heredity and Conscious-
ness: a mechanist answer to the vitalist challenge." Bergson in
France, McDougall in England, and Driesch in Germany, have at-
tacked mechanistic philosophy, not only as inadequate to cope with
the known facts of phylogeny, ontogeny and consciousness, but as
definitely in conflict with them. In reply it was attempted to show
NOTES AND NEWS 27
that in regard to each of the three sets of problems it is possible to
point out a solution, statable in mechanistic terms, which at the same
time provide full satisfaction to the demand of the vitalist that the
purposive and psychic characters of life shall not be reduced to an
epiphenomenal status of dependence upon blind processes, but recog-
nized as genuinely operative factors in the economy of nature. In
regard to the origin of useful variations, their rise in germ-plasm with
greater frequency than is explicable on recognizable mechanistic prin-
ciples may be explained by the conception of biological vectors. Ac-
cording to this conception the unpurposed yet purposeful products of
telogenesis, not only in the germ-plasm, but in the brain when occu-
pied with creative imagination, are results of a system of protoplasmic
stresses. The problem of the manifold of hereditary determinants in
the minute germ-cell may be met by conceiving the germ as a system
of super-forces or superimposed stresses. These, which were com-
pared to superposed twists in a rope, were embodiment of a manifold
of invisible intensive determinants equal in richness, it was claimed,
to the serial events of the germ's ancestral past and capable of un-
folding and reproducing its own pattern by a kind of induction
through the serial stages of embryonic growth. The more difficult
problem of explaining mind in physical terms was met by the sug-
gestion that the structure of conscious life is analogous to the struc-
ture of life in general and capable of being explained in the same way,
except that the system of cerebral super-forces in which the past is
stored up in the present, is composed of traces of potential energy
acquired by the brain through the transformation of the kinetic
energies of sensory nerve currents. For a physical interpretation of
the essentially specific and quantitative nature of mental elements a
new category "Anergy" was suggested, to stand for the form of
durational being produced whenever the energy of motion is trans-
formed into the invisible phase we call potential. At the conclusion
of the discussion on the paper, the Chairman moved a vote of thanks
to Professor Montague and asked him to convey the greeting of the
Aristotelian Society to the American Philosophical Association, as
representative of which and as chairman of its delegation to the Con-
gress of Oxford in September Professor Montague had visited this
country.
IN order to provide an enduring memorial for the one hundred
and twenty-seven Field Service men who gave their lives in the war,
and in order to perpetuate among future generations of French and
American youth the mutual understanding and fraternity of spirit
which marked their relations during the war, an organization has
been established, known as the American Field Service Fellowships
28 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
for French Universities, formerly the Society for American Fellow-
ships in French Universities. This organization proposes to award
fellowships for advance study in France to students selected from
American colleges, universities, and technical establishments and
occasional fellowships for French students in American universities.
These fellowships will, when endowed, be named after the men of the
American Field Service who died in France; and it is intended, if
sufficient funds can be obtained, to name a fellowship in memory of
each one of these men.
The fellowships for 1921-22, not to exceed twenty-five in number,
will be of the value of $200 plus 10,000 francs, and are tenable for
one year. They will be renewable for another year uipon applica-
tion, provided circumstances warrant it. These fellowships are
offere<l in llic following fields of study:
Agriculture History
Anthropology Law
Archeology and History of Art Mathematics
Astronomy Medicine and Surgery
Biology Oriental Languages and Literature
Botany Philosophy
Chemistry Physics
Classical Languages and Literature Political Science and International Law
Criminology Psychology
Economics Religion
Education Romance Languages and Literature
Engineering Slavic Languages and Literature
English Language and Literature Semitic Languages and Literature
Geography Sociology
Geology Zoology
Applicants must be citizens of the United States and between
twenty and thirty years of age. They must be :
1. Graduates of a college requiring four years of study for a de-
gree, based on fourteen units of high school work; or,
2. Graduates of a professional school requiring three years of
study for a degree ; or,
3. If not qualified in either of these ways, must be twenty-four
years of age and have spent five years in an industrial establishment
in work requiring technical skill.
Applicants must be of good moral character and intellectual abil-
ity, and must have a practical ability to use French books.
Further information about the fellowships may be obtained from
the Secretary, Dr. I. L. Kandel, 522 Fifth Avenue, New York.
if
VOL. XVIII, No 2. JANUARY 20, 1921
THE JOURNAL
OF
PHILOSOPHY
A CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY
IT is with some misgivings that one embarks upon the adventure
of telling philosophers what philosophy is about. It might
prove as perilous as a similar attempt to disclose to artists the aims
of art and the metaphysical implications of creative activity. Even
though they should not take your words unto themselves respond-
ing blandly "yes'm," or waxing indignant at some unintentional
imputation (and J know not which is the worse) there is always
the possibility of their dismissing the whole matter with a shrug
(which would be worst of all). And might they not be right ? Why
bother with a definition of art? It is the work of art which is im-
portant. Why define philosophy either? Why take so much
trouble to explain what you are doing and why you are doing it?
It's a sign of decadence!
And yet so much of the philosophy of to-day is engaged in de-
fining itself philosophy which breathes of a philosophical renais-
sance rather than of decadence. Of course, there is precedent for
it. Plato it was, I believe, who began it, and in this respect at
least there have been those who have not failed to profit by his
example. Witness the numerous articles appearing in this JOURNAL.
Philosophers do seem to find it necessary to talk about the function
of philosophy. Bertrand Russell, for instance, begins his Problems
of Philosophy by asking: "Is there any knowledge in the world
which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it i" and
elsewhere admonishes us against forgetting that "the philosophy
which is to be genuinely inspired by the scientific spirit must deal
with somewhat dry and abstract matters, and must not hope to find
an answer to the practical problems of life." It is "the theoretical
understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy."
Professor Dewey, as leader of the Creative Intelligenzia, voices
their views somewhat differently : ' ' Philosophy, ' ' he says, ' ' claims to
be one form or mode of knowing. If, then, the conclusion is reached
that knowing is a way of employing empirical occurrences with
respect to increasing power to direct the consequences which flow
29
30 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
from things, the application of the conclusion must be made to
philosophy. It, too, becomes not a contemplative survey of exist-
ence nor an analysis of what is past and done with, but an outlook
upon future possibilities with reference to attaining the better and
averting the worse."
The New Realists, in their turn, inform us that their aim ia
among other things, the ' 'correction of established habits of thought. ' '
In this Russell, and Dewey, and the New Realists do agree, that
most of the philosophy up to Russell or Dewey or Neo-Realism, as
the case may be, has misconceived its function, and that if the claims
of philosophers had not been absurd, their achievements would have
been greater. And then each proceeds to explain what philosophy
should be and what philosophers should do. And thereupon they
cease to speak alike.
Now, I can not quite bring myself to the point of believing that
most of the philosophy since Plato, or since Bacon, or even since
Spinoza, has so completely mistaken what it was about. I wonder
if there might not be five and forty ways of being a philosopher, as
there are of composing tribal lays, and every single one of them
or almost every one right, for a particular reason. And I wonder
whether the reason for the rightness can not be expressed in some
other way than by a weighing of evidence, a consideration of worth
and of shortcomings, and an inevitable arrival at the irritatingly
moderate conclusion that "there is much to be said on both sides."
I, too, would play the game of defining philosophy, not, ho\v.-\vr,
as a prelude to the sudden production of any philosophical system
or carefully unsystematized philosophy, as the case may be, which
depends upon my definition; but rather as a protest that so much
energy should be expended on preliminary flourishes, statements of
policy on polemics, in short which miirht. be used either in the
organization of a body of scientifically philosophical truth, or in dis-
covering and pursuing definite means for the improvement of the
conditions of life here below.
For philosophers have, broadly speaking and in the main, divided
in their view about the relative importance of these two types of
philosophical activity. The line of cleavage has been particularly
marked since what is generally viewed as the opening of the modern
era in philosophy. Descartes and Spinoza, with their passion for
clarity of thought, precision, and scientific certainty, are the intel-
lectual forbears of such philosophers as Russell and the six Realists
and the German logicians. And Bacon, in his radical protest
against the formalism of Scholastic philosophy, and his declaration
that knowledge means the power to utilize theory in the interest of
31
human life, is the not so very remote ancestor of Professor Dewey
in his reaction against the idealistic formalism of Germany, Eng-
land, and America, in his demand for a sweeping away of tradi-
tional philosophic problems whose genuineness is questionable, and
in his emphasis on the necessary connection between concreteness
of thought and activity which is to be both moral and successful.
In this paper I am not attempting to derive my definition of
philosophy from a consideration of these two quite different notions
of what philosophy should be. What I am trying to do is to set
forth a conception of philosophy in terms of which both the instru-
mentalist and the scientific views of philosophy find a common,
broader interpretation.
Let me recall to your minds the well-known view that philosophy
is the attempt to evaluate 'the conclusions of the various sciences,
"taking its material ready-made from the sciences," in Miss
Calkins 's words, "and simp-ly reasoning about them and from them."
According to James too "philosophy has come to denote ideas of
universal scope . . . and the philosopher is the- man who finds the
most to say about them." The definition of philosophy as the
science of sciences, and the figure of the wheel, with the sciences as
the spokes and philosophy at the hub, come to mind at once. I
believe, however, that ^he position of philosophy is at once more
humble and more arduous. It may well begin, not with the aim of
achieving an organization from above, of being inclusive, but of
being exact in any small realm which it may choose to isolate. For
when any sort of inquiry becomes self-conscious, looks about itself,
and examines the assumptions on which it is proceeding, or considers
its relations to any other human activity, it promptly turns into
philosophy. Thus philosophy, as I understand it, does not reside
permanently and peacefully at the hub of the wheel, but spends at
least as great a part of the time as a wanderer along the rim, a
traveler from spoke to spoke. There are frequent excursions hub-
ward, it is true, and temporary surveys from this central vantage
point. But sooner or later philosophy must return to its more
humble position. Or, it might be possible to imagine philosophy as
a dual personality, having the strange power of being in two places
at once. At any rate, the figure of philosophy as a dweller on the
periphery rather than at the center of the circle, does greater justice,
I think, than the older view to the fact that a philosophy which is
not intimately bound up with at least one important branch of
human enquiry, which does not receive its impetus or take its de-
parture from an intimate, vivid acquaintance with some specific
science or art, so often seems futile and empty.
32 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
When philosophy is viewed as the attempt to discover and ex-
press the relationships between the various interests and activities
of human life, certain aspects of the philosophic enterprise come to
light. One is that philosophy is simply an intensifying, an ampli-
fying, and a clarifying, of ordinary living, and that there is a per-
fect continuity between the most esoteric and abstract philosophy
and common every-day experience. For both represent the con-
stant and universal human demand for a consistent, organized ex-
perience, a perspective on life, so to speak. It is impossible for me
to prove this by a description of the way in which meaningful ex-
perience begins and develops. I never was a baby, that I remem-
ber; none of the babies with whom I am acquainted tell their
thoughts ; and it seems even more futile to appeal to fox-terriers and
earth-worms. But it might be illuminating to consider what really
happens when an ordinary human being not a philosopher, except
in spite of himself reads a novel, for example. He understands
it in terms of his acquaintance with people; or he may bring to bear
his knowledge of history, or of the social or political or economic
conditions which it depicts or interprets; or of these conditions as
its author's back-ground of experience and their influence on his
ideas and his attitude toward life. He may relate it to other novels
and other authors, with respect to its style, or its subject-matter, or
just a few wayward and incidental notions which it may happen to
contain. In other words, in proportion as the experience of reading
that novel is rich and vivid and absorbing, it is a relating of the
novel in as many ways as possible to the reader's background of
experience. Sometimes as in the case of one's first acquaintance
with a Russian novel, for example, in which the technique and the
subject-matter are relatively unfamiliar; or in one's first encounter
with the German Romantic poets, or with impressionism in music
or painting or verse, or with Japanese drama the relating is not
easily done, and sometimes necessitates the working over of a great
part of the background against which the new experience is pro-
jected. In other words, our standards do change as our experience
grows. And sometimes the new experience is rejected as compara-
tively meaningless, or at any rate temporarily unassimilable. But
the rejection itself has meaning, and in this sense the experience is
related to a more or less organized larger whole.
This tying up of meanings and memories extends right through
the experience of every-day, from the tasting of a strange new
breakfast food, to considering the prospective site for the town fire-
house, or the advisability of sending missionaries to the Esquimaux.
A new experience, in short, if it is at all intelligible is understood in
A CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 33
terms of a whole system of experiences, and is criticized in the light
of it. The new experience is placed against a background of prin-
ciples or presuppositions, the residue of a tentatively organized
past in a similar attempt to make a whole of conscious life. And
often, as I said before, it is impossible to assimilate the new ex-
perience without adjusting or reworking the background, and chang-
ing at least some of the presuppositions.
When the reader of novels or the listener to music or the viewer
of paintings, becomes conscious of what he is doing, does it delib-
erately, and publicly voices his opinions, we call him a critic. And,
not immediately, perhaps, but in the long run, I think, we call his
criticisms good just to the extent to which they furnish us with a
technique, however imperfect, for the organizing, however tenta-
tive, of similar experiences and, of course, by differentiating, of
contrasting ones.
Now, the philosopher, I take it, consciously or unconsciously is
trying to do for some or all of the experiences 1 and activities and
values of life what the literary critic, for example, is or ought to be
trying to do for literature that is, trying to discover their relation-
ship to the other experiences 1 and activities and values of life, and
perhaps to life as a whole. He is a Critic, in the most complete and
general sense of the word. For criticism is simply a consideration
of things in their relations to each other. When you criticize a
thing, you view it in the light of another fact or group of facts, and
try to formulate the relation between them. For criticism is not
evaluation, if evaluation be taken to mean putting a value on some-
thing which is originally negative or inherently valueless. Values
are spontaneous, as much given as the greenness of the grass, or the
hardness of granite, or the shortest distance from here to San Fran-
cisco, or the perplexing circularity of Columbia Library. These
things are not created by our experience. They are discovered.
And similarly we do not create values. We discover them. It is
perfectly natural that we should prize health, and comfort, and
clear cool air, and friendship, and good-tasting food, and economic
independence, and beautiful paintings, and courage, and the satis-
faction of curiosity. The important thing is" to see them in their
relation to each other, to achieve a perspective. And the attempt
to attain this perspective we call philosophy.
Emphasis is often laid on the valuing aspect of philosophy.
The relationship between values (with the stress on values rather
than on the relating of them) is, I believe, often taken to be the
1 The term ' ' experience ' ' being used to include the experience of fact in the
realm of physical or logical "structure."
34 ////: JOURNAL OF
special field for the philosophy. The moral or the esthetic judg-
ment, at first blush, does seem inevitable for work of philosophic
significance. Yet what I feel I have not sufficiently made clear is
that it is the relating, carried on in the most rigorous and thorough-
going manner, which is the keynote of philosophic activity. The
relating of values is only one phase or branch of this activity.
Values are inevitably dealt with if the enterprise of relating be
carried far enough. The value judgment does enter into philosophy,
just as it does into the experience of reading a novel or a poem.
But the relation of better or worse than something else, is only one
of the relations discovered and articulated in that illuminating and
rationalizing of experience which is philosophy. The desire to see
things clearly and whole does include the wish to know the relative
importance of this or that fact or endeavor in the light of human
life as a whole. I think it is worth while, however, to emphasize
the fact that any step in the process of integrating experience, so
long as it be a conscious, rigorous attempt to see one thing in the
light of another, may rightly be called philosophical. Not logic
only, but all philosophy is a study of relations.
Such a view of philosophy is much more pluralistic than the
older classic view. It gives the title of philosopher to those of less
Protean capacity than the philosopher is usually supposed to ex-
hibit. Whether or not it is possible to achieve any permanently sig-
nificant conclusions from a consideration of, say, the relation of
poetry to push-pin, or of economic conditions to standards of
achievement, or of a novel to a political theory, without dealing
with all the values of life and a general conception of life to boot,
may be doubtful. But the question itself, as I see it, is not the
crucial one. However far the philosopher may find himself driven
toward inclusiveness as his enquiry proceeds, he is as much engaged
in the pursuit of philosophy at the beginning of his task as later, a
philosopher as well when he is engaged in discovering the relation
of one science to another (of the methods and aims of history to
those of anthropology, for instance), as when he is dealing with the
significance for conduct of the theory of evolution, or with the rela-
tions of the errf-at value groups the beautiful, the true, and the crood.
This means that philosophy is bound up with science, just as it is
fused and interpenetrated and continuous with every-day living
and with the esthetic experience. If, as Spencer says, "Philosophy
is completely unified knowledge," then we have no philosophy at all.
But if philosophy be the attempt to achieve a more complete unifi-
cation of knowledge than we have at present, then philosophy is one
phase of science and of art and of common experience. It is en-
A CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 35
lightening to recall the fact that among the ancients science and
philosophy were largely identified. The mathematician was the
philosopher, and the philosopher was the physicist. For to them
philosophy was simply an intelligent attempt to understand the
world in which we live. The philosopher, according to Plato, was
one who knew "the true being of each thing." Even when one
reads the history of the philosophy of not so very ancient times, he
frequently finds it difficult to decide whether he is studying philos-
ophy or science. And in spite of the growing tendency of the sci-
entists and the philosophers to hedge off porcupinely from each
other, I should say that the difficulty exists even to-day. Is Ber-
trand Russell a philosopher when he is criticizing the primary con-
cepts of number, or when he is engaged in the attempt to reduce
mathematics to logic (i.e., when he is relating these sciences) ? Or
is he a philosopher only when he is considering the subject of mathe-
matics itself as one interest among others that human beings pursue,
and expressing a judgment as to its supreme value and beauty. Or
is it only when he is giving an interpretation of the meaning of life
as a whole, as in The Free Man's Worship f And what of logic and
metaphysics themselves? Are we to consider them sciences or
branches of philosophy? Their classification seems to me to be
rather arbitrary, on the whole, depending to a great degree on your
point of view and your native or acquired predispositions. If ex-
actness of detail in the description of "structures" (to use Profes-
sor Woodbridge's term) be the mark of science, then logic, without
a doubt, and metaphysics in proportion as it becomes exact, are
sciences. But then esthetics, and even ethics very slowly, per-
haps, but none the less surely are also on their way to become
sciences. There seems to be a grain of truth in the cynicism that
philosophy is nothing but bad science. It is a curious and rather
pathetic situation for philosophy, that the results of the philosophic
pursuit of relations, just to the extent to which they become exact
and indisputable, are constantly being taken over by one or another
of the sciences. And one by one mathematics, physics, astronomy,
biology, psychology, and latest of all sociology, have left the philo-
sophic roof-tree and gone off on their own, so to speak.
Yet the situation, rightly viewed, is not so discouraging for phi-
losophy, after all. It simply means that a relation which is more
or less completely determined and known may at times and accord-
ing to one 's point of view assume the status of a fact ; and that any
group of such clarified and interpreted facts, tentatively organized
in the light of some determining principle or group of principles, is
what we mean by a science.
36 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
There is no one region of philosophic fact, and no peculiarly
labelled, quite indisputably philosophic problems. Philosophy takes
its material to be criticized and reorganized wherever it may hap-
pen to find it. And however many young sciences go forth from
the philosophic roof-tree, the house itself will never be empty so
long as science finds anything left to discover and describe. What
is more, there is a constant, if often unpremeditated returning, as it
were, of the sciences to the house of philosophy. For the moment
mathematics, for example, raises its head from the contemplation of
its own particular discoveries and considers its relation to logic or
music or chemistry or the Beautiful, that moment it turns into
philosophy. And the moment the economist or the lawyer or the
politician articulates to himself the place of his particular occupa-
tion in any larger setting, he becomes a philosopher. Philosophy is
found not only above, "relating the big conclusions of the various
branches of science," but right within the fields of the sciences.
The two are mingled and interpenetrated. One might express their
relationship by borrowing a figure from Professor Montague, but
using it in a different connection. The line of chalk on the black-
board is something more than an infinite number of points. These
chalk-specks are arranged linear-fashion. And the arrangement is
as real as the chalk-bits. Only, to have a chalk-line on the black-
board, you must have both the infinite number of chalk-bits and the
linear relation of them. One can not get one without the other.
So with the relation of science and philosophy. The scientific enter-
prise is philosophical, just in so far as it is a "progressive integra-
tion of experience," to use a phrase of Santayana's.
This progressive organization, with the relating of interests and
activities of every sort, makes intelligible the notion of different
levels, as it were, of philosophy of philosophies "of a higher
order," just as there are "propositions of a higher order," to use
Bertrand Russell's expression. And for the philosophies as for the
propositions, the term higher carries no laudatory connotation what-
soever. It is simply a fact that the social sciences, for instance, are
on a different relational level than the natural sciences, inasmuch
as the social sciences themselves represent a wider, more compre-
hensive, more complete integration of interests and a partial evalua-
tion of human activities. That is, with respect to their subject-
matter they are on a different philosophical level than the natural
sciences. And in a like manner, in the consideration of the rela-
tionship of the beautiful, the good, and the true, or in the criticism
of the critical activity itself as one type of interest among others,
we have philosophy on still higher levels always bearing in mind
A CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 37
the perfectly neutral sense, so to speak, in which the term higher
is used. An infinite regress in the discovery of relations and inter-
relations and relations between relations, is set up. But then, the
effect of an infinite upon you depends on your own attitude
toward it.
But, you cry, isn't this all fantastic and absurd? What you are
doing is not distinguishing and defining philosophy, but obliterating
distinctions, stretching the term philosophy to include things with
which it never dreamed of being associated. "If," as Professor
Morris Cohen points out, "the Holy Sepulchre be everywhere, one
can not effectively preach a crusade to redeem it from the infidel."
Now, I believe that it is absurd to make such an extension in the
use of terms that all distinctions are smothered under a blanket of
inclusiveness. But I believe it is equally absurd to make distinc-
tions where none exist in fact. Far truer than our present-day
contrasting of science and philosophy, was the older distinction be-
tween "natural philosophy" and "moral philosophy," and I wish
we might return to it. After all (if one could accomplish the feat
without resembling too absurdly the glib narrator who piquantly
ends his story in the fashion just opposite to the expectation which
he had carefully aroused a "sell," J believe it is technically
termed) one might be tempted to voice one's wonder whether the
supposedly indubitable importance of a distinction between science
and philosophy might not be the result either of a too-jealous cling-
ing to traditional and sometimes outworn philosophic problems and
prerogatives; or of a not-quite-nicely balanced sense of values a
proverbially philosophic lack of humor might be another way of
putting it. One might be tempted to wonder what difference it
makes, after all, whether a problem be a problem for science or a
problem for philosophy, so long as the problem itself be a genuine
and significant one. And whether it is so tremendously necessary
that we have any definition of philosophy, even though courses pur-
porting to introduce us to the subject have still to be given. For
philosophy, so far as I can see, is simply that love of wisdom of
which Plato speaks. He might have added that the philosophic
person is much more important, in the long run, than the philosophic
problem. It might be a good thing, practically, if philosophers and
scientists and artists forgot to argue about the function of phi-
losophy and science and art, and devoted themselves to the dis-
covery of things that are so, in whatever portion of the discoverable
universe, natural or moral, most happens to interest them whether
it be the realm of mass and weight, or of logic, or of values, or of
musical combinations, or of the reasons and the validity of stand-
:js THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPJ1 Y
ards of judgment themselves, or of the relation of any of these to
any or all of the others.
And it is just this sort of thing that philosophers used to do.
Most of them up until the time of Socrates were engaged in criti-
cizing our notions of the physical world. It is true, they had a
weakness for trying to solve all the problems of the nature of man
and of the universe according to a single formula, and we smile at
them and do the same things ourselves, at least those of us who
are idealists, or Freudians, or vegetarians, or Guild Socialists, or be-
lievers in New Thought. It is true also that the pre-Socratics some-
times tried to solve physical problems dialectically, poor souls. But
the genuine philosophic impulse was there, the impulse to under-
stand things in terms of each other; only, in the case of the Pytha-
goreans, for instance, the impulse was to understand everything in
terms of their experience of number.
With the Sophists, philosophy takes the form of a criticism of
the standards of morality and social life. Socrates continued this
criticism, only with more rigor and honesty, criticizing as well the
skeptical and individualistic tendency of the Sophists. His uncom-
promising demand that we say what we mean and mean what we
say, led him also to demand that we criticize the concepts we em-
ploy, and find out what we mean by such notions as piety, justice,
moderation, courage, cowardice and other terms whose meanings
we usually take for granted.
Plato extended the Socratic criticism to cover the entire social
life, which he judged according to ideals of human life and conduct
which were themselves criticized.
We hear so much about the "critical" philosophy of Kant; and
yet, so far as I can see, all philosophy is critical by reason of its
very nature. When it is not, we call it poetry, or, if we are very
severe in our criticism, or happen to have been particularly irritated
by it, we call it dogmatism. It would be vain to attempt to trace
even the main currents of the critical movements through its history,
showing in what ways and in what various fields the critical activity
has manifested itself. I shall simply point out a few of the interests
of philosophers of the present day.
William James was chiefly interested in relating the results of
investigation in the realm of the biological sciences to conduct, and
in pointing out what he supposed to be the consequences for theo-
retical knowledge. The occupation of many of his and our con-
temporaries has been to criticize his methods and his conclusions.
James's other main interest was the psychological warrant for re-
ligious faith.
A CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 39
Among living philosophers, Santayana is chiefly interested in
criticizing the various values of life in the light of their relation to
each other and to a conception of human life, which in turn he has
tested in its relation to fact, to logic, and to practise. Incidentally,
he is criticizing other philosophers and other attitudes toward life
both logically and on the ground of their implications for the whole
of life. His Life of Reason is a critique of human life in which
science and art and religion and the social values are viewed, each in
its relation to the other values of human life.
Bertrand Russell's interest in science is of a very different sort
from that of Santayana. His earlier work is primarily concerned
with problems of scientific method in their relation to logic. In his
later social philosophy he is dealing with the relation between ideal
and practical needs, with the relation of expressions of impulse to
a satisfactory life and its conditions. He is engaged in describing
the relations between economics, politics, education, industry, in-
stinctive human nature and human ideals.
Poincare, the great French scientist, becomes a philosopher when
he examines his pursuit with the purpose of finding out just what
it is he is doing. Like the earlier Russell, he is interested in dis-
covering the interrelations of the various sciences and of analyzing
their ultimate concepts. He is a philosopher on a different level, so
to speak, when he steps aside to talk about the whole enterprise of
science in its relation to the other phases of human activity and the
place of the scientific and the practical interests in human life.
Sometimes the philosophical critics deal with the values of life
in their relation to some special interest or some particular concept.
Thus Mr. Laski is interested in criticizing the concept of sovereignty
and of the state. Dean Pound is dealing with the nature and basis
and ideal of law. The relation of the state to economic and indus-
trial groups is the chief concern of the political philosophers of Eng-
land and France, and lately of America such men as J. A. Hobson,
G. D. H. Cole, A. R. Orage and others of the Guild Socialist move-
ment in England, and Duguit, Durkheim, Levine, and Sorel in
France to mention only a few.
Professor Dewey is interested in criticizing the values and activ-
ities of life, and the role of philosophy in life, particularly with
reference to conduct and the improvement of the conditions neces-
sary to a satisfactory life. "What serious-minded men not engaged
in the professional business of philosophy want most to know," he
says, in his essay on "The Recovery of Philosophy," is what modi-
fications and abandonments of intellectual inheritance are required
by the newer industrial, political, and social movements. They
40 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
want to know what these newer movements mean when translated
into general ideas. Unless professional philosophy can mobilize
itself sufficiently to assist in this clarification and redirection of
men's thoughts, it is likely to get more and more side-tracked from
the main currents of contemporary life." It is in the light of his
conception of the role of philosophy in life that he questions the
genuineness of traditional philosophic problems.
Thus, broadly speaking, the types of philosophy depend on the
types of subject-matter dealt with. The line of cleavage, as I have
noted, is between the "social" and the "scientific" philosophies. A
recognition of the fundamental similarity of their enterprise would,
however, do much toward clearing the intellectual atmosphere.
Since Aristotelian completeness is an impossibility to-day, philoso-
phers, if they are to accomplish anything of real importance, must
of necessity be partial in their endeavors. The remedy for the pos-
sible evils of philosophical partiality is not a vain attempt to be all-
inclusive, but rather wholeness of vision, a recognition of the relation
of one type of philosophical activity to another.
By this I do not mean that every aspect and tenet of either
philosophical humanism or philosophical intellectualism is equally
acceptable or valid. But a philosopher may be a philosopher even
though he make mistakes. What I am speaking of is the status of
the different types of philosophical interest. Each is equally rele-
vant to human life (an irritatingly moderate conclusion, I know),
provided that neither commits the cardinal philosophical sin of
taking itself, in its partiality, to be the sum of philosophy. So that
when one considers human needs and values as somehow not in-
clusive of intellectual needs and values, he is making as vicious an
abstraction as one who fails to remember that "the sincere dialec-
tician," to use Santayana's words, "must stand upon human,
Socratic ground."
By this I do not mean that everything that is being done in
philosophy is quite as important as everything else. Some interests
and some values are more fundamental than others. This itself is
a philosophical question. I only mean that philosophy is philosophy
on whatever level it is found. All criticism is not equally important.
But it is all critical.
And, as I tried to make clear, to say that philosophy is criticism
does not mean that philosophy is in any sense an evaluation from
above. Philosophy is not the construction of ends, but the discern-
ment and relating of them. And this illuminating and ordering of
ends is only one phase of the Life of Reason, the "progressive inte-
gration of experience" in the attempt to satisfy an instinctive and
A CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY 41
persistent craving for consistency in experience in pure knowl-
edge, as it were, and in conduct, and between the two. In Santay-
ana's words (once again), "To understand is pre-eminently to live,
moving not by stimulation and external compulsion, but by inner
direction and control. ' ' The demand at the basis of the whole enter-
prise is, I believe, an esthetic demand, a passion for order and har-
mony and lucidity. The final test of a philosophy, I believe, is its
power to satisfy this demand.
But is this not turning philosophy, or criticism, over to sub-
jectivism and intellectual anarchy ? If there are no objective stand-
ards of judgment why then argue about a novel or a painting or
a social theory or a philosophy of life? In matters of taste there
can be no disputing. I do not believe, however, that such an inter-
pretation of criticism means consigning it to the depths of "mere"
impressionism. What the critics of the theory of the esthetic bias
in the philosophic enterprise overlook, is that few human beings
knowingly and willingly play the fool, even though it be the blessed
fool, for the comfort of a superficial synthesis. The "will to be-
lieve" is not so strong as that. "What they also overlook is that
experience is not wholly a sub-cutaneous phenomenon. Why argue ?
Simply because conversation is a means of discovery. It is possible
for human beings in some way or other to share and discuss and
criticize each other's ideas. The mere existence of language bears
witness to this. But this in turn implies a common ground as the
possibility of such communication namely, the obligation of every
rational being as a rational being to endeavor to avoid contradicting
himself.
What this means, in terms of criticism, is that a man has a right
to his standards for interpreting his experiences, of whatever sort
they may be, just so long as he finds them adequate, just so long as
he can maintain them consistently against all comers and against
himself. An impressionism such as this, if this ~be impressionism,
is curiously plastic under the pressure of logic and of fact.
SAEAH UNNA,
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
42 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
MODERN LOGIC AND THE ELE.MKNTARY JUDGMENT
MY suggestion to exclude the term "elementary judgment"
from modern logic, so as to avoid serious confusion with the
S is P proposition in traditional logic, 1 has met with certain criti-
cisms 2 which are of sufficient importance to require an answer,
especially as my critic's position he seems to have fallen into the
very confusion against which I am protesting appears to be fairly
typical for many students of logic. As my earlier paper failed to
remove certain grounds for this typical misunderstanding, I shall
in what follows, first re-state what I take to be the fundamental
positions (1) of traditional logic, (2) of certain partly modern
logicians, and shall then state (3) the position which should, in my
opinion, be taken by all modern logicians in accordance with the
essential principles common to the whole movement. Having in
this way made clear both what is included and what is excluded
from modern logic, I shall then proceed to give concise answers to
each of the contentions urged against me by my critic.
1. Traditional logic recognizes a distinction between simple
and complex propositions, e.g., between (a) propositions of the
form 8 is P, and (b) propositions of the forms S is P and Q is R.
If 8 is P, Q is R. Either 8 is P or Q is R, etc. Compound or com-
plex propositions are so called, because, for certain purposes, they
can be analyzed into two or more simple or elementary propositions
connected in a special way. 8 Along with this distinction between
prepositional forms, goes a secondary belief that logical thinking,
which expresses a relation between the ideas S and P, is an appre-
hension of "corresponding" relations between real entities. That
is to say, the traditional logician tends to regard reality as a system
of entities, s, p, q, r, etc., between which relations of inclusion or
exclusion (is is not) hold, and that these relations can be clearly
apprehended and expressed in the traditional propositional forms.
This belief is known as the "existential import of the copula,"
This JOUBNAL, XVII., pp. 214 ff. The proposed exclusion is in the inter-
ests of intellectual clarity, and is in no sense an attempt to banish awkward
psychological or logical facts.
* See L. E. Hicks, Shall We Exclude Elementary Judgment* from Logic f
This JOUKNAL, XVII., pp. 493 ff.
* For certain purposes, this kind of analysis appears to me to be perfectly
legitimate (Cf. my Intro, to Mod. Logic, p. 9), and I do not understand what
Dr. Hicks means by calling traditional logic "moribund" (p. 494).
LOGIC AND THE ELEMENTARY JUDGMENT 43
2. Modern logicians recognize a distinction between infra-
logical thinking 4 and reflective or logical thinking. This is essen-
tially a distinction between psychological and logical, and has
nothing whatever in common with the traditional distinction be-
tween simple and complex prepositional forms. Certain partly
modern logicians 5 place the propositional-form distinction (of
simple and complex) under the head of "logical," excluding it
entirely from the "psychological" sid'e of the modern distinction. 8
It should be added that "Wundt and Erdmann, and perhaps also
Sigwart, regard the distinction between simple and complex propo-
sitional forms as coinciding with a distinction between judgments
as elementary and critical or reflective, respectively.
On the question of existential import there is an entire volte-
face in modern logic. Reality is no longer envisaged as a system
of entities between which simple relations of inclusion and exclu-
sion hold which relations can be simply apprehended and ex-
pressed in 8 is P judgments, 7 but rather as a highly complex system
of relations, the discovery of which furnishes problems of almost
infinite complexity to our various departmental sciences. This is
expressed by Lotze in his arrangement of certain well-known propo-
sitional forms in the order, S ought to ~be P, 8 may be P, 8 is P,
where 8 is P represents the final establishment of a hypothesis,
and is anything but an elementary or primal judgment. This view
is characteristic of the modern movement taken as a whole, and the
function of logical thought is generally regarded as the experi-
mental establishment of hypotheses, which, until established, have
the status of "floating adjectives." 8
To make still clearer the comparison between traditional and
modern logic on these points, the above statements are summarized
in the following diagram.
* E.g., processes involved in sense-perception, association, memory, emotion,
etc., which, while subsidiary to logical processes, are themselves, as such, infra-
logical (Sigwart, Erdmann, Wundt, Ziehen).
E.g., ' ' Concinnists ' ' from concinnare, a term proposed by Ziehen such
as Wundt and Erdmann.
8 Thus, it would be a serious blunder to identify the prepositional form S
is P with the psychological, infra-logical experiences, out of which the stand-
ardized thought-process which constitutes logical judgment arises.
7 Certain exceptions must be noted. Husserl and his followers, such as Pro-
fessor W. T. Marvin, hold that the logical intelligence apprehends certain very
general, "noetic" relations, which hold good for all judgments, and Erdmann
thinks that we apprehend relations which are "logically immanent" in the real
world.
s Cf. Bradley, Principles of Logic, Ch. I.: Sigwart, Logic, Ch. IV.
44 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
(1) Proposition*
.Simple Compound
(5uP) (IfSuP.QitR)
(2) Thought
Infra-logical Logical Judgment
(unstandardired mental (a) Elementary Reflecti
pfC (SwP)
(&) (5 ought tobeP, may be P, S IB P)
3. It seems to me that there is a dangerous ambiguity in the
position of many modern logicians, and in particular that their
view of "existential import," which assigns the S is P form to the
end of the series which culminates in an approximation to com-
pleted judgment (26), is hardly consistent with the "concinnist"
attempt to retain the S is P form for the "elementary" as opposed
to the "reflective" judgment (2a), and this would seem, as Dr.
Hicks points out (p. 494), to assign the 8 is P form to the beginning
of the series. We might speak of a lower and a higher categorical
form, to mark the distinction between the preliminary and the more
final form of judgment, but the danger of confusion is sufficiently
apparent, and the further possibility of confusion with the S is P
proposition of traditional logic, and even with the elementary, infra-
logical processes recognized by modern logic, is, as a consideration
of Dr. Hicks 's treatment of "primal' or "elementary" judgments
(pp. 494, 497-8) itself indicates, not to be disregarded.
The confusion in question seems to me to arise mainly from the
"concinnist" attempt to find a place for, and to incorporate in
modern logic, the formal distinction between simple and compound
propositions. This distinction, which is of great importance to tra-
ditional logic, is without significance for characteristically modern
logic, and can be entirely omitted, not only without loss, but with
distinct gain in clearness and avoidance of confusion. It was for
this reason that I suggested, in my earlier paper, that traditional
and modern logic should be kept separate, and that the term "ele-
mentary" judgment, as represented by the S is P form, should be
abandoned, as it tends to introduce confusion between (a) the
simple proposition of traditional logic, (6) the infra-logical experi-
ences out of which our clear-cut, standardized judgments arise, ac-
cording to modern logic, (c) the simpler types of judgment, 9 and
For confusion between (b) and (c), cf. Dr. Hicks 's paper, pp. 494-495.
LOGIC AND THE ELEMENTARY JUDGMENT 45
(d) the final ideal of judgment in modern logic. It tends further
to introduce confusion between the naive confidence of traditional
logic and the scientific skepticism of modern logic (cf. Hicks,
p. 497).
In making this suggestion, I would rest especially upon the work
of Bradley, Bosanquet, and (recently) Ziehen. I would insist upon
the value of the distinction 'between infra-logical processes and
standardized thought. All standardized or logical thought I would
regard as critical or reflective, and would insist that the substitu-
tion of experimental verification of hypotheses, recognized as such
(in place of the naive faith that "S is P"), is essential to the
modern position, and that the importance of this explicit recogni-
tion of tested and standardized thinking is so great as to justify
and necessitate the rigid exclusion of elements likely to re-introduce
the naive distinctions whose place is properly in traditional logic.
Modern logic includes all standardized thinking, as such, and
necessarily involves a systematic study of the intellectual standards
employed in such thinking, plus a brief description of the infra-
logical processes, and a contrast of infra-logical with strictly logical
and reflective thinking. In virtue of the contrast thus established,
it excludes from logical study all further investigation of these
psychological processes (except, perhaps, in the chapter on falla-
cies), and establishes the ideal of a thinking which shall be con-
sistent, systematic, and thorough, as reflective and as critical as
possible. It also excludes all consideration of traditional logic, with
its characteristic distinctions and problems, as foreign to its own
purpose, and as likely to cause confusion.
II
From the position thus outlined, I will give concise answers to
Professor Hicks 's detailed criticisms.
1. Dr. Hicks thinks that, if only Beurteilungen are admitted
into modern logic, then concepts, identifying judgments (''That is
a cow"), and many inferential judgments ("Yonder is fire"), will
necessarily be omitted (pp. 494-5). Thought is a continuous
process, and a line can nowhere be drawn, so that not only per-
ceptual and many experiential judgments would be omitted, but
eventually (in view of Bosanquet 's contention that ideally there
is only one judgment) "all human judgments would pass under
the knife" (p. 496). My answer to this criticism is: There were,
perhaps, grounds in the previous paper which make this misunder-
standing possible. From the present standpoint, "judgment" be-
ing understood as a human approximation to the one absolute
46 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
judgment, a// judgment, so far as we really judge, i.e., so far as
our thought conforms to the standards of identity, difference, and
organization, is included. This is true not only of symbolic and
transcendent judgments, but also of perceptual and experiential
judgments. What is excluded is the vague experiences of infra-
logical character which have not yet been raised to the intellectual
level. 10
2. Dr. Hicks thinks my treatment of the reflective level
"unique," and my contention, that its acceptance renders insignifi-
cant the distinction between simple and compound propositions, in-
consistent with the practise of "most logicians," who retain the
elementary judgment as well as the reflective level (p. 496). To
this I answer that the criticism is partly grounded. Wundt, Erd-
mann, and other partly modern logicians do attempt to retain both
the reflective level and also the distinction between simple and com-
pound propositions. My objection to this attempt is stated above
I. (3). My treatment is not "unique." It rests largely upon
the work of Bradley and Bosanquet in showing that all our think-
ing is both categorical and hypothetical, categorical qua sensory
and hypothetical qua intellectual, i.e., hypothetical, so far as re-
organizing sensory experience in terms of intellectual patterns and
standards (cf. esp. Bradley 's Principles, Ch. II). It rests further,
in principle, upon the treatment, common to all characteristically
"modern" logicians, of the rudimentary attempts at judgment
e.g., leaping uncritically to conclusions as belonging essentially to
the infra-logical stage.
3. Dr. Hicks thinks I succeed "in banishing elementary judg-
ments only -by enveloping them in metaphysical mist," and chal-
lenges my authority among my "masters" for stating that "contact
with reality is an ideal" (p. 497). To this I answer that if Dr.
Hicks will glance over Bk. I. of Lotze's Logic he will find that Lotze
regards the attempt characteristic of logical judgment to be, to seek
for grounded thought, and that the attempt starts with superficial
sensory judgments, and proceeds continuously without stop until it
concludes in metaphysics. So too in ch. V. of Sigwart's Logic,
he will find that the function of logical thinking consists largely in
checking the naive confidence which expresses itself in 8 it P affirm-
ations, until the judgment has been adequately grounded and the
hypothesis verified. If he will look over Bradley 's Principles,
passim, he will similarly discover, not only that logical thinking
constructs floating adjectives and seeks to attach them, toy successive
10 Cf. Intro, to Mod. Logic, pp. 38-44, 46-53, 55-64, etc. The term ' ' ex-
periential" ia justified, not only by the usage of Erdmann, but also by Aris-
totle 's well-known account of
LOGIC AND THE ELEMENTARY JUDGMENT 47
stages, to Reality, and is working towards a final (metaphysical)
judgment of individuality, but also that a profound note of skepti-
cism pervades the entire work. Similarly, Bosanquet's view of
judgment as "the effort of thought to define reality" leads steadily,
step by step, and pointing beyond itself at each step, to the final
judgment of Omniscience. So, too, in so universally read a work
as Part III. of Creighton's Logic, he will find the stages of judgment
to be from simple sensory judgments of quality to the final judg-
ment of "individuality." It is perhaps unnecessary to continue
to pile up a list of "authorities," as the view is plainly character-
istic of the attempt to realize the vast programme of modern sci-
ence, in which each new discovery is regarded as of provisional and
hypothetical character, subject to revision as knowledge advances,
and in no sense to be regarded as final.
4. Dr. Hicks argues that judgments are not all "man-made,"
on the ground that "the real compels our thought" and that we
have to think as reality dictates (p. 497). I answer that, in a
sense, that is true, but the whole question is, in what sense? As I
understand it, while we are, of course, always in some contact with
reality, we are not always, or even usually, in valuable contact.
Our contact tends to be superficial, misleading, unsatisfactory for
scientific purposes. "We do not know immediately, in the form of
S is P judgments, what reality is. Our problem is, precisely, to
find out by the trial-and-error method, introducing mental patterns,
mind-made entities such as the x and y of simultaneous equations,
into our thought-processes, so as to raise the level of our thinking
from vague and unstandardized feelings to standardized, clear-cut
judgments. It is thus in a very real and important sense that the
consecutive hypotheses with which we approach the concrete situa-
tion can be regarded as "mind-made." The modern epistemolog-
ical logic is precisely the logic involved in this formation and veri-
fication of mental models.
5. Finally, Dr. Hicks criticizes me (passim) for excluding
spontaneity from modern logic in my zeal for critical thinking.
"The tree of knowledge is rooted in spontaneous judgments" (p.
498). I answer that I am not quite clear in what sense Dr. Hicks
uses the term "spontaneity." Surely, all thought is spontaneous,
and we, its carriers and agents, at best, only follow it whitherso-
ever it may lead. But two main senses can be distinguished. (1)
We can restrict the term to the subconscious, in F. W. H. Myers's
sense of that term, according to which instinctive impulses, emo-
tions, obscure intimations of all sorts, "well up spontaneously from
the depths of our nature." It would be idle to attempt to deny
the existence of powerful, if obscure, motives which, arising from
48 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
this source, influence and largely assume direction of our thought.
But is not this source often poisoned, giving rise (as Freud, Jung,
et al. t have shown ad nauseam) to unworthy prejudices, freakish
and fallacious assumptions, idle fancies, and dangerous longings?
On the other hand (2) the cool, intelligent weighing of evidence,
the critical control of impulsive tendencies of all kinds until they
have satisfied our tests for rationality is not this also to be called
"spontaneous," a matter of self -direction? Before the question,
which of the two selves, (a) the instinctive, subconscious, animal
eelf, or (6) the rational, critically self-conscious, human self, the
logician should prefer, there can surely be no hesitation. All the
armory of logic, its whole raison d'etre as a philosophical discipline,
is surely intended for one main purpose, and for one main purpose
alone: to aid us in our fight for control over forces within as well
as without, and to fit us for living the life of cool reason, the life of
deliberate, self-knowing and self-directing activity, the life of ideal-
ized will rather than of brute instinct and mechanical habit, the
life of the "higher" or rational slf. The study of the obscure
spirits which lurk in the subconscious, belongs, not to logic, but
to psychology, and is relegated to that science by the unanimous
voice of modern logicians.
RUPERT CLENDON LODGE.
UNIVERSITY or MANITOBA.
EDDINGTON ON EINSTEIN
LAST fall when the news that the British eclipse expeditions had
confirmed Einstein's law of gravitation sent curious Ameri-
cans scurrying to their Carnegies, they found that there was only
one book in English giving an adequate account of the theory in
its generalized form and that very few copies of this had come to
America. This much demanded volume was Professor Eddington's
Report on the Relativity Theory of Oravitation published by the
Fleetway Press for the Physical Society of London in 1918. The
Cambridge Professor of Astronomy was a member of the expedi-
tion which was sent to the island of Principe in the bight of Africa
to observe the eclipse of May 29, for the express purpose of ascer-
taining if the deflection of starlight predicted by Einstein took
place. The plates taken in Africa and South America showed a
deviation of the images of seven stars corresponding closely with
those calculated from the theory and when Professor Eddington
and his associates so reported to the joint session of the Royal and
Astronomical Societies on November 6 it was declared by the Presi-
EDDINOTON ON EINSTEIN 49
dent to be " one of the most momentous, if not the most momentous,
pronouncements of human thought." A month later Professor
Eddington gave a talk at Trinity College and one might have
thought that a new play was opening for the cue of dons and under-
graduates stretched half way across the Great Court while inside
the dining hall there was "standing room only." In our country
we have the amazing spectacle of "Einstein books," published
hastily to meet the popular demand, stacked up on the quick sales
counter of the bookstore to an altitude comparable to that of the
latest novel.
Professor Eddington, as the foremost champion of Einsteinismus
in English is pre-eminently qualified to satisfy the curiosity of the
general reader as well as the needs of the serious student and his
latest book, Space, Time, and Gravitation, 1 is excellently adapted to
serve both classes. He employs mathematical formula as far as
necessary, yet the non-mathematical reader can pick his way
through the volume, as on stepping stones across a creek, on the
paragraphs of summary or illustration that he understands better
or thinks he does. The author, unlike some authorities, does not
shy off from the sensational aspects of the theory of relativity. On
the contrary he obviously takes delight in playing up its paradoxes.
Sir Oliver Lodge, who as an adherent of the ether is antagonistic
to the new notions, said in discussing Professor Eddington 's ad-
dress before the Royal Astronomical Society that one of the things
which astonished him most about it was that Professor Eddington
thought that he understood it.
What particularly puzzled Sir Oliver Lodge was the proposed
replacement of the straight line as the path of a freely moving
body by the "geodesic" which is the longest distance between two
points. As Professor Eddington expresses it in his lecture, the
earth in passing from the point it occupied a hundred years ago to
the point it occupies now might have done it in no time, as judged
by those traveling on it. For the earth might have cruised around
with the velocity of light and turned up at its present point with its
clocks at the same hour and its people at the same age. "But the
earth did not do that. It was bound by the rules and the rule of
the great trade union of matter is that the longest possible time
must be taken over any job." So the earth pursues a leisurely
spiral "a circle in space drawn out into a spiral by continuous
displacement in time. Any other course would have had a shorter
interval length" (page 72). Or to give the law of motion its gen-
eral expression: "Every particle moves so as to take the track of
* Cambridge University Press, 1920.
60 THE JOURNAL OP PHILOSOPHY
greatest interval-length between two eventa, except in so far as it
is disturbed by impacts of other particles or electrical forces."
There are any number of "shortest" paths; there is only one of
the maximum interval-length through time and space. Einstein de-
duces the laws of motion from his law of gravitation. In Newton's
theory there is no apparent connection. Einstein deals solely with
the course of a gravitating body; he is not concerned with a hypo-
thetical "force" of gravitation. Gravitational force is no more
"real" than centrifugal force, since either may be annulled by
choosing a suitable standard observer.
The presence of matter in space necessitates a non-Euclidean
geometry for its measurements. This curvature of the empty space
of a gravitational field can be calculated and might be measured if
our instruments were exact enough. For instance if a massive
particle is placed at the center of a circle the ratio of the circum-
ference to the diameter would be a little less than v. "If the mass
of a ton were placed inside a circle of 5 yards radius, the defect in
the value of ir would appear only in the twenty-fourth or twenty-
fifth place of decimals" (page 104).
Although this curvature or "hummock" produced by matter
can not be measured directly, it can be found indirectly by observa-
tion of the path of a planet, or of a ray of light near the sun. The
author sums up his exposition of gravitation in these words:
The simplest type of hummock with this limited curvature has been investi-
gated. It has a kind of infinite chimney at the summit, which we must suppose
cut out and filled up with a region where this law is not obeyed, i.e., with a par-
ticle of matter.
The tracks of the geodesies on the hummock are such as to give a very close
accordance with the tracks computed by Newton's law of gravitation. The
slight differences from the Newtonian law have been experimentally verified by
the motion of Mercury and the deflection of light.
The hummock might more properly be described aa a ridge extending lin-
early. Since the interval-length along it is real or time-like, the ridge can be
taken as a time-direction. Matter has thus a continued existence in time. . . .
The laws of conservation of energy and momentum in mechanics can be de-
duced from this law of world-curvature.:
The student of philosophy and psychology rather than of scien-
tific methods will turn with most eagerness to the final chapter
wherein Professor Eddington discusses the speculative aspects of
the relative theory. He gives this chapter the Lucretian title: "On
the Nature of Things," and endeavors to forestall ridicule by quot-
ing from Midsummer Night's Dream:
Hippolyta. This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard.
Theseus. The best in this kind are but shadows ; and the worst are no worse,
if imagination amend them.
P. 151.
EDDINGTON ON EINSTEIN 51
Here is his idea of the trend of the relativity theory:
This is how our theory now stands. We have a world of point-events with
their primary interval-relations. Out of these an unlimited number of more
complicated relations and qualities can be built up mathematically, describing
various features of the state of the world. These exist in nature in the same
sense as an unlimited number of walks exist on an open moor. But the exist-
ence is, as it were, latent unless some one gives a significance to the walk by
following it; and in the same way the existence of any one of these qualities of
the world only acquires significance above its fellows, if a mind singles it out for
recognition. Mind filters out matter from the meaningless jumble of qualities,
as the prism filters out the colors of the rainbow from the chaotic pulsations of
white light. Mind exalts the permanent and ignores the transitory; and it ap-
pears from the mathematical study of relations that the only way in which mind
can achieve her object is by picking out one particular quality as the permanent
substance of the perceptual world, partitioning a perceptual time and space for
it to be permanent in, and, as a necessary consequence of this Hobson's choice,
the laws of gravitation and mechanics and geometry have to be obeyed. Is it too
much to say that mind's search for permanence has created the world of phys-
ics! So that the world we perceive around us could scarcely have been other
than it isf . . . The conclusion is that the whole of those laws of nature which
have been woven into a unified scheme mechanics, gravitation, electro-dynamics
and optics have their origin, not in any special mechanism of nature, but in the
workings of the mind.
"Give me matter and motion," said Descartes, "and I will construct the
universe." The mind reverses this. "Give me a world a world in which there
are relations and I will construct matter and motion." . . .
We have found a strange foot-print on the shores of the unknown. We have
devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origin. At last,
we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the foot-print. And
lo! it is our own.s
Some mathematicians and physicists have manifested impatience
at the impertinent curiosity of the public and declare that Einstein's
theory concerns only themselves, and whatever they may decide to
do with it can have no possible effect upon anybody's religion, phi-
losophy or view of life. But the public knows better. And Pro-
fessor Eddington agrees with the majority on this question. Galileo,
Newton and Darwin were specialists, speculating in fields remote
from common life, yet they have revolutionized the thought and
altered the conduct of the world. Einstein's theory is even more
fundamental and unconventional and if it is verified by experiment
or genrally adopted as a working hypothesis it will be found in
the course of time to have a profound influence upon the minds of
men outside of the realm of science.
EDWIN E. SLOSSON.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
s P. 201.
62 THE JOURNAL OP PHILOSOPHY
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Implication and Linear Inference. BERNARD BOSANQUET. London
and New York : Macmillan and Company. 1920. Pp. viii -\- 180.
In this book Dr. Bosanquet has undertaken, as he tells us, "to
develop and elucidate the non-syllogistic principle" on which his
Logic was founded. In doing this, he has brought his views on a
number of fundamental logical questions into relation with those of
certain other contemporary and recent writers, and thus given
additional significance and interest to the present discussion. The
book is the outcome of Dr. Bosanquet 's long and fruitful occupation
with this subject, and contains in clear and pointed form some of the
more important logical doctrines at which he has arrived. It would
be difficult to find anywhere within the same compass a treatment of
inference so complete and philosophical. The discussions of the
character of the true a priori (p. 94 et passim), of "logic and the
study of the mind" (Chap. VII.), and of the relation of "Judgment
and Supposition" (Chap. VIII.) are characterized by the insight
and grasp that come from a well-examined and coherent view of the
mind and its experiences.
It is true, I think, that readers who are familiar with Dr. Bos-
anquet 's Logic as well as with his treatment of logical questions in
his Gifford Lectures will find nothing in this volume that is substan-
tially new in principle. But the author's logical principles here
gain a new emphasis and perspective by being brought to bear upon
the problems indicated by the title, and also by the illustration and
fupport they receive from the many illuminating examples of vari-
ous concrete types of reasoning which are examined in the course of
the argument. One thus comes to feel to a remarkable degree the
olid ground of experience beneath one's feet, and is made to realize
aneiw that logical principles do not have their reality in an abstract
realm apart, but are nothing but the expression of the movement
and life of the mind. "Truth, in short, is not merely an antecedent
framework, but a spirit and a function" (p. 163).
"Inference," Dr. Bosanquet tells us, "includes prima facie
every process by which knowledge extends itself. When, by reason
of one or more things you know, you believe yourself to have arrived
at the knowledge of something further, you claim to have effected an
inference" (p. 2). And it is impossible to doubt that we are in pos-
session of some knowledge, that there is nothing true. "It is agreed
in principle that we possess a province of assertion on the whole
justified, which we call truth. . . . Thus it would seem to be a nat-
ural assumption that in establishing the details of our knowledge we
BOOK REVIEWS 53
transfer the character of certainty which we primarily recognize in
the provinces of truth as a whole, to the several matters which we
progressively establish within it. And a general consideration whick
merely embodies this presumption might be rendered by some such
formula as 'This is nothing.' The essence of an inference then
would be in showing of any suggested assertion that unless we ac-
cepted it, our province of truth would as a whole be taken from
us" (p. 3).
In developing this view of systematic inference the author is ac-
cordingly able to contrast his position both with the traditional view
of the syllogism as maintained 'by formal logic at its worst, and with
the standpoint of its opponents who attack it from the empirical
point of view. Moreover, he is able to show convincingly that there
is no distinction between these two views in fundamental principle :
both proceed to a conclusion by means of "linear inference." As
opposed to this, the true method of inference is through recognizing
the "implications" of the system in which we find ourselves. The
starting-point of inference is thus neither a general principle nor
sense-data in the form of instances, but it proceeds from within a
whole or system already apprehended as such. Two things are es-
sential : concrete knowledge of the subject matter and some insight
into the form or principle of the whole. Both the formal syllogism
and the type of induction that depends upon enumeration of partic-
ular instances fail to conform to these requirements; the one by at-
tempting to operate with the abstract form as sole principle, and the
other by abandoning the lead of any kind of a principle and con-
tenting itself in the end with a simple whole of enumeration. As
Dr. Bosanquet points out, in neither of these methods of procedure
do the extremes interpenetrate each other: they are both linear in
that they simply go up or down and do not carry their starting-
point with them in such a way as to transform the conclusion.
Whether we go up or down the result is the same : there is no deter-
mination of one extreme by the other and, accordingly, no attain-
ment of genuine rationality in the result.
If the reader is not already familiar with Dr. Bosanquet 's thought
and method of writing, there is danger that he may fail to appreci-
ate the range and significance of the arguments set down here in such
a condensed form. TJie theory of the a priori, to which I have
already referred, follows as a consequence of the view of systematic
inference in accordance with the principle of Implication. The
author's Gifford Lectures of several years ago set forth the same
interesting corollary upon which he here lays emphasis, viz., that
the parts of our knowledge that are really necessary and self-evident
64 / HE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPH Y
do not exist as isolated formal propositions, but constitute whole
concrete systems or aspects of our experience, such as art, or reli-
gion, or philosophy. I can mention only one other topic discussed in
this most compact volume. A> is well known, a great deal of <lis-
cussion has gone on in regard to the relation of Logic and Psychol-
ogy. In the years before the war there raged, especially in Ger-
many, a sharp controversy in which the party names were Psycho-
logismus and Logismus. It would be too much to claim that the
question has been in any sense settled by the careful analysis of Dr.
Bosanquet's chapter, but it seems to the reviewer to contribute
greatly toward the clearing up of ideas on this subject and to furnish
a new starting-point for the discussion of this most fundamental
problem.
Bacon has said that some books are to 'be tasted, others to be
swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. This book be-
longs by good right in the last mentioned class.
J. E. CREIGHTON.
CORNELL UNIVERSITY.
Imagination and Its Place in Education. E. A. KIRKPATRICK.
Botrton: Ginn and Company. 1920. Pp. 214.
"This power of viewing the absent as though it were present . . .
is imagination." The book has three parts. Part I., " Imagination
and Related Activities," is a review of current conceptions about
mental images, association, memory, dreaming, and the relationship
of feeling and of reasoning to imagination. Part II., "The Imagi-
native Life of Children," gives descriptive accounts of children's
plays and day-dreams. There is also a discussion of the character-
istics of imagination at different ages. Part III., "School Subjects
and the Imagination," includes comments on the use of imagination
in reading, spelling, drawing, arithmetic, etc.
The book is readable and straight forward, and is one that a
student ought to grasp without much supplementary explanation.
Some of the exercises at the end of the chapters, however, seem too
large to be handled by the type of student for whom the text is
designed. For example, the question on p. 166, "Does practise in
using the creative imagination in one line increase originality in all
lines? Give proofs." The book as a whole should prove useful
and stimulating.
K. GORDON.
CARNIOIK INSTITUTE or TECHNOLOGY.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS 55
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. January,
1920. The Translation Method of Teaching Latin (pp. 1-15) : "W.
H. FLETCHER. - An examination of the curriculum of junior high
schools located in different sections of the country reveals a striking
similarity of purpose on the part of administrators. The results of
the translation method showed that the interest of the class is main-
tained at the highest pitch, the pupils like to translate Latin, and
they like to study Latin. The Psychology of Riddle Solution (pp.
16-33): THOMAS RUSSELL GARTH. -An experiment was conducted
with riddles. The writer concludes that one must believe in the
trial-and-error character of the method employed in riddles solu-
tions. Speedy guessing tends, as thus objectively determined, to
militate against successful guessing. An Inquiry into the Statistical
Basis of a Conclusion Concerning Sex Differences (pp. 34-38) :
GEORGE W. FRAZIER. -In 1915 Yerkes, Bridges and Hardwick pub-
lished a monograph explaining the derivation and standardization
of A Point Scale for Measuring Mental Ability. They were con-
vinced that their data showed some pronounced sex differences. Two
very interesting statistical points are involved in the method by
which their conclusion was reached: (1) the wisdom of using the
mode as a measure of central tendency and (2) the validity of con-
clusions drawn on so few data. The present writer gives tables
showing no pronounced sex differences. Is it fair to make conclu-
sions concerning general differences in mental ability, as judged by
the point scale, on the basis of a 3.1 difference in arithmetical mean?
Is the point scale method so refined that one can be sure that the
P.E. might not be greater than any of the above differences? The
second point concerning the statistical basis of the conclusions we
are dealing with has to do with the number of cases considered.
The authors were evidently justified in making their conclusions on
the basis of the arrangement of the data as given in the monograph
and were also conscious of the limited number of cases considered,
but it appears from the rearrangement of the data that no differences
between the sexes as great as indicated by Yerkes exists. Communi-
cations and Discussions: Age-Grade Distribution and Intelligence
Quotient: ALLEN J. WILLIAMS. -A discussion following Supt.
Witham's article in the Journal for November, 1919. Editorial.
News and Notes. Publications Received.
Dunning, William Archibald. A History of Political Theories,
from Rousseau to Spencer. New York: Maconillan Co. 1920.
Pp. 446.
M THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Langfeld, Herbert Sidney. The ^Esthetic Attitude. New York:
Harcourt, Brace & Howe. 1920. Pp. xi -f 287.
Merriam, Charles Edward. American Political Ideas: Studies in
the Development of American Political Thought, 1865-1917.
New York: Macmillan Co. 1920. P.p. 480.
Parker, DeWitt H. The Principles of ^Esthetics. Boston: Silver,
Burdett & Co. 1920. Pp. 380.
NOTES AND NEWS
ANNOUNCEMENT is made of the establishment of an Institute of
Politics at Williamstown, Mass., during the summer months. This
project was first undertaken by Williams College in 1913, but the
plans for it had to be suspended during the war. Now, through the
kindness of an unnamed 'benefactor, funds have been provided to
carry on the work for three years, so that it will be possible to hold
the first session this summer. The object of the institute is to ad-
vance the study of politics and to promote a better understanding of
international relations. The subject chosen for this year's session is
"International Relations." It will "be treated in its historical, po-
litical, industrial, commercial and institutional phases. The work
will be carried on by lectures given by men of national and interna-
tional distinction, and by classes and round-table conferences con-
ducted by professors from American colleges and universities. In
addition, every facility will be offered for research, as a special
library is being collected for this purpose. The lectures will be
open to the public, but the classes and round-table discussions
may be attended only by regularly registered members of the in-
stitute. Membership is limited to members of the faculties of col-
leges and universities and to those to whom, by reason of special
training and experience in the field of politics, invitations will be
sent. President Harry Augustus Garfield, of Williams College is the
Chairman of the Administrative Board. The Board of Advisors is
composed of the following members: Professor William Howard
Taft, of Yale ; Professor Archibald Gary Coolidge, of Harvard ; Pro-
fessor Philip Marshall Brown, of Princeton ; Professor John Bassett
Moore, of Columbia; President Edwin Anderson Alderman, of the
University of Virginia; Professor Jesse Siddal Reeves, of the Uni-
versity of Michigan; President Edward Asahel Birge, of the Uni-
versity of Wisconsin; Professor Westel Woodbury Willoughby, of
Johns Hopkins ; President Harry Pratt Judson, of the University of
Chicago, and Dr. James Brown Scott, Secretary of the Carnegie En-
dowment for International Peace.
VOL. XVIII, No 3. FEBRUARY 3, 1921
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
THE MEANING OF "RELIGION" AND THE PLACE
OF MYSTICISM IN RELIGIOUS LIFE
TpvETERMINED attempts have been made recently to extend the
-Lx meaning of the term religion so as to make it synonymous
with "the consciousness of the highest values." "All moral
ideals," it is said, "are religious in the degree to which they are
expression of great vital interests of society." Whoever seeks the
welfare of society is religious. This view 1 fails to recognize the
significance of the difference in psychological attitude that separates
the adherents of any organized religion from the devoted agnostic
or atheistic social worker; 2 it means the identification of morality
with religion, as well as the obliteration of the radical distinction
that exists between magic and religion. For, in that understand-
ing, when magic is not practised in the interest of an individual
but of a group, it is no longer separable from religion. 8 Nothing
in the recent deepened understanding of the role played by social
consciousness in human development, and especially in the origin
of religion, excuses this utter confusion of aspects of human life
long ago separated by the application of different names.
1 Set forth in France with great power and learning by Durkheim and his
followers, the position has been taken up in this country by Irving King in his
Development of Religion and by Edward S. Ames in The Psychology of Belv-
gious Experience. The preceding quotations are from this last book.
2 The present time offers numberless instances of utter devotion to the public
good by those whose affection and thought do not rise above humanity. This
fact is probably the most important of the many great, omnipresent facts of
which Christian traditions obscure the view. It can not be said, on the whole,
that during the Great War the majority of the steadfast friends of humanity
who fought generously for the betterment of mankind have been those who felt
themselves in the kind of personal relation with God that is implied in the es-
tablished Christian worship. Eussia, in the decades preceding the Great Con-
flict, was of itself a sufficient illustration of the degree of heroic sacrifice to
which the love of man may prompt, without reference to God or to immortality.
s Ames writes, ' ' It would be no exaggeration to say that all ceremonies in
which the whole group cooperates with keen emotional interest are religious."
LOG. oit., p. 72.
67
58 THE JOURNAL OF
In our understanding of the terra (and we think that we are
in agreement with the dominant usage), religion can not 'begin
before the birth of some conception, however vague, of superhuman
personal power or powers, whose existence is felt to be a matter of
moment. Before that time, any ceremony that may have been per-
formed was either merely social or magical. The contradiction
which such religions as Buddhism and the Religion of Humanity of
Comte seem to inflict to the affirmation that the notion of divinities
in relation with man is necessary to the existence of the institutions
is merely apparent. Original Buddhism died almost with its foun-
der. Most of his desciples promptly deified and worshipped him;
a small number remembered his teaching and continued to do him
honor as if he were living. There are reasons to hold that these
would long ago have given up their commemoration were it not for
the support they get from the mass of the worshippers. As to the
Religion of Humanity, it no longer exists. Comte 's disciples lived
in a time when the deification of man was no longer possible. They
went as far as they could towards the personification of the Orand
Eire, but they were on the whole too clear-sighted to find it possible
to go as far as necessary for success.
The main cause* of this unfortunate effort to do away with real
differences is, I think, the conviction that metaphysical concepts
are derived, whereas social relations are fundamental, and that,
consequently, you may disregard religious metaphysical conceptions,
when they prove untenable, without surrendering that which is
primary in religious life, namely the social interests involved in the
discarded metaphysical view of the world. However justifiable that
conviction may be, it does in no way legitimize the transformation
of the historical meaning of the word religion. If "religion" were
to be used to denote all social forms of behavior, a new word would
have to be found for those forms of behavior that involve belief in
and relation with superhuman, anthropopathic 'beings. No such
term has ever been suggested by the writers whom we criticize;
they have apparently no use for one. "Religion" should continue
to mean what it has meant in the past; and the expressions "social
values," "social ceremony," "social work," should continue to
designate those aspects of social activity which involve neither a
conscious relation with superhuman powers nor the use of a magical
force.
The appearance of beliefs in anthropopathic, intelligent agents
* In certain influential quarters the extension of the meaning of the term
religion to all social work, haa back of it nothing more respectable than the
desire to avoid the obloquy which attaches to those who do not describe them-
selves as religious.
MYSTICISM AND RELIGION 59
in relation with man was most probably prepared 'by pre-religious,
purely social practises. If it may -be supposed that such practises
ever existed without some sense of a transtribal power or powers,
it may with much stronger reason be held than an increasingly
clear notion of transhuman, personal power developed out of them,
and that thus a certain god-idea arose. 5
Some of the religious practises themselves were, doubtless,
derived from pre-religious, merely social ceremonies. But since
religion has reference to personal agents (willing, thinking, and
feeling beings) some at least of these ceremonies had to be modified
in order to fit the new relation. In other instances, the derivation
of religious from purely social ceremonies consisted merely in the
ascription of a new meaning. One can readily understand that,
for instance, dances born of the play-impulse and built up under
the influence of the love of rhythm, of rivalry, and of other ele-
mental tendencies, came to be looked upon as efficacious either in
a magical or a religious way.
As it is hardly possible to define religion without indicating its
relation to magic, we shall say very briefly how magic is to be
differentiated on the one hand from merely social behavior, and on
the other from religion. Magic implies the action of an impersonal
power, which, however, may be wielded by a person and made to
act upon a person. It acts by coercion and not by successful appeal
to feeling or intelligence. From the mechanical forces as known to
the civilized man, the magical power differentiates itself in that
neither a quantitative nor qualitative relation is necessarily implied
between it and its effects. In the mechanical type of behavior
(throwing a stone, fording a stream, bending a bow) observed at
any degree whatever of culture, the existence of a quantitative
relation 'between cause and effects is implied. When fording a
stream, for instance, instead of relying entirely upon his own
strength, the savage may seek by promises or other anthropopathic
means to move a spirit into assisting him. In that case he behaves
religiously. Or he may repeat some formula, perform various
gestures that will bring him the help desired independently of
the intervention of any spirit, or through the coercion of a spirit.
In that case he acts magically. 6 To confuse these two types of be-
5 In A Psychological Study of Religion I have considered several probable
origins of the god-ideas. See Chapters V. and VI.
For a detailed comparative study of magic and religion, see Part II. of
A Psychological Study of Religion. The substance of that Part was already
contained in an earlier essay entitled The Psychological Origin and the Nature of
Religion, London, Archbald Constable & Co., 1909. A quite similar view of
magic and religion is set forth in Edwin Sidney Hartland's Ritual and Belief,
New York, Scribner, 1914.
60 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
havior is to fail to apprehend one of the fundamental differences
that can exist in human experience.
If there be a phase in human development when the separation
into impersonal and personal powers does not yet exist, then, at
that time, some pre-reiigious form of behavior and thought is
present, but not religion. How can we know when primitive man
has made that distinction? By the presence of the two modes of
behavior: one persuasive, the other coercitive. When he suppli-
cates or offers food, he may fairly be said to think himself in rela-
tion with a personal power.
With this brief statement of the nature of religion and of its
relation to merely social behavior and to magic, we turn to the
relation of mysticism to religion. But what are we to understand
by that much abused word "mysticism"? An experience taken to
mean contact (not through the senses but "immediately") or union
of the self with a larger-than-self, be it called the spirit world,
God, or the Absolute, ia for us a mystical experience. Any form
of worship through which that experience is thought to be secured
will, therefore, be regarded by us as mystical worship.
No one doubts that mysticism as defined above is included in the
meaning of the term religion. But divergences exist as to whether
all religions are mystical; or, as some put it, whether mysticism is
not at the root of every religion, so that in its absence no religion
would have come into existence and, with its withdrawal, all
religions would die off. 7 The answer we shall give to this question
will follow logically from the genetic connection which seems to
us to exist between mysticism and a certain group of innate
tendencies.
From the point of view of the kind of social relation to which
they prompt, the most important instincts and instinctive tenden-
cies may be classified under two heads: those that would separate
individuals and those that would bring them together. On the
i William James, for instance, affirms, that ' ' personal religious experience
has its root and center in mystical consciousness," The Varieties of Religion*
Experience, page 379. Similarly, William Hocking writes of the mystics,
"their technique which is the refinement of worship, often the exaggeration of
worship, is at the same time the essence of all worship, ' ' Mind, Vol. XXI., N. 8.,
p. 39. Delacroix, who in the preface to Etudes d'Histoire et de Psychologie du
Mysticume says that mysticism, understood as the immediate apprehension of
the divine, is "at the origin of all religion," recognizes nevertheless, on page
306, that "The Christianity of Bossuet excludes the Christian mysticism of
Mrae. Guyon. One can not deny that there are here two different forms of
Christianity." He opens a more recent article on Le Mystidsme et la Religion
with the words, "There exist religions without mysticism." Scitntia, Vol. XXI.,
1917.
MYSTICISM AND RELIGION 61
one side we find fear and the various reactions expressive of
aggression and dislike. On the other, those expressive of curiosity,
and of the tender emotion. The former seek satisfaction in dis-
regard, or at the expense of other selves; they lead to methods of
life that would separate the individual from the rest of the world.
The latter seek cooperation with other selves; their method is that
of association and union.
These categories of reaction may each be awakened under differ-
ent circumstances by the religious objects, and thus two types of
religious attitude and behavior come into existence. Mysticism
appears to us as the expression in religion of the cooperating,
uniting human tendencies.
Animal life began, it seems, with an endowment of conflict-
instincts. The appearance of the parental instinct marked prob-
ably the introduction of the other type of endowment: the animal
family became the cradle of the cooperative method of life. In
humanity, the aggressive, self-sharpening attitude was for a long
initial period the conspicious one; the other was called forth
mainly, or only, in the narrower circles of family and tribe. Even
there, its expression was easily inhibited by the subjugating, de-
structive instincts. Slowly man discovered the objective value of
the good- will and the subjective delight of spiritual union.
Christ's contribution to humanity was in the demonstration he
offered of the surpassing value of loving relationship. His rule of
conduct recognizes no other than the tendencies making for mutual
helpfulness and association of the spirit of love.
These two different methods of life have not found equal appli-
cation in every one of its phases. In business the aggressive oppo-
sition of self to self still prevails. The kind of cooperation by
which it seems tempered, is too often for the more successful ex-
ploitation of the outsiders. In certain professions, however, such
as that of the physician and the teacher, in the purely 'benevolent
social activities, and in the individual love-relation involving the
sex passion, the cooperating and uniting tendencies vigorously
assert themselves. In religion their expression has culminated in
a form of worship seeking complete love-union with the divine ob-
ject, in such a way that the worshipper and "God" become one: that
is the mystical strand in religious life.
The powerful instinctive tendencies that incline man to seek
union of will and feeling with other selves receive assistance from
two different directions: (1) Striving with resisting other selves and
inanimate objects brings recurrent moments of weariness when the
zest for the strife disappears. How delightful it is then to close
one's eyes to the multiplicity of things, to ignore the challenge of
62 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
other wills, to renounce effort and to lose oneself in the silent,
peaceful current of undifferentiated life! Both physical and moral
causes bring on this inclination to self-surrender. The pace has
been too fast and the jaded nerves demand rest. Or dispiriting
queries have arisen : ' ' What matters gains and conquests ; what boot
fortune, knowledge, human loves f Nothing is perfect and nothing
endures. Would that I could overcome my spiritual isolation,
destroy the barriers that separate me from my fellow men, be one
with them, instead of struggling against them." In this mood the
will-to-union is given full career.
(2) Mystical worship, rooted in primary instinctive tendencies
and abetted by fatigue and moral failure, finds an ally in the natural
tendency of thought to seek repose in generalization. Thinking
includes a double movement. Consider the man of science or the
philosopher; they do their work by alternating analyses and syn-
theses; they can not do it by one of these alone. There must be
observation and discrimination; but when objects have multiplied,
under the analysing activity of the mind, the severed things must
somehow be united again; they must be seen in their connections.
And, at least for some men, a unification of all things must be
reached ; a universe must 'be built out of the discreet objects. Com-
pleted thinking implies these two movements: 8 sundering and
uniting. The analysis may be quite incomplete, and the ultimate
generalization may be jumped at without much reference either to
facts or logic; but some kind of an all-inclusive principle must be
obtained that generates the sense of security belonging to a coherent
world.
If religion is constituted by our relations with superhuman
powers and if mysticism arises, as we say, from one group only of
the instinctive tendencies prompting to intercourse with these
powers, then there must be two kinds of religious worship. (1)
The worship expressive of defensive purposes and of the sort of
self-seeking that keeps man and God separate. Here transaction
with God, however earnest, bears the mark of externality; there is
no thought of absorption of the self into another self; God and the
worshipper remain apart, just as the seller and the buyer in a
business transaction. (2) The worship prompted by the tendencies
to association, cooperation, union. It assumes the forms character-
istic of mystical worship. Thus understood, mystical experience is
neither the root nor at the root of all religions; it is one type of
religious relation.
8 What the relation is between this double movement of thought and the two
kinds of instincts mentioned above, is not a problem to be discussed here. There
is a correspondence in the results; is it merely fortuitous?
MYSTICISM AND RELIGION 63
The objective kind of religion is well illustrated in the dealings
of Anyambie, a West African chief, with his god. "The great
man," writes Miss Kingsley, "stood alone, conscious of the weight
of responsibility on him of the lives and happiness of his people.
He talked calmly, proudly, respectfully to the great god who, he
knew, ruled the spirit world. It was like a great diplomat talking
to another great diplomat. The grandeur of the thing charmed
me." But, under other circumstances, this same Anyambie might
have behaved in a totally different way towards that same god or
towards a less clearly defined superhuman world. He might have
acted as the Mexican Indians who swallow ten buttons of mescal
and sit around a fire, passively enjoying beautiful colored visions
and a sense of power and elation incomparably superior to any-
thing earthly. The ceremony might have ended in an orgy in
which sex was given satisfaction in a mysterious, sublimating set-
ting. If this should have happened, Anyambie would have passed,
in succession, through both the objective and the mystical type of
religious experience.
It is quite evident that in early societies these two types of be-
havior coexist side by side, in complete toleration of each other.
In Greece, for instance there was by the side of the religion of the
Olympic gods, the mystical mystery cults. But when a particular
religion made claim to universality and was able to enforce that
claim within wide confines, as in the case of Roman Catholic
Christianity, the independent organization of mystical propensity
became difficult.
Man is after all, by nature and the physical circumstances of his
existence, dominantly spatially minded': in order to think and act,
he must objectify. He is not often permitted to lose sight of the
opposition of the me and the not-nie. For this essential reason,
and for others into which this is not the place to enter, the organi-
zation of religious life assumes mainly the objective, non-mystical
form. Provided one does not understand by "non-mystical" the
total absence of mystical elements, but merely their subordination,
one would be justified in saying that all the great popular religions
are of the non-mystical type.
Now these highly organized, dominantly objective religious in-
stitutions soon come to realize the danger threatened by the indi-
vidualism-inspiring mystical tendency. In his search for God, the
mystic goes his own way. If need be, he will brush aside formulas,
rites, and even the priest who would serve him as mediator. And
Mary H. Kingsley, ' ' The Forms of Apparitions in West Africa, ' ' Proc.
Soc. for Psychical Research, Vol. XIV., 1898, pp. 334-335.
64 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
he issues from the divine union with a superior sense of divine
knowledge: he holds that ultimate truth has been revealed to him.
Persons of this sort, harboring such convictions, may obviously be
dangerous to the stability of any institution that has come to regard
its truths as the only truths, and its way of worship as the only way.
And so it comes to pass that the more highly institutionalized are
the spatially minded religions, the less tolerant they are of mystical
piety when it rises beyond the ordinary.
"What becomes of the tendency to mystical religion in countries
dominated by intolerant, objective religions making claims to uni-
verealityt The mystically minded seek what expression is permitted
them within the established religions. They follow their inclina-
tions as far as the ecclesiastical authorities permit. When suffi-
ciently subservient either in fact or semblance as St. Theresa and
Marguerite Marie Alacoque, they are tolerated and, at times, even
encouraged; when too independent and made intractable by the
assurance of divine inspiration, as Mme. Guyon, they are suppressed.
But if the Church is uneasy and watchful in the presence of
fully developed mysticism, it is quite hospitable to its rudimentary
manifestations. Intercourse between sympathetic people constantly
tends to pass from externality to the intimacy of united will and
feeling. Hence, whenever the religious object is conceived as a
loving Being, it becomes almost impossible for the worshipper not
to glide into the trustful, self -surrendering, blessedly reposeful atti-
tude which constitutes the first step towards complete mystical
union. And so it comes to pass that the Christian worshipper ever
tends to drift into mystical relation 10 with his God. This tendency
could not fail to be recognized and even encouraged in a religion
whose God is officially a God of love. But though Christianity unites
in some measure the traits of both types of worship, it is neverthe-
less dominantly an objective religion. According to the ritual, the
worshipper comes into the presence of his God to acknowledge his
sins and to be cleansed from them, to seek protection from bodily
and moral harm, to return thanks for God's goodness, to praise
him, and to rejoice in the assurance of his favor.
Held in subjection though it is, the mystical impulse performs
in Christianity a vivifying function, the value of which can hardly
be overestimated ; for it represents the action of tendencies in which
10 It is in the light of the preceding remarks that I understand Delacroix
when he speaks of the pretence virtuelle du mysticisme dans la religion, et son
cffaccment souvent presque total et sa liberation ritdt que jtechit le mfcanigme
rtducteur. "Le Mysticisme et la Religion," 2d Part. Scientia, Vol. XXII.,
1917.
MYSTICISM AND RELIGION 65
humanity sees its salvation, the tendencies to universal cooperation
and love-union. 11
Let us say now, as a last word and perhaps a word unnecessary
to those who are acquainted with fully developed religious mysti-
cism, that no institution in which the mystical tendencies should re-
main unchecked could long continue to exist, for it would do too
great violence to common sense. The non-mystical and the mys-
tical tendencies together make a complete man and a complete
religion. The problem of religion (one may say of civilization) is
not to be set in terms of the suppression of one or of the other group
of tendencies but in terms of their functional relation.
Had I wanted in this paper to indicate the instinctive source
of all the main aspects of religious worship, I should have pointed
out the presence in human nature of certain innate tendencies such
as curiosity and self-abasement, from which arise reverence and
admiration, and, by derivation, these conspicuous constituents of
worship : praise and adoration. These instinct-emotions are self-
regarding neither in the sense implied! in fear and the lower aggres-
sive tendencies that are the main roots of the objective religious
relations nor in the sense of those other propensities that incite to
cooperation and union. Because of their apparent total disinter-
estedness they are often regarded, mistakenly, I think, as the loft-
iest expressions of which man is capable.
It will be useful to add some instances of religion representing,
as far as possible, the pure objective type. The ancient religions
of Egypt, Babylonia, and Palestine contain only meager traces of
mysticism. Originally, the God of Israel did not even maintain
any relation with individuals; he dealt with the nation as a whole.
When personal relations appeared, they remained for a long time
external. Certain psalms and the later prophets contain the earliest
expressions of mysticism in the religion of Yahweh. 12 Among the
Greeks, the worship of the Olympian divinities was altogether non-
mystical, and it is an open question how much mysticism is to be
found in the Mysteries.
11 It seems to me that no recent student of mysticism has displayed as much
insight into the profounder significance of mysticism than Hocking. With re-
gard to this conception of the relation of mysticism to religion and to life in
general the reader is referred to chapters XXVII. and XXVIII. (The Prin-
ciple of Alternation) of The Meaning of God in Human Experience.
, 12 The mystical practises and theories among the Hebrews before that time
did not belong to the religion of Yahweh. They were remnants of other and
older cults. We refer, for instance, to the excitement, reaching a contagious
frenzy, generated among bands of "prophets" and regarded as a mark of
divine possession. See I Sam. X., 5 ff ; XIX., 20 ff.
68 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Perhaps no semi-civilized people was ever more free from mys-
ticism, in our sense of the term, than the old Romans. "These peo-
ple," says J. B. Carter," "could know nothing of their gods, be-
yond the activity which the pods manifested in their .behalf ; nor did
they desire to know anything. The essence of religion was the
establishment of a definite legal status between these powers and
man, and the scrupulous observance of those things involved in the
contractual relation, into which man entered with the gods. As in
any legal matter, it was essential that this contract should be drawn
up with a careful guarding of definition, and an especial regard to
the proper address. Hence the great importance of the name of
the god, and failing that, the address to the 'Unknown God.' A
prayer was therefore a vow (votum), in which man, the party of
the first part, agreed to perform certain acts to the god, the party
of the second part, in return for certain specified services to be
rendered. "Were these services rendered, man, the party of the first
part, was compos voti, bound to perform what he had promised.
Were these services not rendered, the contract was void. In the
great majority of cases the gods did not receive their payment
until their work had been accomplished, for their worshippers were
guided in this by the natural shrewdness of primitive man, and
experience showed that in many cases the gods did not fulfill their
portion of the contract which was thrust upon them by the wor-
shippers. There were, however, other occasions, when a slightly
different set of considerations entered in. In a moment of battle it
might not seem sufficient to propose the ordinary contract, and an
attempt was sometimes made to compel the god's action by perform-
ing the promised return in advance, and thus placing the deity in
the delicate position of having received something for which he
ought properly to make return." That is the objective religious
relation in all its nakedness.
No one knows better than the Christian mystic himself that the
ordinary religious life of Christendom is of another type than the
mystical. The founder of Quietism, Molinos, speaks of these two
attitudes as "diametrically contrary to one another." There are,
he tells us, "two sorts of spirtual persons, internal and external:
these seek God without, by discourse, by imagination and consider-
ation: they endeavor mainly to get virtues by many abstinences,
maceration of body, and mortification of the senses; bear the pres-
ence of God, forming Him present to themselves in their idea of
i* Religious Life of Ancient Borne, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co. 1911.
pp. 12-13.
MYSTICISM AND RELIGION 67
Him, or their imagination, sometimes as a Pastor, sometimes as a
Physician, and sometimes as a Father andi Lordi; they delight to be
continually seeking of God, very often making fervent acts of love ;
and all this is art and meditation.
' ' But none of these ever arrives by that only to the mystical way,
or to the excellence of union, transformation, simplicity, light, peace,
tranquillity, and love, as he doth who is 'brought by the Divine
grace, by the mystical way of contemplation.
"These men of learning, who are merely seholastical, don't know
what the spirit is, nor what it is to be lost in God; nor are they
come yet to the taste of the sweet ambrosia, which is in the inmost
depth and bottom of the soul, where it keeps its throne, and com-
municates itself with incredible, intimate, and delicious affluence." 14
Similar statements could be quoted from probaibly all the great
Christian mystics. Anyone interested in the place to 'be ascribed to
mysticism in Christianity should read the account of the great quar-
rel about quietism in which Bossuet and Fenelon were the great pro-
tagonists and poor Mme. Guyon the victim. 15 Bossuet represents
here, with undeniable authority, rational, common sense Christian-
ity : a Christianity in which man and God remain face to face with
each other the creature and the creator; the sinner and the Judge,
albeit a forgiving and loving Judge!
JAMES H. LEUBA.
BETN MA WE COLLEGE.
i* Molinos, The Spiritual Guide, John Thomson, Glasgow, 1885. Part I.,
Chap. I., 54, 65; Part II., Chap. XVIII., pp. 126-127.
IB An excellent summary of this quarrel will be found in H. Delacroix's
Etude d'Histoire et de Psychologie du Mysticism, Chap. VIII.
In recent times, Eitschl has altogether rejected mysticism. He "will hear
nothing of direct spiritual communion of the soul with God. Pietism in all its
forms is an abomination to him. The one way of communion of the soul with
God is through His historical manifestation in Jesus Christ, and experience due
to a supposed immediate action of the Spirit in the soul can be regarded as an
illusion. This is the side of Ritschl's teaching that has been specially taken up
and developed by his disciple, Hermann. ' ' Professor Orr, as quoted by Garvie
in the Bitschlian Theology, p. 143.
Of Eitschl 's main disciples, Garvie writes, "Kaftan, with Hitachi and Her-
mann, condemns mysticism in the two types which they describe, both as an
attempt to secure union with God conceived as the Absolute, and as an endeavor
to be joined through the imagination and the affections to Christ in His glorified
state. But in his antagonism to mysticism he is not led, as Eitschl is, to deny
there is in Christian experience a mystical element, a real communion of the soul
with Christ." Ibid., p. 157. See also Hermann's work, Verkehr des Christen
mit Gott.
68 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE
I
I FANCY there are in America not a few who like myself have
often wished they might know what all those names in Alcan's
catalogue stand for. At last we have an account of French phi-
losophy during the period 1890-1914, with a sketch of its ante-
cedents, an account remarkably rich and at once highly appreciative
and very critical. 1 We do not learn what all the names in Alcan's
list stand for, but we learn about many of them, and these, the
writer assures us, are the names that best represent the recent tend-
, encies. I translate M. Parodi 's own words :
"It is, in fact, 'between 1885 and 1890 that French thought seems
to show a singularly increased activity and a new spirit. At the
same time philosophy begins to touch the larger public and to in-
fluence literary groups. We must not forget that the two most dis-
tinguished writers of the preceding generation, Taine and Renan,
who had at this time reached their greatest fame and nearly finished
their work, were philosophers essentially; under their influence the
interest in ideas became universal, and the non-professional pre-
occupation with them ('le dilettantisme') was a moral and a literary
as well as a philosophical movement" (p. 13). "Jules Lemaitre has
said somewhere that while in the preceding period it was the course
in rhetoric that made the greatest impression on students, about
1890 it was unquestionably the course in philosophy" (p. 14). "It
was the moment too when a series of famous theses opened new
paths: that of M. Bergson was defended in 1889, and that of M.
Durkheim in 1893. Notes of M. Jules Lachelier's courses were be-
ing passed about; the teaching of M. Boutroux had reached its bril-
liant point. It may be said that contemporary philosophy shows
from this time on its distinctive traits" (p. 15).
What are these traits? They appear in the passing of the dia-
lectical philosophy of preceding years, the increasing prevalence of
the scientific temperament, and the emphasis upon empirical method
that we are now familiar with. Many of the old problems are al-
most ignored. The problems that really interest are problems about
the nature of science and its kind of validity. Parodi says they are
exclusively of this type, and the statement is the more significant
because he admits it with regret, and would like to see a certain
revival of "rationalism." These problems get their philosophical
shading, however, from their relation to the antinomy of mechanism
i La Philosophic contemporaine tn France. Essai de classification des doc-
trines. D. Parodi. Paria: Fflix Alcan. 1919. Pp. 502.
PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE 69
and freedom. "The problem of freedom has become decidedly the
central problem of philosophy, the one around which all the others,
the problem of knowledge included, have come to gravitate." French
philosophy is thus at present electrified by the sting of problems
about morals (pp. 17, 161). Moreover, in the intimate contact ,of
philosophy with science, a striking fact is the agreement between
the men of these two types of training. "Indeed the philosophy of
the sciences, which some would like to make the total subject matter
of philosophy, is, just now in any case, the field most cultivated and
most honored" (p. 16).
But although contemporary philosophy lias this general char-
acter, there is nothing like a doctrinal agreement. In the teaching
of philosophy as it occurs in public instruction there is no dogmatic
common direction, which is one proof, among others, that no school
can be pointed to as more characteristic than another as regards its
positive conclusions. Rationalism and idealism are still defended;
LeRoy and Sorel can interpret Bergson in diametrically opposite
ways. There is the spirit of Hamelin, and' the spirit of Le Dantec.
What gives to French philosophy of to-day its distinctive quality is
that critical attitude that goes by the somewhat misleading name of
' ' anti-intellectualism. " This attitude by virtue of its empiricism
and its reaction against a conceptualistic tradition, includes an in-
terest in spontaneity, in life (la vie inepuisable) , that, historically,
has been the burden of romanticism. Over against what M. Parodi
calls "ce romantisme phttosoplUque" there is rationalism with an
empirical and an idealistic emphasis. ' ' Perhaps one might say from
this point of view, that our period is a moment in the great conflict
between romanticism and classicism in philosophy" (p. 457).
II
Whence this anti-intellectualism and what are its relations to the
earlier movements? It is, at least, not a response to foreign in-
fluences, for on the whole, Parodi insists, French philosophy has not
been greatly affected by them. Schopenhauer and Spencer, and in
our own day Nietzsche and James, have touched the surface. Kant
and his immediate successors went a little deeper. But the sub-
stance of French philosophy has been the product of French criti-
cism, (p. 21). And this, for the nineteenth century, can be de-
scribed as showing four stages. Briefly these are the reaction after
the Revolution (Bonald and de Maistre) ; the July Restoration,
Cousin's official philosophy of compromise, and the psychological
spiritualism of Maine da Biran; then the first period of Comte's in-
fluence, followed by Littre, Renan and Taine, the propertied class
inclining nervously more and more to clericalism as to the social
70
rampart, while in all circles where criticism was alive, positivism
prevailed with its indifference to metaphysics, its cult of facts and
its confidence in science; fourth and last, 1870 and the Commune,
the sense of a crisis for the nation's vitality and a will to think
seriously and thoroughly. This stage shows three groups: (a)
Littre, Taine, Berthelot, and the first disciples of Comte, the theory
of evolution with its corollary of progress; (6) the influence of Ger-
man scholarship and of German transcendentalism (Jules Lache-
lier) ; (c) Cournot and Renouvier.
A movement that could be called anti-intellectualistic would
seem to be a reaction against these antecedents. But M. Parodi in-
sists that it issues from the speculations that precede it. This may
be so, but I am tempted to look outside of a philosophical tradition
for some, at least, of the causes of the contemporary criticism of
rationalism. For one thing, the extraordinary progress of science,
coupled with the facts that rationalism was usually engaged in dis-
guised apologetics, and that the habit of taking supernaturalism for
granted in some phraseology of metaphysics has steadily been grow-
ing weaker, accounts for a great deal. Also the exciting social and
political history of France, the friction between the government and
ecclesiastical institutions, must have been immensely favorable to the
cultivation of spontaneous curiosity and criticism. And after all,
with fertile minds, a type of problem in time often becomes anti-
quated and stale. This is a kind of explanation which a rationalist
like M. Parodi may not relish, but which I, for one, wish he had
taken account of.
The contemporary period is described by M. Parodi in ten chap-
ters, entitled: "Essays in Synthesis, philosophy that is comprehen-
sive in a somewhat Spencerian fashion; The Historians; The Psy-
chologists; Emile Durkheim and the School of Sociology; the Phi-
losophy of Emile Boutroux; The Critique of Scientific Mechanism;
The Philosophy of M. Bergson ; Bergsonism and Intellectualism ; The
Moral Problem; Rationalism and Idealism." There is also a chapter
of conclusions, and Chapter I. devoted to antecedents. It is impos-
sible, of course, to say much about all these chapters, but the author
is certainly entitled to praise for the admirable way in which his
pages of exposition are free from criticism. The heart of the whole
matter is in the chapter on the critique of mechanism. Here, follow-
ing upon the names of Liard, Evellin, Hannequin, Meyeraon, who
raised the question somewhat incidentally, come the names of Mil-
haud, Pomcare 1 and Duhem. The critique of mechanism was initiated
mainly, however, by M. Boutroux, who attacked the dogmatism of
the Cartesian tradition, first in his thesis of 1874 (De la Coniingence
PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE 71
des lois de la nature), and subsequently in his more advanced L'Idee
de la loi naturelle. And Parodi quotes the following: "Man circum-
scribes his own field of research ; he purposes to consider only a cer-
tain order of facts, those that can be numbered and measured, and to
ignore the rest. It is only 'by virtue of this restriction that we deal
with objects of an appreciably mathematical character.' ' ' As Parodi
observes, this was an "idee capitale, qui devait faire fortune parmi
nos contemporaines" (p. 179).
