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MIND
A QUARTERLY REVIEW
OF
PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY.
THE DNIVERSITY PRESS.
MIND
A QUARTERLY REVIEW
OF
PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY.
EDITED BY
PROFESSOR G. F. STOUT,
WITH THE CO-OPERATION OF PROFESSOR E. B. TITCHENER, AMERICAN
EDITORIAL REPRESENTATIVE, AND OF PROFESSOR WARD, PROFESSOR
PRINGLE-PATTISON, DAVID MORRISON, M.A., AND OTHER MEMBERS
OF AN ADVISORY COMMITTEE.
NEW SERIES.
VOL. XX.-ign.
LONDON:
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED,
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, W.C.
ig 1 1.
VAbs
v V.TuO
CONTENTS OF VOLUME XX.
(NEW SERIES.)
ARTICLES.
PAGE
BALSILLIE, D. Prof. Bergson on Time and Free Will . . . 357
BRADLEY, F. H. On Some Aspects of Truth 305
GATOR, GERALD. Reality as a .System of Functions .... 342
FAWCETT, E. D. The Ground of Appearances 197
FIELD, G. C. The Meaning of Human Freedom .... 379
JONES, E. E. C. A New ' Law of Thought ' and its Implications . 41
JOSEPH, H. W. B. The Psychological Explanation of the Develop-
ment of the Perception of External Objects 161
KLEIN, A. Negation Considered as a Statement of Difference in
Identity 521
LLOYD, ALFRED H. Dualism, Parallelism and Infinitism . . . 212
MACKENZIE, J. S. Mind and Body 489
PETRIE, R. Aristophanes and Socrates 507
SCHILLER, F. C. S. The Humanism of Protagoras .... 181
SNELLMAN, J. W. The ' Meaning ' and ' Test ' of Truth ... 235
SOLOMON, J. The Philosophy of Bergson 15
STOCKS, J. L. Motive 54
STOUT, G. F. Reply to Mr. Joseph 1
STRANGE, E. H. Mr. Bradley's Doctrine of Knowledge . . . 457
DISCUSSIONS.
BENN, A. W. Aristotle and the Philosophy of Evolution ... 243
The Origin of the Atomic Theory 394
BRADLEY, F. H. Reply to Mr. Russell's Explanations ... 74
CUNNINGHAM, G. W. Self-Consciousness and Consciousness of Self . 530
DREWITT, J. A. J. On the Distinction between Waking and Dreaming 67
FAWCETT, E. D. A Note on Pragmatism 399
MELLONE, S. H. " Real Kinds " and " General Laws "... 248
MULLER, T. B. A Point in Formal Logic 540
PETRIE, R. Plato's Ideal Numbers . 252
QUICK, OLIVER C. The Humanist Theory of Value .... 256
RUSSELL, JOHN E. Truth as Value and the Value of Truth . . 538
TITCHENER, E. B. Feeling and Thought : A Reply .... 258
WATT, HENRY J. Feeling and Thought : A Restatement ... 402
CRITICAL NOTICES.
BERKELEY, HASTINGS. Mysticism in Modern Mathematics (P. E. B.
Jourdain) 88
COHEN, H. Kant's Begrundung der Ethik (A. D. Lindsay) . . 119
CRAWLEY, A. ft. The Idea of the Soul (W. McDougall) ... 103
ELLIOT, H. S. R. (ed. by). The Letters of John Stuart Mill (C. Read) 97
HALDANE, E. S., and G. R. T. Ross. The Philosophical Works of Des-
cartes (A. E. Taylor) 542
VI CONTENTS OF VOLUME XX.
PAGE
HBYMANS, G. Die Psychologie der Frauen (Helen Bosanquet) . . 419
JAMBS, WILLIAM. Some Problems of Philosophy : A Beginning of an
Introduction to Philosophy (F. C. S. Schiller) .... 571
JONES, HENRY. The Working Faith of the Social Reformer, and other
Essays (H. Rashdall) 261
LINDSAY, A. D.The Philosophy of Bergson (H. Wildon Carr) . . 560
LINDSAY, J. Studies in European Philosophy (H. Rashdall) . . 121
MCTAGGART, J. M. E. A Commentary on Hegel's Logic (B. Bosanquet)
MICHALTSCHEW, D. Philosophische Studien (G. E. Moore) . . 118
MOORE, ADDISON WEBSTER. Pragmatism and its Critics (D. L.
Murray) 566
NATORP, Dr. PAUL. Die logischen Grmidlagen der Wissenschaften
(Philip E. B. Jourdain) 552
PERRY, R. E.The Moral Economy (J. Seth) 116
PRADINES, M. Critique des Conditions de V Action (F. C. S. Schiller) 422
ROLAND-HOLST, HENRiETTE. Josef Dietzgens Philosophie (S. J. Chap-
man) 270
Ross, G. R. T. (see Haldane).
SCHILLER, F. C. S. Riddles of the Sphinx (E. D. Fawcett) . . 405
SIDGWICK, ALFRED. The Application of Logic (D. L. Murray) . . 413
TITCHENER, E. B. Psychology of the Thought-Processes (H. J. Watt) 108
UNTERMANN, ERNST. Die Logischen Mangel des engeren Marxismus
(S. J. Chapman) 270
WHIPPLE, GUY MONTBOSE. Manual of Mental and Physical Tests
(W. H. Winch) 268
NEW BOOKS.
ALEXANDER, ARCHIBALD B. D.The Ethics of St. Paul (G. G.) . . 129
Aristotelian Society, Proceedings of (A. A. B.) 426
ARNOLD, FELIX. Attention and Interest (J. Edgar) .... 434
BARILLARI, MICHELE. Diritto e Filosofia, J. : Criteri Preliminari
circa il Metodo (A. W. Benn) 289
BARTH, JOHANN AMBROSIUS. Scritti di G. Vailati (A. E. T.) . . 437
BERGSON, HENRI. Creative Evolution (J. Solomon) .... 432
BINET, ALFRED. L'Annee Psychologique, 16 Annee (H. J. Watt) . 283
BOWNE, BORDEN PARKER. The Essence of Religion (J. Field) . . 438
BROWN, WILLIAM. The Use of the Theory of Correlation in Psychology
(C. W. Valentine) 427
BULLOUGH, EDWARD. The "Perceptive Problem" in the JEsthetic
Appreciation of Simple Colour -Combinations (C. Valentine) . 585
BUSSELL, F. W. Marcus Aurelius and the Later Stoics (" The World's
Epoch Makers ") (A. E. Taylor) .' . '. . . . . 272
CALKINS, MARY W. A First Book in Psychology (H. J. Watt) . . 577
CARUS, PAUL. Truth on Trial (J. Waterlow) . . . . . 438
CASSIRBR, ERNST. Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff (A. E. Taylor) 438
CLAPAREDE, E. (published by). VI me Congres International de Psy-
chologie (Geneva, 2nd-7th Aug., 1909) (H. J. Watt) . . . 588
COIT, STANTON. The Spiritual Nature of Man (G. G.) . . 430
COKE, HENRY GEORGE. The Domain of Belief (N. P. Crichton) . 280
CROCE, BENEDETTO. La Filosofia di Giambatista Vico (A. W. Benn) 441
DEWBY, JOHN. Studies in Logical Theory (B. Bosanquet) . . 435
DOUGLAS, ANDREW HALLIDAY. The Philosophy and Psychology of
Pietro Pomponazzi (H. W. Blunt) 276
FORSYTE, T. M. English Philosophy : A Study of its Method and
General Development (H. Wodehouse) 274
HIBBEN, JOHN GRIEB. The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (A. E.
Taylor) 279
HICKS, R. D. Epochs of Philosophy : Stoic and Epicurean (A. E. T.) 124
CONTENTS OF VOLUME XX. Vll
PAGE
HOLLANDER, BERNARD. The Mental Symptoms of Brain Disease
(W. L.M.) 130
JANET, DR. PIERRE. Les Nevroses (W. L. M.) 132
JERUSALEM, W. Introduction to Philosophy (D. L. Murray) . . 436
JEVONS, F. B. The Idea of God in Early Religions (G. G.) . . 431
JOURDAIN, E. F. On the Theory of the Infinite in Modern Thought
(A. E. T.) .... 437
JOYAU, E. Les Grands Philosophies Epicure (A. E. Taylor) . . 283
KEARY, C. F.The Pursuit of Reason (R. R. Marett) .... 433
KING, I. The Development of Religion (P. E. Winter) ... 574
LAGUNA, THEODORE DE, and LAGUNA, G. A. de. Dogmatism and Evo-
lution 580
LAWRENCE, R. M. Primitive Psycho-therapy and Quackery (P. E.
Winter) 588
LINDSAY, J. The Fundamental Problem of Metaphysics (J. B. Payne) 586
MARBE, KARL. Theorie der Kinematographischen Projektionen (H. J.
Watt) 287
MARSHALL, H. R. Consciousness (T. L.) 126
MILES, EUSTACE. The Power of Concentration (W. L. M.). . . 131
PETRONE, IGINO. II Diritto nel Hondo dello Spirito (A. W. Benn) . 289
PIERON, H. L'fivolution de laMemoire (S. Dawson) . . . . 282
PLATT, A. The Works of Aristotle : De Generatione Animalium
(J. Handyside) 281
POTTS, W. A. (see Shuttleworth).
RUSK, ROBERT R. Experiments on Mental Association in Children
(C. Valentine) 587
SCHWARZ, DR. A. Die hermeneutisclie Induktion in der Talmudischen
Litteratur (D. S. Margoliouth) 133
SHARGHA, I. K. Examination of Prof. William James's Psychology
(H. J. Watt) 128
SHUTTLEWORTH, G. E. Mentally Deficient Children : Their Treatment
and Training (W. L. M.) 132
SMALL, A. W. The Cameralists : the Pioneers of German Social Polity
(W. R. Scott) 583
,, Adam Smith and Modern Sociology (W. R. Scott) . 586
STOOD ART, W. H. B. Mind and its Disorders (W.' L. M.) . . . 127
STUMPF, DR. C. Beitrage zur Akustik und Musikswissenschaft (C. S.
Myers) . 284
TEACHERS. A Guide to Reading in Social Ethics and Allied Subjects;
Lists of Books and Articles Selected and Described for the Use of
General Readers (J. Field) 438
THORNDIKE, E. L. Educational Psychology (F. Peters) . . . 436
TITCHENER, E. B. A Text-book of Psychology (H. J. Watt) . . 581
TUNZELMANN, G. W. de. A Treatise on Electrical Theory and the
Problem of the Universe (J. W.) 579
VARISCO, BERNADINO. I Maximi Problemi (A. E. Taylor) . . . 135
VOLD, J. MOURLY. Uber den Traum : Experimental-psychologische
Untersuchungen (H. J. Watt) 288
WATERHOUSE, ERIC S. Modern Theories of Religion (G. Galloway) . 429
WENLEY, R. M.Kant and His Philosophical Revolution (R. A. C.
Macmillan) 584
WINCH, W. H. The Transfer of Improvement in Memory in School-
Children (G. Valentine) 587
WODEHOUSE, HELEN. The Presentation of Reality (L. Brehant) . 278
WOLFF, E. Francis Bacon und seine Quellen. Erster Band : Bacon
und die griechische Philosophie (T. L.) 134
Vlll
CONTENTS OF VOLUME XX.
PHILOSOPHICAL PERIODICALS.
PAGE
American Journal of Psychology (vol. xxi., No. 3 vol.
xxii., No. 2) 140, 296, 447, 594
Archiv fUr die tyesamte Psychologic (Bd. xvi., Heft 1
Bd. xviii., Heft 1) 299, 451, 597
Archiv fur Systematische Philosophie (Bd. xv., Heft 4) . 148
Archives de Psychologic (Tome ix., No. 3 Tome x.,
Nos. 2, 3) 145, 298, 449, 595
International Journal of Ethics (vol. xx., No. 4, July) 144
Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific
Methods (vol. vii., No. 16 vol. viii., No. 9) . . 142, 297, 448
Philosophical Review (vol. xix., No. 3 vol. xx., No. 2) . 139, 292, 445, 592
Psychological Review (vol. xvii., No. 3 vol. xvii., No. 6) 139, 295, 446, 593
Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale (17 e Annee, No. 5) 147
Revue de Philosophie (Septembre - Octobre, 1910 l er
Fevrier, 1911) 146, 298, 596
Revue Neo-Scolastique (Aout, 1910) .... 147
Revue Philosophique de la France et de I'fitranger
(35 Annee, No. 8) 148
Rivista di Filosofia (Anno ii., Fasc. 3, June- July, 1910
Anno iii., Fasc. 1, January- March, 1911) ' . . 303, 599
Sociological Review (vol. ii., No. 4) .... 297
Zeitschrift fur Philosophie und Philosophische Kritik
(Bd. cxxxix., Heft 2 Bd. cxl., Heft 2) ... 149, 302, 599
Zeitschrift filr Psychologie (Bd. Ivi., Heft 1 Bd. Ivii.,
Heft 4) 148, 299, 450, 596
NOTES AND NEWS.
Aristotle and the Moon (D. W. T.) ...
BALDWIN, PROP. Literary Note ...
BENN, A. W. Epicureanism and Natural Law .
First Universal Races Congress ....
International Congress of Philosophy .
MIND Association, Full List of Officers and Members
,, Annual General Meeting .
MOBRAY, D. L. The Bologna Congress
RUSSELL,' JOHN E. A Metakritik
TAYLOR, A. E. Correction of Notice
456
600
154
159
160
150
304, 453
453
157
160
NEW SERIES. No. 77.] [JANUARY, 1911.
MIND
A QUARTERLY REVIEW
OF
PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY
I. REPLY TO MR. JOSEPH, 1
BY G. F. STOUT.
I HAVE, for some time, been aware of serious faults in the
account of the perception of external objects given in my
Manual and Groundwork. But I trace these faults not to any
vital error in fundamental principles, but to a failure to
follow out my own principles faithfully and accurately. Mr.
Joseph, on the contrary, alleges that there is a radical vice in
the presuppositions which are, in his opinion, common to me
and to all psychologists as such. The primary assumptions
which he ascribes to me in common with all psychologists
are twofold :
(1) That the mind starts with a separate knowledge of its
own sensations only, and subsequently passes by a distinct
and additional process to the apprehension of external things ;
(2) that the supervening process of transition from sensation
to sensible things depends merely on such psychological laws
as those which are exhibited in " association of ideas ".