Parodi mentions many interesting writers and describes their
philosophical contributions names that must 'be omitted from this
summary review. But Gaston Milhaud (Les Conditions et les
limit es de la certitude logique, 1894, and Le Rationalisme, 1897)
must not be overlooked. Milhaud continues and completes the
work of Liard, of Evellin and of Hannequin. Milhaud dispels the
phantom of logical absolutes in the field of existence. Americans
might do well to study his paper, L'Idee de science in Memoires du
Conyrcs de Philosophie de Geneve.
There is no space to pause on the historians of philosophy or on
the psychologists. The chapter on Durkheim is clear and helpful.
According to M. Parodi, the work of Espinas prepared directly that
of Durkheim, presumably through the former 's conception of a social
conscience, since for Durkheim the specific mark of a social fact is the
feature of obligation or duty that belongs to it. Espinas continued
the biological theory of sociology made popular by Spencer, while
Tarde stood for a psychological point of view. It was Durkheim,
however, who demanded that social facts should be determined by
their own specific character, and not by what characterized some
other field of inquiry. The all-importance of the group for the in-
dividual ("I'dme est fille de la cite") was announced, though, by M.
de Roberty and M. de Greef, not Frenchmen, but writing in French,
and by M. Jean Izoulet (La Cite moderne, 1894). Important col-
laborators of Durkheim are M. Levy-Bruhl and MM. Hubert and
Mauss. An independent disciple of Durkheim is M. Bougie (Les
Idees egalitaires and Le Regime des castes).
There is much in the work of M. Boutroux that anticipates, some-
what dimly, of course, the ideas of M. Bergson. Parodi quotes this
among other things: "Et encore, ce n'est pas la nature des choses
qui doit etre I'objet supreme de nos recherches, c'est leur histoire."
M. Bergson had M. Boutroux for one of his teachers when the latter
was initiating the critique of scientific method. M. Parodi 's expo-
sition of the philosophy of Bergson is admirable, but I will not
mutilate it by fragmentary paraphrase. It is interesting to know,
however, that the philosophy of M. Bergson, in so far as this is a
72 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
reaction against the doctrine of mechanism and dialectical intellec-
tualism, "marks the triumph of tendencies long active, not only in
philosophy, but in modern imagination as a whole, and which one
might follow back to Rousseau through French and German roman-
ticism" (p. 290). A writer who, in certain respects, shows the same
preoccupation as Bergson and some of the same influences, is Gabriel
S. allies (Essai sur le Genie dans I'Art, 1883). M. Dunan reaches
conclusions much like those of M. Bergson. The quotations from
Dunan are interesting; here is one: "It is not more rigorous reason-
ing that we need, but new ideas, in closer touch with experience
(mieux orientt's} than those of our predecessors." For M. Georges
Remacle the traditional error of philosophy has been to consider
consciousness as an image of things. It is more akin to the cate-
gories of art and of morals than to the categories of truth.
M. Bergson has not yet developed, himself, the practical implica-
tions of his philosophy, but "among French thinkers, those who have
most emphatically claimed to be his disciples are concerned, first of
all, with religious or social action." M. Maurice Blondel (L 1 'Action,
thesis defended in 1893, and of which the reprinting was forbidden
by ecclesiastical authority) makes primary the spontaneity of the
will. M. Le Roy is, however, the most explicit adapter of M. Berg-
son's ideas to confessional uses, making himself thereby the boldest
and most original of the "modernist" group. Le Roy has applied
Bergson 's theory of concepts to the definition of dogma. " 'Chris-
tianity is not a system of speculative philosophy, but a rule of life,
a discipline of moral and religious action.' 'God is personal' means
simply 'act, in your relations with God as you would with a human
person.' 'Jesus is risen' signifies 'maintain those relations with
Him that you would have maintained before His death, and that you
would maintain toward a contemporary.' ... At most, from the
strictly intellectual point of view, dogma might have one other func-
tion, that of excluding certain errors, certain heresies which have
been judged likely to contradict these practical and vital rules. . . .
And no one, presumably, will be surprised, after this, at the condem-
nation included in the Syllabus of Pope Pius X, in article xxvi,
which is directed especially against M. Le Roy: 'Anathema is who-
ever shall say, ' 'Dogmas are to be understood only according to their
implications for action, that is, not as rules of faith but as rules of
conduct"'" (p. 310).
Le Roy and Sorel are both men of technical competence. Le Roy
is a professor of mathematics. Sorel is an engineer and technician,
well informed in the history of science. M. Sorel contends that the
history of science and of philosophy has been much influenced by the
PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE 73
progress of technique. ' ' The aim of experimental science is, then, to
construct an artificial nature (if such a term may be used), in place
of real nature, by imitating the combinations that enter into experi-
mental mechanisms." And, pressing his idea to the limit, he does
not hesitate to conclude that ' * ' to speak accurately, there are no laws
of nature, but only laws of mechanism, by means of which we repro-
duce under certain definite circumstances certain determinations
similar to those (voisine de celles) that are given by natural bodies.'
According to M. Sorel, 'savants of to-day no longer believe in de-
terminism' " (p. 312).
If theories in physics are instruments of action, theories of poli-
tics and of society are even more obviously so, and the orthodox
political theories are instruments of antiquated class domination.
It is a pity that M. Parodi has not told us more about Sorel. I
have not, of course, repeated all that he tells, but Sorel is interesting
on his own account, and not merely as formulating a left wing of
Bergsonism. . He is free of the usual academic flavor, and the
ideas in his books and articles are ideas that students of philosophy
have usually not met with before. And it may be that the syndical-
ist appropriation of creative evolution is one of the reasons why a
return to the philosophy of clear and distinct ideas seems to M.
Parodi so desirable.
Other writers who have handled the ethical side of M. Bergson's
philosophy are "Weber, de Gaultier, Pradines, Wilbois and Chide
(pp. 315-24). As for the opposition, as early as 1898 M. B. Jacob
raised a cry of alarm. In 1914 M. Maritain denounced Bergson's
philosophy as the fountain-head of modernist heresy. Benda's clever
but petulant little book appeared in 1912. M. Rene Berthelot pub-
lished Un romantisme utilitaire in 1913.
The ultimate importance of all this for the French is, as M.
Parodi insists, in its relation to ethics, and the great problem is how
to write ethics in normative terms. I think I do not altogether
understand, but to judge by M. Parodi 's description, his colleagues
are not quite prepared, with the exception of those of the school of
Durkheim, to write ethics in terms of candid description. M. Levy-
Bruhl, it appears, "separates completely the two elements of the old
concept of ethics. Every science is theoretical, but as such it can
not be practical nor initiate action ; its only purpose is to understand,
it has no call to approve or to condemn. Every ethic, on the con-
trary is an affair of action and practise" (p. 356). "How is a
normative science possible ? Is there not a real contradiction between
the idea of science and the idea of norm?" (p. 350). "Telle est la
crise inevitable de I' idee de morale theorique dans la pensee con-
74 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
temporaine." Obviously, or so it seems to the present reviewer, the
difficulty is unnecessary, and results, not from the data of morals
being indescribable in consistent terms, but from an unwillingness to
give up the dialectical method. Light should come naturally enough
when critics no longer seek absolute sanctions outside of the region
of empirical human affairs.
Again the sociologists Belot and Kauh have reinstated the indi-
vidual conscience. Loisy has made his interesting contribution,
coming at one point into close agreement with Durkheim, when he
holds that religion is nothing else than the mystic form of the social
bond (p. 372). Others who give more importance to the rational
element are Lalande, Jacob, Seailles, Buisson, Darlu, Fouillee and
Lapie. It is M. Paul Lapie who, M. Parodi believes, has shown the
right path for rationalism in ethics; for Lapie, ethics is logic.
Another group of writers on social and political ethics empiri-
cists whose will is not effaced by their deference to facts, and whose
aim is to direct and modify them includes Bougie, Jean Jauns,
Andler, Basch, Renard, Landry, Gide and Henry Michel. All of
these make use of the idea of solidarity popularized by M. Leon
Bourgeois.
There remains a group of writers, interesting not so much to stu-
dents of philosophy as to students of recent French experience, the
men who took the stand of M. Charles Maurras and I' Action Fran-
Gcvise. Of this group M. Parodi has given an excellent account in
an earlier book, Traditionalisme et Democratic (1909). It dates from
the time of the Dreyfus trial, and stands for, or stood for, ultra-
nationalistic and anti-democratic reaction. Its programme included
restoration of the state religion and of the monarchy, and the exalta-
tion of military and racial pride. The group is literary rather than
professionally philosophical; its two most distinguished representa-
tives are Paul Bourget and Maurice Barrel. To them the humani-
tarian idealism of the eighteenth century is naive and gratuitous
folly, and the Revolution the greatest calamity ever visited upon
France. No society was ever really founded on ideas or on an argu-
ment. All social stability is built on habits, instincts, associations,
something that can not be transplanted, but that is a patrimony that
can not be thrown away without moral suicide. This position, it is
claimed, is entirely empirical, an application of the position of Comte,
emancipated from all ideology and amiable superstition, which the
so-called "intellectuals" so innocently seek to popularize. The per-
sonal convictions which are here offered as empirical observations
are not so unlike, M. Parodi remarks, the individual "intuitions" of
another school. Once give up the method of clear and distinct ideas,
PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE 75
which alone makes real criticism possible, and there is no longer any
test of sanity this is the message of Parodi's book. It is on this
doctrine of intuition that Sorel bases his apology for revolution, and
it is on something psychologically equivalent that Bourget and
Barres rest their argument for tradition.
Over against all this ' ' anti-intellectualism " there is a vigorous
protest of idealism, inspired largely by the influence of Lachelier, a
systematic metaphysician of the classical type. This current of
rationalism is represented by Jules Lagneau, Octave Hamelin, Leon
Weber, and M. Brunschvicg. The work of Hamelin is, according to
M. Parodi, the most vast and complete work of contemporary ideal-
ism (p. 432), while M. Brunschvicg represents "a sort of new ideal-
ism, idealism grown infinitely prudent and modest, ready to efface
itself before positive science, limiting its ambition to understanding
what science accomplishes, but upholding at the same time the essen-
tial point of view of systematic philosophy and the rights of reason ' '
(p. 420). And M. Brunschvicg is given credit for "a new idea of
truth": "Truth consists of those propositions which are substan-
tiated" la verite, c'est en somme ce qui se verifie a view with
which an American pragmatist should be entirely satisfied.
In spite of the work of Couturat, modern logistic is, in Parodi's
opinion, not a French enterprise, and so he gives it but slight atten-
tion. An effort of the most serious value, however, and a character-
istically French one, initiated by M. Andre Lalande, is the "Philo-
sophical Vocabulary," still unfinished, drawn up by the French
Philosophical Society.
Where there is so much variety and fertility, conclusions are diffi-
cult and must be decidedly tentative. Of two things M. Parodi is
sure: never has French philosophy been farther from having a
unified doctrine ; and, also, this lack of agreement is a sign of energy
and constructive ability. Certainly a mark of French intelligence is
the cooperation of philosophers and scientists in philosophical dis-
cussion. "If we consider the philosophy of science, it is remarkable
there is not one of the distinguished savants of our period but has
done work in philosophy at some time" (p. 387).
But when that has been said, M. Parodi ventures to speak of
something like a crisis in French philosophy. Empiricism, under
the influence of M. Bergson's criticism, is issuing in an intuitionism
difficult to test or to describe, and lending itself to contradictory
interpretations. The "unconscious," under one label or another,
plays, it appears, an increasingly important role; but what is per-
haps most serious is the degree to which a philosophy of intuition
releases the individual from the control of objective criticism in-
76 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
deed principles of evidence tend to disappear. Carried to this ex-
tent, where there is no longer any criterion of evidence, empiricism
eeMCQ to be empiricism in the scientific sense, and the heart is its own
authority, as in pragmatism of the sentimental type. There is, of
course, the opposition of the less adventurous, but conservatism is
to-day at a disadvantage, however sound its criticism. But if em-
piricism of to-day has become more discriminating, more subtle and
microscopic, rationalism, too, is more modest and more scientific than
it used to be. Rationalism has had to go to school to science, and has
learned so much that the old professional suspicions which each had
of the other are largely forgotten. Apparently no French savant
has any occasion to declare, as Mach had to, that he is not a philos-
opher and does not intend to be one.
Ill
M. Parodi has not given us a history of recent French philosophy,
and he has not attempted to. But if French philosophy has its
orientation in French life, if it includes, as one likes to suppose it
does, a competent criticism of French experience, there must be
many things in that experience that a student of French philosophy
would like to know about. An episode need not have the dimensions
of the French Revolution in order to influence discussion. French
democracy was put to a very severe test by the Dreyfus affair, and
M. Parodi tells in a most interesting way, particularly in his earlier
book, the relation between "the affair" and certain utilizations of
positivism. M. Le Roy is a Bergsonian because he is a modernist.
One would like to know more about the influence of modernism on
recent French formulations ; whether there has been any such influ-
ence, whether any important thinkers have cared to adapt their
phraseology to confessional tastes, or whether any were moved in the
opposite direction by, let us say, such an incident as is connected
with the name of M. Loisy. According to M. Parodi, the energy of
recent philosophy has been focused on the authority of science. I
well remember an address in America by M. Levy-Bmhl, in which
that distinguished philosopher said that this examination of science
was, if I rightly recall, initiated by Rrunct lore's dramatic affirma-
tion that science was bankrupt. One would like to know more about
that. The polemic of Brunetiere was, in any case, an intellectual
event, however irrelevant it may have been to la philosophic in-
tegrate.
It is impossible to believe that the Catholic Church in France
is not a great factor in the country's intellectual life. An institu-
tion with so superb a tradition, symbolized by what is the Cathedral
PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE 77
of Chartres and what was the Cathedral of Rheims, is a possession
for the imagination as well as a complication for politics. In many
subtle ways it must help to form that fine thing we know the culti-
vated French mind to be. Does it affect the orientation of French
philosophy, and how ? And finally is not Sorel a symptom of some-
thing larger than the sum of his pages? Sorel has no good word
for democracy, that compromise of middle-class domination and
political corruption. It may be that democracy will soon have to
be tested more severely than it was in France by the Dreyfus trial.
Might one not expect that the concept of democracy would provide
a central problem in French ethical discussion? I have the im-
pression from M. Parodi's book that it does so, and in view of the
trend of events it seems likely to do so more and more. Under the
circumstances, criticism, foresight and direction in a word, the
rationalistic virtues can not be esteemed too highly. Their neces-
sary work can not be done by mysticism and individualistic in-
tuition.
To what extent M. Parodi's exposition is influenced by the po-
tential danger that disruptive social forces may seize upon a meta-
physics of mystical intuition, I would not venture to guess. But the
book is a document of firm patriotism; full of sympathy, however,
with the spirit of progress and with all genuine aspiration. It is
a review of what France has to offer in the way of philosophy to
students from other nations that come to her universities. "II nous
a pant, ~bon aussi et opportun, a I'heure ou nous sommes, d'exposer
aux autres, et a nous memes, toute la richesse, toute la diversite
toute la puissance de I'intelligence frangaise." But that attempt,
as M. Parodi surely will admit, calls for gifts and power that no
single scholar can supply. I greatly wish that Parodi's fine effort
might be supplemented with another review of the same ground,
this time, perhaps, by some one of the school of Durkheim.
And a little skepticism may be permitted as to the danger latent
in the word "intuition." M. Poincare distinguishes two types of
mathematicians, one of them holding to deductive logic, the other
resorting to observation and experiment. The second type, says
Poincare, uses intuition. That M. Bergson means by the word just
what Poincare meant by it I will not insist, but there is, I believe,
no reason for understanding it, in M. Bergson 's usage, as meaning
anything but highly expert empirical perception. Mr. Kreisler, the
violinist, while serving with the Austrian army, was able, owing to
the exceptional training of his ear, to distinguish differences in the
sound of a moving shell that indicated something about its position
or direction. The discrimination had not been made before, but to
78 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
an ear made sufficiently sensitive by experience it was a normal
empirical perception, by whatever name it might be called. Intui-
tion is, however, in spite of Poincar6's authority, an unfortunate
word, for, after all, it is not M. Bergson that will misuse it, but
those to whom the way of evidence and proof is too long and tedious.
And these, as M. Parodi believes, may become in troubled times a
danger not only to philosophy, but to the world.
WENDELL T. BUSH.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Industrial Administration, a series of lectures. Manchester: The
University Press. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. 1920.
Pp. 203.
Poet-war England has shown a considerable interest in the prob-
lems of industrial efficiency including the problems of effective in-
dustrial administration. This interest has brought the universities
into a closer touch with industry and business and has encouraged
some of them to undertake the training of executives and adminis-
trators. At Manchester it has resulted in the creation of a Depart-
ment of Industrial Administration in the College of Technology.
The eight lectures which comprise the present volume were delivered
in this department during the session of 1918-19.
The authors are almost without exception recognized in England
as authorities in the special topics with which they deal and are for
the most part reporting their experiences either in actual manage-
ment or else in scientific investigations carried into industry. As
is to be expected in such a series there is a considerable diversity
both in choice of subjects and in the methods in which these subjects
are handled, ranging from a generalized discussion of the possible
applications of psychology to industry to a technical report on the
relation of specific atmospheric conditions to efficiency. All of the
papers, however, are dealing with some phase of the administration
of the human problems in industry and are concerned with the man-
agement of men rather than with the management of machines,
materials, finished products or with such topics as "cost-account-
ing," "routing" or scientific management in the narrow sense. In
America the volume may be described as dealing with various phases
of "industrial relations" or of "personnel administration." If
British experience in this field is accurately reflected in the present
volume, it does not show any marked advance over the best Amer-
ican theory and practise.
BOOK REVIEWS 79
The following are the lecturers and their topics.
B. Seebohm Rowntree, speaking as an employer, presents the
social obligations of industry of labor, adopting as his premise
"That Industry should everywhere and always serve the needs of
citizenship." He gives in detail a cost-of -living study and discusses
its relation to earnings. T. H. Pear, professor of psychology in the
University of Manchester, is the author of the paper on the applica-
tions of psychology to industry. A. E. Berriman, chief engineer
of a large automobile works (Daimler), has a paper on education as
a function of management. Of particular interest in his discussion
of the relations of the various existing educational agencies (ele-
mentary, secondary and higher school, trade apprenticeships, part-
time schools, etc.) to each other and to the conditions of industrial
employment. Charts and records for engineering training are re-
produced. Dr. T. M. Legge, the Medical Inspector of Factories,
reviews the recent progress in the attack on occupational diseases.
Dr. Leonard Hill, Director of the Department of Applied Physiology,
Medical Research Committee, in his lecture on atmospheric condi-
tions and efficiency, corrects some popular beliefs as to the way in
which bad air produces its harmful effects. He has devised an in-
strument, kata-thermometer, for studying the cooling power of at-
mosphere and on the basis of his records presents a chart showing
probable optimum conditions of temperature and air movement for
certain types of work. T. B. Johnson recounts his experiences with
industrial councils and considers their possibilities. St. George
Heath calls attention to the need of systematic training for factory
administration. A. F. Stanley Kent, director of the department in
which these lectures were given, contributes a brief lecture on
industrial fatigue.
LEONARD OUTHWAITE.
BUREAU or INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH, NEW YORK.
Lectures on Industrial Administration. B. Muscio, editor. London :
Isaac Pitman & Sons. 1920. Pp. 276.
A companion volume to that on Industrial Administration from
the University of Manchester (reviewed immediately above), is this
series of lectures on industrial administration. The editor explains
in a preface that the lectures were delivered in a school for the study
of industrial management held at Cambridge in July 1919 under
the general direction of Dr. C. S. Myers, Director of the Cambridge
Psychological Laboratory.
The thirteen lectures in the book are divided in five parts deal-
ing respectively with the ethical, administrative, psychological, phys-
80 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
iological and special research problems of industry. In the main
the papers are simple and interesting reports of current tendencies
in the field of industrial administration. There is nothing refresh-
ingly novel or startlingly progressive to report.
Throughout the volume there is a gratifying acquaintance with
American authorities and evidence of a debt to American experi-
ence. A. Robert Sterling discusses Taylor's principles in modern
British management. Cyril Burt in dealing with vocational diag-
nosis in industry and at school reviews the work of Miinsterberg,
Whipple, Hollingworth, Seashore, the Division of Psychology of the
Surgeon General's Department and the Committee on Classification
of Personnel (unfortunately referred to as the American Personal
Department). The lecture on the psychology of advertising is of
course indebted to Scott, Hollingworth, Strong and Starch. T. H.
Pear in a lecture on social psychology and the industrial system
discusses at length Ordway Tead's Instincts in Industry. P.
Sargant Florence contributes an article on the statistical measure-
ment of the human factor in industry which is based on American
experience, particularly on his own work for the United States Public
Health Service. In dealing with industrial research A. P. M. Flem-
ing calls attention to the extensive technical research work being
carried on here by large companies (Westinghouse, General Electric,
Eastman Kodak, etc.) as well as by such organizations as the Mellon
Institute and the Bureau of Rolling-Mill Research at Carnegie
Institute of Technology.
American managers and students will find a brief account of the
British shop stewards' movement in E. M. Wrong's description of
some tendencies in industry. They will benefit by a reading of the
section on physiological problems of industry, particularly Dr.
Edgar L. Collis* account of the practise of industrial welfare and
health.
LEONARD OUTHWAITB.
BUREAU or INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH, NEW YORK.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
MIND. April, 1920. Sense-Knowledge (3d art., pp. 129-144) :
JAMES WARD. -From the historical standpoint the continuity be-
tween perceptual and conceptual knowledge is shown in the cases of
temporal order and number. The Meaning of Matter and the Laws
of Nature according to the Theory of Relativity (pp. 145-158) : A.
S. EDDINGTON. - " . . . we have found one mode of thought tending
towards the view that matter is a property of the world singled out
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS 81
by mind on account of its permanence . . . that the so-called laws
of nature . . . are implicitly contained in this identification and
are therefore indirectly imposed by the mind; whereas the laws
which we have hitherto been unable to fit into a rational scheme, are
the true natural laws inherent in the external world, and mind has
had no chance of moulding them in accordance with its own out-
look." Omnipotence and Personality (pp. 158-185) : W. M. THOR-
BURN. - "God is good, and God is great. But it is mere poetry to call
him Omnipotent. He is too obviously limited by the intractability
of lifeless matter, and the wilfulness of His own living creatures.
His plans for the harmonious perfection of the world are too con-
spicuously marred and thwarted by dolts, devils, and democrats."
Phenomenal Symbolism in Art (pp. 186-206) : P. J. HUGHESDON. -
Considers ' ' what it is that phenomena express, secondly, whether this
expressiveness is essential or associative . . . thirdly, what is the
difference in this expressiveness according as it is regarded from the
esthetic or from the practical point of view." Discussions. Mr.
Bosanquet on Croce 's ^Esthetic : H. WILDON CARR. Croce 's ^Esthetic :
BERNARD BOSANQUET. Critical Notices. A. N. Whitehead, The
Principles of Natural Knowledge: C. D. BROAD. New Books. Aris-
totelian Society, Supplementary Vol. 2: Problems of Science and
Philosophy: C. D. BROAD. G. M. Stratton, Theophrastus and the
Greek Physiological Psychology before Aristotle: W. D. Koss. Vlad-
imir Solovyof, The Justification of the Good: A. E. TAYLOR. I. I.
Efros, The Problem of Space in Jewish Mediceval Philosophy: C. T.
HARLEY WALKER. Irving Babbitt, Rousseau and Romanticism: B.
BOSANQUET. G. Pitt-Rivers, Conscience and Fanaticism: G. G. L.
Stein, Philosophical Currents of the Present Day: F. C. S. SCHILLER.
P. Decoster, La Reforme de la Conscience : L. J. RUSSELL. Count H.
Keyserling, Das Reisetagebuch eines Philosophen: F. C. S. SCHILLER.
G. Castellano, Introduzione allo studio delle opere di Benedetto
Croce: H. WILDON CARR. G. Marchesini, Lo Spirito Evangelico di
Roberto Ardigo: A. E. T. Philosophical Periodicals. Note.
Paul Barth, Erich Becher, Hans Driesch, Karl Joel, A. Meinong,
Paul Natorp, Johannes Rehmke, Johannes Volkelt. Die Deutsche
Philosophie der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstelhmgen. Leipzig:
Felix Meiner. 1921. Pp. viii -f 228. 60 m.
Child, Charles Manning. The Origin and Development of the Ner-
vous System from a Physiological Point of View. Chicago : Uni-
versity of Chicago Press. 1921. Pp. 296. $1.90.
Royce, Josiah. Fugitive Essays. Edited by J. Loewen'berg. Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press. 1920. Pp. 429.
82 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Santayana, George. Character and Opinion in the United States:
With Reminiscences of William James and Josiah Royce and
Academic Life in America. New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons. 1920. Pp. viii + 233.
NOTES AND NEWS
THE following from Nature will interest American societies and
individuals that would like to cooperate in any effort to help Russian
men of science :
We have recently been able to get some direct communication from
men of science and men of letters in North Russia. Their condition
is one of great privation and limitation. They share in the conse-
quences of the almost complete economic exhaustion of Russia; like
most people in that country, they are ill-clad, underfed, and short
of such physical essentials as make life tolerable.
Nevertheless, a certain amount of scientific research and some
literary work still go on. The Bolsheviks were at first regardless,
and even in some cases hostile, to these intellectual workers, but the
Bolshevik government has apparently come to realize something of
the importance of scientific and literary work to the community, and
the remnant for deaths among them have been very numerous
of these people, the flower of the mental life of Russia, has now been
gathered together into special rationing organizations which ensure
at least the bare necessaries of life for them.
These organizations have their headquarters in two buildings
known as the House of Science and the House of Literature and Art.
Under the former we note such great names as those of Pavlov the
physiologist and Nobel prizeman, Karpinsky the geologist, Borodin
the botanist, Belopolsky the astronomer, Tagantzev the criminologist,
Oldenburg the Orientalist and permanent secretary of the Peters-
burg Academy of Science, Koni, Bechterev, Satishev, Morozov, and
many others familiar to the scientific world.
Several of these scientific men have been interviewed and affairs
discussed with them, particularly as to whether anything could be
done to help them. There were many matters in which it would be
possible to assist them, but upon one particular they laid stress.
Their thought and work are greatly impeded by the fact that they
have seen practically no European books or publications since the
Revolution. This is an inconvenience amounting to real intellectual
distress. In the hope that this condition may be relieved by an
appeal to British scientific workers, Professor Oldenburg formed a
NOTES AND NEWS 83
small committee and made a comprehensive list of books and publi-
cations needed by the intellectual community in Russia if it is to
keep alive and abreast of the rest of the world.
It is, of course, necessary to be assured that any aid of this kind
provided for literary and scientific men in Eussia would reach its
destination. The Bolshevik government in Moscow, the Russian
trade delegations in Reval and London, and our own authorities
have therefore been consulted, and it would appear that there will
be no obstacles to the transmission of this needed material to the
House of Science and the House of Literature and Art. It can be
got through by special facilities even under present conditions.
Many of the publications named in Professor Oldenburg's list will
have to be bought, the costs of transmission will be considerable, and
accordingly the undersigned have formed themselves into a small
committee for the collection and administration of a fund for the
supply of scientific and literary publications, and possibly, if the
amount subscribed permits of it, of other necessities, to these Rus-
sian savants and men of letters.
We hope to work in close association with the Royal Society and
other leading learned societies in this matter. The British Science
Guild has kindly granted the committee permission to use its ad-
dress.
"We appeal for subscriptions, and ask that cheques should be
made out to the Treasurer, C. Hagberg "Wright, LL.D., and sent to
the British Committee for Aiding Men of Letters and Science in
Russia, British Science Guild Offices, 6 John Street, Adelphi,
London, W.C.2.
MONTAGUE OF BEAULEEU,
ERNEST BARKER,
E. P. CATHCART,
A. S. EDDINGTON,
I. GOLLANCZ,
R. A. GREGORY,
P. CHALMERS MITCHELL,
BERNARD PARES,
ARTHUR SCHUSTER,
C. S. SHERRINGTON,
A. E. SHIPLEY,
H. G. WELLS,
A. SMITH WOODWARD,
C. HAGBERG WRIGHT.
84 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
To THE EDITORS OP THE JOUBNAL OP PHILOSOPHY :
Among the mental disturbances resulting from the war and com-
monly classed as "shell-shock" are many cases of battle blindness,
usually evanescent though sometimes permanent. That this affliction
is not due to modern artillery is proved by the fact that it was known
long before the invention of high explosives. Perhaps the earliest
instance on record is that told by Herodotus in his account of the
battle of Marathon (VI., 117) :
The following prodigy occurred there: an Athenian, Epizelus, son of Cupha-
goras, while fighting in the medley and behaving valiantly, was deemed of sight,
though wounded in no part of his body, nor struck from a distance; and he con-
tinued to be blind from that time for the remainder of his life. I have heard
that he used to give the following account of his loss. He thought that a large
heavy-armed man stood before him, whose beard shaded the whole of his shield;
this specter passed by him, and killed the man that stood by his side. Such is
the account, I have been informed, Epizelus used to give.
Of course the valiant Athenian may in the stress of conflict have
burst a blood vessel or started some other physiological injury but the
accompanying hallucination would imply a case of psychical blind-
ness, which might therefore be called " Epizelus 's disease."
EDWIN E. SLOSSON.
WASHINGTON, D. C.
PROFESSOR ALEXIUS MEINONO, of the University of Graz, died on
November 27, 1920, at the age of sixty-seven years. It is unnecessary
to dwell upon the loss to philosophy in the death of so able a thinker
at the maturity of his power.
QEHEIMRATH DR. RICHARD FALCKENBERO, professor at Erlangen
since 1888, died after a brief illness, September 28, 1920. Professor
Falkenberg's best-known work is his Geschichte der neueren Phi-
losophie, now in its eighth edition ; the final chapters of this edition
are printing under the care of his son, Dr. Robert Falckenberg, him-
self a graduate in philosophy. Professor Falckenberg was also the
editor of the series, Frommanns Klassiker der Philosophic, to which
he contributed the volume on the life and works of Lotze, 1901, and
co-editor of the Zeitschrift fiir Philosophic und philosophische Kritik.
VOL. XVIII, No 4. FEBRUARY 17, 1921
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
A BEHAVIORISTIC VIEW OP PURPOSE
WHERE matters of fact are in question it is normally the office
of the philosopher to trace the broader outlines of accepted
fact rather than to contribute new items of fact. The features of
human nature which have recently been assembled by psychology,
and' particularly the newer facts which have been brought to light
by behavioristic and psychiatric observers have already begun to
compose a physiognomy. For the first time since the moralists
and theologians divided the soul from the body, man is beginning
to find a place in nature without being stripped of his most dis-
tinctive characteristics. He has begun to move about on the sur-
face of the planet while still retaining possession of his faculties.
This achievement is due primarily to that general psychological
tendency which has acquired the name of behaviorism from one of
its particular and recent manifestations. Behaviorism in the gen-
eralized sense is simply a return to the original Aristotelian view
that mind and body are related as activity and organ. Expressed
in more modern terms this means that the mental life consists of
those performances of an organism that immediately involve the
exercise of its nervous system. The difference between psychology
and physiology ceases to be a difference of subject-matter, like the
difference between entomology and ornithology, where each deals
exhaustively and exclusively with a class of objects; and becomes a
difference of method and approach like that between chemistry and
physics, where two sciences deal with interpenetrating type-com-
plexes which contain common elements and are found in the same
objects. Psychology deals with the grosser facts of organic behavior,
and particularly with those external and internal adjustments by
which the organism acts as a unit, while physiology deals with the
more elementary constituent processes, such as metabolism or the
nervous impulse. But in so far as psychology divides the organism
it approaches physiology, and in so far as physiology integrates
the organism it approaches psychology.
There is at present another difference that is likely in the near
future to be obliterated. The nervous system of a highly developed
85
86 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
organism plays a double role. Or, as it is more commonly ex-
pressed, there are two nervous systems, the cerebro-spinal or central
system, and the autonomic system. The former regulates the
organism's external affairs and the latter its internal affairs. Now
it is customary for psychology to concern itself primarily with the
former, leaving the latter to physiology. In other words psychology
views behavior as a commerce of the organism with its environment,
in which the organism imports stimuli and exports acts. The
central nervous system receives stimuli at the peripheral sense-
organs and delivers acts at the skeletal muscles. It has also its
executive offices in which a record is kept of all such transactions,
and in which the rate and the form of exchange are determined.
Meanwhile the autonomic nervous system is supposed to keep the
plant in repair and supply the fuel. But as in most forms of busi-
ness, it is difficult to draw any sharp line between up-keep and
out-put. Certainly if the reserves of the human organism are
seriously depleted, or if the machinery breaks down, all hands are
called upon to repair the damage and for a time no other business
is transacted. Indeed the executives would appear to be con-
stantly in receipt of reports on the condition of the plant and
largely to be governed in their policy by what is reported. There
is much to be said even for the view that the care of the plant was
originally the sole object of the business and that its commercial
transactions developed out of the need for fuel. This is the view,
now strongly supported, 1 that the central nervous system is an out-
growth of the autonomic system. In any case from what we now
know about emotion, and what we have always known, but have
not yet succeeded in understanding, about feeling, it is evident that
a powerful influence is exerted on the organism's behavior by the
whole internal economy, including the glands of internal secretion
as well as the major nutritive, respiratory and circulatory processes.
Waiving this last consideration for the present, let us return
to that view of the organism which is defined by the functions of the
central nervous system. The organism is on the plane of moving
bodies and physical forces, where it is elbowed and trodden by all
elements, but where it gives as good as it gets. Where does the
"mind" fit into such a picture, and where the will and the reason?
Somewhere, evidently, between the stimulus and the act. If you
ask a man a question and get an answer, his mind has been at work
between the question and the answer, between the sound waves
which impinged on his auditory nerve and those which emanated
from his vocal organs. From your standpoint as an untrained ob-
server there is a hiatus. You put in your question and you wait
i Cf. e.g., Kempf, The Autonomic System and the Personality.
A BEHAVIORISTIC VIEW OF PURPOSE 87
for your answer. If you are an introspective psychologist you ask
another question, and get another answer. If you are a behavior-
ist you follow the stimulus towards its destination and the act
towards its source until they meet and the gap is closed. If you
are an introspectionist you regard the mind as something that
supervenes, or hovers about the hiatus. If you are a behaviorist
you regard the mind as something that intervenes as an arc or
circuit of the general causal nexus. When so regarded the mind
appears as a physical complex which receives, transmits, converts
and gives out physical influences, and which is constantly changing
its external and internal adjustments in consequence of its
activities.
The elementary unit of conduct or behavior on the part of
organisms having such a structure will be a movement induced by
a stimulus. The specific character of the act will lie in its having
effected just that movement in consequence of just that stimulus;
and the characteristic property or state of such a mind will lie in
the arrangement of parts conditioning such an act. An act of
mind will foe a response; and a state of mind will be a disposition
to respond.
Now many will object that this is to leave out "consciousness."
But what is this "consciousness" we are under obligation to include
is it a datum or a theory ? It was once said that psychology omitted
the soul. And so it did, in so far as the term "soul" was the
name for a theory formulated in theology or ' ' rational ' ' psychology.
But psychology never deliberately neglected any of the facts or
problems lying within the field of the mental life of man; and as
a result of omitting the older theory of the soul it reached a very
much better understanding of the actual mode of existence in ques-
tion. No one would now think of conceiving the soul as a simple,
indivisible and incorruptible static entity, or as a naked act of pure
reason. In every philosophy the soul is now a process; or a flow-
ing, and more or less complexly organized, experience. When,
therefore, we say the soul is lost, what we really mean is that a
theory is more or less obsolete, as a result of its having been suc-
cessfully ignored. The soul as an existent fact having a nature and
an explanation, is not lost, but found.
Now something of this same outcome may with reasonable safety
be predicted in the case of "consciousness." If a behaviorist be
enlightened he will have no intention of omitting any facts, but
only of abandoning a theory which he believes has proved unsatis-
factory. He does not abandon consciousness, but the introspective
theory of consciousness. This consists in taking the data of intro-
spective analysis as the ultimate constituents of the mental life, the
88 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
units which in their own peculiar aggregations and sequences com-
pose mind. Psychophysical parallelism and atomic sensationalism
are developments of this theory, and are evidences of its weakness.
It has in fact never worked. The most illuminating things that
psychology has said 'have been said when it has allowed itself liberties
with this theory, and introduced as much of the outlying physical
and organic field as proved convenient. The behaviorist has em-
phasized the failure of the introspective theory to yield results com-
parable to those obtained in kindred 1 sciences, and proposes to try
another. He does not deny or intend to neglect any of the data of
introspection. He merely believes that this is not the best place to
begin, because the introspecting mind is a peculiarly complex form
of the mental life. He regards an animal reflex or habit as a more
elementary mental phenomenon than an introspectively discrimi-
nated sensory intensity. 2 He believes that introspection does not
present mind as such, or characteristic mental phenomena or
events; but that it may present pretty much any subject-matter,
such as parts of physical nature within or without the organism.
Beginning with any experience, introspection suspends further ex-
ploration and becomes more attentively observant of what was first
in this way circumscribed. Features are now discriminated which
were not at first noticed; and construed as a test of capacity, this
doubtless indicates how many items of the physical world the human
mind can discriminate. But the mental part of it should then be
looked for not in what is discriminated, 'but rather in the act of
discrimination. And since this is a relatively complex case ol
mental action it would appear to be the part of prudence to begin
with some simpler act, such as the reflex. The behaviorist concedes
that introspection and all its works must find a place in any com-
prehensive and adequate view of mind. When they do find their
place they will perhaps have lost their present outlines, because of
having been broken up and redistributed. But in so far as the new
theory is more successful than the old, consciousness as a group of
facts, as something that exists and happens, will have been found
and not lost.*
2 For an admirable discussion of this question and a behavioristic interpre-
tation of sensation, cf. 6. A. De Laguna: "Sensation and Perception," this
JOUBNAI,, 1916, Vol. XIII., pp. 533, 617.
* The behaviorists would hope, incidentally, to rescue consciousness from the
hands of its'parallelistic friends who in proportion as they insist upon its mental
purity find themselves compelled to admit its causal impotence. Thus Professor
H. C. Warren is driven by the very rigor of his scientific method to conclude
that ' ' To say that we are ' conscious of the performance ' of the act does not add
to the explanation of the physical changes which occur, nor does 'lapse of con-
sciousness' add to the explanation of inappropriate reactions" ("The Mechan-
A BEHAVIORISTIC VIEW OF PURPOSE 89
The failure of the introspective theory of consciousness has been
most pronounced in the region of the will and the affections, in other
words, in that department of human nature where there is now the
greatest demand for light. That the introspective method should
tend to a reduction of the mental life to sense-data is perhaps evi-
dence if its being at bottom only an analysis of objects of cognition.
In any case the failure of introspection to give any satisfactory
account of feeling, desire, will, and conation does not admit of
doubt. The dubious feelings of "pleasantness" and "unpleasant-
ness, ' ' which if they are a unique species of introspective data ought
to be indubitable, are held by some to be simple sensations, by others
to be fusions of organic sensations, and by others to be acts or
"attitudes" of liking and disliking. The notion of a feeling ele-
ment serves for the present only to prevent opinion from swinging
either towards a consistent sensationalism, or towards a consistent
activism. The former would obliterate the distinction between cog-
nition and motor-affection; the latter would involve the abandon-
ment of the introspective method.
Meanwhile, wherever accounts of the motor-affective life pre-
serve anything distinctive and peculiar, they incorporate something
of the movement and action of the physical organism. The basic
antithesis of favor and disfavor, which is said to distinguish active
feelings, is an echo of the antithesis between positive and negative
reactions. 4 Desire viewed introspectively can never be anything
but a combination of ideas and feelings. A. Meinong and other
exponents of the introspective method have seen the difficulty of
accounting in these terms for actual dynamic differences, such as
that between desiring a thing and liking to think of it, or that
between real desire and the sham-desire characteristic of play and
esthetic detachment. But being an introspectionist, Meinong can
not follow up the method of common sense and refine the evident
differences of behavior and functional adjustment, but must simply
invent ad hoc such entities as the Annahme, Phantasiegefuhl and
Wissensgefiihl. 5 C. V. Ehrenfels makes a truly heroic effort to
ics of Intelligence," Philos. Rev., 1917, Vol. 26, p. 617). The better course
would be so to interpret "consciousness" of the performance as to enable it to
take its place among the determining conditions of the performance; that is to
construe consciousness dynamically from the outset.
* This appears to me to be the case, for example, with Schwarz '9 conception
of Gef alien as distinguished from Geftihl. Cf. his Gliick und Sittlichkeit, Halle,
1902. I do not deny the common opinion that the animistic view of nature is a
projection into external objects of the experience of conation, but I do affirm
that what is so projected is now understood to be mainly if not wholly an ex-
perience of bodily action.
5 Cf. TJeber Anndhmen, 1902, passim.
90 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
define desire introspectively, and after observing that there is here
no unique psychical element, proposes a peculiarly complicated com-
bination of ideas and feelings. "Was wir Begehren nennen, ist
nichts anderes als die eine relative Oliicksforderung begriindende
Vorstellung von der Ein-oder Ausschaltung irgend eines Objectes
in das oder aus dem Causalgewebe um das Centrum der gegen-
wdrtigen concreten Ichvorstellung."* Waiving all doubts as to the
introspective correctness of this description, it is to be noted that in
so far as it remains rigorously introspective it fails to provide for
the dynamic aspect of desire. The impelling force of desire is sup-
posed to lie in feeling, in Oliicksforderung. Since it is not clear
whether Ehrenfels finds the distinctive feature of desire to lie in
the possession of the mind by the idea, or in the tendency of the
idea to be realized in fact, let us consider both cases. An idea of
the creation or annihilation of an object enters the mind and keeps
its place there whenever the subject in question would otherwise
feel worse. But this less agreeable alternative never becomes an
introspective datum, and Ehrenfels thus virtually explains desire in
terms of the way the subject in question is disposed to feel. Or, let
us suppose desire to be the tendency of the idea to be realized in
fact. As Ehrenfels describes it, this means that an idea not only
enters the mind and holds its place therein by virtue of its relatively
agreeable character, but is superseded by a succession of ideas each
of which in turn more nearly approximates the actuality of an ob-
ject at first only remotely represented in idea. Thus the kinesthe-
tic images of the bodily movements which immediately cause the ob-
ject's actuality take the place of the first bare supposition of its
actuality, and the process will culminate in the perception of the
actuality as an acomplished fact. But how does Oliicksforderung
account for this succession? Again we can only say that if each step
in this progressive realization had not been taken when it was taken
the subject would have been less pleased than he was. The line
from the idea to its realization is the line of most possible pleasure
under the circumstances. But this only establishes a hypothetical
concurrence of pleasure with realization. The pleasures themselves
evidently do not account for the realization. They must themselves,
along with the realization, be explained in terms of some tendency
or disposition for which introspection has no eye. Desire is a state
of mind with reference to an object such that the mind "won't be
happy till it gets" the object. But to explain such a state of mind,
or even to describe it in the sense of assembling the facts that out-
System der Werttheorie, 1897, I., pp. 248-249.
A BEHAVIORISTIC VIEW OF PURPOSE 91
line and block it off, it is necessary to deal with the organism and
the environment in their round physical dimensions. 7
As to will, Miinsterberg's reduction of this to such terms as der
Wahrnehmung des erreichten Effektes die Vorstellung desselben
vorangeht* perfectly illustrates the extent to which introspection
forces its subject-matter into the cognitive form, or endeavors to
make up the whole of will by piecing together its cognitive shreds
and patches. Miinsterberg deserves credit for the vigorous con-
sistency with which he adhered to introspection when he did em-
ploy it, as well as for his recognition of the fact that the will when
so regarded is not the real will at all. 9
As to conation or effort, introspective records seem to be confined
mainly to sensations or feelings of conation or effort, these being
first conceived in some physiological sense. Thus for Ehrenfels
striving (streben) differs from willing through the presence of
Bewegungsempfindungen or Anstrengungsempfindungen. Stout
speaks of a "mental striving," which "tends to realize itself," and
of which the physiological correlate is "the tendency of a neural
system to recover a relatively stable condition." What, one may
fairly ask, is the common meaning of "tendency" on the mental
and the physiological sides? Or is the latter the real tendency and
the former the feeling of it? 11 McDougall argues from the prin-
ciple of parallelism that we are justified
in assuming that the persistent striving towards its end which characterizes
mental process and distinguishes instinctive behavior most clearly from mere
reflex action, implies some such mode of experience as we call conative, the kind
of experience which in its more developed forms is properly called desire or
aversion, but which, in the blind form in which we sometimes have it and which
is its usual form among the animals, is a mere impulse, or craving, or uneasy
sense of want."
Reading this author's account as a whole one can not but be
convinced that he derives the structure of instinct altogether from
its organic aspect, as when he says that "the innate psycho-physical
disposition, which is an instinct, may be regarded as consisting of
three corresponding parts, an afferent, a central, and a motor or
efferent part, whose activities are the cognitive, the affective, and
T Ehrenfels himself frequently appeals to Gefiihlsdispositionen; e.g., op. cit.,
I., p. 41. For criticisms of Ehrenfels similar to that offered above, but having
a very different moral, cf. Meinong: Uber Annahmen, 1902, pp. 293-296; W. M.
Urban, Valuation, pp. 35-37. Cf. also Ehrenfels: op. cit., I., p. 251, note.
sMiinsterberg's Willenshandlung, p. 88.
Cf. Psychology and Life, 1899, p. 208.
10 Op. cit., I., p. 221.
11 Analytical Psychology, II., pp. 82, 83.
12 W. McDougall : Social Psychology, p. 28.
92 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the conative features respectively of the total instinctive process." 1 '
Similarly he says that every instance of instinctive behavior in-
volves "a striving towards or away from" an object; and that in
all instinctive behavior there is "a persistent striving towards the
natural end of the process," which is intensified by obstacles, 14 It
is clear that neither the three-fold arrangement of instinct, in-
volving the assignment of conation to the motor part, nor the direc-
tion of conation as "towards" or "away from" an object, nor the
persistence of the striving appear at all in the field of introspection.
In other words, all the characteristics of conation are borrowed from
the behavior of the organism, except what is comprised under "feel-
ing of" or "consciousness." What is really described is what one
is conscious of when one is conscious of striving. It would seem
reasonable, then, first to describe and explain striving as a general
organic process, and then to discuss the further and necessarily
ulterior question of the feeling or consciousness to which it gives
rise."
The defects of parallelistic introspectionism are especially
flagrant in the motor-affective field of the mental life. Almost
every recent advance in this field has resulted from the more or
less complete abandonment of the introspective method of descrip-
tion and the parallelistic method of explanation. The most notable
advance, an advance that has been accepted by the social sciences as
well as by popular opinion, is the rejection of the once-classic cal-
culating hedonism, the view that conduct is ruled by selfish pleasure-
pain reasons. 19 The chief cause for the obsolescence of this view
has been the resort to biological in place of introspective methods
of explaining human conduct. Pleasure and pain are peculiarly
introspective entities; and an introspective account of action tends,
as we have seen, to place the whole burden of explanation on feel-
ing. As to the selfish and calculating part of it, that evidently
arose from the introspective method of asking an agent to explain
his own conduct. Such a question is ambiguous, and is commonly
construed by the subject interrogated as a demand for reasons by
which to justify his conduct. In the ordinary run of conduct the
best a man can say in defense of his conduct is that it is prudent,
Ibid., p. 32. The italics are mine.
i Ibid., pp. 26, 27. The italics are mine.
, It has sometimes been argued that desire, will, etc., must be complete in
introspection because a subject may know infallibly that he is desiring, or will-
ing without knowing anything about his bodily states. The argument has abso-
lutely no force. Such knowledge is not infallible, nor is it entirely without bod-
ily data. Furthermore there may be "infallible signs" which do not constitute
either direct or complete experience of the event in question. Cf. B. Russell:
"On the Nature of Acquaintance," Monist, 1914, XXII., 184.
" Cf. G. Wallas, Human Nature and Politic*, Ch. I.
A BEHAVIOR1STIC VIEW OF PURPOSE 93
that is conducive to his own satisfaction (which he is perfectly will-
ing to call pleasure).
This "key" to human conduct has now 'been exchanged for a
new one, or for a whole set of keys of a new type. The first of these
to be adopted was the unit-instinct, and the most recent is the ' ' com-
plex." 17 The unit-instinct made prominent by James, and at pres-
ent exemplified in McDougalTs widely read and widely quoted
Social Psychology, is being questioned by psychologists at the same
time that it is 'being very widely and uncritically adopted in sociol-
ogy and economics. 18 Meanwhile the influence of Freud has rapidly
increased', and at the same time his fundamental conception of the
"libido" has been generalized to free it from an exclusively sexual
meaning. 19 The "complex" has this advantage over the instinct,
that it is not necessarily a genetic conception. It is true that ortho-
dox Freudians trace all complexes to inherited and infantile eroti-
cism. But in its generalized form the complex is essentially a pres-
ent dynamic agency; in Hart's words, "a system, of connected ideas,
with a strong emotional tone, and a tendency to produce actions of
a certain definite character." 20 A complex in this sense may be ap-
pealed to for explanatory purposes without identifying that most
doubtful and elusive line that divides what is original from what is
acquired.
But what have these two conceptions in common? Why may
the instinct and the complex be said to be keys of the same type?
In the first place, because both are essentially dispositions. They
exist whether they are exercised or not. And when they are exer-
cised they are activities, like circulation and respiration, describable
in terms of characteristic organic and environmental changes, and
not describable except in a most incomplete and misleading way,
17 One hesitates to group "complex" and "sentiment" with "instincts,"
' 'purpose ' ' and ' ' determining tendency ' ' 'because the two former conceptions ap-
pear to regard an object as the source of unity, whereas the latter emphasizes a
dominant activity. It does appear to be possible to divide a man into his "A-
system" of responses, his "B-system," etc., or into ambitions, enterprises, prob-
lems, etc., which will involve many objects. I believe, however, that the more
these things are analyzed the more indistinguishable they become. In so far
as my .4 -responses have unity, as for example my love of my friend, some one
instinct or emotion has become dominant in my dealings with him, and pre-
scribes what my other reactions shall be. In other words I have something like
a purpose with reference to my friend. A purpose on the other hand has a
unique reference to certain objects, perhaps to one object, which is the object of
its culminating and "satisfying" activity.
is Cf. e.g., Th. Veblen: The Instinct of Workmanship, 1914; O. Tead: In-
stvncts in Industry, 1918; C. H. Parker: "Motives in Economic Life," Proc. of
the Amer. Economics Assoc., 1917, pp. 212-231.
Cf. e.g., Hart : Psychology of Insanity, 1912.
20 Op. cit., p. 61.
94 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
in terms of introspective data. There are three possible ways of
assigning a status to dispositions. Assuming that the mental is non-
physical, and that dispositions are mental, they may be construed
as belonging to an "unconscious" mental life. What this mental
life is which is licit hr physical nor introspective no one has yet
succeeded in making clear. And since every indication points to a
physiological interpretation of dispositions, this conception of the
"unconscious" is as gratuitous as it is unintelligible. Seeing the
force of this, one may conclude that since dispositions are physio-
logical they are therefore not mental. Or, thirdly, accepting the be-
havioristic version of mind, one may regard dispositions as both
physical and mental : physical because consisting in certain physio-
logical structures, mental because of the peculiar type of function
or activity in which these structures are engaged. Instincts as a
rule have been so interpreted largely because the conception was
derived from the observation of animals, where mind has always in
practise meant behavior. That complexes have not as a rule been
so interpreted seems to be due to the fact that the Freudians have
been primarily interested in the activities of the complex rather
than in its structure and place in nature. 21 Of one thing they have
been sure, namely that this fundamental mode of mind is not a
datum of introspection. Their interpretation in physiological terms
would not contradict any observed properties which they possess;
while it would have the great advantage of removing them from an
obscure and doubtful region where they may be the victims of loose
speculation and popular superstition, to a well-defined and open
region where they may be further illuminated by the observations
of the associated sciences.
The instinct and the complex are, then, first of all organic dis-
positions, or systematic arrangements in the physical organism
which condition specific modes of performance. There are further
common characteristics. In each case there are stored energies and
channels arranged in groups and patterns. These channels, like
river beds, have the property of transmitting and guiding energy
and also of drawing energy by their lower resistance. In each case
there must be stimuli, that is, conditions external to the system in
question which release its stored energies and set it going. The
system must possess a peculiar susceptibility to such influences, like
the explosive's susceptibility to impacts or high temperatures. In
each case the system tends to find expression in coordinated mus-
cular changes usually causing a movement of the skeletal muscles
and some change in external objects or in the relation of the organ-
" For a physiological interpretation of complexes, cf. E. G. Holt, The
Freudian With, 1915, pp. 3-99.
A BEHAVIORISTIC VIEW OF PURPOSE 95
ism to them. Finally, in each case the system comes temporarily
into possession of the organism as a whole, competing with other
systems for the control of the common parts in which they overlap.
Emphasizing their points of similarity we obtain the broad out-
lines of a more fundamental conception, which they both exemplify
and of which we may hope to find further exemplifications as well
as improved and amplified statements. This more fundamental
conception may perhaps best be termed set or determining tendency,
a condition of the organism which qualifies and predisposes it to
execute what Holt calls a specific "course of action," when a
specific exciting condition occurs. Within the general framework of
this conception let us now look for an interpretation of those char-
acteristic modes of behavior that are supposed to distinguish the
normal adult of the human species, such as acting interestedly, pur-
posely, or rationally. This inquiry should lead us to the center
of the motor-affective life, and of the intellectual life in its bearing
on conduct. Our results will at best be rude schematic approxima-
tions. Science has not really penetrated into the wilderness of
human nature. We are still camping on its frontiers or cruising
off its coasts. But at such a time it is justifiable to make a hasty
reconnaissance even though we may expect (and hope) that the maps
we draw will soon be obsolete.
Let us start with that state of a man in which he is said to be
prepared for future action, or to have his plans made so far as con-
cerns what he is himself to do. A good example is afforded by the
chess player who has a series of moves ready in advance, or the
foresighted housewife who has made up her mind what to cook for
each successive meal for the coming week. Future responses are at
least partially organized, and are held in reserve in the order of
their appropriate stimuli. As each in turn is called into play the
next in order moves into its place, just as in baseball the "batter-up"
moves towards the batter's box, selects his bat and makes a few pre-
liminary swings. While the serial order of prepared responses is
not always as clear as this, something of the kind is a constant
feature of human conduct. Immediately 'behind what I am doing
now there is what I am going to do next, and behind that, successive
lines of reserves which advance toward the front as my action un-
folds. A similar situation must be supposed to exist when a re-
sponse is only partially executed. A football player about to catch
andi run back a punt has the whole action outlined in advance. At
the same time that he is watching the ball in its course through the
air he is ready with neuro-muscular coordinations of the arms and
legs to grasp the ball, ward off tacklers and run down the field.
At any given instant in the course of this action some part of it is
96 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
being carried out, while other parts are carried as far forward as i*
possible without interference with that part which is being carried
out. So far are these preparations carried that the organism is at
the time incapable of doing anything else, and will if "over-
anxious" cany the preparation too far, as when the running-re-
sponse crowds the catching-response and causes the player to fumble
the 'ball.".
We may say, then, that most human action instead of being
born de novo at the moment of performance merely passes over
from an implicit or partial state to an explicit or complete state.
The organism is loaded and aimed, in short, before it is fired.
Or the organism is ordinarily in a state of being committed in
advance of performance. These reserve responses must be sup-
posed to possess an unqualified physiological existence, even though
they are not in action and even though they should never be called
into action. It is unnecessary to dwell upon the various forms
which these may assume. They may be so related that the action
of each provides the stimulus for the action of the next, in which
case they are in some sense parts of one plan ; or they may be corre-
lated with successive stimuli externally and independently supplied,
as when one is prepared for a sequence of probable contingencies.
Now let us suppose such a reserve or partial response to be in the
advanced stages of preparation and then to be checked through
the non-appearance of the complementary stimulus or through some
impediment. Either one of two things will happen. If there are
other prepared responses for which the appropriate stimuli are
present, the organism may go over to another course of action. If,
however, the first course of action possesses a temporary monopoly
of the energies of the organism, responses will occur which have the
character of being auxiliary. These may assume the form of
"random" activities, habits or inherited reflexes, for which suitable
stimuli are presented. This will continue until some one of the
random activities provides the complementary stimulus or removes
the impediment and so permits the original response to complete
itself. But in proportion as an organism is "experienced" in the
matter such auxiliary activities are not random. Certain of the
present stimuli have acquired "meaning." The immediate response
which they excite is again, as in the case of the original response,
the first of a series of acts. Successive ulterior acts are made ready
Or the anticipatory set may have so much momentum that it is impossible
to readjust quickly to a change in the situation. A good example is afforded by
the case of the subject who being prepared to lift a heavy weight is given a
light one instead, with the result that it is flung high above the head with a
wholly disproportionate expenditure of energy. (Quoted from Miiller by James,
Principles, 1890, II., p. 502, note.)
A BEHAVIORISTIC VIEW OF PURPOSE 97
to take their turn. But in some cases these tentative reserves
will coincide and in some cases they will conflict with the suspended
response. Where the former is the case the tentative act will be
performed and where the latter occurs the act will be abandoned
after having been "considered."
We have now obtained a first approximation to a view of inter-
ested or purposive action. An act is performed because its pre-
pared sequel or implicit phase coincides with the incomplete part
of some course of action that is at the time dominating the organism.
Under the tension created by a suspended response an organism
performs one or more acts which promise the act or acts in which
the response is carried out. Let us call the suspended response
which for the time commands the energies of the organism, the deter-
mining tendency; and let us use the expression auxiliary responses
for the acts which occur under the influence of such a tendency
when its completion is delayed.
Suppose, for example, that my determining tendency is to ob-
tain a book from my study. I approach the door and turn the knob,
having in readiness and in serial order the neuro-muscular coordi-
nations involved in pushing open the door, walking across the room
and grasping the book. The door, however, resists my push. This
act being checked, the ulterior acts are also checked and crowd it
from the rear. I do not desist, responding irrelevantly to some
other stimulus that happens to engage my attention, as a baffled
kitten may turn to playing with its tail, but I "try," or engage in
auxiliary responses. Being a person of experience, however, instead
of kicking, pounding, shouting or running back and forth, I look
around, that is I increase the number and range of stimuli that
affect me. Finally I see a key hanging on a nail. This key means
something to me. It has its immediate meaning as something to be
grasped, and an ulterior meaning in terms of a series of antici-
patory sets arranged in depth. In other words, when I grasp keys
I also get ready to perform certain further acts in orderly suc-
cession. Near the head of this tentative line of action is that same
anticipatory set (for pushing open the door) which now stands at
the head of the original line, pressing for release. The implicit
phase of the auxiliary course of action coincides with the suspended
portion of the dominating tendency, and the auxiliary course of
action is adopted. 23
The central feature of this conception of human behavior is that
23 In this case the suspended course of action is resumed at the same point
at which it was interrupted. I might have adopted a course of action whose
reserve phases coincided with those of the dominating tendency later on. In
other words I might have gone around and climbed in a window, or borrowed
my neighbor's book.
98 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
general state of the organism which has been termed a determining
tendency. The organism as a whole is for a time preoccupied with
a certain task which absorbs its energy and appropriates its mechan-
isms. It must be assumed that synaptic resistances are lowered or
heightened not merely as a result of the past history of the nervous
system, but as the result of some present systematic readjustment."
The passing of impulses through certain channels must be conceived
not as the result of past erosion, but as the result of a correlated
raising and lowering of gates. Another analogy is afforded by the
insertion in a mechanical musical instrument of a record or per-
forated roll which calls the parts of the instrument into play in
simultaneous and successive patterns.
There can be little doubt that the organism is subject to such
"seizures." Hitherto attention has been directed chiefly to their
origin, or to their behavior under peculiar conditions, as when they
are repressed. 25 It is here contended that whether such determining
tendencies are congenital or acquired, whether they are the agents
or the victims of repression, they do in any case exist and give to
human (and much of animal) behavior its characteristic form. In
discussions of the instincts it has been customary to dwell upon
their congenital origin, and upon the specific pattern of the re-
sponse; while little has been said about the power which an aroused
instinct has to take possession of the entire organism. We have
heard much of the stimuli to anger, much of the feeling of anger,
and much of the more or less specific and more or less doubtful in-
nate forms of response in which it expresses itself. But we have
heard comparatively little of the state of being angry. 26 Cannon's
* As evidence of the willingness of psychologists to accept other determiners
of action than recency, frequency and other items of the local history of the
mechanisms immediately involved, it may be noted that Watson includes among
such determiners "the general setting of the situation as a whole," and the
experiences, "emotional tensions," etc., of the organism as a whole in the period
immediately preceding the incidence of the stimulus. There should be added the
general posture of the organism as a whole at the moment of the incidence of the
stimulus. Cf. Ptychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist, 1919, p. 3.
25 Over and above the question of the formation of a determining tendency
there is also the profoundly important question of its being called into play.
What is it that puts any given determining tendency in the ascendancy at any
given time and causes it to be successively superseded by others f Why am I
now angry, now running to catch a train and now thinking out a problem? We
may surmise what some of the causes are, such as routine, the onset of new
stimuli, the completion of a previous course of action, health, fatigue, or the
requirements of some long range "programme" of action. It is with no in-
tention of slighting this question that it is omitted here. Whatever be the facts
they will not invalidate anything that we may learn about the structure and
working of the determining tendency when once it is in control.
* A notable exception is the passage in which James describes the situa-
A BEHAVIORISTIC VIEW OF PURPOSE 99
experiments have shown, however, that in anger the whole organism
is virtually commandeered for war purposes :
Thus are the body's reserves the stored adrenin and the accumulated
sugar called forth for instant service; thus is the blood shifted to nerves and
muscles that may have to bear the brunt of struggle; thus is the heart set rapidly
beating to speed the circulation; and thus, also, are the activities of the diges-
tive organs for the time abolished. Just as in war between nations the arts and
industries which have brought wealth and contentment must suffer serious neg-
lect or be wholly set aside both by the attacker and the attacked, and all the
supplies and energies developed in the period of peace must be devoted to the
present conflict; so, likewise, the functions which in quiet times establish and
support the bodily reserves are, in times of stress, instantly checked or completely
stopped, and these reserves lavishly drawn upon to increase power in the attack
and in the defense or flight.23
What is true of the bodily functions regulated by the autonomic
nervous system is also true of the functions regulated by the central
nervous system. In an angry organism bodily movements and
postures, speech, imagery and ideation, attention, and even recep-
tivity to sensory stimulation, are all drawn into one comprehensive
response. Only stimuli whose meanings are congruent with this
general cast of mind are responded to. Other responses involving
different uses of the same parts and organs are temporarily in-
hibited. The organism literally lives and moves and has his being
in anger.
While the major emotions exemplify the extent to which a deter-
mining tendency may master the total organism, they are in several
respects peculiar. There is usually no specific end-response in which
the course of action culminates. It is rather a series of acts of a
similar type, such as abuse or blows in the case of anger. It is not
highly articulated and subordinated, but moves from point to point
upon the same level. Such action is usually too precipitate to be
nicely selective. And, finally, such action is unique in the extent
to which it interferes with the internal economy of the organism.
Too much emphasis on the major emotions tends, therefore, to ob-
scure the essential characteristics of the determining tendency.
For a determining tendency may culminate in specific and delicate
adjustment like the spelling of a word, or the picking of a lock.
It may be highly organized, and convergent in long-delayed achieve-
ment. It is not necessary that the determining tendency should
call the entire organism into play. One may prepare a lecture with-
out disturbing one's digestive processes, or solve a problem without
appreciable effect upon one's respiration. It is even possible that
tion in which "any strong emotional state whatever is upon us," or "the fever
fit is on us": Principles, 1890, II., p. 563.
27 W. B. Cannon, Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Sage, 1915,
p. 269.
100 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
two or more determining tendencies should be active at the same
time and divide the organism between them. But the major emo-
tions illustrate in an exaggerated form the distinguishing feature
of the determining tendency, namely its selection of its own auxil-
iary and constituent activities.
If instincts be interpreted as determining tendencies, and if this
be the mark of teleology, how are we to account for the difference
between human behavior and the behavior of animals such as birds
and insects whose rich instinctive endowment is proverbial? This
question proves the importance of distinguishing between a concate-
nation and a subordination of responses. In the typical animal
instinct a series or concatenation of responses is innately determined,
owing to the fact that the successful completion of each component
response in turn furnishes the stimulus for the next, the series cul-
minating in a result that is useful to the organism. This is some-
times spoken of as a chain-reflex ; but the term is misleading because
it suggests that the component responses are pure reflexes, whereas
the reflexive character lies rather in their sequence. The component
responses themselves are tentative and intelligent. The segments
of the nest-building operation, for example, such as the movements
through space, and the selection, grasping and carrying of mate-
rials, are performed more or less experimentally and adapted to
local conditions. The purposiveness of the behavior lies not in the
appropriateness of the several phases to the end-result, but in the
persistence and resourcefulness exhibited in each phase regarded by
itself. The successive responses are not subordinated to the end-
result as their purpose. The completed nest, in other words, is not
anticipated. It is this which distinguishes the bird from a human
house-builder. In the case of the latter the domestic complex is
guiding the action throughout. Everything which the human
agent does from the first consultation with his architect is in some
measure qualified by this meaning and selected on this account.
As a result there is not merely variability within each component,
but variability of components. The human builder has subordi-
nated his auxiliary acts to his determining tendency to a greater
depth ; and in order that this should be possible, he must be capable
of a much more complicated far-flung play of meaning.
Let us now turn to certain salient characteristics of human be-
havior viewed as interested or teleological, for the purpose of verify-
ing and amplifying the conception already outlined.
The central contention in William James's epoch-making Prin-
ciples of Psychology is that selection, interest or purpose is the essen-
tial and distinguishing feature of mind. "Consciousness is at all
A BEHAVIORISTIC VIEW OF PURPOSE 101
times primarily a selective agency." 28 Our senses themselves are
organs of selection. Attention, perception, thought, taste, and the
moral will are all modes of choice by which a man 's personality and
his world are finally individuated and stabilized. In one of his early
essays, an essay that has been too little read, James distinguishes be-
tween real teleology in which the agent asserts his own end, and
"hypothetical" teleology, or the case in which an external observer
finding the result of an action to be useful imputes them to the agent
as an end :
We can describe the latter only in teleological terms, hypothetically, or else
by the addition of a supposed contemplating mind which measures what it sees
going on by its private teleological standard, and judges it intelligent. But con-
sciousness itself is not merely intelligent in this sense. It is intelligent intelli-
gence. It seems to supply both the means and the standard by which they are
measured. It not only serves a final purpose, but brings a final purpose posits,
declares it. 2 9
No one would now be disposed to dispute the essential soundness
of this position. The human individual does not merely do things
Jhat are useful as judged by an external observer, but by its own
activity adopts and seeks that result in relation to which its deeds are
useful. And as James has so persuasively shown, the individual's
experience is not dictated to him by external events, so that his mind
merely echoes what goes on around him ; but his experience is always
in some sense what he makes it, what he is himself disposed to look
for. But granting this, let us inquire whether we must therefore
follow James in his next step, when he says :
It seems hopelessly impossible to formulate anything of this sort in non-
mental terms, and this is why I must still contend that the phenomenon of sub-
jective "interest," as soon as the animal consciously realizes the latter, appears
upon the scene as an absolutely new factor, which we can only suppose to be
latent thitherto in the physical environment by crediting the physical atoms,
etc., each with a consciousness of its own, approving or condemning its mo-
tions.so
In other words must we adopt a dualistic sundering of mind and
body in order to provide for the individual's assertion of his inter-
ests against the world about him? Does "physical" mean "pas-
sive," "secondary," "compliant"? Not unless one wishes it to. If
28 Vol. I., p. 139. The best statement (too long to quote) is to be found in
Vol. I., pp. 289-90. Cf. also I., pp. 8, 11, 402, 583-84, 594; II., pp. 558-59, 584.
In the account in I., pp. 583-84, of voluntary association James speaks of ' ' some
general interest which for the time has seized upon the mind ' ' ; and gives an ad-
mirable account of pressure exerted by an obstructed response.
29 From ' ' Spencer 'a Definition of Mind as Correspondence, ' ' Jour, of
Specul. Philos., 1878. This essay is now reprinted in a volume entitled Collected
Essays and Reviews, 1920, and the passage quoted appears on p. 64.
so Ibid., pp. 64-65.
102 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
one wishes to divide the individual into two parts and say that the
part in which the environment is agent and the individual reagent
is body, and that the part in which the individual is agent and th:
environment reagent is mind, one is entitled to do so, merely as a
matter of terminology. But to go further and to identify the phys-
ical organism wholly with the first, leaving the second to be provided
for by some alien and incommensurable factor, is certainly not war-
ranted by what we know about the physical organism. In propor-
tion as the organism is unified and functions as a whole its behavior
is incapable of being translated into simple reactions correlated
severally with external events. The observer with his eye on any
given set of external conditions finds that he can not predict the
organism's behavior. Its behavior is "spontaneous" or internally
conditioned. The most recent developments in physiology as well as
in psychology and psychiatry have emphasized the extent to which
the organism is integrated ; the extent, in other words, to which any
particular deed is to be accounted for in terms of the state of the or-
ganism itself rather than in terms of the incidence of an external
stimulus. The better the organism is understood, the more does it
assume just those characters which James insists upon as the prerog-
atives of mind. Thus in proportion as an organism is an individual
its movements are governed' by its own internal organization. Through
these movements the organism not only acts on the environment, but
introduces, terminates and varies those relations which enable the
environment to act on it, and so determines even its own experiences
and fortunes.
In further confirmation and amplification of our conception of
purpose let us test it by the application of two ideas which will be
generally accepted as contained in or associated with the traditional
view of human conduct. These two ideas are: (1) the subordination
of means to ends; (2) determination by the future.
1. Subordination of means to ends. Purpose is supposed to have
two levels; or two factors of which one rules and the other serves.
Just this duality and subordination seems to be provided in the re-
lation of the determining tendency and the auxiliary response. This
duality and subordination is especially striking in the case of the
learning process, as this is studied experimentally. 81 The organism
is first put into a condition of hunger, or fear, or desire. This state
then acts 'both as the exciting cause of the trial activities and as the
arbiter that determines which one among them shall be deemed suc-
cessful. An organization which is exerting itself under the influence
The writer has applied the present conception to, or, rather derived it
from, the learning process in an article entitled "Docility and Purpose,"
Piychol. Bev., 1918, p. 25.
A BEHAVIORISTIC VIEW OF PURPOSE 103
of hunger will cease to exert itself only upon the performance of an
act by which hunger is satisfied, that is, an act by which the food-
taking response is enabled to complete itself. But what is true of
the learning process is characteristic of developed behavior generally.
Man, at least, is normally in the condition of one learning. That is
to say, he is proceeding more or less tentatively, instigated by a de-
termining tendency and finding a way that shall suit it. Through
this conception the relation of end to means obtains an interpreta-
tion which distinguishes it, without isolating it, from the cognate
relations of whole to part and of cause to effect.
2. Determination by the future. That a reference to the future
as in some sense governing the act, is an essential feature of the tra-
ditional conception of purpose appears from the commonest terms of
the teleological vocabulary, such as "for the sake of," "in order to,"
"iwith a view to," "in fear of," "in hope of," "lest," etc. It is
evident that no account of human conduct which fails to set apart
some special feature as the connotation of these expressions will,
either in or out of scientific laboratories, seem to cover the facts.
It is not sufficient to conceive the organism as making random
efforts instigated by a determining tendency; nor is it sufficient
that these efforts should cease when one of these efforts "suc-
ceeds." For there is as yet no act of which it can be said that it is
done with a view to or for the sake of a future act. 32 "Random,"
"hit-or-miss" action is essentially unguided action, which so far as
its own immediate determination is concerned is as disposed to miss
as to hit. Philosophical opinion in the past has usually vacillated
32 In an article entitled "Instinct and Purpose," Psychol. Bev., 1920, Vol.
27, p. 227, Dr. E. C. Tolman says, speaking of a cat's efforts to get out of a
cage, "The mere fact that on each single trial it hits about until it gets out,
seems to me to be sufficient to characterize its activity as purposive. The cat
hits about in order to get out, for the sake of getting out . . .," etc. While the
article as a whole is an admirable statement of a view that I hold to be funda-
mentally sound both in method and in doctrine, I can not believe that the author
is correct in this claim. What the exponents of purposiveness are looking for is
an act of which it can be said that its occurrence is due to its promise or fore-
cast. No act even though it be aroused by a determining tendency can be of
the sort required unless it has meaning, that is, arouses anticipatory reactions to
its sequel; and unless it is preferred because of such anticipation. Such antici-
pations are ordinarily the result of experience. But when an act is called
"random" it is implied that it is of the nature of a pure reflex, that is un-
guided by experience. Dr. Tolman makes the important point that random ac-
tivities of the sort aroused in connection with a determining tendency "vary
within a class" which persists as a whole, and so are in type determined in
advance. But even so we do not get the means selected because of its future or
implicit relation to the end until the factor of meaning becomes effective. I
believe that Dr. Tolman 's account of thought is also unsatisfactory in so far as
he fails here to regard "thought-of acts" as projected or uncompleted acts.
104 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
between two impossible positions. According to one opinion the
purposive act is governed by an ideal form, or "final cause." But
such a cause can not lie upon the plane of existence at all, and can
not belong to the future of any particular act. It ends by becoming
a static interpretation of the act, colored by illicit associations of
futurity. According to the other opinion the purposive act is gov-
erned by the antecedently existing idea of a future result. But this
explanation goes to pieces on the rock of dualism. A writer like
Hobhouse, whose predilections are empirical and naturalistic, circles
closely by the solution here proposed, but nevertheless ends with the
more or less inscrutable paradox that in the case of purpose, "the
doing is determined by what is done." 8 *
The solution would seem to lie in the action of present dispositions
which are correlated with future contigencies. A calendar of engage-
ments filled out for the next month exists and acts in the present.
Nevertheless it is correlated serially and progressively with the fu-
ture. Similarly the responses organized and serially adjusted so as
to be executed in sequence exist now among the determining condi-
tions of present events. Nevertheless they are functionally correlated
with a sequence of events in the historical future in their own fu-
ture. A series of dated anticipatory responses is thus a projection
of the future upon the present spatial field, and provides a means by
which the contingent future may be translated into the physically
existent present.
Let us now sum up our conception of purposive or interested ac-
tion, as a basis for discussing the very intimate, confusing, and com-
promising relations which it sustains with reason or intellect. 8 * A
determining tendency 36 is a general response-system, tentatively ad-
it Development and Purpose, 1913, p. 320. Cf. the statement on p. 319:
"Generically then a purpose may be defined as a cause conditioned in its opera-
tion by its own tendency. . . . Not the result as an event which may happen to-
morrow, next year, perhaps never, but its own movement towards the result, the
oonational movement that it initiates and sustains, is integral and essential to
its being." But until the mechanism of tendency is indicated, such a statement
is little more than a restatement of the problem.
* In an article to be entitled ' ' The Independent Variability of Purpose
and Belief," which will appear in a later number of this JOURNAL.
as Dr. Tolman (op. cit., 222) prefers to use the expression "determining
adjustment." I use the term tendency which suggests expenditure of energy,
rather than adjustment which suggests a sluicing or distributing of energies
otherwise provided, because I wish to regard the determining tendency as in-
cluding whatever may be necessary to initiate effort. This will doubtless involve
originating stimuli; but I should not like to use an expression that suggested
that the determining set plays a waiting game. Otherwise Dr. Tolman 's is the
best account I kno<w of the agency which I have here in mind.
I find much to applaud in an article by L. L. Thurston, entitled "The
BOOK REVIEWS 105
vancing towards completion, or tentatively renewing itself. 39 Inter-
ested or purposive action is tentative action adopted because the
anticipatory responses which it partially arouses coincide with the un-
fulfilled or implicit phase of such a determining tendency.
RALPH BARTON PERRY.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Le Neo-Realisme. RENE KREMER. Louvain : Institut de Philosophic.
Paris : Felix Alcan. 1920. Pp. x + 310.
American neo-realists have every reason to be gratified with this
European appreciation of their campaign and doctrine. Dr. Kremer
has read everything, or nearly everything, that is of any value for
throwing light upon his subject. His success in finding his material
has been remarkable and his industry in mastering it quite extraor-
dinary. The University of Louvain contained 1 much that escaped
destruction, and Professor F. C. S. Schiller placed his own library
at Dr. Kremer 's service.
Dr. Kremer notices that realism in one form or another has been
gaining recognition in Great Britain, France, Germany and Aus-
tria, but he regards American neo-realism as the most explicit and
most original. This chapter of American philosophy is, he says, al-
most unknown in Europe, and he has made it his task to describe it,
with a minimum of criticism, to readers of French. The account
seems substantially correct and very accurate. The movement had to
be studied largely in a confusion of articles, most of them polemical
in purpose if not in tone, and the author's patience and clear-sighted
appreciation deserve all praise.
This is not to say, however, that any one of the leading neo-real-
ists will be perfectly satisfied. No outsider is likely to render the
doctrines of such a crusade to the complete satisfaction of the cru-
Anticipatory Aspect of Consciousness" (this JOURNAL, 1919, Vol. XVI., pp.
561-569). I believe that this writer makes the mistake of defining behavior in
terms of consciousness instead of consciousness in terms of behavior. But he
makes skilful use of the serial arrangement of the response and the function of
the "unfinished act." His account of intelligence in terms of the degree of re-
moteness of "consciousness" (trial and error?) from the overt act, and his
application of this view to instinct (563) are admirable. Although I did not
read this article until I had formulated my own views, I am glad to find in it at
least a partial corroboration of them.
as In other words a determining tendency may be progressive or recurrent.
In this appears to lie the difference between desire and enjoyment. But this most
important question must be omitted here.
106 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
saders. It seems to me, however, that each of the six ought to be
satisfied, and I am sure that they will take great pleasure in this
effort of an old realist of Belgium to understand the new realists of
America.
There is no occasion to repeat for American readers Dr. Kremer's
exposition. His chapters have the following titles: The Realistic
Evolution of American Philosophy, The Critique of Idealism, Real-
ism and Pragmatism, The Programme of the New School, Realistic
Epistemology and its Proofs, The Problem of Truth and Error, The
Theory of Values, The Originality of Neo-Realism. But the appre-
ciation and criticism at the end deserve attention.
Dr. Kremer is struck by the fact that the writers whose work neo-
realists claim to continue are not those usually classed among the
realists. Hume, Avenarius and Mach seem to be the patrons most
openly recognized. Among writers in German, Husserl and Mei-
nong, and in England Bertrand Russell, Nunn, Alexander and Moore
had more or less influence.
The realists of the older school are glad to welcome the collabora-
tion of the American group, with certain reservations. Indeed the
R. P. Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., has drawn upon some of the argu-
ments of Professor McGilvary in his Dieu, son existence et sa nature.
But there are seven ways in which, according to Dr. Kremer, neo-
realism might with advantage be modified.
1. The neo-realists are too much inclined to form an isolated clan.
Their expositions would gain in elasticity and influence if the pha-
lanx formation were abandoned.
2. One good result of returning to the methods of individual in-
dependence would be the passing of the curious terminology which
is a difficulty for uninitiated readers. With more moderation in
their statements there would be less to explain, and, as unsympa-
thetic readers are likely to think, to retract.
3. Their psychological analysis must recognize the subject and
its reactions, as well as the field of objects.
4. The faith in science should not be quite so naive ; it would be
a gain for empiricism if systematized opinions were not so inevitably
baptized as facts.
5. There is a conflict between empiricism and rationalism. Now
and then rationalism tries in vain to absorb empiricism. Reasonable
philosophy requires both elements properly adjusted.
6. The neo-realists in their opposition to metaphysical dualism
leave no place for spiritual substance. Descartes did, indeed, make
too radical a separation, but both elements unite to form the actual
human being.
BOOK REVIEWS 107
7. And finally, if realism is to live, it must not leave out what
idealism properly included, the appreciation of personality. There
is no call to absorb the finite in the Absolute, the evil in the good,
but above finite spirits and defeated wills must be recognized the
Infinite Spirit, the source and end of all things. Hume, Avenarius
and Mach, Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine and St. Thomas must not
be forgotten.
This summary reads crudely enough beside Dr. Kremer's sincere
and graceful sentences, but it may serve to suggest the points of
affinity and divergence between the old and the new doctrine. There
are suggestions that Dr. Kremer will publish a study of contempo-
rary realism in Great Britain, and when that work appears, very in-
teresting comparisons will be possible, as well as further conclusions.
The present work is an important one for introducing American
philosophy to European readers of French. Dr. Kremer is well
aware that neo-realism is not the whole of recent philosophy in
America, but his European public may not realize it. It is to be
hoped that he will continue his studies in our philosophy, and tell his
readers about that large and vigorous current in which the chief
effort, perhaps, is to safeguard empiricism against the rationalistic
appetite.
It is not unnatural that Dr. Kremer should apprehend American
pragmatism too much, under the suggestion of the American realists.
And it is not surprising that he does not distinguish between the
Cambridge and the Chicago product, inasmuch as relatively few
Americans do so; but in a study of recent American philosophy of
the progressive type, this distinction is of the first importance.
Dr. Kremer begins his study quite rightly with the critique of
realism, and he recognizes that one characteristic of neo-realism is
its spirit of scientific method. But the passing of idealism is a phe-
nomenon that can not be explained by the success alone of any par-
ticular criticism ; the success of the criticism is rather a symptom of
the passing of something that idealism sought to guarantee. It will
be greatly to our advantage when philosophers of the older disciplines
take the trouble to see our philosophy and tell us their impressions.
Dr. Kremer's report of the other phases of American criticism would
be, I am sure, one that we should be glad to see offered to readers of
his very beautiful language.
WENDELL T. BUSH.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
108 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Sinnesphysiologische-Untersuchungen. JULIUS PIKLER, Leipzig:
Earth. 1917. Pp. viii + 515.
The title of Professor Pikler's book is misleading. Sensory physi-
ology it is not, nor are many of the investigations experimental. It
is not clear from the text, but one surmises that the few empirical
observations were, for the most part, made by the author himself
without corroboration by other observers, since there is only an
occasional reference to a few voluntary subjects.
In the preface the author states that he has called his investi-
gation sensory physiological because his aim is physiological rather
than psychological; namely, the determination of objective processes
underlying consciousness, rather than a description of conscious
states. True, there is no introspection, but the nearest approach to
physiology is the constantly occurring phrase "adaptation of the
organism."
Professor Pikler's criticisms are aimed chiefly at what seems to
him a mechanistic interpretation of consciousness. He has observed,
as have also most beginners of 'psychology, that there is not a one-to-
one correspondence between the stimulus and the response. Instead
of describing a reaction as conditioned by both the stimulation and
the state of the organism as modified by experience, he attempts to
show that we have many perceptions which are independent of
sensory stimulation.
The general plan is to discuss the various theories explanatory of
a particular perceptual phenomenon, to show the weakness of all
such theories built upon a sensory basis and then to conclude that
he has verified his theory of adaptation. In the last analysis
adaptation seems to mean for him mental adaptation. Attempts to
(Jiscourage strictly scientific and rigidly empirical explanations are
unfortunately not infrequent. One is reminded 1 of Dr. J. S. Hal-
dane's attack in The New Philosophy upon a physical and chemical
explanation of life. After tearing down the scientific understruc-
ture Dr. Haldane says, "To the question why living organisms be-
have as they do, the only answer is that it is a part of the nature
of reality that they do so." Indeed, if it were not for the critical
examination of contemporary psychology by Professor Pikler one
would have, at times, the feeling that one were back in the age of
mental philosophy.
As a good example of the author's mental set might be cited his
conclusion regarding stroboscopic effects similar to those examined
by Wertheimer. Professor Pikler has described some interesting
variations of Wertheimer 's work and has, in the reviewer's opinion,
quite rightly rejected Wertheimer 's explanation. His own conclu-
sions, however, are as follows: "There are sensations which have
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS 109
their origin neither in an adequate sensory stimulation, nor in any
other sensory stimulation, nor in experience, but rather in an
a priori, adaptive, self-preservation tendency which is entirely in-
dependent of experience. ' '
Again, in the first chapter StrumpelTs theory, that we go to
sleep because of the absence of sensory stimulation and awaken be-
cause of the presence of the same, is vigorously attacked. Strum-
pell's patient was anesthetic except in one ear and one eye. When
the eye was closed and the ear stopped the patient fell asleep. But,
remarks Professor Pikler, what causes him to awaken? No sensa-
tions can penetrate the barriers of this almost complete anesthesia.
His conjecture is that excess energy, the desire for psychic activity,
is so great that the patient moves spontaneously. He opens his eyes,
begins to remember, think, etc. There is a drive (trieb) toward or
interest in recuperation which underlies sleep and an interest causes
us to awaken.
The other chapters of the book are concerned with the negative
judgment, the perception of visual depth, kinematographic percep-
tions, optical illusions and Ranschburg's phenomenon of retroactive
inhibition.
The author apologizes for bringing heterogeneous problems to-
gether in one volume. In justification of his plan, however, it may
be stated' that the problems are held together by a certain similarity
of theoretical treatment. The critical historical parts of the book
are of more value than the very questionable positive contributions.
Throughout, there is that sombre coloring of faculty psychology
which so inhibits the enthusiasm of the present-day experimental
psychologist. The only American author mentioned is Professor
Dewey and his name appears in a quotation.
H. S. LANGFELD.
HAEVAED UNIVERSITY.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
MIND, July, 1920. The Importance of the Sensory Attribute
of Order (pp. 257-277): H. J. WATT. -The ordinal attribute of
sensory stuff is the foundation of spatial arrangement, and forms a
basis for the solution of the problems of recognition, memory, and
cognition. Motives in the Light of Recent Discussion (pp. 277-
294) : WM. McDouGALL. - Contends for the position of McDougall's
Social Psychology that instinctive tendencies are the mainsprings
of activity, against the doctrine of Woodworth in his Dynamic Psy-
chology and of Graham Wallas and Hocking. Some Recent Theories
of Consciousness (pp. 294-313): A. K. ROGERS. - Critical examina-
110 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
tion of the theories of Alexander, Woodbridge, James and M<--
Gilvary. A New Theory of Sleep and Dreams (pp. 313-323) :
EOGENIO RIGNANO. - Dreams are the result of an "affective func-
tional rest not accompanied by a corresponding intellective func-
tional rest." Critical Notices. Bernard Boeanquet, Implications
and Linear Inference: C. D. BROAD. N. 0. Lossky, The Intuit h-f
Basis of Knowledge: C. D. BROAD. Sigmund Freud, Totem and
Taboo: Resemblances between the Psychic Lives of Savages and
Neurotics: WM. McDouGALL. Henri Bergson: L'Energie Spiritu-
elle, Essais et Conferences: F. C. S. SCHILLER. New Books. George
Galloway: The Idea of Immortality: H. RASHDALL. J. T. Merz. A
Fragment on ttie Human Mind: A. E. TAYLOR. A. Wohlgemuth,
Pleasure-Unpleasure: JAMES DREVER. W. S. Hunter, General Psy-
chology: JAMES DREVER. R. C. Lodge, An Introduction to Modern
Logic: B. BOSANQUET. G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of .
Art: B. BOSANQUET. H. J. Watt, The Foundations of Music.
W. Powell, The Infinite Attribute of God: G. G. E. Mercer, Why
do We Dief: G. G. W. H. B. Stoddart, Mind and its Disorders:
W. L. M. R. S. Carroll, The Mastery of Nervousness Based upon
Self Re-education: W. L. M. G. Gentile, Sommario di Pedagogia
come Scienza Filosofica; G Gentile, La Riforma della Dialettica
Hegeliana; L. Vivante, Principii di Etica; A. Shannon, Morning
Knowledge; J. A. Smith, The Philosophy of Giovanni Gentile: B.
BOSANQUET. A. Aliotta, La guerra eterna e U dramma dell'
esistenza: A. E. T. Philosophical Periodicals. Notes: Mind Asso-
ciation.
Liebert, Arthur. Das Problem der Geltung. (Zweite Auflage.)
Leipzig: Felix Meiner. 1920. Pp.262. Br. 40 m. Geb. 50 m.
Read, Carveth. The Origin of Man and of his Superstitions. Cam-
bridge University Press. 1920. Pp. 350.
Wahl, Jean. Les Philosophies pluralistes d'Angleterre et d'Amer-
ique. Paris : Felix Alcan. 1920. Pp. 323. 15 fr.
Wahl, Jean. Du Role de 1'idee de 1'instant dans la philosophic de
Descartes. Paris: Felix Alcan. 1920. Pp. 48. 3 fr. 50.
NOTES AND NEWS
THEODORE FLOURNOY
ON November 5, 1920, occurred the death of Theodore Flournoy,
the eminent psychologist and philosopher of Geneva. For Ameri-
NOTES AND NEWS 111
cans his name will always be coupled with that of William James ; the
friendship, based on a kinship of temperament and of philosophical
views, that sprang up between the two men, and that gave us Flour-
noy 's admirable sketch of James's thought, was a precious example
of the bonds that may exist between searchers after truth. There
was, in fact, a remarkable resemblance between the careers of the
Swiss and the American. Like James, Flournoy took his doctorate
in medicine, and like him he felt the call to a wider field of thought.
After studying, at Geneva and in Germany, the natural sciences and
philosophy, and after working under Wundt at Leipzig, he returned
in 1885 to his native city to lecture on the history and philosophy of
the sciences. His thought at this time was based largely on a thorough
study of Kant; and he endeavored to formulate a position which
would allow of untrammelled devotion to scientific truth while preserv-
ing the essentials of the Protestant faith to which he was sincerely
attached. Like James, he preserved these two interests to the very
end, and was the doughty opponent of what he called the "monistic
and deterministic naturalism of 'modern thought.' ' Gifted with
a hatred of dogma and of closed systems, and ever ready to admit
new facts and new ideas to his hospitable mind, he yet preserved
rigorously the distinction between individual opinion and scientific
truth. In 1890 he turned his attention definitely to psychology, and
in his Metaphysique et Psychologic he proclaimed in ringing tones
the independence of the latter discipline as a natural and experi-
mental science. The next year he was appointed to a newly founded
chair of psychology, which he insisted be in the Faculty of Sciences.
Fluornoy is most widely known as editor of the Archives de Psy-
chologie, where much of his most original contributions appeared.
Again like James, who wrote him, ' ' Your work as a philosopher will
be more irreplaceable than what results you might get in the labora-
tory out of the same number of hours, ' ' he was drawn more to a con-
sideration of the import of the new science than to the actual routine
of experimentation. Hypnotism, dual personality, and other ab-
normal phenomena interested him; in many respects he was a pre-
cursor of the psychanalysts, and published several volumes of re-
searches into the dim realm of the subconscious. The psychology of
religion, in uniting his two chief interests, proved a field of inexhaust-
ible possibilities.
When pragmatism was launched it found in Flournoy a sym-
pathetic and discerning friend, if not a blind disciple. Through
lecture, article, and book, he took every opportunity to make known
to the French-speaking world the philosophy of his friend. He had
already done much to pave the way for it, and he found very con-
112 THE JOURNAL Ol- I'llILOSOPHY
genial its voluntarism, its pluralism, above all its sense of freedom
and of close contact with the common everyday realities of life. He
stands as the successor of Se"cretan and Renouvier in upholding what
the French call la philosophic de la liberte, and he advances beyond
them in founding his theories upon the solid base of scientific fact.
He remained ever faithful to the ideal he expressed in the closing
words of Metaphysique et Psychologic: Dans la culture des sciences
et la pratique des vertus tant privces que sociales, un meme zele; en
matiere de croyances mctaphysiques, une complete liberte infJi-
viduelle; en tout et partout, la tolerance et le support mutuels ces
formes elcmentaires, mais non les plus faciles, de la charite.
J. H. RANDALL, JR.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
THE present rate of exchange makes it easy to subscribe to French
periodicals. Those who wish to subscribe to the Revue de Meta-
physique et de Morale can do so by sending $1.20 to Professor James
H. Woods, Prescott Hall, Cambridge (38), Mass. Those interested
are reminded that the cost of a subscription can be divided among as
many as care to join together.
AT the annual meeting of 1918 the American Philosophical Asso-
ciation passed the following resolution :
The American Philosophical Association expresses its appreciation of the
effort of the Ecvue de Metaphysique et de Morale to promote the knowledge of
American Philosophy in France, and desires to perpetuate and deepen the inti-
macy between France and the United States.
A BIBLIOGRAPHY of recent French philosophy has been compiled
by Professor Edmond Renoir, of Paris, at the suggestion of Professor
Riley, of Vassar College, the cost of the preparation being paid by
the Vassar College Library. A copy of this bibliography has been
sent, through the Institute of International Education, to each
member of the American Philosophical Association.
VOL. XVIII, No 5. MARCH 3, 1921
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
INSTRUMENTAL INSTRUMENTALISM
(
MUCH has been written and said of late of the moral depravity
of an instrumentalist philosophy. Of what value is a phi-
losophy that is so engrossed in the means, that it gives no thought to
the ends? One can not intelligently discuss the instruments of hu-
man progress unless one first knows its goals. Instrumentalism when
carried to its logical conclusion finds itself involved in a reductio ad
absurdum, for not everything can be instrumental ; something must
be final. And what is more, even the instrumental goods of life may
have their additional intrinsic values. Instrumentalism is at best
merely a partial truth. Such, in general, are the charges which are
being brought against instrumentalism.
If these charges are valid, instrumentalism would, it seems to me,
be obviously condemned. And if they but indicate the weaknesses in
the theory, it would seem to be weak indeed. But I think they serve
less to throw light on the difficulties of the instrumentalist position,
than to throw light on its difficulties in making itself understood.
One naturally becomes suspicious of philosophers who continually
get themselves misunderstood. One infers that they do not know
how to say what they mean, or that they do not mean what they say,
or that they mean different things as occasion requires, or that they
mean something radically unintelligible. To what extent the instru-
mentalists are guilty in these respects, I leave to the reader's own
predilections to determine. For my part, I think the chief cause for
the misunderstandings involved in the charges listed above is in the
term "instrumentalism" itself; and I think if we could forget this
"label," and study the writings which bear it directly in terms of
their subject-matter, misunderstandings might be fewer. In these
days of polemics, let a man but call himself an "instrumentalist,"
and that of itself is sufficient to start a controversy, regardless of
whether either party to the controversy knows what the term means
or not. Just because the term instrumentalism, like the terms real-
ism and idealism, may mean most anything, it would seem worth-
while to attempt to define in their own terms the ideas which are
concealed by the ' ' ism. ' ' I am conscious that I am running the risk
113
114 ////. JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
of but adding at least one more meaning to the term, and of thus
increasing the confusion. If that be the case, I hope that what
follows will be allowed to stand or fall on its own account, whether
it be instrumentalism or not. For my purpose is not to add to the
controversies about the term instrumentalism ; rather I wish to plead
that it be discarded, since it appears to be more of an instrument of
verbal warfare than of intellectual clarification.