Now, I admit most readily, that such a view is untenable,
and that if it were really my view, Mr. Joseph's criticism of
my work would be entirely cogent, but I disown both the
positions which he ascribes to me. As regards the first, in-
deed, he is so far right, that I do assume in the Manual and
in the Groundwork the existence of certain sense-experiences
which do not of themselves involve the apprehension of sen-
sible things. The reason is that when I wrote these books,
I regarded the awareness of " external " existence as distinc-
v conditioned, not by all sensations, but only by a certain
a See MIND, N.S., Nos. 75, 76.
1
2 G. F. STOUT :
class of sense-experiences, which alone exhibit a special form
of contrast between felt passivity and felt activity. But I
certainly did not say or think that the sense-experiences
having the required character are or can be separately ap-
prehended, so as to demand or even to admit of a further
process of transition from sensation to external object. On
the contrary, the view indicated is that, from the outset,
experiences fulfilling the assigned conditions necessitate by
their nature the assertion of external existence. This is the
position of the Manual and Groundwork. In my later writ-
ings, I give up the view that there are sensations which do
not involve this obfective reference : thus my final position
is that some apprehension of external existence, however
vague and rudimentary, is indivisibly bound up with all
sense-experience. 1
In rejecting the first of the fundamental assumptions
which Mr. Joseph attributes to me, I, of course, also reject
the second. I may add that I should still continue to reject
the second even if I saw reason to accept the first. Even if
I began by supposing the mind to be initially confined to the
circle of its own sense-experiences, and then attempted to
assign a supervening process leading to the knowledge of
existences lying outside this circle, I should never expect to
find the required conditions in merely psychological occur-
rences as regulated by merely psychological laws. I cannot
imagine myself embarking on any such undertaking without
at least presupposing as part of the initial equipment of the
growing mind the principle of causality or sufficient reason.
Mr. Joseph has, it would seem, profoundly misunderstood
my general philosophical position, and the misunderstanding
necessarily extends to my view of the nature and aim of
Psychology. But I must hasten to add that this general
misapprehension does not wholly destroy the point and value
of his special criticisms of my account of the development of
the perception of the external world. On the contrary, I am
pleased to recognise that in part, at least, his objections are
-well founded, and that they bring to light important defects
in my treatment of this subject, of which I have become
increasingly sensible myself for some years past. What I
have to urge in reply is that his strictures are only partially
relevant, and so far as they hit the mark they reveal, not so
much inadequacy or error or deficiency in my general principles,
as a failure to apply them faithfully. As regards the mis-
understanding itself, I am far from asserting that the fault
1 See my paper on " Things and Sensations/' Proceedings of British
Academy, 1905-1906.
REPLY TO MR. JOSEPH. 3
lies wholly with Mr. Joseph. I am myself in part respons-
ible, inasmuch as I have allowed myself to be influenced by
the fashionable prejudice against introducing general philo-
sophical discussion into a text-book of Psychology against
what is called " mixing Psychology with Metaphysics ". If
I had been addressing myself especially to readers such as
Mr. Joseph, I should have adopted a different course. This
applies mainly to the Manual and Groundwork, not to the
Analytic Psychology, and not to my more recent writings.
I shall now proceed to sketch in broad outline my general
view of the nature of knowledge and to show how this
determines my view of the special function of Psychology
as a department of Philosophy ; I shall then consider the
application to the special psychological problems connected
with the perception of external objects as existing in space
independently of their being perceived.
My fundamental position is closely akin to that which
Kant expressed in the maxim, " Thought without sense is
empty, and sense without thought is blind ". In my own
language, I recast this formula as follows : All knowledge
includes in inseparable unity two correlated elements, the
experiencing of presentations and the thought of objects.
By presentation I mean whatever is or may be existentially
present in consciousness as a toothache is present in the
moment in which it is being actually felt, or as a sound-
sensation is present in the moment of actual hearing, or as a
colour-sensation is present in the moment of actual seeing.
What is thus existentially present at any moment is, in the
strict sense, experienced and may be called an experience.
vVhatever is not thus existentially present, though it may be
known through experience, is not itself experienced at the
time at which it is known. The mind has cognizance of it
as something thought of, not as something actually present.
It exists for the mind, but does not exist in the mind. 1 Thus,
future, past, and merely possible presentations can only be
thought of, not actually experienced, in the present moment
of consciousness. On the other hand, an actual presentation
may also be object of thought in so far as it is apprehended as
related to what is not existentially present at the moment,
e.g. the continuance of its own existence from the past and
into the future. When I think of a future or past visual
presentation by means of a present mental picture, the
mental picture is actually experienced, and the future or past
a The old Berkeleyan phrase "to exist in the mind" seems to m*
useful and convenient when its meaning is denned in this way.
4 G. F. STOUT I
visual presentation is merely thought of : but the mental
picture may also be implicitly thought of as meaning the
future or past presentation. It is thus an object of thought
as well as an actual experience. Similarly the present phase
of the mental picture itself is an object of thought inasmuch
as it is apprehended as a transition between past and future
phases, which as such are not existentially present in con-
sciousness. Thought, then, as distinguished from presenta-
tion consists in the awareness of whatever is not at the
moment an actual content of experience, or in the awareness
of what is actually experienced as related to what is not so
experienced. The object of thought as such is whatever the
mind means or intends; presentation is what exists in the
mind, and is not merely meant or intended by it. All know-
ledge, as I began by saying, seems to include in insepar-
able unity the experiencing of presentations and the thought
of objects. These two constituents of all cognition are cor-
related in such a way that thought gives meaning to pre-
sentation, and presentation specifies the direction of thought.
What it is that the mind means or intends at any moment
depends on its actual experience at that moment ; but if it
were confined merely to the actual experience it would not
mean or intend anything. Presentation without thought is
blind ; thought without presentation is empty. Memory
supplies a good example. In remembering a past event, the
remembrance is conditioned by the specific nature of our
actual experience at the moment. But the past event as
the mind means or intends it is not an actual experience at
the moment. Nor is there any distinct step of transition
from the present experience to the past event. There is
only one indivisible cognitive act in which we may by ana-
lytic reflexion distinguish two inseparably correlated ele-
ments, the thought of the past event, and the specifying
content of actual presentation by which the direction of
thought is determined. For every variation or difference in
the specifying content of presentation there is a correspond-
ing variation or difference in the nature of the object of
thought. This may be expressed by saying that the specify-
ing content represents the object. But in using such language
we must be careful to distinguish this primary representative
function from other forms of representation. In other forms
of representation one object already known is regarded as
representative of another object already known. A map, for
example, is regarded as representing the relative position and
distance of places, or the motion of the hands of a clock is
regarded as representing the lapse of time. But the specify-
EEPLY TO MB. JOSEPH. 5
ing function of presentation is involved in all awareness of
objects. Other forms of representation are therefore deriva-
tive from this and presuppose it. It may be used to explain
them, but they cannot be used to explain it. For this
reason it would be well if we could conveniently express the
distinction by using different words. I should like to say
that the object determined by the specifying content of the
presentation is presented not represented by the presentation.
According to this usage, when a presentation itself is said to
be presented, this would merely mean that it exists as a
presentation, i.e. that it is existentially present in conscious-
ness. When an object is said to be presented, this would
mean that thought is directed to this special object rather
than to any other through the special content of a presenta-
tion. But the double use of the terms "presentation" and
"presented " is a serious objection to this proposal. 1
The foregoing account of the general nature of knowledge
is still essentially incomplete. I have as yet omitted a point of
fundamental importance. I have referred only to a plurality
of distinct objects each determined for thought by corre-
spondingly distinct presentations. But the scope of thought
is never confined to such special objects, or to any collection
of them however extensive. Whatever may be the special
items with which the mind is occupied at any moment, they
are never apprehended as absolutely self-complete and self-
contained. They are always apprehended as partial con-
stituents of a whole which includes and transcends them
and as connected with other unspecified constituents of
the whole. Further, the whole is for thought always one
and the same. It is what we call the Universe. What-
ever special objects are directly presented (represented),
the universe is indirectly presented as their necessary con-
tinuation and completion. Thus the universe, or as Male-
branche used to say, "being in general," is the universal
object of all thought as such. But the special items which
from moment to moment we distinguish within the unity of
the universe depend on presentations, as they come and go
in the individual mind. Similarly the special objects present
to different minds vary according to the varying nature of the
presentational material which each acquires in the course of
its life-history. But all apprehend the same universe. Each,
as Leibniz says, "mirrors" the universe from its own point
of view, and its point of view is conditioned by the distinctive
character of its own individual experience. As the total
1 The double use would almost inevitably expose me to the charge of
equivocation.
6 G. F. STOUT :
object of all thought is the universe in its unity, the devel-
opment of knowledge has always two distinguishable but
inseparable aspects. On the one hand, it consists in a more
and more extensive and intimate acquaintance with special
features of the whole and their modes of interconnexion. On
the other hand, it consists in increasing insight into the
general nature of the unity of the universe, leading progres-
sively to fuller, more definite, and more accurate apprehension
of certain universal structural principles, which may be called
categories. These two aspects of the development are inter-
dependent. The categories may, in a sense, be truly described
as a priori forms of thought, or rather of the object of
thought, i.e. Eeality. But this must not be taken to imply
that our knowledge of them is definitely fixed, complete, and
infallible from the outset. On the contrary, our apprehension
of these universal principles grows, in definiteness, fullness
and correctness, with the growth of the detailed knowledge
dependent on special experience. At the same time the
detailed development is throughout conditioned implicitly or
explicitly by the categories, inasmuch as these control the
direction of selective attention, retention, and reproduction
and the processes of productive imagination by which pre-
sentational material is moulded in accordance with the re-
quirements of thought.
Such being the general nature of knowledge, it is pos-
sible accurately to assign the precise scope of the psychology
of cognitive process. Psychology investigates the develop-
ment of knowledge as conditioned by presentations and by
the gradual acquirement and elaboration of presentational
material in the individual mind. It is therefore concerned
with such factors as attention, retentiveness, reproduction,
association, and also, though less directly, with the physio-
logical conditions of sensation and movement. For instance,
it is a psychological problem how the fact of our having per-
ceived a thing makes it possible to think of it again when
it is no longer perceived ; and the psychological answer
consists in assigning the conditions of the occurrence of a
presentation so connected with that which originally specified
the thought of the object as to fulfil an equivalent function
in again determining the direction of thought to the same
object. Similarly as regards the problem with which we are
at present occupied, the psychological questions which emerge
are the following : (1) What are the presentations which de-
termine for thought the existence and nature of a material
world ? (2) What is the primary significance of these
presentations as determining the original apprehension of
EEPLY TO ME. JOSEPH. 7
external reality which is presupposed in all subsequent de-
velopments of it ? (3) Wherein does the subsequent develop-
ment consist as conditioned by elaboration of presentational
material through attention, retention, productive imagination,
etc., under the guiding control of the original thought, and
also of certain fundamental categories which themselves
become more fully and explicitly and accurately known as
the process advances?
The answer to the first question seems plainly indicated.
From beginning to end, it is through sensuous presentations
that we are conversant with an external world. In particular,
apprehension of this world as a whole of parts coexistent in
space seems dependent on the extensive character of certain
presentations, more especially those of touch and sight. I do
not indeed say that the thought of a universal order of exist-
ence is itself accounted for by sensuous presentation. On the
contrary, I regard this as a category a pure concept in the
Kantian sense. 1 But here as elsewhere thought without
sense is empty. The pure concept of an order of coexistence
is in itself a mere blank form. To constitute even the most
rudimentary apprehension of extension in space, it must be
specified and determined by the immediate content of sen-
suous presentation, and the sensuous content which primarily
fulfils the function is the extensiveness of visual sensations
and touch sensations. Mr. Joseph appears to find great diffi-
culty in the conception of an extensive character belonging
directly to sensuous presentations as such. But his objections
seem all to hinge on the assumption that the parts of the
extensive quantum are distinguished by the qualitative dif-
ferences which have been called local signs. This however
is merely a hypothesis which may very well be false. 2 What,
from my point of view, is important is not the hypothesis but
the fact which it is intended partially to explain. The essen-
tial fact is that colour presentations and touch presentations
both as actual sensations and as images retained or revived,
are diffused in a continuous quantum within which it is pos-
sible to distinguish parts outside of each other, beside each
other, and between each other. A peculiar significance
attaches to this distinction of the extensive parts of sense
presentation inasmuch as it marks for thought the coexist-
ence of distinct things as subjects of qualities, states, and
1 1 have failed to make this explicit in my account of the development
of spatial perception. But, evidently, it meets many of Mr. Joseph's
difficulties.
2 I think that Mr. Joseph's arguments constitute a strong though not a
conclusive case against it.
8 G-. F. STOUT :
processes, and not merely different states, processes, and
qualities of the same thing.
Our second question concerns the general nature of the
reality which thought apprehends on the basis of sensuous
presentation.
Sensuous presentations determine the thought of some-
thing which transcends their own existence : what is this
something, and how is it connected with the presentations
themselves ? We may dismiss, at the outset, the Berkeley an
view that what each presentation signifies is the past, future,
or permanently possible occurrence of other presentations
within the experience of finite individuals. It is impossible
to resolve what we know as the material world, or anything
which we recognise as a material thing, into groups or series
of actual and possible sensations emerging within the ex-
perience of individual percipients. What is required is the
thought of a domain of existence containing parts which
persist, change, and interact, independently of the coming
and going of sensuous apparitions in the consciousness of
finite individuals. On the other hand, we must set aside any
view which regards this realm of independent existence as
radically disparate in kind, or as discontinuous in existence
with the presentations through which we, as thinking beings,
are conversant with it. Such assumptions are irreconcilable
with the ineradicable presupposition of ordinary conscious-
ness that what is immediately given in sense experience is
itself matter, and not merely a symbol of matter. Such as-
sumptions also seem to preclude the possibility of account-
ing for the development of our detailed knowledge of material
things and processes in their systematic interconnexion. For
every step in this development presupposes the possibility of
a thorough-going correspondence between distinctions and
relations within the immediate content of sensation and dis-
tinctions and relation within the realm of material existence
with which thought is conversant by means of sense-expe-
rience. This thorough-going correspondence seems incon-
ceivable if the sensuous signs are regarded as fundamentally
disparate in nature or discontinuous in existence from what
they signify. I feel bound, therefore, to reject the Kantian
doctrine that matter as it is in itself is so completely hetero-
geneous from anything which we immediately experience as
to be absolutely unknowable. For the same reason, I feel
bound to reject monadistic theories which regard matter per
se as consisting in a collection of individuals each having a
sort of individual unity, essentially analogous to that which
characterises the human self as a thinking and willing sub-
EEPLY TO ME. JOSEPH. 9
ject. The material world as something known through
sense-experience must itself be like sensuous presentations
themselves, a divisible stuff and not a collection of indivisible
units. In a word, it must be matter and not mind. 1
Thus I agree with common-sense and with the new
realists as represented by Mr. Moore, in affirming that what
is existentially present in consciousness in sense-perception
is matter directly apprehended as it is itself. Only I must
insist that what is existentially present both is and is thought
as being partial and fragmentary. For thought, it signifies
its own continuation and completion in a whole which tran-
scends and includes it.
I have now assigned the general presuppositions which I
postulate as necessary and sufficient for the solution of our
third problem, concerning the detailed development of our
apprehension of external objects. As yet we are barely on
the threshold of this problem. So far as we have yet pro-
ceeded, our position is as follows : (1) There is a realm of
real existence apprehended as being of a piece with the im-
mediate content of sense-experience. (2) Difference, rela-
tion, and change within the content of sense-experience is
thought as continuous with correlated difference, relation,
and change in this external reality. (3) In particular, dis-
tinction and relation within the extensity of visual, tactual,
and other extensive presentations signify distinctions and
relations of things, as subjects of states, processes, and quali-
ties, as contrasted with qualities, processes, and states of the
same thing. 2
But beyo r nd this all is initially dark. The realm of ex-
ternal existence is an indefinite background penetrated only
at the tiny loophole w r here it is confluent with our sense-
experience. Between this primitive awareness of external
reality and our developed apprehension of the material world,
there is an immense gap which requires to be bridged. We
have to show by what steps we reach out beyond our im-
mediate sensuous communication with the realm of external
existence, and, piercing its depths, apprehend it as an arti-
1 On this point, my views have undergone a radical change. I have
gradually come to realise that even the wonderful constructive ingenuity
of Leibniz and Lotze cannot make a monadistic theory of matter really
tenable. I may add that if matter really consists in monads, Leibniz
seems to be right in holding that they can have no ' ' windows ".
2 It is to be noted that the discernment of distinction and relation
within the content of sense-experience only emerges .'gradually . and the
processes of its development have to be traced. In my account of the
development of spatial perception, for example, I lay much stress on this
aspect of the psychological problem.
10 G. F. STOUT:
culate system of definitely distinguishable parts persisting,
changing, and interacting according to uniform laws, -per-
sisting, changing, and interacting independently of the vicis-
situdes of that very sense-experience which is, from beginning
to end, the indispensable basis of the whole development.
Especially, we have to show how it is possible to reach a
position from which we can return upon sense-experience
itself, and assign what are called its physical and physiological
conditions ; a position from which we can regard the stream
of our sensations as one train of occurrences among others,,
arising in direct and unconditional connexion with certain
processes in a part of a small portion of the material world
which is known as our nervous system, and related to other
material things and processes only if and so far as they,
more or less directly, affect, in certain ways, the state of this,
little bit of matter. To a very large extent the process of
development through which this articulate knowledge of the
material world is attained, consists in ideal construction..
But the first steps must be taken at the perceptual level in
order that ideal construction may have a basis from which it
can start. For instance, it is at the perceptual stage that we
learn to correlate different sensory data, and especially data
belonging to different senses, as meaning different attributes
of the same thing, that we learn, for example, to identify
an object as apprehended by touch, with the same object as.
apprehended by sight or hearing or smell. 1 Further, it is
at this stage that we come to attach an identical significance
to varying sensations not merely as meaning the same thing
but the same unchanging attribute of the same thing. An
obvious example is the way in which visual presentations,,
incessantly varying in magnitude and shape, are none the
less interpreted as signifying a constant size and shape of
the thing seen. But in principle the like holds good for
touch which varies with the part of the tactile surface used
and also with other conditions. This same problem is raised
in another and a less psychological form when we inquire
how it is that the determinate objects of sense-perception
affect our sensibility only indirectly through a long and com-
plex series of intermediate processes. For it is variation in
the intermediate conditions which determines variation in the
final sensation, and consequently in the concomitant brain
process. 2
1 Cf. chap. viii. of my Groundwork of Psychology, pp. 72-77.
2 1 say "in the final sensation and consequently in the concomitant
brain process ". I do not say " in the brain process and consequently in
the concomitant sensation ". I shall presently explain what may appear
to be a putting of the cart before the horse.
KEPLY TO MR. JOSEPH. 11
Questions such as these inevitably confront us whatever
may be our views concerning the nature of matter, and the
mode in which we perceive it. For, on any view, it remains
undeniable that only a very small portion of the material
world, as we know it, is or can be given in immediate ex-
perience. In the main, our knowledge of it is a thought-
construction on the basis of presentational data, involving,
at every step, psychological processes of attention, retention,
association, reproduction, and productive imagination. As
regards my own attempts to grapple with problems of this
kind, I am quite prepared to recognise their inadequacy.
There are certainly important points which I have omitted
or failed to emphasise duly. On the other hand, I cannot see
that my general line of procedure is wrong : and I am not
prepared to admit that my special explanations are sub-
stantially irrelevant or erroneous. These may require to be
modified or supplemented; but they do not, as far as I can
see, require to be rejected. It may be that I am to be blamed
for not having explicitly assigned the fundamental presup-
positions regarding the nature of knowledge and reality,
which, from my own point of view, underlie my own proced-
ure. But I have to plead in excuse that a text-book of Psycho-
logy is generally regarded as an inappropriate place for " meta-
physical " discussions of this nature. I have also to urge
that in some of my writings which are unnoticed by Mr.
Joseph I have done something to supply this deficiency. In
my Analytical Psychology I have expounded my view of the
inseparable correlation of presentation and thought in essen-
tially the same form in which I continue to hold it. 1 Further,,
since the publication of the Groundwork, I have written various
papers, bearing, more or less, on the general nature of know-
ledge, in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society and else-
where. 2 It would be quite unreasonable to expect Mr. Joseph
to have gathered together these scattered productions and
read them in connexion with each other. All I say is, that
if he had done so, he would probably have avoided essential
misunderstanding of my fundamental position.
1 This view is substantially identical with the doctrine of Inlialt and
Gegenstand, which has since been developed by Meinong, Lipps, Witasek
and others.
3 E.g. ' ' Things and Sensations," Proceedings of British Academy, 1905 ;
" Immediacy, Mediacy, and Coherence," MIND, vol. xvii., N.S. ; "Mr.
Bradley 's Theory of Judgment," Aristotelian Proceedings, 1902-1903 ;
"New Kantianism, as Represented by Dr. Dawes Hicks," ibid., 1905-
1906 ; " Are Presentations Mental or Physical ? " ibid., 1909-1910 ; " The
Nature of Conation and Mental Activity, " British Journal of Psychology,
12 G. F. STOUT I
To meet completely his special .criticism, I ought to cover
again the whole ground in detail, supplying what I now
regard as deficiencies, and rectifying inaccuracies. But I
have not time to do this in the present paper. What I have
here written will have served its purpose, if it has made clear
my general philosophical presuppositions, and if it has shown
that these are radically different from those which Mr. Joseph
attributes to me, and to psychologists in general. 1 To make
my general position still more clear, I shall add in conclusion
three more points which seem to me to be involved in it. In
the first place, it involves a thorough-going distinction and
contrast between matter as it is in itself and matter as it is
phenomenally known. Only the extremely partial and frag-
mentary aspect of matter which existentially enters the con-
sciousness of finite individuals as sensuous presentation or
apparition is directly apprehended by them as it is in itself.
Our knowledge of the material system as a whole and of its
laws is phenomenal ; it is a thought-construction on the basis
of sense-experience. All that we call " external " or " physi-
cal " objects, processes and laws belong to the phenomenal
order. On the other hand, sensuous presentations as such
do not belong to this order. They are not in phenomenal
space which is fully occupied by phenomena, and they do not
obey such laws as that of gravitation.
The second point is closely connected with the first. If, as
I maintain, the individual has in his own presentation-
continuum a partial glimpse of the existence and nature of
matter as it is in itself, it would seem to follow that this
portion of matter per se must be also capable of being phe-
nomenally known to an external observer as a physical ob-
ject. We are thus confronted with the question : What is
the phenomenal counterpart of sense-experience? The
answer to this question seems clearly indicated by the ap-
parently unconditional correlation of the existence, nature,
and changes of sensuous presentations with a certain system
of processes in the brain. The brain, so far as it is impli-
cated in these processes, is identical with our sense-experi-
ence as phenomenally known. If this be so, Spinoza is in
principle right in regarding the mind as primarily the idea of
1906. I may also refer to my recent paper on "Instinct and Intelli-
gence," ibid., October, 1910.
1 Really it is a mistake to suppose that psychologists as such have any
philosophical principles in common. What I have said in the Manual
and Groundwork about the perception of external objects may be accepted
by psychologists who would reject my account of the philosophical posi-
tion implied ; or again, it might be rejected by psychologists approaching
closely the type described by Mr. Joseph.
EEPLY TO MR. JOSEPH. 13
the body, and of other material things only in so far as they
affect the body. 1
And Spinoza also supplies the right answer to the objec-
tion that we have no immediate awareness of our own brain
processes. " We clearly see what is the difference between
the idea, for example of Peter, which constitutes the essence
of the mind itself of Peter, and the idea of Peter himself
which is in another man, for example in Paul. For the
former directly manifests the essence of the body of Peter
himself, nor does it involve existence so long as Peter exists ;
the latter, on the other hand, indicates rather the constitution
of the body of Paul than the nature of Peter ; and therefore
so long as Paul's body exists with that constitution, so long
will Paul's mind contemplate Peter as present, although he
does not exist." 2
The third point arises in connexion with the question con-
cerning the relation of sensuous presentations to the mind
which experiences them. I have always held with Berkeley
that sensuous presentations are sharply contrasted with such
states and processes as willing and attention, loving and
hating, which belong to the individual subject in his indivisible
Unity and Identity. But I have also consistently asserted
the other Berkeleyan position that sensations, though they
are not, like attending and willing, modes of the individual
consciousness as such, are not the less mind-dependent, inas-
much as they exist only in being experienced by some one.
I am, therefore, bound to explain how I can assume that the
presentation-continuum of the individual is continued beyond
itself into a whole of fundamentally like nature which tran-
scends and includes it. The only solution of this problem
which I can find is one already suggested by Berkeley, though
not developed by him in any coherent way. It is that pre-
sentations which do not exist in my mind exist in other minds.
Further, it is not enough merely to postulate a collection of
finite minds or "monads," even though we permit ourselves-
to multiply these ad libitum like Leibniz and Lotze. For the
confluence of the presentational content of our monad with
that of others would still ultimately fall outside the experi-
ence of the finite individuals. I therefore posit an omnipresent
mind as experiencing the whole presentation-continuum
which is shared out to finite individuals in partial allotments.
1 1 am throughout leaving out of count our knowledge of other minds,
and sensations as experienced by other minds. This requires a separate
discussion.
2 The quotation is from Ethics, Bk. ii., Prop, xvii., Schol. (White and
Stirling's translation).
14 G. F. STOUT: EEPLY TO ME. JOSEPH.
In conclusion, I have to apologise for the extremely egotis-
tical style of this paper. The apparent egotism is not due
to any desire on my part to assert or imply originality. Very
probably there is nothing in what I have said that is really
new. But except in the case of Leibniz, Spinoza, Kant and
Lotze, and my own teacher, Dr. Ward, 1 I find it difficult to
determine precisely what and how much I owe to others, and
to determine wherein precisely I agree with them, and
disagree from them. Hence, to avoid complications, I have,
for the most part, thought it best to speak as if I were
speaking for myself alone.
1 1 would refer to Dr. Ward as the source of everything in my writings
which he would not himself disown. But this is a large exception.
II. THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON.
BY J. SOLOMON.
THE central idea of Bergson's philosophy is as old as Hera-
clitus, that of an incessant becoming ; its peculiar merit is
that it leads us to understand far better the principle and
the effects of the eternal flux. In the inner world of con-
sciousness we can perceive that flux directly, and to the
inner world exclusively Bergson devotes the first of his works,
the Donne'es Immediates de la Conscience. But that his
latest work, that on Evolution, stands in the closest relation
to his earliest Bergson expressly points out in the preface to
the latter. For the idea developed in both is that of growth
and enrichment. As the bud grows into flower and fruit, so
the living body ripens, ages, and throws off fresh living
bodies, so species evolve into higher species, so perhaps the
world as a whole is ever re-creating itself. But in objective
things we see only the effects of the process, in the world of
consciousness we see the process itself ; we see a psychical
mass of elements perhaps separable but never separated
always interpenetrating, moving on as a whole towards an
adaptation to our present environment an adaptation which
is essentially Action, but which involves also all that we call
recognition, knowledge, instinct. Such a consciousness has
a history ; its life is not a mere filling of successive moments
of abstract time with a content now new, now old ; it is a
movement, in which there is no repetition, no subjection to
general laws a movement individual and irreversible. It
has temporal predicates ; there is in its life an earlier and a
later, length and brevity ; but its length is never that of so
many moments of abstract time but a certain duration
having a fixed ' protensive ' quality ; the hour-long toothache
is not two toothaches each of half an hour's length or sixty
minute-toothaches. An old, or rather effete, apophthegm
tells us ' History is philosophy teaching by examples ' ; but
< example ' has a meaning, general laws which is what is
here understood by l philosophy ' have a meaning, only
where there is repetition ; but history never repeats itself.
16 J. SOLOMON :
Every nation is vitally different from every other nation ; and
if a nation ever finds itself again in an old environment, it
will react to it, as an individual would, in a different way,
just because its growth in the interval has left it no longer
the same.
But if living things, conscious or unconscious, with souls
or without souls, may correctly be described as in endless,
irreversible movement, in which no repetition is possible
and no general law can be discerned, are there not inanimate
things with no principle of movement, ever repeating them-
selves at least while isolated from other influences and
essentially subject to general laws ? How then can the world
as a whole, which is largely composed of such things, be con-
ceived as engaged in the same process of continual self-
creation that we perhaps rightly attributed to living things ?
Does not science exist to confute such fancies ? if it has ad-
mittedly up to the present failed to understand the living,
has it not grasped general laws which enable us successfully
to predict the interactions of the non-living? does it not
find, and even of itself produce, endless repetitions among
the phenomena of the non-living ? We do not deny it. But
to predict or even to produce is not to explain. In all, even
physical, phenomena there is something which science can-
not, but happily need not, explain succession ; if, as Bergson
puts it, the melting of sugar in water takes time, there is in
some sense a history even to sugar. The dream of science is
to discover causes which involve their effects, which are their
effects ; but if ever the cause were the effect, then there
would be no cause, no effect at all.