Let me recall first that instrumentalism was originally a theory
of judgment. As such it meant the thesis that judgments are in-
struments by which man enhances his control over his environment.
Now a judgment may obviously be any number of other things, and
consequently other valid definitions (if I may beg the question!) are
possible. This definition claims to be in terms of what a judgment
does, its function ; and it may hence be called an instrumental defi-
nition. But that does not mean that this "instrumentalist" theory
of judgment fails to take into account the ends which judgment
serves. For the ends of judgment are precisely upon what the defi-
nition is based. It would be less misleading to call such a theory
functional or teleological, rather than instrumental. But more is
intended by the instrumentalists. For it must be noted that the
thesis that judgments are instrumental is itself a judgment and
must consequently be interpreted instrumentally. Most readers of
instrumentalist logic assume that to say "judgments are instru-
mental," means simply that every judgment and every theory or
system of judgments is an instrument of control. And the obvious
reply is to produce a judgment which serves no such purpose.
(Esthetic judgments serve effectively in this capacity!) But to
criticize an instrumentalist in this way, assumes that he does not
take himself seriously; that he fails to apply his theory to his own
judgment. If we ask, accordingly, what is the instrumentalist inter-
pretation of the instrumentalist theory, I think the only possible
answer is, that it is a criterion for the evaluation of judgments. It
defines a good judgment, rather than any judgment. The judgment,
"All judgments are instrumental," means, if interpreted instru-
mentally, "All judgments should be instrumental." That is to say,
a good judgment is one which "gets you somewhere" (intellectually
speaking), and a bad judgment is one which is either a "blank
cartridge" or a positive obstruction. (I purposely used the terms
good and bad, rather than true and false ; they have greater instru-
mental value!) It ought not to be necessary to add that it is not
the business of a philosophy of judgment to offer a criterion of good
and bad "places to get to." If a judgment gets you anywhere it is
a good judgment, whether or not it is good for you to get there.
INSTRUMENTAL INSTRUMENTALISM 115
The knowledge of where to get and where not to get is a matter for
the science of ethics, and should not be allowed to confuse the theory
of judgment.
But a virulent anti-instrumentalist will no doubt congratulate me
on so readily giving away the case. If instrumentalists mean noth-
ing more than this, their position is not only true and obvious, but
merely a celebration of the commonplace, all the more vicious be-
cause it is couched in more pretentious terms. And if, he will say,
the instrumentalist would take himself ' ' merely ' ' instrumentally, no
one would quarrel with him. However that may be, I am interested
here in trying to show that this is not merely an apologetic for the
instrumentalist, a statement of what he should have said, but that
it really represents his own meaning. For when the instrumentalist
develops his theory of judgment into a general philosophy of life, we
find this to be the dominating note. It is an insistence on the evalua-
tion of ideas by their consequences. In Dewey's writings in par-
ticular this central theme is developed in a number of ways. It is
developed as a theory of education and of ethics. It is developed,
though fragmentarily, as a philosophy of history. It is developed
as a social and political philosophy. But in all these various forms
the method is that of approaching ideas (theories and philosophies)
from their function in human experience. They are considered each
in relation to its own environment and evaluated in terms of it.
The significance of the method is that it is fundamentally teleological.
It is not a philosophy of nature, but of intelligence ; and its subject-
matter, whatever it may be, is always evaluated in terms of human
art, i.e., teleologically. Instrumentalism, in brief, is a method of
evaluating ideas by placing them in their teleological relationships.
Now why such a procedure should be called instrumentalism is
not clear to me. The term was carried over from the more limited
field of logical theory where it was useful, to the broader field of
philosophy where it has become confusing. What instrumentalism
really amounts to is not a harping on the instrumental values of life
to the neglect of the intrinsic values; it is not a philosophy which
tries to get along without aims and ends. It is simply the insistence
on the importance of teleological relationships. No one more than
the instrumentalist realizes the impossibility of divorcing means and
cud. Means and end are correlatives, and it is impossible to emphasize
the one and not the other without getting into fruitless abstractions.
And I don't think one would accuse the instrumentalist of commit-
ting this blunder, were it not for the name. "Teleologist" would be
a more descriptive term, were not that term rendered useless by its
ambiguities. Dewey has more recently used the term "experimen-
116 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
talist" almost exclusively, and it does away with the false implica-
tions of "instrumentalist." An experimentalist may be defined as
a philosopher who regards ideas as working hypotheses and in that
sense ' ' instrumental " ; or as one who evaluates ideas by the purposes
they serve. The two definitions are correlative.
It seems to me that the real objection to the experimentalist phi-
losophy as we have it, is not that it emphasizes means to the exclu-
sion of ends (for it does not), but that it is merely formal. It in-
sists on the importance of the means-end relationship for philosophy
and life, but it has little or nothing to say about means and ends in
the concrete. An inquirer who comes to the experimentalist with
the question, "What are the ends of human life?" will be disap-
pointed, and he goes away grumbling, "The man is too much con-
cerned with means to know anything about ends." But he would
have been equally disappointed had he asked: "What are the means
of human life!" The philosopher knows little or nothing about
either ends or means in the concrete; he only knows that if you
would be intelligent you must keep means and end in mind. In view
of other theories of intelligence this insistence may be justified, but
it seems to me that the protests indicated above are symptoms of a
growing impatience with philosophy for contenting itself with the
connotation of "intelligence" and leaving the denotation to tradi-
tion, common sense, and occasionally to science. Of course, the phi-
losopher can reply that any philosophy must be formal; the phi-
losopher is a lover of wisdom, not a wise man. God alone knows the
ends and means of human life. But the experimentalist can ill afford
to make such an apology, for who condemned German philosophy
for its formalism !
An experimentalist philosophy seems to me bound to admit its
belief in its own instrumental value. If it should be final, if it does
not stimulate experimental habits of life, it too stands condemned
by its own criterion. But if the philosophy of intelligence turn out
to be instrumental in the spread of intelligence, then it stands justi-
fied, though not only it but all philosophy pass out of existence.
Instrumentalism is honor bound to prove its value as an instrument
of control. If intelligence gains more of a foothold in human life
because a philosophy of "creative intelligence" is being preached,
the instrumentalist is instrumentally validated.
Whether or not instrumentalism will thus vindicate itself, it is
as yet impossible to tell. I think there can be no doubt that the in-
tellectual stimulation which it has occasioned during the last decade
or two has meant a net gain in intelligence. But it is to be doubted
whether that gain is due so much to the preaching of instrumental-
INSTRUMENTAL INSTRUMENTALISM 117
ism as a philosophy as to the fresh analysis and the clarification
which instrumentalists have given to certain specific problems. In-
strumentalism achieved its greatest successes as an instrument of
analysis. But to-day there seems to be a general tendency to
abandon the task of analysis and to enter upon a campaign of
preaching and propaganda. But preaching, as the instrumentalist
repeatedly insists, is usually a very ineffective moral and intellectual
instrument. Consequently the pulpit ill becomes the instrumental-
ist. In the realm of education a similar tendency is to be noticed.
No one will deny that the philosophy of James and Dewey has made
for more intelligence in education. But that result has been achieved
by making specific reforms in education, and not by teaching stu-
dents an instrumentalist philosophy. But to-day there seems to be
a tendency to make this philosophy itself the subject-matter of
education. It is very much to be doubted whether intelligence is to
be achieved by teaching "the philosophy of intelligence." In short,
preaching or teaching the "moral obligation to be intelligent" is of
little value if it lead merely to an enthusiastic defense of the ethics
of intelligence, instead of to the habit of disciplined thinking.
It would indeed be a curious bit of irony if some future German
philosopher should write a book on American philosophy and poli-
tics, devoting it to the thesis that American philosophers and educa-
tors succeeded in making the idea of experimental science and
intelligence so formal, yet so powerful, that American politicians
were able to supply the "concrete filling-in" ad libitum. I write
this as a warning, not as a prophecy. If instrumentalism should be
guilty of such charges it would be self-condemned. But the phi-
losophy is still in its infancy, and it would be rash to try to predict
its future. It is, however, just as rash to try to evaluate instru-
mentalism, for its outcome is still unknown. To sum up, the point
I wish to emphasize about instrumentalism is the same point which
Solon made regarding happiness, and which instrumentalism made
regarding judgments, viz., "it behooves us to mark well the end"
(Herodotus, Bk. I, ch. 32).
HERBERT W. SCHNEIDER.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
118 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
THE OXFORD CONGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY 1
FROM Friday, September twenty-fourth, to Monday, September
twenty-seventh, inclusive, Oxford University entertained be-
tween two and three hundred philosophers and psychologists repre-
senting the British Psychological Society, the Aristotelian Society,
the Mind Association, the Oxford University Philosophical Society,
the Societ^ Franchise de Philosophic, and the American Philosoph-
ical Association. Besides the three delegates from America, Presi-
dent Meiklejohn and Professor Warbeke attended the sessions of
the Congress, and there were also visitors from Italy, Poland, Japan
and India. The meetings of the Congress were held in the build-
ing of the Examination Schools. The delegates were assigned to
students' rooms in the various colleges, and had their meals in thfe
Hall of New College.
At the inaugural session of the Congress, Professor Bergson de-
livered an address on "Prevision et la Nouvaute." The speaker
endeavored to prove that the common belief in the existence of
future possibilities is erroneous, at least in the fields of mind and
life. After events happen we analyze them and form concepts of
how they might have happened. These products of retrospective
analysis are then made the basis for a belief in the present exist-
ence of future possibilities. Man should rid his mind of this illusory
conception of a future predetermined in the form, of possibilities,
and realize the full and absolute creativeness of life.
On Saturday morning Professor A. N. Whitehead presided over
a symposium on "Relativity." Professors Eddington, Broad and
Lindemann defended the doctrine of Einstein; while Mr. W. D.
Ross endeavored to show that the theory was not necessitated by the
experimental facts, and that its defenders presupposed that very
absoluteness of motion which it was the object of the theory to deny.
Professor Whitehead argued that the relativity under discussion
was a relativity to the body rather than to the mind, and that the
subject could be cleared up only by a recognition of the reality and
importance of the triadic relations involved in all perception. Pro-
fessor Lindemann defended the curious theory that beliefs should
be evaluated on the basis of the extent to which they contributed
to the survival of those who held them. He maintained that the
advantage of the Einstein theory consisted not in its greater truth
but in its greater simplicity and convenience.
The two sessions of Saturday afternoon were devoted to psy-
chology and were of unusual interest. The first symposium was con-
i This report is based largely on memory, and the writer asks pardon for any
errors of omission or commission which it may contain.
THE OXFORD CONGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY 119
cerned with the question "Is Thinking merely the Action of Lan-
guage Mechanisms?" The participants were Miss E. M. Smith, and
Messrs. Bartlett, Pear, Thomson and Robinson. Professor John B.
Watson was unable to be present, but the entire discussion centered
about his behavioristic theory that all thought is reducible to explicit
or implicit speech. The speakers seemed to be in general agreement
that a behavioristic metaphysics which denied the existence of men-
tal images and other purely psychic elements of the thought process
was so untenable as hardly to be taken seriously; but that the be-
havioristic methodology of Professor Watson in accordance with
which thinking and other forms of mental activity are to be in-
vestigated in terms of the bodily expressions with which they are
uniformly correlated, was a permanently valuable addition to psy-
chology.
The symposium on behaviorism was followed by one on "The
Disorders of Symbolic Thinking due to Lesions of the Brain" in
Which the leaders were Dr. Henry Head and Dr. R. Mourgue. The
theories advanced were based upon study during the war of a great
variety of cerebral injuries. Both participants seemed to some ex-
tent to agree with Bergson that the trouble with patients suffering
from disorders of an aphasic type was not due to actual destruction
of memories, but rather to the destruction of the mechanism by
which those memories are given the kind of connection and articu-
lation characteristic of normal thinking.
The topic of the evening session was "Present Tendencies in
American Philosophy." After presenting the greetings of the
American Philosophical Association, the present writer referred
briefly to the philosophical situation in America prior to the war
and to the work done by teachers of philosophy in organizing and
conducting courses on the Issues of the War for the young recruits
at the universities. He then proceeded to explain the origin and
purposes of the American New Realists, the arguments by which
they defended their position, and the kinship of neo-realism in its
epistemology to medieval Thomism, and in its ethics to the secular
idealism of modern France. Professor J. E. Boodin, of Carleton
College, followed with an exposition of the philosophy of prag-
matism. He dwelt upon the many and diverse influences of William
James, and stressed the essential identity of James's teaching with
that of the great British empiricists. After touching briefly upon
what seemed to him to be the shortcomings of pragmatism, he closed
with a tribute to the work of John Dewey. Idealism in American
philosophy was explained and defended by Professor R. F. A.
Hoernle, formerly of Harvard and now of the University of Durham.
Professor Hoernle dwelt mainly upon the work and teaching of
120 TUB JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Josiah Royce. He spoke feelingly of the extent to which Royce had
devoted himself not merely to the promulgation of his own doctrine
but to friendly cooperative work in various fields of science and to
the encouragement of independent thinking on the part of his
pupils. He concluded with a cordial reference to his former col-
league, Professor Hocking of Harvard, as worthily representing the
tradition of Royce 's idealism in America to-day. Lord Haldane,
who presided, closed the session with an expression of sincere in-
terest in American philosophy as a whole, and paid special tribute
to the work of Professor Creighton.
On Sunday morning there was a service for the Congress at
Christ Church with a sermon by the Bishop of Ripon. In the after-
noon Mr. Arthur Balfour presided over a symposium on "The
Relation of Religion and Ethics." The participants were Pro-
fessor Chevalier of the University of Grenoble, Professor J. A.
Smith and Principal Jacks of Oxford, Baron Von Hiigel, M. Belot,
Inspecteur General de I'lnstruction Publique, and Professors Gilson,
Vermeil, Bougie and M. Lenoir. Most of the speakers defended the
thesis that ethics is indissolubly related to religion. Professor
Chevalier's argument was of peculiar force and originality, as was
also that of M. Belot. Mr. Balfour, who closed the discussion, took
the position that while the validity of ethical principles is clearly
independent of any religious belief, yet the presence of the latter
supplies motives for ethical living which nothing else could supply
and which for most men are all but indispensable.
At the Sunday evening session there was a symposium on ' ' Mind
and Medium in Art." Professor Wildon Carr presided, and Mr.
C. Marriott opened with a novel and forceful defense of the posi-
tion that a Pine Art, no less than an Industrial Art or Craft, derives
its canons of esthetic perfection from the specific nature of the
medium employed. This position was criticized by the chairman
and by Messrs. Watt, Bullough, and Valentine. Mr. Bullough's re-
marks were of especial interest.
On Monday morning at the first session, M. Xavier Leon, Presi-
dent of the Societe Franchise de Philosophic presented a significant
and very sympathetic analysis of Fichte's anti-imperialism. The
second of the morning sessions was devoted to a symposium on ' ' The
Problem of Nationality." The participants were Professors HaleVy
and Marcel Mauss, of the University of Paris, Professor Theodore
Ruyssen, of the University of Bordeaux, M. Johannet, Professor Gil-
bert Murray and Sir Frederick Pollock. Most of the speakers ex-
pressed themselves strongly in favor of nationalism as a healthy and
permanent attitude. But the dangers attendant upon its abuse
were recognized, and emphasis was put upon the impossibility of
THE OXFORD CONGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY 121
settling the European problems of the boundaries of states by the
criterion of nationality alone or indeed by any one principle. Pro-
fessor Gilbert Murray while admitting the values of the nationalistic
or patriotic sentiment seemed less inclined than the other speakers
to regard it as permanent.
At the first session of the afternoon "The Meaning of Meaning"
was discussed by Dr. Schiller and Professor Joachim. The paper of
Mr. Russell, who was not able to be present, was ably defended by
one of his colleagues. Mr. Russell had argued for the position that
meaning could be defined and interpreted as a special case of the
association of ideas. Professor Joachim devoted himself mainly to
an attack upon the premises and conclusions of Mr. Russell's argu-
ment Dr. Schiller, whose doctrine of meaning had been criticized
by Mr. Russell, defended and amplified his claim that a man 's mean-
ing could be understood only in terms of the personality and specific
purposes of the man himself.
At the second session the question debated was "Is the Platonic
EIAO2 presupposed in the analysis of Reality?" The leaders of
the discussion were Messrs. Joad and Lindsay, Miss Stebbing and
Professor Hoernle. Dean Inge presided.
The Congress closed with a banquet in the Hall of New College.
The Warden, Dr. Spooner, presided and there were speeches by Mr.
Balfour, Lord Haldane, M. Bergson, M. Xavier Leon and the writer.
The visiting delegates took the occasion to express their thanks to
Oxford University for its generous hospitality and to Professor
Wildon Carr for his invaluable services as secretary and organizer
of the Congress.
W. P. MONTAGUE.
, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
ABSTRACTS OF THE PAPERS BY THE AMERICAN DELEGATES
American N co-Realism: W. P. MONTAGUE.
Professor Montague presented the greetings of the president
and members of the American Philosophical Association and on
behalf of that Association expressed his thanks to the secretary of
the Congress, Professor H. Wildon Carr, and to Oxford University
for the hospitality extended to the delegates from America. Amer-
ican politicians might disagree as to the desirability of a League of
Nations, but American scholars were unanimous in their desire for
closer cooperation with the scholars of Europe. The speaker re-
ferred briefly to the embarrassments of American idealists, prag-
matists and realists prior to America's entering the war, and men-
tioned the work done 'by Dean Woodbridge of Columbia and
122 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Professor R. B. Perry of Harvard in organizing courses of instruc-
tion on the issues of the war for college men and other recruits.
The speaker then told of the origin of the Neo-Realist movement
in a meeting at Columbia in 1910 of six professors of philosophy,
two each from Princeton, Columbia and Harvard. At that meeting
plans were made for cooperative work which should have for its
purpose the promulgation of a form of realist philosophy in which
Reid's insistence upon the independent existence of the particular
objects of perception was combined with the Platonic insight as to the
independent subsistence of the essences and universals which are
the objects of conception.
The doctrines accepted by the six realists were more or less sim-
ilar to those already expressed by Meinong in Austria, by Russell,
Alexander, Moore and Nunn in England, and by James, Wood-
bridge and McGilvary in America. The general justification of this
effort to establish a realistic attitude toward all objects of cognition,
was based on the need (1) to restore philosophy to that congruity
with common sense which it had possessed in ancient and medieval
times; (2) to make available for philosophic speculation the great
conclusions of modern science; and (3) to free the religious and
spiritualistic conception of reality from its useless and embarrassing
alliance with the Berkeleyan and Kantian forms of so-called
idealism.
The four principal arguments in support of the radical ob-
jectivism of the New Realists were stated 'by Professor Montague
somewhat as follows:
I. The acknowledged fact that an object or content is directly
experienced does not in itself justify the idealist's claim that such
object or content is thereby disqualified from continuing to exist un-
changed during the intervals when it is not experienced. And the
attempts of idealists to make their position appear axiomatic, and
to beg the question at issue by always describing objects of con-
sciousness as (inseparable) states of consciousness are illegitimate.
II. The acknowledged fact (or truism) that we can not ascertain
by direct observation the nature of unobserved objects does not in
itself justify the idealist's claim that we can gain no knowledge of
objects during the times when they are not observed. From the be-
havior of objects when experienced we can get sufficient data for re-
liable inferences as to the extent to which they depend upon the rela-
tion of being experienced.
III. The admitted fact that our consciousness of objects is the
ratio cognescendi for their existence and character in no way justifies
the idealist's claim that consciousness is therefore the ratio essendi
of its objects.
THE OXFORD CONGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY 123
IV. The behavior of the particular objects of perceptual experi-
ence (or at least of veridical perceptual experience) justifies the neo-
realist in inferring their existence independent of the minds that
know them (contra pragmatism) ; and when this capacity for self-
existence apart from individual minds is once granted, the assump-
tion of a transcendental or over-individual mind as a ground for
the invariancy of their relations and the regularity of their recur-
rence in our experience becomes arbitrary and unwarranted (contra
absolute idealism). Similar considerations justify a similar con-
clusion as to the capacity for subsisting independently of any mind,
finite or absolute, of the abstract universals and propositional rela-
tions of conceptual experience (or at least of such of them as are
veridical).
By these and similar lines of argument the neo-realists seek to
establish their connection that cognition is an "external relation,"
and that as such it is selective rather than constitutive of the objects
cognized.
Professor Montague then proceeded to describe some of the work
done by the New Realists in the furtherance of their doctrine.
' ' The Programme and Platform of Six Realists, ' ' published as an
article in THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY in 1910, and the book called
The New Realism (Macmillan, 1912), were the results of more or
less cooperative endeavor. These were followed by articles and
books published separately by various members of the group.
Among these might be mentioned The Concept of Consciousness
and the Freudian Wish by E. B. Holt; Present Philosophical Ten-
dencies, by R. B. Perry ; A First Course in Metaphysics, by Walter
Marvin; The New Rationalism by E. G. Spaulding; and an article
in The Philosophical Review, of January, 1914, on "Unreal Sub-
sistence and Consciousness," by the speaker.
Professor Montague confessed to being somewhat at variance
with the more recent writings of his colleagues in that the latter had
for the most part agreed in regarding the epistemological doctrine
of neo-realism as more or less implicative of mechanism, pluralism
and behaviorism. As in the later work of Mr. Bertrand Russell,
so also in the books of Holt and Spaulding, there was a drift towards
positivism and nominalism and an abandonment of the Platonism
which had characterized the earlier phase of the movement.
Having stated the principal arguments for the New Realism and
given a description of the later developments and divergencies of
the school, Professor Montague then presented his conception of the
two tasks in philosophy which he regarded as of most importance at
the present time, and for the accomplishment of which he believed
124 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the neo-realistic epistemology offered a fruitful method. These tasks
were (1) the reconciliation of the vitalistic doctrine of such
writers as M. Bergson and Professor McDougal with the mechan-
istic doctrines and methods of most modern scientists; (2) the
emancipation of ethical values and sanctions from the dogmas or
hypotheses of religion.
With regard to the former of these tasks he thought it a good
omen that one of the first works of scholarship to come from the
University of Louvain after the war should be a very complete and
sympathetic analysis of Le Neo-Realisme amcricain by Father
Rene Kremer, C. SS.B. This tribute from a Catholic and a Thomist
should be a reminder that a realistic epistemology by no means im-
plies a naturalistic cosmology, but serves rather as a means of
restoring to their original clarity the great philosophic issues which
have so long been obscured and distorted by Berkeleyan and Kan-
tian subjectivism. The emancipation of philosophy from the sophis-
tries of epistemological idealism would make it possible to attempt
an intelligent reconciliation of the tradition of ontological idealism
with the claims of modern science.
With regard to the second of the two tasks to the achievement of
which philosophy should be devoted, Professor Montague expressed
the hope that the good feeling between France and America, re-
newed by their recent participation as allies in war, might serve to
awaken American scholars to the true significance of the seculari-
zation of the French educational system. The Hellenic faith in the
eternal validity of moral ideals as independent of, though not op-
posed to, all metaphysical theories, whether of naturalism or super-
naturalism, was a faith that had been proclaimed anew and with
convincing eloquence by great philosophers of England such as
Huxley and Mill. And this conception of a morality of ideals as
distinguished from a morality of commands had been adopted by
France and made incarnate in the education of her children and in
the heroism of her army.
In conclusion Professor Montague wished to repeat that the New
Realism defends not only the existence of physical bodies independ-
ent of consciousness, but also the validity of moral ideals independ-
ent of the vicissitudes of nature or politics. And at a time like the
present, when theological authority is losing its hold upon so many
minds, it is of supreme importance that, in addition to their reli-
gious training, the youth of America, like the youth of France,
should be given a faith in real idealism the indestructible and secu-
lar faith in a sanctionless morality.
THE OXFORD CONGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY 125
Pragmatism: J. E. BOODIN.
There are several reasons why pragmatism should be of interest
to British and French philosophers, and especially to British phi-
losophers. In the first place, the pragmatic movement, and that
means primarily William James, broke the spell which German
thought had cast over America, and made America look to Britain
and France rather than to Germany for its inspiration. It trans-
planted the great British empirical tradition to American soil at
a time when it had lost its hold on Britain itself. William James is
a lineal descendant of Locke and J. S. Mill. In the second place,
pragmatism is of interest because it is the matrix out of which the
more recent movements have grown. The new idealism, of which
Josiah Royce is the most outstanding representative, owes no small
part of its freshness to the influence of James ; Royce called himself
an absolute pragmatist. Most of the leaders of the New Realism
in America were pupils of William James. Behaviorism owes in-
spiration not only to the pragmatic emphasis on conduct as the
central fact of psychology, but also to James's analysis of such
psychological concepts as activity and consciousness. In the third
place pragmatism is of interest because it is to-day a live movement.
The most outstanding figure in American philosophy to-day is John
Dewey. Professor Dewey is perhaps the only American philos-
opher who can be said to have a school in the compact sense. And
the Chicago school numbers among its members such vigorous
thinkers as Professors Tufts, A. W. Moore and Mead and is making
new converts, one of the ablest of these being Professor Bode. The
contributors to the volume Creative Intelligence show something of
the strength of the Dewey type of leadership. But there are a
number of individual thinkers who stand outside the Dewey move-
ment. And there is probably no American thinker of any school
who does not gratefully own his debt to William James. In the
fourth place, pragmatism is having an important practical influence
on American civilization. James himself, outside of his influence
on psychology and philosophy, had a large and enduring influence
on the religious thought of America. Dewey is the most important
interpreter of the ideals of education in America, and more recently
is making his influence felt in political philosophy. Justice Holmes
and Roscoe Pound, Dean of the Harvard Law School, have carried
the pragmatic method into the realm of jurisprudence and are ma-
king an impression on the technical tradition, while Laski shows
the influence of James in his critical analysis of the question of
the authority of the state. These are only instances of the exten-
sion of the influence of pragmatism in America, the tendency of
126 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
which has been a wholesome regard for the demands of human ex-
perience.
But, you say, pragmatism is nothing but a muddle and conveys
no definite meaning. It is true that pragmatism has been a com-
plex movement. It has been an atmosphere rather than a definite
philosophy. In the earlier stages at any rate it was a "thick"
movement. This "thickness" was due to two causes. One was the
use of a metamorphical language which gave rise to a large progeny
of misunderstandings. Instance "the cash value of truth," "truth
is the expedient in the way of thinking," etc. James himself was
deeply pained by these misunderstandings (some of which seemed
to him wilful) during his last years and strove heroically to remove
them. The other cause of the "thickness" of pragmatism was the
number of isms which men like James included in their philosophy
and which all came to be associated with pragmatism. James at
various times wa a pluralist, a tychist (believer in chance), ener-
gist (interaction of mind and body), ethical idealist, panpsychist,
neutralist (doctrine of pure experience), mystic, etc. It was too
much for one word to carry, even though you paid it extra.
But as you look through the smoke of misunderstanding and
confusion there are some definite contributions which can 'be laid
to the credit of pragmatism. First, pragmatism sharpened our con-
sciousness of the meaning of propositions. The question of C. S.
Peirce: What practical difference would it make if one rather than
another of alternative hypotheses were true? has made us more
conscious of our procedure and ena/bled us to get rid of dead lumber
with which every civilization gets overburdened. In the second
place, pragmatism has contributed a more adequate psychology of
the thought process. It has emphasized the teleological, active,
selective character of the process. It has showed that thinking is
not carried on in vacua, but is for some end in which the whole of
human nature, emotional and volitional as well as intellectual,
counts. Thinking arises as a result of a problem or doubt when the
old habits break down and when we must cast about among alterna-
tives for a way of meeting the situation. This process terminates
normally in selection and action, which are merely two ways of
stating the termination of the process. James's chapters on "Con-
ception" and "Reasoning" in his Principles of Psychology have be-
come classic and Dewey's form of statement is scarcely less im-
portant. In the third place, pragmatism has brought into clearer
consciousness the significance of scientific method. Professor Boodin
has elsewhere defined pragmatism "as scientific method conscious of
its procedure." Pragmatism has brought out the trial and error
aspect of the search for truth. It emphasizes the tentative and
empirical character of the process. It speaks of truths in the plural
truths as working hypotheses in a manifold world. Truth in the
singular is at best an ideal limit in our human procedure. In the
fourth place, pragmatism aims at furnishing a test of truth. The
statement of this test has ibeen confused enough, but Professor
Boodin believes that a definition can be made which will answer all
requirements. We may define the test in Loekian terms by saying
that an hypothesis is true when it terminates in the intended facts.
But we can also state it in terms of conduct. An hypothesis is true
when it leads to successful procedure in the intended direction. In
metaphysical terms it would read: We know the specified reality
through the differences it makes to our purposive conduct. T^is
would hold in any universe of discourse. Economy or simplicity is
implied in successful procedure. Finally, pragmatism has empha-
sized the constructive or creative character of truth. We may say
that it has over-emphasized this aspect. But in some cases, such as
psychotherapy and social relations, the belief in the truth of a
proposition may be a factor in making it come true. This does not
hold of an eclipse. But in every case truth is a creative addition
to our world and not a mere matter of copying.
Professor Boodin 's contribution to the pragmatic movement may
be said to be twofold. He has tried (Truth and Reality, Macmillan,
1911) to clarify the concept of truth and to build it out in neglected
directions. He has also tried (A Realistic Universe, Macmillan,
1915) to construct a system of metaphysics on the basis of the
pragmatic method. He calls his own attitude "pragmatic realism."
His method is objective and realistic as contrasted wth the sub-
jective and skeptical tendencies of the movement. The pragmatic
movement may be said to have split up into a right and a left wing.
Idealism in American Philosophy: R. F. A.
For the student of idealism in present-day American philosophy,
the most prominent figure is Royce, and the most important prob-
lem that of the influence of Royce on contemporary thought.
Royce is the typical representative of an age in which the devel-
opment of natural science, and of philosophies based on science,
came into conflict with much in the traditional creeds of the Chris-
tian churches. For him personally, the fundamental problem
throughout all his thinking was to justify religion as the dominant
fact in life and thought. In order to reconcile religion and science,
he abandons most of the mythology of the creeds, and much of the
ritual of the churches. But he "saves" religion by interpreting it
as the central source of metaphysical insight, as the mode of experi-
ence in which we respond to the nature of reality as a whole, and
128 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
find it deserving of worship. Idealism, in Royce's hands, is first
and last a philosophy of religion. But Royce saw clearly that
religion can not be saved in abstraction from, still less in opposi-
tion to, life's other interests. Hence, in arriving at a synthesis, his
philosophical interests ranged from mathematical logic and biology
at one end to moral and social theory at the other. Many students
who had little sympathy with Royce's emphasis on, or interpretation
of religion, were deeply influenced by these other sides of his
thought.
Yet, towards the end of his life, Royce often was despondent
about his influence as a teacher. His life's work seemed to be bear-
ing no fruit. No school of younger idealists seemed to have grown
up about him, carrying on and developing his teaching. Super-
ficially, this discouraging estimate was not without justification.
Realists were challenging his metaphysical theory on technical
grounds as too Berkeleyan and subjective. Pragmatists were de-
nouncing his Absolute as encouraging "moral holidays," instead of
preaching the gospel of the progressive mastery of man over nature
through knowledge. His books were not being expounded on all
sides by devoted disciples. His most novel and distinctive theories
seemed not to -be caught up into the currents of philosophical debate.
Thus, for example, his argument in The Religious Aspect of Phi-
losophy, that error implies an absolute truth for an absolute spirit,
much as it impressed William James at the time of its first formula-
tion, soon came to be almost ignored. Few thinkers adopted, from
The World and the Individual, his terminology of the "external"
and "internal" meaning of ideas; fewer still thought his use of the
theory of the mathematical infinite a very happy one. His analysis
of morality in terms of " loyalty," in The Philosophy of Loyalty; his
theory of religion as the spiritual life of the "beloved community,"
in The Problem of Christianity; his use of Peirce's concept of "in-
terpretation," in the same book all evoked little response. Royce
might well think of himself as one preaching to deaf ears.
But the truth was that, like James, Royce exercised his most
powerful influence in stimulating his pupils to think for themselves
and to stand intellectually on their own legs. He did not train dis-
ciples. He inspired independent thinkers. This may be readily
appreciated by a brief survey of contemporary work which has
grown, no doubt with the help of many other influences, yet funda-
mentally from seeds sown by Royce. His interest in mathematical
logic is carried on by C. I. Lewis's Survey of Symbolic Logic, and
by H. M. Sheffer's work at Harvard. The work of his seminary on
scientific methods, and the speculative problems raised by the nat-
ural sciences, has left its mark on L. J. Henderson's The Order of
BOOK REVIEWS 129
Nature. The influence of his metaphysical theories is felt in widely
different directions in Mary Whiton Calkins 's Personalistic Con-
ception of Nature, and, on its dialectical side, in W. H. Sheldon's
Strife of Systems. His emphasis on religion as a fundamental fac-
tor in human experience and civilization reappears not only in G.
P. Adams's Idealism and the Modern Age, but above all in W. E.
Hocking 's The Meaning of God in Human Experience and The
Remaking of Human Nature. But Hocking 's appointment, as
Royce's successor, to the Alford professorship is fitting in an even
deeper sense. The tide is at the moment running against idealism,
and this has prevented the power and freshness of Hocking 's work
from being as fully and widely appreciated as they deserve to be.
And his own best is yet to come. But all who know even a little of
his unpublished studies in the philosophy of the State, of History,
and of Art, look to him to be the true heir of Royce and the leader
of the idealism of the future.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
The Reign of Religion in Contemporary Philosophy. S. RADHAKRTSH-
NAN. London and New York: Macmillan Co. 1920. Pp. x -+
463.
Professor Radhakrishnan has produced a notable book. Any
criticism of the main trend of current Western philosophy, under-
taken from the standpoint of Indian thought with its characteristic
basis and traditions, could not fail to be noteworthy ; but this volume
has a special significance. Consider for a moment its title The
Reign of Religion in Philosophy. Can such dominance be properly
ascribed to religion? Influence whether waning or increasing is
another question may be conceded ; but to what degree this is iden-
tical with that direction and control which deserve the name "reign"
appears a highly debatable issue. Such a title, again, inevitably
arouses certain too familiar reflections ; we anticipate criticism, skep-
ticism, even hostility to religious conceptions as such. But on both
these points Radhakrishnan takes up an attitude that is refreshingly
definite. Approaching his very wide but extremely pertinent sub-
ject as an absolutist, he maintains two theses: (1) "of pluralistic
theism and monistic idealism, the latter is the more reasonable ' ' ; sys-
tems marked by "religious neutrality end in absolute idealism. The
current pluralistic systems are the outcome of the interference of
religious prejudice with the genuine spirit of speculation"; 1 and (2)
i But the ' ' realistic reaction, ' ' particularly the realism of Russell, is an
exception. Cf. pp. 331, 336.
130 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
"monistic idealism is the more reasonable as affording to the spiritual
being of man full satisfaction, moral as well as intellectual" (p. vii) ;
thus his criticism is at once positive and comprehensive. Of these
two contentions, the first obviously concerns philosophy alone; but
his second principle includes a much wider and not so purely philo-
sophic an issue in its claim that only absolutism can satisfy religious
needs. For him, as for the poet, "the world glows with God"; if
religion can at all be regarded as transcended, this is only in full
spiritual satisfaction; it is not negated, not abandoned and wholly
discarded; and this, I think, is a somewhat new characteristic in
recent absolutistic thought.
In proffering a few remarks on a work which, whatever other
judgment may be passed upon it, must be recognized as an ex-
tremely able, clear and individual discussion of fundamentals, it may
be useful to summarize them as expressing agreement with the
author's absolutistic criticism of current pluralisms, together with
the impression that this absolutism itself needs somewhat clearer ex-
pression in order to guard against its becoming another mere variant
of pluralism.
The method adopted by the author is the old and powerful one,
in the right hands, of "exposing, through criticism, the absolutistic
implications" of the systems (among others) of Ward, Bergson,
James, Eucken and Russell ; and these names are sufficient to show
that he has overlooked little that demands notice in recent thought.
But there is here neither lack of appreciation nor the slightest im-
putation of intellectual dishonesty. On the contrary "recent ten-
dencies in philosophy" (Chap. II.) are traced to an inevitable reac-
tion from that abstract absolutism which, as perhaps James most
vehemently argued, derided or at least neglected the demands of
average humanity.
Such a protest against mere abstractionism, this recognition of
aspects of the human spirit other than the purely intellectual, was
at once natural and praiseworthy; but it has had two unhappy
consequences. In the first place it selected a radically false criterion
in its choice of intuitive belief as the ultimate standard to be at
all costs maintained ; and Badhakrishnan regards pluralism as noth-
ing more than an unconscious attempt to provide philosophical bases
for the instincts of a democratic humanism. "Distrust of intellect is
the characteristic note of recent philosophy. Instead of reason-
philosophers we have faith-philosophers" (p. 42). They are deeply
concerned about the intellectual difficulties and the spiritual trials
of that typically modern and pathetically puzzled person, Mr. Brit-
ling; if he protests that he can not understand our theories, then
they must be false; if they do not pacify his troubled soul their
BOOK REVIEWS 131
effectiveness is patent. The further result is equally inevitable ; all
the "isms" thus proffered for the solace of Mr. Britling can not
escape being radically faulty, because their own presuppositions
imply that very absolutism which they repudiate. But this innate
absolutism is essentially concrete; it "does not dismiss the world of
reality as illusory. It is wrong to assume that it cancels the exist-
ence of the Many for the sake of the One. All that absolutism says
is that the One is the life and soul of the world. This is not to say
that the world of life and change is unreal." 2
Thus Badhakrishnan has raised anew, and from what is in many
ways a novel standpoint, a number of old and much debated issues.
The absolutist heavy artillery has reopened with a well-directed
barrage, and not without having learned some valuable lessons from
the tactics of its opponents. For whatever be the defects of recent
pluralism, its advocates have been remarkably successful in rousing
wide interest and in infusing reality into discussion. From this
both sides alike must benefit ; no longer will argument proceed in an
academic void ; and one outstanding merit of the volume under con-
sideration is the fresh clearness with which the points at issue are
presented.
Doubtless a fitting reply will duly be made to its contentions by
those who have not yet "outsoared the shadow of our night." I shall
content myself therefore with noting those features of absolutism
which seem to me most to demand attention from both pluralists and
the author himself.
Few of those to whom the subject is perhaps already too familiar
can afford to omit his opening chapter on "Science, Religion and Phi-
losophy." There is much truth in "philosophy has become a list of
beliefs held by faith and not a reasoned system. ' ' But at the same
time ' ' religious facts have more significance for philosophy than any
other." "Philosophy is not a theory of theory, but a theory of
life, at home in life and not in false abstractions. Instead of trying
to make philosophy religious, we should make religion philosophical.
True religion and true philosophy will agree, for there is no secret
hostility between the different sides of human nature." 3 At first
one is tempted to believe that yet another pluralist is writing ; surely
we have here a note not always markedly resonant in classic abso-
lutism.
The consideration of the ad hoc system of Leibnitz may be passed
over briefly. His inclusion seems due to a double reason; first for
historic continuity and completeness and secondly because he is a
2 Pp. 48, 49. (Slightly modified.) As for Mr. Britling, see the end of
section III., p. 42.
Pp. 12, 19, 20, 22.
132 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
rationalistic pluralist, and therefore a patent exception to that tradi-
tion of inherent connection between absolutism and reason on which
James was so fond of insist ing. Radhakrishnan maintains that an
"examination of Leibnitz's theory of perception will enforce absolu-
tism" (p. 61.) In any case the artificialities of the entire system,
in spite of the int.-llcftual power that went to its construction,
render it a feeble basis for modern pluralism; and to Leibnitz Rad-
hakrishnan affiliates the work of James Ward, thus arriving at the
moderns. Ward's position, he points out, has a twofold aspect; he
upholds spirit as against naturalism, but as against absolutism, many
spirits; thus he re-edits the Monadology in an attempt "show that
by itself pluralism is inadequate and must give place to a theism"
(p. 92). His panpsychism, which has always appeared to me the
weakest feature in his system, is very forcibly criticized. "We can
not follow Ward when he says that in this world we have all persons
and no things . . . that matter is mind" (p. 99). For as Rad-
hakrishnan contends further, it is possible to accept Nature, even
a completely mechanical Nature, without any necessary contradic-
tion of a spiritual Absolute. Here the absolutist position, as against
that taken up by Ward and other panpsychists, is excellently ex-
pressed ; only the sense that it would be unfair to the author prevents
the citation of sentence after sentence which go to the root of the
matter. I may refer, however, to the somewhat analogous position
held, from the absolutist standpoint itself, by Dr. McTaggart, for
whom the ultimate differentiations of the Absolute are finite indi-
viduals; it would be interesting to know Radhakrishnan 's opinion
of this interpretation of Hegelian idealism. It constitutes a crucial
test for absolutism, for its acceptance involves serious risks of sub-
jectivism. But "spiritual monism need not be of the panpsychist
type" (p. 108) ; and further, Ward's treatment of ethical freedom
implies a fundamental misinterpretation of the function of mechan-
ism in Nature.
The consideration of Ward is remarkably complete without being
overdone; besides the points just noted, the implications of his
theory are traced in their bearing on life and matter, creation and
evolution, the finitude and the personality of God; the final con-
clusion being that Ward's fear that absolutism "would open the
floodgates to mechanism, determinism and other inhumanisms" is
completely unfounded. "In escaping from subjective idealism to
which pluralism leads, Ward has affirmed absolutism." "Even the
most brilliant philosopher can not make pluralism philosophically
sound."*
Pp. 134, 120, 147.
BOOK REVIEWS 133
The three succeeding chapters are devoted to Bergson, which
leads me to venture the opinion that Radhakrishnan, like many others,
has taken this remarkable writer rather too seriously. We find, it
is true, the severe condemnation of his system as " a cheap and facile
monism indifferent to the difficulties of rational philosophy"; the
abstract vagueness of "duration" is insisted upon; 5 nevertheless
I think that the most damaging criticism of Bergson can be found
in his own work itself. Like that of James, it is a mosaic rather than
a true unity ; an ad hoc construction rather than an organic growth ;
but with the element of self-contradiction much more accentuated,
as any careful analysis is sufficient to show.
I very much doubt, therefore, the truth of the remark that "if
freed from its inconsistencies it must end in absolutism"; these
"inconsistencies" seem to me so fundamental and deep seated that
their removal would involve the destruction of the entire system.
Radhakrishnan, however, takes his principal results separately, and
here as elsewhere traces their absolutistic implications. As in Ward 's
case, he finds the theories of perception seriously defective; "the
problem is slurred over and not solved" (p. 156) ; but he does not
mention the direct contradiction between Bergson 's position in Time
and Free Will and that in Matter and Memory. The careless vague-
ness in the use of his central terms is another matter for criticism ;
e.g. he "is not very careful in his use of the word life. Life and
consciousness are sometimes used synonymously. Life sometimes
refers to vital phenomena" (p. 175). Here we have one of the best
aphorisms in the volume: "Matter to Bergson is congealed mind,
while to Hegel it is concealed mind" (p. 178). This is excellent,
and incidentally it reveals the author's command of his English.
The account of the place which intuition has always held in classi-
cal absolutism, and the contrast with Bergson 's opposition of intui-
tion to intellect, are equally good. For absolutism, there is no such
dichotomy as Bergson asserts ; "intuition does not mean a break with
ordinary thought, but a completion of the labour of intellect, a
comprehension which sees things as a whole." 6 This is but one
instance out of many where the gross misrepresentations of abso-
lutism, so common in its recent critics, are clearly pointed out and
corrected. 7 In this respect, perhaps the strongest card in Bergson 's
suit is "tout est donne"; here again misconception is involved; the
o P. 163; note "rational," not "rationalistic."
P. 189. Cf. also pp. 196 and 207, and Dr. Bosanquet's remark that this
view can not be read into Bergson. (Principle of Individuality, p. 168, n.)
7 ' ' The absolutism which comes in for severe rebuke at the hands of pluralist
critics is a fiction of their own imagination and not a theory held by its recog-
nized exponents" (p. 407).
134 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPJl V
universe is not a "twice told tale; there is a progressive realization
of the absolute in the world" (p. 186). But, as I have said already,
perhaps Radhakrishnan takes Bergson, as a philosopher, too seri-
ously; for he concludes "Bergson is more a prophet than a philoso-
pher, a seer than a dialectician. The vision requires a system of
absolute idealism" (p. 221).
The sarcasm with which the chapter on "Pragmatism" begins
will probably be considered as no more than is deserved by the
methods adopted by some of its advocates. On its more serious
side, Radhakrishnan points out that while Kant was a pioneer
pragmatist, still this did not induce him to "break up the unity of
mind. His pure and practical reason are both expressions of rea-
son" (p. 228), a feature often overlooked by those who rely on the
supposed insufficiency of the Kantian pure reason. Throughout a
fairly long chapter Radhakrishnan succeeds in presenting some novel
aspects of this much debated subject. He is as severe on Kant as
on James, while he gives full expression to such concessions as
absolutism need make, and traces accurately the factors in recent
controversy which almost necessitated the new movement. The
principal defect of the chapter is the oversight of those expressions
of absolutist thinkers on the nature of truth, uttered long before the
pragmatists began to emphasize its practical aspects, whose due
recognition would have deprived their contentions in advance of
much of their force. 8 On the other hand, the insistence on the in-
evitable subjectivity of pragmatism is very forcible. "True prag-
matism inclines towards absolutism, which has long ago given up the
idea of the Absolute as a static entity existing alongside the actual"
(P- 251).
It is in his pluralism that William James is most distinctively
to be found, and A Pluralistic Universe is the subject of another
long chapter. Radhakrishnan is quite right, I think, in locating
"the greatest defect of James's philosophy in its unsystematic
nature" (p. 255). But all his work seems to contain evidence of
hasty reading (to say the least) of absolutist literature, of which
Radhakrishnan gives several instances; his account of the relation
between the Absolute and finite individuals; of the monistic "all"
as opposed to, instead of complementing, the pluralistic ' ' each " ; of
the Absolute as static rather than dynamic; passage after passage
is shown to be defective either in its bases or its implications. And
in spite of the indebtedness which James expresses to Bergson, they
"have different views of intellect. It is surprising that James does
not realize that the adoption of Bergson 's theory commits him to the
conceptual method" (pp. 268-269).
Cf. my Examination of James't Philosophy, pp. 16-18.
BOOK REVIEWS 135
As for the constructive side of James's work, does this, Radhak-
rishnan asks, really guarantee "freedom and novelty, a God who
is of real help, and personal immortality?" He thinks not, after all ;
"such a God is too human for any religious purpose" (p. 285).
And his vacillations on moral freedom, in conjunction with his ab-
stract view-point, forced an unreal alternative between chance and
fatalism, and so, but only as a pis oiler, the selection of chance as
more favorable to freedom. Finally, the theory of pure experience
excludes any persistent soul ; but on the other hand, if we fall back
on the panpsychism of Fechner we drift into a "mother-sea of
consciousness" which again is "incompatible with a radical plural-
ism" (p. 296). Certainly James was never himself anxious about
his own reputation as a thinker, and therefore his fate need con-
cern us still less ; but it is impossible to resist the feeling that, while
he "has secured a permanent place in the republic of great philoso-
phers," it is no less a misfortune in the interests of philosophy
itself, that "he was not very scrupulous about the logic of his posi-
tion; he was at the mercy of the latest fad" (pp. 296, 297). We
may indeed regard this as a tribute to his real power, since such
irresponsibility would have proved the ruin of any weaker man.
The other recent critics of absolutism Russell, Balfour, Howi-
son, Schiller, Eucken are all dealt with with equal thoroughness;
but I should like to turn to Radhakrishnan's own exposition of
monistic idealism.
Every such endeavor courts distinctive and grave dangers. To
insist on the differentiations demanded by a really concrete absolut-
ism means the risk of pluralism; if, in avoiding this, the thinker
emphasizes the equally necessary transcendence, he may lose his
particulars in abstraction ; the underlying unity of these particulars,
again, must be something other than themselves, without being ex-
ternal or artificial on the one hand, or on the other so merged with
them as to become a pantheism, not to say a panpsychism. So far
as the present volume is constructive (and its main purpose is
critical) it stands all these tests excellently. Its chief failing, curi-
ously enough, seems to me to be a tendency toward pluralism; but
this may easily be more apparent than real, and will doubtless
receive due consideration in Radhakrishnan's future constructive
work. Or it may arise from his intense sympathy with religion, even
as in its "Western rather than its peculiarly Oriental phases. The
highest religion, he maintains, is permeated by, and must if needs
be fall back upon, absolutism; 9 this again fosters and conserves
religion as such, not any mere intellectualism nor even passive
9 " If philosophy takes into account facts of religious consciousness we will
be led to the absolutist theory" (p. 283).
136 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
mysticism and absorption. As being in agreement with this attitude
he cites, quite properly of course, both Hegel and Bradley; but he
is himself much more definite, much less vague and distant; per-
haps from temperament he seems less afraid of the reproach of
wearing his heart on his sleeve. Thus we find in the final chapter
alone: 10 "The world glows with God. ... A central spirit, an in-
finite and eternal spiritual energy, purposeful and intelligent. All
things are real only as they exist in God." And thus, in view of the
two dangers already alluded to of pluralism on one side, and of
panpsychism on the other it is not surprising that an unconscious
tendency towards the former seems to manifest itself.
But before dealing with this major difficulty I should like to
discuss a few minor points. 11 The first concerns the use of the term
"idea," which together with "ideal" is the source of more mis-
understanding of Idealism than any other. "Ideal" ia almost
always construed in the moral or esthetic sense of a standard which
ought to be, but never is, actual; while "idea" is interpreted wholly
subjectively, instead of objectively as in accordance with both
Platonic usage and Hegelian logic; and the few references which
Radhakrishnan makes to "idea" seem to me to convey this erro-
neous subjective meaning. We have e.g. (p. 34), "the idealist doc-
trine that the world is an idea is a sham. How can the world be
looked upon as a dream or imagination?" Then (p. 46), "Absolut-
ism which makes mind the central reality," and p. 95, "The Abso-
lute Idea, which is the sole reality" (in reference to Hegel). What
seems lacking here is the principle that for Hegel the Absolute and
the Absolute Idea are not wholly identical. He regarded neither
mind (as such) nor the Absolute Idea as the ultimate reality. These
are the logical the thought aspects of reality, which itself is some-
thing richer than they, being Spirit. The altogether erroneous im-
pression that Hegel regards all reality as Thought or as Mind ac-
counts, I think, for much of the repugnance felt towards it; and it
would materially help forward the comprehension of absolutism if
Radhakrishnan were to make this essential distinction clearer than
he has done; as it is he appears to use mind and spirit as synon-
ymous. 11
10 In this Radhakrishnan develops the standpoint of Indian metaphysics as
"the earliest form of speculative idealism in the world" (p. 451).
" Perhaps I may add here a contradiction which I feel sure, however, is
purely superficial. We have (p. 254) : "In philosophy we do not seek for faith
and vision but for a reasoned explanation ' ' ; but p. 441 : ' ' Philosophy is neither
purely conceptualist, not purely empiricist, but is intuitional."
i* The distinction only, for the principle itself ia fully recognized. Cf. p.
82: "Reality is a concrete spiritual whole"; also pp. 97, 101, 135, 139, 304,
352, 434; as to the distinction itself, I may refer to Dr. McTaggart's Commen-
tary, sec. 294.
BOOK REVIEWS 137
Nor do I feel satisfied with his exposition of Hegel's theory of
being and becoming on p. 168. There we have, "being relates itself
to non-being, and passes with it into the higher category of be-
coming." But Hegel did not pass from being to non-being; the
transit is from being to nothing (or nought) . This distinction may
seem mere hair-splitting, but it is in reality fundamental. "Non-
being" is the denial of "being"; while "nothing" is the acceptance
of "being," but the denial of any "determination." Thus the
former is a direct logical contradictory, which absolutely nullifies
thought ; while the second is the dialectic transition which is just as
absolutely indispensable to thought. 13
But these are after all only minor points ; the final question is :
Does Radhakrishnan succeed in his detailed exposition of the prin-
ciple of the Absolute? I think that on the whole his treatment is
excellent. The Absolute, in the first place, is concrete "the highest
concrete" "which holds to the reality of both eternal and tem-
poral, victory of the good and a battle with evil, consciousness of
perfection, and a moral will." Secondly, his interpretation is but
"the outlines of a scheme" (which still "appears to satisfy philo-
sophic needs and impulses"), 1 * so that too much must not be ex-
pected from it. But I find it extremely difficult, after careful
comparison, to distinguish his treatment of the relation between the
Absolute, God, and the universe, from that which he quotes (and
adversely criticizes) from Rashdall and, in a less degree, A. J.
Balfour. 15 These passages are too long to give, and each reader
will form his own opinion; but on the questions of evil and im-
perfection, personality and creation, the parallel appears very close
between Radhakrishnan 's absolutism and that pluralism which in
other writers he condemns; and, in the words of James, "the
difference between monism and pluralism is the most pregnant in
philosophy. ' '
I will contrast a few brief sentences: "No pluralism can be con-
sistent unless subordinated to a monism which will make God not
a person . . . but an impersonal or suprapersonal spirit." Here
then, quite definitely, God can not be a person. 16 But as against
this, we find "The Absolute breaks up its wholeness and develops the
reality of self and not-self. The self is God . . . The personal God
1S Cf. again Commentary, sec. 16. Again, in saying that "Bashdall adopts
the traditional argument of idealism" (p. 392), I think that Radhakrishnan
means Brkeleyan Idealism. Pringle-Pattison, following Trendelenburg, simi-
larly criticizes Hegel; but his illustration is obviously inapposite. Hegelianism
and Personality, p. 99, note.
Pp. 440, 313, 411.
Pp. 392-395, 402-404.
P. 277; but cf. also p. 382.
138 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
is not the Absolute, but its highest manifestation"; while, on the
other hand, "the Absolute constitutes the self of the whole world,"
without any "breaking up" whatever. "Breaks up," indeed, ap-
pears an unfortunate term wherewith to express the truth that "the
universe is the Absolute dynamically viewed"; but I have no
doubt that, in his future work, the author will clear up these ob-
scurities, and present the Absolute as itself "the whole, the only
individual, the sum of all perfection." 17 I have dealt with his
present volume at such length because in it Absolutism, after a com-
paratively long interval of silence and neglect, once more takes up
the gage of conflict and offers itself as the surest guardian of man 's
highest artistic, moral and religious interests.
J. E. TURNER.
LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
REVUE DE METAPHYSIQUE ET DE MORALE. Avril-
Juin, 1920. Conscience et fonction sociale (pp. 127-150) : G. BELOT.
-The so-called economic and political problems of our day are fun-
damentally moral problems, and what is needed for their solution
is a moral education which will adjust the demands of conscience to
the actual circumstances of the present environment. La valeur des
Jdees de A. Comte sur la chimie (pp. 151-179): G. URBAIN. -A.
Comte's view that the positive science of chemistry aims at the "pre-
vision of reactions" seems to be in accord with modern development*
of the principles of Mayer and Carnot. But Comte, leaping into a
religious vein, was too enthusiastic over the prospect of unifying the
science under a single principle, for there seem to be two sets of
chemical data. In the one set, which embraces thermodynamically
unstable compounds such as the organic compounds, "the reversi-
bility of reactions is the exception, and this is the domain par ex-
cellence of atomistic doctrines"; in the other set, which embraces
thermodynamically stable compounds, "the reversibility of reactions
is the rule, and this is the domain par excellence of energetic doc-
trines." In spite of this dual character of its data, which prevents
the formulation of some single first principle, chemistry can be just
as rational and fruitful as any scientific positivist could wish.
L'antitlogmatisme de Kant et de Fichte (pp. 181-224) : M. GI^ROULT.
-Fichte's conception of "dogmatism" and the "idealism" which he
substitutes for it correspond substantially with Kantian ideas on the
same subjects. This is shown by the fundamental agreement be-
" Pp. 444, 435, 445, 442.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS 139
tween the Kantian and Fichtean notions of liberty, the autonomy of
the will, and the creative activity of the self. Etudes Critiques. La
Pensee italienne au XVI e siecle et le courant libertin, par J. -Roger
Charbonnel (pp. 225-243): L&ON BLANCHET. - M. Blanchet finds
this book worth criticizing, as he considers it the best work in French
on the part played by the Italian Renaissance in the emancipation
of thought from the scholastic system. The author has made some
serious biographical errors in his account of Campanella, and he
should have given more systematic development to three important
themes: (1) the answers of these Italian thinkers to the problem of
separating the realms of revelation and of science; (2) their rela-
tions to protestantism; and (3) their attitudes toward magic in con-
nection with their pantheistic views of nature. Questions Pratiques.
Qu'est-ce qu'un depute f (pp. 245-260) : FELIX PECAUT. -The pres-
ent position of the deputy is ambiguous, for although there has been
a steady tendency in modern parliamentary government toward
releasing him from all mandates of his electors, the desire for re-
election still operates as an effective limitation upon his freedom.
Though it is difficult to see how this check can be diminished while
the present system of democracy remains, it would seem desirable in
the complex society of to-day to entrust legislation as far as possible
to experts free to follow their own informed judgments. Supple-
ment. Livres Nouveaux. Alfred Loisy, De la discipline intellec-
tuelle. D. Parodi, La philosophie contemporaine en France, essai de
classification des doctrines. 81 chapitres sur I' esprit et les passions,
by the author of Propos d' Alain. Th. Flournoy, Metaphysique et
psychologic. Gustave Geley, De I'inconscient au conscient. G. True,
Le retour d la scolastique. E. M. Lemeray, Le principe de rela-
tivite. F. Soddy, Le radium. Bertrand Russell, Introduction to
mathematical philosophy. A. N. Whitehead, An enquiry concerning
the principles of natural knowledge. G. de Ruggiero, Storia della
filosofia. E. Troilo, Figure e studii di storia della filosofia. Julius
Pikler, Sinnesphysiologische Untersuchungen; Hypothesenfreie
Theorie der Gegenfarben; Theorie der Konsonanz und Dissonanz.
Gorg Simmel, Der Krieg und die geistigen Entscheidungen. Perio-
diquts. Philosophical review, 1919, Vol. XVIII., Nos. 3, 4, 5.
Claparede, Ed. Psychologic de 1 'Enfant, et Pedagogic experimen-
tale. (8th edition.) Geneva: Librairie Kundig. 1920. Pp.
xl -f 566.
Giese, Fritz. Psychologisches Worterbuch. Leipzig: B. G. Teub-
ner. 1921. Pp. 170. 35 m.
140 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Genung, John Franklin. The Life Indeed: A Review, in Terms of
Common Thinking, of the Scripture History Issuing in Immor-
tality. Boston: Marshall Jones Co. 1921. Pp. xiii + 370. $3.
Mathewson, Louise. Bergson's Theory of the Comic in the Light of
English Comedy. Lincoln, Neb. : University of Nebraska. 1920.
Pp. 27.
Mentre", Francois. Les Generations Sociales. Paris: Editions Bos-
sard. 1920. Pp.472. 15 fr.
Patten, William. The Grand Strategy of Evolution: The Social
Philosophy of a Biologist. Boston: Richard G. Badger. 1921.
Pp. xvii + 430. $5.
NOTES AND NEWS
To THE EDITORS OP THE JOURNAL OP PHILOSOPHY :
I want to thank Professor Lodge for his courteous consideration
of my criticisms on his proposal to exclude elementary judgments
from modern logic. Further discussion does not seem to me to be
necessary, since he is now ready to include all real judgments. He
says: "From the present standpoint, 'judgment' being understood
as a human approximation to the one absolute judgment, all judg-
ment, so far as we really judge, i.e., so far as our thought conforms
to the standards of identity, difference, and organization, is in-
cluded" (this JOURNAL, XVIII, 2, pp. 45-46).
L. E. HICKS.
BERKELEY, CALIF.
THE annual meeting of the Western Division of the American
Philosophical Association will be held this year at the University of
Chicago on Friday and Saturday, March 25 and 26. Arrangements
have been made for three discussional groups to meet concurrently
during one of the two mornings or afternoons. These groups will be
led by Professors Arthur 0. Lovejoy, E. B. McGilvary and J. D.
Stoops. Professor Lovejoy announces the following topic: "The
Existence and Nature of the 'Psychical' with Especial Reference
to the Standpoint of Pragmatism." Professor McGilvary will dis-
cuss "The Bearing of the Theory of Relativity upon Metaphysics,"
and Professor Stoops has selected the question, "Are Volitions In-
dependent of Instinct." As usual, members will have an oppor-
tunity to present papers not exceeding twenty minutes in length
on any topics of their selection.
VOL. XVIII, No 6. MARCH 17, 1921
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
McDOUGALL'S SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY IN THE LIGHT
OF RECENT DISCUSSION
THE Introduction to Social Psychology of Professor William Mc-
Dougall, which has recently reached its fourteenth edition, 1
is proving to be as important in the development of this new science
as was the work of William James in the development of general
psychology.
Before discussing Professor McDougall's principal conceptions
in this book, it will be worth while to notice certain of his general
psychological opinions that at least throw a side light upon the
Social Psychology. He is a firm believer in the teleological nature
of mental activity, and rejects mechanism and psycho-physical
parallelism. In opposition to the introspectionist school, who de-
fine psychology as the "science of consciousness," he was among the
first to define it as the "science of behavior." 2 His conception,
however, is quite different from that of Professor John B. Watson's
Behavior. Professor McDougall does not reject introspection, but
refuses to confine himself to it, and believes in studying the human
mind in its relation to the body, and to the physical and social
environment. He believes in the soul as "an hypothesis which is
indispensable to science at the present time." 3 The soul is "a be-
ing that possesses, or is the sum of definite capacities for psychical
activity and psychophysical interaction." 4 In this interaction the
soul produces sensations and meanings of every kind ; to some extent
it guides the direction of energy in the cells of the brain ; memory
1 London : Methuen & Co. 1919. Pp. xxiv + 459. The edition contains a
uew Preface and a third supplementary chapter, in which the author's main
differences with Mr. Shand, Dr. Drever, and Professor Thorndike are stated.
With the other two supplementary chapters, on "Theories of Action," and
"The Sex Instinct," the present volume is nearly one third larger than the
original edition of 1908. The student of this book should also consult the sym-
posium on Instincts, published in Vol. III. of the British Journal of Psychology,
and that on "Instincts and Emotion," in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society, 1914-15.
2 In the Primer of Physiological Psychology, 1905.
s Body and Mind, 1911, p. xiv.
< Idem, p. 365.
141
142 THE JOURNAL OF PIULOSOPJI Y
and reasoning are due to its activity. His lu-lief in some kind of
teleological principle, guiding the brain processes of individuals,
and operative in biological evolution, brings him into sympathy with
Professor Bergson to some extent; 5 but he does not accept the Berg-
sonian anthithesis between instinct and intelligence. Among psy-
chologists he has been influenced by William James, Professor G. F.
Stout, and Professor James Ward. 8 One only gets here and there
a hint as to his metaphysical preferences. Physics explains facts
in the terms of mechanical process; psychology, in terms of pur-
posive or appetitive process. The antithesis between the two types
of process is fundamental for science. The more plausible meta-
physical view, he thinks, is to regard "mechanical process as re-
ducible to the appetitive type," or, perhaps, as representing a
degradation of the latter. In this connection he cites with high
praise Professor Ward 's The Realm of Ends. 1 He also has remarked
that perhaps all living things might be described as "expressions or
embodiments of what we may vaguely name, with Schopenhauer,
will, or with Bergson, the vital impulsion (I'elan vital), or, more
simply, life." 8 Each instinct would be an embodiment of this fun-
damental will-to-live. His metaphysical sympathies would appear
to lie with some form of teleological idealism. In biology, one sup-
poses that his thought is most in accord with vitalism, or with such
views as that of Professor J. S. Haldane; but I recall no specific
passages in his writings on which I can base an assertion. 9
The conceptions of the Social Psychology have three nodal points :
the doctrines of (1) instincts; (2) sentiments; (3) the development
of character and volition. To lose sight of any one of them is to
miss much of the value and significance of the book. Among other
interesting and original features which, however, do not seem to me
basic to the system as a whole, are various details in the interpre-
tation of sympathy, suggestion and imitation as "general innate
tendencies" to feel, think, and act as one perceives others doing; the
theory of play an ingenious adaptation of the theories of Spencer
and Groos to his doctrine of the instincts; the analysis of the in-
c/dero, p. 333, note; p. 377, note.
In the Preface to his last book, The Group Mind, which has just appeared,
he mentions Ribot, Janet, Fouille, Boutmy, Tarde, Demolins, Buckle, Maine,
Lecky, and Lowell as authorities on psychology and social subjects to whom he
owes most. Here he places slight value upon Wundt and other German psy-
chologists.
t Social Psychology, p. 363.
Ibid., p. 361.
I have indicated the various metaphysical opinions with which I think
Professor McDougall 's doctrine of instincts might be combined in ' ' The Evolu-
tion of Values from Instincts," Philosophical Review, 1915, esp. pp. 180-183.
M C DOUGALL'S SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 143
stinctive bases of religion ; and the suggestive conception of ' ' active
sympathy." These features deserve and 1 have received some dis-
cussion and criticism; but it will be necessary to confine this paper
to the three nodal points.
I. The significance of the instincts is indicated by the purpose of
the Social Psychology which is to ascertain the mental characters of
primary importance for society, and to illustrate their operation in
the life of societies. 10 The principal primary instincts are "the
mental forces that maintain and shape all the life of individuals
and societies"; 11 from their operation arise sentiments, character,
volition, and associated life. An author who attaches such a function
to instincts is not thinking of sensation reflexes; he must have in
mind such processes as fear, anger, sex, parental care, gregarious-
ness, acquisitiveness and self-assertion; in short, the motives to
which writers on moral and social evolution usually attribute the
origin and growth of law, justice, religion, property, the family,
the state and other institutions, when they choose to regard them
psychologically. Prior to the appearance of the Social Psychology,
in 1908, there was no scientific definition and classification of in-
stincts suited to the needs of such writers. One of the main pur-
poses of this book was to supply this want.
On the analogy of the reflex arc, Professor McDougall decides
that on the physiological side the instinct has afferent, central and
efferent portions. On the conscious side (and here and everywhere
it must not be forgotten that Professor McDougall is an interaction-
ist) an instinctive operation begins with a perception, followed by
the distinctive emotion and conative impulse, after which it culmi-
nates (if not inhibited) in an action. 12 The fundamental part of
the instinct is the emotion, together with the conative impulse, anrl
remains unmodified throughout life. New afferent and efferent chan-
nels to an instinct may be acquired as when we learn to be afraid
or angry in response to new stimuli, and to express our fear and
anger by new modes of behavior. But the characteristic emotions of
anger and fear themselves never change, except in the sense that
they become united in complex emotions and sentiments.
Each instinct is attended "by some one kind of emotional excite-
ment whose quality is specific or peculiar to it." Keeping this
principle in nft'nd, the selection of a list of principal primary in-
!0 Cf. the titles of Section I. and Section II., and pages 17, ff.
11 Ibid., p. 44.
12 The correspondence with the afferent, central and efferent nerves of the
reflex arc is imperfect. The emotion and conative impulse of the central portion
are more prominent introspectively than the percepts and motor cues of the
afferent and efferent portions; but all three portions are partly psychical and
partly physiological.
144 THE JOURNAL OF /'////.o.vo/-// y
stincts is based on two criteria: (1) the emotion and conative im-
pulse are manifested in the behavior of the higher animals; (2) they
occasionally appear in human beings with morbidly exaggerated
intensity, showing that they are relatively independent functional
units in the human mind (pp. 47-49). Working on this basis, the
list of principal primary instincts and emotions is as follows:
Instinct Emotion
Flight Fear
Repulsion Disgust
Curiosity Wonder
Pugnacity Anger
Self-Abasement Subjection
Self-Assertion Self-display
Parental Tender
Sex Lust 18
Food seeking 14
Acquisitive 14
Constructive 14
Gregarious 14
This list has been variously criticized. Professor Thorndike,
following more strictly the conception of the reflex arc, finds it nec-
essary to enumerate as many different instincts as there are different
kinds of definite responses to definite situations. For instance, eat-
ing involves at least four separate responses, according as the taste
of food is sweet ; bitter ; very sour, salt, acrid, bitter, oily ; or appe-
tite is sated. Reaching, grasping, and putting into the mouth re-
quire further discrimination; reaching alone "includes at least three
somewhat different responses to different situations." 18 Professsor
Thorndike 's inventory of instincts is in reality an inventory of re-
flexes that are presumably attended by consciousness. Each term
in Professor McDougall's list is for Professor Thorndike merely a
general name for a considerable number of different instincts. It is
evident that Professor Thorndike 's purpose is not the same as that
of Professor McDougall. He is apparently giving a preliminary
account of innate modes of behavior that can be employed in labora-
tory experiments in learning, fatiprue. and the like. 1I,> is not en-
deavoring to furnish a basis for the development of individual char-
is P. 393.
i The emotional tendency in the case of each of the last four instincts is
not well enough defined to have received a name. Possibly McDougall now in-
Unds that the instinct of "distress" should be added to the list. (Proceedings
of the Aristotelian Society, 1914-15, p. 49.)
is ' ' The Original Nature of Man, ' ' Educational Psychology, Vol. I., p. 50.
M C DOUGALL'S SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 145
acter and social life. Professor Thorndike's viewpoint appears to
be mechanistic. He certainly can have little patience with the gen-
eral psychological and philosophical positions held by Professor Mc-
Dougall. The issue between them raises the preliminary question
whether psychology is properly a strictly mechanistic science, or
whether it should, in the words of James, view consciousness a^
' ' primarily teleological ; " or, to put it differently, whether instincts
should be classified on the basis of physiological behavior or mental
characteristics. If one prefers the latter alternative, he will think
that Dr. James Drever has met Professor Thorndike's objection that
according to Professor McDougall's list different responses at dif-
ferent times attend the manifestation of the same instinct, when he
points out that, whatever the response may be, the emotion itself as
it goes on in consciousness is characteristically the same. "Not only
so, but the particular response does not of itself serve to satisfy or
remove the emotion. The emotion only disappears when the re-
sponse has secured its end the avoidance of the danger." 18 More-
over, all the different responses may be tried in turn to escape any
given danger. Dr. Drever 's argument, however, will appear irrele-
vant to the consistently mechanistic behaviorist.
In his Foundations of Character, Mr. Alexander F. Shand views
instincts as specific responses to specific situations. He believes that
there are organizing or teleological principles present in the mind,
as well as the mechanistic ones. Instincts are organized and con-
trolled by what he calls the ' ' system of the emotion, " or ' ' emotional
system," as well as by sentiments. In the case of the adult human
being several instincts may coexist in the same system, "and the man
who foresees the different results to which they impel him may
sometimes be able to choose between them. ' ' 17 Take the % emotional
system of fear as an illustration. A man who is afraid may choose
between flight, concealment, silence, crying for help, and fighting.
His end in any case is the same, and so is his emotion. Some in-
stincts, like walking, running, etc., may belong to a number of dif-
ferent emotional systems. It seems to me that Mr. Shand is right
on this point, if we understand by instincts those simple or com-
posite modes of behavior of the reflex type which are attended by
and subject more or less to the guidance of consciousness. Professor
McDougall does not seem to me to succeed in his attempts to reduce
these alternative modes of behavior in the case of each instinct to a
limited number that follow one another in serial order, so as to con-
stitute "chain instincts." 18 However, I am unable to see why one
i Instinct in Man, p. 163.
P. 198.
is Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1914-15, pp. 29-43.
146 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
who is in the main a follower of Professor McDougall can not agree
with Mr. Shand on this point. Why not regard the reflex modes of
behavior that are attended by consciousness as mechanistic in their
operation, and as specific responses to specific situations, and at the
same time hold to Professor McDougall's list of the "principal pri-
mary instincts" and emotions T The latter would then be regarded as
organizing, teleological principles which operate in the manner at-
tributed by Mr. Shand to his "emotional systems." I can not see
that anything would be lost in Professor McDongall's system that is
significant for the interpretation of individual and social character,
if this correction were made ; and the facts appear to require it.
Professor McDougall observes in a passage in the Social Psy-
chology that the instinct of pugnacity and emotion of anger are
peculiar, in that they have "no specific object or objects the percep-
tion of which constitutes the initial stage of the instinctive process.
The condition of its excitement is rather any opposition to the free
exercise of any impulse, any obstruction to the activity to which
the creature is impelled by any one of the other instincts." 19 Mr.
Shand assigns such a role to anger and also to fear, joy, and sorrow.
He maintains that every primary impulse "is innately connected
with the systems of fear, anger, joy, and sorrow in such a way that,
when opposed, it tends to arouse anger; when satisfied, joy; when
frustrated, sorrow; and when it anticipates frustration, fear." 20
Thus far, these are differences in detail which probably do not ap-
pear so important to their readers as they do to Professor McDougall
and Mr. Shand themselves. But when Mr. Shand goes on to say
that these four emotions develop an additional highly complex
"system of desire," and that in this latter system there are gen-
erated a whole new set of "prospective emotions" (viz.: "hope,"
"anxiety," "disappointment," "despondency," "confidence," "de-
spair") with reference to anticipations of the future, the whole
center of gravity of Mr. Shand 's system is seen to be differently
located from that of Professor McDougall. Mr. Shand 's structure,
apart from the sentiments, consists of three stories : the basic primary
impulses and emotions, to which he gives comparatively little atten-
tion; the four systems of fear, anger, joy, and sorrow; and the
system of desire, together with the prospective emotions. While
Mr. Shand has fortified his argument with a wealth of illustrations
from English and French literature, I am disposed to believe that
all the facts which he sets forth could probably be brought without
difficulty into the one-story structure of Professor McDougall (after
the modification that I have suggested in the preceding paragraph
P. 59.
20 Foundation* of Character, p. 38.
M^DOUGALL'S SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 147
had been made). For Professor McDougall makes all the primary
emotions conative at the outset, and so is able to regard the "pro-
spective emotions" as "simply so many distinguishable ways by
which the desire and emotion springing from any primary conative
disposition, or from any sentiment, are modified by our intellectual
apprehension of the degree of success or failure attending our efforts
towards the end of our desire." 21
Another interesting attempt to arrange instincts in different
orders has been made by Professor Hocking. 22 His first story con-
sists of a large number of instincts that are definite responses (either
expansive or contractive) somewhat in the manner of Professor
Thorndike. Regulative of these are the four centrally initiated in-
stincts of pugnacity, fear, curiosity, and play. If we must have a
second story group of instincts regulating the others, curiosity and
play, neither of which is a definite response to a definite situation,
certainly belong in it. To it also belong, as I think, either "joy" and
"sorrow" or "pleasure" and "unpleasantness"; and I would add
besides the "social instinct" and the "instinct of thought." But I
am not sure that we need two stories, if we conceive of the instincts
in Professor McDougall 's list as all teleological in their functioning,
and capable of employing the more mechanistic reflexes for their ends.
Space does not permit more than reference to Professor Holt's 28
proposal to make "Freudian wishes," and Professor "Woodworth 's 24
to make "mechanisms" and "drives" the basis of social psychology.
Both of these writers are right in breaking away from structural
psychology, and each has enriched the subject by his contributions.
Neither has as yet, however, developed his method of analysis to a
point where it rivals those of Professor McDougall and Mr. Shand
in comprehensiveness and workability.
The ultimate test for any doctrine of instincts or emotions in
social psychology is its practical usefulness. Both are abstractions
from the stream of consciousness. Neither is a metaphysically inde-
pendent entity. "What particular abstractions it is worth while for
social psychology to make depends on which will be most fruitful
in enabling us to understand and to direct the development of char-
acter in individuals and societies. Professor McDougall's list seems
to me to meet this test very successfully on the whole. It appears
21 Social Psychology, p. 432.
22 Human Nature and its Remalcing, Chapters VIII.-X.
23 The Freudian Wish, and its Place in Ethics. I have reviewed this work
in the Philosophical Eeview, 1917, pp. 672, ff.
24 Dynamic Psychology. I have reviewed this book in this JOURNAL, 1919,
pp. 77-82. McDougall has criticized Woodworth at length and Wallas more
briefly, in an article in Mind, July, 1920.
148 THE JOURNAL OF PHlLOSOI'll Y
to require supplementation chiefly in two directions. Professor
Woodworth says that the system of Professor McDougall does not
make sufficient space for the good will, comradeship and cooperation
of equals. 25 Self-assertion and subjection are concerned chiefly with
superiors and inferiors. The gregarious instinct is treated merely as
an impulse to herd. Passive and active sympathy are not sufficient.
So, though I once endeavored to meet this difficulty in an analysis of
punitive justice by widening the scope of the gregarious instinct, it
now seems to me that Professor Graham Wallas 20 handles the matter
better by positing another instinct, which he calls "love"; but as we
need this term for the sentiment, this had better be called, I think, the
"social instinct."
The only other serious omission at least as I think in Professor
McDougall 's list has also been indicated by Professor Wallas." This
is the lack of provision for the desire for knowledge, and intellectual
interest in general. Thought, including inference, is certainly an
innate tendency in man. Its operation is attended by a distinct and
unique emotional satisfaction, and it has its conative side. While not
present in the animals, it may be regarded as the distinctive human
instinct. The practical need of recognizing this instinct is great.
It can not be identified with curiosity without minimizing its im-
portance. There are as great dangers to the modern world in anti-
intellectual ism as in excessive rationalism. Neither blind impulses
nor pure reason can operate in isolation. In the organization of
character both individual and collective the recognition of this
instinct can not too much be insisted upon. 28
II. A sentiment, for Professor McDougall, is the organization of
instincts and emotions about the idea of some object. The most im-
portant varieties of sentiments are those of love, hate, and respect.
Sentiments are classified according to the character of their objects
as concrete particular (e.g., love for a particular child), concrete
general (e.g., love for children) and abstract (love for justice, virtue,
science). The original emotion felt toward an object of love would
probably have been tender emotion ; and as this became habitually
attached to an object other emotions would become parts of the
system, so that one would feel fear if the object's welfare were im-
perilled, anger if any one were to threaten to injure it, curiosity if
there were more to learn about it, subjection if it were to become dis-
* Op. cit., pp. 188-206.
z The Great Society, pp. 141-43.
" Op. cit., pp. 39, ff. The whole of chapters III., X., and XI., deserve
study.
zs The rational side of volition is more fully recognized by Profess
Dougall in his treatment of national volition in the Group Mind, pp. 237-242.
M C DOUGALL'S SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 149
graced, elation if it were to win deserved credit, and so on. The
various emotions manifested toward an object of hatred would be
organized in an hostile manner, pugnacity in that case being the
original instinct to become habitually attached to it.
As I have always understood Professor McDougall, the organiza-
tion of two or more emotions about an object in this systematic form
is the differentia of a sentiment. As this is the consequence of the
habitual expression of the same emotion toward an object, 29 it follows
as a corollary that sentiments are not innate, but acquired. If this
is a correct interpretation there are innumerable sentiments in the
mind of any adult human being, as many as there are objects that he
habitually loves, hates, and respects. Moreover, there must be more
than three types of sentiments also I should say in fact as many
as there are different primary instincts which could first become
habitually attached to objects and so furnish the nuclei of senti-
ments. If we make hatred the sentiment which has its origin in
anger toward an object, the sentiment is somewhat different from the
sentiment that is built up with reference to an object toward which
the original and determining emotion felt was disgust. If a man
makes enemies who hate him primarily because they are angry at
him, he can hope eventually to win them over and placate them ; but
if their sentiment of aversion toward him is fundamentally one of
disgust, there is small chance that he can ever induce them to regard
him favorably. Scientific interest, parental affection, and romantic
love appear to me to owe their origin to different instincts and to
constitute sentiments of different types. Furthermore, there is less
uniformity in the sentiments of individuals than in their instincts.
The latter are innate, and common to the entire human race. An
Oriental has the same instincts as an Occidental ; his sentiments must
be very different. 30 To hold a group together, in patriotism, re-
ligious devotion, enthusiasm for a cause, or what not, they must be
28 In a controversial passage in his discussion with Mr. Shand (Proceedings
of the Aristotelian Society, 191415, p. 51) Professor McDougall writes as if the
only fundamental difference between instincts and sentiments is that the former
are innate and the latter acquired, and that if a new afferent channel to an in-
stinct were to be opened, say the presence of a dog in the case of the fear of a
child, a sentiment would be established. I had previously understood pp. 35-38
of the Social Psychology to mean that afferent and efferent channels of instincts
might be modified without the interposition of ideas and the formation of senti-
ments. The controversial passage need not be interpreted as implying a different
view than I had understood, and in any case, being controversial, it may put the
emphasis in a djfferent place than would otherwise be done.
so However, in the Group Mind, Professor McDougall says that there are
very great differences in the "innate tendencies," "qualities," and "disposi-
tions" of different races. (Chap. VII. and Part III.)
150 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
taught common sentiments. The whole psychology of religion might
be regarded as the implanting and development of a sentiment, as
I have shown elsewhere. 81 To hold a newly constituted state to-
gether, a national sentiment must spring up and acquire strength.
The essential condition for a successful League of Nations would be
the constitution of an international sentiment strong enough to bind
the peoples of the associated nations together in a common loyalty.
Thus interpreted, the doctrine of the sentiment is indeed "the
key to all the constructive part" of Professor McDougall's system,
as contrasted with its purely analytical part. 82 That this is seldom
appreciated, and that discussion has chiefly centered about the in-
stincts is, J think, partly Professor McDougall's fault. In Section
II. of the Social Psychology he indicates social applications of the
various instincts. He has not done this for the sentiments. It will
be interesting to see how far he will do this in his forthcoming book,
the Group Mind. 3 *
Since the sentiment, and not the instinct, is the more important
tool for the understanding of social institutions, the issue with Mr.
Shand as to the nature of the sentiment is crucial. The chief points
in dispute between Professor McDougall and Mr. Shand in this con-
nection are, whether Mr. Shand is justified in believing that senti-
ments are innate ; that love and hate consist of the dispositions of the
four emotions of joy, sorrow, anger, and fear, directly united; and
so on. Such issues as these, I believe, can only be decided by observ-
ing the application of the rival systems of Professor McDougall and
Mr. Shand to the interpretation of social institutions. Discussion of
them in any other way is bound to appear to most readers as rather
arid and scholastic. It is unfortunate that in the text of the Social
Psychology the account of the sentiments remains unchanged in the
si "Instinct and Sentiment in Religion," Philosophical Review, January,
1916.
2 Social Psychology, p. vii.
Since writing this paper, the Group Mind has come into my hands, and
I have added here and there a footnote citing this hook. I have not yet had
time to digest it. On first reading, it gives one the impression that the center
of gravity in his system has changed considerably. He says surprisingly little
about the principal primary instincts and emotions, and a great deal (especially
in Part III.) about innate "capacities," "qualities" and "dispositions,"
without explaining their relation to the instincts. He now apparently thinks
the original nature of man more complicated than he did when he wrote the
Social Psychology, and that the additional constituents which he now attributes
to it are of more consequence for some problems, at least, of associated life.
However, what I have written above about the significance of the sentiments
appears to be in accordance with the new book, in portions of which, like the
basic Chapters III. and IV., the term "sentiment" apparently employed in the
technical sense of the Social Psychology, appears on almost every page.
MDOUGALL'8 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 151
last edition, and dates from the time when Professor McDougall sup-
posed Mr. Shand 's doctrine of the sentiments to be virtually the same
as his own. This is an injustice both to himself and to Mr. Shand.
The majority of readers are likely to overlook the corrections in the
preface and appendices, or to neglect them as unimportant.
Professor Morton Prince has strikingly shown the empirical use-
fulness of Professor McDougall 's doctrine of the sentiments in psy-
chotherapeutics. 34 He has also made use of it in drawing a remark-
ably plausible character sketch of the German Kaiser, Wilhelm II. 3S
Professor McDougall believes that the "complexes" of psycho-ana-
lytic literature are pathological or morbid sentiments, 36 and claims
that the empirical usefulness of the "complex" in medicine is con-
firmatory evidence for his doctrine of the sentiments. This claim
appears reasonable, and promises to furnish a way to assimilate the
"complex" to the conceptions of general psychology. The over-
emphasis of the Freudian school upon the sex instinct can be cor-
rected, if it can be agreed that any one of the instincts in Professor
McDougall 's list may become suppressed, sublimated or perverted,
and may express itself in subconscious processes, including dreams.
The supplementary chapter to the Social Psychology on ' ' The Sex In-
stinct" seems to one reader, at least, the most sane and illuminating
he is almost disposed to say the only sane and illuminating dis-
cussion of the subject that he has ever read.
III. Although, at least to the student of ethics, the chapters
on character and volition (VII.-IX.) are the most valuable part
of the Social Psychology, they have aroused comparatively little
discussion. Character, for Professor McDougall, is mainly a matter
of the growth of sentiments, and the organization of these senti-
ments into a coherent personality. The development of the self-
regarding sentiment plays the leading role in this evolution. Voli-
tion is due to the reinforcement of other impulses by effort, and effort
is the contribution of the self-regarding sentiment to the conflict.
While the main ideas in these three chapters have been adapted from
James, Tarde, Royce, Professor Baldwin, and others, they are here
interpreted in the light of the doctrines of instinct and sentiment
and given a coherence and significance which they never possessed
before.
The principal attack upon these chapters has been made by Dr.
Hastings Rashdall. 37 In reply to this I have written in defense of
Professor McDougall. 38 On further reflection, I am now disposed to
s* The Unconscious.
ss The Psychology of the Kaiser.
36 Social Psychology, p. ix.
37 7s Con-science an Emotion?
ss Philosophical Eeview, 1916, pp. 676-691.
152 mi-: jori{.\.\i. <>r
believe that there may be more ground for Dr. Rashdall's criticism
than I formerly thought, but I still believe that the view of reason
in the moral life as "will" or "practical reason" (employing the
latter term not quite in the Kantian sense) which includes not only
the purely discursive processes, but also a synthetic organization of
the emotions and sentiments in a coherent whole, enables us to pre-
sent a view of the moral consciousness that is both rational and ob-
jective. This conception I may have been wrong in reading into
Professor McDougall's account. I do not know. At any rate it
ought to be there.
Along this line the Social Psychology needs another supple-
mentary chapter, dealing with the organic character of the indi-
vidual mind. 39 Even in infancy, the mind is a whole, though an
undifferentiated whole. It is not a chaos of developed but disorgan-
ized emotions. With its normal development into a moral person-
ality, the various instincts and emotions (including the social instinct,
and the instinct of thought) become differentiated and organized
into sentiments. This organization as a whole is what in ethics we
mean, when we regard it intellectually, by the reason ; and, when we
look at it expressed in action, by the will ; and when we regard it as
the structural constitution of a man's mind, by his character. The
self-psychology of Miss Calkins seems to me capable of furnishing an
admirable means of approach to this problem.
Taken all in all, the Introduction to Social Psychology remains,
after the twelve years since its first appearance, the foundation for
a psychological interpretation of human social life. During this
time its author has done much to broaden this foundation. While
the doctrines need modification here and there, and further applica-
tion and development everywhere, this book seems, to one admirer at
least, by far the most important contribution to this field that has
yet been made in the present century.
WILLIAM KELLEY WRIGHT.
DABTMOUTH COLLEGE.
THE TWENTIETH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN
PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION
THE elements favored us, and the counter-attractions of New
York City proved in most cases not too great for the philos-
opher's powers of resistance. To that degree the twentieth meeting
of the American Philosophical Association may be accounted a suc-
cess. Not that New York, or any metropolis, is quite the proper place
The organic character of the social mind is recognized in the Group Mind
(e.g., pp. 10-12; 22-26; 78-80; 214, ff; 240-242).
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION 153
for philosophic congregation. There is here no fitting atmosphere of
leisure, nor other advantages that come with remoteness from the
main currents of modern and practical life. But if certain external
inducements were therefore lacking for the fullest surrender to the
claims of the speculative, the programme prepared by the executive
committee succeeded uncommonly well in fixing attention upon those
human concerns which are unaffected by the vicissitudes of place and
circumstance.
"We were called upon to grapple with problems of modern logic ;
to analyze the function of education ; to define epistemological dual-
ism, relativity, individualism; and most extensively of all to con-
sider the role of the philosopher in modern life. Not all of these
topics, to be sure, proved conducive to complete philosophic tran-
quillity and intellectual enthusisam. The austerity of certain of the
subjects goaded one member to plead for a double programme in
future meetings so that those taking delight in highly technical dis-
cussion might have their way without trespassing upon the comforts
of others inclined to meditate upon humaner matters; and the ap-
parently innocuous topic chosen for special consideration threatened
quite unforeseen conflict and disquiet even before Professor Wood-
bridge disturbed the serenity of those engaged upon the definition
and praise of the philosopher by his protest that it was pitiful indeed
if at this our twentieth celebration we could do nothing more useful
or more self-respecting than to ask what it is to be a philosopher.
All was not harmony ; nor all enthusiasm. And such degree of pro-
test and division of opinion as was publicly voiced in all probability
bulked small in comparison with the violent dissent on subject after
subject which rankled in the minds of many, but for lack of time
found no expression. Not that concord within any philosophical
association need be secured by universal agreement upon all im-
portant matters. It is only when disagreement extends to some-
thing so fundamental as the very constitution and aims of philoso-
phy itself that there is cause for actual alarm. In the opinion of the
present writer the revelations at this last meeting of American phi-
losophers were such as to justify alarm.
Relatively unimportant perhaps in this connection was the
difference of opinion as to whether philosophy is metaphysics, and
whether metaphysics includes logic, psychology and theory of morals.
In one sense, that is, the question was a verbal one. Nobody im-
pugned the reality of psychology, logic or ethics as departments of
knowledge, any more than they impugned the reality of metaphysics.
Strong feelings were nevertheless aroused as to the propriety or
impropriety of the various classifications suggested. But it was
when values were set upon the different domains and the aims of
154 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
philosophy explicitly defined that disagreements arose which could
be accounted serious. The issue was clearly fixed when Professor
Drake came forward with his view that, while the contemplation of
ideas is justifiable in that it satisfies a harmless human impulse, it is
valuable only as a genteel substitute for chess the really important
thing, the one valuable thing, being the solution of social problems.
Though this came only as a brief comment from the floor, it may be
taken as an unambiguous expression of the practical attitude ap-
proved by a number of those present, the attitude which without un-
fairness may be called in the last analysis anti-intellectualistic. Be
it remembered that it was definitely a question as to the duties of
the philosopher in his official capacity and in private labor, and
incidentally therefore as to the place of philosophy in education and
in life. In justice to Professor Drake and to many who were in
agreement with him it should be admitted that what they wished to
advocate was perhaps, theoretically at least, not a subordination for
all time of the claims of the intellect to those of active life. With
the final solution of all social ills they would undoubtedly hope for a
true renaissance of intellectualism when intellectual exercise could
question, however, is whether a postponement of the cultivation of
be sincerely rated as something more significant than play. The
pure metaphysics for its own sake until society needs no further
improvement and practical problems are all solved, might not mean
a postponement forever, or at best a postponement of such duration
that whatever purely disinterested metaphysical curiosity the human
mind possesses would have dried up or been drained off beyond
recall into the service of other and more "useful" activities.
Expressions of an opinion strongly opposed to that of Professor
Drake came from the leaders of the discussion. Professor Pratt, in
his appeal for a greater sense of consecration to the task of teaching
and research, went so far as to deplore participation by the philoso-
pher in any kind of political propaganda. In his opinion the philo-
sophic function is literally and strictly to foster the life of the spirit.
Again, Professor Mecklin denied that the philosopher is a social
reformer, declaring his task to be untrammeled theorizing activity
requiring speculative imagination and critical reason. Dr. Cabot,
instead of wishing, as a professional public benefactor might have
been expected to wish, for a curtailment of impractical philosophic
training and study, urged rather that more courses, more teachers,
more hours be devoted to the subject. He stressed the point that the
attainment of new ideas which is the object, though rarely achieved,
of discipline in thinking, involves a painful process not unlike an
operation ; and that it is not for the teacher of philosophy to try to
make that operation less painful. Professor Powell, without ad-
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION 155
vocating metaphysical operation for its own sake, practised it bril-
liantly in his comparison of the tasks of the philosopher and the
lawyer. The latter, he declared, is, like the metaphysician, often
involved with hypothetical entities of his own creation and in need
of philosophic criticism. Unlike him, he is trammeled in his judg-
ments by precedent and inhibited by a sense of the irrevocable future
consequences of his own decisions. Whereas the philosopher is care-
free and happy, living in the present, the student of law has to live
at once in past, present and future, constantly making points which
establish a line. Decisions of lawyers, then, constitute a body of
practical ethical judgments which should be of great interest to the
ethicist. Professor Woodbridge's protest against the whole dis-
cussion, which followed Professor Powell's contribution, produced a
shock. To some it appeared as heresy ; to others as a sane and needed
check upon an argument that had reached its limit of usefulness. It
served in any case to give a new turn to the topic one to which for
lack of time justice could not be done. This was the question of
historical research and the teaching of the history of philosophy.
As a matter of fact the few who rose to their feet and uttered
their opinions appeared to be in perfect unanimity in the matter.
Two or three spoke in behalf of more and better teaching of the
history of philosophy, and Professor Creighton echoed the lament of
Professor Woodbridge that too few serious historical studies are
submitted to the Philosophical Review and other publications. The
final word in the chorus of agreement came from Professor Riley who
undertook to suggest topics for historical research which in his opin-
ion might well engage the attention of the student of philosophy.
The compilation of a history of American Art (as more profitable
and sensible than the study of einfiihlung and other theoretical ques-
tions) was one suggestion; the study of the history of sumptuary
laws was another. No one in the audience arose to point out to Pro-
fessor Riley that the history of art is neither psychology nor esthetics
and that still less is it philosophy. Either the majority agreed with
him; or they were too staggered to make reply. Professor Creighton,
it is to be recorded with thanksgiving, did protest with regard to a
history of sumptuary law that it would be history and not philosophy.
But the whole big problem upon which attention had alighted for a
moment and from which it had then glanced off the problem of the
place and the importance of the history of philosophy in the study
of philosophy was dropped, and we heard no more of it. And yet,
judging from the scanty evidence of the present writer's unvoiced
questions and criticism, and the unvoiced questions and criticisms of
a few others, there was here no philosophic concord and unity of
opinion. Indeed, the kind of disagreement that further pursuit of
156 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the topic would have brought out was precisely the kind that, as was
remarked above, is cause for real alarm. That one group of philos-
ophers are materialists, another vitalists; that some incline to ideal-
istic epistemology, others to realistic ; that certain men are pragma-
lists and the rest are not all this is probably advantageous for the
search for truth. But that on such a question as the significance of
historical research in philosophy for philosophy itself there should
be sharply opposed opinion, is quite another matter. There is no
space here for recording the hypothetical controversy that might
have taken place, but didn't. And yet even in the briefest account
of the philosophical meetings just past it is more than barely relevant
to comment upon a matter, touched upon though not discussed, and
of the intensest interest to all concerned. That comment is as
follows :
More than any previous age of human life this is an historical
age. It is an age dominated by the concept of evolution. And while
historical interest and historical method made possible the vindica-
tion of the evolution hypothesis, that hypothesis has in turn rein-
forced historical interest and encouraged historical habits. Now the
evolutionary viewpoint has meant increased intellectual emancipa-
tion, a loosening of the fetters of dogma, a greater readiness for shift
of opinion in the face of a shifting world. To the pragmatic move-
ment with its use of the concept of evolution is due much of the
renewed emphasis within the field of philosophy upon the historical
method which has been productive of such fortunate consequences.
/That method, when applied to the study of ethics, was adapted to
make for greater liberality in the evaluation of any given code by
drawing attention to the impermanence of all codes and their start-
^ing multiplicity. When applied to the study of epistemology and
metaphysics, it served to emphasize the variety of possible epistemo-
logical and metaphysical viewpoints and the dangers of an over-hasty
conclusion that one's own particular epistemology and metaphysics
was destined to be the final one. The importance of history, of the
^istory of human opinion, for developing a philosophic spirit of
free inquiry, has been recognized anew and received new demon-
stration. What then of the argument that philosophers should bend
their energies to increased historical research? It is likely, to be
sure, that there are interesting matters as yet uninvestigated regard-
ing the lives of the thinkers of the past and regarding the circum-
stances under which they developed their ideas (though it is less
likely that there still remain unlisted any important varieties of
metaphysical theory originated by those thinkers of the past which
would serve to enrich the background of the thinkers of the present).
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION 157
It is likely also that most young students of philosophy are better
fitted to do a creditable bit of work of an historical nature than to
originate a metaphysical system. What then? Shall the mature
student of philosophy likewise devote himself to the amassing of
history, and still more history? Is, after all, history of philosophy,
.philosophy? The chemist would scarcely admit that the history of
mediaeval theories and practise, including alchemy, constitutes an
important part, or even a genuine part, of present-day chemistry;
the psychologist would argue similarly about the subject-matter of
psychology, and the mathematician about mathematics. Even the
historian would declare it to be a small part of the concern of history
to record its own past to make a history of history. That a young
person, or even a mature one, is better able to cope with an historical
problem than to produce an original philosophic idea would not seem
to prove that history, even the history of philosophic ideas, is phi-
losophy. The most that it might suggest is that the young person, or
the older one, might be in the wrong niche altogether, might be really
an historian and not a philosopher at all. If Miss Calkins was cor-
rect in her definition of metaphysics that it is an attempt, by rea-
son, to get at ultimate reality then surely it would seem that pro-
vided the historians of philosophy have really made a compilation
of all the important theories that have in the past been held regarding
the nature of the good, the true, and the beautiful with a view to
envisaging all possible theories, in the hope of finally arriving at the
true theory it would be well to advocate less fresh historical re-
search rather than more, as a substitute for philosophy itself, that is.
When philosophers in cooperation with scientists have actually de-
termined the complete nature of ultimate reality an achievement
not likely to occur this side of the infinite then of course it will be
quite proper to return to biographies both of men and of theories,
and glorify them forever. If, by that time, the theory of art is
quite settled, we may also resort to the history of art, even American
art ; and perhaps history proper will at last have nothing to do but
investigate its own history. Only, if Miss Calkins 's definition still
stands, the philosopher's activity will then result in nothing but
history, likewise the esthetician 's, while history itself will have an
eternity of leisure for the swallowing of its own constantly augment-
ing tale.
It is time to return to a brief mention of the other topics offered
for consideration at the first and later sessions of the conference.
Professor Mitchell's paper on "Formalism in Logic," which set forth
an ingenious method 1 for reclassifying and combining the funda-
mental propositional relations of traditional logic, elicited technical
168 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
cinuments and questions from several members of the association.
The same was true of Professor Lewis's brilliant paper on "The
Structure of Logic and its Relation to Other Systems," in which the
thesis was defended that no single set of demonstrable postulates can
properly be called ultimate, and that any attempt to demonstrate the
validity of logical principles must of necessity be circular since the
principles discussed will themselves be employed in the demonstra-
tion. Professor Lewis made an interesting point about classes sup-
posed falsely to include themselves, to the effect that when a judg-
ment about the nature of propositions is expressed propositionally,
that judgment does not have as part of its domain of reference the
proposition expressing it the supposition that it does being due to
the gratuitous introduction of a further judgment that the proposi-
tion in question is a proposition, which in turn would involve a defi-
nition of propositions in general.
Professor Cohen by his paper entitled "Some Philosophical As-
pects of Physical Relativity" plunged us into abstruse and difficult
questions upon which everyone nowadays is supposed to hold some
opinion. His main point seemed to be that even Einstein's own views
of relativity do not involve a denial of an absolute. The absolute ad-
mitted is however not a substance, but consists rather of the system
of the invariant relations of nature, comparable to the Logos under-
lying the Heracleitean flux. Taking into account the complete sys-
tem of reference of any measurement, that measurement will then be
absolute and unchanging, just as a mathematical formula will then
be absolute within one limited system of postulates though "untrue"
or meaningless within another. Professor Spaulding, leading the
discussion of the paper, offered an analysis of the philosophical sig-
nificance of relativity on his own account, pointing out that space
appeared to have attributed to it a dynamic function to take the
place of the function formerly ascribed to gravitation, while for the
old absolute ether had been substituted an "ether of events" none
of all this serving however as a proof of subjectivism. As a conclu-
sion to the morning session, Professor Sellars read a paper on "Epis-
temological Dualism vs. Metaphysical Dualism" in which he spoke
of the importance of distinguishing between naive and critical real-
ism, the former of which falsely identifies the physical object with
the content of perception, while critical realism is dualistic, admit-
ting that we know the external thing despite the fact that it does not
enter as content of the experience. The copy theory may, he con-
tended, be escaped by a recognition that the content of perception
contains merely the "gross structure" of the external world.
The afternoon session, at which the topic of the role of the phi-
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION 159
losopher was started, was followed by a reception to the association
by President and Mrs. Butler, this in turn being followed by dinner
at Westminster Hotel and the brilliant address, "The Appeal to
Reason," by the president, Professor Perry. As was said repeatedly
the following day, we should have been amply supplied with mate-
rial for discussion if we could have confined ourselves for the re-
maining sessions to the ideas formulated in this address. Neverthe-
less we returned dutifully the next morning to the appointed
programme and after concluding the discussion about the philosopher
listened to Professor Montague's vivid account of the International
Congress held at Oxford in Septem'ber, at which he, as chairman of
the American delegation, and Professors Hoernle and Boodin had
described the present situation in philosophy in America.
At the final session Professor Townsend treated the topic ' ' Edu-
cation as Criticism," reaching the pessimistic conclusion that while
criticism as opposed to dogmatism is the ideal of education, it has
failed in that it has been employed not as an end but as an instru-
ment of will and the desire for power. Professor Ferguson, treating
of "A Supposed Dualism in Plato" offered an intricate and interest-
ing analysis of the allegory of the cave in the seventh book of the
Republic, for the purpose of showing that Plato merely states there
the two stages of education and is not offering a classification of ob-
jects. Professor Lodge, under the title "The Reference to Reality
in Modern Logic," attempted a reconciliation of Pragmatism and
Absolute Idealism. And finally, in a paper on "The -Philosophical
Basis of Mr. Fite 's Individualism, ' ' Professor Symons convicted Mr.
Fite of inconsistency in postulating a harmony to be attained be-
tween egoistic impulse and self-realization through social relations,
such harmony, in Mr. Symons 's view, necessarily presupposing a
social consciousness and a monistic system which Mr. Fite would
deny.
The members of the association went their way, not regenerated
perhaps, but at least stimulated by the interchange of ideas. There
were gaps in the ranks. Professor Hoernle had deserted us for a
professorship at Durham, England, and Professor Overstreet, in re-
cent years so closely identified with all the activities of the associa-
tion, was absent in California. Both were missed, as well as Professor
Sheldon, the president for the coming year, Professor Bode, this last
yearns vice-president, and many others. Of those who had gathered
for the annual consideration of the problems of philosophy, there
surely was none who, as the sessions broke up, failed to feel in an
unusual degree unworthiness and sharp regret for all philosophic
shortcomings. In this age, when more than ever before there is need
160 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
of reason and ripeness of judgment in a distracted world, the short-
comings of the philosopher impress one as a genuine calamity. In
this age, that is productive at once of savage brutalities, ingenious
sophistries in defense of outworn traditions, unprecedented greed for
material goods and alarming increase of control by unintelligent
and fanatical minorities, what indeed promises salvation but the
development of those qualities that Professor Gardiner hailed as the
product of the philosophic habit and temper of mind : poise and mod-
erated passion and prejudice; and ability to clarify ideas, to recon-
cile apparent contradictions and to formulate and develop ideals!
If philosophers, set somewhat apart by training and by natural
concern for the generic and unchanging aspect of things, are them-
selves unsure of their function, at variance regarding method, and
inclined, any of them, to doubt the worth of those intellectual inter-
ests which it is their task to guard and cherish then indeed is the
outlook for the future even darker and more ominous than the facts
of contemporary history incline one to fear.
HELEN Huss PARKHURST.
BARNARD COLLEGE.
The Religwus Consciousness: A Psychological Study. JAMES BISSETT
PRATT. New York : The Macmillan Co. 1920. Pp. x -f 488.
This "study" is in fact a general work on the psychology of re-
ligion. The contents range from a preliminary analysis of the notion
of religion and of the psychology of religion through a discussion of
the subconscious and of society and the individual to the specific
topics of religious growth, conversion and revivals, belief in God and
in immortality, the cult, prayer, and mysticism. The plan of the
work differs in three respects from that of others in which much the
same topics appear: First, mysticism receives especially full treat-
ment (almost a third of the book) ; second, the material is drawn al-
most exclusively from highly developed religions; third, within this
field the author's policy tends toward fulness of descriptive detail
rather than toward the finally adequate analysis that includes origins
and early forms.
Certain unquestionably excellent results have been achieved by
this unusual plan. In particular, the work is unique for range and
variety of data within its chosen field, and for sympathetic apprecia-
tion of diverse types of religious belief and practise. Professor Pratt
has taken pains to obtain first hand knowledge of such facts not only
in our western environment but also in India, and he has consistently
BOOK REVIEWS 161
endeavored to discover how each situation looks through the eyes of
the person whom he observes. His reading of religious literature is
similarly catholic in range and in spirit.
A general work of this character is certain, of course, to contain
much material that is the common property of psychologists. Con-
cerning Pratt 's presentation of this material it is sufficient to say
that he has given it attractive and often popular form. The tech-
nical psychologist will, of course, look beyond this to what is less
usual, and especially to anything that is debatable. Among the fresh
leads that he will find are the following :
1. Correction of one-sidedness in western conceptions of religious
life in India. For example, Pratt finds a vital belief in immortality
among all classes in India except those that have come under western
influence, and he has a succinct explanation for the fact (248-250).
He points out, too, that the majority of Indian mystics emphasize
personality (471, f.).
2. A penetrating analysis of the causes of decline in the belief in
immortality in our western world (238, ff.).
3. Ascertainment of a type of conversion, objective-minded and
sometimes intellectual, that has been generally overlooked by psy-
chologists because they have incautiously taken their lead from
evangelical theology and customs (122140).
4. Evidence that one function of the cult, from the standpoint of
the worshipper himself and not merely from that of the priest, is re-
newal and confirmation of the religious attitude (271-278), so that
religion here appears as evaluation of itself, a process of self -involu-
tion.
5. Careful exposition of the specific differences and relations be-
tween objective worship, which seeks to produce changes in the deity,
and subjective worship, which aims at effects in the worshipper him-
self (Chap. XIV).
Among the debated and debatable points are :
1. Pratt strenuously opposes Ames's general view of functional
psychology as inclusive of theology and philosophy, and particularly
his reduction of the meaning of God to "idea of God." But, for
some almost inscrutable reason, Pratt does not himself come to close
quarters with the distinction between structural and functional
analysis of religious experiences. His most common schema is struc-
tural the exhibition at each point of four factors or types, the tra-
ditional, the rational, the mystical, and the practical or moral (14,
ff.). Values are indeed mentioned, but there is neither classification
of them, nor indication of their origins, or of how they change within
our changing experience (see, for example, 271). His definition of
162 THE JOURNAL (>/' PHILOSOPHY
religion at the outset makes it "the serious and social attitude of in-
dividuals or communities toward the power or powers which they
conceive as having ultimate control over tlu-ir interests and des-
tinies" (2). The perspective here is functional and it is social; it
has to do with attitudes, interests, destiny, control. In the remainder
of the book, however, "interests" receive scant notice, 1 and God
becomes simply the "determiner of destiny." The notion of control,
too, at least as far as it concerns this life, is limited almost entirely to
subjective reinforcement of desires of which there is nowhere a thor-
ough exposition. The term "social attitude" in the definition
justifies an expectation that religion will be treated as an incorpora-
tion of social values most of all. Instead of this the social aspect of
religion appears in the main body of the book almost if not quite
exclusively as imitation, institutionalism, and traditionalism struc-
tural aspects merely.
2. The author undertakes to give a description of the religious
consciousness in the full scientific sense of description, which is in-
clusive of generalization and explanation (29). He seems to assume
that such description is possible without reference to genetic prob-
lems. "We are not at all concerned . . . with the origin of the
belief in a God or gods. . . . Our questions are the less speculative
and hopeful ones, Why do people continue to believe in God, and
what are the psychological factors that influence or determine the
meaning of that term" (200) ? This passage is followed by exposi-
tion of the difference between dogmatic and popular ideas of God,
discrimination between rational and imaginative factors, and ex-
hibition of the four types of belief (see 1 above). But the content
of the idea of God, and why this content stirs men's minds at all are
hardly mentioned. We are thus left with no real explanation of why
men believe in God. The main reason for this deficiency, 1 judge,
lies in Pratt 's determination to keep clear of origins. It is almost
as if one who desires to know the psychology of private property
should limit his study to the drawing and signing of a title deed.
3. Finally, debatable ground is taken in a number of details,
(a) The products of dissociation are said to be always limited and
inferior (59), whereas one of the harder problems of the subcon-
scious grows out of the invention, sometimes amounting to artistic
creation, that has appeared in several dissociated consciousnesses.
(&) Pratt accepts James's notion of ideo-motor action, and bases a
theory of religious self-expression upon it. The point of Thorn-
dike's criticisms of this theory, that the particular act that accom-
* What is it, for instance, that a Hindu widow hopes for when she makes
offerings before the lingam of the "Great God," and what is the content of the
faith that is strengthened by this actf Bee page 274.
BOOK REVIEWS 163
panics an idea has become attached to it through previous experience,
seems to have been missed (95 ; 169, note 10). (c) The doctrine that
an extreme break between childhood and adolescence is normal
"out of thinghood into selfhood" (108) appears to reflect a theory
that is losing ground, (d) The primary cause of the cult is found
in a cosmic sense (of mana) that is produced by natural phenomena
(260, ff.). This opinion will have to reckon with Campbell's recent
re-study of mana from which she concludes that this idea expresses
the experience of heightened power that one has when one acts with
a group, and that mana is not impersonal. Several recent investiga-
tions, moreover, dealing with widely diverse bodies of fact, converge
upon the view that religious experience is at its core continuous with
men's experience of one another (see Psy. Bui., Vol. 17, No 3, March,
1920, pp. 95-99). (e) Pratt leaves us in doubt concerning his view
of some factors of original nature. He speaks of an instinct of self-
assertion (230 et passim), but intimates that there may be something
of the sort still deeper than instinct. One wonders what this some-
thing is. He speaks also of an instinct of self-expression (268, 278),
the nature and the existence of which surely need to be established.
There is, apparently, a "spiritual nature" (479), and some persons
have a "natural tendency toward mysticism" (359). Both concepts
need clarification. (/) Owing, no doubt, to the fact that the book has
been in process for more than twelve years, so that, as the Preface
explains, several distinct strata of thought are superimposed upon
one another, one or two inconsistencies are visible, one of them an
important one. It is declared at the beginning that a mystical factor
is present in "every genuinely religious person" (14), but at the end
the author says that "many truly religious people are emphatically
not mystical, and mysticism is by no means essential to religion"
(477). There is apparently a similar confusion with regard to
tribal initiations (263, 289).
GEORGE A. COE.
UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINABY.
Little Essays Drawn from the Writings of George Santayana.
LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH. (With the collaboration of the author.)
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1920. Pp. ii -f 290.
The compiler of these extracts from Mr. Santayana 's volumes
explains his undertaking as follows: "The origin and purpose of this
book can be briefly stated. Ever since I became acquainted with Mr.
Santayana 's writings, I have been in the habit of taking up now and
then one or another of his volumes, finding in them, among many
things that, being no philosopher, I did not understand, much writing
164 7 UK JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
like that of the older essayists on large human subjects, which seemed
to me more interesting and in many ways more important than any-
thing I found in the works of other contemporary writers. I soon
fell into the way of copying out the passages that I liked, and thus I
gradually formed a collection of little essays on subjects of general
interest art and literature and religion, and the history of the hu-
man mind as it has manifested itself at various times and in the
works of different men of genius. As most of Mr. Santayana's books
have not been reprinted in England, and are hardly known to those
on this side of the Atlantic who might be interested in them, it oc-
curred to me that it might be worth while to print these little essays.
I asked Mr. Santayana if he would permit me to do this, sending him
my collection for his consideration and possible approval. I sent it
to him with some misgiving, for I felt that it was rather an imperti-
nent thing to cut up the life-work of a distinguished philosopher
into a disconnected compilation of "elegant extracts." And then,
as I re-read with more careful attention the books from which I had
been making excerpts, I came to see that there lay implicit in the
material something of far greater significance, and that a much better
use might be made of it. It became clear to me that the estimations
and criticisms I had copied out were not mere personal and tempera-
mental insights, but were bound up with, and dependent upon, a
definite philosophy, a rational conception of the world and man's
allotted place in it, which gave them a unity of interest and an im-
portance far beyond that of any mere utterances of miscellaneous
appreciation any mere 'adventures of the soul.' ... It was from
this edifice of Reason that I had been taking the ornaments, and I
now saw the much greater beauty they would have if they could ap-
pear in their appropriate setting. To sift, however, and rearrange
these fragments, to reconstruct out of them some image in miniature
of the original edifice from which I had detached them, was not a
task for me to undertake it could only be performed by the archi-
tect of the original building. Fortunately I succeeded in persuading
Mr. Santayana to undertake this task; and while, therefore, the
choice of these little essays is largely mine, their titles and order and
arrangement, and the changes and omissions which have been made
in the original texts are due, not to me, but to their author."
It would appear from this that Mr. Smith, when he made his
selections, had not yet become familiar with the philosophical posi-
tion they illustrate, and this may account for some omissions. Dif-
ferent readers of the original works will, of course, prefer different
passages, and Mr. Santayana has not, perhaps, cared to interfere
with the preferences of Mr. Smith. But the volume has been pre-
BOOK REVIEWS 165
pared rather for appreciative readers of reflective literature than for
those that are occupied with the technicalities of professional discus-
sion, or with the ponderous superstitions that Mr. Santayana has
helped so many to outgrow.
The extracts are arranged under five headings: Human Nature,
Religion, Art and Poetry, Poets and Philosophers, Materialism and
Morals.
To the reader familiar with the extracts in their original context
it is a curious experience to find them in any other for in these es-
says he will find joined together sentences taken from different vol-
umes. Naturally, it is not a system of philosophy that will strike
the mind of the readers of Little Essays. What will strike them
remains to be seen.
In Mr. Santayana 's criticism of life, wisdom has a note of resig-
nation that makes the Life of Reason a composition in a minor key.
One often has the impression that the function of philosophy is to
reveal the immense illusion of spontaneous energy. Philosophy
tames the will to live, and beauty cheers and ennobles the peace that
comes when one reaches the age of Cephalus. This attitude is well
illustrated by the splendid extract 86, from Egotism and German
Philosophy. The passage is entitled "Heathenism"; and heathenism
(contrasted, perhaps, in the author's mind with Christian other-
worldliness) it appears, is the futile faith in life, in energy, and in
the will to live. Mr. Santayana 's symbol is the bull in the ring,
dashing heroically against what he can not overcome. "Heathenism
is the religion of will, the faith which life has in itself because it is
life, and in its aims because it is pursuing them" (p. 219). This
emphasis is, of course, not the only emphasis in Mr. Santayana 's
many-sided work, and the fine passage I refer to is aimed at a type
of metaphysics that is coming more and more to seem a curious piece
of academic madness ; this, however, the reader of Little Essays may
not discover. Yet this is one strong and repeating emphasis, and it
may strike many readers that to stamp wisdom so indelibly with the
marks of resignation is to assimilate the Life of Reason too much to
what Mr. Santayana calls "post-rational morality."
If one were to look about for some one who had pursued the life
of reason with preeminent success, Mr. Santayana might accept
William James as an example. But James was always full of the
will to live and always encouraged others to have it. His somewhat
unfortunate essay "The Will to Believe" expresses this same "faith
which life has in itself because it is life."
This volume begins with a fine protest against the prejudice man
166 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOI'II Y
has against himself. I wonder if this emphasis on inevitable resig-
nation is consistent with the spirit of that protest.
As a great admirer of Mr. Santayana's philosophy, and as one
profoundly indebted to his summons back to the sanity of the pre-
Christian Greeks, I hope it may be the younger students of wisdom
and criticism that will be stirred by this volume. It is much to be
hoped that the note of chastened purpose will not deter them from
finding out what the great theme of the Life of Reason really is.
WENDELL T. BUSH.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
BRITISH JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY. Vol. X, Parts 2
and 3: March, 1920. On Listening to Sounds of Weak Intensity:
E. M. SMITH and F. C. BARTLETT (pp. 133-168) Part II. -The work
developed from an attempt to devise and. apply a series of tests for
the selection of candidates for the Anti-Submarine service. Vari-
ations are liable to occur in the relative efficiency of the two ears,
such variations developing gradually and extending over a long
period. Sounds of weak intensity may take as long as four seconds
to produce their full effect. These and more technical conclusions
were drawn. Psychology and Education (pip. 169-176) : T. P.
NUNN. -This inaugural address at the first meeting of the educa-
tional section of the British Psychological Society outlines the im-
portant departments of educational psychology. Psychology and
Industry (pp. 177-182): CHARLES S. MYERS. -This address, given
before the first meeting of the medical section of the British Psy-
chological Society, shows that in industry there are four main
themes to which psychology can profitably be applied, fatipue,
movement study, vocational guidance, and management. By the
aid of properly devised tests applied by properly trained persons
those leaving school could be materially helped! and usefully advised
in their choice of suitable vocation. Psychology and Medicine
(pp. 183-193): W. H. R. RIVERS. -This inaugural address given
before the first meeting of the medical section of the British Psy-
chological Society quotes researches in psychology applied to medi-
cine. Some Measurements of the Accuracy of the Time-Intervals
in Playing a Keyed Instrument (pp. 194-198) : W. B. MORTON. -A
diagram is reproduced which shows that this player's hand was in-
clined to hurry on the right. Some Experiments in Learning and
Retention (pp. 199-209): MAY SMITH and WM. McDouoALL. - The
writers have adduced experimental evidence in support of Professor
Bergson's distinction between habit and memory. Effort or volition
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS 167
are very important in rendering repetition effective in memorizing.
The Present Attitude of Employees in Industrial Psychology (pp.
210-227): SUSIE S. BRIERLEY. - The assumption 'by the worker of
some measure of genuine control of industrial processes is the only
way in which it is possible to restore to the vast dehumanised
machine of modern production any true satisfaction for the work-
manly and creative impulses of the 'bulk of those whose destiny it
controls. The workers come to Psychology as to the human science,
the science which, whatever else be prostituted to meaner ends, will
of its essence consider the whole man, in all his relations. Sug-
gestion and Suggestibility (pp. 228-241): E. PRIDEAUX. -Of the
methods of "suggestion treatment" there is no question that the
method of normal suggestion by explanation and appeals to feelings
is the best, as the patient then realizes that he himself is responsible
for the removal of symptoms and he will know what to do in case of
a relapse. The real cause of the patients' condition may never be
discovered, so that treatment by suggestion does not conform to our
ideal method of treatment. The Single General Factor in Dis-
similar Mental Measurements (pp. 242-258) : J. C. MAXWELL
GARNETT. -The paper is concerned with variables that are distri-
buted according to the normal law and measured in such units as
will give to each the same standard deviation. Observations on the
DeSanctis tests are given. The claim made by DeSanctis that his
problems test successively higher mental functions can not be sus-
tained, nor can his claim be sustained that his tests can differentiate
between the feeble-minded and the normal. The tests are quite
practical and afford a rapid means of classifying the mentally
defective. They are correctly arranged in order of difficulty.
Publications Recently Received. Proceedings of the British Psy-
chological Society.
Achilles, Edith Mulhall. Experimental Studies in Recall and Recog-
nition. New York: Archives of Psychology. 1920. Pp. 80.
$1.25.
Adickes, Erich; Clemens Baeumker; Jonas Cohn; Hans Cornelius;
Karl Groos, Alois Hofler ; Ernst Troeltsch ; Hans Vaihinger. Die
Deutsche Philosophic der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen.
Zweiter Band. Leipzig: Felix Meiner. 1921. Pp. 203.
Benett, William. Freedom and Liberty. Oxford : University Press.
1920. Pp. 367.
Galloway, T. W. The Sex Factor in Human Life : A Study Outline
for College Men. New York : American Social Hygiene Associa-
tion. 1921. Pp. 142.
K.S THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
NOTES AND NEWS
A MEETING of the Aristotelian Society was held on January 3, the
Very Rev. Dean W. R. Inge, President, in the chair. Mr. C. A.
Richardson read a paper on "The New Materialism." The new ma-
terialism takes the form of a denial of anything corresponding to the
idea of "mind" or "subject." Unlike the old doctrine, it does not
affirm the reality of atoms, its ultimate stuff is sense-material. It
reduces the subject of experience to a series of sense-data, and the
sense-data are conceived as ontologically independent of the subject.
Against this it was argued that the subject of experience is a real
metaphysical existence. Experience consists in spiritual activity
and one type of this activity is sense-experience. The content, sense-
data, is the particular form the activity assumes, and the form is
determined by the interaction of individual subjects. The most
pressing philosophical need of the day is to come to an agreement on
this point. Until we are agreed as to whether there exists the sub-
ject or mind, there must be disagreement on the fundamental matter
of philosophy, namely, the entities in terms of which theories may be
formulated. Without a common platform philosophy will be left
behind, a curious relic, by the intuitive wisdom of the vast mass of
humanity.
DR. Louis HERBERT GRAY, who went to Europe as a member of
the American Commission to Negotiate Peace and who has until
recently been attached to the American Embassy in Paris, has re-
turned to America and joined the staff of the faculty in philosophy
of the University of Nebraska. Professor Gray received his doc-
torate in the field of Indo-Iranian from Columbia University in 1900,
and in the intervening years has been a voluminous contributor to
Oriental studies, both in the linguistic and ethnographic lines. His
work has also embraced wide ranges in comparative religion and
ethics, and he served for a number of years as associate editor of
The Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, to which his contributed
articles arc many. At Nebraska Professor Gray is introducing
courses representing something of a departure in the ordinary pro-
grammes in philosophy. His field is the civilizations of Asia, and he
is offering courses in Asiatic history, art, philosophies and religions.
His work may be regarded as a symptom of the growing importance
which an understanding of the culture and history of Asia is
assuming in America as a consequence of the upheaval in world
affairs.
VOL. XVIII, No 7. MARCH 31, 1921
THE INDEPENDENT VARIABILITY OF PURPOSE AND
BELIEF
THAT there is no purpose without cognition may be taken for
granted'. Shall we then slur the difference by using the terms
interchangeably, or by introducing blends such as "appreciation,"
"judgments of practise," and "value- judgments"? On the con-
trary, where there is intimate complexity the sound method is that
which analyzes and distinguishes. One can not expect to follow
two closely interwoven strands until one has first clearly identified
each of them; and in that preliminary stage of identification it is
necessary to dwell upon differences, rather than to slur them. This
is quite consistent with a full recognition of their intimacy. It pre-
supposes that intimacy. There is a problem only 'because of such
intimacy. Interest affects belief in countless ways, by directing it
to a certain context, by accompanying and impregnating it with
attitudes of favor or disfavor, and by weighting the evidence on
which it is based. Belief, on the other hand, affects interest, by
exciting or depressing it, by knowing it, by illuminating it, or by
determining the forms in which it expresses itself. But how can we
say these things without implying that belief is one thing and
interest another? And how can we understand these complexities,
relations and interactions without some preliminary understanding
of the terms themselves?
The separability and independent variability of these two factors
is assumed by common sense, as is indicated by such expressions as
the following: "I am compelled to believe" (by implication "against
my will") ; "I have reluctantly concluded;" "I was agreeably dis-
appointed;" "I am sorry to find);" "I wish it were so;" etc. The
child who sees his mother enter at one door with a bottle, and his
father at the other with a slipper, doubtless does so with feeling, but
none the less he entertains beliefs or expectations with reference to
both stimuli, as truly as does the unfeeling psychologist who stands by
to observe the phenomenon. One may take a belief and show how it
may remain unaffected through the whole repertory and cycle of
the passions, including the point of indifference. When an histor-
ical event such as signing of the armistice is made known, there oc-
169
170 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
curs a moment of belief which may in individual minds be combined
with joy or grief, with rage or fear, with pleasure or displeasure,
and with any degree of emotional or affective intensity. A given in-
dividual having adopted a belief with reluctance, may later be glad,
and eventually not care. In passing through these phases the in-
dividual has never changed his belief or wavered in his adherence
to it. Similarly an interest may remain fixed while belief varies.
One may desire peace and not falter in one's pursuit of it, while
belief in its achievement passes from disbelief through doubt to
ascending degrees of certainty. Let us now seek to interpret this
independent variability more exactly.
In order to understand the difference between interest and 'be-
lief it will be necessary to consider a common constituent which
with one qualification becomes interested action, and with another
qualification becomes belief. This more fundamental process may
best be called ' ' supposition. ' u It is essentially an anticipatory set,
or implicit course of action correlated with a specific object. If I
suppose or entertain the idea that the barn is on fire, I in some
measure set my fire-response in readiness. I talk to myself in terms
taken from my fire- vocabulary ; and I am peculiarly receptive to
such visual or other sensory stimuli as fire has in the past presented.
Other trains of anticipatory responses such as fire itself is most apt
to excite are now partially excited in its absence. In short, a re-
action-system of which fire is the complementary environmental
factor is in momentary possession of my mind. This may be the
end of the matter, so far as this particular system is concerned. In
the course of the implicit elaboration of this response some other
system may have been started into action, and I may wander from
supposition to supposition through a more or less protracted
sequence of "idle" conjecture.
If we examine the structure of a supposition we find a further im-
portant property. It is scheduled or set for a specific occasion or
class of occasions. Supposing my barn to be on fire is, for example,
a readiness for fire-stimuli when I now at this moment look out of
the east window rather than when to-morrow I look out of the west
window. The supposition determines not only what my response
shall be, but on what occasion it shall be applied. Having a sup-
position that my barn is on fire, there is some specific situation which
will find me by virtue of that supposition on the look-out for fire and
< This ia approximately the same as the Annahme of A. Meinong, who da-
serves credit for having brought this procees to light. The present treatment,
however, differs radically from Meinong's; especially in getting away almost
wholly from the traditional form of the judgment or propoaition, and in giving
the matter a achamatic physiological interpretation.
PURPOSE AND BELIEF 171
ready to deal with it. By virtue of my supposition I shall be more
or less ready to act according as fire is or is not presented on that
occasion. If fire is presented, I shall be able to respond to it with-
out preliminary adjustment, and shall be in advance of another to
whom, as we say, no suoh possibility has "occurred." Per contra,
if fire is not presented my response is, so to speak, thrown back upon
its haunches. I am taken by surprise and have perhaps a more
difficult readjustment to make than another who has not thought
at all.
It will be convenient to employ the term "index" for the stimu-
lus or situation which 'brings the response into action. In the
formal judgment the so-called "subject" is the index, the so-called
"predicate" is the response, and the fact whose presence or absence
determines the judgment to be true or false is the complementary
environmental condition or "object." The subject is given, the
predicate is applied and the object is contingent. The index may
assume a variety of forms and in a given case it can ibe identified
only functionally. In the supposition considered above the subject
is not "my house" in any determined verbal, imaginal or physical
sense. The subject is that situation in which my readiness for fire
matures and is brought to bear. In any given case the same sup-
position might equally well be expressed as "If you will look
through that window you will see flames." When a judgment is
formulated verbally the so-called "subject" ordinarily instructs the
organism to which it is addressed. It localizes or sets the attention,
and determines what stimulus shall serve as index. In some cases a
word may serve tooth to instruct and to indicate. If the word
"fire" is shouted in my hearing with a certain intonation my fire-
response is aroused at that moment and at that place. But the
words, "There is a fire out there" prepare me for what I further
see (the complementary stimulus of red flames, etc.} when I re-
ceived visual stimuli with a certain specific localization (the index).
"Your house is on fire" may determine this same index, but it will
also determine me to look elsewhere for evidence, as e.g., in my
automatic fire-alarm, or the report of my stable-iboy. In other
words the latter judgment has a wider range of verification, it
establishes more occasions of adjustment or of maladjustment, of
surprise or of confirmation.
Truth and error are said to be relative to the intent of a judg-
ment. I know of no better description of this than in the terms
here proposed. Truth and error qualify an anticipatory set as re-
gards its fitness to meet a specific occasion. There can be no deter-
mination of its truth or error so long as the locus of its application
remains ambiguous. A charge of error can always be effectively
172 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
met if one can show that "that was not what one was talking about" ;
that is, if there remains doubt as to where the evidence is to be
sought. By fitness is meant only that the anticipatory set does or
does not there find the complementary object by which it can move
to completion. This "complementary object" may be a single actual
stimulus, or a group of stimuli, or a group of physical properties,
by which a response is enabled to execute itself. Fire as an object
consists of the way it looks, sounds or feels; and also of the other
things that can be "done" with it, such as burning things with it,
or quenching it. In fact since my response to it may consist in
part of a further extension of plans, the object must include its
capacity to mean or to act as a sign. Object, in short, is much more
than stimulus. 1
A bare supposition does, then, have the functional relations that
are necessary in order to determine, truth or error. There is need
of much greater elaboration before this problem can be said to be
adequately solved, but to pursue it further here would take us far
off our charted course.*
* Cf. E. B. Holt 's doctrine of ' ' the recession of the stimulus, ' ' The Freud-
ian With, 1915, 75 ff.
For a further discussion of aspects of this problem, cf. my article entitled
"The Truth-Problem," this JOURNAL, 1916, Vol. XIII, pp. 505, 561. Mr. Rus-
sell has recently undertaken to describe thought in terms of "images," a re-
version to a mode of epistemology that has been showing symptoms of obsoles-
cence. Although I sympathize heartily with Mr. Russell's appeal to "fact" as
the test of truth and error, I can not see that he has escaped any of the diffi-
culties and shortcomings of the "representative" theory. It is not a question
cf whether "images" in some sense exist or not; doubtless they do. But, in
the first place, their nature and conditions are so obscure that it is good strategy
to attack somewhere else in the hope of understanding them better by taking
them in the rear or in the flank. And in the second place, they do not appear
to play the part in thought which Mr. Russell attributes to them; inasmuch
as: firtt, their presence is not necessary, even though usual; second, their re-
semblance to the "object" is not necessary, though common; third, even where
there is an image which is similar, this does not sufficiently describe the thought 's
selection of its object, its pointing or reference, since error, in other words
dissimilarity, does not make a thought any less a thought. Cf. B. Russell: "On
Propositions: What They Are and How They Mean," in Problems of Science
and Philosophy, Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume II, 1-43. Mr.
Russell 's emphasis on images has exposed him to H. H. Joachim 's attack in
Mind, 1920, XXIX, pp. 404-414. In the same number of Mind (398-404)
appears a restatement of Mr. Russell's view with a great difference at least of
emphasis. He here makes little of images; says that "the essence of meaning
lies in the causal efficacy of that which has meaning" (398); and that mean-
ing attaches to "signs," which are "sensible (or imaginal) phenomena which
cause actions appropriate, not to themselves, but to something else with which
they are associated" (402). With this revised view I should differ only in
points of detail. It illustrates, I think, a fundamentally sound method of at-
tacking the question.
PVRP08B AND BELIEF 173
Commonly a supposition is further qualified as: (1) a belief; or
(2) a purpose. 4
1. A belief is a supposition to which one has committed oneself.
This is evidently a matter of degree. In every supposition there is
some degree of belief. Doubt is feebleness or vacillation of belief;
and disbelief is contrary or antagonistic belief. There is some belief
in all supposition because all supposition is action, and action which
precludes other action. When one is following up, exploring, or
elaborating a certain supposition, other suppositions are cut off,
and for the time being one is committed. But for practical pur-
poses it is easy to distinguish such momentary and innocuous com-
mittal from irretrievable committal, in which one's bridges are
burnt behind one. Irretrievable committal is the case in which the
supposition has gone so far as to exclude all other suppositions with
the same index. There are no mental reservations, no anchors to
windward. The non-occurrence of the complementary objects finds
one utterly maladjusted. This condition may develop in various
ways. If upon supposing my barn to 'be on fire I cry "Fire!"
telephone for the police and rush out of the house in the direction
of the barn, I am engaging in activities which for the time inhibit
the supposition that the barn is in a state of "normalcy." I am
also creating a rapidly shifting series of new situations to which
I must react as they arise, and which prevent vacillation, that is,
the alternation of the two major suppositions. Or I may have
carried my supposition so far as to make it impossible to reverse
'because of the momentum of the response. Even though the com-
plementary stimulus should not appear the organism would be
caught off its balance and unable to bring another response into
play. Or a supposition may have been carried so far as to lead
to amendments in other systems of response. Supposing my barn
to be on fire I give up my trip to the city and suspend household
activities, so that the contrary supposition is impeded through re-
quiring a general rearrangement of plans. Or the supposition may
come in the shape of a suggestion, which, finding an unresourceful
The great merit of pragmatism lies in its having discredited the image
theory of knowledge, and in its having introduced a functional view of mean-
ing. James, e.g., speaks of meaning in terms of "experiences to be expected"
(article on "Pragmatism" in Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology). But
this function must remain more or less mythical until it can be interpreted in
terms of organic behavior ; and unless it presupposes a physical environment.
Or it may be a hypothesis, a question, a doubt, a command, a wish, etc.
While we must for the sake of brevity omit these variations from the present
discussion it would appear that up to a certain point they are all alike, and
homogeneous with the acts of mind considered above.
174 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
and unresisting mind, may obtain exclusive possession by default. 5
2. Purpose has been elsewhere examined in ite own terms,' but
its nature now requires a brief restatement here in the light of the
nature of supposition and belief. In purpose a reaction-system be-
ing partially aroused generates auxiliary activities. These may be
random activities of a type likely sooner or later to provide the com-
plementary object by which the response is completed ; or they may
be activities which owing to previous experience promise that object.
Where the former is the case we may speak of longing, wishing or
craving, as present; but only where the latter is the case may we
properly speak of purpose.
A purpose, then, requires the presence of a supposition, which
ordinarily will have assumed the form of a belief. 7 The auxiliary
act is performed because the belief which qualifies it is an anticipa-
tion of the response required for the completion of the determining
tendency. It follows that a belief becomes a purpose only when the
anticipatory response in which it consists is in demand. The belief
correlates the anticipatory response with a specific occasion; the
purpose subordinates it to a determining tendency. In the case of
purpose the determining tendency and the component belief are
so related that one can be inferred from the other. If the agent
is asked to justify his action in terms of his interest, he will state
his belief; if he is asked to justify his action in terms of his belief,
he will state his interest. Thus if an ambitious man who allows
himself to be interviewed by a reporter is asked to explain, he will
explain that he is ambitious if he supposes you to be familiar with
his beliefs regarding the political effects of publicity, and he will
explain that it pays to advertise, if he supposes you to be familiar
with his ambition.
Belief and purpose may also be linked through containing the
same component response. What I believe about a situation may
consist of what I propose to do about it. Thus in the case of the
aforesaid fire, the believing consists in part of the arousal of my
fire-extinguishing activities, and these activities fully aroused be-
come my method of dealing with the situation and express my
desire with reference to it. The belief is the fact that my mode of
There are undoubtedly other factors in belief, such aa the "sense of
reality," which I think can be interpreted as the receptive attitude to external
stimuli; and the factor of earnestness or zeal, which is a blend of belief with
resolution or will.
Cf. my article ' ' A Behavioristic View of Purpose, ' ' this JOURNAL, Vol.
XVIII, No. 4.
i One may act on doubtful grounds; which would mean that although a
plan is being carried out alternatives are not wholly abandoned.
PURPOSE AND BELIEF 175
dealing with fire, 8 whatever that may be, is now brought into play,
to the exclusion of my modes of dealing with the safe and usual
condition of my property. The purpose to put the fire out lies in
the character of my fire-response, and its selective control of my
action. I do what I do 'because of its paving the way to my fire-
response, in other words, I have a purpose with reference to the fire ;
and that response consists in movements culminating and coming to
rest in the experience of fire-extinguished, in other words, the pur-
pose in question is to put the fire out. That I act on fire as I do,
and that I act at all is a matter of purpose; but that this mode of
acting on fire should be correlated with a specific situation, that I
should bring that rather than some other response to bear here and
now, is a matter of 'belief. The force and quality of my act are
derived from purpose, its opportuneness from belief.
"We may now understand more clearly the alleged impotence of
reason. It is the practical function of reason or the intellectual
faculties to effect certain internal adjustments by which preformed
unit-responses are fitted to a governing tendency; that is, to find
among the individual's existing propensities the means by which a
purpose may be executed. Belief without purpose would refer to
explicit action only hypothetically. It would mean an established
connection between an indicated situation and a mode of response,
which would render the indicated situation eligible in case there was
any call for the response. What belief does is thus to establish con-
necting channels by which the currents of purposive energy are dis-
tributed and directed. In the absence of such currents, belief is
like an empty aqueduct. 9 But this is after all no more than to say
that belief is one of the conditions of action. When it does occur,
it is a condition; and owing to its peculiar controllability, it may
for practical purposes be the all-important condition ; as important,
for example, as the agencies by which "physical" forces are
directed and applied.
The distinction between purpose and belief is further reflected in
the distinction between motor-affective meanings and cognitive mean-
ings. A datum derives meaning from the present and impending
In a first experience of this sort modes of response will be integrated in
a new way. I am prepared for what I have never met before, for example, fire
on my own property. I have modes of dealing with fire, and with my own
property. These being combined in advance create a readiness for a novel situa-
tion. All beliefs doubtless have some element of novelty in them.
I do not mean here to take a stand either for or against the ' ' ideo-motor
theory," according to which a belief if left to itself will take effect in action.
Cases of pure ideo-motor action are in any case rare; and even if they do exist
the all-important fact is that the belief is left to itself, that it does, in other
words, function as a determining tendency.
176 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
action which it arouses. A pain-stimulus is immediately qualified by
the response of rejection and may be said to acquire the meaning of
intolerability, as food being or about to be eaten acquires the mean-
ing of edibility. The meaning consists in the imminent action al-
ready formed and started on its course. But a datum has cognitive
meaning only in so far as it arouses a conditional response, that is,
a response whose completion is contingent on the further develop-
ment of the situation. It is not necessary to suppose that the one of
these meanings is possible without the other, but only that they are
distinguishable. The motor-affective meaning is infallible, the cog-
nitive meaning is liable to error. If I have already begun the ac-
tivity of eating, then the object so responded to possesses in some
measure the quality or value of edibility. I am finding it edible.
If I anticipate the later stages of the process but find it impossible
to carry them out, if the object can be carried to the mouth but can
not be swallowed, then it belies its promise and I have judged in
error. Motor-affective meaning is the existing response or its com-
pletion in so far as these require no further development of the
stimulus; cognitive meaning is projected response correlated with a
future series of objects which may or may not be presented. The con-
fusion of these two types of meaning has led to the error of regarding
motor-affective responses as a kind of true knowledge, or to the error
of regarding some cognitive responses as having the infallibility of
fact. 10
In order further to illustrate the interplay of interest and cogni-
tion let us now examine some of the modes of their independent
variability. There is, first, the case in which belief remains fixed
while purpose varies. I expect a visit from X to-morrow at four
o'clock. My attitude to X being one of enmity I schedule my com-
bative response for that hour. Meanwhile I experience a change of
heart about X and come to regard him as a friend in disguise. What
I then change is the character of the JT-response. My expectation of
his arrival is unchanged; that is, my X-response, which is now a
grateful response, is still scheduled for to-morrow at four o'clock.
My surprise at his non-appearance will be in no way affected by the
10 I take it that the view here proposed is approximately the same as that
of Mrs. De Laguna, formulated in her valuable article entitled "Emotion and
Perception from the Behaviorist Standpoint," this JOURNAL, Vol. XVI (1919),
pp. 409-427. She says, for example, "In so far as a stimulus is calling into
play a specific type of response, belonging to a single genetic and functional
system, it possesses the affective quality experienced in emotion; in so far as
the stimulus calls into play an attentive postponement of response, it arouses
cognitive awareness and possesses perceptual quality" (421-422). Mrs. De
Laguna also has in mind the analytical function of perception.
PURPOSE AND BELIEF 177
change in the greeting which I have prepared for him. Or consider
identity of belief with variety of purpose in different individuals.
The rumored signing of the armistice on November 8, 1918, was
greeted by some with delirious joy, by others with rage. The defeat
of Germany was already linked with different reaction-systems in
the minds of these two groups. The one group struggled to bring it
about, the other to avert it. The identity of belief lay in the fact
that both took the same occasion to discharge these different reaction
systems; and both were equally in error, in that in both cases the
response was equally premature.
Second, there is the case in which there is stability of purpose
with variability of belief. A mother loves her son with steadfastness.
This means that she is disposed to rejoice at his success and to grieve
at his failure. She will then rejoice or grieve in accordance with her
beliefs. She hears a report of his success and believes it. This means
that she responds to the situation with the response that constitutes
her way of greeting her son's success. The father, being more skep-
tical, suspends his rejoicing, though he is no less disposed to rejoice
at his son's success when once he believes it. Additional evidence
then leads to the mother's abandonment of her belief, that is to the
abandonment of her rejoicing. Her rejoicing turns out to be ill-
timed. The situation is one to which her grief rather than her re-
joicing is appropriate. Meanwhile she has not in the least changed
her sentiment, that is her system of reactions in relation to the for-
tunes of her son. She has revised only the schedule, the timing, the
application of these reactions. Similarly the sentiment of humanity
may beget in one man a chronic melancholy, in another a spirit of
joyful service. The difference between the pessimist and the opti-
mist is not a difference in what they love and hate, but a difference
in what they think, that is a difference in the occasions on which
they bring their love and hate to bear.
Third, there is the case of a converse relation between belief and
purpose. In hopeless longing there is a positive response which is
never applied. The man who longs to see his dead sweetheart, but
without belief in any such possibility, is perpetually rehearsing lov-
ing greetings which he never assigns a place in his plan. There is
no occasion in his life when he enacts these greetings, nor any occa-
sion which he is prepared to meet thus and thus alone. His hopeless
longing is an unscheduled response, one that has no place in the
programme which he is carrying out. Or consider the opposite case
of dread, the positive expectation of that which is contrary to one's
will. This means that one's fixed response to a certain situation,
such as the loss of money, is one of grief. To dread the loss of
178 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
money means, then, that this grief is set for the reading of the finan-
cial news in the evening paper. It is now set, and in some degree
partially excited, which distinguishes this situation from the situa-
tion that might be described in the words "I expect to be sorry to-
morrow." In the latter case one is now implicitly enacting not the
sorrow but that response with which I am accustomed to deal with
my sorrow, which may be to read a detective story.
There is another and quite different case to which the term dread
is sometimes applied, the case, namely in which one acts to avert a
future contingency. Here the belief and the interest are likely to
be congruent, though there is commonly much vacillation. The fa-
miliar and apparently simple case of the burnt child's dread of fire
is in reality one of the most paradoxical of all forms of behavior.
We may suppose inherited connections between the visual fire-stim-
ulus and the withdrawing movement. Suppose the child to have
completed the two reflexes in the usual order: (la) seeing fire, (1&)
touching fire; (2a) feeling pain; (2&) withdrawing hand. Then in
future when the visual fire-stimulus occurs it should by habit and
association arouse the reaching response with the withdrawal re-
sponse held in readiness and awaiting its turn. As a matter of fact,
however, the child avoids the fire, that is, the reaching response is
somehow anticipated and annulled by the withdrawing response.
According to the classic explanation (the so-called "Meynert
scheme") this is due to the arousal by association of the idea of the
fire, which releases the withdrawal response in time to forestall the
reaching response. 11 A simpler explanation would now be offered
in terms of the "conditional reflex." This visual stimulus of the
bright flame, being present with the pain-stimulus, becomes itself a
sufficient stimulus for a retraction-movement which was originally
coupled only with the pain-stimulus. 12
11 Cf. James : Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, pp. 24-27. For a criticism
of this explanation, cf. E. H. Holt: The Freudian Wish, pp. 69-74. Holt ex-
plains the behavior by supposing that since the pain-stimulus is an intense form
of the heat-stimulus, the former or the stimulus to retraction is present in some
degree whenever the child is in proximity to the flame. Learning to avoid fire
consists then in increasing the openness of the motor path until the retraction
response is more easily aroused, or aroused at just that point in the increase of
the warmth-pain stimulus that is compatible with safety and interferes to a
minimum extent with the organism's other dealings with the object. This ex-
planation is in the judgment of the present writer too limited in application to
get to the root of the matter. It would not, for example, explain why a cut
child dreads knives or learns not to "monkey with a buzz-saw."
12 For a summary of ' ' conditioned motor reflexes, " cf. J. B. Watson : ' ' Th
Place of the Conditioned Reflex in Psychology," Psychol. Rev., 1916, Vol.
XXIII, pp. 94-97; Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist, 1919, p.
PURPOSE AND BELIEF 179
In any case the important thing to note is that the visual stim-
ulus itself causes retraction, so that the occurrence of the pain-
stimulus is not necessary. The visual stimulus is not so reacted to
as to introduce the pain-stimulus as a condition of the retraction
response. The organism has not the purpose of removing pain, but
(in so far as there is anything tentative in the behavior) of with-
drawal from the visible fire. 13
There are several ways in which the factor of purpose might
enter into such a situation. The pain-reflex itself may assume a
tentative or conative form. The first retraction may fail to remove
the pain stimulus, and in this case the checked response will lead to
auxiliary random efforts to the casting about for means. Stimuli
promising relief will be reacted to because the anticipatory act which
they arouse agrees with the impeded relieving response.
A different situation arises when the pain-stimulus itself is pros-
pective instead of present. There is undoubtedly such a thing as
acting from dread of pain, or for the purpose of avoiding pain.
Avoidance or prevention is "better than cure"; it is not a means
to cure. "We may, to be sure, suppose a case in which remedial ac-
tion itself, the relief from distress, the actual efforts or performances
incidental to the removal of a stimulus, should tend to expression in
the absence of the stimulus; and in which, therefore, opportunities
promising to provide the stimulus should be seized as providing an
outlet for the tendency. Something of this sort seems to be the case
with the longing which retired soldiers have for the revival of those
very enemies, fears and privations which when they were present
those same soldiers did all in their power to remove. Or there may
be a virtuosity in remedial action which moves a man to look for
trouble in order to give himself the satisfaction of overcoming it.
But if there is such a thing as has been described, at any rate it is
not what we mean by dread or prevention. In this latter case the
remedial action, that is the pain together with the characteristic re-
moval-reactions to which it gives rise, is just what is avoided. We
must in this case suppose either one or both of two things : either a
specific countertendency, a strong internal resistance to the play of
212. It must be admitted that since the actual mechanisms by which the con-
ditioned reflex is created are obscure it is impossible to deny that the associative
centers are called into play in some such manner as is schematically indicated in
the "Meynert scheme."
is In order to understand the rapidity with which the conditioned reflex is
established in such cases it is probably necessary to suppose that pain-reflexes
have a peculiar power to persist and to spread. Cf. Sherrington 's statements in
Shafer's Physiology, 1900, Vol. II, p. 974, quoted by C. T. Herriek, in Intro-
duction to Neurology, 1918, p. 287.
180 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
this system of response ; or a positive tendency on the part of some
other and antagonistic system. In the first case, whatever response
is prospectively congruent with this system will meet with the same
resistance. One's purpose will be wholly negative in the sense that
it rejects but does not select. If one crosses the street to avoid meet-
ing a person one dislikes, the dread of meeting the person has acted
only as a deterrent. It has forced the positive purpose of getting to
my destination to abandon the straighter and shorter course. It i
for this reason that action motivated by fear is lacking in construc-
tive quality and is attended by unhappiness. Fear inhibits but
does not inspire. Action governed by fear is a succession of rejec-
tions, of acts considered only to be abhorred a series of mistakes
and false starts. In the second case, on the other hand, a positive
prospect, the antithesis to that which I dread, acts as a determining
tendency, as when I take medicine not to avoid a headache but to
feel well and to do those things which in the absence of headache I
can do. In both of these cases interest and belief run together.
The negative avoidance of damnation is accompanied by a correla-
tive series of inhibited beliefs in damnation ; the positive interest in
salvation is accompanied by positive belief and takes the form of
hope instead of dread.
There is one further case of the conversity of interest and belief,
which occurs at the moment when the belief is tested. One may then
be "pleasantly surprised," or have one's "worst fears realized."
To be pleasantly surprised, as, for example, at one 's election to office,
means that the response prepared for the occasion of the reception of
the news was one of regret, of fortitude, of redirection of activity to
other objects. In spite of efforts in the past to obtain election one
had subsequently arranged to deal with failure rather than with
success. But although the news of one's election finds one unready,
the response which one awkwardly and tardily brings into play is a
positive and joyful response. The news is grateful to the ear and
releases constructive activities subordinate to the political purpose
which is now renewed. When one's worst fears are realized, on the
other hand, one has prepared for the worst and finds that prepara-
tion suitable to the event. One 's belief is verified, though one's desire
is thwarted.
RALPH BARTON PERRY.
HARVARD UNIVIBSITT.
RECONSTRUCTION IN MENTAL TESTS 181
RECONSTRUCTION IN MENTAL TESTS
AS to the existence of a goodly amount of unrest among psy-
chologists and others who are working in the field of mental
tests, there can be no doubt. Such unrest is natural following a
period of inflation and is probably symptomatic of a tendency to
get back to normal. It is, however, of some importance to watch
carefully the process of readjustment, if for no other reason than
that it may be as painless as possible and productive of no new
disorders that are preventable.
A recent article, 1 clearly a product of this unrest, seems to be
traveling over dangerous ground toward a goal that is hardly
wholesome. The opinions expressed in this article are shared by
enough others in and adjacent to the test field so that its contents
assume an importance quite out of proportion to that of the article
itself.
The general point of view which is taken is that mental testing
is not a descriptive but a technical science; and that since statis-
tical methods as applied to tests have been largely methods bor-
rowed from the descriptive sciences, the time has come to look for
fundamental revision in statistical approach. It is urged that
every method must aim at the most direct and empirical solution
of a problem "no hypotheses, as thoroughly empirical treatment
as may be!" Among other specific assertions, we find, "The
actual distribution of various traits is a matter of academic inter-
est only." It is contended that such a revision of methods, aimed
at the practical solution of a practical problem, is necessary for the
clarification of the total situation.
Before attempting to discuss the truly vital issues involved in
such a point of view as this, it may be well to clear the ground
by discussing briefly the concrete illustrations in the article.
There it is pointed out that a school superintendent who is called
upon to make a decision as to the use of this, that, or any test
scale, and who is given data as to the "reliability" and "validity"
of these scales and information as to the statistical procedure in
the construction of this scale, will not be given the information
that is really essential to him in making his decision. Of course,
this is obvious. But, surprisingly, the conclusion drawn is that the
study of the "reliability" and "validity" is futile, and that the
construction of test series or tests that approximate as nearly as can
be determined true scales of measurement is irrelevant to the prob-
i Pressey, S. L., ' ' Suggestions, ' ' etc. Psychological Review, Vol. 27, No.
6, page 466.
182 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
lem. The criticism more properly belongs to the advisor of the
school superintendent who suggested these three criteria by which
to judge the practical usefulness of his tests. The criticism of sta-
tistical methods on such grounds is much like finding fault with the
esthesiometric index because it had been suggested as a measure of
pitch discrimination ; or of current quotations in sterling because of
their unsuitability as an indication of the selling price of wheat.
It is worthy of note, however, that a writer in this field be-
lieves that a school superintendent might be thus badly advised.
If I may be permitted to depart for a moment from the main dis-
cussion of this paper, the fact that such bad advice is obtainable is
a matter which psychologists can not much longer ignore. It. is
the result, to my mind, of two conditions. First, inadequate in-
struction in statistical technique for students who are doing their
work in mental tests; and second, careless editing of psychological
and educational periodicals. Not only are most instructional
forces rather poorly equipped from the standpoint of personnel
to give adequate statistical instruction, but the libraries in many
cases lack periodicals and books which are essential for the stu-
dent in mental tests. To be concrete, Biometrika should be avail-
able for first hand reference by such students, and certainly by
research workers.
The journals are perhaps even more responsible for the exist-
ence of questionable statistical opinion. Articles are all too com-
mon which, from a statistical point of view, are distinctly amateur-
ish. One quotation will be illustrative. In a recent article, the
subjects which were examined are being described: "In the first
group, there were seven boys and eight girls. Of these, two were
colored. In the second group, termed the abnormal group, there
were nineteen cases. The chronological age ranged from eight to
fifteen years. There were ten boys and nine girls. Of these,
seven were colored children. Thus, the two groups represented a
chance selection." Fifteen pages of the journal were consumed in
reporting an experiment based upon such a selection of subjects.
Another type of article which frequently appears is that which
naively expounds as new some bit of statistical technique which
has long had a recognized and reputable standing without ever
a word as to its origin. Thus, we have an article telling how to
weight the individual parts of a test to gain maximum diagnostic
value without any mention of Spearman's work which was pub-
lished in 1913. We find articles telling us how to compute a cor-
relation without the use of products, without any acknowledgment
of Pearson's or Harris's notes appearing prior to 1910. The de-
RECONSTRUCTION IN MENTAL TESTS 183
mand is made for methods which will show how unmistakably a
test scale will set off the lower 15 per cent, or so in scholastic
ability ; but this technique was devised by Pearson in 1909, its ap-
plicability to experimental psychology pointed out by Brown in
1911, and its suitability as an index of diagnostic value in the test
field has been discussed by later writers. The authors of such
papers themselves can not be held blameless ; but after all it is the
journals that have brought into existence the reputations to which
school superintendents turn for advice.
To come back to the main subject under discussion, the desire
for revising our statistical technique to conform with mental test-
ing, not as a descriptive, but as a technical science. There are at
least three good reasons why such an attitude is to be deplored.
In the first place, it leads to the giving of approval to various
statistical tricks which may be expedient enough in producing
results in an immediate and practical situation, but which are
actually bad method. Pressey comments on the statistical methods
used in the development of the army trade tests as being a step
in the right direction. As a matter of fact, from the point of
view of method, the trade tests' statistical technique is open to
serious criticism. To be sure, the present writer must be held re-
sponsible for the statistical method which was used in constructing
trade tests, but he would justify it on the ground of practical
necessity. Mere practical usefulness does not appear to justify a
place for this particular technique as reputable scientific method.
In an earlier article in this JOURNAL," it has been pointed out
that the barrenness of the field of mental tests is due in some
measure to the extent to which statistical technique has been per-
mitted to compromise the results of test measurement as descriptive
material. Certainly, the creation of a "statistics" which shall be
simply a tool in the solution of a technical and practical problem
can not do other than accomplish further distortion of the actual
phenomena which are observed. Pressey would even use bis sta-
tistics to produce bi-modal distributions in the observed phe-
nomena, because, as he says, "A normal distribution of scores is
not to be desired if the greatest efficiency is sought."
To sum up my first point, it seems to me that if we make
practical efficiency the criterion by which our statistical technique
is judged, we shall encourage the use of innumerable methods,
faulty or merely expedient, which have, to be sure, served a pur-
pose, but which can not be genuinely productive in a scientific
sense.
2 Vol. XVII, No. 3, p. 57.
184 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
In the second place, this point of view results naturally in a
tendency to ignore the necessity for analysis, and for the isola-
tion of variable factors in connection with a test problem. Con-
cretely, this tendency finds its expression in the existence of
"omnibus" tests and the like, methods which are concerned only
with the total score and the immediate desire for successful
prediction.
These first two points of criticism gain added significance as
they are related to a third point, namely, that this point of view,
with its approval of the expeditious, with its tendency to warp the
observed data in its statistical machinery, with its inclination to
discard as irrelevant and academic the laborious isolation of
factors and definition of concepts, must invariably limit the possi-
bility of significant contributions to psychological science from the
mental test field.
The future of mental tests, even as applied science, hinges on
the capacity of the field to produce contributions that will give us
more light on the general problems of mental adjustment. These
contributions will be in the highest sense of theoretical importance.
It is therefore, to my mind, unfortunate that there should exist a
point of view towards statistical technique that will ultimately
bring about increased scientific sterility of the field.
The best progress in the field of mental tests can not come from
considering that "mental testing is not a descriptive but a tech-
nical science." Like any other science, the science of mental tests
must be descriptive before it can be technical. We are urged to
accept as a slogan : " No hypotheses, as thoroughly empirical treat-
ment as may be!" It would be more suitable to urge at the
present time, "No problem that does not test out an hypothesis."
Psychologists could well afford to ignore for the time being the
practical applications of mental tests. These have been ade-
quately established and there will always be technicians to work
out refinements in practical procedure. The need to-day is for a
clarification of the concepts and hypotheses underlying the mental
test field; which may in time lead to the development of a theory
of measurement that will be consistent with our best knowledge of
mental life.
That there must be a change in mental test theory and mental
tests methods is evident. The restlessness of workers in the field
is certain indication that some change will come. But the change
must be an orderly one, based upon scientific principles and upon
the most exact methods that exist or that can be devised. "Direct
action" can not hold more promise in the realm of science than
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION 185
I
in the field of politics; and the most productive reconstruction in
mental test theory and technique will be one that serves to in-
crease the contribution of mental testing as descriptive science.
BEABDSLEY RUML.
CARNEGIE CORPORATION.
THE TWENTY-NINTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION
THE twenty-ninth annual meeting of the American Psychological
Association marked an unusually well attended and enthu-
siastic gathering of American students of psychology. Because of
-Chicago's central location and probably because of the fact that the
American Association for the Advancement of Science also held its
meetings in the midwest metropolis, the registration was unusually
large. It would be rash of course to attempt to correlate the fresh
and eager attitude of the assembled psychologists with the proverbial
breezes of Chicago, but possibly there is some relation between the
enthusiasm of the psychologists and the remedial effects of time
upon the disturbances of war. The calmer consideration of problems
scientific and pedagogic gave ample evidence of our passing on from
war time events. In truth, the various discussions during the several
sessions manifested stronger currents of psychological and general
.scientific interest than has been the case in the past few years.
The session began on Tuesday morning, December 28, and ended
the Thursday morning following. At times the meetings were rather
bewildering, since, because of the combined sessions with sections
I and sometimes Q of the American Association for the Advance-
ment of Science, there were as many as four sessions at once. All
meetings were held in the Law Building of the University of Chicago.
The meetings were announced in the programmes as follows : Tues-
day morning a session for general psychology ; in the afternoon of the
same day two sessions were scheduled, one in experimental psychol-
ogy paralleling a joint session with sections I and Q of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science. "Wednesday afternoon
there was scheduled the address of Dr. Yerkes, the retiring vice-
president of section I which was articulated with the psychological
association meeting, advertised as a session for social psychology.
Dr. Yerkes spoke on "The Relation of Psychology to Medicine," and
-advocated the establishment of psychology in the medical curriculum
as a basic medical science.
On Wednesday afternoon the session on social psychology was
' followed by the business meeting. In the evening the annual dinner
186 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
of the American Psychological Association was held in Ida Noyes
Hall, the palatial women's social center building of the University of
Chicago. Following the dinner, the president of the Association, Dr.
Shepherd Ivory Franz, delivered an excellent and important address,
and later in the evening a period was devoted to some reminiscences
of Wilhelm Wundt by Messrs. Cattell, Judd, Scott, and Pintner.
The programme for Thursday morning announced a session for
comparative psychology. In addition to these meetings announced
on the American Psychological Association programme, the Ameri-
can Association for the Advancement of Science programme
scheduled a joint meeting of section I (psychology) and Q (educa-
tion) for Tuesday morning, and a "Symposium on Problems of
Psychology" for Thursday morning. The psychologists who spoke
at the symposium and the titles of their papers were: Dr. Cattell,
"Practical Psychology;" President Scott, "Psychology in Indus-
try;" Professor Judd, "Problems in Psychology;" Dr. Yerkes,
"Problems of Psychology."
In commenting upon the meetings it is necessary to distinguish
between the session headings of the programme and the contents of
the papers read. For the two things, namely, the session headings
and the contents of the papers did not always agree. Thus, the
session announced for comparative psychology listed only two papers
out of a total of six, which were reports on animals. Also, out of
seven papers listed under industrial psychology and tests, only two
were industrial in nature. To these two papers may be added a
third on advertising media, strangely appearing under the heading
of comparative psychology ; these three constituted the total number
of papers on industrial and commercial topics. As no doubt there
is a definite correlation between the interests and occupations of
American psychologists and the content of the papers read at this
meeting, it is interesting to enumerate the papers by topic. Tests
and guidance, 22 papers, plus 7 in the psychological section of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science ; experimental
psychology, 19 papers, 8 of which were on learning, 2 on auditory
phenomena, 5 on oculo-visual investigations and the rest on scat-
tered topics; general psychology, 7 papers; social psychology 3; and
animal psychology 2.
Judging from the association meeting, it is not incorect to say
that American psychologists are for the most part tremendously in-
terested in tests of various sorts, although there are numerous indi-
cations of serious dissatisfaction with much of the testing work done.
How decided is the disapproval of much of the test work could
be gathered from the remarks of Professor Judd, who spoke in the
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION 187
symposium of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science. Professor Judd uttered a definite warning against much of
the work in tests, making many references to dangers to psychology
as a science. The theme of his remarks was that the persons working
with tests are not careful enough to provide themselves with a basic
scientific psychological foundation. Unfortunately Professor Judd
made no specific recommendation as to what constitutes a scientific
foundation for testing work, although as a general proposition his
argument seemed decisive and compelling. The general impression
gathered from his remarks seemed to be that he was referring to a
more intense acquaintance with the principles and technique of ex-
perimental psychology, presumably in the sense of physiological
psychology. This opinion was expressed by the speaker in the form
of an assertion to the effect that mental testers were not giving
enough attention to fundamental explanatory phases of psychologi-
cal science. Now although there are few who would disagree with
Professor Judd, as to his general thesis, the psychologists interested
in mental test work can not apparently find any very close relation
between the introspective experimental psychology and their par-
ticular problems.
Psychologists in general will be more than pleased, however, to
observe the growing sentiment against the unchecked development
of uncritical testing work. Dr. Yerkes, who spoke after Professor
Judd in the symposium, was very positive in his remarks concerning
the necessity for a critical analysis of mental testing. Dr. Yerkes
referred to the fact that many testers were not psychologists at all,
and were unfamiliar with psychological principles. As evidence of
the precariousness of much of the testing work we might refer to the
uncritical handling of such concepts as superior and inferior as ap-
plied to races in the papers on the comparative testing of American
white and other subjects. The unscientific and probably unknown
bias concerning the superiority of one's own race is responsible for
much innocent shifting of emphasis, even when the reporter's own
data are unequivocal in discouraging conclusions of superiority and
inferiority.
Professor Dodge, who opened the discussion, following the pres-
entation of the symposium papers, apparently stimulated by a sug-
gestion made at another session that we substitute more Freudian
material for the physiological psychology, made an impassioned plea
for the conservation of the old materials in psychology. He con-
nected this point with the problem of mental testing, in that he
considered physiological psychology as a valuable basis for any
application of psychology. From a strictly scientific standpoint the
188 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
problem of providing a critical explanatory basis for mental testing-
and other psychological application is not that of abiding by any
tradition, as Professor Dodge's plea may be superficially interpreted,
but rather to base psychological applications upon verified psycho-
logical hypotheses. And so it is significant to observe that the
active work in experimental psychology is either concerned with
problems in learning or with more definite determinations of the
physical stimulating conditions of the person performing visual or
auditory actions.
After listening to the various discussions at the several sessions,
one is severely impressed by the fact that comparatively few psychol-
ogists are interested in bringing to the surface the theoretical implica-
tions of their experimental work. Thus, for example, it was possible
for Professor Dodge to make his plea for traditional psychology, al-
though his own experimental work has been for the most part directed
toward achieving a better control over stimulating conditions to the
end that an exact correlation could be made between such stimulat-
ing conditions and the reactions to them, and thus is not traditional
at all. In other words, Professor Dodge does not take account of the
differences between his own objective methods and the less valuable
introspectionism. To the writer it seems that much of the difference
between those who knowingly adhere to an objectivistic position and
most of those who work in sensdry experimental psychology, is that
the former do, while the latter do not make plain to themselves that
they are not working merely with manifestations, 'but that their data
are the correlations which they record between definite forms of
reactions and specific stimuli. This fact comes out clearly when we
observe that, although the experimentalist does actually correlate
stimuli and responses, he thinks of himself as studying something
with which he is not dealing directly, namely, consciousness, and so
the learning as well as the sensory experimentalists still believe that
they must offer neural explanations for their results, although it
seems a far cry from the actual learning act to a hypothetical synap-
tic connection. It is but natural, of course, that the nervous system
should serve as the tangible parallel and representative of the invisi-
ble and elusive consciousness.
That psychologists in general are not very much interested in so-
called theoretical problems is attested by the fact that little discussion
followed the reading of the papers in the general session. The prac-
tical temper of the psychologists present was markedly evident since
it required the stimulus of Dr. Cattell's remarks on the statistical
treatment of data, in his paper on the "Validity of Votes," to invoke
any comment at all. This paper, and Professor Thurston 's paper on
"What Should Be Taught in the Introductory Course," were the
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION 189
only ones of the general session that aroused the assembled psycholo-
gists to expressive activity. Thurston's suggestion to introduce the
beginning student to some phases of human behavior aside from the
simple sensory reactions met with quite violent opposition. The
comment following Thurston's paper indicated quite clearly that
whatever may be the condition in our institutions concerning the
gathering and testing of scientific information the work of teaching
will be very well guarded indeed. Are American psychologists not
interested in the development of new attitudes and in the interpreta-
tive correlation of psychological facts gathered in the various domains
of observation? Possibly our teachers are merely depending upon
the workers in other countries to initiate problems and to develop
fundamental principles, for it is impossible to believe otherwise than
that without such work there would soon be nothing to teach so far
as principles are concerned. And who would be so imprudent as to
deny the connection between psychological principles and the
techniques which make it possible for us to have facts at all ?
And yet the lack of interest in theoretical problems does not
signify any profound absorption in experimental psychology. This
fact appeared evident from the scanty attendance upon the experi-
mental sessions, whereas the test meetings were crowded. The vogue
of the metal-instrument psychology is not flourishing and for the
reason that it is generally appreciated that even with metal instru-
ments we are unable to obtain data concerning processes which are
invisible and intangible. That is to say, psychologists are apparently
unwilling to go on with the old problems set by the epistemological
physiologists of a half century ago. But on the other hand, the lull
in the development of experimental psychology is due no doubt to
the failure to appreciate generally that the newer problems involv-
ing responses to stimuli can be advantageously cultivated with the
aid of laboratory equipment. For by means of instruments we can
certainly refine our observations of stimulating conditions and the
reactions of the person. For the advantage of psychology we must
note that complaint can only be made against the old parallelistic
experimentation, and in truth there is to-day far too little work done
in the psychological laboratory, although obviously human psychol-
ogy must be largely a field science.
An irony of science it is, as we have formerly implied, that the
very psychologists who hint at the lack of interest in experimental
psychology, by referring to the lure of the spectacular and the at-
tractiveness of popular applause, such as are met with by the tester
and those who in general apply psychology, are themselves responsi-
ble for the backwardness of fundamental psychological experimenta-
tion. As we have indicated above, the failure to appreciate overtly
190 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
that experimental psychology is now working in the service of
objective science and not still searching for a soul, and the neglect
to proclaim this fact, is to the largest extent responsible for the
failure of development in the experimental field. Signalized in this
failure by the fact that laboratory work in psychology is quite
strictly confined to the physiological sort and seldom includes a
problem in the so-ealled higher mental processes. Although there
must be great temptation in popular applause, it is only fair to say
that psychologists desert the laboratory problems in order to turn
to testing work, mainly because test statistics appear definite and
certain. Unfortunately, however, the statistical statements are some-
times mistaken for actual psychological phenomena.
Of especial interest is it to note that the prevailing tone among
psychologists who do discuss principles is objective, and the prevail-
ing tendency is to couch discussion in psychobiological terms. Al-
though there was visible in several papers an attempt to set one's
own introspectionism against the behaviorism of others and vice
versa, still there was so much reinterpretation of fact and principle
as to allow more than a casual coming together upon the same
ground. Especially noticeable was this tendency in a paper by
Professor E. G.- Boring on the "Common-Sense of the Stimulus-
Error." This writer, while aligning himself with the introspection -
ists, made such an analysis of the facts of the cutaneous limen of
duality, as to make his position practically indistinguishable from
that of another writer, calling himself an objectivist. Professor Bor-
ing's analysis was directed against both the extreme introspect ion -
ists and the extreme behaviorists, in that it brought to light both the
stimulus and the various stages in the response-situation. "When
such an analysis is made the difference in positions vanishes com-
pletely, although the names of the factors in a stimulus-response
situation vary at the hands of the different writers. Here lies the
value of actively attending to one's psychological principles, for
not only does such an inventory lead to an understanding between
different workers, but it also paves the way for much needed co-
operation.
The keynote to current psychological thought and observation, as
it appears to the writer, was sounded in Dr. Franz's presidential
address. Dr. Franz entitled his paper "Cerebral-Mental Parallel-
ism," and planned in it to indicate the uselessness of such a problem
in psychological work. Dr. Franz's paper was the report of some
cases which appeared rather definitely to indicate the lack of de-
pendence of mental activity upon specific cortical centers, although
of course there is a general correlation of such activity with the
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION 191
cortex. The substance of the address may be summed up in two
propositions. (1) The destruction of cortical tissue need not neces-
sarily result in a destruction of mental activity. Individuals whose
defective brains were studied after death had previously reported no
loss of imagery. And (2) even when cortical lesions are correlated
with mental disturbances the subject may experience a restoration
of mental function without improvement of the cortical tissue. Dr.
Franz believes that mental activity consists of a series of habits
which the individual acquires. Now when some of these habits are
destroyed or impaired they may be reconstituted, although the
cortical lesions may remain. It is not difficult to see how this can
occur, if we remember that an act can be constituted of various kinds
of individual sensori-motor coordinations. In one case quoted by the
speaker a surprising amount of cortical tissue was deteriorated in a
person who for several years before death had enjoyed a renewal
of much of his mental and intellectual activities. In the conclusion
of his address Dr. Franz strongly urged the psychologists present to
look favorably upon researches in physiological and neural psychol-
ogy, since after all the facts seemed to indicate that psychological
reactions involved the total operation of the person. To the writer
it seemed that no psychologist who heard the address could fail to
be impressed with the importance of its contents for the psycho-
physiological problem. With the study and description of more cases
such as were presented in Dr. Franz's (paper and with the sub-
stantiation of Dr. Franz 's results there must come a general accept-
ance of the unitary character of the psychological reaction, and a
greater appreciation of the place of the nervous centers as coordi-
nate members among a larger series of factors constituting a reaction.
Dr. Franz's paper shows the way to a confirmation of the objective
viewpoint in psychology and a revival of investigation in the funda-
mental principles of psychology. It certainly indicates the way to
a study of the reflex and general sensorial processes from another
standpoint than that of the old introspective psychology.
As a most fitting memorial to the late master-spirit of psychol-
ogy, Wilhelm "Wundt, the president of the association, called upon
several members who had had contact with Professor Wundt, to
speak of his life and work. Appropriately enough President Franz
first called upon Dr. Cattell, who was an assistant in Wundt 's labora-
tory and who is himself a brilliant figure in the annals of American
psychology. Dr. Cattell spoke briefly of Wundt 's personal life and
then gave a very impressive picture of the profound and far reach-
ing scholar. Professors Judd and Pintner spoke mainly of the man
and teacher, emphasizing the humbleness and kindness of one of the
world's foremost scientists when dealing with his students. Presi-
192 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
dent Scott of Northwestern spoke impressively of the prolonged in-
terests which Wundt maintained in any subject in which he was
interested at all. Thus he pointed out how Wundt continued to
revise his early works until they reached as many as six editions.
It was this prolonged and vital interest in whatever he undertook
that Dr. Scott suggested as the factor which above all made for the
greatness of the man. A number of the reminiscences clearly indi-
cated the long contact which Professor Wundt maintained with the
development of psychology as a science. Especially was this fact
brought out by Dr. Cattell's statement that in his early contact with
Wundt the latter was of the opinion that psychological experiments
could only be performed with trained psychologists. Genuinely
instructive was the reference made by one of the speakers to the
wide range of Wundt 'a interests. Mention was made of his ponderous
works in logic and ethics, which indeed emphasizes the contrast in
scope of interest among scholars which academic custom dictates in
our country and in Europe.
At the business meeting held on Wednesday afternoon the elec-
tion was announced of Professor Margaret Floy Washburn, of
Vassar College, as president of the American Psychological Asso-
ciation for the year 1921. Professor W. S. Hunter, of the Uni-
versity of Kansas, and Professor G. F. Arps, of Ohio State Uni-
versity, were elected to the council of the association. The
association nominated Professor W. B. Pillsbury, of the University
of Michigan, and Professor G. M. Stratton, of the University of
California, to represent the Association in the National Research
Council, while Professor E. K. Strong, Jr., of the Carnegie Institute
of Technology, is to represent the American Psychological Associa-
tion in the council of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science. As officers for section I of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science, the election was announced of Professor
E. A. Bott, of Toronto University, as Vice-president; Professor F.
N. Freeman, of the University of Chicago, as Secretary, and Professor
L. W. Cole, of the University of Colorado, as chairman of the section
committee. The Association elected 35 new members, increasing the
membership to 428.
Incomplete is a record of the twenty-ninth meeting of the Ameri-
can Psychological Association without recording the names of two
distinguished visitors at the sessions, one, the newly inducted suc-
cessor of James and Munsterberg in Harvard's department of psy-
chology, Professor William McDougall, who was welcomed to mem-
bership in the association, and the other, Professor G. A. Jaeder-
holm, of Sweden. J. R. KANTOB.
INDIANA UNIVIRSITT.
BOOK REVIEWS 193
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Les Classiques de la Philosophic; publics sous la direction de MM.
VICTOR DELBOS, ANDR LALANDE, XAVIER LEON. Paris:
Librairie Armand Colin.
VIII. BERKELEY: Les Principes de la Connaissance Humaine,
traduction de Charles Renouvier. 1920. Pp. xii -f- 107.
IX. BERKELEY : La Siris, traduction de Georges Beaulavon et
Dominique Parodi. 1920. Pp. viii + 159.
XII. MAINE DE BIRAN: Memoire sur les Perceptions Obscures,
suivi de la discussion avec Royer-Collard et de trois
notes inedites. 1920. Pp. xii + 66.
Les Classiques de la Philosophic, of which, three volumes have
appeared, is a new series designed to put into the hands of French
readers some of the philosophical classics which at present are un-
available to them. Descartes, Malebranche, Condillac, and Maine
de Biran are the French authors represented in the announced list,
and Hobbes, Berkeley, and Kant are those of whom translations are
to appear. Since the series ia intended merely to fill in gaps in the
literature formerly accessible, some of the more important of the
writings of those authors are not included. The price per volume
is moderate, varying from three to five francs. The texts are edited
critically, with carefully prepared footnotes on the various readings
of the successive revisions of the works. Each volume is accom-
panied by a brief biography of the philosopher and an excellent
bibliographical notice.
The volume of extracts from the still largely unpublished works
of Maine de Biran gives us one of his main essays in psychology,
and shows both his dependence upon Condillac and his departure
from Condillac in the direction of mysticism. This essay is followed
by four brief extracts from the manuscripts in the possession of the
Institute of France, three never before published, in which extracts
the attitude of Maine de Biran is shown towards four other psy-
chological authors of his day, Royer-Collard, Bonstetten, Reid, and
Dugald Stewart.
The two volumes of translations of Berkeley are interesting as
evidence of the place held by Berkeley in French thought. It is
startling to learn that, whereas Siris appeared in an earlier French
translation as long ago as 1745, that is, but one year after its first
publication in English, the Principles never was put into French
until 1889. The 1889 translation is indeed the only translation ever
made into French. It was made by Renouvier, and originally ap-
peared in sections in five successive issues of La Critique Philoso-
phique, of which Renouvier was at that time editor. This present
194 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
reprint of Renouvier's translation, into which only minor correc-
tions have been introduced, is consequently the first time that that
important and basic document in modern idealism has been avail-
able readily and in book form to those who read only French. It
is perhaps hazardous to rest any conclusion upon these dates. But
one may well wonder whether the order of translation was at all
due to the congruity of the contents of the two works to the current
tradition in French philosophy. Malebranche repudiated the doc-
trine of the Principles as foreign to his own thought ; but he might
not have objected so strongly to the Siris which appeared after his
death and contained a more Platonic type of idealism. At least,
whatever the explanation may be, the amazing facts are that, while
the Siris was almost immediately translated, the Principles had to
wait nearly two centuries for its first French translation and more
than two centuries for the publication of that translation in book
form. Considering the much greater importance of the Principles,
one can not but wonder at these dates.
Students of Berkeley may well spend a few hours in reading
Renouvier's French translation of the Principles. The effect pro-
duced is somewhat different from that obtained by going over the
English original. This difference is due primarily to the use of
esprit as the equivalent for mind. Descartes, with whom the modern
psychological approach to metaphysics may be viewed as beginning,
used dme about as frequently as esprit, both of which words are
usually translated as mind by Haldane and Ross. Locke, even
though following Descartes in his proof of the existence of the self,
avoided the use of the word soul, probably because soul had retained
a theological connotation lacking to the French dme. Yet mind
had for Locke the same substantial meaning as dme for Descartes:
It was a realm of being, a receptacle in which ideas are deposited,
an order of existence ontologically different from that of external
objects. And Berkeley, even while denying the existence of Locke's
external objects as meaningless, retained his supposition of the sub-
stantial self, which he more often called mind than soul. Hence
when the French translation of Berkeley's Principles employs esprit
as the equivalent for mind, Berkeley's metaphysics loses much of
the sense of substantial and solid being, and becomes more delicate,
more airy, more spiritual. That is, one passes from the French dme
to the English mind, and then back to the French esprit, with the
result that idealism is not so much insistence upon a kind of funda-
mental substance as revelation of the importance of meaning, of
implication, of logical connections. In the French translation of
Siris, the word mind is consistently translated as intelligence, which
further adds to the changed emphasis in Berkeley; yet this work is
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS 195
already in English somewhat Platonic, and makes such a rendering
quite justifiable. The reader of these French translations of Eng-
lish classics can not but be impressed with the subtility of language
in the proper rendering of ideas ; and he may wonder how often in
the history of philosophy certain views have been adopted because
of the words available for expression.
STERLING P. LAMPRECHT.
COLUMBIA UNIYXBSITT.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE, July-August, 1920. La sensibitite,
^intelligence, et la volonte dans tons les faits psychologiques (pp.
1-57) : FR. PAULHAN. -" Sensibility, intelligence, and will are not
. . . groups of facts, well delimited and separated from one another,
any more than they are products of three distinct metaphysical
faculties." They are to be found everywhere in the life of the
spirit. L'imagination pure et la vie esthetique (pp. 58-87) : J.
SEGOND. -"Esthetic life represents in its own fashion and implies
in its work a kind of mathematics of quality ... a kind of physics
of quality ... a kind of history of pure quality." Matiere et societt
(pp. 88-122) : M. HALBWACHS. - An analysis in defense and clarifi-
cation of the following definition of the working class: "the group
of men who, in order to acquit themselves of their task, must turn
themselves towards matter and pass out of society. ' ' La Scolastique
(pp. 123-141) : P. MASSON-OURSEL. -Through comparative study of
occidental and oriental scholasticism seeks to show that scholasticism
is not merely an episode but a necessary phase of thought. Oriental
scholasticism like the occidental form possesses three chief char-
acters: "the exposition of thought under the form of commentary,
the dialectic method, and the belief in the value of systematization,
with this corollary: the position of the philosophical problem as a
classification of categories." Analyses et Comptes rendus. Ettore
Galli, Nel regno del conoscere e del ragionare: R. GUNON. Columbia
University, Studies in the History of Ideas: P. M-0. Irving Bab-
bitt, Rousseau and Romanticism: P. MASSON-OURSEL. E. Seilliere,
Les origines romanesques de la morale et de la politique romantiques:
P. MASSON-OURSEL. Th. Ziehen, Lehrbuch der Logik auf positivis-
tischer Grundlage, mit Beruecksichtigung der Geschichte der
Logik: P. MASSON-OURSEL. Leon Daudet, Le monde des images:
FR. PAULHAN. J. Varendonck, La psychologic du temoignage:
P. MASSON-OURSEL. J. Varendonck, Recherches sur les societe*
d'enfants: E. CRAMAUSSEL. Pierre Dufrenne, La reforme de I'ecole
primaire: E. CRAMAUSSEL. Revue des periodiquei.
196 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Durant, Drake, Arthur 0. Lovejoy, James Bissett Pratt, Arthur
K. Rogers, George Santayana, Roy Wood Sellars, C. A. Strong.
Essays in Critical Realism : A Cooperative Study of the Problem
of Knowledge. London : Macmillan & Co. 1920. Pp. vii -f 244.
Foster, George Burman. Christianity in Its Modern Expression.
(Edited by Douglas Clyde Macintosh.) New York: The Mac-
millan Co. 1921. Pp. xiii -f 279. $3.75.
Hollander, Bernard. In Search of the Soul, and the Mechanism of
Thought, Emotion and Conduct : A Treatise in Two Volumes con-
taining a Brief but Comprehensive History of the Philosophical
Speculations and Scientific Researches from Ancient Times to the
Present Day, as well as an Original Attempt to Account for the
Mind and Character of Man and Establish the Principles of a
Science of Ethology. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner,
& Co. New York: E. P. Dutton. No date. Pp. 516, 361. $20
per set.
NOTES AND NEWS
A MEETING of the Aristotelian Society was held on February 7,
Lord Haldane, vice-president, in the chair. Professor R. F. A.
Hoernle read a paper on "A Plea for a Phenomenology of Mean-
ing." The task of a phenomenology of meaning is to collect and
examine all types of empirical situations in which signs function
and meaning is present. This is the more necessary as all the
higher activities and all control of social organizations depend on
the use of signs. Yet current theories are fragmentary and one-
sided. This is shown by an examination of the theories of F. C. S.
Schiller, B. Russell, Lady Welby, C. S. Peirce, G. F. Stout, A.
Meinong, and E. Husserl. A clue to a completer theory may per-
haps be found in the distinction between the indicative and the
expressive function of signs. We have the pure indicative function
when the existence of A enables us to infer the existence (or non-
existence) of B. We have the pure expressive function when an
agent makes, or utters, signs. The two functions are curiously
interlaced in intersubjective intercourse. The distinction, however,
requires to be further tested by application to various kinds of non-
verbal signs, to symbolic actions, and especially to the functions
of sounds in music.
THE Department of Psychology of the University of Oregon an-
nounces that it has met all requirements established by the Faculty
of the University, concerning library facilities, laboratory equip-
ment, courses and scholarship, and is now authorized to offer work
for the degree of doctor of philosophy.
VOL. XVIII, No 8. APRIL 14, 1921
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
URBAN 'S AXIOLOGICAL SYSTEM
I
HE recent essays on value by Professor W. M. Urban 1 give one
* of the most important contemporary discussions in this field.
Their author is preeminent in America as a philosopher who has
given both prolonged and intensive investigation to the theory of
value. At least three careful criticisms of these articles have been
published, 2 and Urban has answered two of the criticisms. 3 Never-
theless there seems to be need of another criticism. The previous
criticisms have been mainly expressions of disagreement concern-
ing one detail or another, but they have given little attention to
Urban 's system as a unity. The present paper will attempt to en-
visage Urban 's system as a system, and will show that the question-
able doctrines in his writings follow logically* from one erroneous
assumption.
The present writer is in agreement with Urban on the two most
important problems in the theory of value. We both believe that
value is irreducible to such existential categories as pleasure, satis-
faction, or causality. We both ibelieve that value is "objective in
the more than social sense"; that is, we believe that the judgment
about value gives us objective information. 5 These two points of
agreement are so fundamental that other points of disagreement
might seem relatively unimportant. There is one problem, however,
which leads to very complicated mistakes if it is incorrectly treated.
This is the logical problem as to what is the fundamental value cate-
gory. 6 Urban thinks that "ought" is the fundamental value cate-
i" Value and Existence," this JOURNAL, 13: 449-465. "Knowledge of
Value and the Value-Judgment," this JOURNAL, 13: 673-687. "Ontological
Problems of Value, ' ' this JOURNAL, 14 : 309-327.
*R. B. Perry, this JOURNAL, 14: 169-181. D. W. Fisher, this JOURNAL, 14:
570-f82. F. C. Bartlett, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 17: 117-138.
s This JOURNAL, 15 : 393-405.
* Professor Urban is the best judge whether these doctrines were con-
sciously inferred from the one erroneous assumption. Here we are concerned
only with the logical implications.
*This JOURNAL, 13: 683 and 455-460; also 12: 105-106.
e This may seem a mere technicality, but, as the following pages will show,
a mistake on this point is extraordinarily misleading. This problem is ob-
viously not ' ' just a matter of preference. ' '
197
198 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
gory. This the present writer believes to be false. From this false
assumption follow numerous errors in the structure of Urban 's
"axiology." In the following pages an attempt will be made to
show the connection betwen these errors and the doctrine that
"ought" is fundamental. It will be argued that there is error
both in the doctrine that "ought" is fundamental and in the doc-
trines which are suggested thereby. Then it will be shown that
the main truths which Urban sees can be maintained by taking
betterness as the fundamental value category, and that in this way
the difficulties and errors of Urban 's system of "axiology" can be
abolished.
II
What is the fundamental value category or universal ? Is there
only one fundamental category or are there more than one? Most
philosophers seem to have assumed rather than argued their an-
swers to these questions. English writers have usually taken the
notions of intrinsic goodness and intrinsic badness as fundamental.
Sidgwick, despite some variation of opinion in the different editions
of the Methods of Ethics, took "ought" as fundamental. So Urban
takes "ought," or perhaps "ought" and "ought not," as funda-
mental. 7 The present writer has argued elsewhere that neither
goodness nor oughtness can be taken as fundamental, and that the
fundamental value universal is intrinsic betterness. 8 A detailed
examination of Urban 's system of "axiology" will show the many
good and sufficient reasons against taking "ought" as fundamental.
In fact, one of the chief merits of Urban 'a work is that it should
for all time show the difficulties and errors involved in the assump-
tion that "ought" is fundamental.
When ought is used as a value notion, 9 it may be used in a
narrow meaning or it may be used in a wide meaning. Let us con-
sider the narrow meaning first. This is the strictly moral or ethical
meaning. As an ethical category ought has the following char-
acteristics.
1. Ought applies only to what is practically possible. "The
good is much wider than what we ought to try to produce. There
is no reason to doubt that some of the lost tragedies of ^Jschylus
T Sometimes he speaks of "ought to be" as the fundamental (this JOURNAL,
13: 463 and 681). Elsewhere he mentions both "ought" and "ought not" and
once he seems to say that "the latter is just as fundamental as the former."
This seems to refer to positive and negative value as equally fundamental (this
JOURNAL, 13: 675).
This JOURNAL, 16: 96-104.
Of course the purely hypothetical use of ought is not axiological. On this
point Urban (15: 401-402) is correct as against Perry (14: 179-180).
URBAN'S AZIOLOGICAL SYSTEM 199
were good, but we ought not to try to rewrite them, because we
should certainly fail. What we ought to do, in fact, is limited by
our powers and opportunities, whereas the good is subject to no
such limitation." 10
2. Ought does not assert either intrinsic value or extrinsic value
of its subject, but a combination of both. Whether an action ought
to be done depends on whether the totality of that act with its
motives and consequences is intrinsically better than the possible
alternative totalities. 11 Thus ought indicates what may be called
total value, that is, the value of the total situation in which the
act occurs.
3. Ought is used in at least three senses, corresponding to the
three different but similar meanings of right. It has a subjective
usage, a probable -or reasonable usage, and an objective or absolute
usage. In other words, a complete account of ought must consider
the different limitations and extensions of human knowledge in
their effect upon the determination of ought. 12
4. Ought differs from right in that ought implies uniqueness of
what is morally permissible, whereas right implies that in the given
situation some other act may be equally valuable and therefore also
right. Several acts may be as good as possible and therefore right,
but if an act ought to be done it is the single best possibility. 13
These four characteristics of ought have determined many of
Urban 's doctrines. As we shall see, Urban expressly denies that he
is using ought in the narrow ethical sense. But it will be apparent
that the characteristics of the ethical sense of ought have influenced
him nevertheless.
In the wide sense of ought, it is used in such expressions as
"ought to be." It is my contention that this meaning is simply
an unfortunately disguised and confusing equivalent for goodness
and betterness. This usage has been rather widespread, and occurs
even in such writers as G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell. 14 "Ought
to be on its own account" is used as the equivalent of intrinsic
goodness (or intrinsic positive value, as Urban phrases it). "Ought
not to be on its own account" is used for intrinsic badness (or
intrinsic negative value). Now the present writer has shown that
the notions of intrinsic goodness and badness (or positive and nega-
10 B. Russell, Philosophical Essays, page 6.
11 C. D. Broad, "The Doctrine of Consequences in Ethics," The Interna-
tional Journal of Ethics, April, 1914.
12 C. D. Broad, same article ; also B. Russell, Philosophical Essays,
pages 16-30.
is G. E. Moore, Ethics, pages 31-38.
i* G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica, page 17; B. Russell, Philosophical Essays,
pages 5-6.