And this brings us to a second idea ever running through
Bergson's work, his depreciation of intelligence, the very
faculty exercised in science and in the perception on which
science is built. He thus ventures on a ' Theory of Know-
ledge,' a theory which many thinkers from Lotze to Mr.
Prichard in his recent able work on Kant have come to regard
as a useless superfetation. But Bergson's theory is very
different from Kant's. It is a consequence of his thorough-
going belief in evolution, creative evolution of new and higher
forms of life. He holds evolution to have taken place on
three different lines the line of Automatism, exhibited in
plants ; the line of Instinct, exhibited pre-eminently in the
Hymenoptera ; the line of Intelligence, exhibited in the Ver-
tebrates and carried to its highest in Man. At the basis of
these modes of evolution, as at the basis of each particular
living individual, is a general Life-Force or ' ilan de vie,'
ever pushing on to organisations more free and more effec-
THE PHILOSOPHY OF BEEGSON. 17
tive in dealing with the brute matter of the environment.
But because this life-force held suspended in it different ten-
dencies which had to separate as they grew, it ultimately
developed itself along divergent lines, achieving at the ter-
minus of each an extraordinary success in the execution of
its main purpose, but by the radically different methods of
vegetism, instinct, and intelligence ; the view, in some form
as old as Aristotle and still commonly held, that the vegetal
automatism is the original basis on which instinct arises, and
that intelligence develops from instinct, or at least that there
is some community between the last two, Bergson regards
as radically false and disproved by the facts of evolution.
We cannot for the present unfold these ideas further. But
what is intelligence, what id the characteristic faculty of man,
by which he has attained so marvellous a command of his
environment ? It is something much more definite than a
vague power of adaptation. It is the capacity for fabrica-
tion, for making out of the inorganic, to some extent even
out of the organic, world, instruments, themselves inorganic
and external to their creator, for the satisfaction of his wants,
fire and clothes to keep him warm, a house to keep him dry,
fishing-rods and arrows to procure him food. But what is
the psychical capacity on which this power rests ? It is
man's power of detaching from the fluent continuum which is
absolute reality fixed things or fixed systems, the essence of
which so far as we can or need to determine them is just
that repetition, that obedience to law, which we do not find
in the living individual nor perhaps in Nature at all, if taken
as a whole. Intelligent action is the action that assumes
such fixity, intelligence is just the conscious assumption of
it. What we call logical principles and categories of the
understanding are just the assumptions, but assumptions
now consciously grasped, of a mode of action found to some
degree in all vertebrates, but in an infinitely higher degree in
man. But that mode of action and therefore those conscious
assumptions are the products of evolution ; how then can
they be the principle of evolution itself ? and if animals live
and grow in their bodies, their thoughts and character their
souls in short by a kind of evolution, how can we expect
that the intelligence and its categories should explain this
life and growth ? The seeming absoluteness then of the
ideas of the understanding, of natural law, of uniformity, of
causation, of unity and identity, of multiplicity, of non-con-
tradiction, is illusory. We men can attain no success except
by using them, and where we use them successfully they
must be approximately true. But there is the wide domain
2
18 J. SOLOMON:
of the living in which they meet with no success ; to insist
on applying them there is merely blindly to practice a natural
habit, the mental habit of the human species. The primitive
form of such habit is Perception, by which we isolate and
are thus able to use single fixed things ; the more refined form
is physical science, by which we isolate or construct fixed
systems. But neither perception nor science gives us the
ultimate truth ; intelligence is not the final arbiter. It is
the great divider, and it trusts as implicitly as the conqueror
to the maxim 'divide et impera'. The true motto of the
human species is ' Natura non nisi dividendo vincitur ' ; its
conquests are made by the violation, the disorganisation of
nature. The more familiar ' Natura non nisi parendo vincitur '
is the motto, we shall find, of instinct, of the bee and the ant.
Bergson's Donnees with wonderful sureness and insight
shows, as we have said, that the conscious life is a continuous
growth, a real whole that changes as a whole, no merely ap-
parent whole in which certain immutable elements, obeying
as to their mutual relations immutable laws, effect apparent
changes in the whole by reconstructions now here, now
there, in its substance. It is no mere succession of precisely
definable states, ever repeated with an equal or different in-
tensity, associated with one another or free from such
association. A self-conscious mind cannot be this, for " a
succession of perceptions is not a perception of succession ".
Nor can the ' parts ' of a mental state be really separate and
juxtaposed ; we directly feel their interpenetration, the in-
tegrity of the soul. The second chapter of the Donnees de-
fends this thesis. The first helps in destroying the crude
notion of separable definable mental states by showing that
we do not experience the same state in varying degrees of in-
tensity as commonsense and the psycho-physicists suppose ;
but that the so-called different intensities of a single sensa-
tion, effort, sentiment, emotion are really different sensations
or emotions altogether.
Let us speak first of the admirable first chapter, a chapter
which no one can read without feeling that a new power has
arisen in the philosophical world. Intensity is a kind of
magnitude, as even Kant acknowledged by his antithesis of
intensive and extensive magnitudes. But magnitude is
spatial or it is nothing ; the greater contains the less, it is
the less with something added to it. But who can think of
a heat of 90 as a heat of 60 + a heat of 30 ? or of a great
joy as a sum of smaller joys ? or of a great effort as a sum of
smaller efforts ? Each sensible ' degree ' of heat has its own
special quality ; and so has each degree of illumination and
THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON. 19
of saturation, no less than each shade of colour. What then
is that difference which is signified by ' more and less in-
tense ' ? and why do we identify it with the difference be-
tween the large and the small? We must not give the
same answer in every case. In sensation the magnitude of
the external object, in effort the magnitude of the external
movement, no doubt counts for something in our conscious-
ness and gives the appearance of largeness and smallness to
the sensation or effort itself. But the profounder explanation
of the seemingly various intensities of the same effort, the
only explanation of the seemingly various intensities of the
same emotion is that the ' intenser ' is radically different
from the less intense. An intenser joy is not a dilatation of
the same joy ; it is the coloration of a greater number of ele-
ments in our mental life ; in its extreme form it makes all
our feelings and our perceptions different from what they
were. An intense pain, says the psychologist, ' irradiates '
to new elements ; in fact the irradiation is not a property of
the intensity, it is the intensity. A greater effort is not a
greater tension of the same part of the body, it is a tension
spreading to a greater number of parts. If we extend the
arm and slightly bend the first finger without contracting a
muscle of the hand, we may feel a considerable expenditure
of energy : but this comes from the simultaneous fixation of
the muscles of the chest, the closing of the glottis, the active
contraction of the respiratory muscles (D. 15-19).
The psycho-physicists then, who profess to measure
mental states, build on a rotten foundation. Indeed com-
mon sense-recoils from the conclusions to which they push
its own assumption. Consciousness finds no meaning in
that * minimum increment of sensation ' and the equality ' of
all such minima ' which are the fundamental assumptions of
Fechner ; nor yet in an equality of the differences between
two pairs of sensations, on which the experiments of Del-
boeuf rest (D. 42-4).
But, when we have granted the interpenetration of all
the elements of consciousness at a single moment, there still
remains the doctrine lightly dismissed by us on page 18, that,
after all, the conscious life is a succession, and so consists of
real parts really juxtaposed, only not in space but in time.
Does not Kant say that Time is the form of inner perception,
as Space of Outer Perception ? Now against this view Berg-
son never ceases to protest. His crusade against abstract
Time is in fact one phase of his fundamental doctrine, as the
constant self-creation of living things perhaps even of the
whole universe, or his protests against the inadequateness
20 J. SOLOMON:
of intelligence are others. For to postulate abstract time is
to break up the continuous process which is the essence of
reality into an infinite number of stationary parts each of
which corresponds to or occurs in ' a moment of time '.
Such a comminution the intelligence makes and, as the
characteristic and within limits the successful method of
human action, is justified in making. But in doing so it
gets rid of the continuous process of reality altogether and
so far falsifies reality. And what does it substitute for it ?
There is a real concrete time, part of things themselves, the
duration felt by the living, unfelt by the inanimate which
belongs to their changes. But intelligence substitutes for
this an abstract time, an homogeneous measurable medium,
a conception fraught with endless self-contradiction. For it
is at once an ever disappearing and yet a persistent reality,
instantaneous and yet eternal, elica) KIW^TOV TOV at,ayvo<$, as
Plato says in the Timceus. But this monster is really but
a ' bastard ' of space, an application of space to a region where
space is inapplicable. For separateness, divisibility, numera-
bility, number itself are conceivable only where space, real
or ideal, is presupposed. If the things we count are merely
in time, then each passes away as it is noted ; to make a
whole, i.e. to be really counted, they must remain, i.e. they
must all be in one space, real or ideal. We do not to use
Bergson's illustration count the men in a regiment when
we call the roll of it.
That abstract time is merely space over again is shown
by our imagining it as a line. That the image is unwork-
able appears as soon as we have to speak of ' the movement
of time '. We have to add to our line an object moving uni-
formly along it. In fact when we assign to a process a cer-
tain length of time we really mean that the process ends
simultaneously with the arrival of the standard object at a
certain point on the line, its movement having commenced
simultaneously with the commencement of the process.
And this is all that our measurements of time tell us, the
isimultaneities between one process and another, the standard
process being chosen for its uniformity, and the ultimate test
of its uniformity being nothing but this, that we feel it to be
uniform, whether it be the movement of the sun in the sky,
or that of a pendulum. Of a mysterious monster, time,
whose essence it is to move uniformly, the man of science
knows nothing. Of movement, then, itself science tells us
nothing, but only of simultaneities betweeri different move-
ments. But these are just what for the purposes of practice
we really want to know. Suppose everything moved twice
THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON. 21
as fast as at present, our limbs included ; our feelings would
be very different ; but our actions would need no alteration ;
nor would our mathematical 'equations of motion'. The
paradoxes of Zeno whether obviously absurd as ' the fly-
ing arrow rests,' ' a time is double itself,' or plausible as
that of Achilles and the tortoise all rest on the identification
of Movement itself with the line traversed by it. Because
that is divisible as we please, it is assumed that the move-
ment is so : and we placidly take for granted that Achilles'
movement is fairly represented by steps taken as and when
the tortoise takes its steps, only ten times, say, as long.
Bergson recurs often to these paradoxes.
But now, says Bergson in chapter iii., determinists and
libertarians wage a contest over our liberty, endless, because
both take that view of conscious life which we have already
refuted. If our life were merely a succession of ' moments '
at each of which was to be found an aggregate of distinct
tendencies each of a given strength, then it seems impossible
to deny that the actions performed would be fatally deter-
mined. But this is the view of intelligence, analysing after
its usual fashion a given or made whole ; it is retrospection
over our past. But living is not retrospection except pos-
sibly in morbid cases, where the spring of life is broken, the
man feels himself a prisoner of his past, and asks despair-
ingly, ' What else can such a being as I do ? ' Knowledge
looks backward, it sees a road traversed ; life looks forward,
it makes a road. When we have to act, we do not feel our-
selves a mere collection of tendencies of definite strength;
nay, as we have shown, the very idea of ' the strength ' of a
tendency is a false one ; we feel, as we are making up our
mind, that a particular tendency is now less, now more ab-
sorbing. It is only the outside spectator or ourselves, when
the action is 'over, that can map our soul into tendencies
and assign each a definite strength. Ultimately the deter-
minist's argument is ' I cannot see how I could have acted
otherwise' which is an attitude of retrospection, not of liv-
ing. But the libertarian is just as much retrospective, just
as ignorant of the real movement of life. Only, looking back
to a point farther back than the determinist, to a point pre-
ceding the movement which issued in the present act, he
says ' I see that I could have acted otherwise ; I do not see
anything that forced me to act as I have done '.
But conscious life is found only in connexion with living
body. Is it in such dependence on the latter as will force us
to retract the view we have given of it above ? What is a
living body, and what does it do ? Is it essentially the same
22 J. SOLOMON :
as inanimate matter, only wrought into an organized indivi-
dual where every part tends to serve every other? or is
it some entirely new substance? These are the ques-
tions biological, psychological, metaphysical considered in
Matiere et Mdmoire. Its answer is that even where the
conscious life seems most dependent on the body, in percep-
tion and memory, its life is yet essentially spiritual. A life-
force, essentially such as we have recognized in the conscious
life, has been gradually insinuating itself into matter, adapt-
ing matter more and more precisely and comprehensively to
become the organ of its further action. If it has become
imprisoned in the living body, it has at least made its
prison-house to suit itself.
The living body, say of man, perceives, feels, and acts
upon the bodies that surround it. Its action on them pre-
sents no special difficulty, it is just one case of the action of
matter on matter. But what of its perception ? is that the
converse of its action, is it the action of the surrounding
matter on the human body? In that case the action of
matter on matter would produce something entirely novel
and mysterious, a representation of the agent. The material-
ist boldly says that it does ; that, in addition to the material
effect on nerves and brain, there is further produced in the
latter a shadow surely a most inappropriate name of the
material effect, an extra or epi-phenomenon, powerless as all
shadows are, and in no way accounting for anything that
follows. Common-sense, repelled by this conclusion, while
taking perception to be in the first place a material action on
the brain, supposes its effect on the brain to be translated
into a state or phase of the immaterial mind, a representa-
tion of the external object, or as the idealists would say
something out of which the external object is constructed.
But the brain is just one part of the general material system
and connected with the rest by physical laws ; if they are
images, so is the brain ; if the brain is real, so are they.
Materialism, common-sense, idealism, however much they
differ, agree in the impossible postulate that the part some-
how contains the whole.
Bergson's view is very different. He holds that life is
action, adaptation, utilisation, that perception is ' an annex
to action,' practical not contemplative, and possible therefore
only in relation to the present, which alone acts and can be
acted on. Our elaborate nervous system is only an immense
complication by successive differentiation and dissociation of
the formless amoeba, in whose uniform contractility and ex-
citability perception and action are fused and indistinguish-
THE PHILOSOPHY OF BEEGSON. 23
able, in which " touch is at once active and passive, and the
instrument of perception is also a means of defence ". With
us they seem separated ; perception and action seem two
wholly different kinds of consciousness ; and the bodily
organs of each seem not less separate. But let us assume
what alone seems reasonable that in us, as in the amoeba,
movement is given to the body from the external and re-
turned by it to the external, only by a far greater variety of
routes, since in us endless motor nerves can be connected in
' the great telephone exchange ' of the brain with endless
sensory nerves. The question then remains what deter-
mines the actual connexion, what determines the specific
route taken ? Bergson answers, Spirit, the Life whose prin-
ciple is adaptation, utilisation. Whenever we intelligently
act, a question has been put to the motor activity and an-
swered ; but the same should be said whenever we perceive.