200 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
tive value) are complexes of intrinsic betterness or worseness." If
X is intrinsically good or has intrinsic positive value, then by defi-
nition the being or existence of X is intrinsically better than the
non-being or non-existence of X. If X ought to be on its own ac-
count, X ought to-be rather than not-to-be. But this means that
the being of X is intrinsically better than the non-being of X. So
"ought to be" is a complex of betterness. The definitions of in-
trinsic badness or negative value have been shown to be the exact
logical converses of the above definitions.
In his first article, 16 Urban confines himself to the phrases
"ought to be" and ' ' ought not to be. ' ' But in the two later articles 47
the phrase ''ought rather" occurs. "What does "ought rather"
mean? It is clearly an expression for comparative value. When
we are speaking of intrinsic value, the usual comparative notion is
"better." How does "ought rather" differ from betterness T
Urban nowhere suggests any difference, and it seems clear that
"ought rather" means better. The only possible difference that
one could suggest is that "ought rather" suggests the narrow
ethical meaning, which Urban has explicitly ruled out.
We have now examined both the narrow ethical use of ought and
the two wide uses in "ought to be" and "ought rather." All of
these notions have been found to be analyzable into disguised forms
of betterness or into complexes depending on betterness. So it is
clear that our fundamental value notion should be betterness rather
than oughtneas.
Ill
If one takes ought as the fundamental value notion, one must
try to meet the general arguments listed above. In addition to
these troubles, there are some seven confusions or fallacies in the
theory of value, all of which are caused by the treatment of ought
as fundamental.
1. Ought encourages the blending or confusing of intrinsic and
extrinsic values. Hence the fallacy of assuming that what is true
of extrinsic value is true of intrinsic value.
2. If one asks what kinds of objects or entities are in the scale
of intrinsic value, that is a plain and specific question. But if one's
value notion tends to confuse intrinsic value with extrinsic, instru-
mental, or contributory values, then one may suppose that every
object or entity has some value. Hence one falsely concludes that
every object or entity is in the scale of intrinsic value.
i This JOURNAL, 16: 98-99. In those pages and in the present article,
"good" is used to mean what Urban calls intrinsic positive value.
"This JOURNAL, 13: 456, 457, 461, 462.
IT This JOURNAL, 13: 681; also 15: 396.
URBAN'S AXIOLOGICAL SYSTEM 201
3. In the ethical sense, what ought to be done has nothing equally
good. In other words, oughtness can not be asserted of whatever
has an alternative equal in value. Hence one may falsely conclude
that no two objects or entities are or can be equal in value.
4. In a specific situation, if action X ought to be done, then
each of the other alternatives of action X ought not to be done.
There are no actions 'between ought and ought not. So ought not
is the contradictory of ought, but only within the field or universe
of discourse of that specific situation. Hence one may falsely con-
clude that every object or entity which is in the value scale has
either intrinsic goodness (positive value) or intrinsic badness
(negative value). In this case there would be no indifferent enti-
ties in the scale of intrinsic value between the goods and the bads.
In other words there would be no objects or entities which are
intrinsically better than the bads but intrinsically worse than the
goods.
5. Ought is a rather complex term depending on intrinsic bet-
terness. Such " value qualities" as beauty also depend on intrinsic
betterness, as we shall see later. If both ought and beauty are
analyzed into their dependence on betterness, one will see the dis-
tinctness but co-ordinateness of the two notions. If ought is left
unanalyzed, the connection between ought and beauty can be only
obscured.
6. If ought is taken as fundamental, its relational characteristics
will be recognized sometimes, forgotten sometimes. If ought is
merely a disguise for betterness, the disguise can do no good but
much harm.
7. If ought is taken as fundamental, one imagines the old
dichotomy of the Is and the Ought. If one does not reduce the
Ought to the Is, then one must suppose that there is some mysterious
relation between the Is and the Ought.
Let us consider these seven difficulties as they manifest them-
selves in Urban 's writings.
IV
If one takes ought as fundamental, one may say that the mean-
ing is "ought to be on its own account." This meaning, as we have
seen, is the same as intrinsic goodness or positive value. But in the
vast majority of its uses, ought refers essentially to the value of a
further end or a larger totality of which it is an instrument or a
part. In its strict moral sense ought refers to the value an act has
in relation to the total situation of which it is a part. 18 Conse-
quently the use of ought gives a constant temptation to forget that
intrinsic value is the logical basis of the study of value.
is For proof, see the above mentioned article by C. D. Broad.
202 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
As we might expect, Urban first limits his discussion to intrinsic
value or oughtness, but subsequently he seems to forget this dis-
tinction in his main arguments. "It need scarcely be said that an
ultimate definition of value is concerned only with intrinsic value,
all extrinsic or instrumental values going back ultimately to con-
cepts of intrinsic value." 1 ' Later Urban explains that the rela-
tional characteristics of "ought rather" do not do away with the
intrinsic nature of value. In intrinsic value we shut out the rela-
tion of means to ends but not the relation of more or less. 20 But
when Urban argues about value he seems to forget all about the
qualification of value as intrinsic. Thus in one passage 21 he asserts
that wherever there is interest there is value. Now clearly this is
not true of intrinsic value. There are many things which we are
interested in only as means or instruments. So if interest is the
test of value, these things have only extrinsic value. Yet Urban
uses this argument to prove that all objects or entities have a place
on the scale of intrinsic 22 value. This fallacy was caused by the
confusion of extrinsic values with intrinsic values, and this con-
fusion seems to have been caused by the use of ought as funda-
mental. 23
From the confusion of intrinsic and extrinsic values, there fol-
lows logically what we may call Urban 's Law of Universality. This
is the doctrine that "every object has some place in the world of
value." "Every object falls under the category of value just as
necessarily as under the category of being." 24 In other words, no
object or entity (whether existent or not) is "value-free."
We must distinguish two possible interpretations of this law.
In the light of its context and the use which Urban makes of it,
it seems to mean that every object has a place in the scale of in-
trinsic value. 25 On this interpretation the law would be very im-
portant, if true. But we shall see that it is not true. On the other
interpretation, Urban may mean merely that every object has some
This JOURNAL, 13 : 452.
20 This JOUENAL, 13 : 681.
21 This JOUBNAL, 13 : 675-676.
22 He does not say on this page whether it is intrinsic or extrinsic value.
But the context clearly requires the assumption that he is proving something
about intrinsic value.
23 Another instance of the confusion of intrinsic and extrinsic values is
found in the remark that ' ' we can deduce the value of an object from its nature
as little as we can its existence" (13: 674).
s* This JOUBNAL, 13 : 685 and 675-677.
2" This JOUBNAL, 13: 452-460 and 681.
URBAN'S AXIOLOGICAL SYSTEM 203
value. In this case, the law would perhaps be true, but too unim-
portant for the use which Urban makes of it. Urban nowhere ex-
plicitly states which interpretation should be followed, but we may
reject this second interpretation for the following reason. To say
that an object has some value may mean either that the object is
itself in the scale of intrinsic value or it may mean that the object
has certain relations to something else which is in the scale of in-
trinsic value. If an object has no value intrinsically but is a cause
or a part of something which is in the scale of intrinsic value, then
the object may be called extrinsically valuable. I know of no proof
that every object is actually a cause or a part of an intrinsic value,
but clearly every object might be such. But this is unimportant. It
is surely a trivial assertion to say that every object is or might be
either in the scale of intrinsic value or among the causes or parts of
intrinsic values. What we wish to learn from a study of value is
knowledge concerning what objects are in the scale of intrinsic
value and what are their comparative values. So we are forced to
conclude that Urban means not his second interpretation, but the
first one to the effect that every object is in the scale of intrinsic
value.
Urban 's proof for this law of universality is as follows : 26 "All ob-
jects, as objects, are of interest either actually or potentially, and
wherever there is interest there is value." Several objections might
be made to this argument, but the most important objection is as
follows : If we grant that interest proves value, 27 what sort of value
does any sort of interest prove ? Does it prove intrinsic value ? It
seems that there are many objects which we are interested in only as
means, instruments, or parts. So this type of interest can not prove
intrinsic value but only extrinsic value. If we were interested in ob-
jects only on their own account and never on account of their results,
the present objection would be out of place. To argue from the as-
sumed universality of interest of any sort to the universality of in-
trinsic value is clearly fallacious.
I know of no valid proof that every object is in the scale of in-
trinsic value. This is no place to argue the very difficult problem
concerning the inclusions and exclusions of the scale of intrinsic
value, but let us consider a few examples. Urban likes to dwell on
Meinong's "round square," an impossible object but one to which
Urban attributes value. 28 Probably few people have attributed value
to round squares. Of course the mental process of thinking about
26 This JOURNAL, 13 : 675-676.
27 Surely Urban should give some proof for this assumption, since he does
not agree with Perry that value is to be denned in relation to interest.
ss This JOUENAL, 13 : 676 and 679.
204 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
round squares did have a certain extrinsic value (positive or
negative) in the formation of the theories of Meinong and Urban.
But do round squares themselves have any intrinsic value? The
present writer must confess his inability to think of them as being
intrinsically better or worse than anything. Then let us consider the
rather numerous numbers. Does every number have a place in the
scale of intrinsic value? Does 12 have intrinsic positive value and
does 13 have intrinsic negative value? It would be unfair to ask
Urban to give the relative value of all numbers, but surely he should
explain the value of the more frequent numbers. Or shall we not
say that the scale of intrinsic value does not include numbers among
its members ? So there are some objects of thought which are not in
the scale of intrinsic value, and Urban 's law is false.
VI
What may be called the law of inequality is stated by Urban in
the following terms : ' ' Of any two values one must be greater than
the other." 28 "When any two value objects are brought into rela-
tion, one must be higher than the other." 30 Urban seems to think
that this follows logically from the fact that values form a "system
of higher and lower." 81 But of course the logic of relations and
series does not warrant any such inference. There are "series of
levels" in which the members of any given "level" are in some
specified sense equal or equivalent to one another. 32 In other series
this is not the case. So it is a purely empirical question to be investi-
gated whether or not the value scale is a series of levels. Conse-
quently Urban 's supposed law is entirely without proof.
Apparently Urban was led into this theory by the following facta.
In dealing with the moral use of ought, we say that X ought to be
done only if the doing of X stands out as better than every alterna-
tive. If another alternative is just as good, we say that either is
right** So if an act ought to be done, no other act can be equally
good. On the supposition that ought is the fundamental value no-
tion, the law of inequality would perhaps be plausible. 84
Empirically it must be admitted that many objects seem to be
"This JOURNAL, 13: 677-678.
oThis JOURNAL, 13: 677.
si This JOUBNAL, 13: 677.
2 See, for example, J. Boyce in the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sci-
ence*, Vol. I., pages 118-119.
G. E. Moore, Ethics, pages 31-38.
s* G. E. Moore, Ethics, pages 35-36. Even if ought were fundamental, it
might still be the case that two actions which ought not to be done were equally
objectionable, and so equal in value.
URBAN'S AXIOLOGICAL SYSTEM 205
equally valuable. It would require strong proof to offset this seem-
ing. No proof has been given. 35
VII
There is another doctrine which we may call the law of duality.
This is stated by Urban as part of his law of universality, but it is
really separate in meaning. According to this theory every object
in the world of value is of positive or negative value. There is noth-
ing in between the goods or positive values and the bads or negative
values. 36 Let us restate this law. We may say that there is no entity
which is intrinsically better than every intrinsic bad, but intrinsically
worse than every intrinsic good. Is this law true ?
Urban himself gives no proof for this law. But it would follow
logically from the following facts about ought. Among the alterna-
tives in a moral choice, there are none which come between the act
which ought to be done and the acts which ought not to be done.
Inside the group of those alternatives, whatever is not what ought to
be done is what ought not to be done. So here a law of duality does
hold. But this does not prove that intrinsic positive value or good-
ness is the contradictory of negative value or badness. 37 Other proof
there is none.
Urban 's law of duality might be proved by his law of inequality.
But, as we have seen this law of inequality is false. An entity is in-
different, in the sense of being between the intrinsic goods and the
bads, if its being or existence is intrinsically equal in value to its non-
being or non-existence. This would mean that its being is neither
better nor worse intrinsically than its non-being. 38 But if nothing
is equal in value to anything else, then nothing could be indifferent
in this sense. The notion of indifference within the value scale is
defined by value equality, so if there were no value equality there
would be no indifference in this sense. Since we have seen that
there is value equality, there may be indifference within the value
scale.
It seems clear that bare negativity, non-being, or non-existence
(however these categories are explained) can never involve either
intrinsic goodness or intrinsic badness. Yet merely negative facts
seem to be on the scale of intrinsic value. Concerning an intrinsic
evil we say that its non-existence would be better intrinsically than
as Note the reference to ' ' equivalence ' ' in Urban '9 earlier Valuation,
page 142.
se This JOURNAL, 13 : 675.
37 As Fisher has pointed out (this JOURNAL, 14: 574), there is a plain in-
consistency in Urban 's remarks on this point.
s* This JOURNAL, 16 : 98-99.
206 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ita existence. Its non-existence is neither good nor bad intrinsically,
but is between the goods and the bads. So the law of duality can not
be true.**
VIII
If ought is left unanalyzed and "fundamental," then its- relation
to the other value categories is seriously obscured. As an example,
let us consider beauty and its relation to ought. Now ought depends
on betterness but on total betterness. Ought can be determined only
when reflection has investigated the consequences of an act and reck-
oned with all of the ascertainable values. Beauty is a category not
involving total values in this way. If the contemplation of a work of
art has intrinsic value, we may say that the work of art is beautiful
irrespective of the moral, economic, or other consequences involved.
So a work of art may be beautiful even though it may be condemned
as a work which ought not to be produced or contemplated. The
esthetic judgment deals with the intrinsic value of a somewhat iso-
lated experience and it neglects the extrinsic or instrumental values
which may be involved. Thus both ought and beauty depend on in-
trinsic betterness but in quite different ways. 40 The difference is
that ought is based on a wider survey of values. Hence it may be
argued that if ought and beauty conflict (that is, if a beautiful ob-
ject ought not to be produced or contemplated), beauty must give
way as the narrower concept.
Urban misunderstands this complicated relationship, and says
that beauty is a subjective "quality" which is felt, whereas ought is
something objectively judged. 41 But there is an esthetic judgment
as well as an esthetic feeling, and there is a feeling of oughtness as
well as a judgment of oughtness. Urban seems to treat ought as be-
ing on an entirely different plane from beauty. Beauty, he thinks, is
a subjective value quality, whereas ought is objective value. But
since both ought and beauty are analyzable (though in different,
* Urban 'a remarks on the value of non-existence are partially based on a
natural misunderstanding of a sentence by the present writer in a one page ab-
stract (this JOURNAL, 12: 105-106). I had said: "All facto about non-existence
are equal in value. (Equal in value means neither better nor worse.) " Urban
quotes this once in a slightly altered form (13: 678). Then he changes it en-
tirely in the quotation: "All facts about non-existence are neither better nor
worse" (13: 679). My own doctrine is: "all of the negative or non-existential
facts in the value scale are indifferent or neither good nor bad" intrinsically.
(This JOURNAL, 16: 98.) Equal in value may be denned to mean neither better
nor worse than one another. Obviously one would not assert value equality of
what is entirely outside the scale of value.
> For a very brief discussion, see this JOURNAL, 16: 102-103.
41 This JOURNAL, 13 : 456.
URBAN 'S AXIOLOGICAL SYSTEM 207
ways) into complexes of intrinsic betterness, it is clear that no such
difference of kind can be found between them. Urban has been mis-
led here by his assumption that ought is a fundamental and un-
analyzable value category.
IX
In his first article Urban speaks only of "ought to be," but in the
two later articles he speaks of "ought rather." Now "ought rather"
is clearly a relation. If value is a relation, surely the notion of
betterness is the clearest and simplest to use. The conception of in-
trinsic betterness is easily distinguished from extrinsic values, and
none of the "moral" limitations of ought are involved. If one uses
better as fundamental, 42 one will always be conscious of the relational
character of value, and one can study and analyze value according to
the facts of the logic of relations. As far as "ought rather" differs
from better, it differs only to disguise and confuse the facts. 43
There are times when Urban 's language almost makes him agree
that betterness and not ought is the fundamental value notion. He
says explicitly that ought is deduced from betterness. 4 * But clearly
one does not deduce ought from better, unless better is more funda-
mental.
Urban even says in one place 45 that "the relation 'better than'
can be seen to lie in the nature of value as such. ' ' Yet this admission
is never followed up. That better is fundamental is half seen, but
there is little realization as yet of the consequences of this admission.
Urban analyzes the conceptions of existence and reality. But
since he takes ought as fundamental and unanalyzed, he becomes en-
tangled in the old mystifying opposition between the Is and the
Ought. To summarize and criticize all of the debatable points in
Urban 's rather lengthy third article 46 would be impossible here.
Urban himself recognizes the difficulties and "antinomies" in his
discussion. So we may confine ourselves to a short positive discussion
of those points on which light is thrown by the theory that value is
a relation.
If value is not subjective, then value is in some sense real. The
feeling of value implies the feeling of the reality of the value cate-
Or the notion of "worse." See this JOURNAL, 16: 97.
As the previous pages should have shown. Incidentally it may be men-
tioned that ought is a one-many relation, whereas better is a many-many relation.
"This JOURNAL, 13: 681; 14: 315, note 19; 15: 396.
This JOURNAL, 13 : 681.
* This JOURNAL, 14 : 309-327.
208 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
gory. 47 About this real or objective value there may be true knowl-
edge in what may be called value judgments. These value judgment*
will be true or false in the same general way that other judgments
are true or false. But they will differ in that they refer to the value
relation rather than to such relations as time or causality. They may
also differ in their psychological antecedents from such judgments as
those of sense-perception. But they are not to be contrasted with
"truth-judgments."
The complete object of a judgment, may, following Meinong, be
called an "objective." 48 Then a judgment about value will refer to
an objective, which includes what we mean by value. But this calls
for analysis. When we judge that X is intrinsically better than
7, X and T may be called value-objects, but by value we mean the
relation of betterness which holds between X and Y. Value is a re-
lation, not an objective. 49 Relations are real, and the value relation
betterness is real. I see nothing mystifying in this.
If the value relation is real, must the two terms of the relation be
actual existents? Clearly not, as Urban admits. 50 Doubtless the
judgment of value arises in the comparison of actual experience, but
it is soon extended to objects of thought and imagination. It is even
extended to mutually exclusive alternatives of action, only one of
which can be actualized. We may properly value what never actu-
ally exists, but of course our valuation is based upon our experiences
of actualities. So the elements of what we value must have been
actually experienced. But the specific construction may be new.
Thus in a Utopia, the total condition valued may never exist in the
past, present, or future, but the elements used in describing the
Utopia are drawn from experiences of actual existents.
If ought is taken as fundamental, one might assume that value
implies possibility, because the moral use of ought implies that the
action which ought to be done is possible. But this would be fal-
lacious. It is certainly clear that both of two valued objects may not
be "compossible."
Since judgments about value refer to the real relation of better-
ness, we can have no complete account of realities (or Reality, if you
please) without an account of value.
As to the value of the whole of reality, there are some preliminary
questions 1 f Can we make judgments about the whole of reality?
How would such judgments deal with the difficulties at the basis of
" gee Urban 's Valuation, page 22.
The word ' ' objective ' ' is unfortunate as suggesting the subjective-objec-
tive controversy.
Urban seems almost to admit this, this JOURNAL, 13: 681.
so This JOURNAL, 13: 463, and 14: 319.
URBAN'S AXIOLOGICAL SYSTEM 209
Russell's theory of logical types? 51 There is no reason why value
may not be ascribed to facts about totalities, but only about totalities
which are capable of being judged. 52
As to "degree of reality," anyone can use the word reality in a
eulogistic sense. The question to be asked is whether or not such
usage leads to clear or confused thinking. Urban seems to think that
this usage is necessitated by the law of universality, that every object
is in the value scale. But we have seen that this law is false. It must
be insisted also that logical importance is not the same as intrinsic
value. These two points undermine Urban 's proofs. 53 I doubt if we
know enough about either metaphysics or "axiology" to be able to
give a trustworthy discussion at present.
XI
With this very fragmentary criticism of Urban 's doctrine of real-
ity and value, the present set of criticisms is ended. We have seen
that the central flaw in Urban 's system of value is the assumption
that ought is the fundamental value category. We have seen the
numerous errors and fallacies which almost inevitably follow from
this false assumption. But to make these criticisms must not be
taken as a condemnation of Urban 's work. Not only is Urban cor-
rect in his fundamental doctrines of the indefinability and reality of
value. The system he has worked out is a remarkable help in show-
ing exactly what are all the main consequences for "axiology" of the
attempt to take ought as fundamental. The clear thinking out of one
point of view, even though it contains an element of error, is more
helpful to the advancement of knowledge than the usual doctrines
which are not thoroughly thought through.
If Urban were to accept what might be called "meliorism," the
doctrine that intrinsic betterness is the fundamental value category,
his entire system would need going over. Corrections in many places
would be required. But the main outlines of his work would remain,
only bettered.
A. P. BROGAN.
UNIVERSITY or TEXAS.
si A. N. Whitehead and B. Russell, Principia Mathematica, Vol. I., Oh. 2.
ez Note the strange opposition between Urban and Fisher, thia JOURNAL, 13 :
454 and 14: 575.
os This JOURNAL, 14 : 326 and 327.
210 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
SOME PHILOSOPHIC ASPECTS OF SCIENTIFIC
RELATIVITY
IT is perhaps not altogether premature to attempt to outline some
of the essentially philosophic aspects of the recent development
of the physical theory of relativity, if only because of the extrava-
gances in which both popular and scientific "philosophy" have in-
dulged. Perhaps not since the Darwinian controversy have concepts
so fundamental been subjected to criticism ; and the reason for this
is simple. All the basal elements of the purely scientific theory itself
are identical with many of the central concepts of philosophy space,
time, simultaneity, motion ; even the mere name itself, relativity, is
sufficient to arouse the pugnacious instincts of every true philosopher.
Confusion therefore is more than usually possible, and thinkers may
again, as was the case with evolution, be drawn away in a vain pur-
suit of philosophic jack-o'-lanterns. The moral (if I may venture
to suggest it) is obvious; there should be a much closer connection
between philosophy and science. It is true that every step in ad-
vance makes this more difficult to achieve ; but as things are at pres-
ent, the results of scientific research far too often fall like a bomb
into the philosophic camp, with dire results to its traditional serenity;
as for the philosophies of scientists themselves, perhaps the less said
the better. But Philosophy, it must be remembered, holds an in-
alienable lien on the whole of experience; which in its scientific
aspects is fast becoming exceedingly complex.
As I have already suggested, the term "relativity" itself accounts
for much of the prevailing confusion. It is absolutely essential to
disregard, at all events to begin with, its long and involved philo-
sophic history, and to use it, completely devoid of philosophic im-
port, as it was employed originally with a purely scientific and quite
definite meaning, which implied nothing more than that the observa-
tion of phenomena is determined only by the observer's velocity
relatively to the observed system. 1 Even its widest later applica-
tions are concerned only with the relative velocities of systems and
observers, and with the mathematical and other scientific (but not
philosophic) implications of these. It is therefore vitally important
to bear in mind that the theory has, to begin with, no bearing what-
ever upon the problems of the relativity of knowledge, of knower
and known, or on the subjectivity, in the Kantian or any later sense,
of Time and Space. So far as these questions are concerned, matters
stand as they did previously; no school of thought is entitled (so
i Campbell, Modern Electrical Theory, p. 381. Cunningham states this in
terms of objects and ethereal media Principle of Relativity, p. 155.
PHILOSOPHIC ASPECTS OF RELATIVITY 211
far) to find in the scientific results any support, much less any con-
clusive proof, for its particular contentions; philosophically the
formation is "as you were. ' '
A second source of obscurity has lain in the apparent self-con-
tradictory character of the theory ; a defect, however, which is wholly
due to omissions in its exposition, and which is removed entirely
when all the facts are considered. Simultaneity, it is stated, has
lost its meaning ; one and the same event, again, may be both before,
and after, another event; even objective 2 space may be "warped."
The illogicality of these statements, in this form, is evident; but it
is not peculiar to them alone, for every partial truth, expressed with-
out its necessary qualifications, is similarly illogical. But if we say,
with greater accuracy and completeness, that events simultaneous
for one observer are not therefore necessarily so for another; or
that what is "before" for A may (or must) be "after" for B, or
even for A himself when certain conditions of his observation change ;
or that an imaginary space-time continuum may be heterogeneous;
or that "motional phenomena become timeless phenomena in four-
dimensional space"; 3 we merely generalize a principle which is fre-
quently a matter of ordinary simple experience, as when the flash
and report of an explosion are simultaneous for one observer but not
for another, or when a spatial figure expresses a temporal process.
But the delicate phenomena and refined calculations which are
involved are both so remote from ordinary intelligence that it is
exceedingly difficult to form any conception of the actual concrete
bearings of the theory ; it is plainly impossible to construct any image
of the velocity of light or the size of an electron ; but these are after
all obstacles rather of practical experience than of pure theory ; and
if the new principles could be applied to familiar occurrences the
greater part of their mystery would disappear.
Such an application becomes possible if we imagine two observers
who have always been completely blind, and whose knowledge of
distant phenomena depends wholly therefore on their sense of hear-
ing. Consider, e.g., simultaneity and synchronism, and the fact
that a clock which is at rest relatively to a normal observer and is
ticking uniformly, will, if it moves continuously away at a fixed
speed, thereupon tick for him at a slower rate, if he remains at rest
and all other conditions are unchanged ; in other words, if the clock
while at rest (relatively to him) kept exact time with his watch, it
would, while moving away, lose time as compared with his watch;
but the velocity of light naturally makes the actual observation
of this impossible.
2 Objective, i.e., as content of experience ; but I should not myself question
the wider "realist" position.
a Cunningham, op. cit., p. 191.
212 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
But instead of clock and watch, let us take two automatic guns
firing simultaneously, and with exactly the same intervals between
the reports when they are close together and also close to an ob-
server. If now one gun remains in position still close to the observer,
while the other moves quickly away, it is obvious that the simul-
taneity will cease, and a longer and longer interval will elapse be-
tween the reports from the near gun, and the corresponding* reports
from the distant moving gun; which means that the rate at which
the observer heard the moving gun fire would alter ; it would lengthen
as compared with that of the fixed gun, which latter would thus
come to fire (apparently) at a faster rate than its moving fellow.
On the other hand if a second observer accompanied the moving gun
his experience would be directly converse ; to him the stationary gun
would appear to fire more slowly than his own ; and again if both
observers with their respective guns were moving in varying direc-
tions and with varying velocities relative to each other, the com-
parative time-keeping of their guns would vary correspondingly.
Thus the two guns with their audible reports take the place of the
two timepieces with their visible dials ; and here it may be argued
by the philosophically minded that the audible phenomena are mere
"appearance" and that the guns "really" still retain their original
synchronous firing. Now in one sense this argument is quite valid ;
but in another it is not; for its validity depends on all the condi-
tions which ultimately determine human experience. To the normal
observer, who can both hear and see, this contrast between reality
and appearance is both inevitable and justifiable. But we have
supposed our two observers to be congenitally blind, to lack there-
fore all experience of light phenomena and visible motion, and to
derive all their knowledge of distant phenomena solely from the sense
of hearing. For them therefore there can arise here no distinction
between reality and appearance; what is heard is "real," and the
audible differences in the firing rates of the two guns actual and
ultimate.
Now these differences (audible, but to the blind observers real)
depend on the velocity of sound waves; and all that the theory of
relativity does is to trace and calculate the analogous consequences
which the velocity of light must produce in normal human experi-
ence. If we substitute clocks for guns, sight for hearing, and the
velocity of light for that of sound, there must arise an analogous
discrepancy between the time rates of moving clocks, and therefore
Corresponding that is in serial order, and disregarding fortuitous coinci-
dences arising from the transmission of sound; as well as the assumption that
the velocity of light ia everywhere and always a constant ; this prevents the light
phenomena being strictly analogous to those of sound.
PHILOSOPHIC ASPECTS OF RELATIVITY 213
further, since all our measurements are normally based on time and
space measurements, between physical phenomena when observed by
different observers who are in different physical systems moving
relatively to each other. In normal experience, vision corrects hear-
ing ; but we possess no sense faculties whatever which can in a similar
manner check and correct the conscious experience derived through
sight. That experience is ultimate for us, exactly as hearing is
ultimate for our blind observers ; no distinction between reality and
appearance can possibly arise; what "really" happens 5 is what light
phenomena reveal to us as happening; and then the scientific prin-
ciples of relativity must be taken into account if our observations
and calculations are to accord with ''reality." They are no more
illogical, contradictory, or revolutionary, than the theories of Coper-
nicus, Galileo, and Newton ; they merely, as these did, further correct
the rough verdicts of our unrefined experience and yield exacter
laws whereby we must express the content of that experience. 6
Indeed, the principle, in spite of its name, does not even imply
that we are wholly deprived of absolute standards ; it merely means
that we are free to determine these as we please, provided we accept
all the results of our choice ; it follows further that a proper selection
will greatly simplify argument and calculation. Thus the "proper
time" (Eigenzeit) of a system with reference to which a body is
"at rest," as measured by observers moving with the body, 7 is un-
varying and in that sense absolute ; and Professor Eddington main-
tains that "One part of the "World differs from another an in-
trinsic absolute difference . . . the equality of two tensors in the
same region is an absolute relation . . . the vanishing of the left-
hand side denotes a definite and absolute condition of the World." 8
Just as sight would discover an "absolute" to our supposed blind
observers, so thought may attain an absolute which is truly such for
normal experience.
Nor again does the manner in which the theory treats simul-
taneity and other space and time attributes justify the contention
that space is "warped," or afford the slightest fresh ground for the
view that it and time are subjective. Some recent thinkers who have
6 I.e., in actual observation. We can still go beyond this in thought, but
then the very data on which thought operates are derived from observation.
Cf. previous note on the velocity of light.
Contrast Bertrand Eussell ' ' Demands a revolution in our conceptions of
space and time" (English Review, Jan., 1920, p. 11); and Eddington "The
theory has introduced new conceptions of time and space," Mind, April, 1920,
p. 145.
i Therefore of course themselves ' ' at rest ' ' in that system.
Loc. cit., pp. 148, 150, 151. The "World" is "the aggregate of all the
point-events" (p. 147).
214 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
previously held this position now appear to regard it as finally
lished; while "realist*" (so far as I know) have done little to
question this attitude. But both schools alike, I think, have fallen
victims to a profound misconception, which many scientists (par-
ticularly mathematicians) have avoided. They have overhastily
confused the mathematical concepts which represent certain abstract
aspects of time and space with those entities themselves as ontologi-
cal ; and thus the continuous variance of the space-time continuum in
a field of force is expressed as a "bending" or "warping" of space,
and the dynamic equivalence between gravitation and acceleration
(expressed by the Principle of Equivalence) is represented as be-
ing the active operation of space-time itself; thus Russell: "at-
tributing the phenomena of gravitation to properties of the space-
time belonging to a gravitational field." 8 But any such extensions
of the scientific theory are as yet wholly illegitimate, and certainly
find no grounds in the work of its founders; it would be as logical
to argue that because a curve may represent a changing force, there-
fore energy and time must be distorted. Philosophic arguments are
(so far) scarcely affected in any degree, and upholders of neither the
subjectivity nor the objectivity of time and space derive much if any
support for their views from the new developments, if these are
confined within their proper limits.
Thus Cunningham begins by insisting on the necessity of "draw-
ing a clear distinction between the mode of measurement, and the
nature of space and time"; the theory "emphasizes the derivative
nature of metrical space and time, though it has nothing to say
against the reality of perception is completely dependent on such
perception." But when thought analyzes the content of this per-
ception, it is possible for it to detach certain purely abstract aspects,
so that e.g. "in the four- dimensional world of Minkowski space and
time combine into a single concept"; and this Cunningham rightly
terms "the introduction of mind-stuff," 10 a perfectly logical pro-
cedure if we but remember the character of what is thus introduced
and refrain from objectifying its necessarily imaginary attributes.
For the "four-dimensional world of Minkowski" is not a universe
which is more truly real than the spatio-temporal world of perceptual
experience; it is merely one which may be (in thought) substituted
for either of two relatively moving physical systems, so that motion
in that system, when observed from the other, must be regarded as
occurring in this imaginary four-dimensional space-time concept
and correctly calculated only on that supposition. 11 Thus "space
English Review, Jan., 1920, p. 14.
10 Principle of Selativity, Pref., pp. 8, 156, 87 ; italics mine.
11 The imaginary element appears in the employment of V 1 in dealing
with the time coordinate.
PHILOSOPHIC ASPECTS OF RELATIVITY 215
and time become particular aspects of a single four-dimensional con-
cept, and the motion of a point in time is represented as a stationary
curve in four-dimensional space"; and exactly in the same way
"force and its rate of working may combine into a single concept
in which distinction [is] lost, emerging only when we again separate
space and time;" or in general, "All relations shall be vectorial
relations in four-dimensional space. ' ' 12 It may be worth remarking
that a "dimension" is any definite concept, which may (further)
be absolutely defined in terms of simpler concepts (dimensions) , and
which when combined, as thus defined, with number, may constitute
equations; time and space therefore are themselves merely instances
of the general class of "dimensions" as a whole.
These methods and principles, however, do not affect in the
remotest degree the philosophic problems of objective reality, the
pros and cons of which remain what they were before ; they merely
express the laws which relate the appearances of such reality to
different observers, or to the same observer under different sets of
conditions. That different conditions necessitate different appear-
ances of one and the same reality is almost a philosophic axiom ; but
the discovery that "We may not conceive of a body as having physi-
cal reality unless the velocities of a given point as seen by two differ-
ent observers are related by Einstein formulae" 13 is not in itself
sufficient to revolutionize our previous conceptions of the nature of
that reality. In the same sense "Riemann never speaks of space
itself as being non-Euclidean. He carefully refers always to metric
relations. ' ' 14
This consideration applies even to that most elusive of all physi-
cal reals, ether. It is notorious that it has hitherto proved im-
possible to attribute to it properties free from self-contradiction
when taken all together; and it may be completely dispensed with
when phenomena are reduced to the abstract level of motions which,
as occurring in different physical systems, are expressed by Einstein
formulae. But with the reintroduction of energy and its correlative
concepts conditions are profoundly different; "the propagation of
light . . . will always be sufficient ground for belief in some reality
by means of which the transmission is effected. The ether must be
rehabilitated." 15
Precisely the same holds true, mutatis mutandis, with regard to
gravitation. The famous Principle of Equivalence is exactly what it
professes to be and nothing more a principle of equivalence, but
12 Cunningham, op. cit., pp. 191, 157, 113.
is Ibid., p. 162.
i* Nature, May 20, 1920, p. 351.
i Cunningham, loc. cit., p. 29. Nature, loc. cit.
216 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
not therefore of explanation. That changes in a gravitational field
may be equally well expressed in terms of accelerations neither ex-
plains gravitation nor explains it away; as Brose points out, "Ein-
stein does not seek to build up a model to explain gravitation, but
merely proposes a theory of motions. He does not discuss forces as
such." 16 Whatever gravitation is due to, it produces (of itself)
accelerated motions which, when in different systems, are related by
the formulae of Einstein and Minkowski. If therefore within a non-
gravitational system of bodies a gravitational field is suddenly cre-
ated, an additional acceleration factor is thereby introduced into all
the preexisting motions, and the paths of light rays which previously
appeared straight thereupon appear to be bent in varying degrees;
and this change must appear to be ultimate because of the funda-
mental role, already alluded to, played by light and vision in normal
experience.
J. E. TURNER.
LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OP LITERATURE
The Making of Humanity. ROBERT BRIFPAULT. London: George
Allen and Unwin Ltd. 1919. Pp. 371.
This volume is devoted to the thesis that human evolution is the
making of humanity, and that rational thought is the primary means
of this progress. By human evolution is meant the natural growth
of human life from ' ' troglodytic man" to a rationally organized so-
cial life which shall satisfy the demands of human life. And by hu-
manity is meant this organized whole of human life, which is a real
organic unit over and above the individual human organisms which
compose it. This organism of humanity is, however, not something
already existent as a finished fact, but something in process of mak-
ing. The author's purpose is to describe how it is being made. This
description naturally takes the form of a philosophy of history. The
problem is: What has been the constant factor, the real cause of
human progress?
Mr. Briffault briefly criticizes the "endogenous theories" which
attempt to explain human progress by man's mental capacities or by
his racial characteristics on the ground that since they neglect to
take into account the conditioning factors of man 's environment they
merely argue in a circle. Human progress is not explained by
arguing that man is by nature a progressive animal. "A real se-
i The Theory of Relativity, pp. 24, 25.
BOOK REVIEWS 217
quence of cause and effect first becomes apprehensible when atten-
tion, instead of being centered on the mind and the race, is directed
to the environment in relation to which they react and develop" (p.
37). But when we turn to the "exogenous theories," those of "geo-
graphic and economic determinism," they also are inadequate be-
cause they neglect the human factors. Geographical and economic
changes can account for changes in human life, but not for a con-
tinuous progress. We never discover the real cause in the natural
conditions of progress, inasmuch as a cause, at least when speaking
of progressive processes, is more than a conditioning factor. It is a
constant factor. Mere environmental changes can, therefore, never
account for the continuity which seems to be a characteristic of hu-
man evolution.
An adequate cause can only be found by studying man in his re-
actions to his environments. It is in the field of human adaptation
to environment that the real cause for progress is to be found. The
author then attempts to prove that the type of reaction which he
calls "rational thought" is the fundamental cause of human prog-
ress. For rational thought is man's peculiar adaptive mechanism.
"All other factors have been, not means or efficient causes of the
process of progress, but conditions. They have promoted progress or
impeded it, sped it or retarded it, according as they have acted
favorably or unfavorably upon the operation and development of
rational thought. In no case is 'their relation to the fact of progress
continuous and invariable ; their influence may be at one time favor-
able and at another time unfavorable" (p. 51). "But its actual
forward development, its progressive character is exclusively the
effect of that particular instrument of adaptation by which the hu-
man race has been differentiated" (p. 51.) "Although no one per-
haps will directly demur to the statement, when put in so many
words, that man is first and foremost homo sapiens, that all his powers
are dependent upon the rationality with which he employs them, and
that he succeeds or fails according as he thinks and acts rationally
or irrationally, yet many are quite prepared to uphold views directly
implying an entirely different estimate of the sources of human
power; and there is a deeply rooted and widespread disposition to
disparage rational thought, and exalt at its expense other supposed
powers and methods as the talismans of true human development"
(pp. 52-53).
These quotations are, I think, sufficient to show the author's chief
interest in writing the book. The book is an ardent plea for (rather
than a sound demonstration of) the controlling power of rational
thinking or intelligence. It is refreshing to read such a plea at a
218 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
time when the champions of other ways of salvation are so popular.
Faith in intelligence is still on the defensive. The straight and nar-
row path of reason is still unattractive, and those who follow it are
even fewer than those who preach it ! And to-day it is decidedly un-
fashionable philosophy to be a "rationalist" or an "intellectualist"
But at least two of the reasons why these are usually terms of re-
proach are evident in this book. First, the preachers of rational
thought so readily beg the question. They assume that it is fairly
obvious which opinion of a number of opinions is the rational one.
To condemn thinking because it is irrational is the easy and obvious
thing to do. But it usually throws little light on the real problem,
which is : Why is it irrational ? After all few people are willing to
champion unreasonableness. I say unreasonableness rather than irra-
tionality, because those who pride themselves on being ' ' antirational-
ists" usually do so on the grounds that rationalism is unreasonable.
And it is precisely because rationalism has been both more and less
than the defense of ' ' reasonableness, ' ' that it has become discredited.
Mr. Briffault's book seems to me to be open to this fundamental ob-
jection. It has much to say about the value of rational thought ; but
little to say about its concrete definition. The former might nowa-
days be taken for granted ; the latter is a vital and difficult problem.
In answer to this charge Mr. Briffault would, of course, refer to
his chapters on "Rational Thought, Its Origins and Functions," and
to his chapters on "Custom-Thought" and "Power-Thought." But
I doubt whether a study of these chapters will throw much light on
the problem. Rational thought, for example, is defined as " an adap-
tation of the organism to the most general and fundamental charac-
ters of man's external environment" (page 48). And again in more
detail: "Rational thought is the human improvement on the biolog-
ical method of trial and error; a perfected, economical, immensely
more effective form of it. If one course of action proves successful
and another fails there is a reason for it. If sufficient knowledge had
been taken, it would have been possible to know beforehand which
was the rational and which the irrational course. The successful re-
sult is that to which efficient thought would have led, had it been
applied. With the growth of rationality, the development of experi-
ence, of available data, and of the habit of rational thought, its
powers contribute more and more to the results of the method of
trial and error, shorten and facilitate and economize its waste in an
increasing degree. The sphere of that method becomes narrowed,
that of rational thought extended. The more efficient method of
adaptation tends constantly to prevail" (p. 55). Now that may all
be true enough, but how does it help us in evaluating the rationality
BOOK REVIEWS 219
of current doubtful opinions ? It is all ex post facto. It is a fairly
simple matter to see one's mistakes after they have been made, but it
is another matter to acquire the capacity of avoiding mistakes. To
say that ' ' the successful result is that to which efficient thought would
have led, had it been applied," is mere mockery. Mr. Briffault has
little trouble in exposing to ridicule the irrationalities revealed in
human history, and to point the moral that if people had been more
rational more progress would have been made. (Of course it would,
by definition!) But that still leaves the real problem of discovering
the technique of rationality. How are opinions to be evaluated ?
Mr. Briffault does not leave this question entirely unanswered ; he
makes two practical suggestions for the evaluation of thought. Ac-
cording to him the two most persistent and vicious forms of irra-
tional thought are custom-thought and power-thought. Custom-
thought is thinking dominated by tradition, habit, dogmatism.
Power-thought is thinking dominated by the exercise of power of
one individual or class over others. Custom-thought takes its rise in
the earliest forms of primitive thinking. Power-thought is a product
of the ever-increasing differentiation of society into classes and con-
flicting interests, and the consequent wielding of power by some over
others. As this process continues, power-thought becomes more and
more prevalent.
The history of human progress is the story of the conflict of ra-
tional thought with these two types of irrationality. 1 In every case
where progress has been thwarted, one or both of these two will be
found responsible. And wherever progress is made, it will be found
to consist of a victory of rational thought over these. Part II., "The
Genealogy of European Morals, ' ' is devoted to the elaboration of this
idea. And it is in this part that the author makes his own contribu-
tion to the philosophy of history. His purpose is to show how Euro-
pean history illustrates the progressive power of rational thought
over custom- and power-thought.
The story falls into two main parts the Ancient, or Graeco-Ro-
man phase of civilization, and the Modern. I quote the author's own
summary of the ' ' ancient phase, ' ' which is admirable for its brevity
and clarity : ' ' Three broadly distinguished stages mark the course of
human evolution. First, the long primitive tribal stage in which
custom-thought ruled absolute, broken only now and again, and only
to be renewed with but slightly weakened force, by material discover-
i Theoretically, of course, custom-thought and power-thought need not be
irrational, and certainly are not in many cases. (I suspect that the struggle
between the capitalists and the proletariat is such a case in the author's own
mind!) Mr. Briffault does not justify his assumption of their irrationality theo-
retically. Whatever justification it may have lies in its practical utility.
220 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ies and the clash of cultures. To that original phase succeeded that
of the great oriental civilizations wholly dominated by theocratic
power-thought whose absolutism is only occasionally and ineffectually
challenged by military power, and which, owing to its greater subt-
lety of direction and elasticity of interpretation, virtually nullifies
the disruptive effects of crossfertilization. Thirdly comes the extraor-
dinarily felicitous accident of Greece, which at a blow almost com-
pletely liberates the human mind from custom- and power-thought,
and raises it to undreamed-of heights of power and unfettered effi-
ciency. But while it utilizes all the available data of rational
thought, it contributes little to their increase, and its poverty in that
respect cripples the power which it derives from freedom. The
world contains as yet too much barbarism and too much orientalism ;
and the Grseco-Roman phase of civilization succumbs at last to a
gigantic tide of these elements which submerge and overwhelm it.
It is eventually succeeded by a fourth phase, the one in which we
live" (p. 162).
This fourth or modern phase is in every sense a new develop-
ment. It is usually supposed to begin with a "renaissance," a re-
birth of the intellectual life of the ancients. But the author finds in
the "soi disant renaissance" an obstacle rather than a cause of prog-
ress. It was thoroughly dominated by custom-thought, and hence
pedantic and artificial to the core. The real rebirth of Europe is to
be attributed to other causes: (1) to the development of natural sci-
ence among the Arabs and Moors and its spread in Europe; (2) to
the commercial revolution; (3) to the force of reason revealing the
romantic inconsistencies of the medieval theology which it had itself
erected. The reason these forces have not made more progress than
they have is to be sought in the fact that the political history of Eu-
rope is nothing more than a story of the conflicts of various powers,
each dominated exclusively by power-thought. There was first the
theocratic power struggling against the power of kings, followed by
the struggle of the kings against the unruly power of the moneyed
classes ; and this in turn followed by the struggle for power between
the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. All these struggles are shot
through with duplicity, trickery and treachery, which when "di-
vested of those decent veils with which its nakedness is customarily
disguised by the reflections of power-thought appear to be conducive
to a Yahoo view of humanity" (p. 246). It is this fact of European
history which has made it impossible for morals to gain a foothold
in the practical control of European society. Ethics has been forced
to remain theoretical and speculative ; morals are supposed to have
nothing to do with politics. But in spite of this, morality has
BOOK REVIEWS 221
evolved steadily and is increasingly becoming a controlling factor in
life. It has thus evolved precisely because it is a form of rational
thought. "Moral progress has in every case consisted not in a de-
velopment of feeling, but in a development of thought ; the rational
evolution has preceded and brought about the ethical evolution" (p.
300). "So long as the extra-rational foundations of privilege were
unquestioningly accepted, claims to equality, to right, to justice,
could not and did not arise. So long as the divine nature of king-
ship was undisputed, every abuse of tryanny could exist unchal-
lenged, so long as feudal power was looked upon as part of a super-
humanly established order, every excess to which unchecked authority
gives rise could proceed unquestioned. It is only when they have
come to perceive that what they regarded as a sacred truth was a lie,
that what they had been taught to look upon as right was iniquitous
wrong, it is then only that the injured have rebelled. It is the ex-
posure of the basic irrationality of the justifying lie, which brings
about the overthrow of the abuse. The oppressed have only revolted
against tyranny or injustice, however atrocious, when they have
clearly perceived it as irrational, mendacious, false" (p. 282).
This illustrates the second reason for objecting to this type of
rationalism. It not only begs the question, but it also shifts its
ground from a defense of rational thought as the only rational basis
for moral life, to the rationalization of history. It is one thing to
show the futility of an irrational social life, and it is another thing
to maintain that historically its irrationality has been the cause of its
futility. I have my suspicions about any monistic philosophy of his-
tory, but it seems to me much easier to justify an economic interpre-
tation of history, than a "rationalistic." Usually the economic
consequences of an abuse are more potent and primary forces for
progress than its intellectual consequences. Mr. Briffault appears to
me here to be involved in a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. It is
the counter-fallacy to what he calls the " misological " fallacy. Con-
sequently it seems to me that The Making of Humanity is valuable
not so much as a philosophy of history as for the light it throws on
many of our moral distinctions. For instance, one can not read the
book without coming to a fresh realization of the tremendous influ-
ence of "power-thought" on our moral ideas, especially the idea of
"corruption." Likewise, one can not read the chapter on "Current
Opinion on Opinions" without coming to a fresh realization of the
vogue of the "misological" fallacy. It is impossible here even to
indicate the many clever ideas in which the book abounds. It is un-
fortunate that they are so often concealed by a needlessly pompous
and repetitious style.
222 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
There is one contradiction which runs through the entire book,
and which is theoretically fundamental. On the one hand the author
speaks of the moral law as a natural law, of progress as an inevitable
accompaniment of human evolution, of natural selection, etc. On
the other hand the author speaks of the control of evolution, and
makes a plea for education, closing with this sentence: "In the phase
which its evolutionary aims have reached the first indispensable re-
form which must precede or accompany all others, if they are to be
aught but stages in the long process of trial and failure, is an or-
ganized effort to provide for the handing down with untampering
honesty the full measure of those powers which man has acquired,
and to transmit them to the race. Failing such a provision, trog-
lodytism and medievalism must necessarily continue with us, and
all attempts to shake off the dead hand of unburied evil must remain
essentially ineffectual" (p. 371). To me this seems to raise the ques-
tion of what after all is meant by evolution and laws of nature, etc.
I think we owe a vote of thanks to Mr. Briffault for bringing out this
contradiction, or at least this ambiguity so obviously and frankly.
Mr. Briffault 's book, however, deserves more positive justifica-
tion than that. In a time when the protagonists of intelligence are
obviously disheartened, when courage is failing, to bring forth an
enthusiastic defense of the power of reason is a real service.
HERBERT W. SCHNEIDER.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OP PSYCHOLOGY. October,
1920. An Experimental Study of Visual Movement and the Phi
Phenomenal (pp. 317-332) : F. L. DIMMICK. - The integration of a
time and quality element in a gray flash gives the perception of
movement in vision. A Psychological Interpretation of Modern
Social Problems and of Contemporary History: A Survey of the
Contributions of Le Bon (pp. 333-369) : HARRY ELMER BARNES. -Le
Bon was not an accurate social scientist but suggested some valuable
theories. He emphasized psychic traits as being the determining
factors of society rather than institutions. Some of the traits
named are mysticism, racial tendencies and national characteristics.
A Psycho-Analytical Study of Edgar Atten Poe (pp. 370-402) :
LORINE PRUETTE. - Poe as an only boy had many weaknesses of an
only child. His poetry shows a high degree of introversion and
flight from reality. Minor Studies from the Psychological Labora-
tory of Clark University. Highest Audible Tones from Steel Cylin-
ders (pp. 403-406) : C. C. PRATT. The limen is something less than
NOTES AND NEWS 223
20,000, with smaller individual variations than in the use of the
Galton whistle. Book Notes. M. M. Knight, Iva L. Peters and
Phyllis Blanchard, Taboo and Genetics. Sigmund Freud, A General
Introduction to Psychoanalysis. H. L. Hollingworth, The Psychol-
ogy of Functional Neuroses. Wilfred Lay, Man's Unconscious
Passion. William McDougall, The Group Mind. Henri Bergson,
Mind and Energy. George Lansing Raymond, Ethics and Natural
Law. Irwin Edman, Human Traits and Their Social Significance.
Proceedings of the International Conference of Women Physicians.
Bernard Muscio, Industrial Psychology. Henry Lane Eno, Activ-
ism. Dorothy Tudor Owen, The Child Vision. Julius Magnussen,
God's Smile. J. W. MeSpadden, Famous Psychic Stories. Orison
Swett Harden, Success Fundamentals.
Gollancz, Hermann. Translation of Dodi Ve-Nechdi (Uncle and
Nephew) by Berachya Hanakdan, and of Abelard of Bath's
Quaestiones Naturales. Oxford: University Press. 1920.
Pp. xxii -f- 161.
A
Janet, Charles. Considerations sur 1'Etre Vivant. Premiere Partie :
Resume preliminaire de la Constitution de l'0rthobionte. Beau-
vais: A. Dumontier. 1920. Pp. 80.
Sortais, Gaston. La Philosophic Moderne depuis Bacon jusqu'a
Leibniz. Tome premier. Paris : P. Lethielleux. 1920. Pp. 592.
20 fr.
NOTES AND NEWS
In a paper entitled "Cosmic Evolution," read before the Aris-
totelian Society, March seventh, Professor J. E. Boodin advanced
the hypothesis of cosmic interaction to account for the evolutionary
series on our earth. Modern science and modern philosophy agree
in treating the evolution of our earth as an independent drama.
The later levels of evolution are supposed by some magic to emerge
from the earlier life from matter, thought from reflex action.
Some have attempted to introduce a plus principle such as an elan
vital or entelechy. But such a principle would have to be present
from the beginning, thus antedating life. It would have to account
for the reversed or alternating directions of evolutionary series, and
sometimes it would have |to lie dormant for long periods of time.
It is at best an abstraction of the fact that certain processes have
direction. It does not explain the fact. For this we need a cosmic
dynamics, and this is found in interaction. Interaction is not
merely a speculative principle. The discovery of interaction has
224 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
revolutionized our conception of the organism. We have long
known about neural messengers, but lately we have discovered that
the process of growth, proportion and assimilation are controlled
by chemical messengers in the form of secretions carried in the
blood. Thus secretions from the thyroid and parathyroid glands
control the process of growth and proportion of the organism. In
the cosmic continuum we are familiar with certain interactions that
control the movements of the heavenly bodies in space. Radiant
heat and light, without which our earth would be dead and void, are
communicated from the sun and distant stars. Is it not reasonable
to suppose that the movement of our earth in time as well as in
space is controlled through its interactions with the larger cosmos!
Only so can we account for the appearance of life as a new type of
energy pattern. It is equally impossible to explain the evolution
of our sense organs without taking account of the principle of
interaction. No reasonable man could hold that our complicated
organs of sight and hearing are developed by chance in the organ-
ism without reference to the cosmic environment. It is safe to say
that if there were no light patterns there would be no eyes ; if there
were no sound patterns there would be no ears. Through a long
trial-and-error process and under the control of cosmic patterns the
organism develops the appropriate instruments to respond in spe-
cific and differential ways to the cosmos. And what shall we say of
the various levels of control within the organism ? Can we account
for the unique type of pattern of creative thought and its control
of the lower levels by a chance combination of reflex arcs! Here too
we must invoke the principle of cosmic interaction. The develop-
ment of the organism to think is due as truly to thought patterns
communicated through the cosmic continuum as the development of
seeing is due to the light patterns acting upon organic matter. And
thought patterns like light patterns must be communicated from
other worlds that are of a level to emit such patterns. We know no
other way. In neither case is it the act of thinking or seeing which
is communicated. This is due to the interaction of the respective
patterns with matter and its properties.
VOL. XVIII, No. 9. APRIL 28, 1921
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
SOME POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF ETHICAL
PLURALISM
IN a recent article, 1 I endeavored to show that the moral life is
essentially pluralistic, that the goods available to us in this
world in which we find ourselves are widely various, often incom-
patible, and in many cases incommensurable, and that consequently
the choices which in practise we are forced to make are rather per-
sonal options than discoveries of eternal principles. It was main-
tained that ethical theory has usually been too pious in its deference
to monistic philosophy, and that a first-hand examination of con-
crete human affairs, of the actual method whereby pressing prob-
lems are solved, compels a frank recognition of the arbitrary char-
acter of moral codes and programmes. However objective and "nat-
ural" moral distinctions and values are, none the less any selection
between alternative goods and any determination between alterna-
tive courses of action are conventional to groups or peculiar to in-
dividuals. Failure to realize the pluralistic nature of the moral life
is the occasion of much strife and social discord, and hence of an
unnecessarily large amount of moral evil.
The following paper seeks to carry further the analysis which
in that paper was begun. The attempt is here made to follow out
the import of the position there set forth, to point out its significance
for the social life of men, for their association within groups, for
the coexistence of many and 1 sometimes rival groups, and for the
relations of different nations in a world which, in spite of antagon-
isms and devastating wars, is growing to be ever more closely bound
together in politics, commerce, and culture. It is no new thing for
philosophy to dwell upon the analogies between the excellent man
and the perfect state. To understand the one is to be well on the
way to understanding the other. Perhaps we can not with Plato
divide human nature into the same number of mental faculties as
we find social classes in our city; and perhaps we can not with
James Mill generalize out psychology into a politics. But it is prob-
ably safe to say that no theory of morals amounts to much unless
it illuminates social problems. Society can be properly ordered only
i This JOUENAL, Vol. XVII, No. 21.
225
226 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
through due consideration to the achievement of goods by the indi-
viduals of which society is composed. Hence the social and political
implications of the theory of pluralism in ethics should afford the
most searching test of its soundness.
In the first section which follows a contrast is set forth between
two strikingly opposed views of the basis of political rights and
duties, both of which have had vogue throughout centuries, and then
an endeavor is made to state a theory which will contain the truth
of both the opposed positions without the exaggerations which led
advocates of the opposed theories astray. This constructive state-
ment leads to an examination of the moot point of the relation of
might and right. In the second section a treatment is given of the
concept of sovereignty, again developing the historically opposed
views, endeavoring to understand their motivation, and showing
the consequences of ethical pluralism for a theory of sovereignty.
Special emphasis is laid upon the international bearings of this
concept, because of the present acuteness of international problems.
And then in a brief concluding section, an effort is made to bind
together the various points as related aspects of a consistent
pluralism.
I
Historically, political theory has alternated between two suppo-
sitions. The tradition which has in most ages enjoyed most favor
has looked to some ultimate moral principle as the final court of
appeal in conflict between men and nations. This tradition finds
expression in the stoics, in the great body of political -teaching in the
Middle Ages, in Grotius and Pufendorf, in Locke and the whole con-
temporary reaction to the maligned Hobbes, in most of the moralists
who approach the problems of conduct from the religious angle.
Sometimes this appeal to ultimate principle is in reality merely a
firm insistence upon the finality of some particular body of positive
law, in which the established values of some group or class are de-
fended. Thus for example, the common law in England or the
federal constitution in the United States has been appealed to by
various advocates of the old order from the days of Edward Coke to
those of the National Security League. But such appeals are en-
thusiastic rather than scientific or philosophical, and are intelligible
only in the light of the curious political situations in which they
emerge. That is, a particular body of positive law becomes en-
throned as sacrosanct when it is imperiled by sweeping changes in
the structure or policy of government, and becomes a rallying point
upon which liberals like Edward Coke or reactionaries like the Na-
tional Security League may assemble. The dominating tradition in
POLITICAL IMPLICATION OF PLURALISM 227
political philosophy is, however, a much more profound and more
significant position than the transient efforts of those who find some
cherished values of existing society threatened by attacks from dan-
gerous external sources. The attempt has been made to get back of
all existing bodies of law to a criterion by which even the best of
them could be weighed in the balances and by which most have been
found woefully wanting. This ultimate standard has often been
called "the law of nature." Always it is regarded as universally
applicable to all men in all places and at all times, immutable in its
superiority to all enactments of human or even divine legislators,
rational in its provisions which serve as the major premises of
syllogisms whence all moral and political maxims may be deduced.
This ultimate standard forms the proper basis of all social relation-
ships and organizations, and gives those rulers and citizens who
follow its dictates the only valid assurance of just and honorable
living. Treated from the idealistic point of view, this ultimate
standard becomes, as is also conspicuously true in the case of
medieval realism, a part of the framework of the universe, a genuine
aspect of the nature of things; it is not only normative for the
actions of men, but somehow structural in the very being of the
spiritual world; it exists as a real substantial and supernatural
principle apart from all human art and reflection. But this logical
realism, this ontologizing of the final moral standard, however
characteristic of some historical expressions of this political tradition,
is not indispensable to it. Ideals, in order to be supreme, do not
necessarily have to be objectified into an external order which we
would approach and study as we would approach and study the
physical constitution of things. But throughout this political tradi-
tion, ideals are at least ultimate, fixed, and unquestionable. Most
men have been quite willing to appeal with Antigone to "the un-
written laws whereof no man knoweth whence they come." 2 The
criterion may well be considered apart from metaphysical and
logical questions, simply as the standard supreme above all men,
depending upon no enactment, subject to no legitimate exceptions,
imposing upon all an obligation to obey its prescriptions. Such a
criterion serves as a powerful agent of reform, and enlists strong
loyalties and deep enthusiasms. That this orthodox tradition is
still a live and vital political force can easily be seen by referring
to the great and inspiring speeches in which is expressed the pur-
pose for which the United States entered the Great War, to the
effusive acceptance speeches of presidential candidates, to a multi-
tude of newspaper editorials, to the sermons of countless ministers
of the gospel.
2 Sophocles 's Antigone, lines 456-457.
228 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
The other and opposing political philosophy, though it too is
found in almost every period throughout the whole history of
human thought, is not so much a tradition as a series of realistic
protests. It has seldom enjoyed popularity, but constitutes the
vigorous and bold criticism of non-sentimental minds who disengage
themselves critically from the sympathies and intimate kinship of
their fellows. With Thrasymachus they cry out that justice is
but the interest of the stronger. They repudiate the conventional
codes and the professed standards as alike inventions of the weak
to rule the strong. They prefer realpolitik to pious maxims. They
find no objective moral order in the universe, but only a struggle
in which they intend to succeed. Hobbes is the great name in this
class of political thinkers, and it is safe to say that never have his
insight and his wisdom been equaled by his predecessors or
followers. Usually the social and political " realism " which writers
of this tradition maintain, is much more crude than the skilful
teaching of the Leviathan. And when one finds an author like
Machiavelli or Nietzsche who shows discrimination and intelligence
in his frank and open realism, one finds also that this author is
misinterpreted and abused by his contemporaries and by his his-
torians. The political realists always seem, as did Hobbes and
Spinoza to the pious Locke, "justly decried names." They usually
draw down upon themselves the same universal condemnation
which Thrasymachus received at the hands of the friends of
Socrates. And in its cruder form realism probably deserves to be
thus reprobated. The fundamental idea of realists is that of the
exercise of power, of the impossibility of substituting moral senti-
mentalities for the force of manly assertion and vigor, of the de-
pendence of law upon the will of those competent to define the law.
The only "law of nature" is the struggle for existence, which of
course since the time of Darwin has had the reinforcement of much
biological material. Success in this struggle must be won at all
costs. The weak must give place to the strong. The ignoble must
make way for the noble, and the noble are the survivors of the
hardest contest. Duty is to oneself, to the impulse to achieve
mastery, to the desire to attain self-assigned goals. Against the
traditional sanctions of religion and custom, the virile man will
put the might of his own triumphant determination, and woe to
those who present themselves as obstacles in his stern pursuit of
his chosen career. Force rather than law is the ultimate sanction
of good conduct ; and force is to be used, not so much to fulfil the
law of nature as to create a novel and man-made law. Power is its
own justification, and there is no sin but failure. That this
realistic position is still the determining factor in many contem-
POLITICAL IMPLICATION OF PLURALISM 229
porary events is quite evident. The realistic principle is practised
even more than it is preached; and for every Bernhardi we can
find a dozen D 'Anminzios. Our modern world seems at times to be
one huge Fiume. Imprisonment for honest conviction, deportation
of "radicals," expulsion of minorities from legislative bodies, the
threat of a general strike, all these demonstrations of major power,
even though they may be rationalized as in accordance with a
supreme moral standard, are indications that various parties are
resolved to make their will prevail by the weight of legal, or even
physical instrumentalities, to create a moral standard by compul-
sion. Where a cloak of legality can be maintained, so much the
better; but the cloak is worn rather thin, and in emergency is
frankly discarded.
The only hope of effectively settling the issue between these
two opposed types of social and political philosophy is in a factual
approach on the basis of the human goods which men may make
the end of their activities. As long as duty or obligation is the
fundamental moral or political concept, no resolution of the issue
is possible. But if duty is defined in terms of the pursuit of goods,
then an experimental test is found. In what way can the greatest
human excellence be realized? To what extent is there a final and
fixed principle or set of principles to serve as a guide in realizing
this excellence? What place may, nay must, force play?
On the one hand, the former tradition fails to take account of
the pluralism of goods. The unity which men introduce into their
own living is a practical achievement, not a theoretical monism.
There are many predicaments in which men must arbitrarily select
some and reject other goods, without thereby imposing upon all
the necessity of a similar choice. Of course the goods of life can
not be treated as atomistic entities. Rather they are altered in
moral quality by the groupings in which they stand and the rela-
tions which they bear to other goods and bads. None the less, how-
ever much we may be satisfied personally with our own hierarchy
of goods, our own integration of values, we can not legitimately
read that hierarchy and that integration into the nature of the
universe. Though a wise man will find that reflection in a difficult
situation will enable him to find the unique good which the situa-
tion is to have for him, there is not therefore a unique good abso-
lutely and objectively and apart from the personality, tempera-
ment, purposes, and interests of the person involved. The wise
man ceases to brood upon the goods he has sacrificed, and con-
centrates his efforts upon, and finds his happiness in, the goods
he has selected. But others may legitimately choose differently,
and be equally justified in their choices. Two men may, and in-
230 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
deed often do, make opposed integrations of values, resolving the
moral dilemmas they face in contrary ways, and unifying the
pluralism of goods by utterly unlike programmes. The contrast
between the diverse variety of possible goods and the achievement
of moral unity has sometimes been viewed as that between appear-
ance and reality ; but unfortunately for the happiness of most men,
the variety is only too real and the unity rarely attained. The
contrast is rather, to borrow a Greek distinction, that between
nature and art. The pluralism is given, the unity is to be won.
And it is as foolish to suppose that there is but one form of unity,
as to suppose that a block of marble could be fashioned into but
one sort of statue. Under the chisel of a Michelangelo a stone
rejected by another may become a David of surpassing beauty.
But it might have become still other things than a David. Even
if there is not a vague and indeterminate potentiality in all situa-
tions, even if moral and social facts exercise strict and unchange-
able limitations upon future developments just as do the physical
materials of onr world, yet the potentialities are usually plural.
And because of these plural potentialities there is real contingency,
there are real alternatives. Thus there is something which we may
fairly call arbitrary about the moral life, something irrational.
The just man will be under necessity, first, of introducing order
where he found none on the basis of an arbitrary choice, and then,
since the most individualistic must needs seek at least some of his
goods through social or communal activity, of compromising enough
with his fellow men to get the bulk of his chosen ends fulfilled. The
same is true of the just state. The final principles and the ulti-
mate standards of all moral and political codes must then be some
person's own selection or some group's own selection, final only
relatively to some personal loyalty, ultimate only relatively to some
chosen end.
On the other hand, the "realistic" protest against the supposi-
tion of eternal principles is in its extreme statement most unsound.
Mere force is non-moral. However much pluralism points out the
arbitrary element in the moral life, it stands irrevocably opposed
to utter license and dogmatic petulance. Things are not made good
by being desired. Things are not made good by becoming the goal
of a strong man or a powerful group. Even if justice were pro-
visionally defined as the interest of the stronger, it could not be
defined as the will of the stronger; for the stronger could not by
mere will make what he willed to be his own real interest. Goods
are always human goods. They are discovered as good quite as
objectively and obviously as other things are found to be square
or heavy. Human goods fall within the limitations of the natural
POLITICAL IMPLICATION OF PLURALISM 231
conditions which support human life and make its continuance
possible. Human goods would not be the goods of angelic beings,
nor of demoniacal beings. If men became demons, our human
goods might possibly become their bads, and our bads their goods.
But the quite sufficient answer to this is simply that men happen to
be men and not demons. Success in achieving one's goal is not
justification of the goal. Rather the goodness of a goal would alone
furnish the justification of success. A man may arbitrarily select
his end when several incompatible goods are offered to him; but
he can not by act of will alter the nature of human goods and the
consequences of human actions. A man may make evil his end,
but it will not thereby become a good end, no matter how much
force he exercises, no matter how persistent he may be in his
efforts. The basis of morals lies in the actual conditions of human
life, which are given in the nature of the real world; and no man
and no nation can any more alter the natural distinctions between
goods and bads, which result from those conditions, than they can
square the circle or transform poisons into foods.
The conclusion to which I have been working is evident in the
light of the observations of the last two paragraphs. That conclu-
sion is that the moral life is primarily a problem in successive ad-
justments. Neither the supposition of eternal principles nor the
realistic protest is sound. Both are overstatements of one or
another aspect of the facts. No principles are eternal and im-
mutable, universal and absolute. There is no one objective cri-
terion, but rather there are a number of alternative criteria. Thus
there will be constant need for reconciliation, for compromise, for
working agreements. There will be no means of settling the issues
which are bound to arise between advocates of different and op-
posed programmes of action except either brute force or mutual
adjustment. Brute force will always have to be in the background
of social and political problems, since there are some values which
we cherish so profoundly that for them we would defy the world
and would rather perish fighting than survive in peaceful compro-
mise. And when that kind of a case arises, there is no reason
which forbids the sublime courage of unyielding loyalty. But
more often a way can be found to social adjustment. As an indi-
vidual selects among the pluralistic goods offered to him in order
to be able to get more than random drifting would secure, so a
group will arbitrarily adjust the various selections of its members
in order not to be disrupted by violence, in order not to permit its
members to thwart each other and exhaust all the energy of the
group in inner strife which may well be needed against common
external dangers. These groups will in turn need to adjust their
232 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
enterprises to those of the groups about them, to the inclusive
national group in which the lesser groups live. And the nations
are faced with the problem of finding a basis of adjustment or else
incurring almost certainly a mutual destruction and a common
doom. Right will not compromise with wrong, except as a sort of
temporary truce in preparation for a future renewal of the con-
test; but the alternative rights may well work out compromise
agreements which will enable them for a long period of time to
avoid friction and work in neighborly fashion to their respective
goals.
Thus the implications of ethical pluralism for political phi-
losophy seem to be the sanction of both compromise and the use of
force. These two expedients for settling differences between indi-
viduals and groups are in such general disrepute, however, that
another word of defense may be advisable. In the first place, com-
promise is not here used to include the lowering of one's moral
standards in the face of temptations. Only too often our passionate
natures lead us to sacrifice some great good for some vicious satis-
faction, for greedy gain, for evil end. It is as true as it is un-
fortunate that men do deliberately seek the bad at times. Video
meliora proboque, deteriora sequor. Compromise as the turning
from good for some seductive evil can be unqualifiedly condemned.
But such is not what has here been meant by compromise. Rather
I have used the term compromise to indicate mutual adjustment of
rival and incompatible goods, the integration of competing social
programmes zealously and worthily held by persons or groups who
must operate within the same social milieu. Destroy one another
they might; but surely such destruction is an unmitigated evil.
The only alternative is that of finding a basis for joint action which
enables both persons or groups to work towards their cherished
goals without thwarting the other. Compromise in this sense
might indeed be hailed as the social virtue par excellence. It is a
vital necessity in any world where personal contacts are as close
and as intimate as is the case to-day. It becomes itself a good, not
simply instrumental, but intrinsic. The finding of a modus vivendi
is often the very secret of happiness. And in the second place, the
use of force is not under all circumstances to be disparaged. Force
is good or bad relatively to the function it is made to serve. Though
it is true, as is so often said, that might does not make right, it is
also true that might alone is at times able to enable a cherished
right to prevail. Without might, not simply would the seeking of
goods be thwarted by many a deliberate choice of evil ends, but
also a new and unique, a fresh and perhaps promising, selection
among heterogeneous goods would almost certainly be overpowered
POLITICAL IMPLICATION OF PLURALISM 233
by convention and social habit. That is, however natural and ob-
jective goods may be, the requisite conditions for the achievement
of these goods include the use of force, either personally exercised,
or, in the case of goods which must be sought socially or coopera-
tively, communally exercised. Hobbes overstates the point when
he writes that "power irresistible justifies all actions, really and
properly, in whomsoever it be found"; 3 but no choice of noble
ends, no resolution to seek worthy goods, will be effective without
power. Either morals are an affair of pious sentiment and sub-
jective wish, or they require energetic and forceful pursuit, with
the employment of whatever weapons may be found suitable to
the end in view. Eight can not certainly be defined in terms of the
might essential to success; but right is dependent upon might for
success.
II
The implications of ethical pluralism for political philosophy
have led to a recognition of the validity of both compromise and
the employment of force. But the employment of force, as dis-
cussed up to this point, has been left intentionally ambiguous, in-
cluding both the employment of force by individuals or groups in
the interest of their individualistic selections of goods, and the em-
ployment of force by a superior power to bring about the inte-
gration of other persons' rival selections of goods. These two kinds
of the use of force now need to be more carefully distinguished.
The consequences of their employment are very unlike, and, in
order to pass judgment upon the relative advisability of their em-
ployment, must be examined. The former kind is more frequently
met in international affairs, the latter kind in disputes arising
within a national unit. Yet either kind may be met in most any
area of human activity, and their ordinary location is not essential
to their understanding.
We have had in the Great War a striking example of the results
of the former type of employment of force on an unprecedented
scale; and the results are universally deplored. In such tests of
endurance and destruction, each side is all but ruined, and the
alternative selections of goods (if we generally let it be assumed
that the war was a clash between rival selections of goods) are both
alike made almost impossible of realization. Compromise would
have been better for the victor as well as for the vanquished, though
no authority capable of compelling compromise existed. Many a
man and many a group, after a forceful insistence upon some
chosen goal at all cost and at all consequences, may wish that less
resolution and more pliability of temper had guided their contacts
Hobbefl '9 English Works, Molesworth edition, Vol. IV, p. 250.
234 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
with rival men and groups. Of course no one can dogmatically
assert that force, exerted not to compel compromise but to enforce
a chosen good end, is always mistaken even when the price to be
paid therefor seems disastrously heavy. For as was mentioned
above, the incommensurability of goods and the consequent arbi-
trary aspect of moral standards prevent us from reprobating the
person or group who holds out for his chosen goal to the bitter end.
Provided that the discomfiture of struggle in the face of heavy odds
is willingly borne by those who resort to force, there seems to be
no principle by which such assertion of force can be shown to be
morally wrong. There are some things so sacred to individuals
and to nations, that no legal restrictions can be observed, no treaties
can restrain, no international power can be recognized even if
created to deal with just such issues. Better at such times are
failure and extinction than compromise and survival. To insist
upon one's right to condemn the resolute determination of others
in carrying out their moral standards is to commit the same kind
of an arbitrary act, and to put one 's own standard forth as absolute
much as others had put forth theirs; and thus one would but em-
phasize the fact that all such condemnations were but relative to
some other selection of goods or some other choice of ends which
the critic has made in antagonism to those criticized.
Granting so much to those who decline all compromise, we may
leave them aside from further consideration, and examine only the
employment of force to compel compromise between contending
parties. It has been found true that most issues are not worth the
cost of bitter opposition. Half a loaf is better than none. Refusal
to compromise would lead to Hobbes's war of all against all, and
would destroy the possibility of all achievement altogether. Thus
we are led inevitably to a consideration of sovereignty, which is the
dignified name for authority or power to compel peaceful compro-
mise between rival persons and groups. The need of sovereignty
is apparent upon the basis of ethical pluralism. The justification
of sovereignty is the fact that more gooda are available in an
ordered society than are available in a disordered society. Better
to have a large part of one's chosen goods forbidden than to lose
all in a death struggle. Force used to compel settlement of con-
flict by an integration of ends is better, in the opinion of most
people, than force used in passionate and daring revolt. But
sovereignty is a concept which has been the cause of endless dis-
cussion ; probably no other concept in political philosophy has been
so frequently and profusely handled since Bodin and Hobbes forced
it to the fore nearly three hundred years ago. Sometimes sov-
ereignty has been held to be a legal term descriptive of certain
POLITICAL IMPLICATION OF PLURALISM 235
facts; and at other times it has been held to be a moral term im-
plying certain rights and duties. But always it has been COR
fusing and confused. None the less it is essential for any political
philosophy. I shall endeavor to deal with it under three heads,
taking up first various facts to which it points, secondly various
theories as to where its locus should be, and thirdly some of its
consequences for internationalism.
1. Sovereignty as a fact of political organization is apparent on
all hands. The machinery of government may serve many a posi-
tive function, carrying on certain public enterprises and providing
certain common needs. But at least it among all other functions
must have the function of compelling peaceful settlement of differ-
ences, of providing the instrumentalities of harmonizing various
group interests, of ordering the life of the many persons over whom
the government exercises authority. The public nuisance of trials
of force are so great that unless a sovereignty prevents their occur-
rence it ceases to remain sovereign. The sovereign powers may
not deem it always expedient to determine some specific compro-
mise for every divergence of interests; but it at least must restrict
the degree of violence which contending parties may utilize and
the forms of expression which that violence may assume. The very
revolt against a particular sovereignty is usually not an effort to
abolish all sovereignty, but an effort to create an alternative sov-
ereignty to replace the old. The principal consequence of the
existence of sovereignty is to make it increasingly inadvisable to
resort to demonstrations of power to settle minor issues.
None the less, it is often difficult to tell, in examining a given
society, just where sovereignty resides. Occasionally it is largely
concentrated in the hands of one prince who seems to have the
power to do about as he wills. But it is doubtful whether sov-
ereignty is ever entirely absolute, since even the most autocratic
rulers have found that they dare not go beyond certain limits of
their subjects' endurance. More usually, as we look back over the
course of history, we discover that in each successive political order
there have been a number of offices or institutions which have had
certain powers in certain realms within which they were able to
carry out programmes and determine policies as they preferred,
but beyond which they had no great influence or authority. Many
nominal "sovereigns" have been mere puppets with little real sov-
ereignty; and many common men and unofficial bodies have regu-
lated the lives of thousands. In democratic governments the people,
or the majority of the voters, may be considered theoretically sov-
ereign; but practically the "popular will" which rules is deter-
mined by many another consideration than the decision of the
236 THE JOURNAL OF l'HILnsur/IY
ballots at the polls. When we get back of the definitions of the
locus of sovereignty which we find in constitutions or laws to the
actual ability to exercise power and compel obedience, we find it
most difficult to determine the real locus of sovereignty. If every
difference between contending factions were pushed back to a final
settlement, we should discover by the outcome who was sovereign;
but such is almost never the case. Rival claimants to power are
seldom willing to hazard the limited powers they are sure they
possess in order to find out how much further their power may
hold; and so they come to a voluntary compromise to avoid the
gamble of open struggle. Not often can one claimant establish his
complete sovereignty by compelling his rivals to come barefoot to
Canossa.
The difficulty in locating the seat of sovereignty is due partly
to the fact that it is not stable. Seldom does sovereignty remain in
the same hands during two successive tests of power. Every social
organization rests upon a good deal of latent anarchy, upon
smothered fires of protest and potential might, which, though not
usually exercised because of the indifference or cowardice or
ignorance of its possessors, asserts itself at unexpected moments
and changes the relative status of the contending parties. Sov-
ereignty fluctuates in each new social crisis. Any declaration of a
balance of powers is but a truce during which the powers so bal-
anced seek for reinforcements to change the balance of powers into
a preponderance of power in their own favor. Successive com-
promises, successive settlements on the basis of force, successive
determinations on the basis of mutual convenience, all these are of
frail nature, are doomed to certain extinction, are soon made
obsolete by new issues, new laws, new constitutional definitions, new
class influence, new trials of force. Political organization, like bio-
logical organisms, grow, become diseased, regain health, linger on
uselessly, and die. The very abject surrender at Canossa may be
but a clever trick to prevent permanent ruin ; and more than once
has a Gregory VII died in exile and a Henry IV temporarily
triumphed.
None the less, though sovereignty is difficult to locate and
changes from hands to hands, it is essentially indivisible. When
the principle of divided sovereignty has been defended, the dis-
cussion has clearly been about something else than sovereignty.
There can not be a number of courts of last appeal. The principle
of divided sovereignty may be meant to teach that it is often pos-
sible to find a basis for compromise without compulsion by a supe-
rior authority, or that many types of group contact may lead to
no serious clash, or that men do not need in every case to be coerced
POLITICAL IMPLICATION OF PLURALISM 237
in order to enter into cooperative enterprises. Though Hobbes saw
human nature truly when he stated that all mankind manifest "a
perpetual and restless desire for power after power that ceaseth
only in death," 4 he was wrong in interpreting the desire for power
to be wholly selfish, to be centered upon the sensuous pleasure of
the individual, to be altogether egoistic in aim and purport. In
other words, sovereignty does not need to manifest itself in every
phase of human activities. Nevertheless sovereignty means the
power to compel submission to social discipline, to force an inte-
gration of ends which will admit of social operation, to subject
personal desires to social control. The coexistence of equal powers
by two Roman consuls would not mean that there were two final
authorities, but either that no issue had arisen to test the seat of
sovereignty, or that both officials were creatures of a hidden sov-
ereignty. When crises arise which demand some strong arm to
force settlement, it does not help to be told that a number of arms
have each a bit of power. When sovereignty means final authority,
divided sovereignty is a contradiction in terms. When one is seek-
ing a principle for settling critical issues, an offer further to un-
settle the issues by introducing several more contending factors is
hardly helpful.
It is perhaps worth while to dwell on the indivisibility of sover-
eignty a bit further. It has often been said in criticism of the sup-
position made so commonly in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies of a state of nature which through the social contract gave
place to the state of political society, that neither of these states ever
existed in its purity, and that what we find in our study of history
is a series of social organizations which lie at various points be-
tween the two extremes. It is a valid criticism; for the historic
states are all combinations of a certain amount of unorganized
chaos and a certain amount of authority, approaching, now the
anarchy of a state of nature, and now the absolutism of a state
of political society. Is it not possible to say also that neither of
the extremes would be desirable? Under the former, every differ-
ence of personal or group choice would lead to serious friction,
and rampant individualism would defeat its own purpose by making
all choices of alternative goods alike precarious. Under the latter,
the spontaneity of life would be crushed, the constraining weight
of officialdom would destroy all fresh vital impulses, and the whole
absolutistic structure would arouse an ever-increasing force of
sullen protest which would be bound to lead to eventual overthrow.
Only a state in which every person was in complete and violent
conflict with every other would justify absolute power, and absolute
* Hobbes 'a English Works, Molesworth edition, VoL III, pp. 85-86.
238 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
power would but produce complete and violent conflict. But
absolutism and the indivisibility of sovereignty are two quite
different things; and though Hobbes, who first in modern times
emphasized sovereignty, also happened to be an absolutist in his
politics, there is no reason for confusing the two theories. Sover-
eignty in each issue which arises must be one; but the same power
which decides certain issues need not be, and seldom is, the power
which decides all. Yet it will not do to lay it down as an axiom that
certain issues concern a different sovereignty than other issues;
for the exercise of sovereignty will depend upon the given align-
ment in each situation, and what authority can make itself obeyed
is a simple matter of fact and not a matter of theory. The whole
supposition of a divided sovereignty is based on a wish that people
would settle more of their issues by voluntary compromise without
the need of compulsion by competent authority. But the wish is
more pious than a corresponding supposition would be sound; and
hence the theory which mistakes the wish for the truth of the
corresponding supposition is not exactly adequate.
2. In the light of these considerations about the actual facts of
sovereignty, it is interesting to turn to the political philosophies in
which in modern times sovereignty has been discussed. Clearly
these philosophies are to be classed as so much propaganda. They
are endeavors to secure the recognition of some aspirant to sov-
ereignty rather than a description of existing alignments of power.
They are attempts to put through some cherished integration of
ends rather than objective interpretations of an actual order.
Filmer's insistence upon the sovereignty of the king of England
was motivated by the hard and cruel fact that the king did not
have the power which Filmer wished him to have ; and his work on
The Necessity of the Absolute Power of all Kings (1648) betrays
quickly that the necessity existed only for those who wanted to
achieve a particular order different from what was actually given.
Harrington's theory of the sovereignty of the people was surely
propaganda in the time of the Cromwellian despotism. Locke side-
stepped on the whole issue of sovereignty, evidently hoping to sub-
stitute the law of nature for the exercise of all force ; and his treat-
ment of the relations of the executive and legislative powers which
defended the order existing in 1689 baffles any attempt to determine
which he considered to be the supreme and final authority in cases
of conflict. But conflicts did arise, and the ensuing two centuries
in England produced advocates of many different solutions.
Bentham and many another "radical" would put sovereignty into
the hands of popular majorities. Stuart Mill would put it into the
hands of the people as they were led and directed by the wisest of
POLITICAL IMPLICATION OF PLURALISM 239
their own number. Burke would put it in the established institu-
tions of government as they were defined in their respective func-
tions and powers by such a treatise as that of Blackstone. Godwin
would make each man his own sovereign, and the socialists would
subordinate every man to some rather mythical sovereignty called
the ' ' state. ' ' Thus one does not have to go outside England to find
representatives of nearly every conceivable programme of political
action.
Surely these philosophies are, however, nothing but programmes,
programmes of action, programmes which their advocates hoped to
help realize by describing them eloquently and treating them as if
they were already realized. Taken as pieces of political propa-
ganda, these different and opposed philosophies are intelligible,
their motivation is clear, their moral significance is evident. Taken
as attempts to discover some metaphysical entity, a sovereignty
which is not the particular sovereignty of their own day and gen-
eration, but which exists already and eludes capture, which would,
if captured, be a priceless treasure, they are confusing. Historians
have abused the political philosophers of England by making their
moral programmes into descriptions of some mysterious essence, a
sort of philosopher's stone, and have reduced the fascinating story
of keen propaganda into as ridiculous a venture as The Hunting of
the Snark. Sovereignty, as a fact of political life, may please or
displease various factions and individuals who find themselves sub-
ject to its sway; but no good is accomplished by supposing sover-
eignty to be something else than it is. It is easy to interpret the
subject-matter of the different political philosophers as the skeleton
of some plan for improving the social order, for achieving certain
cherished ends, for realizing certain human goods. It is hard to
interpret their subject-matter if it is supposed that the thing under
discussion is the same objective fact or being, seen in so many
different places at the same time and in so many different guises.
Political philosophy is more concerned with human aspirations than
with scientific descriptions of the given order. Viewed as so much
aspiration and as so much programme for action, the philosophies
of sovereignty are significant human creations; but viewed as suc-
cessive attempts to locate a metaphysical essence, they are distress-
ing futilities. Sovereignty may be described as it is found, or it
may be described as one wishes it were. But if the latter thing is
done and the political philosopher as distinguished from the
political scientist attempts to do just that it is not to be confused
with the former. To take a piece of political philosophy and to
read it as a descriptive analysis of the data of politics is to make
out of sovereignty, not a fact of a nobler order than other facts,
240 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
but a dangerous lure which, like the pot of gold at the end of the
rainbow, leads men on and on until they meet an awful fate in an
unknown land far from home.
3. The present critical state of international problems is such
as to tempt me to draw certain conclusions concerning them from
the criticism just given of the idea of sovereignty. Sovereignty
has been defined as power sufficient to deal with competing groups
with opposed programmes of action and to force a peaceful com-
promise; and it is most properly exercised in the interests of the
contending parties and of the other parties who would be seriously
affected by an open contest of violence. Sovereignty, consequently,
must exercise control over an area as extensive as the issue to be
settled. For world-wide problems, we need a world-wide sover-
eignty. Attempts to substitute arbitration will be successful just
as far as voluntary compromise is accepted by the contending
factions, but no further. It is obvious in the light of the Great
War that there are issues which voluntary compromise will not
resolve ; and it is obvious that we have no adequate power to compel
compromise by force, that is, no international sovereignty. We
may choose, therefore, between two alternatives. We may permit
the "state of nature" and the "war of all against ail" to continue
in international affairs, striving to be on the winning side, and
assuming, though the facts are against us, that the winning side at
least will profit from such a social order. Or we may seek to create
a sovereignty to which of course we ourselves will have to be subject
as well as all others. This sovereignty would not be needed to solve
every issue, its very existence would perhaps make its frequent
operation unnecessary; but it would be available in emergency.
The great practical opposition to the creation of an interna-
tional sovereignty to-day is nationalism, that is, the desire to have
one's own national state irresponsible and supreme. But to limit
sovereignty to national boundaries is equivalent either to a denial
that there are international relations which may be productive of
conflict, or to the assertion that one prefers rather to have his own
nation defy the world in order to obtain its own integration of
goods than to compromise. The former alternative is falsified by
numerous facts. The latter gives color to H. G. Wells 's recent
definition of a nation: "A nation is in effect any assembly, mixture,
or confusion of people which is either afflicted by, or wishes to be
afflicted by, a foreign office of its own, in order that it should be-
have collectively as if it alone constituted humanity." 5 The habit
of speaking of a national government as a sovereign power is con-
fusing; for though it is sovereign in many a matter, it is clearly
H. G. Wells, The Outline of History, Vol. II, p. 453.
241
not sovereign when it is itself one party to a dispute which requires
either a forceful settlement or a compromise with other parties.
The supposition of sovereignty as a metaphysical essence possessed
by certain national units is doubtless the reason why the difference
between a government's relation to its own subjects and its rela-
tion to other governments has not been properly stressed. To call
a government which is sovereign in internal affairs also sovereign
absolutely would be equivalent to calling a man who was the son
of his father also the son of his brothers and children. In so far
as claims to the sovereignty of a national state in the settlement of
world-wide issues are due to conviction that its proposed pro-
gramme for the world-wide integration of contending standards
and policies is the wisest or the easiest to effect, those claims are
an intelligible matter. But most assertions of national sovereignty
in international affairs are due, not to heroic resolution to defend a
cherished choice of ends, but rather to blatant egoism and irrational
pride. Most of what is called "national honor" is only so much
national bumptiousness. Just as the theory of the divine right of
kings was usually a defense of what T. H. Green well calls "a
divine right to govern wrong," 6 so the claim that national sover-
eignty is unlimited in the field where a nation, from the very nature
of the case, can seldom be sovereign without bitter struggle, is
usually equivalent to the assertion that the nation has the right to
act unjustly when it so desires. One wonders how much the motto
" America first " is not an insistence that other nations shall not be
privileged to criticize America's actions, to hold their own cher-
ished ideals, to receive due consideration in the settlement of world
policy. Yet no nation can reasonably hope to be unaccountable.
With nations as with individuals, sheer will can not create the good-
ness of the ends sought, nor determine the badness of all other ends
than one 's own. Sheer will can not annul the Tightness of different
choices of pluralistic goods, nor can it repair the harm done by
crushing other contending forces when integration and compromise
are possible. Thus much nationalism, though put forward as a
moral principle, is a cloak for unjustified aggression; and unless
it is disciplined by a superior weight of a real international sov-
ereignty, it is almost sure to become the cause of the downfall of
human civilization.
I have no desire to malign all nationalism. Nationalism was, in
the days when most human contacts were over smaller areas and
human conflicts concerned only those who lived within the bounds
of one single nation, a powerful force for right, a means of medi-
ation which made possible the integration of diverse interests and
T. H. Green, Works, Vol. II, p. 385.
242 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
thus the realization of a greater number of human goods. And it
is still, in spite of the widening area of human contacts, a whole-
some force within its own realm. Only when it is assumed to be
competent to deal with international problems does it become a seed
of dissension instead of an instrument of union.
Various arguments in favor of this or that kind of an inter-
national order must be understood, like the attempts to determine
the locus of sovereignty within a nation, as propaganda rather than
as description of existing facts; and their importance lies in their
betrayal of the way in which contending parties hope to secure the
determination of international policies in accordance with their
own choices of ends. Opposition to any and all internationalism is
a confession of allegiance to anarchism, a resolution to make might
right, a determination to carry through one's own national pro-
gramme at any cost to oneself or to the world. The offer to enter
into an association of nations on the condition that all other nations
will agree with one's own definition of international policies, 7 is
utterly idle. It reveals a naive supposition that one's own prin-
ciples and ideals are alone virtuous, that right is single and abso-
lute, that obstinate adherence to one's own preference is necessarily
heroism and sublime faith. Internationalism is agreement to com-
promise rather than to risk ruin in combat, which is different from
assuming one's own selection of goods to be in accordance with an
eternal and immutable principle. No one should expect that the
decision of an international order would always be pleasing to
oneself; but he may expect that agreement under compulsion will
be beneficial in the long run. Of course resistance to constituted
authority, when such resistance is worth the cost, would be just as
possible under an international organization as under a system of
international anarchy; and the fact that it would then be called
revolt or civil war instead of merely war would make it no different
in principle. But the intelligent policy seems to be to enter into
international organization as better than retaining international
anarchy, whether such organization offers complete satisfaction to
one's own interests or not, to accept check to one's interests when
check comes as a temporary matter, to carry on the effort to realize
one's own ideals through education and propaganda rather than by
violence, to make the international organization rather than open
conflict the field of one's endeavors.
Ill
In conclusion, I desire to sum up my argument. Since goods
are plural, since no one selection of goods is authoritative, since
Cf. The New Btpublic, November 10, 1920, pp. 254-255.
POLITICAL IMPLICATION OF PLURALISM 243
many personal choices can legitimately be made, since antagonism
and discord are recurrent and certain, therefore, the requirements
of the moral life demand the greatest possible harmonization and
integration of rival programmes of action. On the one hand, no
single principle of eternal justice is possible; on the other hand,
mere force can not create right. Rather it is true that compromise
is the sole alternative to violence as a means of achieving human
excellence. Since there is an arbitrary element in any moral code,
force must always enter into the attainment of our ends. But force
need not be exercised always by one of the contesting parties, but
may be exercised by a sovereignty, that is, by a power sufficient to
compel a peaceful compromise. Definitions of the locus of sov-
ereignty are but so many attempts to direct the course of events to
a desired goal, and are all alike legitimate as such. Sovereignty
remains, however, essential to peace, wherever it may reside from
time to time. And where no sovereignty exists, its creation is, in
nearly all instances, the first step to the common good, even of those
who are to be most sternly disciplined thereby.
Henry Adams spoke of politics as " the systematic organization
of hatreds." 8 It is such, and in a deeper sense than he intended to
convey. He meant only that certain factions seek through political
struggle to perpetuate their own rancors; but it is also true that
politics is the practical, and as yet the only discovered, means for
organizing conflicting and mutually hateful dispositions into a com-
munity of peaceful functioning. Such organization does not, in-
deed should not, always eradicate the hatreds, which to a certain
extent are healthful incentives to endeavor. But it permits them
to obtain their ends with most order and least harm to themselves
and others. The extreme supposition that sovereignty is needed
in every issue is contradicted by numerous peaceful compromises
every day. The other extreme supposition that sovereignty is
never needed is also contradicted most painfully by common ex-
perience, and is but the pious hope of unduly optimistic souls. The
latter supposition sometimes finds expression in the theory that
only the free agreement of free men is properly called sovereignty,
and that power to compel compromise should not exist or be recog-
nized in political theory. But if the word sovereignty is preempted
for the common fact of such peaceful compromise, then some other
word would have to be found to denote the other and likewise
common fact of refusal to compromise except under the threat of
superior power. However much all theorists may agree that mutual
and willing compromise is more desirable than the exercise of sov-
ereignty upon refractory parties, yet human society has never been
* The Education of Henry Adams, p. 7.
244 THE JOURNAL OF PH1LOSOPJIY
able to get along, and no indication is present that in the future it
will be uble to get along, without a power sufficient to compel agree-
ments where stubborn persons or groups are inclined to refuse.
One overwhelmingly important practical problem before contem-
porary society is simply whether this truth will lead to the erection
of a world-wide sovereignty before the clash of competing forces
wrecks still further men's dreams of a better world.
STEELING P. LAMPBECHT.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
THE COMPLEX DILEMMA
A CURIOUS volume might be filled with the blunders of
logicians. The blunders are not few, and some of them are
both amusing and instructive. But there is one blunder that is
not amusing, unless the spectacle of human frailty is in itself
amusing; and I do not see that it is in any way instructive, unless
the advocates of symbolic logic can draw from it one more illustra-
tion of the value of their devices. The blunder is an old one how
old, I do not know. I find it repeated in manual after manual that
I open, some of them the works of men of distinction and even
eminence. No doubt it has been pointed out before, though I do
not know where perhaps many times before; but I make no
apology for pointing it out again. For such blunders are amaz-
ingly long-lived. We take them over from our teachers, as they
took them over from theirs; and we teach them in our turn without
a shadow of doubt as to their perfect correctness.
The complex constructive dilemma is described as a form of
syllogism, in which the major premise is compound, consisting of
two (or more) hypothetical propositions; while the minor is a
disjunctive proposition, the members of which are the antecedents
of the major; and the conclusion is a disjunctive proposition, the
members of which are the consequents of the major. The complex
destructive dilemma has a like major; its minor is the disjunction
of the contradictories of the consequents of the major; and the
conclusion is the disjunction of the contradictories of the ante-
cedents. The two modes are figured thus:
If A is B, C is D ; and if If A is B, C is D ; and if
E is F, O is H. E is F, G is H.
But either A is B or E is F. But either C is not D or O
is not H .
Therefore either C is I) or Therefore either A is not B
G is H. or E is not F.
245
Both forms are fallacious. As a matter of fact they are not
radically distinct, either being readily transformed into the other.
Consider the following example:
If this wound is infected, it is serious; and if it is not infected
it is painful.
But the wound is either infected or not infected.
Therefore it is either serious or painful.
It is evident that the conclusion that is warranted is not the dis-
junction that is given. The wound may be both serious and pain-
ful. All that we can infer, therefore, is the logical sum: the wound
is serious or painful, in the sense which admits that it may be both.
The correct conclusion might, indeed, also be expressed as a hypo-
thetical proposition: If the wound is not serious, it is painful; or
in the equivalent form : If the wound is not painful it is serious.
The fallacy seems to me to have a double explanation. In the
first place, it is evidently due, in part at least, to the ambiguity of
common speech, which does not distinguish between the disjunction
and the logical sum. But, in the second place, there is a corre-
sponding unclearness in the major. When I say :" If it is infected
it is serious, ' ' I refuse, as a logician, to commit myself to the infer-
ence, that if it is serious it is infected ; I insist that if the wound be
not infected it may be serious anyhow. Similarly, when I say : "If
it is not infected it is painful, ' ' I reserve the possibility that it may
well be painful if it is infected. But when the two proportions are
set side by side, the contrast has the effect of exaggeration. I am
led to think of the consequents as being characteristic of the ante-
cedents, and thus as being mutually exclusive, just as the ante-
cedents are.
But not only is the constructive dilemma fallacious. When the
fallacy is corrected by the substitution of a logical sum for a dis-
junction in the conclusion, the argument is evidently redundant.
For there is no need for a disjunction in the minor. A logical sum
(or equivalent hypothetical proposition) is sufficient. In the argu-
ment here used for the purpose of illustration, as in so many others
which the manuals contain, the minor is indeed a true disjunction,
for its members stand to each other in contradictory opposition.
But the conclusion is not a whit more solid for that. What is essen-
tial to the argument is of the form :
If A is B, C is D ; and if E is F, G is H.
If A is not B, E is F.
Therefore if C is not D, G is H.
This appears, on examination, to be a typical sorites. We may
arrange it thus:
248 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
If C is not D, A is not B.
If A is not B, E is F.
If # is F, is H.
Therefore if C is not D, is H.
In this connection it may be remarked that while the simple
dilemma is not fallacious, it is redundant. Consider the following
example :
If he accepts the position at Harvard, they will get married at
once ; and if he accepts the editorship, they will get married at once.
But either he will accept the position at Harvard or he will
accept the editorship.
Therefore they will get married at once.
The minor says more than is necessary. That he will not accept
both the position at Harvard and the editorship is irrelevant if
true. All that we need to know is that if he does not accept the
position at Harvard he will accept the editorship.
I will conclude by quoting, for comparison's sake, an example
of the complex destructive dilemma. It is from Jevons, who him-
self quotes it from Archbishop Whately. It is thus a hoary sinner.
Thousands of students have been called upon to look upon it as an
exemplar of rationality. "If this man were wise, he would not
speak irreverently of Scripture in jest; and if he were good, he
would not do so in earnest ; but he does it either in jest or earnest ;
therefore he is either not wise, or not good."
THEODORE DE LAGUNA.
BRTN MAWR COLLEGE.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Les Paralogismes du rationalisme. Louis ROUGIER. Paris: Felix
Alcan. 1920. Pp. xiv + 540.
This is a very interesting and useful, but a somewhat curious
book; interesting and valuable for the information it contains, and
somewhat curious for the writer's own philosophy in certain respects,
and for what seem to be the motives which lie behind this very solid
piece of work.
The purpose of M. Rougier is primarily to examine and expose
question-begging intellectualism in every form. The book begins by
stating that intellectualism "seems" to-day a lost cause, but that
unfortunately this is far from true. The habit of dialectical apolo-
getics still continues. Naive and traditional ideologies hailing from
the French Revolution, or from various chapters in the history of
philosophy, put enthusiasm in the place of criticism. The generous
BOOK REVIEWS 247
impulses that give life to popular fictions appeal to metaphysics and
logic in defense of their uncriticized methods. What are these fic-
tions ? To a great extent they are those that constitute the mystique
of twentieth century democracy.
M. Rougier uses the word ''rationalism" in a sense a little un-
familiar, perhaps, to American readers. He means by it, to be
sure, the habit of a priori and deductive argument, but he means,
also, that "ism" that translates its admiration for reason into a
doctrine about it, the doctrine namely that found its classical ex-
pression in the theory that reason is the specific characteristic of
man which differentiates him from other animals. Since reason, not
being an accident, was held to be equally characteristic of all men,
the dialectical consequences for an idealizing theory of democracy
are obvious enough, quite regardless of what the facts may happen
to be.
Of course the earlier history of rationalism in this sense of the
equal endowment of all men with reason, and consequently with
equal goodness, equal competence and equal rights to power, brought
extraordinary benefits. "But to-day, rationalism seems to have ful-
filled its civilizing mission. Destined, essentially, to be a work of
critique and destruction, it had nothing wherewith to reconstruct
and found anew. Sowing broadcast in the world the idea of natural
equality, of the identity of reason in all men, from which follow
equal rights, it has led western civilization to the most conspicuous
paradox in history" (pp. 48-49).
Now this is an idea that Americans are pretty sure to resent,
bred up, as most of them are, in the "rationalism" here under dis-
cussion. But, for the French, democracy has not had the colonial
simplicity it has had in America, and which, perhaps, it some time
ago ceased to have here. Accordingly, the French may prove the
prompter critics of problems that will be ours as much as theirs, and
American philosophers must not be caught in the dialectic they, or
most of them it is safe to say, imbibed with their first school books of
United States history. M. Eougier, to be sure, seems caught in
another, and no less nai've, dialectic. He fails to recognize, at least
he fails to admit, that these philosophical convictions so at variance
with the facts are programmes of action; and he quotes Bentham (I
have to render from the French) : "Why this zeal to proclaim these
rights as unconceded, as inalienable? No one ever found them any-
where. The less they exist, the more noise there is to persuade us
they have always existed" (p. 45). Of course! but one need not
pause to explain that.
In the body of his work, M. Rougier trails the guilty fallacy of
248 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the ontological argument from one philosopher to another. Here he
has done a very laborious and a very useful piece of work. The
story is accompanied with complete references to sources, so that his
text may be used as a guide to them. I think the whole matter is by
no means put so simply as it might be, but simplicity is a virtue that
comes, or should come, from long handling of a theme and M.
Rougier, I fancy, is giving us the first organization of an immense
material.
Perhaps the most interesting section to a majority of American
readers will be the one on realism, realism for the most part, indeed,
of the older stripe. To be sure the word realism is used in a more
comprehensive sense than we are accustomed to. Realism, for M.
Rougier, seems to be any affirmation of existence which goes beyond
the evidence in hand. In this sense, the most audacious and uncom-
promising "realists" have been the great idealists. But this use of
the word helps the writer to make a very interesting classification
and expose.
M. Rougier protests against what may be a defect inherent in all
intellectual method the conceptual simplification of a subject mat-
ter. Philosophy seems, he insists, incorrigibly the victim of the
assumption that men of different times, places and conditions think
alike and are alike. The old dialectical definition of men still en-
cumbers our analysis. "What is obvious, M. Rougier contends, if we
only observe mankind candidly, is the infinite variety of mental
make-up. He goes so far as to suggest that the principle of inference
is not uniform. M. Rougier is both right and wrong. It does not
follow that because different men use different premises, they do not
all apply the principle of contradiction. But on the other point,
M. Rougier may well be right ; it is likely to be more important for
us to know what peoples' premises are and the will that their argu-
ments defend, than the syllogistic forms they might be put into.
How M. Rougier would correct the extravagances of the mythe
rati&naliste is not altogether clear. Presumably by a consistent em-
piricism where existence is concerned, and the recognition that logic
is a strictly formal technique without, as such, any ontological im-
plications. His estimation of current academic philosophical prob-
lems is one that we are, in America, not unfamiliar with: "The
problems of metaphysics are not real problems in the sense that the
questions raised relate to real data. They are pseudo-problems,
resulting most often from erroneous types of explanation. They
arise especially when, in order to solve them, we demand explana-
tion of a different type from the one corresponding to the mentality
which raises the question" (p. 514). "It is we, indeed, who create
BOOK REVIEWS 249
the mystery of the world by peopling it with saving, noble and
formidable enigmas . . . Men are more willing to be ignorant than
to acknowledge the evidence that there is nothing to discover. We
agree that the world shall be a cruel enigma ; we revolt at the thought
that there is no enigma, and that things, in their indifference to
morality, simply are" (pp. 520-21).
There is probably much behind a book like this that French
readers naturally understand, but which American readers need to
have explained. The writer seems concerned about traditions from
the French Revolution, which may lend themselves now perhaps,
to the enterprise of another revolution, humanitarian, perhaps, in
its phraseology, but contradicting in its effects all that the phraseol-
ogy proclaims. No doubt men will always aspire to give their
dreams the form of logic, but that aspiration is a form of conscience
that men should cling to, for without it there could be no will to
criticize and clarify.
I should not, however, give the impression that the book is
motivated chiefly by this consideration. Professional philosophy
shows still so many examples of apologetic sophistry (pp. xi-xiii)
that an examination of their technique is abundantly justified.
M. Rougier promises to support many of his claims in a work
to be devoted to the history of the real distinction between essence
and existence from Aristotle to Suarez, which, to judge by the pages
on medieval logic in the present work, should be of exceptional in-
terest.
WENDELL T. BUSH.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
The Problem of the Nervous Child. ELIDA EVANS. New York:
Dodd, Mead and Co. 1920. Pp. 299.
This book is written to aid parents and others in the management
of " problem" children. The author speaks from the psychoanalytic
point of view, making use especially of the concepts originating with
the Zurich school of psychoanalytic thought. Such topics as the
development of repression, symbolic thought, defense reactions, the
parent complex, buried emotions, muscle erotism, the tyrant child,
teaching of right and wrong, self and character are treated, quite
largely by the method of illustrative cases. This leads, at times, to
conspicuous lapses from good literary form, the material apparently
being transcribed from case-histories without sufficient revision as
to sentence structure.
The educational psychologist who insists on verification, or at-
tempted verification, by laboratory methods, would regard as mystic
260 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
rather than scientific such concepts as "the censor," "the libido,"
"the sublimation of the libido," "buried emotions," "muscle
erotism." Nevertheless, the general effect of the book upon parent*
who read it will tend to be what the author desired. It will aid them
to understand children and to deal with them more wisely espe-
cially in the case of the child who is constitutionally ill-balanced.
The work is recommended by Dr. C. G. Jung, in the introduction
which he has written.
LBTA S. HOLLINGWORTH.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
SCIENTIA. January, 1921. The Present Position of Celestial
Mechanics (pp. 1-12) : H. C. PLUMMEB (Dublin).- A very general
characterization of the workers in this field. The relativity theory
will make no break in the continuity of development of this science.
Les Lignes Spectrales et les Theories Modernes de la Physique (pp.
13-22) : P. ZEEMAN (Amsterdam).- After an historical review, con-
cludes that Bohr's model of the atom is at present the best verified
and most fertile of atomic hypotheses but unfortunately is inter-
nally self-contradictory. Le Finalisme de la Vie (pp. 23-40) : FILIPPO
BOTTAZZI (Naples), with reply by EUGENIO RIONANO (Milan). -The
terms suggesting teleology are always vague and even verbal, and
should be eliminated from physiology. The editor, in his well-
worded reply, argues that life does involve new categories, and
these call for new terms, which are perfectly capable of precise
definition. The Geographical Factor in Balkan Questions (pp. 41-
50) : MARION I. NEWBIGIN (Edinburgh). -In the Balkans there are
no natural frontiers of geography or race. To apply there an ab-
stract principle of self-determination of peoples is to encourage
interminable wrangling. Reviews. Leclerc du Sablon, L'Unitc de
la Science: A. MICHEL. B. K. SARKAR, Hindu Achievements in
Exact Sciences: GINO LORIA. P. Duhem, Le Systeme du Monde,
vol. 5; H. Macpherson, Herschel; P. F. Alexander (compiler), The
Discovery of America (1492-1584) : A. MIELI. A. C. Crehore, The
Mystery of Matter and Energy; N. R. Campbell, La Theorie Elec-
trique Moderne (translated from English by A. Corvisy) ; F. M.
Jaeger, Lectures on the Principle of Symmetry and its Applications
in all Natural Sciences: A. BOUTARIC. S. Young, Stoichiometry;
A. W. Stewart, Stereochemistry: B. L. VANZETTI. M. Arthus, La
Physiologic: FILIPPO BOTTAZZI. F. M. Duncan, How Animals
Work: E. S. RUSSELL. H. F. Delgado, El Psicoanalisis; A. Maeder,
NOTES AND NEWS 251
Guerison et Evolution dans la Vie de I'Ame; la Psyehanalyse:
CHARLES BAUDOUIN. J. M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of
the Peace: CAMILLO SUPINO. D. Bellet, Le Commerce Allemand.
Apparences et Realities; A. de Farle, La Preparation de la Lutte
Economique par I'Allemagne: WILLIAM OUALID. C. Bresciani-
Turroni, Mitteleuropa: A. MABIOTTI. A. Cramb, L'Imperialismo
Britannico (translated from English by G. Salvadore) ; A. Crespi,
La Funzione Storica dell'Impero Britannico: ETTORE ROIA. T.
Dennett, The Democratic Movement in Asia; W. Paton, Social
Ideals in India; K. K. Kawakami, Japan and World Peace:
P. MASSON-OURSEL. J. Tchernoff, Les Nations et la Societe des
Nations dans la Politique Moderne; E. Milhaud, Plus Jamais!
G. Scelle, Le Pacte des Nations et sa Liaison avec le Traite de Paix:
ALESSANDRO GROPPALI. Periodicals. Review of the new collection
of scientific reprints : Les Maitres de la Pensee Scientifique (Gautiers-
Villars, Paris) . Works Newly Received, with brief reviews.
MIND. October, 1920. Meaning of Meaning (Symposium)
(pp. 385-414) : F. C. S. SCHILLER, BERTRAND RUSSELL, H. H.
JOACHIM. -Schiller's criticism of Russell's theory of meaning,
followed by Mr. Russell's reply, and comment upon the resultant
situation by Mr. Joachim. The Philosophical Aspect of the Theory
of Relativity (Symposium) (pp. 415-445) : A. S. EDDINGTON, VV. D.
Ross, C. D. BROAD, and F. A. LINDEMANN. - Eddington distin-
guishes between two sets of laws: "the laws under which the
objective world is developing itself, and the laws inherent in the over-
lapping of the different aspects under which we relate it to our-
selves. ' ' Ross undertakes to show that ' ' one of the difficulties about
relativity is that its supporters seem in the very act of arguing for
it to be implying its opposite"; this criticism is answered by C. D.
Broad. Lindemann states that "the main philosophical advance to
be claimed for the general theory is to the emphasis it has laid
upon the fact that the conceptions we choose to form about geom-
etry in the four-dimensional space-time manifold which forms our
universe are entirely arbitrary." Do We Know Other Minds
Mediately or Immediately f (pp. 446-457) : JOSHUA C. GREGORY. -
Finds that there is "no warrant for Mrs. Duddington's condemna-
tion of 'the usual psychological doctrine that knowledge of minds
is indirect.' ' Some Modern JZstheticians (pp. 458-471) : H. R.
MARSHALL. - A survey of the theories of Bullough, Baldwin, Croce,
Carritt, Bosanquet. Discussion. The Basis of Bosanquet's Logic:
L. J. RUSSELL. Critical Notices. God and Personality; Divine
Personality and Human Life: The Gifford Lectures by Clement
252 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
C. J. Webb : G. GALLOWAY. New Books. Albert Kaploun, Psycho-
logic Oencrale: L. J. RUSSELL. Wilfred Lay, The Child's Uncon-
scious Mind: BEATRICE EDGELL. H. C. Warren, Human Psychol-
ogy: F. C. BARTLETT. Chas. E. Hooper, Common Sense and the
Rudiments of Philosophy: L. J. RUSSELL. Th. Ziehen, Lehrbuch
der Logik auf posit iristischer Grundlage, mit Beriicksichtigung der
Oeschichte der Logik: A. E. TAYLOR. Julius Pikler, Sinnesphysio-
logische Untersuchungen; Schriften zur Anpassungstheorie des
Empfindungsvorganges; Theorie der Konsonanz und Dissonanz:
H. J. WATT. Philosophical Periodicals.
Bullough, Edward (editor). Cambridge Readings in Italian. Cam-
bridge University Press. 1920. Pp. xxviii + 334.
Hatton, J. L. S. The Theory of the Imaginary in Geometry, together
with the Trigonometry of the Imaginary. Cambridge University
Press. 1920. Pp. 215. 18 sh.
Sadger, J. Sleep Walking and Moon Walking. Translated by
Louise Brink. New York and Washington : Nervous and Mental
Disease Publishing Co. 1920. Pp. x + 138.
Stevenson Smith and Edwin Guthrie. Chapters in General Psychol-
ogy. (Revised Edition). Seattle, Wash. : University of Washing-
ton Press. 1921. Pp. 181.
Tilley, Arthur. Cambridge Readings in French Literature. Cam-
bridge University Press. 1920. Pp. 224.
Wheeler, Raymond H. An Experimental Investigation of the Process
of Choosing. Eugene, Oregon: University of Oregon Press.
1920. Pp. 59.
NOTES AND NEWS
Professor E. G. Spaulding, of Princeton University, recently com-
pleted a course of four lectures at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts
and Sciences on the following topics: What Am IT What Can I
Know? What Should I Do? and What Should I Believe? Professor
Spaulding has also been lecturing before the People's Institute of
New York City this winter, and will give a course on the Philosophy
of Evolution at the Harvard Summer School this summer.
A new edition of Bradley 's The Principles of Logic has just been
brought out by G. E. Stechert & Co., of 151-155 West 25th St., New
York City. This edition is an anastatic reprint of the original edition
which was published in London in 1883, and which has been out of
print for some time.
VOL. XVIII, No. 10. MAY 12, 1921
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
A TENTATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PRIMARY DATA OF
PSYCHOLOGY.
TNT the attempt to understand the conditions of psychological reac-
- 1 - tions students of behavior and especially human behavior are
experiencing a need to analyze more thoroughly and to describe more
exactly the fundamental data with which they are working. And
what are these fundamental data? Obviously, responses to stimuli.
At once we are plunged into an investigation of the essential prin-
ciples of human adjustment because our first acquaintance with
behavior indicates conclusively that stimuli and responses are polar
phases of a single occurrence. We can not understand the response
without an examination of the stimulus, nor can we isolate or handle
adequately the stimulus without an investigation of the complete
segment of behavior in which both play or have played a part. We
may, then, state our present problem as an attempt to clarify the
natures of (1) a stimulus, (2) a response, and (3) a segment of
behavior.
I
Let us begin our study by a consideration of the segment of
behavior, which from the standpoint of scientific psychology we look
upon as an arbitrarily selected portion of the activities of a person
or animal. The point is that whenever the psychologist undertakes
to describe a reaction of an organism he must, in order to have any
description at all, divide off, as a definite portion of behavior, the
adjustment in which he is interested from its predecessors and suc-
cessors in the chain or stream of actions. In this manner the psychol-
ogist obtains, in spite of the difficulties of the material, a workable
descriptive unit. Now when we consider the extreme complexity
and manifoldness of human action we must agree that unless we
include in our unit as many factors as possible we stultify our
descriptions and make them too abstract for any use. Consequently,
we shall find that the psychological unit is always the most conven-
iently isolated series of responses to stimuli which can be said to
represent a definite specific adaptation. Such an adaption is exem-
plified by jumping out of the path of a flying missile, or picking up
a book. To this unit of adjustment we apply the term "pattern of
response. ' '
253
254 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
A pattern of response is, therefore, in every instance an extremely
variable and unique sequence of processes, although in similar
stimulating circumstances a describable uniformity may be observed.
Such uniformity as we can observe in the organism's adjustments
constitutes the basis for the predictability of psychological behavior,
and we may trace this uniformity in the pattern of response to the
presence in it of one or more definite response systems. Consider
the responses of a person in a tennis game in which certain stimuli
in the form of a special play are offered him. Knowing something
of the person and the conditions of his acquiring and retaining cer-
tain reaction systems, one may expect a particular kind of response
play from him, and although we may know nothing of the responses
accompanying the tennis adjustments proper, such as the player's
thoughts, whether related or unrelated to the game, his subvocal
utterances and other byplay responses which always form part of
such a segment of behavior, still the central phase of the adjustment
mentioned, or the tennis playing as a series of definite reaction sys-
tems, will characterize for us the total segment of behavior. In this
particular case the segment of behavior will coincide pretty well with
what we ordinarily call the "form" of play, and the predictability
phase of the person 's playing will appear in the observation whether
the player is or is not true to form.
Although the uniformity of a segment of behavior is ascribable
primarily to the presence in it of one or more definite response sys-
tems, still we must not overlook other factors responsible for the
similarity of behavior. And first we must mention the similarity
of the stimuli and of their settings, for it is obvious that the same
objects appearing under the same auspices will call out the same
responses. Moreover, we must not fail to consider another prominent
factor in the similarity of the responses, namely, the precise condi-
tions of the individual at the times when the actions are performed.
How important the pattern of response really is as a unit of de-
scription may be seen from the consideration that only by studying
the conditions of operation of a reaction system, besides the processes
coordinate with it, can we thoroughly understand it. The problems
of inhibition and delay of responses can only be solved by reference
to the interplay of various stimulating objects in the segment of
behavior. Again, the affective coloring and the temporal duration
of an adjustment can not be understood without an examination of
many of the conditioning events which accompany the operation of
the given reaction systems within the compass of the psychological
act under investigation. The same proposition may be asserted con-
cerning the rapidity and accuracy of any act. Briefly, we may
I THE PRIMARY DATA OF PSYCHOLOGY 255
repeat that to learn anything more than that a given reaction system
has functioned we must study the behavior setting of any given reaction
system ; we must study the pattern of response. Possibly the point
we are attempting to make would be most emphasized by observing
that what the psychologist calls illusions are merely situations in
which certain reaction systems are being called out not by the ap-
propriate stimuli, but by some other stimuli within the confines of
the segment of behavior studied. Of course, when we attend to the
stimulus, we might say rather that the particular stimulus has called
out an inappropriate response, but the mechanism is the same which-
ever way we look at the matter.
Two types of reaction sequences can be isolated in any given seg-
ment of behavior. These are (1) the highly variable series of reac-
tions we have already referred to, namely, the central reaction sys-
tem or systems, with the byplay responses, and (2) the orderly and
logically temporal series of reactions which may be analyzed as
follows: (a) the preparatory attention response, (&) the anticipatory
or precurrent reaction, which may be a perceptual or partially in-
cipient act, an ideational or completely incipient response, or some
other fully overt act, and (c) a final overt or consummatory act
which we may name an emotional, volitional, thought or habit re-
sponse. Any reaction under (c) may of course be a member of a
chain of precurrent reactions which precedes some final adjustment,
which final adjustment may likewise be an ideational or incipient
reaction. Thus we may find that an emotional reaction, for example,
may be a response anticipatory to a final adjustment, which may be
either a definite overt act or a thought reaction.
Further, we must note that any member-reaction of a segment
series may be an integration of simpler reactions. If, for example,
a precurrent reaction to placing a book on the table is taking it out
of a group of books, we can readily see that this latter act may
comprise a series of coordinate eye-hand acts. As a matter of fact
no limit can be prescribed to the development of the integrations
in human behavior, especially when we consider the enormous pos-
sibilities for the combination of implicit and overt behavior of
various sorts.
Such an analysis as we have made of the pattern of response
affords us some slight insight into the varieties of acts which com-
prise actual adaptations to our everyday surroundings. In the first
place, we can see what the basis is for the simplicity or complexity
of our adjustments. A psychological act is simple when it contains
few precurrent response systems, and the limit to such simplicity
would be the case in which the distinction between the precurrent
and consummatory reaction systems disappears entirely, as the
256 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
reflex segment of behavior illustrates. In the most complex behavior
segments we find large series of precurrent responses anticipating
the final adjustment to some stimulating object.
Further information gained from a study of segments of behavior
concerns the qualitative differences in adjustments. Thus an act
which consists primarily of overt reaction systems will turn out to
be what is ordinarily known as a motor response, while segments of
behavior in which implicit reactions predominate will be described
by the conventional psychological term of reasoning. Of course, in
these complex segments there never is an exclusive series of one
type, but the predominant type colors the total act. Although it is
not always true, yet for the most part whenever we have a large
series of precurrent responses there are many discriminative phases
and the total act takes on the characteristics of intelligent behavior.
Again, we may observe that great variety is introduced in complex
behavior by the presence in it of language reactions. Language
reactions constitute the most subtle and at the same time the most
efficient sort of precurrent responses ; they make it possible for the
person to preface his final acts by many incipient responses, for
language reactions enable us to perform actions in prospect and to
determine the results of such actions before actually accomplishing
them. Obviously the rational segments of behavior and those con-
stituting voluntary action will include many language reaction
systems.
What is ordinarily called subconscious activity we may determine
upon analysis to be complex segments of behavior from which com-
municative language responses are absent. It must be understood
that only communicative language responses are absent, for sub-
conscious acts may be replete with automatized language reactions,
which are quite different things.
II
A stimulus is any object or thing which can call out a response
in the organism. By object or thing we designate any actual element
in the surroundings of an individual, thus using the terms in an
absolutely common-sense manner. We must include among those
elements trees, stones, wind, air, temperature, laws, customs, morals,
ideals, etc., in short, everything which influences our actions. Nor
are stimuli confined exclusively to objects, for in a genuine sense we
also respond specifically to the colors, tastes, odors, shapes, sizes, and
other qualities of objects. Furthermore, we must add to our list of
stimuli, besides objects and their qualities, all sorts of events and
conditions. When we interest ourselves in the precise conditions of
THE PRIMARY DATA OF PSYCHOLOGY 257
psychological behavior we find that the human organism reacts to
various sorts of circumstances as well as to objects. To a certain
extent we may see in this fact of the extensive range of adaptational
situations an important psychological difference between man and the
other animals. Exceedingly significant among stimuli are the actions
of the organism itself. No inconsiderable proportion of an organism 's
activities can be directly traced to its own immediately antecedent
reactions. This fact has been most exploited by psychologists with
reference to the series of reactions involved in a train of thought.
Indefinitely more striking than thoughts as stimuli, however, are
the various reflex actions, especially of the secretory sort. How re-
plete the literature of psychology is with discussions concerning
mysterious forces or drives controlling the actions of organisms, and
simply because in many instances the writers mistake the ordinary
biological-function factors of reflexes, such as the secretions of the
reproductive organs, for manifestations of superbehavioristic forces.
Now crudely we may classify all the stimuli into three kinds,
namely, natural, social and cultural. The first type includes all
of the objects which can stimulate the lower strata of psychological
organisms in common with the human species. Under the rubric of
social stimuli we may consider all the objects which surround us by
virtue of our living in human groups. Here we may mention such
things as laws, customs, opinions, etc. Also this class includes all of
the natural objects which have undergone modification because of the
human group needs. Salient among the objects of the third class are
the personal ideals of individuals which in a genuine sense are de-
veloped in the person's own experience.
Especially important is it to distinguish between the stimulus
proper and the medium of contact (light rays, air waves) operating
between the stimulating object and the stimulated person. This
distinction is all the more important because much confusion inimi-
cal to the understanding of psychological behavior can be thereby
avoided. Usually these media of contact are thought to be the
stimuli and in consequence the reactions are presumed to be types of
knowledge functions consisting of the presence in the knowing mind
of states induced by the media of stimulation. In detail, the ex-
istence is supposed of a one-to-one correspondence between types of
light rays or sound waves and specialized qualities in the mind. A
serious error arises from such a view which is no less than the im-
plication that the objects to which we adapt ourselves do not exist
until after the light rays, etc., "arouse the consciousness of their
qualities." From the view that the sound waves, etc., are the in-
separable correlates of the qualities of objects, it follows that look-
268 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ing upon the media as the stimuli commits one to a psychological
parallelism, or to express it otherwise, a subjectivism.
To all of this we counterpropose the hypothesis that the light
rays, heat rays, etc., are simply the means whereby the organism
gets into contact with the stimulating objects. A little reflection will
convince us of the merit of this view, for can we not and do we not
adapt ourselves to objects in the absence of any one or all but one of
the large variety of media of perceptual stimulation? And of course
in all ideational behavior they are entirely absent.
But let us not be at all understood as minimizing in any sense
the necessity for and importance of some medium of response, since
certainly, when we are merely in distance contact with an object and
the light rays are removed, we can not make any immediate and
overt response to that object. Moreover, we find that changes in the
media introduce all sorts of possible complexities in the reaction
situation, such as the distortion effects which are especially well
exemplified by the stick bent in water. On the other hand, however,
no quality of the response can be attributed to the mere presence of
the medium of contact.
How important it is to distinguish between stimulating objects
and media of stimulation may be judged from the fact that the
presence or absence of such media marks the difference between
psychological reactions on the one hand and biological and physical
activity on the other. In the physical domain we find no action in-
duced in an object by some other object which is not measurable as
an absolute equivalent of the energy expended by the other. In
other words, physical objects can only operate directly and imme-
diately upon one another. Hence physical actions are evaluated in
terms and propositions of inertia. In general, physical objects are
not possessed of action systems which can be put into operation by
some surrogate of the original stimulus object.
Less immediate is the operation of one thing upon another in the
case of purely biological organisms, for here we have a type of
organization in which it is not improper to say actions can be stored
up, later to be put into operation. Consequently, the biological
organism can be periodically stimulated to action which is entirely
out of proportion to the force exerted upon it by the stimulating
object. In tropismic action, while the range of movement is limited
and the type of action is constant, the organism may still be said
to be spontaneous. In other words, the biological organism has
developed the beginnings of sensitivity to media of contact, although
such media are identical or very intimately related with the stimulat-
ing object. This type of sensitivity in biological literature is given
the name irritability. From a scientific standpoint it is clear, of
THE PRIMARY DATA OF PSYCHOLOGY 259
course, that these differences are all variations in the workings of
different types of objects.
Consider now how differently the psychological organism is
related to the objects which provide it the occasions for adjustment.
Here the organism is so spontaneous and independent of the stimu-
lating object that the former can be influenced to act by a variety
of phases of the stimulating object. This condition is brought about
by the objects building up, in the reactional equipment of the in-
dividual, response systems which are put into operation through the
instrumentality of a variety of contact media. The psychological
organism may be equipped with reaction systems so that it can be
aroused to action by either the sight, sound, taste, touch, or other
contact with an object. Through the use of contact media, the psycho-
logical organism can not only adapt itself to objects distantly placed,
but it has been able to evolve an infinite variety of response forms
and integrations to the end of acquiring delayed and inhibitory re-
sponses of all sorts, besides differential or cognitive behavior.
To psychologists' traditional neglect of the distinction between a
stimulus and its medium of contact we might ascribe the responsi-
bility for much futile discussion concerning reactions to pain. The
phenomena of pain have always seemed to stand in the way of a
naturalistic psychology, such phenomena being the stronghold of
subjectivism, because it appeared impossible to think of pain as a
quality of an object in precisely the same sense as is red or sour.
Whoever takes cognizance of this problem may see that the diffi-
culty in interpreting pain phenomena has been due to the failure
of psychologists to consider the various peculiarities in such phe-
nomena with respect to the media of stimulation. For one thing,
since pain reactions involve such destructive media of stimulation as
pricking, cutting, or otherwise lacerating tissue, it is easy for us to
confuse such reactions with the stimulating conditions. In conse-
quence, it truly appears that pain is more intimately connected with
the person than is true even in the case of pressure responses. From
this fact as a starting point, and from the observation that pain-
inflicting objects do not themselves perform the pain reactions, it
was a simple step to the curious but no less common argument that
pain must be in the mind since it can not be in the knife.
Furthermore, it is safe to say that when objectively we study
stimulating objects, the media of stimulation, and the reactions to
things as isolated phases of psychological phenomena, we will learn
more concerning human behavior than is now the case. For ex-
ample, much have we yet to learn concerning the qualities of electrical
phenomena and their effects upon us, could we but keep distinct our
260 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
reactions from the media of stimulation, and thereby study the
means of our reception of the stimulating media.
The Stimulus and its Setting. An objective study of human re-
actions must include in its programme of investigation, besides the
media of stimulating objects, also the settings of the stimuli to which
adjustments are made. For it is an indubitable fact that the person
is stimulated not only by things but also by the setting or background
of the objects. From a behavior standpoint the setting of the stimu-
lus object is of extreme importance in influencing the behavior of the
individual in conditioning in a large way what the person will do.
A striking illustration of this fact is found in the activities of an
individual reaction to a social outrage, both when the stimulus is
in and out of a mob setting. Plainly we can determine that whatever
differences there are in a person's behavior to the same stimulus,
as in our example, they are all to be accounted for on the basis of
varying conditions of the stimulating situation.
Illusions, when they occur, are to a considerable extent unex-
pected forms of response accountable upon the basis of the modifica-
tion in the setting. Thus we may account for errors in reading by
observing that the reaction which occurs is due to the failure of the
stimulus to be coupled with its customary associates. The phe-
nomena of contrast to a very considerable extent can also be de-
scribed in terms of changes brought about in stimulating objects by
the proximity of various kinds of surrounding things.
To conceive of stimuli as contained in a general setting conduces
to an understanding of a further absolutely essential characteristic
of stimuli, namely, their interrelatedness or chainlike connection.
The study of complex behavior becomes futile when we presume that
stimuli are each and severally unique and independent arousers of
activity. Such a circumstance does not exist at all, as we indeed
infer from our study of the pattern of response. Almost every
situation in which we act involves a definite series of stimulations
which may be intricately related one with another. The appreciation
of the serial form of stimuli provides us with some insight into those
complex serial responses which are generally purported to be the
working out of instincts. Instead of believing in the existence of
mental states manifesting themselves in a variety of connected ac-
tions, we can account for such groups of activities as direct responses
to chains of interconnected stimuli. For instance, the specific acts
which the individual performs in a protracted physical contest de-
pend each upon the continuity of the series of stimulations offered by
the rival contestant.
The Classification of Stimuli. Stimuli may be distinguished
from each other upon a functional basis. In the first place, we may
THE PRIMARY DATA OF PSYCHOLOGY 261
differentiate between stimuli which call out overt responses directed
toward an object present, and ordinarily called perceptual acts, and
those stimuli which bring to action implicit (ideational) activities.
Under the overt class we distinguish primary and accessory arousers
to action, while under the implicit division we may place direct and
substitution stimuli as per the following table :
f(l) Primary stimuli.
For overt responses: -|
For implicit responses:-^
(2) Accessory stimuli.
(3) Direct stimuli.
(4) Substitution stimuli.
1. Overt or perceptual responses are aroused to action by the
original object or situation which excited them to action from the
beginning. A primary stimulus may be thought of as the object
which is naturally associated with a given response, or we might say
that a primary stimulus is the object which calls out a congenital
response, or which is responsible for the building up of a particular
response in the organism. The primary stimuli are objects in the
surroundings which bring into operation original differential re-
sponses. The clearest examples in nature of such stimuli are the
objects and conditions which arouse reflexes and instincts, in short,
any type of congenital response system.
2. Whatever happens to be the adequate stimulus for a given
response system, it is still possible to evoke that response system by
stimulating with an adjunct or an 1 accessory stimulus object. The
experimental demonstration of this phenomenon is found, in the now
universally familiar conditioned reflex. The probabilities are that
there may be several accessory stimuli attaching to a given reaction
system, although this has not yet been experimentally verified.
3. Both the primary and accessory stimulation objects are directly
in contact with the reacting organism, and the acts in which they
function may be considered as directly observable behavior. In the
domain of human psychology at least, there occur many acts which
are not always observed by other than the acting individual if they
are observed at all. For practical purposes we may call these types
of responses thought actions. Now such implicit reactions may be
called out (1) either by the object itself which is reacted to, or (2)
by some other object or situation which may then be said to substitute
for the original object to which the adjustment is made. A direct
stimulus to an implicit act would therefore be the person of whom
one is thinking, or the event in which one is planning to participate.
Clearly then the person must be in immediate contact with the
original object or event in order to be directly stimulated thereby.
262 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
4. In contrast to the direct stimulus, the substitution stimulus is
the excitant of a response originally acquired by contact with some
other object. One goes to visit some particular friend because of
being reminded of him by meeting a very close friend of the former.
In such a case the response is evoked by an object serving as a sub-
stitution for the object actually reacted to. Naturally enough we
can trace out various conditioning factors which make possible the
substitution of stimulating objects, among which are the resemblance,
the common or similar use of objects, and the contextual relation of
things. Apparent it is, then, that the substitution stimulus is an
essential factor in all memorial and thought behavior.
It may be justifiably urged that our description of the substitu-
tion stimulus merely depicts the circumstances of any stimulus cor-
related with a recognition response, since every recognition reaction
is indirectly aroused. Also, it might be said that every overt re-
sponse involves a substitution of stimuli even though the stimulating
object be the same, since every response succeeding the original
adjustment must perforce be stimulated by a representative of the
original object associated with the original response. In seeking
for a trustworthy guide to distinguish between a substitution and a
direct stimulus, we observe the following fact, namely, that whereas
in the non-substitution situation the acting stimulus is one that would
ordinarily call out the response in question because of an original
coordination between the two, in the case of the genuine substitution,
on the contrary, no such connection exists.
The operation of the substitution stimulus is clear-cut when we
consider the delayed reaction in which there are several intermediary
responses preceding the final actual adjustment. In such a delayed
reaction some object evokes an implicit or incipient response, which
in turn serves as a stimulus to some other incipient response, until
finally the consummatory adjustment is made. We look upon the
final adjustment as the adequate reaction to some object or situation,
and as we see, it is in the end made to operate by some object or
situation other than the one finally adjusted to.
Ill
The adjustment unit of a behavior segment is the operation of a
reaction system. This system by virtue of the fact that it is an act
cf an organism or a person can be analyzed into a series of component
functions. These components represent (1) simple acts which unite
to form a larger whole such as the integration of letter strokes into
word wholes in typewriting, (2) the integration of definite antici-
patory and consummatory phases of an act to become a part of a
TEE PRIMARY DATA OF PSYCHOLOGY 263
larger act, and (3) logically derived elements of a single reaction of
an organism to a stimulating object. The fact is that the integrative
character of psychological reactions makes it possible for all of the
phases of a simple adjustment to become a single phase of a more
complex reaction. The response system is,, then, a unitary organ-
ismal adjustment to a stimulus and is abstracted from a pattern of
response in a segment of behavior. In the following table are
summarized all of the salient features of the response system :
1. Discriminative phase.
2. Conative phase, the preparatory attitude of the organism brought
about through the media of stimulation, air waves, for ex-
ample.
3. Affective factor, tension, strain, relief, pleasantness, etc.
4. Action of receptor mechanism.
5. Action of afferent transmission system (nervous conduction).
6. Action of central adjuster (synaptic coordination).
7. Action of efferent transmission system (nervous conduction).
8. Action of effector mechanism.
9. Muscular and (or) glandular phase.
Probably none of the components require any particular explana-
tion, but in order to obviate any parallelistic interpretation of any
phase of the response system we might elucidate briefly the first
three members in the table.
1. The discriminative function refers to that characteristic of a
psychological reaction which we might designate as the differential
response. A fact of nature it is that the psychological organism acts
in a distinct and specific way in the presence of different objects, or
when the same objects are in different settings. This capacity of
making differential responses is based upon the differential sen-
sitivity of an organism to different qualities of things, such as colors
and tastes and their respective media of stimulation, and is an
elementary fact precisely as is the fact of electrostatic induction.
By constant contact with numerous objects the responses become so
specialized and unique as to merit the name of knowledge and when
the responses are not only discriminative but anticipatory also, the
reactions can be called intelligent and reflective. With the increase
of the contacts of the organism with the surrounding objects the
responses become, of course, more and more complexly integrated
and the organism's adaptations to particular classes of things may
become highly intelligent and capable.
2. By the conative component of a reaction system is meant the
susceptibility of an organism to vary its position and attitude to-
ward a stimulus because of being attracted to it through a medium
264 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
of contact. When light, air, or heat radiations come into contact
with the organism they put it into a state of preparation for action
upon some new stimulating object. In a genuine sense we might
think of the conative characteristics of a reaction system as the
factor which influences the person or organism to react to any given
stimulus, since the conative factor refers to the set of the organism
and the precise means in which this set is brought about. In many
cases it is precisely the ease with which an organism can be set for
a response to some stimulus which may condition the occurrence of
the adjustment at all. Moreover, any reaction may be decidedly modi-
fied by the mode of getting set. Thus the jerkiness of a pain reflex
may be ascribed to the way in which the medium of stimulation
influences the organism to prepare for an adjustment. In general,
the direct contact media of stimulation bring about more active and
prompt preparation for responses. Very important in influencing
the form of the conative factor in reactions is the number of re-
ceptors which are in contact with media of stimulation at the same
time.
3. The affective factor or feeling phase of a reaction system refers
to the general condition of the organism before the present stimula-
tion, which condition greatly modifies the present reaction. Also
the organism is conditioned by the present response and carries over
the feeling to future conduct. The feeling factor may be described
as calmness, relief, strain, tension, pleasantness, excitement, satisfac-
tion, etc., and depends to a considerable extent upon the physiological
condition of the person.
In general, it must be observed that the three components of the
response system which we have been describing refer much more to
the functioning of the complete organism than is true of the other
components. Strictly speaking, of course, none of the components
can be considered as anything but an abstraction from a total unitary
activity. It is possible, however, in all but fhe three cases specified,
to correlate the components with the activity of a part of the or-
ganism in the form of specific anatomical structures (glands, muscles,
end organs, nervous structures). The fact that these three former
components of the reaction system can not be correlated with any-
thing but the total activity of the organism is doubtless in large
part responsible for parallelistic hypotheses. Moreover, the fact that
these three components may constitute predominant phases of antici-
patory reactions antedating a final adjustment, which may seem
to be predominately muscular and glandular, gives rise to the notion
of the uniqueness of these components.
The Classification of Reactions. Such complex phenomena as
response systems naturally can not be simply classified or described
THE PRIMARY DATA OF PSYCHOLOGY 265
from a single standpoint. We propose, therefore, to enumerate the
outstanding characteristics from several logically uncoordinated
angles.
1. Connate and Acquired Responses. Since the psychological
organism is likewise a biological organism its development parallels
the unfolding of the animal form. Each starts with a complement
of functions which develop to greater and greater complexity in
accordance with the needs of the individual. Thus the psychological
organism comes into the world equipped with definite response sys-
tems, which may be considered as the genetic prototypes of all the
future response patterns of the particular individual. In other
words, the complex reactions of the mature individual are developed
by a process of interaction of the organism with surrounding objects
on the basis of the connate action systems.
Although there seems to be no logical objection to the proposition
that all responses are developed from these crude connate begin-
nings, yet the reactions of a mature person are so absolutely unlike
the connate systems that they must be looked upon as qualitatively
different. That is to say, the description of them should be in no
wise compromised by the fact of their humble origin. For after all
the facts of psychological phenomena are best described by consider-
ing reactions as directly deservable responses to definite stimuli. In
other words, the acquired reactions which operate in our highly in-
tegrated and controlled adjustments such as thought and memory
adaptations should be described as they arise to meet the needs of the
organism, and as they operate and are controlled by the stimulating
circumstances in which they function. Probably the best attitude
toward the problem under discussion is the careful observance of
both the continuity of the individual's behavior development, and
the full factual description of any present reaction.
As samples of connate response systems we may cite the actions
usually described as reflexes, instincts as found in the animal and
infant, and random movements as found in infants. Among the ac-
quired response systems we will naturally find the most complex
integrations of behavior factors and as a typical example of them we
may mention the communicative language responses, as well as all
the behavior units which function in our multivaried acts of skill.
2. Actual and Potential Reaction Systems. Another mode of
classifying reaction systems is the consideration of them as actually
occurring responses in the presence of their adequate stimuli, or as
latent forms of adaptation to surrounding objects when the stimuli
are not operating. Under the former heading we may place all the
actually functioning responses of the organism at the moment, while
under the latter class we place all those responses which the individ-
266 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ual will perform when surrounded by different objects and persons.
Obviously, we can not at any instant acquaint ourselves with the
complete adaptational equipment of any individual, and thus arises
the necessity for performance or efficiency tests. Apparently the
difference between the two types of responses reduces iteelf to a
degree of connection with a stimulus, but the classification points to
the unmistakable presence of response systems in the individual prior
to their excitation by stimuli. In other words, by the term latent
response we mean only to point out that the person as a psychological
machine may be expected to respond in a certain way, whenever he
is offered a particular stimulus, provided he has acquired the neces-
sary response system and it is not for any reason prevented from
operating. And -all this in precisely the same sense in which the
automobile salesman informs us that his machine will operate under
definite stated conditions, although the automobile may not at that
moment be actually running.
Naturally the range of potential responses includes all of the
various action systems, which, when they occur, exhibit to us the
precise nature or character of the person. That is to say, it will in-
clude not only the reflexes and simple habit responses but also the
most complex social and intellectual activities. Let us observe at this
point that whenever the terms tendency or disposition are properly
used in psychology they must refer to just such particular latent
reaction systems which constitute the capacities of the person when
those systems are not acting, and which are the performances of the
individual when they do function. Immediately upon the presenta-
tion of their stimuli these latent response systems are aroused to
activity and become actual responses.
3. Delayed and Immediate Responses. Students of behavior in
their first contacts with psychological phenomena observe the im-
mediacy of certain responses and their more or less protracted delay,
in the individual 's final adjustment in other cases. Now this differ-
ence in reaction is not merely a matter of an interpolated time in-
terval between the appearance of the stimulus and the occurrence of
the response, but rather an interpolation of precurrent responses be-
tween the final response (considered the response in question) and
the appearance of the stimulating object or situation.
The immediate responses can be best understood by observing
that the segment of behavior in which they occur is limited to a single
. or a very few responses. It is for this reason that there is a close
correlation between immediate responses and the simple reflex type
of action. Here the first action called out by the given stimulus i
at the same time the final adjustment.
In contrast to the immediate responses we find that in some seg-
THE PRIMARY DATA OF PSYCHOLOGY 267
ments of behavior there are series of responses resulting in a final
adjustment. In these delayed responses a definite attention adjust-
ment may be followed by a definite perceptual or ideational reaction
or a series of such reactions; then finally a eonsummatory response
will follow. Also in complex voluntary reactions we may find numer-
ous language responses interpolated between the stimulus and the
eonsummatory response.
Different varieties of delayed responses are found in organisms,
but we can distinguish between at least two fairly clear-cut types.
In the first of these types all the interpolated responses are overt
reactions, 1 while in the second type the precurrent acts are language
reactions or ideational processes. Naturally, the ideational or lan-
guage precurrent responses are more efficient and allow for a longer
time interval between stimuli and responses, and, what is more im-
portant, pave the way for the development of extremely complex
behavior.
4. Temporary and Permanent Reactions. One of the most obvious
facts about reactions is their constant waxing and waning. The
former phenomenon finds its best known expression in the persever-
ant activity while the waning character of reactions is found in the
process of forgetting. Many responses there are which remain per-
manently with the individual and operate in the presence of their
adequate stimuli. These responses we call permanent and they are
illustrated by the informational and skill reactions which give char-
acter to the individual.
Among the temporary responses are the memorial actions, which
are pressed into service for a given limited period. These temporary
responses do not disappear completely from the reactional equipment
of the person, but they are merely disengaged from the stimulating
situations to which they once were attached. Familiar psychological
phenomena which throw light upon the nature of permanent and
temporary responses are the amnesias and aphasias which illustrate
conditions in which parts of the permanent reactional equipment of
the person are temporarily lost, or we might say operate as though
they were really temporary response systems.
5. Explicit and Implicit Reactions. Among the most important
of distinctions between responses is that of the explicit and implicit
response systems. Briefly, we might differentiate between these two
types of responses by pointing out that in the former case some
actual operation is performed upon the stimulating object while the
implicit act can never be anything but a precurrent response to some
final adjustment which produces some effect upon an object.
In every case an implicit response is a vestigial remnant of some
iSuch as bodily orientations; cf. Watson, Behavior, p. 227.
268 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
original overt act or an incipient functioning of the whole. Because
the implicit action is subtly and rapidly performed it constitutes the
basis for all sorts of thinking operations. Probably the best ex-
amples of implicit responses to objects and situations are thinking
and dream activities. Thoughts or ideational activities are nothing
more than a subtle and symbolic repeating of responses previously
performed upon some object or situation. Being vestigial responses,
implicit acts may take on a large variety of symbolic forms, so that
an ideational activity may be in the widest sense representative of
any given act. In some cases the representing act may function
more like an overt than an incipient response showing the possibility
of substituting reactions, one for another. This substitution of re-
sponses is of primary importance for the integration of complex
response systems.
6. General and Specific Reaction Systems. Although reaction
systems must be considered as definite responses to specific stimuli,
still we can differentiate between those systems which are aroused to
action by classes of things rather than by individual objects. As we
consider the order of complexity in our reactions we find that the
simpler adjustments to natural surroundings are excited to action
by purely individual and specific stimuli, while in the more complex
social responses the stimuli may be indifferent individuals of a type
of thing or event. In the complex behavior equipment of the person
we find, for example, that any elderly person may stimulate us to
offer him our seat. Similarly, the acts of any person may arouse
our proffer of thanks. Precisely the same reactions will serve as
generalized adjustments to any individual stimulus of a given class.
Again, we acquire responses not to tamper with anything but that
which is definitely our own property. Especially noticeable in our
equipment of generalized reaction systems are negative or inhibiting
responses.
IV
Fragmentary and schematic as the above analysis of psychological
phenomena is, it does, we still believe, suggest some of the salient
characteristics of the elementary processes involved in psychological
activity. Not the least valuable aspect of such an analysis is the
essential implication that psychological phenomena are the actions
of a complex and highly organized individual. In effect, this means
that psychology must always employ itself with data that are dynamic
in character, in the sense that they are reactions to surrounding
objects or things and not manifestations of complex cellular organi-
zation and functions, or of some hidden mind or soul. Considered as
the operation of a psychological machine, the data of psychology are,
SUPERNATURALISTIC BELIEF AND RELIGION 269
theoretically at least, subject to precise natural description and
formulation into laws. To be sure, psychologists can not, because of
the nature of the facts with which they deal, hope to duplicate in
their domain the exactness and simplicity of physical formulations,
but they can exclude from psychology all animistic prepossession and
unscientific description.
J. R. KANTOR.
INDIANA UNIVERSITY.
IS SUPERNATURALISTIC BELIEF ESSENTIAL IN A
DEFINITION OF RELIGION?
IN a previous article in this JOURNAL/ devoted chiefly to a con-
sideration of William James's philosophy of religion, I discussed
what I called the fallacy of false attribution, which, I said, "consists
in the erroneous interpretation of an experience whereby the ex-
perience is attributed to an external, divine source in cases where
a physiological explanation is adequate to account for it." James
leaves us in no doubt as to his acceptance of supernaturalism, and
his consequent commission of the fallacy of false attribution when
he appeals to the so-called religious experience as evidence for the
truth of religion. In The Varieties of Religious Experience he says,
"If one should make a division of all thinkers into naturalists and
supernaturalists, I should undoubtedly have to go, along with most
philosophers, into the supernaturalist branch" (p. 520). He further
classifies himself as what he calls a "piecemeal" supernaturalist.
"Piecemeal" supernaturalism, he says, "admits miracles and provi-
dential leadings, and finds no intellectual difficulty in mixing the
ideal and the real worlds together by interpolating influences from
the ideal region among the forces that causally determine the real
world's details" (pp. 520-21). Others, however, might reject all
supernaturalism and still insist that evidence for the truth of religion
is to be found empirically in the religious experience. If super-
naturalistic belief were not involved in the religious experience, that
is, if it were possible for one accepting a purely naturalistic account
of all one's experiences still to regard some of them as religious ex-
periences, then the fallacy of false attribution would not occur.
The crucial question arises, therefore, as to the possibility of
defining religion in naturalistic terms. Supernaturalistic or trans-
cendental belief of some kind is commonly regarded as essential in
religion, both in popular thought and also in the traditional theo-
i Vol. XIV. (1917), pp. 653-60. See also, for discussion of the fallacy of
false attribution, the author's book, The Biological Foundations of Belief (Bos-
ton, 1921), Chs. II., HI.
270 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
logical accounts such as those based upon Plato or Kant. The
burden of proof, consequently, rests upon any one who goes con-
trary to the accepted views. Many have attempted, however, to
define religion without including any specific sort of supernatural-
istic belief ; and I propose to examine some of these attempts and to
point out wherein they are fallacious.
Those who try to define religion err frequently in two ways.
In the first place, philosophers and theologians are apt to define
religion as it is for them personally, not as it is for people in gen-
eral. In the second place, philosophers and theologians may some-
times define religion as they think it ought to be for all mankind,
not as it is actually found to be in general human experience. It
is historians and psychologists bf religion who are the best guides
in the search for a correct definition, for they examine the institu-
tions, ceremonies, and personal experiences which are commonly
called religious.
Historians of religion and psychologists who concern themselves
with religious experience agree rather generally that religion, though
manifesting itself variously, from inarticulate experiences of in-
dividuals to socially sanctioned creeds and institutions, is always
characterized by the presence of certain specific beliefs. Anthro-
pologists tend at present to agree in accepting some such account
of the earliest form of religion as Mr. Marett gives in his book,
The Threshold of Religion; and, according to Mr. Marett, religion in
its earliest, preanimistic stage consists of belief in a vaguely defined,
unseen "power," out of which belief there arise acts of appeasing
and persuading and making use of this "power." "To begin with,"
says Mr. Marett, "the religious eye perceives the presence of mana
here, there, and everywhere. . . . "Whatever the word may originally
have signified .... it stands in its actual use for something lying
more or less beyond the reach of the senses something merging on
what we are wont to describe as the immaterial or unseen (p. 118).
James, similarly, in a study of religion upon the highest level, says
that religion consists of the "belief that there is an unseen order,
and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves
thereto."' So, at the two extremes of religious development, the
lowest and the highest, we find, as these two definitions indicate, that
religion is characterized by belief in some sort of supernatural
reality. Mere belief in the existence of this supernatural realm, how-
ever, does not in itself constitute religion. There is in religion the
further belief that some sort of human adjustment to this reality is
advisable, as James states in the definition quoted above; and in
practise such belief issues in overt acts of worship. The objects of
* The Varieties of Eeligious Experience, p. 53.
SUPERNATURALISTIC BELIEF AND RELIGION 271
religious belief, differentiating it from other kinds of belief, are,
then, of two classes : first, some sort of supernatural order of reality,
capable of sustaining a more or less personal relationship with man ;
and, second, certain acts and attitudes towards this order of reality,
acts regarded in the lower religions as efficacious in gaining the
aid of the unseen powers, and in the higher religions, acts of
adjustment to the unseen order. This would pass as a minimum
definition of religion, a statement of what is necessary and no more
than is necessary to constitute religion. Religion, further, depends
for its existence upon the existence of the beliefs in the above-
mentioned religious objects, not necessarily upon the existence of
the objects themselves.
A wholly adequate justification of my definition of religion
would involve the exhibition of supernaturalistic belief in all in-
stances of what, by general consent, is called religion. The pro-
cedure might be a wholly empirical one, based upon a historical and
psychological study of races and of individuals who have manifested
the external signs of religion during the course of history, and who
continue to do so at the present time. Such a study would be long
and arduous, however ; and, besides, many such studies have already
been made. I shall limit myself, therefore, to an examination of
certain definitions of religion that explicitly exclude the element of
supernaturalistic belief; and I shall show that such belief is im-
plied in these very attempts to deny its necessity.
In one of his early articles 3 Professor Leuba denied that belief
is essential in religion. He says: "We have in this essay insisted
upon the absolute divorce which must be recognized between intel-
lectual beliefs and religion" (p. 314). "Religion has become or is
coming to be the conglomerate of desires and emotions springing
from the sense of sin and its release" (p. 321). But here religion
is said to involve belief in sin, a belief that does not occur in the
merely moral life. "Sin" does not occur in the vocabulary of
secular ethics. A sense of sin implies belief in a "higher," unseen
order, together with the belief that maladjustment to this order
exists. Consequently, Professor Leuba does not here escape defining
religion in terms of supernaturalistic belief.
Others who attempt to define religion without including super-
naturalistic belief may be criticised similarly. Thus Mr. Crawley,
in his book, The Tree of Life, says that belief is not essential in
religion. He says: "Religion may arise and subsist without any
belief either in God or the soul" (p. 178). "The source of religious
feelings and their constant support is not the belief in 'spirits' "
" A Study of the Psychology of Religious Phenomena, ' ' American Journal
of Psychology, Vol. VII. (1895-96), pp. 309-385.
272 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
(p. 185). "The religious emotion is no separate feeling, but that
tone or quality of any feeling which results in making something
sacred. . . . Consecration the making sacred of elemental facts,
so noticeable both in primitive and civilized life, is the normal
result of the religious impulse, and of this alone" (p. 209). Then Mr.
Crawley's problem becomes that of defining sacredness. He finds
sacredness characteristic of the elemental facts of life, such as birth,
marriage, death, and burial. "The vital instinct, the feeling of life,
the will to life ... is the origin of religion" (p. 214). Thus, at the
last, Mr. Crawl ey does not define religion apart from supernatural-
istic belief, not necessarily belief in definite spirits or in God, but
in a mysterious power, that of life. The "feeling of life" which,
for him, constitutes religion, is not such an attitude as that, for
example, of the modern scientist who gives a mechanistic account of
life, but is a belief in life as a mysterious supernatural fountain of
power. Sacredness can not be defined apart from belief in a super-
natural area of reality. Birth, marriage, death, and burial, re-
garded merely as physiological and social processes, possess no
sacredness. Belief that supernatural power is manifested in such
processes renders them sacred.
Although in one of his early articles, from which I quoted above,
Professor Leuba defined religion without including the element of
belief, in one of his later works* he very definitely includes belief
as a necessary constituent. Further, all who admit the relevance
of the question of truth and error in religion, thereby admit the
presence of belief as a universal and necessary factor. Except
where belief or judgment occurs, the predicates "true" and "false"
do not apply at all.
Buddhism is an instance of a religion which might seem to be
completely atheistic, that is, without any belief in God. In practise,
however, this is not the case. Pure Buddhism is more a philosophy
than a religion, while in Buddhism as actually practised as a religion
the Buddha himself is deified. Consequently, Buddhism may come
under my definition of religion by virtue of added elements. More-
over, one may maintain, as Professor Leuba does," that original
Buddhism, though disregarding gods, did involve belief in a trans-
cendent psychic power. And Professor Hocking 8 regards Buddhism
as having what would pass for a god, that is, the law of Karma,
which is the moral order of the universe.
The religion of Humanity, which positivism offers, might be
cited as an instance of a religion that contradicts my definition.
A Psychological Study of Religion. See especially pp. 9, 10, 52.
Ibid., p. 289.
W. E. Hocking, The Meaning of God in Human Experience, p. 333.
"The religion of Humanity," says the positivist Mr. Harrison, 7
"... insists that the normal object of religious reverence lies, . . .
not in the Incomprehensible, but in the Comprehensible; not in the
Universe, but in this planet ; not in the Absolute, but in the Relative ;
not in the Supernatural, but in the Natural ; not in the Divine, but
in the Human World." My criticism is, that the religion of Hu-
manity, so called, is not properly a religion at all according to ac-
cepted usage of the term. Even Mr. Harrison admits this, for he
says, "Education would be a more significant and precise phrase to
use of Positivism, if we could purge education from its purely in-
tellectual connotation" (Preface, p. xviii).
M. Sabatier, in his Outlines of a Philosophy of Religion, defines
religion in terms of ' ' feeling, ' ' and says that no element of belief is
necessarily present. Beliefs, he says (p. 8), may die out, but religion
will go on forever. Religion is "the feeling of dependence which
every man experiences with respect to universal being" (pp. 21, 22).
"This feeling of our subordination thus furnishes the experimental
and indestructible basis of the idea of God" (p. 22). "The feeling
of our dependence is that of the mysterious presence of God in us"
(p. 23). Such a definition as M. Sabatier 's does not, however, escape
the admission of an element of belief. A psychological analysis of
one of these experiences of "dependence on universal being" reveals
in the experience a belief, however indistinct and inarticulate, in the
reality of a religious object a belief in ' ' the mysterious presence of
God in us." M. Sabatier says (pp. 23, 24) that "the material uni-
verse is not the principle of sovereignty to which it is possible for
man to submit," and that the practise of religion is an "act of con-
fidence and communion with the universal Spirit. ' ' Here is clearly
involved belief in the reality of "universal Spirit," as opposed, for
example, to universal matter; and this is a distinct case of belief in
a religious object.
Professor Hoffding, in his Philosophy of Religion, tries to differ-
entiate religious experiences from other experiences without refer-
ence to belief. "Religious experience is essentially religious feel-
ing," he says (p. 106) ; and religious feeling is "the feeling which
is determined by the fate of values in the struggle for existence"
(p. 107). Any "cosmical vital feeling" is religious feeling, accord-
ing to Professor Hoffding (p. 110). The doctrines, dogmas, and
cults in which religion has come to be expressed are not literal, he
says, but figurative. "The religious consciousness expresses itself
by means of more or less figurative ideas" (p. 242). "Religious
ideas . . . give figurative form and expression to other sides of the
soul's life than those which are served by intellectual ideas" (p. 243).
T Frederic Harrison, The Positive Evolution of Eeligion, p. 212.
274 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Professor Hoffding even says that the various religious conceptions
of God, immortality, and the like, have originated historically "in
combinations of figures" (p. 243).
Two criticisms may be brought against such a position. In the
first place, it is impossible to differentiate the religious consciousness
from other, non-religious experiences without introducing the factor
of belief. If "cosmical vital feeling" is to be called religious feel-
ing, and not merely emotion of an esthetic sort, it is so only by
virtue of a belief as to the source of the experience a belief that
a supernatural significance attaches to the experience. In the second
place, even though some of the religious legends and dogmas have
now become merely symbolical for a portion of present-day wor-
shippers, the dogmas did not as a matter of historical fact origi-
nate as symbols. A literal significance was originally attached.
Moreover, a literal significance is still ascribed to them by the ma-
jority of worshippers. How long would even symbols remain if there
were no literal believers?
Even for those who do take all religious dogmas symbolically,
religion is not definable apart from belief in a class of supernatural
objects or in a single supernatural object. A symbol, in order to
be a symbol, must be a symbol of something. The worshipper who
takes the dogmas as symbols, and does not believe them literally, still
believes that they are symbols of something real or realizable, though
not capable of being expressed except through poetic, imaginative
symbolism. Furthermore, the objects symbolized are supernatural
objects, existing beyond the world that the sciences study. Professor
Hoffding himself admits this, for he says: "If we could and ought
to uphold no other views of existence than those which scientific in-
quiry can construct and prove, then the axiom of the conservation
of value must fall to the ground. Science is not in a position to
produce out of itself a religious faith" (p. 244).
An effort is sometimes made to define religion in terms of faith,
and to regard faith as something entirely distinct from ordinary be-
lief. Thus Kitschlianism, claiming with Pascal that "the heart has
reasons which reason does not know," bases religion on faith as a
form of religious knowledge entirely different from scientific, factual
beliefs. Faith, however, is a mental process open to ordinary psycho-
logical analysis; and upon analysis it is found to consist of belief
in the reality of some object or in the truth of some proposition,
along with an accompanying emotional state of trust or confidence.
Faith in God involves belief in God's existence, together with con-
fidence in His goodness and care. This latter notion is illustrated
in the non-religious life by the case, for example, of faith in the
curative properties of medicine. Often the term "faith" is ex-
BOOK REVIEWS 275
tended in its theological usage to mean belief in the reality of some-
thing for which there is no empirical evidence. Tennyson's lines in
"In Memoriam" express this idea:
We have but faith: we can not know;
For knowledge is of things we see.
But faith in this sense of the word still includes the element of be-
lief, just as it must do in any other legitimate usage of the term.
There has been frequently in history, just as at the present time,
a strong tendency to find the essence of religion in personal experi-
ences of a mystical sort. Furthermore, it might seem to some people
that, when defined in terms of mystical experiences, religion is
defined without the inclusion of belief as a requisite element. This,
however, is not the case. Upon analysis mysticism is found to con-
sist of a strongly marked emotional state, together with a conviction
or strong belief that there is a divine significance attaching to the
experience. At least after the experience there is present in the
mind of the mystic this belief as to the divine source and significance
of the experience.
Though supernaturalistic belief of some sort occurs in all religi-
ous experiences properly so called and in all accurate definitions of
religion, it might be claimed, nevertheless, that those persons ought
to be called religious whose reactions to the universe as a whole, to
the cosmic drift of things, were serious and reverent, even though
their philosophical views were naturalistic. The majority of scien-
tists would probably be included in this class. The man of high
moral ideals and serious purposes, especially if his life is touched
with deep emotion at the thought of the total cosmic situation, ought
hardly to be called irreligious, perhaps, even though he lacked all
the usual religious beliefs. Such a man is certainly not irreverent;
but it would be more accurate, however, to call such a man, not
religious, but moral merely, with esthetic emotions coloring his
morality. Regard for correct usage of the term requires that religion
be defined in such a way as to include supernaturalistic belief.
WESLEY RAYMOND WELLS.
COLBY COLLEGE.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
La Filosofia Contemporanea. GUIDO DE RUGGIERO. Seconda Edizione.
2 vols. Bari : Gius. Laterza & Figli. Pp. 271, 292.
A completely objective survey of recent European philosophy
has not yet been written, and perhaps never will be written. Such
276 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
books as have thus far been written are perspectives of recent philoso-
phy defined by the doctrinal and geographical location of the writer.
That Signer De Ruggiero lives far from current American philoso-
phy both in body and in mind, is most clearly indicated by his
apportionment of space. He divides contemporary philosophy by
the principle of nationality, allotting 120 pages to Germany, 125 to
France, 160 (including the Appendix) to Italy, and 80 to "Anglo-
American" philosophy. James and Royce receive about five pages
each, Baldwin two pages, Charles Peirce one page, and Dewey one
page, no other American being mentioned at all. There is evidence
of the same perspective in the extent of the author's reading. Al-
though the first edition of the present work did not appear until
1912, there is no evidence of the author's being familiar with any-
thing of James's after the Pragmatism (1907), or of Royce 's after
the Studies in Logical Theory (1903) . Among British thinkers, there
is no mention of Whitehead, Alexander or G. E. Moore ; while Rus-
sell is barely alluded to as an exponent of logistics. The strangest
omission of all, in view of the author's doctrinal bias, is that of
Bosanquet. This writer's Logic obtains a brief and disparaging
mention in company with those of Mill and Bradley, but his other
writings are ignored entirely. Although Italian readers will thus
derive from this book a very imperfect and misleading knowledge
of current pholosophy in England and America, this does not prevent
the English or American reader from finding the book a useful
guide to the current philosophy of continental Europe. Contem-
porary German philosophy has been reviewed so frequently that
this portion of the book is valuable as an interpretation rather than
as a history. But the summaries of French and Italian (including
Neo-Thomistic) philosophy are unique and illuminating, and con-
stitute the chief merit of the book.
In its general method and intent the book is not an historical ex-
position, but a criticism and constructive argument. The author
is a Neo-Hegelian and he reads Neo-Hegelianism into and out of
the whole course of recent philosophical development. Thus Hegel 's
greatness lay in his giving a metaphysical interpretation to Kant's
great discovery of the a priori synthetic role of thought. It remained
for the Neo-Hegelians to purge this view of dualism and transcend-
ence of every sort, and so to perfect the philosophy of "absolute
immanence." This step could not be taken until after the classical
idealism had been supplemented and even momentarily eclipsed by
the naturalistic and empirical movement. This latter movement
accomplished two things: it proved that the rigor and autonomy of
the special sciences must be respected ; and, by reducing materialism
BOOK REVIEWS 277
to subjectivism, it provided a chapter in the idealistic conception of
nature. The new idealism did not, however, arise in the home of the
old. The German Neo-Kantians of all descriptions, Cohen, Rickert,
"Windleband and the rest, lost their way and wandered from the path.
It was left to strangers of other lands to assume the succession and
proclaim the true doctrine. These apparent transplantations of
idealism which flourished better in a foreign soil evidently puzzle
the author, since idealism is, like all true philosophy, an outgrowth
of the national life, and can not, strictly speaking, be transplanted.
The solution lies in regarding idealism as the independent outcrop-
ping through the medium of national life of the same essential
spirituality. In any case, the true successors of Kant and Hegel,
the true exponents of the immanent, concrete and historical idealism,
have been Lachelier and Weber in France, Baillie in England, Royce
in America ("the most vigorous of Anglo-American philosophers"),
and Croce and Gentile in Italy.
From a doctrinal and geographical point of view other than the
author's this book is not an account of contemporary philosophy, but
of nineteenth century philosophy. For the author the primary
object of philosophy is to establish a spiritual view of the world
against the inroads of skepticism, materialism and secularism ; which
was, in a sense, its object during the last century. In the interest of
this cause the author is satisfied with the traditional speculative and
a priori methods of philosophy; and he speaks with the traditional
accent of authority and outraged dignitj 7 when he has occasion to
chastise the various forms of the naturalistic and empiricist heresy.
It is therefore inevitable that the most characteristic development of
contemporary philosophy in England and America should be lost
upon him. Their genial qualities must strike him as flippant and
scandalous, and their rigorous qualities as unedifying and destructive.
He must necessarily fail to see what may strike another observer as
ithe most significant and wholesome symptom of twentieth century
philosophy, an effort at greater precision, clearness, openness of
mind and respect for fact. It is the same desire to rid philosophy of
cant, verbalism, and apologetic bias that has moved thinkers other-
wise so wide apart as the pragmatists and the exponents of logistics.
It has moved the realists of England and America. It has led Berg-
son to limit his speculation to the immediate vicinity of some definite
and special scientific question. It has led to the development of
Gegenstandstheorie with Husserl and Meinong. It has led even the
idealists themselves, and notably such thinkers as Royce in America
and the Neo-Kantians in Germany, to pursue methodology, and to
develop new and intimate connections with natural science. This
278 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
desire does not and can not obtain adequate recognition in De Rug-
giero's Italian and Neo-Hegelian philosophical perspective.
RALPH BARTON PERRY.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
La Philosophic Geometrique de Henri Poincare. Louis ROUGIEK.
Paris: Alcan. 1920. Pp. 208.
This book starts from the thesis that sciences, according to
traditional logic, consist either of rational truths, a priori, eternal,
universal, analytic, and necessary, or of empirical truths, a pos-
teriori, capable of revision, singular, synthetic and contingent.
Kant's doctrine of the a priori synthetic judgment was an attempt
to mediate between these positions, but unsuccessful on account of
the complicated intellectual machinery involved. The correct posi-
tion is that of the "geometrical conventionalism" of Poincare.
The book is divided into two parts, of which the first deals with
the logical and mathematical prolegomena to Poincare 's theory.
The author aims at minimizing the amount of mathematical knowl-
edge necessary to understand Poincare 's exposition, and while he
is reasonably successful, there still remain enough formula and
technicalities to puzzle readers who have not some mathematical
attainments.
The second part of the book gives the theory of "conventions"
and Poincare 's criticism of other positions, from empiricism to
Kantianism. The author identifies Poincare 's position with his
own, and professes to add nothing but certain confirmations from
the recent utilization of non-Euclidean and four-dimensional geom-
etries in problems of the physics of relativity.
M. Rougier has the true Frenchman's gift for clear exposition,
but one misses at times the brilliant passages that enlighten, by
striking figures of speech, Poincare 's own expositions, particularly
in his later works such as the Science et Methode and the Deri'
Pensees. For the American reader, a frank acceptance of Poin-
care' 's self-classification as a pragmatist would contribute to an
understanding of his point of view. But of course M. Rougier was
writing for a French audience. It is, however, good to have atten-
tion directed as often as possible to work like Poincare 's for there
has never been his equal as an exponent of the theory of knowledge
in relation to concrete instances of scientific achievement.
HAROLD CHAPMAN BROWN.
STANFORD UNIVERSITY.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS 279
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
BRITISH JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY. Vol. X., Part 4.
July, 1920. Note on Professor J. Laird's Treatment of Sense Presen-
tations (pp. 285-89) : J. E. TURNER. -We must supplement the real-
ism which Professor Laird advocates by regarding sense data as
always fragments or aspects of the physical world, determined (for
psychology) to be sense data by these conditions under which they
are always and necessarily presented to a consciousness debarred by
its finitude from an immediate apprehension of the whole reality.
Reply to Mr. J. E. Turner's Note (pp. 290-92) : JOHN LAIRD. -It is
irrelevant to point out that sense data have a certain evanescent con-
tinuance. A Performance Test under Industrial Conditions (pp.
292-309) : S. WYATT and H. C. WESTON.- An investigation was car-
ried on in the cotton industry under the auspices of the Industrial
Fatigue Research Board. The process under investigation was
bobbin-winding. Each winder came from her own winding-frame to
the test frame and pieced the 50 pairs of ends as quickly as possible.
Individual differences decrease as a result of practise, but the day's
work has a variable effect upon different individuals. Two Examples
of Child Music (pp. 310-11) : WILLIAM PLATT. - Two examples found
since the author's book was published are given. A Voice Reaction
Key (pp. 312-14): ERNEST W. BRAENDLE. - The apparatus is de-
scribed with a diagram. The Distribution and Reliability of Psycho-
logical and Educational Measurements (pp. 315-18) : WILLIAM MC-
CLELLAND. -" Raw " standard deviations should be corrected by
subtracting the value of o- m 2 /ra from its square. The General Factor
Fallacy in Psychology (pp. 319-26) : GODFREY H. THOMSON. -The
utter invalidity of deducting a general factor from hierarchical order
unless absolutely perfect. Fluctuations in Mental Efficiency (pp.
327-44) : B. Muscio. - Possibly as a consequence of the production
of fatigue, continuous mental activity, such as is involved in academic
study, definitely lowers the capacity for certain mental tests. Pub-
lications Recently Received.
Bryce, James (Viscount). Modern Democracies. New York: Mac-
millan Co. 1921. Two volumes. Pp. 508, 676. $10.50 per set.
Cambridge Plain Texts: Bossuet, Oraison Funebre, pp. 70. Dumas,
Histoire de mes Betes, pp. 60. Gautier, Menagerie Intimes, pp.
65. Lamartine, Meditations, pp. 88. de Musset, Carmosine, pp.
80. Cambridge : University Press. 1920.
Cambridge Shakespeare, edited by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch and
i John Dover Wilson. Vol. I, The Tempest. Cambridge : Univer-
sity Press. New York: Macmillan Co. 1921. Pp. 116. $1.40.
280 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Pound, Louise. Poetic Origins and the Ballad. New York: Mac-
millan Co. 1921. Pp. x + 247. $2.50.
de Ruggiero, Guido. Modern Philosophy. Translated by A. How-
ard Hannay and R. G. Collingwood. London : George Allen &
Unwin. New York : Macmillan Co. 1921. Pp. 402.
Ward, Stephen. The Ways of Life: A Study of Ethics. Oxford
University Press. No date. Pp. 126.
NOTES AND NEWS
The first session of the Institute of Politics, dealing with the
general subject of international relations (see this JOURNAL, Vol.
XVIII, No. 2, Notes and News), will be held at Williamstown, Mass.,
from Thursday, July 28, until Saturday, August 27, 1921.
A partial list of those who will deliver lecture courses extending
throughout the session follows: The Right Honorable Viscount
James Bryce, England; Baron Sergius A. Korff, Russia; Stephen
Panaretoff, Bulgaria; and, unless unavoidably detained, Luis M.
Drago, Argentina ; and Josef Redlich, Austria.
A partial list of those who will conduct round-table conferences
is as follows : Isaiah Bowman, director of the American Geograph-
ical Society ; Professor Archibald C. Coolidge, of Harvard ; Norman
H. Davis, former Under Secretary of State; Professor James W.
Garner, of the University of Illinois; Professor Jesse S. Reeves, of
the University of Michigan; Professor Frank W. Taussig, of Har-
vard; and Professor George G. Wilson, of Harvard. Professors E.
H. Haskins and R. H. Lord, of Harvard, will probably alternate
with Mr. Bowman and Professor Coolidge, respectively.
In addition to the formal lectures and round-table conferences
there will be occasional addresses by visitors of national and inter-
national reputation.
The lectures and addresses will be open to the public and all are
cordially invited.
The round-table conferences will be limited to duly enrolled mem-
bers of the Institute. Each member will be assigned to one or two
round-taible courses and will be given an opportunity to indicate the
course or courses 'which he prefers to take. The round-table con-
ferences will be conducted after the manner of graduate seminars.
It is the intention to so limit the number in each group and to so
assign the members of the Institute to the various groups that each
member will be able to contribute to the discussion.
Those desiring further information can obtain it from the sec-
retary of the Institute, Professor Karl Ephraim Weston, of Williams
College.
VOL. XVIII, No. 11. MAY 26, 1921
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
"CRISES" IN THE LIFE OP REASON
CAN nature lift herself by her own boot-straps ? Using the word
"lift" in a eulogistic sense, the only meaning which can attach
to this question is whether any one conformation of nature is better
than any other. Now nature as a whole can show no progress, neither
could she register it were it miraculously to occur. But a part of
nature might conceivably play somewhat skillfully into the hands of
another part, and by a union of effort effect a local improvement.
Progress must of necessity be an episode, and in a world where better
and worse are basal categories it must be a moral episode. For
such an episode to be natural it would be necessary for nature to
evolve her own values as well as devise a method for their operation.
Inasmuch as such an episode appears at a definite juncture of time
and portrays in its genesis a certain contingency, it is dramatic as
well as moral. If we use the word reason to stand for the total
embodied progress, not in nature as a whole, but in that part of
nature which has somehow managed to rise above its source, we may
say that the life of reason is not only an episode in man 's career, but
is also a moral drama,
In what has just been written it would be easy to recognize a
conscious adoption of the point of view of Santayana. Santayana 's
Life of Reason is not only an affirmative answer to the question
placed at the beginning of this essay, it is also in its literary form
the most perfect and in philosophical acumen the most penetrating
account of the natural history of reason with which I am familiar.
The purpose of this paper is to review the first volume of the series,
not in a spirit of criticism, but with the intention of describing the
complications that arise in the development of reason. Being a
dramatic episode, reason has its critical junctures and its resolutions.
What I am especially interested to describe are the "crises" in the
drama. Though uncritical, the exposition will exhibit at times a
spirit of wariness. The constant use of such terms as "natural ap-
parition," "familiar mystery," "speculative fable," "eddy in the
current," "kindly illusion," "significant figment," "inveterate
preference for form," "miracle of insight" begets a suspicion that
Santayana might, after all, have attributed to nature something of
the art of the prestidigitator.
When Glaucon and Adeimantus approach Socrates with the ques-
281
282 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
tion, does it pay to be moral T they are careful to make it plain that
they do not doubt that virtue and utility are inseparably connected ;
only, they say, they have never yet heard the thesis that justice is
more gainful than injustice defended in a satisfactory manner. Now
I do not doubt that reason has a natural history and that ideals have
a natural basis. Neither do I doubt that if man is to recognize the
forces which govern his life they "must portray themselves in hu-
man experiences." 1 But to accept and justify these forces just as
they are given and to praise them for their loveliness as is done, for
example, by Lucretius, is to mark at once both the value and the
limits of naturalism. The poetry of Lucretius, says Santayana, is
"not the poetry of a poet about things, but the poetry of things
themselves. ' ' 3 The operations of nature stand in no need of idealiza-
tion ; the interplay of its mechanical forces lends itself as much to
poetic expression as to scientific formulation. Not in transforming
nature into something more ideal than herself, but in conforming to
her as the pattern of all beauty and excellence, is to be found man 'a
task. Resignation in some form is the unescapable issue of a me-
chanistic conception of nature and life. But to make an ideal of
conformity is to renounce the imagination and to resign our human-
ity. We exalt nature in order to humiliate man.
If naturalism is "sad," idealism is "rudimentary" and tran-
scendentalism is "insolent." As young children do not distinguish
their images from things external, the idealist mistakes the visions
of the imagination for a perfect and eternal reality. To think one-
self omniscient is a mark of immaturity, but to mistake the stirrings
of impulse for the creative energies of nature is a colossal piece of
human impudence.
But the forces within us do somehow carry us to things beyond
us. Our primitive instincts no less than our "leaps" of thought have
a transcendent reach. The persistent striving of an impulse is the
substance of things hoped for and its concomitant emotion is the
evidence of things not seen. To foster and maintain an interest, and
to generate a force that can conceive and pursue it, is nature's way of
rising above her source. Reason is the process by means of which
man realizes ideals. We have ideals, because, being human, we need
them. If naturalism, by withholding ideals, gives us too little, ideal-
ism, by objectifying them as structural elements inwrought into the
framework of existence, gives us too much. Between these extremes
lies the "illusionism" of Santayana, not sad, though wistful; not
rudimentary, but significant ; not insolent, but kindly. Ideals, origi-
nating in human nature and ministering to human needs, are legiti-
i Life of Beaton, Vol. I, p. 1.
Three PhUofopMcal Poet*, p. 34.
"CRISES" IN THE LIFE OF REASON 283
mate to the extent that they are generous and real as far as they are
revelant. It is not surprising, therefore, to be told that ideals con-
situte the realm of "significant figments" and "kindly illusions."
An important caution must always be observed touching the legiti-
macy of ideals. To idealize the natural is not the same thing as to
naturalize the ideal. Every ideal is a work of art and final causes
nowhere exist in nature. Aristotle's deity is a legitimate formula-
tion of a moral aspiration, but as a physical principle of natural
efficiency it is altogether deceptive. To express our aspirations in
"speculative fables" is the crowning work of reason, but to deify an
abstraction or to rationalize a myth is to open the way for dogmatism
and deception. The reverse process is less kindly and more illusory.
At the outset we may dispel " transcendental qualms. ' ' All of the
principles of synthesis and evaluation necessary for a natural history
of reason are discoverable within experience itself. "The most
irresponsible vision has certain principles of order and valuation by
which it estimates itself; and in these principles the Life of Reason
is already broached, however halting may be its development. We
should lead ourselves out of our dream, as the Israelites were led
out of Egypt, by the promise and eloquence of the dream itself."*
Experience is no enthymeme. The premises from which it is derived
and the conclusion which it yields can be discovered by any one who
is sufficiently gifted to discern them. A natural explanation is one
which accounts for a fact by referring it to other facts which belong
to the same order of existence. For Thales to have said that the
earth floats on water is at least better than saying that it rests on the
shoulders of Atlas. "Early experience knows no mystery which is
not somehow rooted in transformations of the natural world." For
Santayana, as for the Greeks whom he reveres, absolute qualitative
change is unthinkable. Reason must, therefore, have its natural
antecedents.
We begin with the immediate, thanks to Heraclitus 4 who was the
first to descry it. What the immediate reveals is impulse and im-
agination, two pre-existing and primordial processes, the union of
which constitutes reason. Upon the advent of reason, life is already
swiftly moving toward impulsive and instinctive ends. -Side by side
with the life of impulse and equally vital is the life of imagination,
a dreamful existence far more fundamental than anything so sophisti-
cated as perception. Originally these operations of nature go on
in ignorance of each other. It is unfortunate, for each possesses
Life of Season, Vol. I, p. 54.
The brilliant characterization of Heraclitus (VoL I, p. 15) is somewhat
misleading. In hie appeal to reason and in his blending of naturalism and
humanism, he is much more than the "honest prophet of immediacy."
284 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
what the other lacks. Impulse has power, but is blind ; imagination
has vision, but is impotent. Promordial consciousness is disinterested,
entirely speculative, and as a result is altogether improvident. Rea-
son arises when consciousness asserts a preference. By choosing
among objects, it discovers itself. It comes to take an interest in
itself for the sake of the object it prefers. The accident by means
of which ideas, which originally have no relevance to action, attach
themselves to impulse, thus giving potency to vision and foresight
to power, is nothing less than the birth of reason.
Heraclitus began with the immediate ; he also ended with it. One
day is as another was the burden of his lament. Could he have come
after Plato he might have arrested the flux with a figure of speech.
In this respect Santayana is more fortunate. "When the flux man-
ages to form an eddy and to maintain by breathing and nutrition
what we call a life, it affords some slight foothold and object for
thought and becomes in a measure like the ark in the desert, a mov-
ing habitation for the eternal." 8
Coextensive with every alternation in impulsive and ideational
life is a tone of feeling. Pleasure and pain, or as we should now
say with a more strict psychological accuracy, affections of pleasant-
ness and unpleasantness, are invariable accompaniments of every
phase of immediate experience. Herein lies the possibility of dis-
crimination and preference. That pleasure is worthy of choice is an
ultimate fact. One needs no transcendent obligation to persuade him
to enjoy himself. It is not a question of the worth of pleasure, see-
ing that pleasure is itself the basis of all worth. Selection on the
basis of a felt preference is the first differentiation in the flux.
Just pleasure and pain do not constitute rationality. But when
once the source of value is revealed, consciousness can no longer
remain disinterested. A further step is taken when ideas attach
themselves to pleasure. Here interest awakens. The half-born rea-
son welcomes returning joys and trembles before impending sorrows.
As ideas suffuse pleasures, pleasures somehow overflow and attach
themselves to objects. "Here we come upon a crisis." What
happens, we are told, is that pleasures become objectified, they sat-
urate the object which happens to come along just in the nick of
time. Pleasures affiliate with the objects which cause them. As a
result objects can be named and their recurrence predicted. Thus
arises the concept of causality. Causality does not arise from any
malicious intent on the part of reason to fix the blame for its distress
or in any feeling of gratitude for favors received. Its origin lies
solely in the fortunate eccentricity of pleasure to affiliate with its
source. It might have been entirely different, thus showing that
B Ibid., p. 42.
"CRISES" IN THE LIFE OF REASON 285
the life of reason is after all only a natural contingency. Just here, I
suppose, is Santayana's justification for calling the life of reason a
dramatic episode. Pleasures and pains, therefore, become the link*
that bind impulse and imagination together. Henceforth their des-
tinies are bound up in the same process. Ideas become factors in
action. We know not things directly but only through the interven-
tion of the pleasures they afford us.
When imagination connects up with impulse it joins hands with
a body well on in its evolution. The body has aims and needs.
Every attitude is an incipient courtesy and every gesture is a social
response. Imagination falls in with this purposeful activity already
well launched. It makes no attempt to graft its own aims on to the
body ; it does not because it hasn 't any. Imagination has no interests ;
only bodies have that. The function of the imagination is to con-
ceive ends, not to possess them. In a sense consciousness remains
disinterested still, its only interest being to assist the body to an
awareness of the ends which it already possesses though has not as yet
foreseen. Impulse needs no incentive and what consciousness brings
is not efficiency but light.
Reason is now born and an external world is discovered. We are
told how all this happens. But why does consciousness, which is a
"born hermit," turn its most prized possessions out of doors? To
explain this we can not simply revert to a primitive animism, since
it is animism itself that is in need of explanation. Santayana begins
as does Descartes with the inner life and works outward to the dis-
covery (or invention? or apparition?) of nature. Does he really
escape subjectivism ? A discussion of this question would take us too
far afield. It is merely suggested as a real difficulty in Santayana's
analysis. Furthermore it seems to me that the separation of im-
pulses and pleasures and ideas, even allowing for the literary effect,
involves a false abstraction. Activity is a single and indivisible
process with ideation, affection and conation as inseparable phases.
But let us continue with the exposition.
The recognition of stray and random objects falls far short of
a general theory of nature. A further step is taken in this direction.
Consciousness is not only a "born hermit," it is also a born conserva-
tive^ Though the new-born reason is everywhere confronted with
surprise, for in strict literalness no element of the immediate ever
recurs, reason itself has no sense for novelty. The same back again
is its continual lament. To maintain a life of sentiency on a rational
plan requires two things : that pleasures return and be as they were.
And what sentiency requires, reason proclaims, namely, independ-
ence of objects in order "to normalize their recurrence," and a set-
tled character or form in order "to normalize their constitution."
286 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Independence and form are the two conceptions in terms of which
nature is discovered and unified. How do these conceptions arise f
The question, how is knowledege possible? has always had great
fascination for philosophers. It is a legitimate question. Born into
a world not expressly designed for it, yet there, if anywhere, reasan
must find a home. Though in its later career it may, through mis-
fortune or disillusionment, come to renounce the world, in its in-
fancy at least it is loyal to its lineage. Out of this loyalty arises the
means of converting the world into a home for the spirit. Thinking
is a form of life. As a vital process, it must like all life's other proc-
esses, maintain itself by extracting from its environment the means
of its own conservation. The new-born reason can not feed on the
flux. The immediate is not food for thought. The process by means
of which thought derives its sustenance is a sort of living on its own
past. The past never recurs, but something of its being is retained
and utilized in the present. The mind, having an "inveterate pref-
erence" for form, singles out the quality and lets the quantity go.
It is thus that experience becomes accumulative. It is not a mechani-
cal process of addition, but a vital process of nutrition. Only a
growing experience can sustain and nourish the process of thinking.
Form or essence is, therefore, the food prepared by a voracious in-
tellect by its own assertive energy. The mind is not endowed with
form, it only possesses a preference for form; it does not possess
categories, only a tendency to categorize. No "transcendental ego"
is needed. The demand for that dens ex machina is the result of
treating thought mechanically rather than vitally. Plasticity and
modifiability of nervous tissue is all that is required. Epistemology
is a branch of physiology.
This may be expressed differently. Transcendence, not immedi-
acy, is the crux of thinking. How what is present can imply what is
absent is just one of those "familiar mysteries" inexplicable but
factual. Suggestion is just as much a natural operation as digestion.
It can neither be intelligible nor unintelligible, since it is the nature
of intelligence itself that is being considered. All that we can say
is that if what is implied were present in the same sense as that
which implies it, there would no longer be implication, but explica-
tion. Neither would there be thought. Implication is a sort of mist
of meaning that rises above the stream of sentiency, as natural as
evaporation ; and like evaporation, involving a distilled essence which
in good season will return and enliven the source from which it first
arose.
The only possible issue of Santay ana's theory of knowledge is
in mechanism. Mechanism, being the basis of intelligibility, is one
and the same thing as explanation. The unification of all of those
"CRISES" IN THE LIFE OF REASON 287
ideal terms by means of which reason dominates and controls the
flux, assigning to it independence and permanence, constitutes the
realm of nature. Nature, therefore, is ideal. And since it arises in
response to the demand for explanation, it is a purely mechanical
system. Reason prescribes its laws. Only ideals are real, real in the
only sense in which they can be real without losing their ideality.
We have a knowledge of them as we know any goal of thought, not as
a sign, but as a thing signified. Sentiency can no more be sentient
of the ideal than the given can be implied or the absent be present.
The confusion of the ideal with the sentient is the basis of dogmatism,
the most deceptive form of reification. That is why, though it ia
never wrong to pass from the sentient to the ideal, it is never right to
reverse the process. As Hume would have said, you can have no
a priori knowledge about matters of fact.
Nature disclosed is mind discerned. Reason's discovery of mind
is not reason 's discovery of itself. It is the discovery of that vague
realm suspended between nature and sentiency. Nature is that part
of existence that has been reduced to constancy and control. The
discovery of mind marks reason's inability to subdue the flux all at
once. Despite the advance of mechanism an element of caprice
persists and seems to stand outside of the order of nature. Nature
is mechanism ; mind is the residuum of the indeterminate, the realm
of the unpredictable. Santayana might have expressed the discovery
of mind in a simpler way. A part of the ideal of perfection, he
tells us, is that all ideas be applicable in action. The discovery of
mind marks the failure of this ideal. Imagination, a form of life,
like other vital processes, is prolific. It produces countless ideas with
the hope that some one of them by attaching itself to impulse may
become fruitful in action. Reason must take some notice of those
ideas which fail to connect with impulse. Never leaving the realm of
the imagination they can never enter the realm of nature. They are
untrustworthy because they are untried.
When we say, love your neighbor as yourself, we assume the in-
dependent existence of a neighborly spirit. But for reason there was
a problem of discovering fellow-minds before there was a problem
of loving them. Now the discoveries of reason, no less than those of
science, are often entirely accidental. It could not be otherwise with
a subject-matter that is irrational and a method that is experimental.
The discovery that other men have minds is a pure accident. It
could have happened only to a rudimentary consciousness. Sophisti-
cation always leads to solipsism. Mature reflection, seeing that no
idea can be transferred from one mind to another, would be sure
to deny any such thing as mental interaction on intellectual grounds.
Consequently, had fellow-minds not been revealed to emotional con-
288 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
sciousness at a time before reason learned the use of dialectic they
would never have been revealed at all. Already we have seen that
but for an emotional overflow, external objects would never have been
discovered. It is easy to go one step further and turn the objectified
feeling into a principle of natural efficiency. Now the "pathetic
fallacy" is usually fallacious, but there is one case when it is not,
namely, when it happens to be true. Truth must of necessity be an
accident in the trial-and-error method. The discovery of other minds
comes as the natural result of "varied reaction" when applied to
emotional life. Prompted by a vague and indistinct feeling for per-
sonal presence, rudimentary consciousness puts out various tentacles
one of which, as if by a "miracle of insight," touches the projection
of a similar consciousness similarly groping.
This, in outline, is the natural history of reason. It includes
the following steps: (1) Antecedents in impulse and imagination;
(2) the basal character of pleasure and pain, preference asserted and
value revealed ; (3) the attachment of ideas to pleasures and the pro-
jection of pleasures to objects, interest awakened; (4) the rise of
the concept of causality and the external world discerned; (5) ex-
planation required, a theory of knowledge proclaimed, and nature
discovered and unified; (6) the discovery of fellow-minds. Inas-
much as results are never mistaken for causes and values never con-
fused with origins, the account is a model of natural description.
Were there space in which to add criticism to the foregoing exposi-
tion, it would be directed along three main lines. First, a false ab-
straction, more than merely rhetorical, involved in the separation of
impulse, feeling and ideation. Secondly, can one, beginning with
the inner life of feeling, the domain where a " stranger intenneddleth
not," escape subjectivism? Thirdly, by attributing to mind a pref-
erence for form and by assigning to reason the function of legislating
for nature, is Santayana as far from Kantianism as he thinks he is?