All perception is nascent action, action ready to be executed
but not yet executed ; choice has taken place, but execution
can be postponed. Hence in our reflex re-actions say of
blinking at light there is no perception, because execution
is immediate, and the act is not chosen but necessary ; hence
in the amoeba perception is fused in action, because the
amoeba is sensitive only to what is in contact with it and its
re-action cannot be postponed, while the simplicity of its
system allows it no choice of routes for its re-action. But
Man is sensible to the distant and takes an active attitude
towards it before execution is absolutely necessary, an atti-
tude in which there is an element of choice. This attitude
is perception itself. Only in this way can the variability in
our perception of the same object be understood ; and in a
sense Bergson would accept Plato's view that perception
does not give knowledge. But none the more does he accept
the idealistic view that perception is a merely subjective
condition, a ' hallucination vraie,' from which external objects
are constructed by a mysterious * projection '. The percep-
tion gives the real, the external, but only so much of it as
may affect us and be affected by us ; and this awakens a
consciousness in us just because of our freedom of action in
respect to it. So far as its effects on us and our consequent
movement are not merely possible but actual and necessarily
determined by physical laws, we may have sensation proper,
a truly subjective state ;\but perceive we do not. We feel,
say, an increasing heat ; we do not perceive the fire that
causes it. True perception is the reflexion thrown by our
freedom on that which awakens it to action. But this re-
flexion is no mere image in us of a thing without us. If
24 J. SOLOMON:
we must call it an ' image,' it is at least no more an image
than what the most thorough-going materialism would call
the ultimate elements of the world, matter and movement.
If this language implies ' relativity,' it is only the relativity
denned in what Mill (Hamilton, ch. ii.) justly calls ' the in-
significant truism,' that ' our knowledge is relative to us
inasmuch as it is we that know it '. We must only add that
we are speaking of pure perception, entirely unqualified by
memory, which of course adds a personal element, as when
one who has had experience of ice 'perceives,' in merely
seeing it, its coldness a quality entirely invisible to one un-
familiar with ice. And memory, if Bergson is right, may
qualify our perception in a different way. For the rhythm
of our life may be entirely different from that of the object ;
a moment of our life may contain many moments of the ob-
ject's ; thus what is for us an instantaneous perception of
red light corresponds to 400 billion vibrations in the object ;
in fact all ' the sensible qualities ' of objects seem to be per-
ceptions into which an enormous number of the object's
moments are contracted, seem in short to involve a memory.
But if for the moment we neglect this, we may say that
' pure perception ' is an instantaneous and impersonal contact
with real objects. We feel it at first as impersonal ; it is
only later that we discover among the images it gives one
that of our own body, namely which remains invariable,
while all the others vary with change in our body's position.
But common-sense, when it discovers this, does not fly to
the conclusion that all our perceptions are merely subjective ;
and it is only a false logic that has forced philosophers to do
so. Matter then is something including and greater than
our perceptions ; it is not something intrinsically different
from them.
Finally, we said above (p. 17) that man's characteristic
power, the intelligence, is shown in ' detaching from the
fluent continuum which is absolute reality fixed things'.
Obviously perception does this ; and if our account of the
nature of perception is correct, this is what we should expect
it to do. But since the power of man is so much greater
than that of animals, that of the adult so much greater than
that of the child, we should expect ' the fixed things ' which
each detaches from the continuum to be very different. That
they are so is a commonplace to all who have observed
children in the open air. 'A slight ridge,' says Sir G.
Trevelyan in his delightful account of Macaulay's boyhood,
' the very existence of which no one above eight years old would
notice, was dignified with the title of the Alps ' . ' Chaque
THE PHILOSOPHY OF BEKGSON. 2fr
etre,' says Bergson (E.G., 396, 7), 'decompose le monde-
materiel selon les lignes memes que son action y doit suivre.'
Scientific man marks off not things but systems of things ;
or divides things to any extent he may find feasible or desir-
able. This potentiality of divisibility is what he expresses
in the conception of Space, which is just the ' schema ' of
divisibility, not sensible but ' a form of sensibility ' ; only
not of universal sensibility but only of that of the physicist
or geometer.
Perception then involves our own body and external 1
bodies ; it is the nascent adaptive action of the former on the
latter. But what are we to say of memory and its images?
As dispensing with an external object it might seem purely
spiritual. But it depends on previous perceptions, it seems
even to common-sense to store them * in our heads,' and it is-
certainly affected by damage to the brain. We cannot then,
doubt that it is somehow connected with matter, if not al-
together material. And }^et the storehouse theory of memory-
has most serious difficulties. For why should the contents
of the storehouse ever re-appear? and why should they re-
appear with that modification that makes us regard them as
past ? if they went in perceptions, why should they come out
something else? These are further problems of Matiere et
Ndmoire. Bergson concludes, as we shall see, that memory
can only be explained from the spiritual part of man ; that
all the phenomena of it, normal and pathological, are com-
patible with such a theory only. The problem has an im-
portance as great for metaphysics as for psychology. For if
memory can be materialised, then the very fortress of thought
has been captured by the materialist, since the connexion of
thinking with memory is obvious, and is in fact implied in
most languages ; to ' think of,' in English, is synonymous:
with ' to recall ' .
It has been commonly held since Hume that memory-
images are but fainter perception-images. The great objec-
tion to this is that the former are felt as past, the latter as
present and acting. Bergson accordingly holds that the first,
condition of the memory-image is, that d'emblfa, from the
outset, we should by a purely mental act, pure memory,
place ourselves in thought in the past ; out of this attitude
there grow up, he holds, nebulous at first but ever more dis-
tinct, images becoming constantly more and more like those
of perception ; but they must be felt to have their roots in-
the past, and that is why they are felt as past.
Yet there is undoubtedly a close approximation between
the memory- and the perception-image, close enough to make:
26 J. SOLOMON :
Hume's view seem very plausible ; and this approximation
proceeds not merely from the side of memory, but from the
side of perception as well. For when we ' see ' the coldness
of ice or the heat of steaming water (p. 24), we have a per-
ception which is at bottom a memory. And so long as we
take a merely static view of the memory- and the perception-
image, we may like Prof. Stout perhaps the first among
living English psychologists protest against the identifica-
tion of the two, but we are powerless to resist it. Bergson
.shows us the root of the error. It lies in this, that our under-
standing, as we said on page 17, by its fixed habit picks out
the stable from the fluid, notes the end and ignores the pro-
cess in which it is a stage. We have indeed the words
' process ' or ' movement ' ; but we can make no use of them
for scientific determination ; they remain mere abstractions,
reminding us of the essential feature of our conscious life and
probably of all life, but incapable of use in calculation, pro-
duction, or prediction. And yet they express the ultimate
reality. And we see this in our present example. We try
to define the memory-image and entirely fail to distinguish
it from the perception-image, in spite of all the protests of
our consciousness. But the radical difference between them
is in the processes in which they are merely termini ; and
the process ending in the memory-image is one, as we have
already said shortly and shall presently show in more detail,
that starts in the mind, though it may fuse in an active per-
ception which undoubtedly involves the body.
Will it be said that we have images, due to past experi-
ence, but not ' memory-images,' not professing to be copies
of the past ; and that these by a sort of attraction to the per-
ception -we remember Hume's idea that * attraction ' might
be the great principle of the mental as of the physical world
fuse or identify themselves with the perception and thus
enrich it or make it more familiar to us ? But in fact what
we have pointed out is that a ' mere image ' is a dried, inert
abstraction ; how could such an image accept as the same
what we call the same word but what is really a multitude
of different sounds according to the pitch or dialect in which
it is pronounced ? or how is it that the same sound * attracts '
quite different images according to the context in which it
occurs ? But the fact is that an image is a stage in a pro-
- cess, and we should not speak of ' the image ' as if it were
something absolutely definite. In fact it never is so. Not
merely have different people different powers of ' visualisa-
tion,' i.e. they attach different visual images to the same
word, but each of us has different images according to the
THE PHILOSOPHY OF BEBGSON. 27
needs of the occasion ; the memories that recur even of the
same experience will be of different degrees of particularity ;
or, as Bergson puts it, ' Memory has several planes '. At its
most diffused or detailed plane it is the memory of the
dreamer, who revels in the past but never applies it ; at its
narrowest plane it is the memory of the man of action who
puts himself in the past merely to obtain the general extract
of it that will fuse with his actual perception. We are learn-
ing to make a distinction unknown to our fathers between
* idea ' and ' image,' to see that an ' idea ' at least is a process,
and that we have ' ideas ' of much say of the English Con-
stitution of which we could not have 'images'. We have
only to proceed further on this path to see that the image it-
self is a creation prompted by the same purposes as the idea,
varying therefore with that purpose and never twice the
same even in the same person. Such phrases as a ' clear
idea ' or a ' perfect image ' are misleading, there is no such
absolute ideal for either image or idea as such phrases set up ;
each is a creation for a purpose and each is perfect so far as
it fulfils the purpose. The thinkers who speak of perfect and
imperfect images are just those who speak of a store-house
of images. But is it a perfect or an imperfect image that is
stored there ? if perfect, how does it ever come out imperfect ?
if imperfect, how does it ever come out perfect ? But there are
no such stored images, fetched out or awakened by the act of
perception. Not the perception elicits the image, but the image
comes out to meet and fuse with the perception as the whole
self struggles to adapt itself to the present environment.
To make this idea clearer Bergson takes the case of our
apprehension of spoken words. The same case has been
taken by Prof. Stout in his excellent chapter on ' Implicit
Apprehension ' (Analytic Psychology, i., 78-96), and his con-
clusions, though more vaguely expressed, agree with Berg-
son's. He, too, sees that the view that speech is apprehended
by the hearer through the resuscitation in him by each word
of a corresponding image is contradicted by experience ;
that ' images ' rarely arise in him at all, but that a vague
apprehension of the speaker's total drift first emerges and is
then defined by, but in its own way also colours and helps to
fix the relations of, the words actually heard. We know that
in the development of language the sentence precedes the
word ; that the first step in an infant's apprehension of lan-
.guage is to feel as a whole what the speaker means, or rather
what he wants. So in listening the hearer's whole person-
ality reacts to adapt itself to the meaning, the purpose of the
-speaker ; but such reaction, like thought generally, is a move-
28 J. SOLOMON :
ment, and therefore not to be represented by ' images ' which
are things (Matiere, 133). Common experience shows and
experiments have definitely proved (ib., 106) that there is a
vast amount of divination in our understanding not merely
of the ' winged ' word but even of litera scripta. We our-
selves once thought we saw a tradesman's name twice
stamped in consecutive lines above his shop-front ; the fact
was that there was but one set of letters, but a crack extended
across them from the bottom left hand to the top right hand
corner. Such ' divination,' Bergson justly contends, is fatal
to the mechanical theory of memory. Bergson's superiority
is that he shows clearly what does occur as well as what is
falsely supposed to occur, while Prof. Stout is content
with the complementary metaphors of ' image ' and ' image-
less fringe '.
The Past does not leave behind a deposit of images in
'imaginative brain-centres,' nor is an ' apperceptive centre'
needed to re-awaken them. But we may assume that the
past experiences of a living being are never lost (Ball, ap.
Matiere, 168 note). They are still present with us in our
character; why then should they be incapable of re-appear-
ing as representations ? In pathological cases they have
been found to re-appear in unexpected, even in startling ways.
But into our normal consciousness, ' orientated ' as it is by
the very constitution of the sensori-motor nervous system
towards action, they will not for all their forward pressure
gain admission except they promote action, except they
help us to ' answer the question put to our motor activity'.
Just as far as they are impotent for this we are unconscious
of them. But it is an empty logic that would deny the
existence of ' unconscious mental states,' not less empty than
the logic of Berkeley that would deny the existence of un-
perceived things. Common-sense repels the latter doctrine
because it has to admit a possible efficacity in regions of
space outside that which we are observing ; it accepts the'
former because it sees no possible efficacity in the region of
time outside the present. But we have seen that the past
experience shows its efficacity in the mould it has given to-
our present character ; it moulds also our present perception in
the shape of such ' images ' from it as will insert themselves
in our present perceived environment, as when we see the
coldness as well as the blueness of the ice-block in the glacier
we are crossing and shrink from contact with it ; or when the
sight of clouds makes us think of rain and look round for our
umbrella ; or when a present mood maintains and as it were
justifies itself by admitting images of a certain kind, only,.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON. 29
those of dangers when we are depressed, those of pleasures
when we are happy. This is the reason why in our normal
states the revived images always show the characters of ' re-
semblance ' and *" contiguity ' a truth which ' the laws of
Association ' invert in affirming that resemblance and con-
tiguity effect the revival. The fact is that it is only the
resembling and contiguous that fit into and illumine the
present situation ; it is from it and as part of it that they
get that vivacity which makes us speak of them as ' revived '.
In pathological conditions past experiences crowd back on us
in defiance of the laws of Association, apparently because of
a relaxation of the ordinary connexion between the afferent
and efferent parts of the nervous system ; the useless recol-
lection can no longer be kept from intruding.
The doctrine of a physical storage of ' images,' Bergson
points out, is largely due to a confusion between the motor
or organic memory, which re-acts to stimulus with appro-
priate bodily movement, and the spontaneous memory, which
gives us images out of the past. The former is a bodily
habit created by repeated effort to perform a certain act,
whether the act is to recite without book a dozen lines of
Virgil, to play a difficult musical phrase on a piano, to ride a
bicycle. The repetition creates in the nervous system a new
mechanism which functions of itself as soon as started.
There is a real lodgment in a real material. But the image
of a past experience does not recur to us by such effort ; for
the experience being unique cannot be repeated. It just
survives, but unconsciously : what consciously revives it we
have just now endeavoured to state. As there are two
kinds of memory, so there are two kinds of recognition
motor recognition when, without images from the past, we
simply make appropriate use of the object or at least feel
it to be familiar ; spontaneous or intelligent recognition,
where images from the past eater and incorporate them-
selves with and give their character to the object perceived.
Attention is the act that facilitates intelligent recognition.
It cannot do so as both Bergson and Stout urge by the
concentration of some mysterious inner light on the object.
On the other hand, neither is it reducible to those physical
tensions usually called the ' fixation of attention ' which
we undoubtedly create and experience. It is a mental act
which prompts such physical acts or attitudes as will bar the
entrance of useless images and facilitate the entrance of use-
ful ones. And thus in full accordance with his general theory
Bergson can explain what Stout cannot, how attention is at
once physical and spiritual.
30 J. SOLOMON:
On the defects of memory and their organic conditions
we have no space to follow Bergson through his learned and
acute discussion. The defects, which are of such extraordin-
ary variety that the most recent pathologists have come to
despair of conceiving any physical theory for them at all
(Matiere, 132), cannot be explained as those who find in the
brain a storehouse of images would fain explain them, viz.
by the lesion of some special brain-centre. Bain thought,
logically enough, that the damaged brain-centre must be the
centre that functioned in the original perception (Matiere,
134) ; but patients who have lost their visual or auditory
images can still see or hear. If to account for this we assume
special ' imaginative centres,' the facts force us to assume an
ever larger number of these, and an ever-increasing number
of connexions between them. But give up with Bergson the
theory that the brain is a seat of perceptions or images. If
only there is such a lesion in the nervous system that the
physical impressions received from without cannot be pro-
longed into the physical acts that usually complete them,
then we can no longer name or use the object present to our
senses ; motor-memory miscarries. On the other hand,
imagine such a lesion that we become incapable of making
the physical movements needed, as we have seen, for effective
attention, then the images from the past that should incor-
porate themselves in, and so define, the present object to us
fail to return. And this gives an intelligible reason why a
particular sort of memory should be weakened without being
altogether abolished ; why, for instance, the memory for names
should vanish not at once but step by step, that for proper
names vanishing first, that for common nouns next, that for
verbs last, just because the actions into which these fit them-
selves, being the simplest, are the last to become im-
practicable to the patient (Matiere, 127). ' The supposed
destruction of memories is only the interruption of a con-
tinuous process by which memory actualises itself ' (Matiere,
126).
The psychological results of the Donnees and the Matiere
need not be further insisted on. Their metaphysical re-
sult is to dethrone at once materialism and idealism, the for-
mer by establishing the reality of mind or life, the latter by
establishing the reality of matter, of movement, and, in a
measure, even of the sensible qualities of matter. But they
show that we are not to conceive matter as merely possessing
shape, infinitely divisible solidity, a capacity for being trans-
lated without change, so that no variation is possible to it
except in the form, size, and mutual distances of its parts.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF BEEGSON. 31
This is the reduction of it effected by our intelligence ; this
makes it amenable to geometry, this holds before the physi-
cist the illusive dream of a day when it will be possible to
construct a priori all future states of the universe. But we
have learnt the uses and limits of intelligence, and can no
longer be misled by it. To us matter is essentially that to
which the life-force can give the diversity and intricacy of
structure that fit it to be the precise and adequate organ of
the life-impulse itself.
What novelty beyond their mere elaboration does the
longest and to readers untrained in philosophy the most at-
tractive of Bergson's works L'Evolution Crfatrice add to>
these ideas? It connects them with the doctrine of the
evolution of species. It shows that the facts of this evolu-
tion are the strongest confirmation of Bergson's theory of
vital change; the strongest refutation of a mechanical
or a finalistic theory, even though the latter takes the
plausible form of Vitalism, which finds a principle of har-
monious self-maintenance in each living body. It shows
that these same facts confirm Bergson's theory of intelli-
gence and its restriction to a special sphere, and so establish
a real separation, unknown to other systems, between philo-
sophy and science.
That the evolution of species is a fact Bergson takes leave
to assume. Some may still think it doubtful whether it pro-
ceeds by literal filiation. But the relations of living forms
shown by the naturalist's classifications, the facts of em-
bryological change, the chronological succession of forms
disclosed by palaeontology, show that there is a real passage
from less to more evolved forms, whether effected by filiation
or otherwise. Can, then, this fact be explained by either a
mechanical or a finalistic theory ? But first let us make a
preliminary remark on theories of these two kinds.
It is obvious that a mechanical theory must deny that
genuine creation, that incessant uprising of the new and un-
predictable which to Bergson is the essence of the universe.
For that theory requires, in the well-known phrases once
more cited by Bergson from Laplace, Du Bois Eeymond,
and Huxley, that a complete knowledge of the world at any
one time would involve to a superhuman intelligence a know-
ledge of it at any later time ; it involves the view that ' all
is given,' the view to use W. James's phrase of ' a block-
universe '. But a finalistic theory makee the very same
postulate. The superhuman intelligence would see the final
shape that the Universe will assume, the tendencies that are
making for the creation of that shape. And the common
.32 J. SOLOMON :
blot in both theories is their anthropomorphism. Man can
only create where he has unchanging things for his materials
and respects their unchanging laws ; and this same necessity
is supposed by both theories to bind nature as well : ' I can-
not,' says Lord Kelvin somewhere, 'be satisfied that I have
-explained any natural process, unless I can construct a
working model of it '. The finalistic theory adds that nature
further imitates man by having in its creations the idea of
some plan which an ingenious utilisation of its unchanging
materials will realise. But the characteristic action of man
and the psychical process which underlies it, intelligence, is,
like the human species itself, the product of evolution ; how
then can it be its principle ? The fact is that we being fami-
liar with only one kind of creation tend to look for it every-
where ; if our assumption is wrong, we are left in darkness.
But that is no reason for holding the assumption to be right,
and we have just seen that there is the strongest possible
reason for holding it to be wrong.
Nor will the detailed facts of evolution fit either into a
mechanical or a finalistic theory ; neither into Darwinism
with its theory of accidental, transmissible variations in the
germ, whether small or, as Bateson and De Vries hold, large
and multiple ; nor into the orthogenesis of Eimer, who holds
that external influences adapt the organism to themselves by
effecting changes in it always in the same constant direc-
tion ; nor into the finalistic views whether of the neo-La-
marckians who make evolution the result of effort, or of
Reinke and Driesche who affirm the doctrine of Vitalism and,
in Leibnizian language, make a ' dominant entelechy ' direct
each living body to its own preservation. One striking fact
brought forward by Bergson tests with fatal effect the sound-
ness of each theory the formation namely in organisms
widely divergent of identical complex organs with an iden-
tical function, e.g. of the eye in Vertebrates and in a certain
Mollusc (Pecten). To suppose with the Darwinians that the
accumulation of variations can effect two such results is to
suppose, not that two different roads may bring two inde-
pendent travellers to the same point, but that two independ-
ent travellers might follow paths of identical form, though
that form were composed of innumerable zigzags. Eimer's
theory owes its plausibility to the ambiguity of the word
' adaptation '. The beaker into which water or any fluid is
poured determines, no doubt, the form they all take. But if
such insertion is to be called ' adaptation,' it is at least wholly
different from the adaptation by which a living thing moulds
itself to take the greatest advantage from its surroundings.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF BEEGSON. 33
The adaptation may begin in a purely physical way ; it may
well be that light created the rudimentary eye, the pigmented
spot. But so to use Bergson's brilliant illustration the
orator begins by adopting the passions of the crowd he ad-
dresses, but only that in the end he may direct them, and
this end he effects. Will it be said that the perfect eye is
not an adaptation created to profit by the light ? that it is
simply created and has, when created, the power of seeing
what light illuminates ? But the human eye co-operates with
and is adapted to the entire sensori-motor system with the
sense-organs and the muscles and bones that are its append-
ages. It is in conjunction with them that it forms an in-
strument for useful action in an illuminated world. But
who will pretend that all these systems were created by the
direct action of light, which Eimer makes the sufficient cause
of the eye and its function ?
So much for mechanical explanations. The finalistic
theory would either make the whole universe harmonious a
thesis few have cared to maintain since Leibniz' optimism
was exploded by the ridicule of Voltaire ; or if we apply it,
as Vitalism applies it, not to the universe as a whole but only
to those fragments of it which we call organic beings, the
physiology of one such being say man is enough to show
that there is in them no such absolute internal harmony ;
even in our body the parts live for themselves and some will
antagonise the welfare of the whole or even destroy it.
But is not Bergson's own theory of adaptive self -creation
a kind of finalism ? has not such creation a purpose ? No,
if by purpose we mean a fixed end ; yes, if by purpose we mean
a conscious tendency. We must assume an original Life-
Force or tendency, holding in equilibrium many tendencies,
which presently, as they grow, split off and are dissociated.
The child fascinates us by the many possibilities we see in
him ; as he grows up, one set alone realises itself and the
rest are abandoned. But the Life-Force need abandon no-
thing ; it need not evolve in a single eternal individual, nor
even in a single series of individuals ; it can give rise to many
series ever diverging. Yet as all had a single source, even
the strongest resemblances between members of different
series need not surprise us ; Pecten and Homo may have the
same function of vision. But how did they come by the
same apparatus ? Bergson's answer is that the real creation
of the Life-Force is the function, not the apparatus. It is
our anthropomorphic bias that insists on treating the func-
tion as a consequence of the apparatus. Suppose we thrust
our hand and arm into a mass of iron filings ; when the action
3
34 J. SOLOMON :
is completed, the filings have assumed a certain form ; but
has that form any resemblance to our act ? When we take
the structure of the eye as accounting for its function, are
we not acting precisely as one might who analysed and geo-
metrised the complex form assumed by the filings and hoped
in the end thus to account for it with no thought of the act
which really created it ?
That life, then, should develop along different lines, is
what the view of Bergson would lead us to expect. Common-
sense declares that there are such different lines. Does
science contradict it ? does science agree with Aristotle that
the animal life contains the vegetable, the human the
animal? Evolutionary science answers emphatically, No.
Doubtless the vegetative tendency may be found in animals
and man ; doubtless instinctive function, so marvellously de-
veloped in bees, is found in man. And if the Life-Force is
one, if all life started in formless protoplasm, there is nothing
to surprise us in such admixture of tendencies. But look at
the prevailing tendency in each realm, the tendency that is
found to accentuate itself with evolutionary progress in that
realm. The vegetable is stationary, ever nourishing itself
on the circumambient air from which by its chlorophyll! an
function it extracts the carbon it needs, storing energy con-
tinuously, giving it out continuously. The animal feeds
ultimately on the plant, stores its energy and gives out its
energy discontinuously, acts and moves though in general
instinctively, in a way fixed by its organization. Man too
stores and gives out energy discontinuously, acts and moves,
but with conscious intelligence. True, there are plants that
move, climb, catch insects and eat them ; but this is not the
line along which plant-evolution proceeds ; it is not the more
but the less evolved, or the starved or degenerate, plants that
thus act. At the other end of the scale we find in man a
tendency to vegetate ; but this is not the line of his evolu-
tion ; it marks a residuum from the life-principle, which the
more active of the species have cast away. Instinct again
we find in the vertebrates and even in man. But the evolu-
tionary line, in which it is the dominant principle, is that
which culminates in the hymenoptera, bees, ants, wasps.
In them it is that we see almost pure the nature of instinct.
Embedded in the structure of their bodies, it provides them
with an adaptation to the conditions of their lives more per-
fect than the finest intelligence could create ; it endows these
minute insects with a knowledge and adroitness such as one
who was at once a learned entomologist and a skilled surgeon
could scarcely rival. But it is strictly limited to special
THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERaSON. 35
things and special aspects of them, like the infant's know-
ledge of the nurse's breast and its power to suck. It is
bound up with the physical organization. In fact between
the instinct that uses the organization and the process that
creates it we find it impossible to draw the line.
Instinct and intelligence supply, says Bergson, ' equally
elegant solutions of the same problem '. But they are pro-
foundly different ; instinct is not ' lapsed intelligence,' nor
intelligence a complex of instincts. Intelligence aims at
fabrication ; it needs for its material the unchanging, the re-
producible at all times and places ; ultimately, it deals not
with special things but with special relations. Tentatively
exploring it finds the material suited to it ; this material is
the non-living. Instinct does not fabricate, it uses ; or if it
constructs, its work is not one in which each part finds itself
co-operating with other parts naturally indifferent to it, but
an organic whole. It knows by a sort of ' sympathy ' the
things it deals with ; but it knows nothing about them, from
which it could infer their behaviour in other relations.
Therefore instinct knows, or at least can handle, the living.
Man can only do so, so far as he possesses a similar instinct ;
the more he applies in this field the dissecting and recon-
structing method of his intelligence, the more completely he
fails. In these days when we find good and formative
teachers as rare as ever, but ' text-books of Paedagogy ' thick
as leaves in Vallombrosa, and teachers of Psedagogy who
have either never taught or failed as teachers more numer-
ous still, it is well to call attention to the strong words of
Bergson (E.G., 179) : 'the intelligence, so adroit at manage-
in g the inert, shows its clumsiness as soon as it touches the
living. The history of Hygiene and Pedagogy could say
much on this point. When one reflects on the urgent and
capital interest we have in the preservation of our bodies and
the elevation of our souls, on the special facilities granted to
each of us for incessant experiment, and the palpable loss
which is the price of insufficiency in our medical and peda-
gogical practice, one remains astounded at the grossness and
persistence of their blunders.'
The intelligence in fact is nowhere fully at home except
with the homogeneous, the unchanging, the merely quantita-
tive. In Geometry, in the Theory of Numbers, it can make
endless discoveries, but of identities only, never of causes and
effects. That one thing should change into another, that
one thing should cause another, is to the understanding an
absurdity. It cannot fully grasp even inanimate nature ;
and when it seeks in what we call * Inductive Logic ' though
36 J. SOLOMON :
so far as it is not a pure Methodology it is simply bad Meta-
physics to give an intelligible idea of causation, it simply
flounders or contradicts itself. In dealing with life it is still
more at fault, for life is an eternal creation of novelties.
Bergson has noticed this in the preface to his Evolution :
'one would be much puzzled,' says he, ' to cite a single bio-
logical discovery due to pure reasoning ; and in general when
experience has ended by showing us how life proceeds to
obtain a certain result, we find that its manner of operating
is precisely one of which we should never have thought'.
Those who so glibly vouch ' a philosophy of history ' would
probably be less confident if they knew more of the details of
history.