M. T. McCbURE.
TULAN UNIVERSITY.
THE COORDINATE CHARACTER OF FEELING AND
COGNITION
ONE of the vexed questions of psychology that troubles the phi-
losopher who would describe the nature of conscious activity
i> the disputed status of feeling-states. Fourteen years ago C.
Stumpf 1 indicated the three possible views in respect to the statin
of pleasure and displeasure. Feeling may be a quality of sensation
(BO H. R. Marshall) ; feeling may be a mental element coordinate
Zeit$chr. far Ptych., Vol. 44, pp. 1-49, 1906.
FEELING AND COGNITION 289
with sensation (so E. B. Titchener) ; feeling may itself be a kind
of sensation (Stumpf's Gefuhlsempfindungen theory). It is not
my purpose in this paper to weigh the merits of these theories. I
am in sympathy with the second of the three, and so believe that in
the unitary conscious state the two aspects, feeling and cognition,
are coordinate rather than one subordinate to the other. I do wish
to point out, however, perhaps as devil's advocate, that two of the
arguments in support of the theory of relative independence of feel-
ing and cognition, although considered impregnable, will not bear
the test of close scrutiny.
In his recent book The Origin of Consciousness, 2 Dr. Strong
makes much of the difference between affective states and sensations
in support of his argument for the originality of the psychical. After
describing the possible application of the ''return wave" theory to
feelings, he adduces two criteria by. which he judges it proved that
feelings and sensations differ fundamentally. He says, "The sensa-
tions into which affective and conative states have been resolved are
defined as psychic elements due to nerve currents from the periph-
ery; the sensations which are cognitions of the intra-bodily are
sensations localized in a particular part, and bringing before us a
process occurring there. In especial, the latter class of sensations
are attended to or rather the objects they bring before us are
attended to: the sensations constituting pleasure and pain, emotion
and will are not attended to. To attend to an emotion is to destroy
it it breaks up at once into the localized sensations which are cog-
nitions of intra-bodily processes" (pp. 85-86). Speaking of affec-
tive states, he says, "Objects are localized, they are unlocalized; ob-
jects are attended to, they are unattended to and even abolished by
attention" (p. 86). Let us examine these alleged criteria.
Feeling-states are said to be abolished when attended to. Un-
fortunately, the evidence in support of this statement is more of the
nature of casual observation than of careful introspective analysis.
Nevertheless, the latest evidence, contained in Dr. Wohlgemuth's
monograph, Pleasure-Unpleasure, 3 goes toward substantiating the
common observation that the more one directs his attention to the
cognitive aspects of a situation, the less intense are the affective
aspects. As Dr. Strong says, "Even in the case of a keen sense of
disappointment, where we are very apt to dwell upon the feeling,
the keen sensation in the throat of which we quickly become aware
2 London, 1918.
Brit. Jour, of Psych,, Monograph Supplement VI., pp. 1-252, Cambridge
. Press, 1919.
290 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
is an object that displaces the emotion and makes us in so far no
longer disappointed. The young child who simply bawls is the
truly disappointed person." Dr. Wohlgemuth, however, found that
when a feeling is attended to as part of a situation it becomes
"clearer." It seems equally to be a fact of common observation
that we may increase a sense of disappointment by attending re-
peatedly to the factors which are associated with the disappoint-
ment. The child who is compelled by parental order to stay in-
doors does not conquer his disappointment by thinking how he
might be outside with his companions playing ball. Dr. Wohlgemuth
seems to have combined successfully the empirical evidence in his
rule, "If a feeling-element is attended to as belonging to a cognitive
content, or as part of a situation or complex, it is intensified and
becomes clearer; but if an attempt be made to focus the attention
upon it to the exclusion of its cognitive concomitant the feeling-
element is destroyed." 4
But the latter half of this rule is not a conclusive argument for
the coordinate character of feeling and cognition since there is a
parallel case lying wholly within the field of cognition, where direct
attention destroys a sensation. The visual field offers a considerable
range of given objects to vision. Only one small part of this field,
however, may -be attended to at any time. The other objects are
said to be "marginal." Now how may we attend to objects in the
marginal area? The naive answer would be, Look directly at the
objects there. In so doing, however, we no longer view these objects
as marginal, but as objects at the focal point of attention. It is not
even true that in each case the objects will be the same. Marginal
objects have an indistinct and blurred character that is quite differ-
ent from the same objects directly attended to. Furthermore, they
sometimes lack some of the qualities that are to be perceived in di-
rect vision. A bit of colored paper held outside the range of the
blue-yellow zone appears uncolored when seen marginally a very
different object from the same bit of yellow paper viewed directly.
However, it is quite possible by practise to get a clearer view of the
paper as a marginal object by choosing a fixation-point to which to
attend. In this case the observer attends to the object as part of a
situation. The parallel with feeling is obvious. Now if feeling
might be characterized as of a marginal nature, we should not be
able, on the score of a difference of behavior in regard to attention,
to affirm its qualitative difference from sensation or to speak of it as
an independent element of consciousness.
In this connection the "furtherance-hindrance" theory calls for
Ibid,, p. 246. Cf. Lectvret on the Elementary Ptychology of Feeling and
Attention, E. B. Titchener, p. 70, New York, 1908.
FEELING AND COGNITION 291
some consideration. It is well enough established that pleasure ac-
companies smoothly running activities, whereas displeasure is asso-
ciated with any impeded progress. What is beneficial to an indi-
vidual is often marked by unimpeded progress, while an obstacle
will stand in the way of an activity. Here we have to do largely
with the motor "set" of the organism. Whatever may be the pre-
cise neural basis of pleasure-displeasure, it is almost certainly more
diffuse than the neural basis of any sense. The facts warrant our
admitting the motor elements of reaction as associated in part with
feeling. Here some light is thrown upon the relation of attention
to feeling. For, if the neural basis of feeling partly consists of
nerves leading to the brain from the muscles employed in an activity,
it is easy to see that if the attention be directed to these elements
to the exclusion of the objects provoking the activity on the sensa-
tional side, the motor "set" of the organism will be changed com-
pletely.
A second argument in favor of the coordinate character of feel-
ing and cognition is that feelings are non-localizable, whereas the
objects of cognition are localized. This argument, however, is not
supported by sufficient experimental evidence. In fact, it is di-
rectly controverted by Dr. Wohlgemuth who says, 5 "Feeling-ele-
ments can often be localized. The ability to do so depends to some
extent upon the attitude of the observer toward the feeling-element.
The more his attitude allows him to objectify the feeling-element the
easier it is to localize the feeling-element, or, possibly, vice versa.
The question of the localization of the feeling-elements has been as
hotly controverted as that of their co-existence, and I hope that now
it will be considered as definitely established. All my observers are
in agreement about it. ... The ability to localize the feeling-elements
improves greatly with practise. Great individual differences ob-
tain with respect to the ability to localize the feeling-elements,
especially those of auditory and visual sensations. ' ' In the present
state of experimental evidence it seems unwise to base a theory of
feeling on the attribute of non-localizability. It may be remarked
that it is often extremely difficult to locate precisely some of the
cutaneous sensations and more difficult yet to localize the organic
sensations.
We must not, however, treat the important alleged criterion of
non-localizability in a hasty manner. Observers differ in their re-
sults, and the agreement of the four trained observers employed by
Dr. Wohlgemuth may not be regarded as absolutely decisive. Much
of the difference of opinion, I believe, is due to a lack of agreement
among writers as to the meaning of the term " localizability. " It
6 Op. cit., pp. 242-243.
292 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
is instructive to turn to Professor Titchener 's diacussion of the
matter.* He gives two possible definitions: local izability may refer
to perceptual space or it may refer to the coextensive character of af-
fective states with the whole conscious state in contrast with the
side- by -sided ness of sensations. Dr. Wohlgemuth uses the term
with quite a different meaning. His observers locate the affective
states in the tongue, mouth, nose, throat, hand, head, etc. Only in
the case of visual and auditory sensations do the observers ever refer
the affective states to the place of the stimuli in perceptual space.
Dr. Wohlgemuth, again, would have no use for the second possible
definition of Professor Titchener because his own evidence (and that
of Kellogg 7 and others) indicates that mixed feelings are unques-
tionably a fact.
So far as mixed feelings are concerned, I have long been con-
vinced from my own introspection that they are the rule rather than
the exception. The experimental results achieved in this matter
convince me that feeling can no longer well be defended as a co-
ordinate element of conscious activity on the ground that one and
only one quality of feeling is at any one time coextensive with the
cognitive element of a conscious state. To the definition of locali-
zability as a projection of the affective elements by conscious activity
into perceptual space, I would say that further analysis is de-
manded. For the definition may mean either of two things: either
affective states are supposed to carry with them an affirmation of
objects in an existent world parallel to a characteristic affirmation
in cognition, or there is said to be in the content of sensations and
feelings a similarity of spatial reference.
I judge from the words of Professor Titchener and Dr. Wohlge-
muth that each emphasizes one of these possible interpretation*.
Professor Titchener might conclude (although in point of fact he
gives up the criterion because of insufficient agreement among ob-
servers) that feelings differ from sensations in that the former are
localized within the body and the former outside the body. The
neat question here implied, but never so far as I know discussed, ia
whether the affirmation of a feeling as intra-bodily is an existential
affirmation of the bodily organs involved, or whether the affirmation
is of objects considered merely as given to consciousness.
It is quite possible, however, to determine the validity of the
criterion of non-localizability defined in the second way. We may
eliminate all affirmations of physical space, including parts of the
body ; we may eliminate everything that is not integral to the given
in sensation and feeling. Then we may ask whether sensations and
Op. cit., pp. 43-55.
Ptych. Monograph*, VoL 18, No. 3, 1915.
FEELING AND COGNITION 293
feelings as given have a local character, an element of distance from
or "inner space" that may be discovered introspectively. When we
do this, however, we find that, although we discover the local char-
acter present in all sensations, the attribute has lost the precision
that attaches to it in many cases by virtue of an accompanying ex-
istential affirmation. We find that there is a whole range of varia-
tion, from organic sensations that may just barely be localized, to
visual sensations which are quite definitely localized with respect to
other sensations in the visual field. The attribute of local character
seems definitely to be connected with the place of the sense end-
organs i.e., there seem to be places where we see, hear, feel, cold, etc.
But some of the "lower" sensations, although they are discovered
to ha,ve the spatial reference when truly introspected, are most in-
definite in their precise location. They are no more certainly local-
ized than many of the obscurer feelings of pleasure-displeasure.
These observations would seem to indicate that localizability is not
an intrinsic attribute only of sensations. For feelings have their
own curve of localizability, and there is nothing to distinguish the
lower limits of the two curves of sensation and feeling as respects
this attribute.
The similarity of affective and cognitive states as regards locali-
zability is even more evident when we consider the organization of
sense-organs and the relation of organization to marginal conscious-
ness. "The cutaneous sense end-organs are organized only to a
slight degree; we do find groups of cold and heat spots. But in
the "higher" senses the sense-organs contain many end-organs in a
circumscribed area. The result is that within the limits of a single
sense attention must single out one impression that is focal and
leave the others to marginal consciousness. The term "marginal"
may be applied to all sensations not at the focus of attention. Thus,
if I attend to a cold sensation felt in my hand, the cold sensation
occurring at the same time in my foot is marginal. Careful study
should be made to determine the degree of localizability of two
sensations of the same quality as compared with two sensations of
different qualities. I believe that the most precise localization is
found when two sensations of different quality are derived from
end-organs in the same sense-organ. In any such comparison one
sensation will always be marginal, as attention can be directed to
but one at a time. Marginal visual sensations are most precisely
located, next those of sound (by a musical observer).
Now whatever be the neural basis of feeling, it is generally
agreed to be less organized and more diffuse than the end-organs
of any of the senses. If, therefore, we are right in speaking of feel-
ing as of a marginal nature, we shall expect very little precision in
294 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the matter of localization. We shall expect that individuals will
generally disregard the localization of feelings, and that they will
find that feelings may be recognized as local only upon careful intro-
spection. On the other hand, the marginal sensations of the visual
sense will be so vivid, owing to the high degree of organization of the
visual end-organs, that they will be universally recognized.
II
We may postulate that the question of the relation of feeling to
cognition must be decided by introspection of mental states rather
than by investigation of their neural bases. Undoubtedly every
psychical activity has a neural basis, but there are no two distinct
types of neural activity to which cognition and feeling respectively
may be referred. Even if there were, our problem would not be
solved, as we have to determine whether cognition and feeling are
coordinate in conscious activity. Consideration of the factor of
attention has not revealed any criterion by which this coordinate
character may be established. Nor has localizability, applied
strictly to conscious states, proved more serviceable (although the
possibility of distinction on the basis of a difference of affirmation
was suggested as a problem requiring investigation).
It is entirely possible, however, that, when we come to analyze
conscious states more fully, we shall find that the qualities of
pleasure and displeasure are in some respects not homogeneous with
the qualities of sensation. They may have characteristics that
warrant their being regarded as a distinct aspect of conscious
activity. I believe that there are at least two such characteristics.
1. One can not ever introspect and not discover pleasure, dis-
pleasure, or both present in consciousness. Much was made form-
erly of an "indifference-point." But the theory of pleasure-dis-
pleasure as a linear scale has been destroyed as completely as the
theory that cold and heat sensations form a linear scale. Peeling
would appear to be duo-qualitative, pleasure and displeasure each
constituting a linear scale. Furthermore, it is not necessary to the
validity of this first criterion that introspection disclose the presence
of a feeling-element in association with every sensation. To postu-
late this is to postulate the difficult theory of feeling as an "affective
tone" of sensation. It is very likely true that I am quite indiffer-
ent to the sounds that are buzzing in my marginal consciousness as
I write at the present moment. The essential point is that pleasure
or displeasure or both be found somewhere in every conscious ex-
perience, even if only as an accompaniment of organic sensations.
If this requirement be satisfied, it is fair to say that feeling is
coordinate with cognition in conscious activity. In reepect to the
ASSUMPTION OF EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE 295
attribute of being present in every conscious state, feeling will be on
the same footing with cognition which, too, is never absent from
conscious activity. That feeling is usually (not always) less prom-
inent as a conscious element than cognition is easily understood if
feeling is of a marginal character ; it would thus resemble marginal
visual sensations which are neglected by us habitually a good part of
the time.
2. Another firm foundation for the theory of the coordinate
character of feeling and cognition is the fact that of the conscious
qualities only pleasure and displeasure may become detached from
the situation in which they arise and cling in succeeding conscious
states to qualities of any of the senses. In the field of cognition
only one sense has a slightly similar characteristic, and it differs in
two ways from feeling: (a) The visual after-image may become
attached to a succeeding light-sensation, but here the qualities are
within a single sense. (6) The persistence of the visual after-image
is marked either by a fusion which abolishes the quality that fuses
(as when a red after-image fuses with a blue sensation to form
purple), or by an entire absence of fusion, in which case the after-
image persist as an independent entity (as when the image float*
before the eyes and gets in the way of present vision). Now when
pleasure or displeasure continues over from a preceding to a suc-
ceeding conscious state, it is not fused with another quality in such
a manner as to lose its character of pleasure or displeasure, but,
remaining what it was, it colors affectively the new state. Very
interesting results as to the behavior of the feeling-elements of
moods are reached in Dr. Wohlgemuth's experiments. 8
The case for feeling as a coordinate aspect of conscious activity,
therefore, rests partly on the universal presence of one or both of
the affective qualities in all conscious states, partly on a certain
independence of cognition manifested by feeling in the production
of moods. These facts are more significant than the very question-
able arguments adduced from attention and localizability.
MAURICE PICABD.
BABNARD COLLEGE.
THE BASIC ASSUMPTION OF EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE
IT is often supposed that experimental science inevitably must
assume the existence of an external world which, to a certain but
very important extent, is not subject to the control of the more or
less passive observer. Moreover, it is supposed regardless of what
may be the case for such pure or abstract non-experimental sciences
Op. ci*., pp. 243-244.
296 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
as, let us say, non-Euclidean geometry, the strictly experimental
sciences, such as chemistry and physics, could not exist, let alone be
understood, unless it is assumed that there is an outer reality whose
laws, at least, are not subject to our control and about which we
can learn most directly, if not exclusively, by means of the experi-
mental method.
Now it is, of course, a fact that the scientific, and indeed the most
anti-realistic metaphysician, does live and act, no matter what his
belief may be, as if there were an outer independent order of fact
and law to which he must conform. But it must be pointed out that
in spite of the practical and, perhaps, if some metaphysicians are
correct, metaphysical necessity of this belief, as far as the purposes
of science go, be that science experimental or abstract, this assump-
tion that there is an outer independent order of reality is but an
unnecessary and even unscientific over-belief. The procedure of
either the experimental or the abstract sciences is every bit as un-
derstandable, and indeed gains somewhat in metaphysical economy,
if stated in a form which does not assume anything as superfluous
as the existence of an order of reality back of the percept-concept
experience which is the immediate datum of the scientist. All that
is really necessary for the scientist to assume to be able to give an
intelligent account of his procedure is, (a) the percept-concept
nexus that forms the prime experience of the individual scientist,
(6) that there exist certain necessary relations between parts of the
percept field, and (c) that there is a certain amount of ignorance
as to what these necessary relations are. In these terms the problem
of the experimental scientist is merely the problem of finding out,
by trying, if, when he has a certain selected set of percept data, that
is, when he has present to perception the conditions of the desired
experiment, he has also present to consciousness the added percept
datum expected if his theory as to the relationship between various
parts of the percept field is correct.
Thus to the scientist it is immaterial whether he assumes the
existence of an external world or not, but (provided only he realizes
the theoretically unnecessary and extraneous non-scientific assump-
tions involved) of course it is highly convenient, if only for the
purposes of exposition, to state his results in a form which anyone
can understand, and that means in non-subjective terms.
If the existence of an independent external world is not as-
dumed by experimental science, what is involved! It seems to me
that Mill was on the right track when he emphasized the permanency
of certain factors in experience. This permanency, however, does
not lie in the percept data themselves, as Mill seems to have supposed.
The percept material iteelf, the "things" or "substances" which
ASSUMPTION OF EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE 297
we are accustomed to suppose lie back of it, are, as was pointed
out long ago by Plato, notoriously unstable. Not only do two bits
of sense data seem, that is are, constantly changing, never having
twice the same inter-relation, but even the "things" of which they
are supposed to concern themselves, that is to say the percept data
with as much of variance abstracted as is known or suspected to be
due to the individual and not inherent ini the permanent factors
of the percept field, are constantly changing. The constant things
of physics, the mol of gold, the standard meter stick, are in fact con-
stantly varying in position, temperature, electrical charge, and even
in mass and dimensions. The significant thing about them which
is constant, the only thing that the scientist need assume constant, is
not the constancy of substance, but the constant truth of certain
conditional propositions about them, namely, that under certain
standard conditions of temperature, handling, pressure, etc.', this
given nexus of concept-percept experience, which we call the mol of
gold or standard meter, will have the mass of about 197.2 grams, or
the length of one meter. And it is to be noted that even here we
are not really asserting that a given ' ' thing, ' ' the mol of gold or the
standard meter, has fixed attributes, nor even that a given sample
"matter" or whatever the substance of things is supposed to be
has certain properties. What concerns science in such shorthand
expressions as "gold is yellow" is not that gold is a simple entity
with the invariant property of yellowness though we are not
denying that metaphysically speaking that may be a fact. What
does concern science is the permanent truth of a certain conditional
statement not attributing attributes to a substance, but asserting
the existence of a fixed relation holding between certain attributes
and certain other attributes. That "gold is yellow" means to the
scientist that under certain limited (standard) conditions there is a
fixed relation between selective reflection for yellow light and the
atom number (79) ; or, to put the same fact in a form which avoids
even more clearly the assumption of the existence of an external
"thing," what is meant by saying "gold is yellow" is nothing more
nor less than saying that in a certain limited set of percepts (the
limitation being that other percepts of the set must be standard)
the percept "yellow color" is inevitably to be associated with the
percept nexus "atom number 79." From this it follows that the
real fixed entity of the scientist is not some bit of substance, but a
proposition, the fixity of which is of the same nature as the truth
of any proposition, whatever that is ; and though it may be meta-
physically necessary to assume some ultimate fundamental substance
or fixed stratum of being, say matter or force, on which to tack
"properties," science does not need to assume anything so meta-
298 THE JOURNAL OP PHILOSOPHY
physical. All it must assume is not some primary substance to which
certain properties appertain, but only that if we have certain per-
cepts certain other percept* are invariably present also. The ques-
tion of ultimate substance it leaves to metaphysics.
In a like manner science leaves to metaphysics the question of
the locus of the necessity or compelling power which it must assume
correlates under standard conditions "yellow color" with "atom
number 79," or rather correlates the percept "yellow" with other
percepts associated with atom number, such as relative position of
a certain fluorescent line on an X-ray screen. If there is to be any
science at all, there must of necessity be some such correlation,
but whether the reason for this correlation lies in some law of our
percept mechanism, as it may very well, or whether it lies in some
logical necessity inherent, say, in the definition of atom number,
which logically requires that atom number 79 be associated with a
band of selective absorption such that under standard conditions
yellow light is selectively reflected, or whether this necessity is physi-
cal, it being the physical nature of gold, only to be determined ex-
perimentally, to so reflect all these questions are outside the scope
of science. To repeat, the raw question of experimental science is
exclusively, "Is such and such a relationship between experienced
data invariant or not?"; not, "Does a 'thing' have such and such
properties!" or "Is such and such a relation a law of the external
world?"
However, these raw questions of fact are not all there is to science,
unless, indeed, we consider a purely descriptive account of factual
relations science. Science per se attempts more than to describe, and
though we may allow purely descriptive material, from which noth-
ing is generalized or concluded, a tentative place in an incompletely
developed science, a science really becomes scientific when its facts
are so related that you can pass from one to the other by a deter-
mined route. It must be such that the connection of one fact with
another is itself an integral part of that science. That is to say, a
body of fact to be scientific must form a system, i.e., an aggregate of
fact, the specification of the relationship between which is a part of
the specification of the aggregate.
But this is not all. Not only must we in science fix the connec-
tions between facts, but, if we are to pass from one body of facts
to another by some process of proof or explanation which is sufficient
to completely prove or explain the remaining facts, we must admit
that science forms a system of the particular kind recently called
logical, 1 it being the property of such systems that among the entities
of which they are composed (in this case the propositions which con-
JotTCKAL, Vol. XVI, p. 518 (1919).
ASSUMPTION OF EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE 299
stitute the science) there are certain ones (the more general laws or
postulates) which, once they are given, determine completely some
if not all of the remainder (the "proven" or "explained" less gen-
eral theorems) . Thus when once the general laws of science are given
it is impossible that the theorems be otherwise. If this were not so
and each fact were independent of the other, or if its relations to
other facts were not of such a nature, rigorous proof would be im-
possible, and one law could not be said to be the consequence of an-
other. Thus if we are to have science at all, we must admit some
sort of necessity connecting one body of fact unambiguously with
another. From the postulates of Euclid it must follow that the sum
of the squares on the sides of a right-angled triangle must be equal
to the square on the hypotenuse and not equal to some different
quantity, for, to put it most briefly, the very essence of science is that
of a logical system.
But though this must be admitted, I think, for science in general,
and though it forms apparently the basic assumption on which science
in general is built, for experimental sciences this assumption takes a
particular form which has important consequences.
In the pure non-experimental sciences, if any there be, say in such
a science as non-Euclidean geometry where no one would think of
appealing to experiment to see if the sum of the angles of a triangle
are greater or less than two right angles, and in which no test for
truth value is pertinent save the mere fact that the propositions of
the science form a logical system, i.e., that theorems can be proven
once postulates are given, sciences in which the question of the truth
of the postulates themselves is quite outside the scope of the science,
it is quite conceivable that this requirement that theorems be proven
may be merely a physiological condition the brain structure imposes
on thinking, or perhaps merely a convention of the scientist, a rule
he has arbitrarily laid down to govern the game of science-making,
and that the data of science itself, be they outside real triangles or
percept-nexus triangles, are in fact entirely independent entities
which really stand in no such determinate relationship as that sup-
posed by the scientist when he proves one from the other. Perhaps it
may be supposed the real data of science just are, and that that is all
there is to it, and that any dependence of one on the other is a fiction
imposed upon them for the convenience or perhaps even by the neces-
sity of the human understanding.
But though such an assumption of the absolute independence of
the basic data can, as has been said, be made for non-experimental
sciences, that is, for sciences which depend only on self-consistency or
other logical tests for their truth value, such an assumption can not
be made for the experimental sciences. Here it must be assumed
300 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
that the data of science, quite independent of any conscious process
of proof, are in themselves related in the way that is assumed in the
deduction of one set of laws from another. Here it must be assumed,
if experiment is to be used to prove or disprove theory, that in the
outer world, or better in the percept-nexus which we are engaged
in studying, there actually does exist a set of invariable relation-
ships between facts, so that one fact and not some contrary fact
does in reality follow from a given set of general laws, thus quite re-
gardless of convention or any conscious process on our part. For
it is to be noted that while in the purely non-experimental sciences,
we have, or should have, confidence in our theorems only in so
far as we are conscious that the mental or mechanical processes
by which we passed from postulate to theorem were correctly
carried out, in the experimental sciences, though we may think our
reasoning in passing from one set of laws to another was quite correct,
we almost always appeal where possible to an experimental verifica-
tion of our reasoning; for we assume, and this is the basic assumption
of experimental science, that, in reality and quite independent of
any mistakes we may make in reasoning, the data of science, what-
ever they are, are in fact so organized that the very existence of one
set of laws is inexorably connected with the existence of just those
other laws which, in a properly formulated science, can be proven
once the first set is given.
It is just this assumption which allows us to use the results of
experiment as a check either of our reasoning in passing from one
supposed law to another, or, if we have no reason to doubt our rea-
soning, as a check as to the possible truth of the supposed law we
started from. Thus, suppose we had confidence in the first and
second laws of thermodynamics, and derived from them by what we
supposed to be rigorous processes of proof the law that for dilute
solutions of non-dissociated substances the change of the freezing
point with the concentration is equal to 1.99 times the square of the
absolute temperature divided by the heat of fusion of the solvent.
Suppose we try the experiment and find this is not so. There are
then several things which may be wrong. (1) Our experimental con-
ditions may not have been as we thought they were, our thermometer
may be inaccurate, equilibrium may not have been established, etc.,
etc., but all these can easily be checked by processes involving no
dubious assumptions. (2) Our assumption that our solution is
dilute and non-dissociated may be wrong. If it were, certain conse-
quences would follow and these in turn may be checked up by the
same sort of processes we are describing. (3) Our proof may be in-
correct. (4) Our assumption of the so-called laws of thermodynamics
may be wrong. And (5) it may be that all these processes and as-
BOOK REVIEWS 301
sumptions are correct, but that we are not justified, just because by
a purely mental or at least human process we derived this law from
other laws which are so, in fact, in assuming that we have any right
to expect the theorem ' ' proven " to be experimentally verified. Now
the point to be noticed is that though we may doubt any or all of
the first four of these assumptions we never doubt for a moment the
fifth ; and we would be willing to give up instantly even the laws of
thermodynamics themselves, together with all of the consequences
which follow from them, once we had convinced ourselves, per-
haps even on the basis of a single very accurate measurement and
single careful calibration of conditions and instruments, that experi-
ment did not jibe with expectation, this even though the consequence
which was tested was many times further remote from the postulates
than the one we have just chosen. Never once would we give up the
assumption that the data themselves were necessarily interconnected
into a logical system, for to do this would be to give up the very
possibility of an experimental test of assumptions and reasoning.
This must be noted as perhaps the most important point of this
whole discussion for metaphysics, regardless of whether we regard
the data of science as things outside, or as percepts, or even concepts.
The mere fact of experimental science requires the outer world, if
such a thing is to be assumed, to be a logical system in the exact sense
stated, or, if we do not assume an outer world, it requires that the
raw data of science, be they percepts, pure properties, partial reali-
ties, spirit, or what not, be likewise organized into a logical system,
the laws of which can be tested by experiment. If the raw data of
science are so organized, it apparently is of little effect on the
methods and possibility of science whether you assume them com-
posed of spirit, matter, force or what not, or indeed whether you
assume that they dwell in an external world, in your mind, in some
"Absolute," or nowhere at all.
F. RUSSELL BICHOWSKT.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
The Psychology of Functional Neuroses. H. L. HOLLINGWORTH.
New York : D. Appleton & Company. 1920. Pp. 259.
Professor Hollingworth in his book applies himself to two main
projects. The first is represented by an attempt to give in psycho-
logical terms the type of reaction presented in psychoneurotic con-
ditions. To do this he reverts to the conception of redintegration
which Hamilton first used to indicate the tendency of a complex idea
302 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
to be reinstated upon the occurrence of one of its constituent parts.
We need only to grant that a part of a stimulus may provoke a reac-
tion similar to the reaction provoked by the complete stimulus to
see the application of this conception to the psychoneurosis. Its rela-
tion is especially traceable in the war psychoneurosis cases. In the
individual, whatever the initial psychoneurotic symptom, it arose
as a reaction to a very complex situation involving such varied de-
tails as weapons, ghastly sights and noises, physical violence, etc.
The individual commonly recovers from the acute symptoms when
removed from the stimulating environment. During some time after-
ward the occurrence of a single detail of the original complex ex-
perience is sufficient to induce the complete symptom reaction again.
That this conception is presented with breadth of consideration is
well indicated by such comments as these:
"Untutored [savage] minds are especially likely to display the redintegrative
type of thinking. . . . The footprint of the enemy, the sight of his weapon,
the sound of his voice are feared in much the same degree as is his actual
attack. A very great part of the reactions and beliefs of primitive men it
made up of just such conduct acts which, if they would be exhibited by a man
in modern life, would be considered psychoneurotic."
It is properly enough explained that redintegrative reactions have
a role in such normal processes as learning; also that wherever
redintegrative reactions occur they are variously encountered both
in normal and abnormal, faulty, incomplete, and otherwise inade-
quate forms. This leads to the statement,
"Sagacity is, then, the ability to comprehend properly the part in its
relation to the whole and to discriminate out of a whole the appropriate relevant
or significant detail. Failure in sagacity will thus imply a disposition to react
to a present total situation by singling out some detail of it and reacting to
this detail by some total reaction previously associated with a whole in which
the detail figured as an item. This is the mechanism of the psychoneurosea. "
One's opinion of this entirely hinges on one's opinion of the sagac-
ity element. We can accept the well presented account of the redin-
tegrative reaction, per se, and admit that there is this psychological
process in the psychoneurosis sequence. We hesitate, however, to
accept the other implication that inherent sagacity plays such a
determining role.
The second main project of the book serves to furnish Professor
Hollingworth with his reasons for his emphasis on this factor. It
concerns intelligence ratings of nearly 1200 psychoneurotic indi-
viduals soldiers under treatment during and at the close of the
late war in the Plattsburg army hospital. From these examinations
it was found that the soldiers with chronic or extended functional
nervous conditions were in the main either decidedly inferior to the
BOOK REVIEWS 303
average soldier in intelligence, or else considerably superior to him.
The opinion is expressed that most of the average intelligence men
who had psychoneurotic symptoms made a rapid recovery and did
not reach a hospital for extended cases. Regarding the other grades
of intelligence, it is suggested that the high grade cases failed to
make prompt recovery because of a high strung sensitiveness to the
effects, and the low grade because of inadequate motivation and
insight.
It is now possible to explain why we are skeptical of the value
of Professor Hollingworth 's interpretation. He frankly stresses
sagacity. His explanation remains good as long as his words relate
to the psychoneurotic group of inferior mental capacity. When
he encounters the other psychoneurotic group, that which is con-
siderably superior to the average, in intelligence, he explains their
failure to make prompt recovery by attributing to them "a high
strung sensitiveness to the effects." High strung sensitiveness has
no obvious identity with lack of sagacity. When it is needed to
explain one large undisputed group, it strongly tends to weaken a
theory, put forth as general in application, whose corner stone is
something quite dissimilar.
One interesting observation in the book was gained by correlat-
ing the intelligence ratings with specific symptoms, with the latter
divided into three large groups, objective or physical, subjective or
mental, doubtful or transitional. The individuals with overt, ob-
jective somatic and postural symptoms were four years inferior in
intelligence rating to those individuals whose symptoms were psychic,
subjective and automatic. Those individuals manifesting a com-
bination of both types of symptoms constituted mentally also an
intermediate group. This particular finding accords with the ob-
servations of most writers, but it is of great interest to have it receive
scientific confirmation.
Later chapters of the book deal with the "scattering" found in
psychoneurotic cases, with the purely statistical aspects of the in
vestigation, with a discussion of the reliability of group survey in
the determination of mental age as compared with individual rating
and with methods and standards of mental measurement.
The lucidness of the writing and clear cut formulation of thought
need mere mentioning to emphasize the agreeable scientific spirit of
the book. With a very few exceptions, there is sufficient skill in the
use and understanding of medical diagnostic terms. Possibly an
over-assuredness in the conclusions throughout is a defect. When
the task is told in terms of approximate mathematical valence the
exactness of the answer can perhaps be over-rated.
304 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Chiefly for its method, but also for its conclusions which are
stimulating, the book very much deserves study.
THOMAS K. DAVIS.
Nw YORK.
An Introduction to Social Ethics: The Social Conscience in a Democ-
racy. JOHN M. MECKLIN. New York: Harcourt, Brace and
Howe. 1920. Pp. ix -f 446.
The close connection between scientific ethics and sociology is
coming gradually to be recognized. This book is a most happy com-
bination of the two subjects. It frankly bases ethical values upon
the study of the social process. It therefore discards most of the
paraphernalia of traditional ethics. There is no formal discussion
of free will, of the nature of moral obligation, of the nature of good
and evil, or of the summum bonum. Bather, after an introductory
section of one hundred pages largely devoted to giving the historical
setting of moral problems from Puritan times to the present, and
after another section of about the same length devoted to a socio-
psychological analysis of the moral sentiments, the author takes up
the practical problems of an harmonious social order under present
conditions, considering successively the moral problems involved in
the relations of the individual to institutions in general, to the fam-
ily, to the church, to the school, to private property, to machine
industry, to business enterprise, to city life, and to the state.
To some Professor Mecklin's sociological approach to moral prob-
lems will seem not sufficiently profound and critical; but to many
others it will give value to the book. Whatever special criticisms
may be offered, the general value of such an approach can no longer
be doubted. The author is fully aware of the limitations of present
social science as a basis for ethics, but it may be fairly claimed that
he has made the best use of his available material. He rightly sees
in social psychology the chief hope of making the study of society
scientific and hence the best basis for a scientific social ethics, al-
though he draws more or less upon all of the social sciences. More-
over, he shows wide acquaintance with the best economic, political,
and sociological writers, and usually uses their results critically,
though not always.
The author has thus produced one of the most stimulating con-
crete ethical discussions of the problems of present democracy. The
general title of the book is, perhaps, too broad ; but its sub-title, "The
Social Conscience in a Democracy," very nearly describes the con-
tents of the book. As an attempt at the fusion of ethics and modern
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS 305
social science for the solution of present social problems it deserve*
the careful consideration of all students of those problems.
CHARLES A. ELLWOOD.
UNIVBESITY or MISSOURI.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. September-October, 1920. L
mecanisme de la pensee, les schemes mentaux (pp. 161-202) : DR.
REVAULT D'ALLONNES.-" Modifying the statement of Aristotle, we
assert that it is not possible to think without schematizing."
Sensation, perception, apperception, are distinguished on this basis,
and judgment and thought studied as modes of employing schema.
Contribution a Vetude des "regressions psychiques" (pp. 203-272) :
ALBERT LECLERE. - This study is devoted to the examination of the
sexual aspect of the problem of psychic regressions. L'heredite
des caracteres acquis dans ses rapports avec le probleme du progres,
(pp. 273-294) : DR. S. JANKELEVITCH. - ' * Man will become refrac-
tory to evil, not in virtue of a modification of his nature, but
uniquely under the influence of an environment which will render
immorality useless." Analyses et Comptes rendus. J. Hoffmans,
La Philosophic et les philosophes, Ouvrages generaux: P. MASSON-
OURSEL. C. A. Richardson, Spiritual Pluralism and Recent Phi-
losophy: G. MARCEL. L. L. Penido, La Methode intuitive de M.
Berg son: R. GUENON. P. G. Franceschini, Manuale di Patrologia:
P. MASSON-OURSEL. J. Roger Charbonnel, La pensee italienne au
XVI* siecle et le courant libertin: P. MASSON-OURSEL. Tomaso
Campanella, Cittd del Sole: P. M.-O. H. L. A. Visser, Collectief
Psychologische Omtrekken: A. VAN GENNEP. Giuseppe de Castel-
lotti, Elementi di Etica: J. PERES. Revue des Periodiques.
THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY, July, 1920.
Psyche-analysis of Charlotte Bronte, as a type of Woman of Genius
(pp. 221-272) : LUCILLE DOOLEY. -The desolate childhood, the self-
sacrificing womanhood and the gloomy home life are revealed in the
writing of this brilliant author. The writer emphasizes the influ-
ence of the father. An Experimental Study of Visual Form (pp.
273-300) : M. J. ZIGLER. - Visual form presents a dual problem, one
in psychology and the other in applied logic. Identical stimuli ap-
proached in different sets of attitudes may arouse perceptions of
different forms, while different stimuli approached in the same atti-
tudes may arouse the same form. Minor studies from the Psycho-
logical Laboratory of Cornell University. A note on the theory of
Blacks, Greys and Whites (pp. 301-302) : F. L. DIMMICK. - Blacks,
306 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
prays and whites form two qualitative series placed end to end.
This affords a clarification of the color theory. The spatial condi-
tion of the fusion of warmth and cold in heat (pp. 303-312) : J.
HENBY ALSTON. -Heat is a physiological fusion of the excitations
normal to warmth and cold. Book Review. The Social Evolution
of Religion, George Willis Cooke: PHYLLIS BLANCHABD. Book
Notes. The Mental Hygiene of Childhood, William A. White.
Graphology and the Psychology of Handwriting, June E. Downey.
Psychoanalysis; Its History Theory and Practice, Andre Tridon.
Introductory Psychology for Teachers, E. K. Strong, Jr. Personal
Beauty and Racial Betterment, Knight Dunlap. Imagination and
its Place in Education, Edwin A. Kirkpatrick. Modern Spiritism,
A. T. Schofield. Sex Attraction, Victor C. Vaughan. Women's
Wild Oats, C. Gasquoine Hartley. The Hysteria of Lady Macbeth,
Isador H. Coriat. An Introduction to Social Ethics, John M.
Mecklin. An Introduction to Philosophy, Holly Estil Cunningham.
The North Riding of Yorkshire, W. J. Weston. Native Villages and
Village Sites East of the Mississippi, David I. Bushnell, Jr. Thirty-
Second Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1910-
3911. Thirty-Third Annual Report of the Bureau of American
Ethnology, 1911-12. Third Annual Report of the Massachusetts
Commission on Mental Diseases (1918).
Bibliotheca Chemico-Mathematica : Catalogue of Works in Many
Tongues on Exact and Applied Science, with a Subject Index.
London: Henry Sotheran & Co. 1921. Two Volumes. Pp. 964.
3/3 s.
Gudeman, Alfred. Aristotles ueber die Dichtkunst, neu uebersetzt
und mit Einleitung und einem Erklarenden Namen- und Sach-
verzeichnis versehen. Leipzig: Felix Meiner. 1920. Pp. 91.
Br. 10 m. Geb. 15 m.
Keller, Albert G. Through War to Peace: A Study of the Great
War as an Incident in the Evolution of Society. Revised Edi-
tion. New York: Macmillan Co. 1921. Pp. 196.
Robb, Alfred A. The Absolute Relations of Time and Space. Cam-
bridge University Press. 1921. Pp. viii -}- 80.
Rougier, Louis. Philosophy and the New Physics : An Essay on the
Relativity Theory and the Theory of Quanta. Translated by
Morton Massius. Philadelphia: P. Blakiston's Son & Co. 1921.
Pp. xv -j- 159. $1.75.
White, William A. Foundations of Psychiatry. New York and
Washington : Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Co. 1921.
Pp. ix -j-136. $3.
NOTES AND NEWS 307
NOTES AND NEWS
THE CARUS LECTURESHIP AND THE JOINT MEETING OP THE EASTERN
AND WESTERN DIVISIONS OP THE AMERICAN PHIL-
OSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION
In confirmation of a proposal made orally to Professor H. B.
Alexander and by him reported to the Western Philosophical Asso-
ciation (now the Western Division of the American Philosophical
Association) at its spring meeting in 1920, Mrs. Mary Hegeler Carus,
widow of the late Dr. Paul Carus, has written the following leter :
"25 March, 1921
"PROFESSOR JAMES H. TUFTS,
"Dear Sir: The Edward C. Hegeler Foundation and the Open
Court Publishing Company, as a tribute to the memory of Dr. Paul
Carus, for so many years a devoted student of philosophy and kin-
dred subjects, offer to provide for a series of lectures to be delivered
under the auspices of the American Philosophical Association or the
divisions of the American Philosophical Association, acting jointly.
"The terms and conditions of the offer are as follows:
"I. The lectures shall be known as the PAUL CARUS LECTURES.
"II. The lectures shall be given as the Committee choosing the
lecturer may determine during the year 1921 or 1922 and at the
meeting of the American Philosophical Association or the divisions
of the American Philosophical Association, acting jointly. If there
should be any reason for modifying this condition, the donor will be
very glad to consider any requests for such modifications.
"III. The lecturer shall be chosen and the invitation extended
by a committee consisting of not more than nine representatives
of the American Philosophical Association (these representatives
to be appointed by the Executive Committee of the American Philo-
sophical Association, or by the Executive Committees of the several
divisions of the American Philosophical Association, according to
the rules and practice which govern such appointments) together
with not more than three representatives of the Open Court Publish-
ing Company.
"IV. The lecturer shall receive an honorarium of one thousand
dollars, to be paid by the Trustees of the Edward C. Hegeler Trust
Fund.
"V. Within a reasonable period after the delivery of the lec-
tures, the manuscript of the lectures shall be delivered to the Open
Court Publishing Company for publication in book form. This
308 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
provision shall be optional for the first series of lectures. It is un-
derstood that the honorarium shall not be regarded as a purchase of
or royalty upon the published book, but that the author shall receive
the usual royalty accruing from the sales of his book by the Open
Court Publishing Company.
"Trusting that this offer may appeal to the members of the
American Philosophical Association and make possible some real
contribution to the field of philosophy and that the lectures, if given
and published, may serve to stimulate and deepen the interest in
philosophical studies, I remain
"Faithfully yours,
"MARY HEOELEB CARUB,
"Trustee of the Edward C. Hegeler Trust Fund and
President of the Open Court Publishing Company."
In accordance with the terms of this letter and the instructions
of the Eastern and Western Divisions the representatives of these
two Divisions, in conference with Mrs. Cams representing the Open
Court Publishing Company, chose Professor John Dewey to deliver
the lectures at a joint meeting to be held in September, 1921, if pos-
sible. A letter and cable were sent to Professor Dewey, but no re-
ply has been received. In view of the consequent inability of the
Committees to make any definite arrangements, and of the desira-
bility of having a well-attended meeting for these lectures the Com-
mittees have reluctantly decided to postpone until a later date the
joint meeting, due notice of which will be given.
In making public this letter and announcement the officers
of 'both the Eastern and the Western Divisions of the Ameri-
can Philosophical Association desire to express their appreciation
of the generous interest in philosophical study and publication which
prompted the liberal offer of Mrs. Carus on behalf of the Edward C.
Hegeler Foundation and the Open Court Publishing Co. They de-
sire to express also the hope that these lectures may encourage and
strengthen the cause of philosophical study which Dr. Carus had so
warmly at heart, and to which he devoted a life-time of service as
editor and author.
A. H. JONES,
Secretary Eastern Division,
Q-. A. TAWNEY,
Secretary Western Division
VOL. XVIII, No. 12. JUNE 9, 1921
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PROFESSOR DEWEY, THE PROTAGONIST
OF DEMOCRACY 1
PHILOSOPHERS have for centuries sought some ultimate prin-
ciple, to contemplate which would be an end sufficient unto
itself. Yet, according to Professor Dewey, the earliest philosophizing 1
had no such aim. Primitive man's account of his world was in-
vented in a fanciful way, in order to justify and preserve the exist-
ing social fabric. "Made of imaginations" it lauded the deeds of
some mythical ancestor or creator; sanction of traditional authority
was its motive. Later grew up the desire for scientific truth; a de-
sire born of the pressure of practical needs. Arts and crafts, tech-
nologies, ' ' give that common-sense knowledge of nature out of which
science takes its origin " (p. 12). When these two purposes the
desire to justify established authority and the need of correctness
were combined, systems of philosophy arose. But their object was
social and practical ; only later did men forget the original aim, and
develop a style of philosophy which is quite aloof from human needs.
To point out the delusion that caused this falling away, and to re-
call philosophy to its native task, social service, is the reconstruction
which the author of the work before us undertakes.
"We need not cavil at Mr. Dewey 's theory of the social-practical
origin of philosophy. Its truth or falsity is scarcely verifiable ; and
it is not certain that he takes the theory seriously himself (cf. pp.
24-25). It is, to be sure, of a piece with much of his teaching
hitherto ; the practical motive is made fundamental, and disinterested
curiosity is treated as secondary, if not unnatural. But his analysis
which follows might be accepted without his genesis of philosophy,
and to that we pass. How did philosophy get off the track, and how
shall it be put right ?
In brief, it went wrong because of the delusion of superiority
a delusion which, in the author's view, infected human society from
top to bottom, and is not far from being the root of all evil. The
two sorts of knowledge empirical knowledge of this world and alleged
knowledge of some sanctifying principle were rated of different
worth. "The workers and craftsmen who possess the prosaic matter-
of-fact knowledge are likely to occupy a low social status, and their
i Eeconst ruction in Philosophy. John Dewey. New York : Henry Holt.
1920.
SCO
310 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
kind of knowledge is affected by the social disesteem entertained for
the manual worker who engages in activities useful to the body"
(pp. 12-13). So the support of tradition by a reasoned system as-
sumed a higher dignity than the pursuit, by experiment and ob-
servation, of scientific information about nature. As the systems
could not use those humble methods, they developed a technique of
their own, which led to "an over-developed attachment to system for
its own sake" (p. 21). Thus did philosophy gradually "arrogate
to itself the office of demonstrating the existence of a transcendent,
absolute, or inner reality" (p. 23), claiming "a higher organ of
knowledge than is employed by positive science and ordinary prac-
tical experience . . . marked by a superior dignity and importance"
(ibid.). This arrogation has persisted even until today, with the
result that philosophy has remained aloof from practical concerns.
To remedy the fault, it must renounce "its somewhat barren mon-
opoly of dealings with Ultimate and Absolute Reality" and occupy
itself with "enlightening the moral forces which move mankind"
(pp. 26-27). The scientific method of experiment and observation
must be applied to the social problems ; the plain and humble instead
of the autocratic method. The essence of Professor Dewey 's recon-
struction lies in the democratic attitude. Philosophy must descend
to the scientific level, and give equal opportunity to all social pro-
grammes, testing them by their results, and affording superior priv-
ilege to no a priori deduction or conception of society. This is to
be applied to all departments of life: education, the family, morals,
politics, industry, commerce, religion. Evil and error lie in assump-
tion of superiority or self-sufficiency whether of a man, a race, a
conception, a vocation, an institution, or a God. In a word, his
programme is a revolt against superiority. On eighty-nine different
pages of the book he characterizes the issue in terms of a struggle
against aristocratic pretension for equal privilege. As Whitman
was the poet, so is Dewey the philosopher, of democracy. He is, it
seems fair to say, the epitome of Western democracy, its spirit be-
come a self-conscious thorough-going philosophy of life; his work
is the most characteristic contribution which this country has offered,
and perhaps can offer, to the spiritual history of man. And the
merits and defects of his programme are those of democracy itself;
to estimate the one is to estimate the other. But let us get before us
the detail of the programme.
Human progress has been marked by "the gradual decay of the
authority of fixed institutions and class distinctions and relations"
(p. 48). The older view was of "a universe with a fixed place for
everything and where everything knows its place . . . and keeps
it" (p. 54). "In short, classic thought accepted a feudally arranged
DEWEY, THE PROTAGONIST OF DEMOCRACY 311
order of classes or kinds, each 'holding' from a superior and in turn
giving the rule of conduct and service to an inferior" (p. 61).
"Law is [in the older view] assimilated to a command or order"
(p. 64). "We often hear about laws which 'govern' events . . .
This way of thinking is a survival of reading social relationships
into nature . . . the relation of ruler and ruled, sovereign and sub-
ject ' ' (ibid. ) . But in the modern way ' ' The remote and esthetically
sublime is to be scientifically described and explained in terms of
homely familiar events and forces" (p. 65) ; which is "the substitu-
tion of a democracy of individual facts equal in rank for the feudal
system of an ordered gradation of general classes of unequal rank"
(p. 66). Man's "interest has shifted from the esthetic to the
practical; from interest in beholding a harmonious and complete
scheme to interest in transforming an inharmonious one" (ibid.).
The Greeks, to be sure, founded the science of mechanics, but as
the democratic spirit was undeveloped, they could not go far;
"mechanics were base fellows." But "the mechanization of nature
is the condition of a practical and progressive idealism in action"
(p. 72). "To respect matter means to respect the conditions of
achievement" (ibid.). Yet with all this growth of the scientific
spirit we find "in moral and political matters . . . the older order
of conceptions in full possession of the popular mind" (p. 75).
"That the Germans with all their scientific competency and techno-
logical proficiency should have fallen into their tragically rigid and
'superior' style of thought and action ... is a sufficient lesson of
what may be involved in a systematic denial of the experimental
character of intelligence and its conceptions" (p. 99). We need,
not worship of a higher power, but "the co-operation of those who
respect the past and the institutionally established with those who
are interested in establishing a freer and happier future" (p. 101),
"to glorify the claims of reason without at the same time falling into
a paralyzing worship of some super-empirical authority or into an
offensive 'rationalization' of things as they are" (p. 102). Over
against this democratic co-operation the interest in knowledge for
its own sake appears to Professor Dewey aristocratic. "In contrast
with such knowing, the so-called knowing of the artisan is [con-
sidered] base. . . . What condemns his knowledge even more is the
fact that it is not disinterestedly for its own sake. . . . While civic
or political and moral knowledge rank higher than do the concep-
tions of the artisan, yet intrinsically considered they are of a low
and untrue type . . ." (p. 110). But "natural science ... is
something to be pursued not in a technical and specialized way for
what is called truth for its own sake, but with the sense of its social
bearing, its intellectual indispensableness" (p. 173). Nothing, in-
312 THE JOURNAL OF PIIILOSOI'IIY
has valiu- in isolation; value is relative, and distributed equally
in all directions. "Anything that in a given situation is an end
and good at all is of equal worth, rank, and dignity, with every other
good of any other situation, and deserves the same intelligent
attention " ( p. 176 ) . No one end, such as ecstasy, knowledge, riches,
health, is an end in itself, higher in dignity than the means to it.
"Acquisition of skill, possession of knowledge, attainment of cul-
ture, are not ends: they are marks of growth and means to its con-
tinuing" (p. 185). "Democracy has many meanings, but if it has
a moral meaning, it is found in resolving that the supreme test of
all political institutions and industrial arrangements shall be the
contribution they make to the all-around growth of every member
of society" (p. 186). So the State is no fixed sovereign; it is "just
an instrumentality for promoting and protecting other and more
voluntary forms of association, rather than a supreme end in itself"
(pp. 202-203). Sovereignty is a dogma. "Pluralism is well or-
dained in present political practice and demands a modification of
hierarchical and monistic theory" (p. 204). "Organization is never
an end in itself," but only a "means of promoting association"
(pp. 206-207). Institutions are for man, not man for institutions;
human progress by co-operation of all is the one absolute end.
Now these look to be the sayings of a generous and humane soul,
and Mr. Dewey will be, and is, justly honored for his sympathy with
"lower" interests and his plea for impartial co-operation. But we
have to ask, as with any proposed reconstruction, is it as fair as it
appears? Does not the author harbor certain resentments which
render his programme as one-sided and injurious as are the very
traditions whose faults he rightly points out! We believe that he
does ; we find his gospel, and that of democracy generally, not truly
broad, or fair, but exclusive and narrow. It is not an impartial
synthesis; the democratic remedy for human ills does not cure, but
inflames, certain sores which rankle in the spiritual anatomy of man.
His estimate of scientific method fundamentally Important be-
cause he takes from that method his cue for philosophic reform-
is, we think, quite askew. With all his respect for every-day
"homely" fact, he does not consider the every-day procedure of
the scientist. Science, he says, is interested primarily in "laws
of motion, of generation and consequence" (p. 61) and constancy
is not of "existence" but of "function" (ibid.). But if the scien-
tific account is true, atoms are constant in existence as well as in
function. The electron so far as known appears to be a fairly perma-
nent structure. The Mendelian biologist, with his atomic theory of
heredity, finds in the chromosome a substance, or permanent struc-
ture, passing from parent to offspring, and by its persistence de-
termining the inheritance. The tendency of present mathematics
with its logical constants and elements is quite in the Platonic
direction. Laws and functions are not the only constant things
revealed by science. For all the theory of origin of species, the
species we know are so stable that within the memory of man very
few new ones have originated. The changes are vanishingly small
as compared with the fixity. Nor is the world as portrayed by science
so very democratic. It is a world of hierarchies : suns, planets, satel-
lites, each in its fixed orbit or place; nervous systems ruling the
behavior of organs, organs doing one kind of work and no other;
atoms with fixed ways of combining; the perusal of the results of
science suggests an order more like the old feudal than the new
democratic system. Mr. Dewey however selects those aspects of science
that suit his world-view. Note the same preferential selection in the
following : ' ' Nowadays if a man, say a physicist or chemist, wants to
know something, the last thing he does is merely to contemplate. He
does not look in however earnest and prolonged a way upon the
object, expecting that thereby he will detect its fixed and character-
istic form. He . . . proceeds to do something, to bring some energy
to bear upon the substance to see how it reacts; he places it under
unusual conditions in order to induce some change. "While the
astronomer cannot change the stars themselves, he can at least by
lens and prism change their light as it reaches the earth" (pp.
112-113).
As a fact, "merely to contemplate" is the first thing he does. He
cannot experiment unless he begins by merely thinking about the
problem. It is also the last thing he does. He records the experi-
mental results and scrutinizes them in an "earnest and prolonged
way," whereby he detects the nature of the phenomenon. Newton,
it is said, replied to one who asked him how he made his discoveries,
"by intending my mind." There are three stages in an experi-
ment: first, contemplation in order to have intelligent procedure;
second, the process of change induced by novel conditions; third,
the mere contemplation of the results. The third is the end and
motive of the first two. With many scientists, if not most, it is a
motive which has no ulterior purpose just knowledge for its own
sake. Is it not quite misleading to pick out the second stage and
treat it as the essence of scientific method ? Surely a genuine spirit
of fairness would grant all three an essential place, while recogniz-
ing that pure contemplation is the highest of all. Is it not a distor-
tion which declares that the whole method "signifies nothing less
than that the world or any part of it as it presents itself at a given
time is accepted or acquiesced in only as material for change" (p.
114, italics mine).
314 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
And in spite of his profession of respect for science, it looks as
if Professor Dewey did not sincerely respect that discipline, for he
makes little use of its results, and what they reveal as to the con-
stitution of this world. He loves equality, sociality, fluidity, and
he selects from the great corpus scientia certain motives allied to
these. Meanwhile thinkers of opposite preference, professing as
strongly their respect for science, pick out opposite aspects. Messrs.
Russell, Spaulding and others find science to be not experiment, but
a system of timeless relations. Of what value toward progress is it,
thus to confront one extreme with another? Neither can extirpate
the other. Nor can the pure esthetic delight of knowing be abolished
by apotheosis of experimental sociology; it is as intense and per-
sistent as the gregarious impulse which Western democracy glorifies.
A genuine human sympathy would be broad enough to rise above
these exclusions. It would respect as that democracy has shown
little aptitude for doing man's desire to contemplate changeless
beauty, to attain intellectual independence, to create a work of art
for its own sake, to worship a transcendent Deity ; yes, even though
these ends were conducive to no further or "social" good. That
their effects are good in the long run may be true, but they are not
valued for that reason by those who attain them. Modern Americans,
with their love of publicity, co-operation, and "getting together"
do not need to be told what Mr. Dewey is telling them. They are not
in grave danger of drawing away from their fellows to study classi-
cal philosophy, or to attain in some cloister a mystic union with God.
They have already reacted violently against these tendencies, and he
who would intensify that reaction is but preventing a just balance
between contemplation for itself and utilitarian ends, between art
and applied science, between inner religion and external social work ;
a balance wherein neither shall be subservient to the other.
Professor Dewey seems to think that one who finds the satisfac-
tion of a philosophic system its own justification must be hostile to
social interests. It is certainly the case that one thinker who ad-
vocates social amelioration has no appreciation of the "spectator
view of knowledge." Thereby, however, he does not increase the
measure of human life ; he diminishes it. Why should not knowledge
be both power to transform the world, and a joy forever by itself t
Let some men devote themselves chiefly to the first and some to the
second, each respecting the other's unique contribution. Would this
not be a sounder humanitarian ism than to condemn the "spectator
view of knowledge" T And indeed, as matter of history, great think-
ers like Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, did have
both motives. It is not true of these that "forbidden by conditions
and held back by lack of courage from making their knowledge a
DEWEY, THE PROTAGONIST OF DEMOCRACY 315
factor in the determination of the course of events, they have sought
a refuge of complacency in the notion that knowledge is something
too sublime to be contaminated by contact with things of change and
practice" (p. 117). These men wrote on ethics and politics, and
tried to influence the society of their day. If they were in varying
degrees pre-committed to "aristocratic" doctrines, Mr. Dewey is
no less pre-committed by his environment to democratic ones. He
is no more trying to change the practise of today than they tried to
change that of their times. He is the democratic philosopher in the
world of American democracy, as Hegel was the aristocratic in the
world of Prussian aristocracy, and he carries democracy to quite as
great an extreme as did Hegel his aristocracy.
That the democratic attitude is not an impartial one appears in
another way when Mr. Dewey treats of the practical interests.
"When they [the economic ends] are recognized to be as intrinsic
and final in their place as any others, then it will be seen that . . .
if life is to be worth while, they must acquire ideal and intrinsic
value" (p. 171). We must do "away with the traditional distinction
between moral goods like the virtues, and natural goods like health,
economic security, art, science, and the like" (p. 172). (Mr. Dewey
might recall that Aristotle considered all of these to be a part of
virtue.) And, to repeat what was quoted above : "Anything that in a
given situation is an end and good at all is of equal worth, rank, and
dignity with every other good of any other situation, and deserves
the same intelligent attention" (p. 176). Yet none of these goods,
however equalized, are to be thought self-sufficient; each is but a
means to the total improvement of life, and its value lies in its lead-
ing. The denial of self-sufficiency thus brings us to the glorification
of process. "The process of growth, of improvement and progress,
rather than the static outcome and result, becomes the significant
thing. Not health as an end fixed once and for all, but the needed
improvement in health a continual process is the end and good"
(p. 177). "Growth itself is the only moral end" (ibid.). Not
possession, but invention and creation, is good. "Acquisition of
skill, possession of knowledge, attainment of culture are not ends ; they
are marks of growth and means to its continuing" (p. 185). It is
the movement, the process itself of passing from one stage to the
next higher, that is good. Is growth in knowledge then a process
distinct from the acquisition of knowledge, and the end which justi-
fies the acquisition? One would have thought these identical. But
because for Mr. Dewey no acquisition or possession is good in itself,
being "static," it must be that only the process itself is good
process as distinct from possession. Is not this motion for motion's
sake ? Such a doctrine is not true to experience. Men do not wish
31.; THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPJIY
to grow for growing's sake alone weeds grow as well as flowers
but because thereby they get something good and do not 1<>-
When a moderate quantity of the desired thing is best, they desire
no more (if they are wise) ; e.g., one does not wisely seek to better
his health indefinitely, or his wealth. But knowledge, tact, good-will,
taste these we wish to increase without limit. Bodily goods and
spiritual goods differ in just that point; and it is not a sound rule
which overlooks the distinction and makes them "of equal rank,
worth, and dignity." The democratic attitude of putting all these
on a level, of fusing all indiscriminately in a process, is a specious
impartiality which works injustice to the higher ends. We cannot
afford to give equal consideration and opportunity to all impulses,
all motives, all social experiments. The higher ends must be recog-
nized to be higher, and must be more favored. They are, in our poor
human nature, weaker than the lower. Fine art cannot compete
with trade in the open market, literature cannot compete with best
sellers, nor the philosopher with the inventor. The higher callings,
which demand arduous and prolonged labor with little apparent
result, would die out if they were not specially protected e.g., by
fixed salaries and permanent tenure, as is the case with professors.
The human infant would not survive if he had only equal oppor-
tunity with the beasts. Or we may put the same point otherwise
by saying that the only way to make opportunities truly equal is to
favor some callings, some motives, some men much more than others.
True democracy means unequal privilege and turns into a form of
aristocracy. And Mr. Dewey might, if pressed, admit this; but he
nowhere does so, and he does emphasize many times the evils of
superiority and special privilege. The effect of his book on the
American democrat would not be favorable to distinction of better
from worse in the process of growth. Deep in his heart he loves
equality, and he takes no care to point out the need of discrimination
in applying that category. Recall what he said on p. 186: "the su-
preme test of all political institutions and industrial arrangements
shall be the contribution they make to the all-round growth of every
member of society. ' ' Now we do not want the ' ' all-round ' ' growth of
everybody. We want some to do chiefly certain things, others to do
chiefly other things. Difference of skill, distinction of higher and
lower value, division of labor, are necessary to life. And because it
tends irresistibly to overlook these differences, democratic imparti-
ality becomes partiality to the lower.
In political philosophy the author is inevitably led to the danger-
ous doctrine of pluralism. The State is no end in itself; only a
means of "promoting and protecting other and more voluntary forms
of association." As such, in his view, it becomes actually inferior,
DEWEY, THE PROTAGONIST OF DEMOCRACY 317
as we shall see, to association for association's sake. "Every com-
bination of human forces that adds its own contribution of value to
life has for that reason its own unique and ultimate worth. Jt
cannot be degraded into a means to glorify a State" (p. 204). But
when the claims of various associations within a State conflict, as
they often do, who shall have authority to settle the quarrel?
Dreading authority as he does, he no more furnishes a means of
settling disputes than do other pluralists. "Organization" he de-
clares ' ' is never an end in itself ' ' but rather ' ' a means of promoting
association" (pp. 206-207). "Society is the process of associating"
(p. 207). "To this active process, both the individual and the
institutionally organized may truly be said to be subordinate"
(ibid.). Herein process appears once more as end-in-itself ; the
process of getting together for the sake of getting together. This
indeed is the one great sanctifying principle: "when the emotional
force, the mystic force one might say, of communication, of the
miracle of shared life and shared experience is spontaneously felt,
the hardness and crudeness of contemporary life will be bathed in
the light that never was on land or sea" (p. 211). But of course,
rogues may share as well as honest men, and even honest men do
not want to share all things. Nobody denies the pleasures of social
life, or the need of co-operation in some things; but mere sharing
is no more an end in itself than mere privacy. The whole difficulty
is to determine what ought to be shared and what ought not, as well
as what sort of sharing, subject to what rules, shall be permitted.
And how men may remain together without some organization
being established, some government fixed which they shall obey, we
do not know. Naturally Mr. Dewey would not, in his reaction against
sovereignty, go to the extreme of anarchy, but how far would he go ?
His words indicate no limit. Is it right to declare that the State is
not final without confessing that at times we have to treat it as if it
were ? It is not refutation but qualification that is here needed. No
doubt Mr. Dewey knows how to supply that qualification ; but those
who look up to him as a leader and they are many have not his
wisdom and will probably forget, if they ever knew how, to draw
the line. His teaching therefore will work has already worked
in the direction of extreme radicalism and a fanatic devotion to
change of the social fabric. He has accused philosophers of a
' ' morally irresponsible estheticism ' ' ; his words and emphasis, taken
as they stand, lead to a morally evasive fluidity. It is true that he
has spoken of doing justice to the claims of reason and tradition
(cf. pp. 101-102), but the rarity of that sort of statement, compared
with the tremendous stress he lays upon the opposite motives, make
it appear perfunctory. Notice his words about freedom; how they
31 > THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
weight the fluidity and neglect the stability which make up that
attribute! "Freedom for an individual means growth, ready change
when modification is required. It signifies an active process, that of
release of capacity from whatever hems it in" (pp. 207-208). Of
course it does; yet it signifies also ability to remain firm and rigid
when firmness and rigidity are required. It is the omission of
counterpart-truths like this that renders his doctrine a menace.
Of democracy we read "It is but a name for the fact that human
nature is developed only when its elements take part in directing
things which are common, things for the sake of which men and
women form groups families, industrial companies, governments,
churches, ..." (p. 209). This sounds very well; one thinks of
"government with consent of the governed," self-determination, and
other modern ideals. Yet, taken as it stands, it is misleading and
dangerous. How far are the elements to take part in directing?
Should the children take part in the family councils? Is the family
to be governed by equal co-operation, without any authoritative head ?
When I call in a doctor, do he and I vote together as to the remedies
to be used ? Or is the town-meeting, with its equal privilege for all
citizens, the ideal of industrial companies, churches, and other
groups ? ' ' Take part ' ' may mean anything, from equal co-operation
to mere presence as a factor to be conciliated. If it means the latter,
it amounts practically to nothing. But the tendency of one who
reads these words is to read into them ' ' take equal part. ' ' When we
remember how Mr. Dewey dislikes superiority, we feel that he has
this at the back of his head. And people who preach democracy
usually do advocate equal responsibility and equal participation.
Equality is the very heart of their doctrine. Yet the degree of
participation which children can be allowed in families is so different
from the degree which the citizens exercise in a town-meeting, that
it is quite unenlightening to group both under the same rubric, as
tin- democratic ideal.
Perhaps our author is referring, however, merely to a far distant
goal. "Human nature is developed only when," ... he says. Be-
cause men are now not at all equally developed, they cannot be
granted an equal share in directing; but the ideal is to bring them
all to the same high level and give them equal participation, and
even at present to let them participate in directing according to the
degree of their capacity. The latter we of course admit; it means
that we want the best to control most, the inferior to control little.
But if democracy meant no more than this it would not be acclaimed
as the message of hope and the emblem of progress. Its hopefulness
is thought to lie in the belief that inferiority will decrease. Pro-
fessor Dewey would hardly advocate participation in directing unless
DEWEY, THE PROTAGONIST OF DEMOCRACY 319
he wished participation to increase, to be greater than it now is.
And we submit that there is a radically false ideal at work here;
an ideal not openly proclaimed or perhaps consciously enter-
tained that of the equal development of all men (cf. the quotation
from page 186). This ideal is false because such equal development
is undesirable; it would, indeed, be fatal to progress. It would
render society as monotonous as the desert ; it would do away with
the beautiful economy of division of labor, with individuality, with
unique achievement. Men need to look up to superiors, to obey, to
revere. Ideals must be embodied in superior persons if they are
to be effective. Personality is, and forever ought to be, a mighty
force ; and the social democratic heaven of equal development would
reduce personality to nothingness.
Mr. Dewey, however, undoubtedly means that we ought to give
to the less developed a greater share in control of common things
than they now possess. "We exaggerate the dependence of child-
hood so that children are too much kept in leading strings" (p. 185).
I think many would answer ' ' Not in this country ! ' ' And if he feels
thus about family relations, where the difference between parent and
child is so much greater and more obvious than the difference be-
tween man and man in industrial companies, churches, etc., pre-
sumably he would put the demand for participation more strongly
with the latter. He has made no explicit assertions on these matters ;
but the tendency of his teaching, his omissions and his stresses, move
unambiguously toward the greater sharing of control and eventual
doing away with authority. It is not that he does not know where
to stop, but that what he has written does not suggest to anyone
else where to stop or even the desirability of stopping at all. Draw-
ing the line appears rather as a concession to human weakness;
aristocratic motives are portrayed as intrinsically evil, democratic as
intrinsically good. And this, we believe, is fundamentally unsound.
Personal authority, stable institutions, differences of level, unequal
privilege, are as ideal and as finally good as equality. Security of
possessions, fixed knowledge everlastingly true, everybody seeks and
will always seek. These are quite as good as readiness to acquire new
possessions and nevfl truth. We do not wish to make men equal
through and through ; we do not wish the ordinary man to be capa-
ble of doing the work of the expert; equality should pertain only
to certain elementary necessities of life. We do not wish the best
endowed to put off their progress until the least endowed have come
up to their level. We do not desire equal opportunity except where
capacity is approximately equal and competition is stimulating. And
the providing of equal opportunity does not tend to make endow-
ment equal ; it puts a premium on the lower capacities which are less
820 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
restrained by scruple and more quickly realized. We do desire
progress, but progress without increasing stability of what one has
gained whether of material or spiritual goods becomes the revolu-
tion of the squirrel in his cage, or the treadmill of the horse. We wish
the lesser men to become greater, and the superior men to become
greater still. But all the emphasis of democracy today, and of Professor
Dewey its protagonist, no matter what he would say if pressed is
actually in favor of the lower, material needs, the judgment of the
masses, the standards of the unskilled. It will if unchecked tend
to bring humanity down to the level of its least developed members,
and is thus directly against progress.
W. H. SHELDON.
YALE UNIVERSITY.
THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE PREDICATE
IN a recent numfber of this JOURNAL 1 Professor Dotterer proposed
a new definition of "distributed term." This he did with a
view to meeting certain objections which I had suggested in my
Elementary Handbook of Logic against the common doctrine that
the predicate is distributed in negative propositions and undistrib-
uted in affirmative. I shall attempt to show in what follows that
the new definition with its accompanying explanation leaves the
objections unanswered.
My first objection was directed against the position of those who
reject Hamilton's theory of the quantification of the predicate, but
hold the doctrine of the distribution of the predicate. These logi-
cians reject Hamilton's theory, because it supposes that in the act
of judgment the extension of the predicate is present to the mind.
This, they claim, is not true. But when they come to explain their
own doctrine, they say that the mind refers to the extension of the
predicate. My contention was that the mind can not refer to the
extension of the predicate unless the extension of the predicate is
present to the mind; hence, if Hamilton is wrong, these logicians
are wrong.
My second objection was that the use of the doctrine of the dis-
tribution of the predicate involves a vicious circle. This doctrine is
used by logicians to determine certain implications of a proposi-
tion. The beginner in Logic has no difficulty in seeing that the
subject of a proposition may be distributed or undistributed, but it
is not self-evident to him that this is true of the predicate. For
this reason the logician sets about proving it. But in order to prove
it, he appeals to the implication of the propositions, and then he
i Vol. XVII, pp. 519-522.
THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE PREDICATE 321
tells the student that, in drawing out the implication, he must re-
member that the predicate is distributed or undistributed; that is,
he first calls upon the student's knowledge of the implication to
prove the doctrine, and then he bids the student call upon his knowl-
edge of the doctrine in order to find out the implication.
My third objection was based upon the partial inverse of All
S is P. The partial inverse of this proposition is Some non-S is
not P. According to the doctrine of the distribution of the predi-
cate, P is distributed in the partial inverse, whereas it was undis-
tributed in the original proposition. Consequently, if \ve accept the
doctrine of the distribution of the predicate, we shall have to pro-
nounce the partial inverse invalid; and if we pronounce it invalid,
we shall have to hold that conversion and obversion are illegitimate
processes.
In the fourth edition of his Formal Logic Dr. Keynes says that
the distributed P in the partial inverse is explained by the fact that,
in inverting All S is P, we assume the proposition Some things are
not P.* I have discussed this suggestion of Dr. Keynes in my
Handbook. Professor Dotterer's explanation is substantially the
same as the one contained in the third edition of Dr. Keynes's work.
It will doubtless be admitted that the doctrine of the distribution
of the predicate should not be retained in works on Logic merely on
the ground that it is veneraible. It was introduced into Logic, not
for its own sake, but avowedly as an instrument. Its purpose was
to facilitate the explanation of certain inferences, particularly those
involved in conversion and the categorical syllogism. If it does not
fulfill this purpose, it is useless and has no place in Logic. I think
Professor Dotterer's explanation robs the doctrine of all its useful-
ness. His argument is as follows: "Given 'All S is P' as the
original proposition, and 'Some non-S is not P' as its partial in-
verse, it is indeed true that P is distributed in the inverse and un-
distributed in the invertend. In the invertend, however, it is un-
distributed with respect to S; and in the inverse, it is distributed
with respect to non-S. And this is no more of a contradiction than
to say that John is tall as compared with William, but short as com-
pared with Henry. The 'hypothesis of distribution' does not, then,
'break down' in the case of the partial inverse; for in this case the
rule of distribution is simply irrelevant."
I would observe, first of all, that I did not say that the circum-
stance of a term being undistributed in the invertend and distrib-
uted in the partial inverse constituted a contradiction, but that it
caused the doctrine of the distribution of the predicate to break
down. By this I meant that it was inconsistent with the purpose of
2 Formal Logic, p. 140.
322 THE JOURNAL OP PHILOSOPHY
that doctrine and with the use to -which it had been put by logi-
cians. The chief use to which logicians had put the doctrine was to
caution us against, distrihuting a term in the conclusion if the term
had been undistrilmfrd in the premise or premises from which the
conclusion was derived. Otherwise, they said, the conclusion went
beyond the information contained in the premises, and therefore,
was invalid. Now, the partial inverse of the A proposition violates
this rule, and yet it is valid. I infer from this that the doctrine
of the distribution of the predicate breaks down.
Professor Dotterer replies that P is undistributed with respect
to 8 in the invertend, while in the partial inverse it is distributed
with respect to non-8, and therefore my argument is of no avail.
But what, precisely, is the force of this remark? Is it intended to
have a general application? I take it that it is, particularly as it
is enforced by the illustration: "John is tall as compared with
William, but short as compared with Henry." I understand, then,
that the doctrine of the distribution of the predicate is not affected,
if a term which is undistributed with reference to a given term in a
premise is distributed with reference to a different term in the con-
clusion. Take the following argument: All M is P; No 8 -is M ;
therefore No 8 is P. Professor Dotterer 's comment, applied to this
case, would run as follows : "It is indeed true that P is distributed
in the conclusion and undistributed in the major premise. In the
major premise, however, it is undistributed with respect to M ; and
in the conclusion, it is distributed with respect to 8." Professor
Dotterer says the rule of distribution is simply irrelevant in the case
of the partial inverse. If that is true, then it is irrelevant in the
case of the conclusion No 8 is P; for the reason he gave for its
irrelevancy in the first case holds also in the second.
This is what I meant when I said that Professor Dotterer 's con-
tention destroyed the usefulness of the doctrine of the distribution
of the predicate. Hitherto the doctrine has been used to test the
validity of the conclusion in a categorical syllogism. But it can not
be used for this purpose if it is irrelevant.
One of the general rules of the categorical syllogism reads : ' ' No
term may be distributed in the conclusion which was not distributed
in one of the premises." Professor Dotterer suggests the following
wording as more accurate: "Neither term of the conclusion may be
distributed with respect to the other, unless in the premise in which
it appears it is distributed with respect to the middle term." But
how can this rule be proved? The doctrine of the distribution of
the predicate can not be invoked to prove it; for in the case of a
conclusion in the categorical syllogism the doctrine is irrelevant. In
THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE PREDICATE 323
consequence, the rule will have to be proved independently of the
doctrine; and this means that the doctrine is useless.
After formulating his definition of "distributed term," Pro-
fessor Dotterer makes the following remark: "In speaking of the
distribution of a term we are not merely concerned, to employ Pro-
fessor Toohey's terminology, with the import of a proposition, but
also with its implication." These words lead me to believe that in
my use of the terms "import" and "implication" I have not made
my meaning clear to Professor Dotterer. I do not think that my
use of these terms differs in any essential respect from that of, e.g.,
Dr. Keynes. By the import of a proposition I mean that which is
explicitly before the mind when the proposition is uttered. Thus,
in the proposition, Every 8 is P, the intension of P and the extension
as well as the intension of 8 are explicitly before the mind. But in
common with most English logicians I claim that the extension of P
is not explicitly before the mind. Hence I hold that the extension of
P is not part of the import of the proposition. By the implication
of a given proposition I mean any proposition which is involved in
the import of the given proposition; that is, any proposition which
can be derived from, the given proposition. Let Some P's are S be
an implication of Every 8 is P. The extension as well as the in-
tension of P is explicitly before the mind in Some P's are 8. There-
fore, the extension of P is part of the implication, but not of the
import, of Every 8 is P.
If we say that the extension of P is part of the import of Every
8 is P, we are espousing Hamilton's theory. But unless we adopt
that theory, we can not speak of the predicate of a proposition as
being distributed or undistributed; for the words "distributed"
and "undistributed" have no meaning except in reference to the
extension of a term.
When Professor Dotterer says, "in speaking of the distribution
of a term we are not merely concerned . . . with the import of a
proposition, but also with its implication," does he mean that the
implication as well as the import is a necessary factor in deter-
mining whether a term is distributed or undistributed? If he does
not mean this, I do not understand the relevancy of his remark. If
he does mean it, then my second objection holds against his position.
If we must consult the implication of a proposition to learn whether
one of its terms is distributed or undistributed, we can not use our
knowledge of the distribution of the term to derive the implication
without involving ourselves in a vicious circle. Besides, which of
the implications shall we fix upon to determine whether P is distrib-
uted or undistributed in the original proposition? S&me non-8 is
324 THE JOURNAL OP PHILOSOl'/IY
not P is an implication of All 8 is P; and yet P is said to be undis-
tributed in AH 8 is P.
Professor Dotterer's definition of "distributed term" is as
follows: "A term is distributed with respect to another term when
by reflection upon the mere form of the proposition containing the
terms in question we can tell that the class denoted by the one is
either 'wholly within' or else 'wholly without' the class, or some
part of the class, denoted by the other." I do not know whether
Professor Dotterer is an advocate of Hamilton's theory or not; but
this definition is intelligible only from the point of view of Ham-
ilton's theory, at least as regards the propositions A, E, I and 0.
The words, "reflection upon the mere form of the proposition," ex-
clude all appeal to the implication. But since we can not contem-
plate the class denoted by a term without having the extension of
the term present to the mind, and since we can not "tell that the
class denoted by the one [term] is either 'wholly within' or 'wholly
without ' the class, or some part of the class, denoted by the other, ' '
unless we compare the classes together, it follows that the extension
of both terms is present to the mind, and therefore forms part of
the import of the proposition. This is Hamilton's doctrine.
There is an inconsistency in the logician treating the subject and
predicate of a proposition as classes an inconsistency which is
masked by the ambiguity of the words All and Some. Each of these
words may have a collective as well as a distributive force. When
All has a distributive force, it is exactly equivalent to Every. Some
has a collective force in the proposition, Some strikers destroyed the
factory. VHien Some has a distributive force, it is equivalent to
"every one of a certain number of " or "no one of a certain number
of," according as the proposition is affirmative or negative. Thus,
Some men are wise is the same as Every one of a certain number of
men is wise. The rules of Logic are based on the supposition that
the subject term is used distributively, or at least that it is not used
collectively. The words ''distributed" and "undistributed" can
not be applied to a term unless it is used distributively. In the
proposition, All tJie angles of a triangle are less than two right
angles, the subject term, "angle of a triangle," is distributed ; for
it is used distributively, and the proposition is the same as Every
angle of a triangle is less than two right angles. But in the propo-
sition, All the angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, no
logician would speak of the subject term, "angle of a triangle," as
either distributed or undistributed. Now, when the subject and
predicate of a proposition are considered as classes, the proposition
can not convey any meaning unless both terms are interpreted in a
collective sense; and if they are interpreted in this sense, the words
THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE PREDICATE 325
"distributed" and "undistributed" can not be applied to them,
any more than they can be applied to the subject of the proposition,
All the angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. The
words "collected" and "uncollected" would not be altogether in-
appropriate. If, then, the rules of Logic suppose that the subject is
not used collectively, how can they be reconciled with a treatment
of the proposition which imposes upon both subject and predicate a
collective sense?
Moreover, it is impossible, at least in affirmative propositions, for
the predicate to be used distributively, and therefore, it is impossible
for it to be either distributed or undistributed. The words Every
and Every one of a certain number of are the test whether the
subject term is used distributively or not. If neither of them can
be prefixed to the subject of an affirmative proposition, the subject
is not used distributively. But it is obvious that neither of these
signs can be prefixed to the predicate. Take any of the examples
adduced by logicians to prove that reference is made to the exten-
sion of the predicate, and it will be seen that this test would reduce
them to nonsense. Thus, the proposition, All Tartars are Turanians,
would ibecome Every Tartar is every one of a certain number of
Turanians. But the converse, Some Turanians are Tartars, may
without violence be made to read Every one of a certain number of
Turanians is a Tartar.
One more remark in conclusion concerning the partial inverse
of All S is P. The difficulty connected with the partial inverse is
due to an initial mistake in the interpretation of the particular
negative proposition. On the common interpretation, Some non-S is
not P gives us more information about P than does All S is P. But
in reality it does not. It is true that, when a term is distributed in
a proposition, we have information about more individuals in the
extension of the term than we have when the term is undistributed ?
There can be no dou'bt that we have, when the subject is distributed.
Every man is mortal gives us information about more men than does
Some men are mortal. In Logic, the application of the doctrine of
the distribution of the predicate is based on the supposition that the
same is true of the predicate. And the fact that the proposition,
No S is P, gives us the universal converse, No P is S, imparts a
degree of plausibility to this view. But the proposition stands
on entirely different ground. Take the two propositions, Some
mammals are bipeds, Some mammals are not 'bipeds. There is more
information concerning mammals conveyed by these propositions
taken together than there is by the first proposition alone. But the
first proposition conveys as much information about bipeds as the
two combined. The second proposition gives no information what-
326 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ever concerning bipeds. And yet the doctrine of the distribution
of the predicate supposes that the second proposition contains more
information than the first concerning bipeds. Because we know that
Some mammals are bipeds, we can say something about certain indi-
vidual bipeds. But from the mere knowledge that Some mammals
are not bipeds can we say something about every individual biped?
Can we say something about each /biped which we could not say
without knowing that Some mammals are not bipeds f If we can
not say something about every individual biped, how can we have
information about more bipeds in the second proposition than we
have in the first? If Some bipeds are not mammals were set down
as the converse of Some mammals are not bipeds, the converse would
be invalid, not because it contained more information than the con-
vertend concerning mammals, but because it contained more infor-
mation concerning bipeds.
The truth of Some S is not P is consistent with the truth of
either of the following propositions : All P is S and Some P is not 8.
This is evident from the following pairs of propositions: Some ani-
mals are not horses All horses are animals; Some Americans are
not physicians Some physicians are not Americans. If we write
Some P is not S as the converse of Some 8 is not P, we exclude All
P is S. This we are not justified in doing ; for it may be that All P
is S is true. It is not because S is "distributed" in Some P is not S
that this proposition is invalid, but because it purports to convey in-
formation concerning P which the original proposition does not
warrant. All S is P conveys information about every #; but Some
S is not P does not convey any information whatever, whether di-
rectly or by implication, about P. And yet the assumption under-
lying the doctrine of the distribution of the predicate is that the
second proposition gives us as much information about P as the
first one does about 8. This assumption is unwarranted; and it is
this assumption which is at the root of the difficulty that has arisen
in connection with the partial inverse of All S is P.
JOHN J. TOOHEY.
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY.
A SOURCE OF THE PLOTINIAN MYSTICISM
OUR purpose in this paper is to point out the systematic, or, as
one might say figuratively, the deductive reasons which led
to Plotinus's mysticism. Dean Inge in his Gifford Lectures has al-
ready indicated the empirical reasons. He seems to feel that the
experiencing of a mystic vision is enough warrant for a mystical
interpretation of the universe. Since Porphyry's life of Plotinus
gives us ample testimony of his master's weakness for trances and
his gift of second sight and of the more serious things which happen
to certain souls, Dean Inge has a point of view which is perhaps
better directed than our own. For it sees in mysticism that
which is precious to every thinker of to-day, empirical data. As
mystics have never been at a loss to point the finger of scorn at the
half-way empiricism of tough-minded thinkers, Dean Inge's ac-
count will be more than welcome both to disciples of Plotinus, as
he admits himself to be 1 and urges all students to be, and to mystics
of other schools.
Yet there are reasons to believe that the empirical method was
not the method which called most winningly to the post- Aristotelians.
The reflective imagination of even the late Greek was directed by
certain assumptions which were by no means empirically discovered.
Some of them seem to be a sort of formulation in language of pre-
vailing Greek taste and manners. That which acts, for instance, is
always superior (Ti/xtwrepov) to that which is acted upon. That which
is autonomous, or self-dependent, is perfect ; that which depends on
something else is imperfect. That which is ' ' natural, " or in accord-
ance with "nature" is good. Nothing exists without its own "ex-
cellence." which is the satisfactory fulfilment of its function upon
this earth. 2 One sees these and many other assumptions, now
overtly acknowledged, now shown only through their implications,
in the greater part of Greek reflective thought. The interesting
feature of this is that Greek life actually seems to have gone on as if
motivated by them as by maxims.
Among the lesser of these axioms is one which Theophrastus in
his de Sen-su (No. 1) says divided Greek psychologists into two
camps. It is the thesis that only like can know like. There was the
likeness-school, to which Theophrastus assigned Parmenides, Em-
pedocles, and Plato, and the contrast-school, to which he assigned
Anaxagoras, who in spite of experience asserted that there was no
perception without pain (de Sensu, No. 29), and Heracleitus. But
as Beare points out in his Greek Theories of Elementary Cognition
(p. 237), though there was a difference of opinion about sensation,
they all agreed that in cognition proper there was an identity of
character between the knower and the known.
Plotinus, as one might infer from Plato's inclusion in the like-
ness-school, also believed that only similar things could know one
another. He asks, for instance (Enn., L, viii, 1), by what organ
we can know evil, for none of our organs are evil in themselves.
1 See his Gifford Lectures, Vol. II., p. 219.
2 This assumption at least had important implications. V. Nidi. Ethics, I.,
vi, where the function of Man as Man is discussed.
328 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
He ends his chapter on beauty with the remark that a man should
attempt to make his eye similar to the object he is trying to see;
the eye, he says, harking back to Plato (Rep., 507), would never
have been able to see the sun if it had not taken on sun-like qualities ;
similarly the soul would be unable to see the beautiful if it did not
first become beautiful itself. "Become then," he says (Enn., I.,
vi, 9), "godlike and beautiful if you wish to look upon God and the
beautiful."
It is in this assumption that we find, for our present purposes, a
source of his mysticism.
What now is knowledge like in the philosophy of Plotinus? It
is not, as it was in Democritus and the Stoics, receptive ; it is active.
There is no "given" in Plotinus; there is only a "made." The
subject of knowledge is active even in sensation. "In vision," he
says (Enn., III., vi, 2), "it is sight which acts and the eye which is
acted upon." (Sight, it should be said, he thought could not be
acted upon since it is incorporeal, and the incorporeal is impassive.)
Sensations, he says as he opens this portion of the Enneads,
are not passions but acts (evepyeuu). Later, in a chapter which
Porphyry testifies was written immediately after this (Enn., IV.,
iii, 26) he says, "Just as a workman is the soul in sensation, and as
his tool, the body. ' ' Hence when he came to write on Sensation and
Memory, he was prepared to begin by the assertion that sensations
are not blows or imprints (rwot) received by the soul, nor yet the
impressions of a seal (Enn., IV., i, 1).
Rejecting a conclusion which later philosophers accepted with
relish, Plotinus argued that if we perceived only the imprints of
objects upon our souls, we should be seeing not the objects them-
selves but their shadows. He takes as a typical ca<?e the experience
of seeing, for sight was to him as to Aristotle (de Anim., 429a) the
chief of our senses. There must be in vision both the seen and the
seeing, the object and the cognitive or here sensory act; so that
obviously sensations can not be imprints. Again, were objects inside
our souls, as they would be if they were imprints, we should never
have to figure out where visible things are and how large they are.
"Thus I believe," he concludes (Enn., IV., vi, 2), "that the visible
and the audible are distinguished by the soul, not as if they were
both impressions, not that at all, nor yet images, but acts directed
towards their natural objects."
This is a sort of doctrine of specific energy turned inside out.
Whereas Mueller believed that the stimulation of certain nerves
was always provocative of the same type of sensation, no matter
what the stimulus, Plotinus believed that certain faculties, like that
of seeing, had certain appropriate objects which alone they could
A SOURCE OF THE PLOTINIAN MYSTICISM 329
deal with. A human being confronted by a conglomeration of sen-
sory material, actively selects the visual by his power to see, the
audible by his power to hear.
Both sensation (aio-^cns) and knowledge (KptW) are active.
Plotinus is so firmly convinced of this that he invokes one to ex-
plain the other, as when he explains the apparent diminution of
far away objects by the eye 's inability to reach out beyond a certain
distance (Enn., II., viii, 1).
Just what act is involved in perceptual knowledge, Plotinus
does not tell us specifically. He does say, however, that it is the
operation of jpurely psychic functions, as distinct from such func-
tions as the emotions, which are dependent on the body, and are
hence impurely psychic. To know in the best way then, which is
equivalent to knowing truly, would have the effect of exercising the
purely psychic functions of man.
The ideal of knowledge must lie in its approximation to ex-
cellence, in its ability to achieve its aim. Now the aim of all things,
in the Plotinian world, is first to produce (Enn., V., iv, 1), and
then to return to the world of ideas. But the return to the world
of ideas is in plain language an attempt to be oneself, for the idea
of an object, in Plotinus if not in Plato, is both the model after which
the object was made and the most perfect specimen of the object
and the second probably followed from the first. Even to-day the
impulse to return to the pattern after which our institutions have
been fashioned is not unknown ; almost all nationalistic propaganda
relies upon some such assumption as the identity between the per-
fect specimen and the original specimen. To Plotinus the beautiful
object was the ideal object, or the object of this earth finally con-
joined with the archetype in Heaven. To a Christian Plotinian who
believed that man was made in the image of God, true knowledge
would be that knowledge which most adequately fitted the divine
word, which was not far from what the Christian philosophers did
say. It would take us too far afield to discuss the point here, but
a little exercise of one's imagination will lead one to see how wide-
spread this conviction was and how in fact it lasted at least as late
as Spinoza, whose intellectual affiliations with Plotinus are by no
means widely enough acknowedged. 3 In scholastic language the
Plotinian return to the world of ideas might be expressed as the
coincidence of an object with its essence. But that coincidence is
beauty, and furthermore it is goodness.
It is those values which man strives to understand when he is
* See the whole matter of sub specie aeternitatis, the Spinozistic conception
of freedom, of time, and the refusal to relinquish the insolubility of the human
being homo cogitat.
330 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
in search of wisdom. That is why when one has analyzed the theory
of knowledge of Plotinus, one sees clearly that knowledge is not the
result of study, research, experimentation, observation, but of a pure
life devoted to moral values. Knowledge must again be active and
finally it must make the subject like the object for only like can
know like.
Is it difficult to understand why he was a mystic? Ordinary
knowledge seemed to him to be a separation of subject and object.
Discursive reason, the affair of terms and propositions, seemed to
make a schism in the cognitive act. What was required was a sort
of fusion, for only a fusion of some sort would produce sufficient
similarity between subject and object to make the cognitive relation
true. He had, as we have said, rejected the Stoic theory of im-
prints, so that an image of the One in a separated soul of man
would not do the work. It must be a complete similarity, if any,
and it must be active. Since all true knowledge about any object
reveals the object as perfect, knowledge of God as we have grown
used to speak of the metaphysical object must reveal God. But to
do this thoroughly the subject must in some way turn into God.
Plotinus found the fusion he wanted in the ecstatic vision, and
inverting the Socratic formula of finding virtue in knowledge, he
found knowledge in virtue. Hence training for the ecstatic vision was
bound to be moral and not scientific. There is no need to trace here
the steps along the Mystic Way which everyone knows, beginning sig-
nificantly enough with a catharsis and ending with a banquet at
which the soul becomes both the vision and the seer, at which it
thinks in a manner which does not carry it beyond itself (Enn., VI.,
vii, 34-5-6). It apprehends its object intuitively (vo*po>s tyxtyatr&u).
It has to be an intuitive apprehension, if Plotinus's likeness-
hypothesis is to be retained. The One has no qualities by which it
can be described; it simply is (Enn., VI.,vii, 37). Hence the dis-
cursive reason (and how beautifully this is reproduced in Bergson)
can not adequately deal with it, for the discursive reason is analyti-
cal (Enn., V., iii, 17). If the One has no distinguishable qualities,
it may be said to have all qualities blended together; blended, how-
ever, not resting side by side unassimilated. Because they are thus
blended, the One can not be said even to think (Enn., VI., vii, 39),
for thinking would involve their separation.
The soul to know the One must also lose its limiting attributes
and its distinctiveness, for how on Plotinus's hypothesis could
the limited know the limitless? We must then set out to make
ourselves expansive, to radiate as it were until we touch the edges
of infinity.
A SOURCE OF THE PLOTINIAN MYSTICISM 331
As a matter of fact this would be a very difficult feat for us to
perform in the Plotinian universe. For Plotinus has assured us
already that there is an individual ideal to which each of us may
struggle; not one great enveloping ideal for mankind as a whole,
but separate ones for Plato and Socrates and Alcibiades (Enn.,
V., vii), for I suppose that that is the import of his chapter on the
ideas of individuals. 4 But the idea of an individual person must be
the limit of his perfection ; the copy can not exceed its pattern. Yet
in the ecstatic vision we find oddly enough a mode of transcending
that barrier and of working our way into the total being of the One.
The first step in the process is obviously getting rid of the body.
A body is the last thing on earth which characterizes the Plotinian
One, for the corporeal is merely the possibility of everything else,
whereas in the One everything is realized. Yet the simple expedient
of disembodying the soul by suicide will not do, for that is violence
(Enn., I., ix). The violence which is necessary for suicide would
submit the soul to the degradation of passion, and that plainly
would serve little for purifying it. 5 The natural way to get rid of
the body is by exercising the virtues. For the exercise of the virtues
is action, not passion, a distinction which carried in Plotinus 's mind
a very heavy normative burden.
One should note that this catharsis is not the negation of the
Oriental mystic. As Dean Inge has pointed out, the via negativa
of Plotinus is somewhat different from what he calls "a progressive
impoverishment of experience until nothing is left" (op. cit., II.,
p. 146). It is not oblivion in the sense that Nirvana is oblivion, for
the soul when it is like the One must continue its activity. To be
sure it involves a denial, but a denial of some things for the sake of
affirming others. It is no cry to the heartsick to throw off desire;
it is a cry rather to assert oneself, to conquer that which degrades.
Desire which elevates, such as love, is an integral part of the most
excellent knowledge.