A most interesting part of Evolution Crdatrice is the com-
parison of ancient and modern science and philosophy. The
founders of Greek science did their best to ignore change ; the
reality to them consisted in immutable Forms, a degradation
of which occurred in the perceived world by an admixture with
an indefinable somewhat, which Plato called ' the Nothing '
and Aristotle ' Matter ' . And as multiplicity was as inex-
plicable as mutability, the Forms themselves were regarded
as logical emanations from one highest Form. Space and
time were not realities at all. The various Forms were the
subject-matter of the sciences, the unity of those Forms of
philosophy. The value of such science may be seen from the
Aristotelian physics with its assumption of the two great
Forms of 'gravity' and 'levity,' a physics as arbitrary as it
is vague and incapable of development. The fruitful modern
physics that begins with Galileo dreamt of no such essential
forms. Instead of conceiving that ' heavy ' bodies had a
nature that was realised when they reached the earth (cf. the
quotation from de Ccelo, 310 a, 34 in E.G., 248 n.), and ' light '
bodies the contrary, the new science gave no prerogative
position to the terminus of the movement as though it were
a sort of immanent purpose, but set itself to determine the
movement by determining the place of the body at any mo-
ment of time, which as we have seen means determining
the correspondences between its place and those of a body
moving uniformly. Galilean science could no more ' explain '
the movement than Aristotelian ; but it saw what could be
ascertained and what it was alone of value to ascertain. But
then, as Bergson points out, the moderns, while throwing
over the ancient science, virtually retained under ever-in-
creasing difficulties the ancient metaphysics, and this from
no accidental cause, but because that metaphysics is just the
natural metaphysics of the intelligence. For the character-
THE PHILOSOPHY OF BEBGSON. 37
istic function and action of the human species demand self-
identical, persistent objects with constant mutual relations ;
human language can express nothing else. That modern
science, while recognising movement as the very nature of
things, should in its calculations ignore the movement itself,
content to seize the line along which it travels and to define
positions in it, has nothing surprising in it. Only so could
movement become a subject for quantitative determination,
for science, in fact, at all. But that men familiar with a
science that implied the reality of movement should yet con-
struct world-systems independent of it as Spinoza and
Leibniz, and later Fichte and Hegel did is truly surprising,
till we recollect the bias given by the nature of intelligence.
But to intelligence we must add intuition, what instinct
might be if it could widen, and become conscious of, itself.
Such an intuition we have in our own conscious life, where
we not merely enact a genuinely creative process, but see, or
at least feel, it. And the business of philosophy is just to
press this element of intuition, both because of its superior
importance and because it is just what Science does not use
and cannot even recognise. Intuition is the vital element in
every philosopher, not the dialectic of the intelligence by
which he tests it or the system of concepts in which he seeks
to embody and communicate it. Nay, ' the very effort,' says
Bergson (E.G., 259), ' by which we connect ideas with ideas
makes the intuition vanish which the ideas proposed per-
manently to store for us'. We are reminded of Arnold's
view of ' the Progress of Poesy ' :
The man mature with labour chops
For the bright stream a channel grand,
And sees not that the sacred drops
Are lost and vanished out of hand.
On the other hand, a philosophy which accepts all that
science would give it and asks for no more than to be allowed
to systematise it and lay down its principles will find nothing
left for it ; with the facts of science it accepts the principles of
science and a metaphysic, escape from which it has deliber-
ately barred.
Intelligence, says Bergson in a happy illustration, gives
us such a view of life as the cinematograph. There we seem
to have the movement of life itself; but what we really have
is a very large number of instantaneous views, each station-
ary ; the apparent movement is not their movement but only
that of the screen on which they are thrown. Such is our
science ; the ' views ' it gives of , the unending process of
38 J. SOLOMON:
nature may be made indefinitely numerous ; of the movement
we have not as for practical purposes we do not need to
have any idea. Our knowledge is external, superficial ;
but it is practical, it is what we need for action, it suc-
ceeds.
The ' general law ' of the logical text-books is a fusion
by ' endosmose,' as Bergson would say of the ' law ' of
modern science and the ' genus ' (Form, Species) of Aristo-
telian. The two ideas are quite different, though the modern
logician even, we think, so recent and acute a writer as Dr.
Mellone often tries to persuade himself that modern science
no less than Aristotelian is a research for ' Real Kinds '.
But ' real kinds ' imply a negation of the reality of move-
ment ; they are the one reality, permanent things that main-
tain themselves generation after generation. Modern science
takes movement and change for the ultimate fact and seeks
to discover the laws of its stages, that is the correspondences
among those stages ; it gives relations ; in its most perfect
form it gives quantitative relations. Such a relation is
' general ' in our sense, but it is not a genus, a thing, at all.
It crosses and confuses all that Aristotle would have thought
the most palpable distinctions of genera ; it applies as much
to the semi-divine heavenly body as to the lifeless stone.
If evolution is really creative, the famous theory of Her-
bert Spencer is no better than a mare's nest (E.G., 392-398).
It recognises no ' making ' ; it deals only with the made. It
builds up the world by the composition and separation of
solid particles ; it explains instinct and reasonable will by a
composition of ' reflexes ' ; it makes the principles of intelli-
gence the imprint effected on us by the * phenomena ' of the
external world. But how do we come by solid particles, by
distinct phenomena ? they are just the creation, or rather
the external reflexion, of intelligence in the continuous flux.
When intelligence is not, they are not. And this distin-
guishing intelligence, and instinct, and the * reflexes ' are
themselves the creation of the life-force, that in its effort to
express and manifest itself agitates brute matter, and gives
rise to the continuous flux. Vita agitat molem. ' Reflexes '
are not original, instinct is not original, intelligence is not
original. Is the creation of a city explained by pointing to
the collocation of houses ? The creation of the city is also
the creation of the houses with the streets that separate
them, whose outlines they define. A picture is really made
says Bergson as it grows under the hand and mind of the
artist ; if the same picture is glued to cardboard and cut into
squares, a child may put them together ; but he is making the
THE PHILOSOPHY OF BEBGSON. 39
picture. Just such a sham making inconceivable except as
preceded by a real making, is what Spencer presents as the
evolution of the world and man.
Bergson's metaphysics involve, as he expressly points out,
the two ideas of growth and decay, of a rise and a descent.
The working of the life-force is a process of creation, but the
law of matter is dissipation of energy, waste, loss. Are we
then to conceive two independent, antagonising principles,
as opposite as the tendency of matter to fall to the earth -and
there remain inert and of the energy which raises it ? Berg-
son suggests that the seeming opposition, the seeming inverse
relation of the two processes to one another, is really due to
the interruption of the one process of creation. If the one is
called tension, the other will be relaxation, or, as the French
more neatly puts it, ' detente '. From the one comes com-
plexity, interpenetration, the abolition of space, which is
the schema of separateness ; from its interruption comes
separation and the re-creation of spatiality. Therefore in
the conscious life, which is ever creative, space and spatial
relations are unmeaning, and the attempt to understand it as
due to the * attraction ' of separate elements (in Hume's
phrase) must be a hopeless failure. But, as we have so
often said, the peculiarly human practical work of intelli-
gence can only be effected, if at all, by a separation of elements
in the continuum. It is actually effected, and we must there-
fore hold such separation to be in a measure real. Possibly
then it is real just where the work of the life-force stops or is
broken off. If we could see that life-force operating through-
out the universe, as perhaps ultimately it does, our intel-
ligence would be blasted in such vision ; the human species,
supporting itself in existence by intelligent action, would be
annihilated or give place to some higher form.
We are tempted to close our survey of Bergson's philosophy
by asking how it solves, if it can solve, a problem which is a
testing stone to all evolutionary theories, and in which Berg-
son himself obviously feels a deep interest whence comes
the immeasurable superiority of Man over his brother verte-
brates ? Allow him to have advanced farther on the road of
intelligence than they, to depend far less on instinct, even
as Bergson somewhere says to have definitely given instinct
its congd, how are we to account for his enormous superiority,
for the seeming infiniteness of his possibilities ? His body
is a system of machinery developed on the same lines as that
of the other vertebrates and not to an external view widely
differing from theirs. His freedom they share. If he can
generalise, so also as far as practice is concerned can they,
40 J. SOLOMON : THE PHILOSOPHY OF BEKGSON.
and often with great intelligence. We see of course in him
three great possessions which immensely reinforce his in-
telligence his instruments, which embody actions, while the
animal's only instrument is his own body and the motor
mechanisms he gradually creates in his nervous system ; his
language, which is itself an instrument, and the most valu-
able kind of instrument, that which recalls and gives us the
command of ideas, so that the Nominalist is not altogether
wrong when he identifies ideas with words, more right in fact
than the grosser kind of Conceptualist who identifies them
with images ; his social co-operation, a co-operation not un-
known to the animals, but raised in man to an altogether
higher power by his possession of instruments and language,
which can be shared as nothing belonging to the animal can.
But still all these seem accidents, if fortunate accidents, not
enough to raise mankind into a species so transcendently
different. Perhaps Bergson has hit the mark when he sug-
gests that the animal with all his intelligence is yet and re-
mains 'the captive of his own body'. He can only raise
himself above automatism by falling into a new automatism
altogether. By a well-known incident in the history of in-
ventions Bergson illustrates his point with his usual felicity.
We have all heard of the first crude steam-engine that re-
quired the constant attention of a boy to open and shut the
valves for the admission to the cylinder of the cold water or
steam ; and how one day a truant of genius bethought him-
self of tying the handles of the valves to the beam of the
steam-engine ; henceforth the engine worked itself, and the
boy was left free to employ himself as he pleased. So the
progress of man has taken place through the creation of an
external machinery which relieves him from the animal's
limitation of choice, a mere choice of slaveries. The animal
can only make of himself a new machine ; the man ceases to
be a machine at all.
III. A NEW 'LAW OF THOUGHT' AND ITS
IMPLICATIONS.
BY E. E. CONSTANCE JONES.
" I am the pillars of the house,
The keystone of the arch am I ;
Take me away, and roof and wall
Would fall to ruin utterly." K. TYNAN.
IT will not be disputed that assertions of the forms
S is P, S is not P
are possible, actual, significant, useful and necessary. They
can be used, they are used, they must be used. I agree with
Prof. Frege in holding that propositions of the form S is P
( s p ) are correctly analysed as asserting identity of ex-
tension or denotation (Bedeutung) in diversity of intension or
signification (Sinn), 1 and from this analysis 2 I obtain the
principle that
Every subject of affirmative Predication is an identity-in-
diversity (i.e. denotational unity in intensional difference).
This applies absolutely without exception to every Proposi-
tion of the form S is P.
A corresponding analysis applies to propositions of the
1 By Extension or Denotation of a name I mean the things to which
the name applies ; by Intension or Signification of a name I mean the
properties of the things to which the name applies. Extension gives the
* existential ' aspect, Intension gives the qualitative aspect. The things in
question may be material or immaterial; they may have a fixed and
definite position in space and time, or be, on the other hand, ideal, ima-
ginary, or merely suppositional. The Extension or Denotation of e.g.
Quadruped is : Lion, Tiger, Horse, Dog, Cat, Mouse, etc. ; the Intension
is : Animality and Four-footed-ness.
2 This is the most elementary, and the only absolutely general analysis
of Propositions (as distinguished from sentences) of the form /S w P. It
is as general as the form S is P itself, and from that most abstract form,
this universally applicable analysis can be obtained. Compare a = b as
-symbolic of equations.
42 E. E. CONSTANCE JONES I
form S is not P. Every proposition of this form asserts,
difference of Denotation (Otherness) in difference of Intension
(Diversity) ( S
I will examine cases in illustration of the above analysis,
of S is P and S is not-P further on, and briefly consider the
relation of S is P, S is not P, to ' Relative ' Propositions, such
as A is equal to B, C is father of D, etc.
Propositions of the forms S is P, S is not P, are indispens-
able for significant assertion ; and we need them for a satis-
factory statement of the ' Laws of Thought '. Without them
we are in strictness limited to
A is A, A is-not not-A, A is either A or not-A, 1
forms which, though they have at first sight a dazzling
appearance of self-evidence, are not only unnatural and
difficult to interpret, but are also separated by an impassable-
chasm from A is B (S is P).
Granted that we can assert A is B, A is not B (S is P, etc.),
and further that we can explain and justify this form, we
can proceed to a straightforward, effective and applicable
statement of the Laws of Contradiction and Excluded
Middle, thus :
S is P | cannot both be true (Law of Contradiction),
S is not P ( cannot both be false (Law of Excluded Middle).
It follows from these two Laws that of any Subject of
Predication (S), any Predicate (P) is affirmable or deniable;
and that of any Subject of Predication (S), either P or not-
P can be affirmed. And so from S is P, S is not P (analysed
as above) we obtain the principle that
Every Subject of Predication is an identity-in-diversity.
(It is the above analysis of Categoricals and its implications,
that I desire to expound and advocate in this paper.)
It follows further from the above that every Predicate (P)
is necessarily incompatible with not-P, (absence of intension P,}
and necessarily compatible with not-not-P. (This suggests a.
principle of necessary connexion of attributes.)
The learner 2 who is informed that
S is P
1 Everything is A or not-A is of the form : S is P or not-P.
2 The thought-process of the teacher (speaker, writer, etc.) is always
prominently a process of analysis he has a whole before him and sets it
forth to his audience (pupils, hearers, readers). (Compare Bradley's
A NEW ' LAW OF THOUGHT ' AND ITS IMPLICATIONS. 43
is thereby entitled to make a construction to which the
designations S and P both belong, thus :( s, P ). Having
this before his mind, he is entitled to say, net only that S is P,
but also that P is S, that S is-not not-P, that not-P is not-S,
etc. If he is informed that
S is not P
he is similarly entitled to make a construction in which S is
separated from P, ( s )( p ], and to say that P is not
S, not-S is P, etc.
Again, if he accepts the statements
M is P
S is M
he is entitled to the construction of something which is S, M,
P, thus : ( S, M, p ) ; and this entitles him to the further as-
sertion S is P ; for the thing which S and M and P taken in
Extension denote, has in the one extension common to them
all the diverse intensions signified by S, M, and P.
The gist of the last paragraph may be expressed in a self-
contained Hypothetical thus :
If M is P and S is M, then S is P
Principles of Logic, bk. ii., pfc. i., ch. iii., 4 ; Stout's Analytic Psychology,
ii., 71 ; Sid wart's Logic, English translation, i., 25, 26.)
The thought-process of the learner, listener, reader, seeker, is always
emphatically synthetic.
But no one can ever be permanently hardly even momentarily alto-
gether in one of these attitudes. The teacher, in setting out his material,
must be constantly getting fresh aperpus, grasping new connexions, an-
nexing fresh facts. The learner or seeker who can consciously learn or
seek to any purpose, must already have, and use, some store and back-
ground of knowledge.