The soul, after purifying itself and uncovering its likeness to
the One, does not know the One simply by existing. There is no
cognitive relation magically effected whenever two similar things
exist side by side. The soul must advance to a contemplation of its
object.
But what act can the soul do to the One to bring about knowl-
edge of it? Nothing. For anything done to the One from without
4 Later Neoplatonists seem to have rejected this doctrine. Bouillet in his
translation of the Enneads gives a note on Enn., V., vii, which cites Alcinous to
this effect.
8 Cf. Porphyry: Sententice, IX., Finnin-Didot, Paris, 1896, '0 yovv 9dva.ro*
TT)S isvxfjs fab TOV ffwfJMrot ' Kal, he adds shrewdly, ot> vdvrw ?repos crfpy
332 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
would be a shocking limitation of that which by definition is un.
limited. In the first place the One is not susceptible to a passion;
it is impassive, as the pure soul is. In the second place there is
nothing outside it. The One is all-inclusive; it absorbs even time
into eternity. So it includes individual souls. Yet, since souh
advance towards things which are like themselves and seek union
with them (Enn., I., vi, 2) a principle also of Greek physics, I
believe so now, having become similar to the One and in its pres-
ence, they throw themselves into it, forgetting whether they are men
or animals, or essences, or the whole (Enn., VI., vii, 34).
This is the banquet at which the soul achieves adequate knowl-
edge of the One. It should not be considered a rejection of ordinary
knowledge, but a development of it. The object is different. Since
the object can not change to suit the limitations of the subject, the
subject must change to fit the needs of the object. In knowing the
One, the problem is to make the soul infinite in scope, perfect, in-
definable. And since there can not be two beings so characterized,
the result was bound to be a coalition. But the reason for the
coalition can be found, not merely in Plotinus's quaint desire to be
mystical, but in the fundamental principles of his theory of cog-
nition.
One word in conclusion. Knowledge of this sort is bound to be
incommunicable, as all self-conscious mystics have recognized. It
is only knowledge which is discursive which is communicable. Hence
the only way to pass along the knowledge one apprehends in ecstasy
is arousing the sentiments which characterize the ecstasy. That
is why Plotinus could have urged that philosophers contemplate the
beautiful and turn their thoughts from formal logic which, he says
(Enn., I., iii, 5), is to dialectics what writing is to thought.
GEORGE BOAS.
UNIVERSITY or CALIFORNIA.
Psychologic du Raisonnement. EUGENIC RIGNANO. Paris: Alcan.
1920. Pp. xi + 544.
M. Rignano, the editor of the journal Scientia, and probably
best known in this country as a biologist, attempts in this study a
task which for the most part psychologists have been very chary of
undertaking; and the wealth of suggestion and illumination that
his broad scientific background is able to bring to it makes the
American somewhat envious of the ease with which the French and
the Italians can disregard the boundaries of the individual fach in
the interests of a more comprehensive truth. M. Rignano, more-
BOOK REVIEWS 333
over, betrays a most uncommon familiarity with American psycho-
logical investigation, citing it almost as freely as the work of the
older civilizations. One wishes that he were acquainted with the
more recent developments of behaviorism, and especially, since his
conclusions point to a somewhat similar viewpoint, that he had
heard of Professor Dewey's How We Think. But as it is the ap-
parent independence with which the Italian savant has reached his
position serves to corroborate the findings of Professor Dewey,
emphasizing as well as throwing much new light upon the purposive
nature of the thinking process.
Starting from a positivistic and experimental point of view, and
acknowledging a debt of gratitude to Mill's logic, M. Rignano re-
gards reasoning as a function that has naturally developed in the
history of the race as an instrument towards the better adaptation
of the organism to its environment. Consciousness itself arises in
the conflict between the competing "affective tendencies" with
which the organism is furnished and which determine the ends of
its activity while leaving the way open for an indefinite number of
possible solutions. The core of the thinking process consists in the
possibility of exploring in imagination the various suggested ways
of attaining the desired goal of performing imaginatively experi-
ments whose successful conclusion will enable the man to solve the
difficulty without recourse to the method of actual trial and error.
Logical thought is distinguished from mere random thinking by
being at all times subject to the control and guidance of a definite
end or purpose, and is valid only in so far as the imaginative ex-
perimentation in which it consists is capable of actual verification.
With this conception of the nature and function of the thinking
process as a basis, M. Rignano turns to a consideration of its evolu-
tion. Reason has become increasingly abstract through the group-
ing together of objects which for our purposes are "equivalent" in
that they possess certain attributes in common. Classification and
abstraction are a teleological process which brings to bear knowledge
already learned and thus paves the way for the acquisition of
further facts. Simultaneously reason has advanced from a simple
process of intuition or the immediate jumping at conclusions to the
detailed and elaborated processes of scientific deduction, which are
but an intricate form of oscillation between the formation of new
generalizations and the imaginative experimental elaboration to
which they are subjected in the interests of the desired end.
The most interesting portion of the book to those already
familiar with this mode of approach is the chapters devoted to the
higher forms of reasoning, of which M. Rignano distinguishes two
sorts, that represented by mathematical science, whose end is the
334 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
attainment of truth, and that represented by legal and syllogistic
dialectic and by metaphysics, whose aim is purely apologetic and
menial. It can hardly be said that he succeeds fully in extending
his experimentalism to mathematics; but he marks a real advance
upon the classic pages of Mill, and his criticism of modern mathe-
matical logic should be read by all who regard logistic as something
more than a fascinating game. His positivist heritage leads him
into a rather undue disparagement of all forms of reasoning which
aim at anything more "interested" than pure scientific truth; and
though he recognizes that the desire for knowledge is as much an
"affective tendency" as any other, he somewhat weakens the force
of his earlier biological argument by digging too deep a gulf between
scientific and "interested" thinking. After all, there is as much
conceit in thinking you can get the universe into your mind as in
reading your mind into the universe.
M. Rignano has by no means written a definitive analysis of the
reasoning process, but he has written one to which all who are
interested in the workings of the human mind can turn with profit.
He stands in the tradition of both Mill and James, and in his bio-
logical studies he has found a starting point for a very fruitful
and refreshingly naturalistic treatment of a field whose possibilities
are so limitless as to frighten off most intruders. That he tells the
whole story of thought the realists may indeed question ; but that he
has given us one of the best honest and straightforward accounts of
the actual workings of the mind we yet possess no one can doubt.
J. H. RANDALL, JK.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. January,
1921. Vol. XII, No. 1. Announcement of the Reorganization of
the Journal of Educational Psychology (pp. 1-2). -The journal
will be devoted primarily to the scientific study of problems of
learning and teaching. The purpose is to make it a clearing house
for the discussion of scientific investigation and experimentation.
Series of articles will be organized, discussion departments created,
pertinent educational publications in the field will be promptly
reviewed. The Interpretation and Application of the Intelligence
Quotient (pp. 3-13) : FRANK N. FREEMAN. -The purpose is to dis-
cuss the relationship between the I.Q. as a measure of mental
capacity of the individual and the facts of mental development.
Mental age is an absolute measure, but mental age difference is a
relative term. It expresses the individual 's superiority or inferior-
335
ity in terms of a year's mental growth as a unit. When applied to
the Binet scale, this measure would result in apparent greater re-
tardation or acceleration in the case of younger ones. The quest i
arises, "What is the nature of intellectual ability which is implied
by the use of the I.Q.?" The common assumption is that the rate
of intellectual growth is not uniform, but regularly decreases with
advancing age. The assumption made by some investigators that
intellectual growth follows a curve which approaches the logarith-
mic curve is not borne out by the results of the point scale examina-
tions. The author concludes that the application of the I.Q. to
other than the Binet scale must be made with great caution and
only after determining that it is a suitable method of representing
the scores in other tests. The Constitution of Arithmetical Abili-
ties (pp. 14-24) : EDWARD L. THORNDIKE. - The importance of habit
formation or connection-making has been grossly underestimated by
the majority of teachers and writers of text-books. Illustrations
are given as samples of the procedures recommended by a con-
sideration of all the bonds that one might form and of the contri-
bution that each would make toward the abilities that the study of
arithmetic should develop and improve. A Critical Study of the
Concept of Silent Reading Ability (pp. 25-31) : L. W. PRESSEY and
S. L. PRESSEY. - Is either the form or the content of the matter read
an important conditioning factor in silent reading? The writers'
conclusions are tentative. It is their guess that scales of the type
of the Kansas Test and Munroe Test are really by far the best
examples so far of tests of attention which the devisors have
stumbled upon without knowing it. They are good tests but they
have the wrong label. For investigation of real ability in assimi-
lative reading the writers would suggest: (a) a preliminary instru-
ment for detecting oral reading habits; and (&) a test of vocabu-
lary, and these two might be supplemented by (c) any one of the
standard reading tests to investigate habits of attention. A Com-
bined Mental-Educational Survey (pp. 32-43) : RUDOLF PINTXER
and HELEN MARSHALL. - The next step in psychological and educa-
tional measurement is the combination of mental and educational
tests. Two group tests, an educational and a mental, have been
prepared, to measure school work and native ability respectively.
These have been standardized and a simple method for estimating
the difference between them given. This difference is the most im-
portant value for school diagnosis. Department for Discussion and
Research Problems: LAURA ZIRBES. Notes on Articles in Educa-
tional Psychology. New Publications.
Briffault, Robert. Psyche's Lamp: A Revaluation of Psychologi-
cal Principles as Foundation of all Thought. London: George
336 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Allen & Unwin, Ltd. New York: The Macmillan Co. Pp.
240.
Johnston, Joseph S. Christ Victorious Over All. Published by
author, 640 East 43rd St., Chicago. 1921. Pp. 233. $2.
Landes, Margaret W. The Philosophical Writings of Richard Bur-
thogge. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Co. 1921. Pp. xxvi
+ 245. $2.
McTaggart, John McTaggart Ellis. The Nature of Existence. Vol.
I. Cambridge University Press. 1921. Pp. xx -f 309.
NOTES AND NEWS
LOGIC AND ETYMOLOGY
Not so many years ago the people of a certain Pennsylvania
village were accustomed to refer to some of their sidewalks as
"stone boardwalks." While this etymologically absurd phrase has
not become "good English," usage seems to permit this similarly in-
coherent expression, "a dilapidated wooden house." Etymology
is not always a sufficient indication of meaning in present usage.
We do not restrict the science of morals or ethics to the study of cus-
toms; neither do we employ the word esthetics as the title of a chap-
ter on sense-perception.
These commonplace reflections are suggested by Professor La-
guna's discussion of the complex dilemma, 1 in vhich this type of ar-
gument is pronounced fallacious on the ground that the conclusion
asserts a "disjunction," while all that we are justified in inferring
from the premises is a logical sum. In this criticism, as also in the
claim that the minor premise of the simple dilemma "says more
than is necessary," Professor De Laguna apparently assumes that
the disjunctive proposition expresses a disjunction; but, as Whately,
Mansel, Mill, Keynes, et al., have been careful to point out, the dis-
junctive proposition (etymology to the contrary notwithstanding)
does not disjoin but simply enumerates alternatives. On this ac-
count Keynes indeed suggests that the so-called disjunctive propo.
.sit ion might better be denominated an alternative proposition, ex-
cept in the special case in which the alternatives are mutually ex-
clusive. And if the logical vocabulary could be thus reformed,
there would be one less occasion for throwing stones at the despised
logicians.
RAY H. DOTTEREB.
PENNSYLVANIA STATE COLLEGE.
i This JOURNAL, Vol. XVIII., No. 9.
VOL. XVIII, No. 13. JUNE 23, 1921
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
MIND DISCERNED
fc fc \ IT E have said that those objects which can not be incorporated
VV into the one space which the understanding envisages are
relegated to another sphere called imagination. We reach here a
most important corollary. As material objects, making a single
system which fills space and evolves in time, are conceived by ab-
straction from the flux of sensuous experience, so, pari passu, the
rest of experience, with all its other outgrowths and concretions,
falls out with the physical world and forms the sphere of mind, the
sphere of memoiy, fancy, and the passions. We have in this dis-
crimination the genesis of mind, not of course in the transcendental
sense in which the word mind is extended to mean the sum total and
mere fact of existence for mind, so taken, can have no origin and
indeed no specific meaning but the genesis of mind as a deter-
minate form of being, a distinguishable part of the universe known
to experience and discourse, the mind that unravels itself in medi-
tation, inhabits animal bodies, and is studied in psychology." 1
This passage from Santayana's Reason in Common Sense is
quoted for homiletical rather than critical purposes. I confess,
however, that I have found no little difficulty in attempting to con-
strue it intelligibly and systematically. There is apt to remain
with me a residuum which is ambiguous and obscure. For, if the
genesis of mind is the consequence of a discrimination which, in its
turn, is made by processes of conceiving and abstracting, there seems
obviously to be presupposed as already generated or existing a mind
which discriminates in that manner. And if such a mind is to be
presupposed, it is not easy to make out whether it is mind in the
transcendental sense without origin or specific meaning, or whether
it is the mind known to experience and studied in psychology. Botli
seem to be logically excluded. For a mind which discriminates
by conceiving arid abstracting can hardly mean the sum total and
mere fact of existence, and a mind which, as a consequence of such
discrimination, becomes a determinate form of being, can hardly be
the mind which, by discriminating, leads to that consequence. Yet
mind as mere fact of existence and mind as a determinate form of
i The Life of Reason, by George Sautayana, Vol. I, pp. 124-125.
337
338 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
being seem to exhaust the whole domain of mind as denned in the
passage and its context .
These considerations I naturally believe are as obvious to San-
tayana as they are to me, and that belief makes me suspect that the
passage was not written to provoke an excursion into dialectic. I
suspect that his presentation of a flux of experience coming some-
how to be discriminated into material objects making a single sys-
tem which fills space and evolves in time and a sphere of memory,
fancy and the passions, is an attempt, not to raise metaphysical prob-
lems, but to tell in a fairly accurate way after all, how, in an indi-
vidual's life, his personality and the world he lives in come to be
sharply set over against each other. Such, at any rate, was my un-
derstanding on first reading the passage. Later readings brought
out and emphasized the difficulties ,to which I have given expres-
sion. They have led me to do something more, to consider afresh
the question of mind in the transcendental sense and the mind
which is studied in psychology. And it is because they have done
this, that I now approach the question with this introduction.
It is to be emphasized that what now follows is neither criticism
nor exposition of the quoted passage, although its words may fre-
quently recur. I can not easily escape their haunting suggestive-
ness and have no desire to. The mind which inhabits animal bodies
and mind in that sense in which the word is extended to mean the
sum total and mere fact of existence, set forth a contrast which is not
easily escapable when one remembers the writings of philosophers.
Moreover, reflection quickly leads to the recognition that no matter
how absolute the varied determinations of being may be taken to be,
determinate forms of being are discovered in the course of one's
personal history. The universe which we investigate is, in a very
genuine sense, a universe of discourse certainly, a universe dis-
coursed about a sort of total object of thought, the totality of
which seems to be in no wise impaired by any of the distinctions dis-
covered or set up within it. The mind which is studied in psy-
chology as a determinate form of being exists in this univer
inquiry alongside other determinate forms of being from which it is
distinguished. Both it and they are in some sense object
thought and their being so does not in any way seem to exclude
either them or the distinction between them from the total unn
of inquiry. In other words, the world of material objects and the
mind which inhabits animal bodies lie. as it were, discriminated in
;i single universe of discourse and may be subjects of thoughtful
inquiry even if such inquiry may seem never to occur except with
the presence of some animal body with a mind inhabiting it.
MIND DISCERNED 339
Shall we say then that the total universe of discourse to which all
distinctions and discriminations are relevant is mind in the tran-
scendental sense, the sum total and mere fact of existence ? An af-
firmative answer could identify itself with several recognized sys-
tems of philosophy. But it is not any such identification which is
here sought, but rather what understanding, if any, is to be given
to such an affirmation.
Let us consider the total universe of discourse, that realm in
which all determinate forms of being lie, so to speak, side by side
in their manifold relations. We may give to this universe other
names, such as the world of phenomena or the sum total of expe-
rience. Naming it is, however, apt to disclose some prejudice about
it or some theoretical construction of it, of which it itself may be
innocent. If it is named a. world of phenomena, the term " phe-
nomena " may imply no more than that it appears as just what it
appears to be ; but the term may also imply that its items are
phenomena or appearances of something else and thus involve a
relation not possibly given within the universe we are considering.
For clearly the total realm of being does not contain within itself
a relation to something not contained within it, and a relation to
something wholly exterior to it would not be a relation open to in-
vestigation. Propositions involving such a. relation would be
meaningless. Again, if the universe we are considering is named
the sum total of experience, the term " experience " may mean
only that we are considering it, talking about it, regarding it in
any way we can regard it, or making trial of its many factors ; but
the term may also mean that the universe of discourse is the result
of some anterior process by which it is generated and comes to be
the kind of universe it is. In this latter sense ' ' experience ' ' is not
an item within its boundaries, and can not be explored. The expres-
sion 4< the total universe of discourse " may involve similar diffi-
culties. It has, however, the advantage of suggesting primarily
logical considerations. It brings at once to the front the fact that
what we are concerned with are those realms of being which are
objects of study and inquiry, the universe of the chemist and the
physicist as well as the universe of the moralist and the psycholo-
gist. It emphasizes subject-matter as over against speculation and
hypotheses. It calls before us the natural attitude of the man
who finds a purse and looks to see what is in it. So men find rocks
and trees, seas and stars, memories and fancies, and look to see
what these things are and what can be said about them. All in-
quiry starts in this way and not with " phenomena " or " ex-
perience " or 4< sense-data." These may be arrived at later as in-
340 '////: Jorit\Ai. or
terpretations or explanations of what it was with which inquiry
started, but they are not original with its inception. It is, therefore,
in the hope of keeping close to the initial act of inquiry into defi-
nite, concrete subject-matter that 1 speak of the total universe of
discourse, using the term " total " to mean no more than the at-
tempt to leave out no instance whatever of such inquiry.
This universe in its totality meaning by totality what II
just defined might conceivably be the object of a single individ-
ual's consideration. We have a sense of that whenever we enter a
library which contains measurably all that men have ever said or
discovered about this universe. With time and patience enough one
might read every book and learn what purses had been found and
what treasures within them. But it is not the magnitude of the
information possibly to be derived in this way that is in point here,
but rather the fact that such a reader, were he asked to note it,
would observe an underlying continuity in his readings. He would
observe for instance that the physicist and the psych<>l<><ri>t were
both studying sounds even if the former said they were wave*
of air and the latter, sensations ; that the moralist and the economist
were both investigating goods even if the former called them ob-
jects of desire and the latter commodities of exchange. In sum,
he would observe that in all his reading he was confronted with a
world to be interpreted and with interpretations of that world.
The latter might vary from Genesis to Einstein, but the former
would seem to be invariable. Such a reader might leave the li-
brary with what I conceive to be a very simple, but also a very
fundamental piece of metaphysical wisdom, namely that in spite
of the varieties of interpretation, there is, logically speaking, but
one subject-matter to be interpreted. The physicist and the psy-
chologist have the same subject-matter although they interpret it
differently, likewise the moralist and the economist, likewise every-
body. That is, all inquiry is ultimately relevant to the same subject-
matter, the same universe of discourse. It is the continuit
this subject-matter, underlying all interpretations of it, which
makes it possible for the reader to detect what he is reading about.
To strip this universe of every shred of interpretation is not
;i x v. For, in the first place, some interpretation has apparently
laid hold of it before one is led to the attempt so to strip it. And,
m the second place, any stripping is inevitably fraught with the
danger of being itself an interpretation of some sort. On this
double difficulty one might dwell at length, for the search for what
is called " the immediate " has been long, laborious, and uncon-
vincing. Yet, as I take it, the search is ill-advised. We are not
MIND DISCERNED 341
called upon in our investigations to divorce subject-matter and in-
terpretation in any way which would force upon us two wholly dis-
connected universes. That puzzling obligation does not as a matter
of fact confront us. We might with greater truth assert that any
attempted divorce would be meaningless, since interpetation in-
volves itself the identification of the subject-matter to be inter-
preted. This assertion seems to be valid when followed out in de-
tail. For what are sounds ? The physicist and the psychologist
both answer the question and it is quite clear that they are both
telling us what sounds are. There is no difference of subject-mat-
ter between them. There is something to which their replies, how-
ever different, are relevant and that something is identified by them
and their hearers. If some lover of the pure immediate should
interpose with the claim that to call that something " sound " is
already to interpret it, we should have no difficulty in recognizing
that he was talking about the same item in the universe of discourse
about which the others were also talking. In short, subject-matter
needs no divorce, either absolute or relative, from interpretation in
order to be identified. If it did, it is quite clear that the visitor to
the library could not understand a single book he read, or discover
any differences of interpretation or opinion among the authors.
Consequently it would appear that we can tell what subject-
matter is either by identifying it or interpreting it. Asked what
sounds are, we either produce them or refer to physics and psychol-
ogy. This fact recalls many familiar contrasts of philosophy, such
as knowledge of acquaintance and knowledge about, fact and mean-
ing, existence and explanation, object and idea. That such con-
trasts should so naturally and constantly recur is good evidence thart
they are metaphysically sound. They indicate that the universe of
discourse, that is, again, the universe within which all inquiry oc-
curs and proceeds, is characterized fundamentally by the contrast
of subject-matter and interpretation, or, we may say, of object and
idea. 2 Although we may be enticed by various considerations to
attempt to divorce the terms of this contrast so that they may con-
stitute initially two distinct realms of being which are subsequently
united by some secret agency, we never really succeed. Man has
contrived their union only through hypotheses which are ultimately
either unintelligible or petiones principii. We might better side
with those who say, "What God hath joined together, let no man put
asunder." For no inquiry into the universe of discourse has ever
succeeded in separating it into a universe of objects apart from
2 This I take to be Spinoza's doctrine of the attributes of extension and
thought, and the basis of his axiom, " A true idea agrees with its object."
342 THE J1H'1!.\M. O/-' /'III UMU'l/Y
ideas and a universe of these idea absolutely apart from objects.
In the words of Spinoza : Ordo et connectio idearum idem est ac
ordo et connectio rent in.
Since the universe of discourse is a universe of this kind, we
might give to it with some appropriateness the name of mind. Such
a najne would be used in the transcendental sense, for it would be
used to indicate possibilities, the possibility of knowledge, of in-
quiry, of discursive .thinking. It could not mean that a mind was
taking thought of a world. In this latter sense the name could
have no specific meaning. Neither could such a mind be said to
have an origin. One might reluctantly admit that the universe of
discourse itself might have an origin, that it was not self-sustained
and self-sufficient, but mind in the transcendental sense could
have no origin within it. since mind in that sense is but a name
given to the universe's salient character. And that name would
indicate the sum total and mere fact of existence as constituting the
universe wherein inquiry is active and productive.
Clearly this mind is also not a determinate form of being, a dis-
tinguishable part of the universe known to experience and discourse.
It does not inhabit animal bodies and it is not studied in psychology.
Nor does it explain the universe it constitutes, for it is not a sub-
stance which supports that universe, nor a cause of which that uni-
verse is an effect. It is a name for the fact that object apd idea
are already married whenever their union is open to consideration.
It is a protest against the divorce courts of epistemology. It may
be more, indicating a type of structure which the metaphysician
must recognize in any dealing with being in its ultimate character.'
What then is the mind studied in psychology ? Clearly it is
not mind in the sense we have been considering. No argument is
needed, I imagine, to support this statement, for the mind studied
in psychology is a mind which remembers, imagines, perceives, rea-
sons, is disturbed by passions, moved by desires, and, above all else,
inhabits animal bodies. It is a biographical and not a transcen-
dental fact. It is a determinate form of being. It has a gent -sis
and an origin. It is studied in psychology and to that study it
must largely be left here. Since, however, the passage from Santa-
yana which led us to it is a summary of its genesis, we may consider
that topic in the light cf our previous discussion. I am fairly con-
tent to let Santayana's account of its genesis stand, for, as already
indicated, that account calls us to note how the sphere of memory,
fancy and the passions falls out with the physical world, and forms
I have suggested this in nn article on " Structure." See this JOURNAL.
Vol. XIV, No. 25, pp. 680-88.
MIND DISCERNED 343
a sphere by itself although still in touch with what it has left.
Every individual can, I imagine, discover some such genesis in his
own life if he studiously looks for it. And assuredly the things
which for an individual do not make up the physical world are the
things which are studied in psychology. Santayana's account may,
therefore, stand. What is said in the following is neither exposi-
tion nor criticism, but only considerations which are in line with
the previous discussion and which are prompted by the statement
that there is a genesis of mind in the psychological sense. But
strictly it is not with its genesis specifically that I shall be concerned,
but with something relevant to its genesis, namely the possibility
of it, as a determinate form of being, interpreting the universe in
which it finds itself.
The mind studied in psychology inhabits animal bodies.
Whether it inhabits all such bodies is uncertain, but the question
whether it does is one of the best proofs of its habitat and a clear
indication that its definition is ultimately biological. It is distin-
guished in the body not in the way the head, brain, or any a.natomi
cal part of the body is distinguished, but in the way the life of the
body is distinguished. It is not a part of the body in the sense that
the fingernails are a part of it. If we call it a part at all, we tend
to follow Aristotle aqid say that body and mind are parts of the liv-
ing individual, and are more like an axe and cutting than they are
like an axe-head and an axe-handle. Disembodied spirits seem un-
able to function without a medium, and souls, if they survive one
body, seem forced to seek another. So that even if we sa|y that the
mind is not a part of the body in the anatomical sense, and even if
we fancy that the mind can be without a body, it must have a hab-
itat to be effective, to be communicated with, and to be studied.
Now the animal bodies which mind as a determinate form of be-
ing inhabits are items in the universe of discourse. They themselves
belong to the total domain of things which can be investigated and
are objects of inquiry like all other objects in the same domain.
Asking what they are, we say, among other things that might be
said, that they axe the habitations of mind, and that being such
they think and reason. They interpret the world in which they
live. They say, among other things, that sounds are waves of air
and also that they are sensations; that goods are objects of desire
and commodities of exchange. I ajn not concerned here with their
justification in saying these things, but with the fact that they do
say them and with the possibility of saying them that lies back of
that fact. Of our interpretations of subject-matter we say that
some are sound, others unsound, some correct, others incorrect, some
344 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
true, others false. But it is quite clear that back of such affirma-
tions and fundamental to them is the possibility of making any
affirmations at all. On what does that possibility depend? In
other words, how are we to construe the fact that animal bodies, in
so far as they respond to the world about them by interpreting it.
are said to be inhabited by a mind ?
This question of possibility ought not to be so handled that in
place of possibility we have impossibility. Yet this, I suspect, is
what is too frequently done when the question is considered. For
instance, the possibility of interpreting sounds as waves of air can
not lie in the initial existence of waves of air as subject-matter to be
interpreted. Yet our books are full of attempts to exhibit the pos-
sibility of interpretation generally in terms of some specific inter-
pretation which itself rests on that possibility. Nor can we success-
fully flee from the universe of discourse altogether and say that
the possibility is outside of it or arises from the union of factors in
themselves alien to it. Yet this too has been repeatedly tried, with
only ultimate confusion as a consequence. Indeed just now I can
think of only two answers which promise anything like conclusive-
ness. The first is that the possibility resides in the fact that mind as
a determinate form of being inhabits animal bodies ; and the second
is that it resides in the fact of the universe of discourse itself defined
as mind in the transcend enta/l sense as we have defined it above.
Yet I must regard the first answer with suspicion. Its sole title
to accuracy, so far as I can discover, resides in the fact that the
universe of discourse is considered and inquired into only, so far as
we know, by animal bodies inhabited by a mind. Because it is
bodies of this sort that do the interpreting and write the books in
the library, and because without them interpretations are appar-
ently not made, nor books written, it is natural to conclude that the
possibility resides in them. But this turns out to be a rather queer
conclusion when once it is attentively examined. For my own
animal body is one of the many objects of my study, and while I may
discover that it is different from other objects in many ways, I do
not discover that as an object of study it differs at all from them.
It lies side by side with them in the total universe of discourse. It
is, to be sure, what Bergson calls a privileged object since its move-
ments and activities enlarge the range of my inquiries, but this
fact is one of the discovered differences between it and other ob-
jects and does not put it in a different universe from them. I know
that its health and integrity are prime factors in successful study.
As in imagination I rob it successively of what are called its facul-
ties, I find that the universe of discourse is for me progressively im-
MIND DISCERNED 345
poverished, but I do not find that it ever wholly disappears. I
know that to the blind this universe is not luminous as it is to me
and that to the deaf it is not sonorous, but I know that I myself
neither see nor hear without adequate stimuli thereto. In other
words such differences as are thus indicated appear to be differ-
ences due to the constitution of the universe as a whole and imply
no more than the interdependence of its parts. They are not dif-
ferences which can be intelligibly construed as ultimately disrupting
its continuity. The difference between an animal body which can
see and one which can not, is like the difference between one which
can fly and one which can not. Such facts as these, together with
the other that I can not even in fancy abolish the universe and
leave anything to consider, make the conclusion look queer to me
that the possibility of interpretation resides in the fact that a mind
inhabits animal bodies.
In other words, I can make nothing intelligible out of the at-
tempt to start with animal bodies fully equipped in their animality
and then by adding a mind to them construe their thoughtful con-
sideration of their world in terms of this addition only. The attempt
has been made many times, but it has always been wrecked ulti-
mately by our inability to exhibit what animal bodies are without
any implication at all of mind. The attempt moves wholly within
the total universe of discourse. It is never free from the distinction
between thing and idea. Its enticement, as has already been said,
lies wholly in the fact that without animal bodies the attempt it-
self is not made, but this fact must be offset by the recognition that
there are other things, such as digesting food, which are not done
without animal bodies, and that we are not wont to construe the
possibility of doing them by adding to the body a factor in which the
possibility resides. Significant, therefore, as the fact may be that
without animal bodies inhabited by a mind inquiry into the universe
of discourse does not occur and no interpretation of it is made, the
attempt to construe the possibility of such interpretation in terms
of the inhabiting mind the mind studied in psychology is here
rejected. "We turn to the other locus of possibility, namely the faet
of mind in the transcendental sense. 4
Those who deal with the natural history of mind in the psycho-
logical sense point out how that history keeps pace with the natural
history of animal bodies, but they have never been able to discover
* It may be unnecessary to point out again how radically different the
transcendental mind is from the psychological. The former can not be defined
in terms of conscious processes or behavior. It is neither substance nor cause.
I conceive it to be, as indicated in the article ' ' Structure, ' ' one of the structural
facts of existence generally.
346 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
i\ point at which mind may be said definitely to enter, at which it
precisely takes up its habitation. The reason is, perhaps, not that
they have not been acute enough to discover it, but rather that there
is no such point to discover. A mind inhabiting a body may involve
a procedure wholly unlike that of a tenant inhabiting a house. The
latter leases his dwelling from an owner who has a prior right to
possession. It is difficult, however, to think that a mind leases a
body from nature and then moves in on some appointed day. It
seems to dwell in its habitation, if we are to keep up the figure, more
as the house's outlook dwells in it, something congenital and not
alien. It would seem as if animal bodies become seeing, thinking.
remembering, imaginative, and passionate bodies in much the same
way as they become digesting, breathing, walking, and reproductive
bodies. Just how they become this latter sort of bodies we do not
very well know, but we do know that in actually being bodies of this
sort they do no more than react to a, world which is itself congenial
to their reactions. They react, that is, to a world which makes the
specific character of their reactions possible, but this possibility
they do not create. Chemistry may be said to inhabit them and un-
ravel itself in digestion, but the possibility of such a determinate,
individualised, and organized form of chemistry clearly resides in
the fact that the world in which they are is in a very genuine sense
a chemical world. Should all animal bodies cease to be, digestion
inL'ht also cease, but since the process of digesting did not create
the chemistry which made it possible, we could not affirm that what
we might call the chemical structure of the world also ceased to be.
We might rather venture to say that the possibility of chemistry as
a determinate form of being, inhabiting animal bodies, and unravel-
ing itself in digestion resided in the fact that there is chemistry in
the transcendental sense.
Our attitude toward the question of the possibility of interpre-
tation, of thinking, of knowledge might advantageously be similar.
For thinking, like digestion, is a reaction to a world congenial to
it. Just as we do not affirm that by digestion the possibility of
chemistry is created, so we ought not to affirm that by thinking the
possibility of mind is created. We ought rather to affirm that the
possibility of mind as a determinate form of being inhabiting ani-
mal bodies resides in the fact that there is mind in the transcenden-
tal sense. Such a view makes of the genesis of the mind studied
in psychology something wholly natural I know of no better word
as natural as digestion or breathing. With the death of all animal
bodies thinking itself might cease, but that which made thinking
ihle would not cease. This latter would remain something char-
THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 347
acteristic of the world in which animal bodies had come to be. That
is, mind in the transcendental sense can have no genesis. The term
when so used does not indicate an individual existence whose days
may be numbered. Like mechanism, chemistry, and what in gen-
eral we call the laws of nature, it indicates a type of structure or
a system of connections, a logical structure it might be called or a
system of logical connections. To this structure living beings con-
form in much the same way as they conform to other structural
facts. As by conforming to the mechanical structure of things they
maintain their equilibrium, so by conforming to the logical structure
of things they think in propositions, they make distinctions and so
finally come to discover themselves as distinct from their world,
recognize themselves as the habitations of mind, and undertake the
study of psychology.
FREDERICK J. E. WOODBRIDQE.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS
TT^ROM the rise of modern philosophy to the present day, great
-L interest has centered around the problem of the unity of
consciousness. That consciousness has a certain unity, or appear-
ance of unity, no one questions; the problem lies in giving an
explanation of that unity which will contradict neither the find-
ings of descriptive psychology nor the requirements of sound logic
nor the facts brought to light by experimental investigation.
Several of the chapters of James's Psychology 1 seem to many
writers to have dealt in an exhaustive way with the descriptive and
logical sides of the discussion. There we find a trenchant criti-
cism of the mind-stuff theory, so compelling to many minds as to
banish for them into outer darkness any theory of psychic atomism.
"As a feeling feels, so it is," if recognized as an axiom, argue;
mightily against unconscious mental states or the fusion of con-
scious elements in a present feeling. Two assumptions made by
James, however, have somewhat undermined his clearly spun theory.
One of these is the assumption that a present feeling is aware of
itself; the other, that a present feeling is in some unexplained way
"appropriative" of the content of the immediately preceding one.
The credit for exposing these weaknesses is due to Professor
Strong. 2 On the one hand, he has shown that consciousness is not
interfused with the content of the psychic state, so that to have a
feeling is to be conscious of it, but that consciousness is something
1 Cf. Chaps. VI, IX, X, XIII.
2 Charles A. Strong, The Origin of Consciousness, London, 1918.
348 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
adventitious supervening upon the psychic state. On the other
hand, he has described how a present feeling appropriates a past
feeling by the continued presence of the latter as the object of
cognition, the process involving the simultaneous existence of two
psychic states.
The refutation of the phenomenalistic position regarding con-
sciousness has far-reaching consequences. It has led to the repudi-
ation of that mysterious unity of the momentary conscious state
which was supposed to be an ultimate characteristic. Dr. Strong
has shown that there is no such unity, and thus the possibility of
some kind of a temporary fusion of psychic states is again pre-
sented. James's logical demand, that sensations in order to fuse
must have a medium of combination, is not refuted. The question,
rather, is raised as to what is the nature of the medium. Berg-
son's theory of feelings as due to memorial summation, adopted by
Strong, 8 leaves this question open. Sherrington 4 has adduced ex-
perimental evidence to prove that at the time of binocular percep-
tion uniocular visual images are developed to a point where their
concomitant sensations are capable of being introspected under
suitable conditions of experimentation. This would indicate that
the integration was not an integration of sensory areas of the cere-
brum. Further consideration of the manner of fusion seems in-
evitable, as we may not be satisfied by crude statements of fusion
like those contained in the writing of Miinsterberg. 5
One preliminary revision of James's theory of consciousness
that may be suggested at the outset is the rejection of the notion,
expressed in the Psychology, that the child's first consciousness is
"one great blooming, buzzing confusion." 6 Now I have a percep-
tion of confused objects, not when I am entirely unfamiliar with
them, but when I discriminate one from another only partially.
The confusion is due to my inability to synthesize on a sudden
various impressions which immediately suggest to me partial mean-
ings. Thus, when I enter a room and am confronted with a blaze
of color and a babel of sound, my perception of confusion is my
Ibid., pp. 199-200.
Charles H. Sherrington, The Integrative Action of the Nervous System,
New Haven, 1906, pp. 383-383. His important conclusion may well be quoted.
(Italics not mine.) "Our experiments show, therefore, that during binocular
regard of an objective image each uniocular mechanism develops independently
a sensual image of considerable completeness. The singleness of the binocular
perception results from union of these elaborated uniocular sensations. The
singleness is therefore the product of a synthesis that works with already
elaborated sensations contemporaneously proceeding."
Hugo Munsterberg, Psychology, General and Applied, New York and
London, 1916, pp. 133-1
Op. cit., I, p. 488.
TEE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 349
imperfect discrimination of colors and sounds which themselves
are familiar to me. One recalls the instance of two Esquimaux
who were brought from Arctic regions and led along Broadway,
New York City. It is said that they were quite undisturbed by
the bustle of traffic and the sight of unaccustomed buildings, and
became attentive only when they caught sight of a furrier's window
hung with skins. The "blooming, buzzing confusion," moreover,
does not harmonize well with James's theory of the unity of the
momentary conscious state. If the unity apparent in the conscious
state is one of its most fundamental characteristics, we should
hardly expect to find it born in confusion.
The motor aspect of the attention-process also would seem to
bar the presence of conscious confusion where the objects cognized
have not previously been reacted to. Of late, in the writings of
authors so diverse in their general outlook as Strong, Bergson,
Miinsterberg, and the behaviorists, there is a strong tendency to
emphasize the part played by the motor half of the reflex arc in
giving an account of cognition. Presently I shall discuss the rela-
tive importance of stimulation and reaction for cognition. Here
I may say that if the motor factor is an integral feature of cogni-
tion, the new-born baby could not feel a confusion of sensations
because it would be able to feel only those to which it had pre-
viously reacted. The only alternative to this conclusion is the
almost unthinkable supposition that at the birth of consciousness
a multitude of sensory stimulations, normally giving rise to reflex
actions, are inhibited at the center of the arc and shot up through
the spinal cord to the cortex.
Lack of familiarity with objects capable of stimulating the sense
end-organs and the absence of many potential reactions would
seem to make the new-born consciousness a much simpler affair
than James supposed. Coming closer to the problem of unity, we
may ask as to the nature of the complex perception. Here the
relation between consciousness and the object on the motor side is
exceedingly important. As Dr. Strong says, 7 to an instantaneous
sensation we could not react. The unity of a sensation, therefore,
must be accounted for on the basis of memorial summation,
primary memory furnishing an object to which attention may be
directed. Dr. Strong observes the close similarity between intro-
spection and sense-perception. He says, 8 "The motor attitude in
introspection is therefore of the same general kind as that in sense-
perception, and differs from it only in being to an object inside
the body and not to one outside it." Dr. Strong argues power-
Op. tit., p. 201.
* Ibid., pp. 201-202.
350 THE JOURNAL OF I'lll Utsui'll Y
fully for the chief place of attention in giving unity to the field
of consciousness.* He concludes that the momentary psychic state
has no existential unity ; its apparent unity is due to a convenience
of treatment, attention being the main factor.
With the results of Dr. Strong's study I am completely in
accord. I would wish, however, to carry a little further the
analysis of what constitutes the apparent unity of consciousness.
I would wish also to show in some detail how James's arguments
against the mind stuff theory are not valid if applied against
introspective realism, and how, under the latter theory, a certain
kind of fusion, or, better, an appearance of sensations as if fused,
is not invalidated by James's arguments.
The latter points may be discussed first. James leaves us two
alternatives. Either there must be a fusion of sensations, in which
case a soul must be postulated as the medium of fusion, or there
must be a fusion of brain-states to which a single psychic state
corresponds in toto. Now, obviously, if Dr. Strong has shown that
the unity of consciousness is only a specious unity, we shall not
need to controvert James's logical objection to the mind-stuff
theory. The existences known as sensations and images have no
vinculum. But although James was skeptical in regard to a pos-
sible fusion of psychic states, he was believing when it came to the
unity of the single perception. He found just reason logically to
object to the statement that sensation a plus sensation 6 would
yield a sensation (a -}-&). He made no difficulty, however, in rec-
ognizing that sensation (o-j- 6) had unity. It is the merit of Dr.
Strong's work to have shown us that sensation (a + b) has n-.
existential unity, but is the result of a certain convenience of treat-
ment of psychic states controlled by the limitations of the attention-
process. The way is open, therefore, not to reestablishing the doc-
trine of a fusion of separate sensations in the old sense, but to a
new conception of fusion based on certain features of the mechan-
ism of attention. Under this new conception of fusion, the fusion
will not be conceived as of sensations in their own right, but it will
appear as a fusion in our attitude toward psychic states that are in
themselves quite unalterably distinct. In shovelling coal into a
furnace the separate coals in the shovel are not fused into one
larger coal, but it is convenient for me to treat the coals en masse
as one shovelful while I am performing the operation of shovel-
ling. So in some way the separate tones of a chord do not come to
/Wd., pp. 280-282.
THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 351
consciousness as separate sensations there to fuse into one im-
pression; rather does the mechanism of my psyche make it con-
venient for me to treat the stimulations of numerous fibers of the
hasilar membrane as one sound the cerebral disturbances likely
covering a goodly extent of brain-area.
The first protest against this new way of conceiving fusion will
be doubtless a denial of its newness. On the one hand it will be
claimed that here there is no fusion of sensations, that the single
perception resulting from the excitation of the neural mechanism
is as single as James would have desired. On the other hand it
will be claimed that the fusion, if such it is to be called, takes place
in the brain, that the mechanism of attention is substituted merely
for the exploded concept of an arch-cell. Both of these objections
are true as facts, but they are not objections to the theory. They
do not invalidate the usefulness of my statement. The utility of
my point of view appears when it is observed on the negative side
(1) that many psychic states may be present in an "unfused"
form, and (2) that the integration of brain-states is a process not
entirely correlated with psychic activity, but occurs only as a
momentary expedient.
1. Many psychic states may be present in an "unfused" form.
Jf we use the term "sensation" always to mean one of the elements
of a conscious state, we shall never speak of sensations as present
but unperceived. Careless terminology has resulted in the use of
an expression ''unconscious sensation" a self-contradiction taken
advantage of by James in his criticism of the mind-stuff theory. 10
"We are on safer ground when we refuse to define "sensation" as
a conscious element of experience, or when, better, we substitute the
term "psychic state" and reserve "sensation" for the meaning
"given psychic state." In the latter case we recognize that con-
sciousness is adventitious to the psychic state, and that the exist-
ence of a psychic state is not due to its conscious quality when
attended to. Attention will be the main factor in bringing an un-
conscious psychic state to consciousness.
It is the contention of this paper that attention thus modifies
psychic states. 11 First the process may be observed in the case of
single sensations. "We may not attend to an instantaneous sensa-
tion. Attention to the single sensation is contingent on the pres-
ence of a series of instantaneous states, each after the first cog-
nizing its predecessors. A conscious moment, therefore, demands
the presence of at least two psychic states, of neither of which are
we separately conscious. Modification of psychic states by atten-
10 Op. cit., I, pp. 172-175.
11 Cf. Strong, op. cit., p. 137.
352 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
tion again appears in the case of perception, where numerous
Reuse-stimuli are involved. If a and b stand for parts of a chair,
and if I perceive the whole chair, not discriminating the parts, my
perception of (a-\-b) is very different from my perceptions of
a and b separately. Instead, however, of supposing that a soul
unifies sensations of a and 6, or that the unity is accomplished by
an integration of brain-states on the sensory side, we shall more
rightly ascribe the "togetherness" of the psychic states to the
motor factors of attention, and deny that the psychic states or their
neural concomitants, as such, are fused at all. We shall, of course,
also deny that there is any real unity given to perception by the
addition to psychic states of the conscious quality. We shall
rather aver that as a feeling feels, so it is not, agreeing with Dr.
Strong that the esse of a feeling is sentire, not sentiri.
At the risk of repetition, I may restate the previous argument
in other words. In cognition, although an instantaneous sensation
might be aware of an essence, there could be no meaning attached
to the essence if primary memory did not preserve the essences
given in preceding instants. We have no perception of an object
that is flashed before our eyes too quickly for a trace of its suc-
cessive stages to be recorded in primary memory. It is also a com-
monplace that in perception memory-images are an essential
feature. The fact that some kind of memory is concerned in all
sensation and perception to which meaning is attached in other
words, in all attentive consciousness leads us to inquire what
binds together the elements of sensation and perception. We an-
swer that it is attention. Attention gives the sensation or percep-
tion a certain necessary duration. We are then confronted with
the question: are we to conceive of the sensation or perception as
a single psychic state (no matter how complex it may seem) con-
scious of itself, or are we to consider the perception to be composed
of simpler elements, psychic states, of which we are sometimes
aware, and which are sometimes aware of other psychic states, but
which are never aware of themselves? 12 As a mere supposition,
the latter solution seems more probable. The only difficulty to be
overcome is that of finding the explanation for the fact that many
psychic states must then be conceived as appearing as one. Once
we have solved this difficulty, however, we may conclude that the
conscious quality is something adventitious to their existence, and
that therefore we have no warrant in saying that only those
psychic states exist of which we are conscious. In the conscious
moment, certain psychic states have a specious unity, while actu-
ally remaining as unfused and distinct as you please.
Cf. Strong, op. cit., p. 207.
THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 353
But let us not be extravagant by hypothetically multiplying
the number of unconscious psychic states. No warrant for an
atomistic conception of psychic existence may be adduced from this
inquiry. The problem of the degree and nature of neural activity
necessary to the production of a psychic state (i.e., the extent to
which neural integration is necessary) must be left for experi-
mental psychology to determine. Sherrington has made a begin-
ning, by showing that the uniocular visual images are psychically
distinct.
2. The integration of brain-states is a process not entirely
correlated with psychic activity, but occurs only as a momentary
expedient. Although it is certain from experimental evidence that
many areas of the brain are involved in a single perception, it by
no means follows that all of the neural activities of the brain at
any one moment are correlated with the conscious state. We may
naturally suppose correlation to subsist between the clearest psy-
chical elements (those at the focus of attention) and the most pre-
dominant neural activities. If this is true, the neural concomi-
tants of marginal consciousness will be less predominant. Now if
complete integration occurs, we must suppose that the neural con-
comitants of all psychic elements other than those at the focus of
attention are correlated with marginal consciousness. It is much
more plausible that marginal consciousness is a mean between con-
scious and unconscious psychic states a theory rendered probable
if awareness is adventitious to psychic states. As Dr. Strong says, 18
the existence of unconscious mental states is a question of fact,
not of principle. Attention, therefore, would seem to play like a
searchlight over a wide range of mental states, now lighting a spot
barely seen at the previous moment, now bringing into conscious
view spots just previously shrouded in darkness.
II
If the foregoing analysis is grounded in fact, we are driven to
seek an answer to a question that irresistibly presents itself. Is
there some principle by which the specious fusion of psychic states
under the conditions of the mechanism of attention takes place?
The term "specious fusion" has been used to indicate a process
the nature of which yet has to be described. On the one hand, we
have the phenomenal unity of the present moment, so much empha-
sized by James. On the other hand, we have the coexistence of an
undetermined number of psychic states. In some manner atten-
tion is responsible for the apparent unity of the perception. But
how is the process to be conceived?
i Ibid., p. 207.
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
If awareness is a function of psychic states due to an integra-
tion of motor concomitants, it is evident lhat the presence and
character of consciousness will be determined by the presence and
limitations of the attention-process. Every perception involves a
"set" of the organism to some reaction. The selection and single
treatment of psychic states arising from a variety of stimuli are
due to the fact that we can not do or intend two actions at the
same time. The details of the process may be subsumed under the
principles of contiguity and identity. 14
1. In a transverse view a perception may be analyzed into a
variety of sensations and images. Our view of the coexistence of
psychic states, however, need not lead us to affirm the Lockian
principles of the compounding of sensations, so attacked by James.
The "ideas" are not to be conceived as fusing among themselves
in some incomprehensible way, but as being capable of treatment
as a whole so far as attention is concerned. Later, by turning the
attention to the several elements of a perception, thus obtaining a
series of new perceptions, the parts may be envisaged, but this is a
matter of discrimination rather than dismemberment. When I
grasp a tumbler with both hands, the tactual perception does not
result from the fusion of psychic states due to the tactual sensa-
tions derived from each hand, but from a unified reaction due to
the whole action of grasping an object.
2. The unification of many elements in the perception leads to
consideration of the specious fusion of the psychic elements in-
volved in the perception of a single element. Out of this con-
sideration the general principle of specious fusion will emerge.
How are we to explain the single treatment, in consciousness, of
the succession of psychic states that occurs in the memorial sum-
mation in a feeling? In this way: attention treats as one psychic
elements that are identical or nearly identical. Here we have an
explanation of the phenomenal unity of the single sensation. We
could not react to a psychic state that is momentary. There is a
certain slowness of movement of our bodies in relation to their
environment. We are not able to respond to stimulations by single
molecules, whether they be arranged in space simultaneously or in
time serially. Indeed, we are also unable to be stimulated by such
minute structures. The sensory side of the reflex arc thus also has
bearing on the problem of attention. But the significant fact, the
fact that results in the apparent unity of consciousness in contra-
distinction to the plurality of psychic states, is that our reactions
are slower than the working of our sensory mechanism. The slow-
ness of reaction compels a certain unification of psychic states.
" C/. George Santayana, The Life of Reason. I, pp. 165-170.
THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 355
The non-discrimination of identical or nearly identical psychic
states accounts for our perception of objects as static bodies. It
makes it possible for us to live in a stable world rather than in a
Heraclitan flux. It also accounts for the facts adduced by Sher-
rington in reference to binocular perception. Where the uniocular
visual images are nearly identical, they are perceived as one (for
we may react to them as to one object), although under suitable
conditions of experimentation they may be revealed as composed
of simpler psychic states.
Ill
We may now give a concise statement of our theory: The con-
scious quality is attached to certain psychic states concerned in the
process of attention. Reflex without conscious activity may be-
come complicated up to a limited extent until the conditions of
reaction do not keep pace with the mechanism of sensory stimula-
tion. The unequal balancing of the forces of stimulation and re-
action calls for a selection from among psychic states of some few
which may be correlated with a unified reaction. The activity of
these cells (selected in accordance with the familiar laws of the
determination of attention) is heightened, the difference being
manifest by the addition of the conscious quality. Consciousness
is thus seen, from the standpoint of its origin, to be in the first
instance a psychic concomitant of selected neural activities, and the
whole process of selection appears as a device to supplement reflex
action where a complete integration is impossible owing to the
complexity of the sensory mechanism. In accord with the theory
is the fact that actions at first performed only consciously may be-
come later reflex actions. Here consciousness (or rather the whole
process of attention with which consciousness is associated as one
element) has served the purpose of integration, and the action
may be repeated under suitable conditions of stimulation without
conscious intervention.
Perhaps it may be superfluous to remark that the conscious
quality of psychic states is amenable to the same law of specious
fusion that was described in reference to other qualities. Its ap-
plication is somewhat different, however. Whereas one psychic
state in memorial summation is able to cognize the content of pre
ceding psychic states, the conscious quality of a psychic state, be-
ing an adventitious characteristic and no part of the psychic state
as such, but rather a difference of function, is unable to cognize
the conscious quality of another psychic state. Thus, although we
make the distinction between conscious and unconscious psychic
states, we may never directly compare the two or directly cog-
366 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPJIY
nize consciousness. When, however, attention holds in its focus
several psychic states, the identity of activity in each serves the
negative purpose of keeping away any sense of discreteness. That
is, because the conscious quality is the same to whatever psychic
state it may be attached, it does not interfere with the specious
fusion of contents.
Many important considerations in the light of the theory which
we have presented, such as its bearing on the problem of truth
and error, and on the compatibility of an instrumental view of the
origin of cognition with a realistic outlook, would have to be the
subjects of special study. I may point out, however, that the
theory well fits into the framework of the theory of psycho-phys-
ical monism (introspective realism). If psychic states are the
"things-in-themselves" or the "inner substance" of their neural
concomitants, the disparity in the correlation of motor factors of
attention and the conscious quality of psychic states ceases to be
a problem.
MAURICE PICARD.
BARNARD COLLEGE.
Note. For the sake of clearness, I have left to an appended note the dis-
cuwion of a point which, although important, is not vital to the argument. In
Bergson's conception of memorial summation, matter and consciousness are
conceived each to possess its own peculiar rhythm. The rhythm of conscious-
ness, slower than the rhythm of matter, allows the former to sum up vast
periods of matter's rhythm. This thesis leads to the assumption that percep-
tion and matter differ chiefly in their respective tensions. I do not subscribe
to this doctrine, nor is it essential in any way to my argument. Dr. Strong, in
accepting it, seems to interpret it differently from its proponent's interpreta-
tion. For he assumes the reality of homogeneous time, which Bergson denies.
Dr. Strong says, "We must remember, secondly, that the time during which
a brief feeling exists is spun out infinitely fine that it does not come all at
once, at a single clap of the hand, aa it were, but comes in an infinite succession
of instants. To each of these instants of feeling the proposition applies that
without memory primary memory, that is, memory of a fact immediately after
its occurrence it would, on its cessation, completely decease. The apparent
block which a feeling offers to introspection is thus due to the summation of an
infinity of instantaneous parts by primary memory." The "infinite suc<
of instants" to which Dr. Strong refers, and during which he says a feeling
exists, is obviously thought by him to be one with the succession of instants
during which concomitant happenings in the physical world take place i.r.,
homogeneous time. "The apparent block which a feeling offers to introspec-
tion" is thus conceived as due to a summation of the infinite parts of each ap-
preciable moment of a feeling by primary memory. I find this statement hardly
within the bounds of possibility. Logically, no doubt, we can so divide a
momentary feeling, but psychologically it is most doubtful whether such a proc
ess is implicit. As James says, there is no necessary numerical correlation
between cause and effect. In fact, experimental psychology seems to hav
BOOK REVIEWS 357
demonstrated conclusively that integration of neural vibrations is often necessary
to the production of any feeling at all. Howbeit, there is a certain necessary
duration in the case of every appreciable sensation. We need not try to go back
of that. Given this momentary feeling, primary memory will be requisite if
the next appreciable instant is to recognize its predecessor. The summation,
under the theory, will therefore occur in the sensation's own rhythm. (Cf.
Strong, op. cit., p. 200; Bergson, Matter and Memory, pp. 267-282.)
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
A Critical History of Greek Philosophy. W. T. STAGE. Glasgow:
University Press. London: Macmillan and Co. 1920. Pp. xiv
+ 386.
Clarity is often a virtue of intolerance. A man with convictions
knows precisely what he believes and is able to measure the worth
of ideas as any want of conformity unto or transgression of his
standards of belief. Mr. Stace is a man with convictions. He knows
exactly what he means by philosophy and writes a "critical" history
of Greek thought in the light (or darkness) of this meaning. The
style and manner of presentation are extraordinarily simple and
clear. There are more monosyllables to the paragraph than in any
philosophical treatise with which I am familiar. Lucidity is the
chief merit of the book. As a contribution to historical scholarship
it is altogether unimportant. The author takes the stock facts and
traditional material found in any ordinary text-book and presents
them in a manner remarkable for its simplicity, clarity and easy
intelligibility.
But should a man with "convictions" write a history of phi-
losophy at all? A priori this is doubtful. A posteriori one with
Mr. Stace 's convictions should decidedly not write the history of
anything. Philosophy, he says, is an attempt ' ' to rise from sensuous
to non-sensuous thought." It is "the gradual and steady rise to the
supreme heights of idealism." 1 The history of philosophy "pre-
sents a definite line of evolution." It is the "onward march of
thought to a determined goal." "The truth gradually unfolds
itself in time." These conceptions are not generalizations derived
from an examination of the subject-matter of Greek thought, they
are initial definitions in terms of which the history of Greek thought
is to be described and interpreted. That the true philosophy is
idealism and that philosophy is an evolution from sensuous to non-
sensuous thinking are the beliefs in terms of which the criticism
proceeds.
i A Critical History of Greek Philosophy, XII.
3.-.x THE JOURNAL or I'll I LUSOI'H Y
The beginnings of Greek philosophy involve no prob'ems for the
author. "The first Greek attempts at philosophizing were so much
the beginnings of a beginner, were so very crude and unformed,
that it is mere perversity to suppose that they could not make these
simple efforts for themselves." 5 Ionic philosophy is pure material-
ism. By water Thales meant the "material" cause or stuff of
things. The "Boundless" of Anaximander was "formless and
characterless matter." Thus, as we should expect from our defini-
tion, philosophy begins with the purely sensuous. An advance
stage of evolution is found in the semi-sensuous thought of the
Pythagoreans. Their doctrine of numbers involves the abstract and
non-sensuous, but in making numbers the substance of material
things, there is a lapse into materialism. Nevertheless Pythagorean-
ism is a "stepping-stone between the Ionic and the Eleatic philoso-
phy." Parmenides makes a great advance. "The essential mean-
ing of Parmenides is his idealism." For him truth lies only in
reason. "This is exceedingly important, because this, that truth
lies in reason and not in the world of sense, is the fundamental posi-
tion of all idealism." 8 Eleaticism was important, we are told, be-
cause it was the first monism. "Plato's theory is that the Absolute
consists of concepts. . . . Now this proposition, that the Absolute
is reason, is the fundamental thesis of all idealism. Plato, therefore,
is the founder and initiator of all idealism. ... It is this that gives
him his great place in the history of philosophy. . . . This is his
crowning merit." 4 But philosophy must not only seek the ultimate,
it must make the ultimate intelligible. Now Plato's ideas, so the
criticism proceeds, can explain neither themselves nor the world.
Evidently we must await further evolution. This we get in Aris-
totle. "Aristotle registers, therefore, an enormous advance upon
Plato. His system is the perfected and completed Greek idealism. ' " J
After Aristotle "the rest of the story is soon told for it is the story
of decay." In the mystical intuition of the Neo-Platonists ancient
philosophy meets its death. "It was natural that philosophy should
end here. For philosophy is founded upon reason. . . . Therefore
it can not admit anything higher than reason. ... In Neo-Platon-
i-in. therefore, ancient philosophy commits suicide. This is the
end." 6
In the opinion of the present reviewer this method of writing the
history of philosophy is altogether wrong. It is not a history of
Ibid., p. 17.
Ibid., p. 45.
Ibid., p. 235.
Ibid., p. 332.
Ibid., p. 377.
BOOK REVIEWS 359
philosophy at all ; it is a study in dialectic. The author is not deal-
ing with the subject-matter of Greek philosophy; he is selecting
material to illustrate a thesis which exists in his own mind. I have
a strong feeling that most of what goes by the name of "evolution of
thought" is pure dialectic. The order and connection of ideas in
the mind of an evolutionary historian is decidedly not the same as
the order and connection of the facts which constitute the subject-
matter of the history of philosophy. For example, to say that
Pythagoreanism is the stepping-stone between the Ionic and the
Eleatic philosophy is to give to the development of philosophy a
logical continuity which it does not in fact possess. Furthermore,
to discover the "importance" of an idea to consist in its likeness to
some other idea of preferred worth rather than in its inherent con-
tent involves a fallacy of abstraction. For instance, we are told by
Mr. Stace that Eleaticism is "important" because it was the first
monism. It was "the crowning merit" of Plato to have been the
founder of idealism. Rather insecure foundations on which to rest
one 's reputation !
As opposed to Mr. Stace I do not think that Greek philosophy is
an evolution. To be sure there is a certain amount of continuity of
thought, but how much continuity is a question of fact and not of
theory. Nor does more continuity establish evolution. Neither do
I believe that Greek philosophy is a development from sensuous to
non-sensuous thinking. Surely the entire development of Greek
scientific thinking from Thales through Democritus is from animism
to positivism.
The book is wholly unbalanced. This follows inevitably from
the a priori method. The author devoted 318 pages to philosophy
from Thales through Aristotle. Only 38 pages are given to the
entire Post-Aristotelian period including Neo-Platonism. Why?
Because it is the "story of decay." And why decay f Because the
Stoics and Epicureans and Skeptics and Neo-Platonists have little
to contribute to a preconceived definition of philosophy. More
space is given to showing that Parmenides is an idealist than to the
whole atomistic philosophy of Leucippus and Democritus.
It should be remembered that my main objections to this book
are to the author's initial conception of the meaning of philosophy
and to his a priori and evolutionary method of interpretation. The
main facts are told in a manner surpassing in lucidity, simplicity
and literary charm any history of philosophy with which I am
familiar. It seems a pity that the book is critical rather than
descriptive, as, I dare say, a history of philosophy should be.
M. T. McCLURE.
TULANE UNIVERSITY.
:*() Y770 JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
A Study in Realism. JOHN LAIRD. Cambridge: The University
Press. 1920. Pp. xii -f 228.
For Professor Laird the major realisms are " Arnauld's attack on
Malebranche . . . Reid's and . . . the contemporary movement."
There is, in his opinion, little affinity between the modern and the
medieval forms of the theory. Realism proper, as Professor Laird
understands it, is the doctrine "that the object of true knowledge is
in a certain sense independent of our knowing of it" (p. 14). It
"does not imply that the mind can not construct or that its con-
structions can not be known" (p. 186). For it, knowledge "is not
communion with the thing nor contact with it. It is just knowledge ;
and we may inspect the past as well as the present" (p. 54).
"Knowledge ... is always the discovery of something with which the
mind is confronted. The mind is therefore distinct from its object,
and an object is not known the better because of its resemblance to
mind" (p. 214).
Upon all types of cognizable things Professor Laird tests, then,
this theory of realism. He passes in review objects of perception, of
remembrance, of expectation, of dream and fancy, of judgment, of
valuation, endeavoring to show that an anti-realistic interpretation
is inadequate alike for the sensible world, for the realm of laws and
values, and for things merely imagined. In the course of the survey
he takes issue not only with the traditional enemies of realism but
also with members of his own persuasion. Meinong's theory of
"objectives" is attacked (p. 87 f.) as is also the doctrine that mind
is reducible to its objects the "inverted Berkeleyanism " which is
indiscriminately attributed to all the American new realists
(p. 162 f.).
One may gain from a perusal of the book, slim as it is, a remark-
ably clear notion of what realism stands for, and incidentally what
a good many other kinds of philosophy stand for. The author pos-
sesses a gift for hitting off the essence of a doctrine in a few words
and with fine spirit. For, philosophic as he is, he is also something
of the creative artist, with the result that occasionally his character-
izations are exaggerated in their extreme simplification. "The
pragmatists," he says, for example, (p. 114) "can not go all the
way with the absolutists, but they have gone to school with them,
and most of them, by substituting the life-process, or the Zeitgeist,
or the intelligence of a great people, for the Absolute contrive to
retain some of the momentum of the Platonic Ideas and yet to dress
the world in workmen's overalls, or to credit it with the overwhelm-
ing vitality of a gendering bull."
There is no space even to list Professor Laird's main conten-
BOOK REVIEWS 361
tions. Suffice it to say that the realism here presented is of a
thorough-going, vigorous variety. "He who trusts himself to logic
must trust himself altogether. He can not seriously, like the in-
strumentalists or Mr. Bradley, step into the stream with one foot
and keep the other on the bank ; for the bank is not firm enough and
the stream too masterful. . . . All thinking must assume what logic
assumes, and realism, at bottom, is just the assertion of this
principle. ' '
HELEN Huss PARKHUEST.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
Psychology and Folk-Lore. R. R. MARETT. New York : The Mac-
millan Company. 1920. Pp. ix -f 275.
The author of this book is the successor of Tylor in anthropo-
logical work at Oxford. He has previously published a brilliant
little volume, Anthropology, in the " Home University Library "
and a collection of essays called The Threshold of Religion; has had
considerable archaeological experience with palaeolithic man on the
island of Jersey; and as a teacher has done much to build up a
school of anthropology in his university.
The book consists of eleven papers, some of them originally
presidential addresses before the Folk-Lore Society and Section H
of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. As its
title, borrowed from that of the first paper, does not adequately
describe its contents, a brief notice of all the papers may be de-
sirable. Five are chiefly of methodological interest : "Psychology and
Folk-Lore," " The Psychology of Culture-Contact," " The Trans-
valuation of Culture," " Primitive Values," and " Origin and Va-
lidity in Religion." Two deal quite concretely with " War and
Savagery " and " The Primitive Medicine-Man." Two more
"The Interpretation of Survivals" and "Magic or Religion" pre-
sent sympathetic reviews of Sir James Frazer's Folk-Lore in the Old
Testament and The Golden Bough, respectively. One on " Prog-
ress in Prehistoric Times " is a masterly summary of our present
knowledge concerning Stone Age man, and one on " Anthropology
and University Education " is a plea for greater recognition of
this subject in British seats of learning.
Dr. Marett, as his preface indicates, feels somewhat doubtful
whether these addresses, essays, and reviews are worth republish-
ing; but his readers will not have any such feeling. They will be
delighted to pick up a book which, without affectation of learning,
brings the combined results of philosophy, psychology, anthro-
pology, and sociology to the elucidation of the problems of man.
Dr. Marett does not give to us here, or elsewhere, an anthropological
362 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
" system "; but rather keen criticism of prevalent views and re-
freshingly original observations. Very little which will not stand
close analysis filters through his pen to the page. All in all, one is
inclined to recommend highly these bright, witty, and thoughtful
papers. HUTTON WEBSTER.
UNIVERSITY or NEBRASKA.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
REVUE DE METAPHYSIQUE ET DE MORALE. July-
September, 1920. L' or ieiit at ion du rationalisme. Representation,
concept, jugement (pp. 261-343): L. BRUNSCHVIEG. - The "future
of rationalism is not bound up with the success of a constructive
synthesis after the Hegelian method," such as is found in the sys-
tem of Hamelin. Rationalism, in a broader and more legitimate
sense, as represented by Plato and Spinoza, is simply the effort of
the human spirit to make the world intelligible, and as such it must
include certain of the methods associated with contemporary posi-
tivism and even with intuitionalism. The argument for this is
found in a historical study of rationalism, positivism, and mj^sti-
cism in some of their nineteenth century developments. La tradi-
tion philosophique (pp. 345-353): A. DARLU. - Philosophy may be
defended against the charge of being non-progressive, for there is
a philosophic tradition in which truth accumulates. Although cor-
tain problems persist, the later thinkers attack them from new
levels, profiting by the attempts of their predecessors. Considera-
tions sur la logique et les ensembles (pp. 355-369) : J. RICHARD. -In
showing that the first principles of arithmetic do not contradict each
other, the consistency of the first principles of logic must also be
demonstrated, for these two sciences are inseparable. This appears
in examining the theory of classes, the notion of the transfinite, and
the logical paradoxes raised by these. Discussions. Qu'est-ce qu'un
depute f (Autre reponse) (pp. 371-377): F. BUISSON. -No new
theory of parliamentary government, such as M. Pecaut has sug-
gested, is needed to make the status of the deputy unambiguous.
He is an agent for the electorate in the business of government, and
as such is expected to deliberate as they attend to governing them-
selves, not simply to register opinions they have actually expressed
on particular occasions. What is needed to improve the function-
ing of the deputy is a practical reform of electoral procedure, such
as the proportional representation law, which will make him the
spokesman for a group holding a certain opinion, rather than the
spokesman of a majority within a small geographical locality, such
as he must try to be under the system of send in d'arrondisscment.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS 363
Questions Pratiques. Entre citoyens et producteurs (pp. 379-
393): C. BOUGL. -The syndicalist proposal of basing representa-
tion on production is unsound in its present form for two reasons.
In the first place the "work of modern production is so complex
that it is especially difficult to define ' the producer ' in simple terms.
If 'the citizen' is an abstraction, 'the producer' is a proteus."
Secondly, "the producer" is likely to forget some of the interests
of the ' ' citizen, ' ' since the representatives of the different vocations
are to govern not in the interest of their particular vocations but in
the "general interest," which has a reference to other aspects of
life besides that of production. Supplement. Livres Nouveaux.
P. Fauconnet, La Responsabilite. J. Payet, Le travail intellectuel
et la vol&nte. Eugene d'Eicthal, Du role de la Memoire dans nos
Conceptions, metaphysiques, esthetiques, passionnelles, actives.
Henri Berr, Le germanisme contre I' esprit frangais. J. Segond,
Intuition et Amitie. E. Abramowski, Le Subconscient normal,
Nouvelles recherches experimentales. L. Blaringhem, Les prob-
lemes de L'Heredite experimentale. Leon Lecornu La mecanique,
les idees et les faits. Helene Metzger, La genese de la science des
cristaux. J. Souilhe, La notion platonicienne d'intermediaire dans
la philosophic des dialogues; also, Etude sur le terme (< dunamis" dans
les dialogues de Platon. S. de Backer, Disputationes metaphysicae
de ente c&mmuni. John Mills, The Realities of Modern Science.
An introduction for the general reader. Francesco Orestano,
Leonardo da Vinci. Otto Lipmaim, Psychologic fur Lehrer. Jules
Sageret, Philosophic de la guerre et de la paix.
Bacon, Roger. Secretum Secretorum, cum Glossis et Notulis : Trac-
tatus Brevis et Utilis ad Declarandum quedam Obscure Dicta.
Nunc Primum edidit Robert Steele. Accedunt Versio Anglicana
ex Arabico Edita per A. S. Fulton. Versio Vetusta Anglo-Nor-
manica nunc Primum Edita. Oxford University Press. 1920.
Pp. Ixiv + 317.
Drever, James. The Psychology of Everyday Life. London:
Methuen & Co., 1921. Pp. 164. 6s. net.
Fawcett, Douglas. Divine Imaginings : An Essay in the First Prin-
ciples of Philosophy. London : Macmillan & Co. 1921. Pp. 249.
Gemelli, Er. Agostino. L'Origine della Famiglia, critica della dot-
trina evoluzionista del socialismo, ed esposizione die risultati delle
richerche compiute secondo il metodo psicologico-storico. Milan :
Societa editrice "Vita e Pensiero." 1921. Pp. 132. L. 5.
Jelliffe, Smith Ely. The Technique of Psychoanalysis. Second, re-
vised enlarged edition. New York and Washington: Nervous
and Mental Disease Publishing Co. 1920. Pp. x + 171. $2.50.
:*r.4 TllK .JOURNAL ()! I'HILOSOPHY
NOTES AND NEWS
Tin- Research Information Service of the National Research Coun-
ril has recently compiled information about funds for scientific re-
search. From this compilation it appears that there are humlmls
of special funds, trusts, or foundations for the encouragement or
support of research in the mathematical, physical and biological sci-
ences, and their applications in engineering, medicine, agriculture
and other useful arts. The income from these funds, which amounN
annually to at least fifty million dollars, is used principally for prizes,
medals, research scholarships and fellowships, grants and sustaining
appropriations or endowments. So numerous have been the requests
to the Research Council for information about sources of research
funds, availability of support for specific projects and mode of ad-
ministration of particular trusts or foundations, that the Research
Information Service has created a special file which it is proposed to
keep up to date in order to answer the questions of those interested
in such funds. Furthermore, in order to give wider publicity to the
immediately available information about research funds, the Council
has issued a bulletin under the title Funds available in 1920 in the
United States of America for the encouragement of scientific re-
search.
Many scientists lack the library facilities which their work de-
mands. They are compelled either to journey to distant libraries or
to try to borrow books by mail. Often it is difficult for them to locate
something that is badly needed, and again it may be impossible to
borrow it. The Research Information Service of the National Re-
search Council is prepared to assist investigators by locating scien-
tific publications which are not generally or readily accessible. It
will also, as is desired, have manuscripts, printed matter or illustra-
tions copied by photostat or typewriter. The cost of copying varies
from ten to twenty-five cents per page. No charge is made for this
service unless an advance estimate of cost has been submitted and ap-
proved by correspondent. Inquiries should be addressed to the
National Research Council, Information Service, 1701 Massachusetts
Avenue, Washington, D. C.
M. Xavier Leon announces the resumption of the Bulletin dc
la Societr franraise de philosophic, which was obliged to suspend
publication owing to circumstances connected with the war. Five
numbers will appear during the year 1921. Four of these will con-
tain reports of four meetings of the French philosophical associa-
tion; the fifth will be devoted to the philosophical vocabulary
edited by M. LaJande.
VOL. XVIII, No. 14. JULY 7, 1921
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
THE COGNITIVE INTEREST AND ITS REFINEMENTS
IN" an earlier paper we have considered belief and purpose as var-
iants of a basic act of ' ' supposition. " l In the present
paper supposition assumes the role of hypothesis, or of an act dic-
tated by a specifically cognitive interest.
Although we shall be primarily interested in autonomous think-
ing, in which thinking has itself become a purpose requiring its
own specialized tools, it is important to recognize that thinking is
not necessarily autonomous. It can be an adjunct of any purpose,
when it assumes the form of the consideration of alternatives. It
is a form of trial and error in which acts are accepted and rejected
in accordance with their meaning rather than their effects. 2 There
are, in other words, two types of tentative activity. In one type
the auxiliary activities are tried out until one occurs which com-
pletes the response; in the second or reflective type the auxiliary
activities are only considered, until one is adopted. In this second
type suppositions occur; that is, the activity is sufficiently aroused
to bring its sequel into play, and it is adopted or rejected according
to the congruence of this sequel with the checked phase of the
determining tendency. In other words only acts which promise
relief are overtly performed. Mistakes may be made, and in this'
case other auxiliary acts must be tried out, so that the organism is;
learning for the future at the same time that it is guided by the
lessons of the past. But the distinguishing feature of this second
type of tentative activity lies in the fact that while many acts may
be called, few are chosen; or, while many are tried, few are tried
out.
Let us now examine the forms assumed by thought when it sets
up in business on its own account. Possibly it is always carrying
on at least a small independent business. It is not important for
our present purposes to determine whether there is or is not an in-
stinct of thought. 3 In any case there is a very early and a very gen-
i ' ' The Independent Variability of Purpose and Belief, ' ' this JOURNAL,
XVIII, 169-80.
2 Cf. E. C. Tolman, ' ' Instinct and Purpose, ' ' Psychol Bev., 1920, XXVII,
230.
s Cf. G. Wallas, The Great Society, 1914, Ch. 3.
365
3;j THE JOURNAL OF
oral mode of human Ix'havior which we call curiosity. This appears
to consist in a determining tendency which moves the organism to
acquire anticipatory reactions. It is aroused whenever one en-
counters boundaries or blank-walls beyond which one can not look.
The unopened envelope creates a situation in which one's adapta-
tion does not advance beyond what is immediately presented. In
so far as one is curious one would like to anticipate the reactions
appropriate to the contents of the letter, that is to be in readiness
for developments of stimuli in that direction. This impulse is
different from the interest in observing, in which one derives sat-
isfaction from having one's anticipatory expectations successively
aroused by an unfolding series of stimuli. Curiosity is satisfied
when in the absence of the stimulus one has a response ready; so
far as curiosity is concerned one is then quite indifferent to the pres-
entation of the stimulus. Curiosity, in other words, is a tendency
to acquire beliefs, or to possess reserves of readiness in all direc-
tions ; it is to keep in preparation, at least one step ahead of action.
This impulse, be it noted, is satisfied by the possession of beliefs
whether true or not. In respect of remote and unrealized contin-
gencies false beliefs may permanently satisfy curiosity. In so far,
however, as beliefs mature, in so far as their index is presented,
their stability is a function of their truth. Here belief is in part at
least founded on experience, so that whenever a belief results in a
misplaced response there is begotten at the same time a new and an-
tagonistic belief for the future. Surprise, in other words, tends
to prevent its own recurrence. Within certain limits, therefore, if
one is to have beliefs at all they must fit the events to which they
refer. From this there develops the practise of methodical veri-
fication, which is trying out a supposition to the point of deter-
mining whether the complementary object is present as indicated,
but without carrying the response so far as to alter either the ob-
jective situation or one's modes of dealing with it. There is in
this the same immunity from consequences which has been remarked
in the case of the consideration of alternatives in reflective action.
There is a partial or playful exercise of supposition, 4 resulting in
this case in the acquirement of tested and stable beliefs.
All forms of purposive activity depend on beliefs for their issue,
and in this case it is not merely belief that is required, but true be-
lief. Verified belief is in demand not only because it is stable, but
The whole topic of partial and " unreal " response as characteristic of
play, esthetic " detachment," and thought, is one of great importance and
wide bearings. Meinong has done much to develop it. For a behavioristic inter-
pretation, cf. L. L. Thurstone: " The Anticipatory Aspect of Consciousness, "
this JOURNAL, 1919, XVI, 567.
THE COGNITIVE INTEREST 367
because it is useful. If one's desire is to destroy one's enemy, and
believing that he "will pass a dark corner at a certain hour of the
night, one schedules one's attack accordingly, the belief is useless
unless it is true; unless, that is, the complementary stimulus, one's
enemy, presents itself when the response, one 's blow, is ripe for de-
livery. Since curiosity is only one of many determining tendencies,
and since all determining tendencies require verified beliefs, it is evr
dent that the demand for verified beliefs on the score of their utility
far exceeds the demand on the score of their stability. In other
words truth is needed more than it is loved. In either case it is
needed or loved for what it is; and truth would be truth if it were
neither needed nor loved.
We must now consider certain further refinements which grow
out of the demand for verified beliefs. It was asserted above that
where the indices of beliefs fall within the range of presented
objects a belief's stability is a function of its fitness to events. We
have now to observe that this is not invariably the case. There are
beliefs which are frequently applied, but without being selectively
tested, because the presence or absence of specific conditions does not
control the response. Compare, for example, the two following
cases. Believing that there is food in the pantry, I go as instructed
and either find or do not find something that I can eat. The possi-
bility or impossibility of the response is decisive as regards the sta-
bility of this belief. But suppose I believe that there is an enemy
in the next room. In this case whatever I find may serve to excite
my suspicion or hate. My belief regarding the attitude of another
may thus remain stable independently of my experience. It can
find a stimulus in any situation for which my belief may prepare it.
" Enemy " meaning whatever I can suspect and hate, there are
enemies everywhere. Or conversely, if God means what I can love,
then God is everywhere. Similarly to an excessively timid person
all things are fearful. Such beliefs are, strictly speaking, true.
Their defect lies not in their incorrectness as they stand, but in their
promiscuousness. They can satisfy neither curiosity nor the non-
intellectual purposes, both of which demand close and specific
adaptations to a great variety of particular situations.
It may be objected that if I fear X I judge that X is disposed
to do me injury. But this is not correct. I may fear miscellaneous
things, or any new stimulus, without my fear's having any peculiar
selective relation to the particular conditions confronting me. The
point is that my fear would be more useful if it were based on such a
principle, since it would then be more discriminating. If it were so
conditioned, then in the long run it would be reduced to situations
of actually imminent injury. Sentimental truths of the indis-
368
criminate sort, instead of being conditioned by specific beliefs, tend
to breed specific beliefs. In case those beliefs refer to remote con-
tingencies, their truth or error remaining indefinitely doubtful,
they may be innocuous. But when beliefs so inspired are directed
to the immediate environment they are peculiarly likely to be in
error because they have originated independently of experience.
One expects, for example, what may be expected of a hated person,
rather than what has been experienced of this person.
In the technique of knowledge, therefore, it is important that
beliefs should so far as possible assume the form of responses
uniquely correlated with determinate environmental conditions, as
appears to be the case with such responses as sensations, physical
adjustments or unambiguous words. Just what sensation is no
man can in the present state of human knowledge confidently say.
But it does appear to be clear that specific sensations are peculiarly
dependent on correlated stimuli. In the emotional sense I can " see
red " under any conditions, but in the visual sense the conditions
are narrowly prescribed. In physical science it is customary to test
hypotheses by the presence of " properties," or by recording
mechanisms which respond unambiguously. Words serve the same
purpose only in so far as precisely and truthfully used. But the
development of language and of the canons of precision and truth-
fulness testifies to the same demand for uniquely controlled re-
sponses.
Words play so important a role in the specialization of the cog-
nitive interest, or in the functioning of human reason that Profes-
sor Watson may not be far from the truth in maintaining that " the
fundamental difference between man and animal . . . lies in the fact
that the human being can form habits in the throat." 5 The pri-
mary function of language seems to be the establishment within a
group, and eventually within the race as a whole, of uniquely de-
termined responses to objects. For man language is both a prerog-
ative and a need. The overt behavior of simpler organisms is less
equivocal than that of man and constitutes in itself a sort of lan-
guage. But the overt responses of men to any given stimulus are,
owing to their wide range of ulterior references, almost limitlessly
variable. There is scarcely any reaction of which the human organ-
ism is capable that a light-stimulus, for example, may not arouse.
This variety of response does not, as we have seen, stand in the way
of cognition and of truth. For the truth of a supposition does not
depend on the nature of the particular response which it applies,
but only on the opportuneness of the application. You may love
J. B. Watson, Behavior, 1914, 299.
THE COGNITIVE INTEREST 369
this light while I fear it, but truth depends only on our being ready,
you with your love and I with my fear, when the light is there to
serve as its object.
But the human variety of response would prevent developed
social relations if it were not for the conventions of language. All
human association depends on the concerted response of several
organisms to the same object. In order that this concerted re-
sponse may be organized and led by the influence of one individual
organism on others, it is necessary that there should be common ob-
jects recognized as such. This is possible only when the response
of one organism is the sign to a second organism of the presence of
a certain object. Language provides such signs. Without lan-
guage behavior must be either stereotyped or incommunicable.
The neural and implicit phases of sensory response, which may be
supposed to be uniquely correlated with stimuli, are too obscure to
serve as signs. The overt phase of sensory response, the external
accommodatory adjustment such as looking, listening or touching,
is also uniquely correlated with stimuli and is doubtless employed
in the development of language. But this response in its grossly
observable aspect is too coarse to distinguish two qualities of the
same class, such as two different colors or two different sounds.
Language as a social convention establishes identical responses to
specific stimuli, and through the limitless variety of its forms pro-
vides for a limitless variety of stimuli. Verbal responses have the
additional merit of being capable of neutrality as regards favor or
disfavor. They may acknowledge their object without prejudice.
For this reason they are peculiarly useful in the formulation of be-
lief ; and in providing for communication without the use of "in-
fluence, ' ' or between persons who may entertain opposite sentiments
towards the same object. For purposes of knowledge language
must be neither eulogistic nor dyslogistic; it must, in other words,
have no coloring save such 'as it derives from the object or stimulus
to which it applies.
Through language it is possible to carry out systematically a
verification of one individual's judgment by the experience of an-
other. A spoken word, such as ' ' red, ' ' becomes a uniform response
to the stimulus of red light concomitant with and additional to
whatever primary motor-affective response is peculiar to the indi-
vidual. 6 Once the verbal response has been formed it may occur
in the absence of the primary response, and may, like other re-
sponses, be implicit or overt. The overt or spoken word also pre-
I do not undertake here to describe the development of language reactions,
but only their functions when formed. For a discussion of their origin, cf. J.
B. Watson, Behavior, 1914, Ch. 10.
370 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
sents auditory and kinesthetic stimuli to the speaker himself, and
auditory, visual and tactual stimuli to other individuals. These
stimuli being presented with the original stimulus become " con-
ditioned " stimuli to the primary response. In other words the
way it feels when one says " red," the sound of the word " red,"
the visual or tactual impressions of the moving lips of the man who
is saying " red," the visual or tactual impressions of the convention-
alized linear forms red, and possibly the kinesthetic sensations of
the writer all these acquire the power of inducing in any given
individual the same mode of behavior as is in him induced by the
stimulus of red light. 7 When, then, I hear my neighbor say " red,"
I bring the appropriate response into play and find myself ready
or unready according as the stimulus of red light does or does not
appear. In the former case I have confirmed my neighbor's judg-
ment, in the latter case I have at least cast doubt on it. In the
comparatively simple example here used the general situation may
serve as the index, that is serve to set me looking for red light
here and now. In judgments with a remoter reference the process
of verification depends entirely upon the unambiguity of the words
which constitute the subject, that is their having a unique effect
when used to give instructions. Thus in the judgment " fire is
red," no verification is possible except in so far as the spoken word
' ' fire ' ' has the effect of influencing the auditor to find just fire and
nothing else and to bring his red-response to bear then and there.
It is impossible here to discuss the other uses of language, its
flexibility, and its indispensable functions in generalization, dis-
crimination, and constructive speculation. These interesting and
important considerations must be set aside lest we lose sight of our
main problem, which is to understand the formation of a special
cognitive interest. We have so far described the formation of the
interest in verification and some of the special agencies which this
requires. We have now to consider the interest in consistency,
or what would usually be termed the logical interest.
It is evident that in acquiring stable and reliable beliefs it will
be necessary to look not only to their truth as heretofore defined,
but also to their compatibility with one another. A belief at vari-
ance with the same individual 's other beliefs can have at best but a
precarious existence. In what does this incompatibility consist?
i Language in other words may employ any or all of the senses. That which
distinguishes it is not its medium but its conventionalized function. I am
strongly inclined to believe that internal auditory speech, or " hearing oneself
think " mast also be recognized and be given an important place in the mental
processes. I hare not included it because it raises the complicated question
of images.
THE COGNITIVE INTEREST 371
By whatever name we call it we must apparently concede that com-
patibility and incompatibility are fundamental features of our
world. 8 As regards the general conception it must suffice here to
point out that compatibility inside the mind and outside the mind
mean the same thing. An incompatibility between two responses
does not differ in principle from the incompatibility that prevents
two bodies from occupying the same space at the same time. The
important fact with regard to the incompatibility of responses is
this, that it does not appear decisively until the moment when
they are brought to bear. They may be compatible in all their im-
plicit phases and incompatible in their explicit phases. In other
words the mind can readily entertain contradictory beliefs so long
as it does not carry them out ; just as it is perfectly possible to sched-
ule two trains as passing at the same time in opposite directions over
the same stretch of track so long as the trains are not actually run
according to the schedule. It is possible even to run the trains up
to the point of collision.
In the case of implicit response this compatibility is due in part,
perhaps, to the fact that they do not become antagonistic until they
innervate skeletal muscles, but more certainly to the fact that they
may alternate. It is generally agreed that one may possess in dis-
positional form two tendencies like anger and appetite for food,
which can not be excited simultaneously because they contain op-
posite activities in the same muscles and glands. 9 They can, how-
ever, be excited alternately, and the existence of one as a disposi-
tion does not require us to deny the existence of the other. Now
consider the case of two beliefs. I believe that my friend will be in
New York at three o'clock on Monday afternoon, and also that he
s It is, as Professor Holt has long since pointed out (E. B. Holt: Concept
of Consciousness, 1914), one of the notable characteristics of physical nature.
It does not mean the same thing as the absence of co-existence. It means the
impossibility of co-existence. As such it is not, I believe, the same as the fact of
conflict but is rather the source of conflict. Because A and B can not eat the
same bread they contend for the bread; because C and D can not both occupy
the same space they collide. The difficulty of stating contradiction altogether
In terms of physical facts lies in its apparently being indescribable without
reference to possibility. That the capacity of the hall is incompatible with seat-
ing more than five hundred people in it does not mean merely that the number
of seats is five hundred, or that (in the case when the seats are filled) all above
five hundred are standing, or that a thousand people are vainly struggling to
seat themselves; but it means that, given the fact of the hall being as it is, one
of the hypotheticals that does not fit it is the seating of five hundred and one
or more persons in it. Two train schedules are incompatible when their
projected and not yet actualized movements bring them to the same point at
the same time. Two tendencies conflict in the same way.
The whole doctrine of repression can only mean that a tendency can exist
in a dormant state although incompatible with the dominant tendency.
372 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
will be in Chicago at the same hour of the same day. I may per-
haps hold these beliefs simultaneously, provided I do not carry them
too far; I can certainly suppose them both at the same time by for-
mulating some such verbal statement as, "X will be in New York
and in Chicago at three o'clock on Monday afternoon." In any
case I can believe now one thing and now the other and may possess
both beliefs in dispositional form. What then does it mean to say
that these beliefs are contradictory? It must mean that they can
not both be completed. It is impossible that I should be greeting
and dealing with X as indicated in both beliefs.
We are brought back, of course, to the incompatibility of the
physical presence of X in two places at the same time, this incom-
patibility extending to relations between his organism and mine.
Or the incompatibility of two beliefs reduces to the fact that they
can not both be verified in 'the sense already defined. They can
not both prepare me for contingent experience. It follows that
the way incontrovertibly to demonstrate the contradictoriness of
two beliefs is to carry them out ; and that contradictions will be har-
bored in any given mind in proportion as that mind either habit-
ually fails to carry out its beliefs, or possesses beliefs that can not
be carried out because they refer to contingencies which do not nor-
mally occur. Thus we get on very comfortably with contradic-
tory beliefs in the field of religion, politics, philosophy, and scien-
tific theory, but find it necessary to eliminate them in our familiar
dealings with the immediate physical and social environment.
It is important to observe that while two contradictory suppo-
sitions may be entertained as phases of one continuously and
rapidly shifting process of thought, this has the effect of prevent-
ing either of them from becoming a belief. For belief consists
essentially in committal. 10 Two contradictory beliefs can occupy
the same mind only when there is something like repression and
dissociation; when one of them is functionally so unrelated to the
other that when the one is called into play the other is not available.
A mind which has two contradictory suppositions available in the
same situation is in doubt and is equipped to meet two different
contingencies. A mind which has two contradictory beliefs, hav-
ing only one of them available at any given time, is both unre-
sourceful and liable to error. It follows that suppositions with
the same index should be kept functionally related so that they
may be either corrected and replaced by a true belief, or held
jointly in readiness as available alternatives.
Two beliefs are contradictory, then, when they virtually con-
10 Cf. my article " The Independent Variability of Purpose and Belief,"
this JOURNAL, XVIII, 169-80.
THE COGNITIVE INTEREST 373
flict, when if carried out they would actually collide with one an-
other. But this contradictoriness is not ordinarily established by
allowing the collision to take place. As in the case of railway trains
the collision is avoided by revising the schedule. In this anticipa-
tion of contradiction language is again indispensable. To X living
and to X dead I have two opposed sets of reactions, opposed in the
sense that I can not treat X both as living and as dead. X can not
as a matter of fact be both dead and alive; and in so far as my
reactions are intimately related to X they will share this incom-
patibility. There are also certain reactions to X dead-or-alive. Just
as the name " X " is substituted for the latter, so the words " liv-
ing " and " dead " are substituted for the former. It is further-
more a part of the convention of language that what is called ' ' liv-
ing ' ' shall not also be called ' ' dead, ' ' that the terms shall be used
as mutually exclusive alternatives. This does not mean that I can
not as a matter of physiological fact call X both " living " and
' ' dead, ' ' but that it is a misuse of terms to do so, in the same sense
that it is a misuse of the terms to call him " Y." In so far as I
know how to use language and am disposed to be veracious I shall
call a spade " a spade," and shall abstain from calling it " white "
audibly when to myself I call it ' ' black. ' ' Furthermore in so far as
I have adopted the term " living " for X I shall be unlikely also to
apply the term " dead " to him. These word-habits will undoubt-
edly acquire physiological incompatibilities, just as the primary re-
actions will. What we call reasoning from the principle of contra-
diction does not, however, depend on actually introducing these
physiological incompatibilities, but only in presenting the situation
in terms of a breach of verbal usage. Suppose, for example, that I
entertain the two beliefs, " Y is an orphan " and " Y's father is
President of the United States," and you'point out that I am con-
tradicting myself. You do not mean that I can not hold both be-
liefs, for that is the very condition of mind in which you find me.
If I ask you to explain yourself you would say that if Y is an dr-
phan his father X must be dead ; and that if Y 's father X is Presi-
dent of the United States he must be alive, since if a President dies
another individual automatically succeeds to the office; and so you
eventually show me that I am calling X both ' ' dead ' ' and ' ' alive. ' '
You do this by encouraging me to " see the implications " of my
two beliefs, that is to elaborate them carry them out. You substi-
tute for the summary verbal expression of my total reaction, the
verbal expressions of some of its constituents, and then you show
that two of these are such as " dead " and " alive," applied to the
same index. And there you stop. You can not by such reasoning
prevent my continuing to believe as before, but you can show what
374 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
I am doing. You can show it to me and to others. You can con-
vict me of a violation of the canons of speech, and that will usually
suffice to move me to withdraw one or the other of the two state-
ments. If not, you will have done much to discredit any further
statements, that I may make. Meanwhile the fundamental fact is
that if I were to carry out the two beliefs above formulated I
should sooner or later find myself in error, or in conflict, or both.
You may save me from this. I may devise some relatively innoc-
uous way of trying out the two beliefs; and then, having adopted
the one that is verified, reject the other.
As language makes possible the correction of contradictory be-
lief, so it makes possible the a priori construction of " consistent "
belief. It is to such a construction that the term " hypoth>
is more commonly applied. By combining words and ascribing
them when so combined to a specific index I virtually create a de-
terminate expectation. I may, for example, form the hypothesis
that " there 'is a man-eating tiger in the adjoining wood." For
most of these words there are equivalent primary and non-verbal
responses. Some of the words, like their arrangement, have a
purely grammatical function. The several words together with
their grammatical structure prescribe a total organized supposi-
tion having a specific reference or index. When brought to bear
on the indicated occasion it may or may not be verified. But in ad-
vance of such verification it may be tested by further elaboration
and verbalization in order to discover whether it contains a pair of
responses related as " dead " to " alive " or as a to not-a. If no
such pair appears the hypothesis is said to be consistent, though its
truth still remains questionable. It is clear that there is a great
saving of labor in eliminating contradictory hypotheses in advance
of the attempt to verify them.
It should be added that the present account of knowing is in no
sense an attempt to reduce the content >of logic to mental processes.
That much of what is called logic is only bad psychology is doubt-
less true. But in so far as logic is the study of the fundamental
types of relation, it is evident that its subject-matter must be as
much presupposed in a psycho! <".ry of the thought-process as in any
other branch of science. The term " logic " being so understood,
the structure of all things is " logical," physical nature no less
than thought, and bad thinking no less than good. It follows that
such problems as contradiction, implication, negation, universality
and possibility are not solved, though they may be obscured, by
sweeping them into the mind. This procedure appears to pro-
vide a solution only so long as the structure of mind itself re-
mains unanalyzed. In proportion as psychology improves in ex-
REJOINDER TO MR. BOAS 375
actness it will become evident that contradictory beliefs, implied
conclusions, negative responses, universal ideas and imaginary pos-
sibilities are merely special cases of these logical properties, and
that their generic nature remains to be determined by a more funda-
mental analysis.
RALPH BARTON PERRY.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
REJOINDER TO MR. BOAS'S ATTACK ON
GUTHRIE'S PLOTINUS
IN Vol. XVII, No. 13 (June 17, 1920), of this JOURNAL there ap-
. peared a notice of my Plotinus- work by George Boas, of the Uni-
versity of California. It was quite a surprise to me, for various rea-
sons. First because the writer was an entire stranger to me, ajnd
who therefore could not possibly have had any personal knowledge 