This distinction of attitude, and corresponding divergences in past in-
terpretations of Categoricals, is not only interesting but highly important
especially perhaps in connexion with the meaning of Inference and its
place in logical theory.
44
E. E. CONSTANCE JONES :
And other Hypothetical are reducible to a similar state-
ment, e.g. :
(a) If A is B
and B is C
and C is D
and 'D is E
then A is E FIG. 1.
(6) If all A is B
and all B is C
and all C is D
and all D is E
then all A is E
FIG. 2.
(6) may be represented diagrammatically by Fig. 1 or by
Fig. 2 or by some combination of the two.
In Inference the identity-in-diversity which is inferred is
given directly not in the premisses, but in the construction
to which the premisses entitle the learner or seeker.
As much of the denotation of B, C, D and E as are predi-
cable of A are in denotation identical with A ; and of this one
denotation or extension, the diverse intensions signified by
A, B, C, D, E taken in intension, are predicated.
In accepting S is P as an appropriate symbolic expression
of all affirmative Categoricals the most general and ' abstract'
expressions of such Categoricals, as a = b is of equations it is
of course taken for granted that S stands for the whole of the
Subject, and P for the whole of the Predicate, whatever the
Subject and the Predicate may be, and that is signifies identity
of denotation between them, without offering or attempting
any explanation, by reference to origin or otherwise, of the
co-existence in one denotation of the intensions concerned,
or any discrimination of the differences by which one kind
of Categorical may be distinguished from another. When
S is P is used as symbolising Class-Propositions, All E
is Q, No E is Q, etc. S stands for the explicitly quantified
subject All E, and P for the implicitly quantified Predicate
All or any Q, some Q. By implicitly quantified I mean that
there is no explicit quantification, but that explicit quantifi-
cation is justified.
It S is P stands for
All Lions are carnivorous
A NEW ' LAW OF THOUGHT ' AND ITS IMPLICATIONS. 45
S symbolises All Lions, P symbolises [some] carnivorous. Un-
less C were implicitly quantified, by some, thus limiting the
' distribution,' Lions must be understood to be coincident in
denotation or extension with carnivorous, and thus to be also
Tigers, Panthers, Wolves, Vultures, etc. Similarly with
negative Categoricals. In : No Hellebores are fragrant, @,
(= All H are not F) Hellebores is explicitly quantified by
No (= All not), fragrant is implicitly quantified by All or
Any, and
All Hellebores = S, All fragrant = P.
If this were not so, we should not be justified in inferring
from No H are F, that No F are H.
In : Some beeches are not green-leaved, beeches is quanti-
fied explicitly by some, green-leaved is quantified implicitly
by Any.
Some beeches = S
Any green-leaved = P.
The reason why is inconvertible is not because there is-
any question about implicit quantification of the Predicate,,
but because when the [explicitly] quantified converse of
has been reached (No green-leaved things are some beeches),
in deference to common usage (and therefore to ordinary
thought) the quantification of its Predicate has to be dropped
and the Converse becomes : No green-leaved things are
beeches. This of course involves an illegitimate extension
of the denotation of beeches. 1
In : All Planets move in elliptical orbits,
Jupiter is a Planet,
.'. Jupiter moves in an elliptical orbit,
moving^ in elliptical orbit must be understood to be implicitly
quantified by some, otherwise Planets would be coincident
with the things, whatever they are, which move in elliptical
orbits that is, with the whole extension of moving in elliptical
orbit. In the conclusion, the extension of moving in elliptical
orbit is restricted to the one-planet-extension of Jupiter, as,
in the Minor Premiss, the extension of Planet is restricted
to the extension of the Minor Term, Jupiter.
It is the Identity-in-diversity of affirmative Categoricals
which justifies their conversion, with the implied quantifica-
tion, and the pivot of Mediate Inference is a denotational
identity of whole or part of the Middle Term in one Premiss
with the whole or with part of its denotation in the other.
1 Conversion of A and I, with the implied quantification, would be im-
possible unless there were denotational identity between Subject and
Predicate. It is to be noted also that in many languages an adjective
predicated agrees in gender and number with its Subject.
46 E. E. CONSTANCE JONES :
In the Planet-instance above, the denotation of the Middle
Term in the Minor Premiss is identical with part of the
denotation of the Middle Term in the Major Premiss. We
may compare Thackeray's story of the priest and his first
penitent quoted by Dr. Bosanquet (Essentials of Logic, pp. 140,
141) as an instance of what Dr. Bosanquet calls " inference
from mere identity " :
"An old Abbe talking among a party of intimate friends
happened to say : ' A priest has strange experiences ; why,
ladies, my first penitent was a murderer'. Upon this the
principal nobleman of the neighbourhood enters the room :
4 Ah, Abbe, here you are ; do you know, ladies, I was the
Abbe's first penitent, and I promise you my confession
astonished him ! ' !
Here an unambiguous Middle Term the Abbe"s first penitent
unexpectedly reveals the horrifying fact that the principal
nobleman of the neighbourhood is a murderer.
In this we have certainly an inference from ' identity '-
not however ' mere ' identity but denotational identity in in-
tensional diversity. It would be interesting to be shown
precisely how, in any case without identity of this sort,
without denotational or extensional identity any inference
whatever could be drawn.
The same principle of identity in diversity applies in the
<?ase of concrete Hypothetical. Take e.g. this example : If
Ferdinand marries Henrietta, he will be ruined. This may
be expanded as follows :
If F marries H (A), he will be responsible for her debts (B).
If B, he will be responsible for double his income (C).
If C, he will be unable to meet his responsibilities (D).
If D, he will be financially ruined (E).
It is the identity of Henrietta with a person who will
spend double Ferdinand's income, and of Ferdinand with a
person who marries Henrietta, with a person who will be
responsible for her debts, and for double his income, and
therefore unable to meet his responsibilities, that leads in-
evitably to the regrettable conclusion. If Ferdinand were
a minor and his father a millionaire, F might not be B ; if
Henrietta were herself a millionaire, or if her expenditure
would be only half Ferdinand's income, he would not be C ;
and so on.
Again :
If Kate marries Peter, she will be wretched, may mean
If Kate marries Peter (A) she marries an old-fashioned
miser (B).
If B, she will be half-starved (C).
If C, she will be wretched (D).
A NEW ' LAW OF THOUGHT ' AND ITS IMPLICATIONS. 47
It is on the identity (in diversity) of Kate with a person
who marries Peter, and therefore (the denotation of Peter
being the denotation of a miser and therefore the denotation
of a man who will half-starve his wife) with a person who
marries a miser, and thus with a person who will be half-
starved, that ensures her identity with a person who will be
wretched. The two examples may be illustrated diagram-
matically thus :
It would be easy but tedious to multiply examples.
^How do the propositions which are what is called ' Kelative '
i.e. propositions which state the relation to each other of
two or more objects connected as members of a system, e.g.
A is father of B, C is greater than D, E is to the left of F
how do these compare with assertions of the form S is P, S
is not P ? What S is P gives us is intensional diversity in
identical denotation ; in all Kelatives we deal with two such
denotations, which are correlated, and neither of which can
be predicated of the other. Obviously in the above in-
stances A is not B
D ) ; E is not F ( E
C is not D
; but A, althouh he
is not B, is B's father, C although not D, is greater than D,
E although not F, is to the left of F :
48 E. E. CONSTANCE JONES:
We are constantly using Eelatives in common speech in
conjunction with the non-relative S is P form, and this form
is easily imposed on Eelatives when desired (as in the above
examples). I do not regard the denotation assigned to
Subjects or Predicates as implying existence in space or time,
or indeed any particular kind of existence ; no such implica-
tion could possibly attach to S and P in S is P ; to admit the
generality of the form S is P is to bar the implication but
intension cannot be, or be thought of, imagined or supposed,
except as the intension of something, of some that, which has
just as much (or as little) ' reality ' as the qualities the inten-
sion, the what-ness, which it holds together in a denotational
unity. We must be able to use propositions, and to have
some general theory of import i.e. of what propositions in
general mean before we can proceed to settle what precise
kind or measure of ' existence ' or ' reality ' our Subjects and
Predicates have.
Dr. Keynes, in the fourth edition of his Formal Logic allows
that 'logical equations,' such as
Equilateral triangles = equiangular triangles,
may be understood to assert Identity of denotation in diversity
of connotation. It seems obvious that on this basis nothing
but the recognition of implicit quantification is necessary in
order to make acceptable my analysis of affirmative Cate-
goricals in cases in which the terms are connotative. And
then the way seems clear to an acceptance of it as quite
general. Ce nest que le premier pas qui coute, and there is no
witchcraft about connotation as distinct from intension. I
may point out that in the alternative interpretations on page
178'of Formal Logic, 1 and in the passage of Mrs. Ladd Franklin
mentioned in note 1 on page 179, the force of the copula is not
referred to ; in other words, we are not told exactly how the
two aspects of Terms are to be * taken account of ' in the
proposition, and this is the very point of my analysis ; unless
the is of the copula in S is P signifies denotational identity
(intensional diversity is signified by the terms) S and P can-
not be held together in the proposition, affirmative Class-
propositions cannot be converted, there is no link to connect
the premisses in mediate inference, we must lapse into the
disintegration of Lotze's analysis, and say that
(Sis S
SisP= ^PisP
IS is not P
1 Compare MIND, 1893, p. 452, etc.
A NEW ' LAW OF THOUGHT ' AND ITS IMPLICATIONS. 49
The copula is sometimes stigmatised as a ' verbal device '
of the most objectionable kind, and it is asked : What is there
in the subject-matter of an assertion which corresponds to it,
is it not irredeemably artificial? I admit of course that if,
e.g., I am eating a ripe peach, and say! This peach is ripe,
(1) the whole, ripe peach, f RP j, which is present to me,
is not a matter of words, and (2) that in particular there does
not seem to be anything in that whole which corresponds to the
copula to as great an extent as its being and qualities corre-
spond to this peach and ripe. But if we admit words as a
necessary device for the recording and communicating of
knowledge, it must be allowed that the copula fulfils an im-
portant function very modestly and economically. Mill (quite
naturally) placed disproportionate stress on connotation, but
it is noticeable that he lays it down that the most common
meaning which propositions of the form S is P are ever in-
tended to convey is that whatever is denoted by (or has the
Attributes connoted by) the Subject, has the Attributes con-
noted by the Predicate (Mill, Logic, bk. i., ch. v., 4). This
gives us identity of denotation in diversity of connotation :
but Mill does not live up to this it seems indeed as if he had
hardly realised its force. It occurs to him when he is asking :
Between what is connexion asserted in a Proposition ? When
he goes on to the further question : What is the connexion as-
serted? he enumerates five ultimate kinds of predication
afterwards reduced to four, viz. : Simple Existence, Order in
Time, Order in Place, and Kesemblance ; and, so far as I
remember, he makes no subsequent use of or reference to his
one almost general analysis. The present analysis of S is P
into identity in diversity is fundamentally similar to Mill's, but
has a wider scope. It was first, I believe, put forward in print
in a little book of mine in 1890. A view which I understand
to be the same as mine was published by Prof. Frege in 1892 ;
and in Mr. Bertrand Russell's Principles of Mathematics (1903),.
Frege's view is adopted with some reservations. On this
view the science of Logic is the science of the "Laws of
Thought " (if we choose to call them so). I should however
like instead of Laws of Thought, and Law of Identity (1),
Law of Contradiction (2), Law of Excluded Middle (3), to
speak of Laws of Logic, to substitute for (1) a ".Law of
Identity in Diversity," of the form given above, to call (2)
the Law of Consistency (since the Law of Contradiction
excludes inconsistency), and to call (3) the Law of Coherence
4
50 E. E. CONSTANCE JONES I
(since it formulates a principle of Subject-Predicate connexion
between all terms).
For affirmation, extension of S and P must be identical
otherwise the copula cannot be is S, in intension, is different
from P in intension. For significant affirmation, P must be
intensionally different from S.
If the P and S of any S is P were taken purely in exten-
sion or denotation, we should have no use for Predicates that
differed from their Subjects S alone, or P alone, would be
sufficient. If S and P are taken one in extension or deno-
tation and the other in intension, it is clear that we can
never say that one is the other, that the intension of one is
the extension of the other.
And the attempt to take the S and P of an affirmative as-
sertion in intension only, can lead to nothing but confusion
and disaster witness Lotze's reduction, referred to above,
of S is P into
Sis S
PisP
S is not P
(See Lotze's Logic, ch. ii., book i.; also MIND, 1893, pp. 449, etc.)
Lotze's application of the so-called Law of Thought A is
A to propositions of the form S is P is a reductio ad
absurdum of a purely conceptual Logic. What A is A ap-
parently means for him would be better expressed by A-ness
is A-ness, for A-ness is never any-other-ness, it is no not-A-ness,
it cannot be B-ness or C-ness. If this is taken into account, it
becomes clear that A is A reduces us to a deadlock. If we
begin with A-ness is A-ness, there we must end, and Lotze's
conclusion above quoted is inevitable. But the moral I
deduce is, not that we must end there, but that we must
never begin there ; we must recognise, with Locke, that " all
affirmation is in concrete," and this brings us inevitably to
the identity-of-extension-in-diversity-of -intension interpreta-
tion of S is P. We cannot assert one ' concept ' (or intension)
of another, but only that a denotation characterised by some
intension (S) has another intension (P) an intension which
is compatible with, which co-exists with, the intension of S
in one subject. To take Locke's example, we can say, Man
is mortal, but we cannot say Humanity is mortality.
Lotze's difficulty about the interpretation of S is P, and
.similar difficulties felt by earlier logicians, seem to involve a
failure to distinguish between
(1) predicating of S an intension P which is incompatible
with the intension of S and would involve its denial (presence
of P is taken to imply absence of S) ;
A NEW ' LAW OF THOUGHT ' AND ITS IMPLICATIONS. 51
(2) assigning to denotation S an intension P, which, while
it is not intension S, is compatible with that intension and
can co-exist with it in one denotation, f S, P J
The difficulties above referred to vanish on the identity-of-
extension-in-diversity-of-intension view of the interpretation
of S is P, while on a purely conceptual or intensional view
they are fatal to any coherent doctrine of prepositional
import.
It is only identity of extension that can hold together the
diverse intensions in affirmation ; it is only identity of exten-
sion that can give the necessary connexion in Inference,
Immediate and Mediate (if not, it would not, in Mediate
Inference be necessary to ' distribute ' the Middle term in-
tensional sameness and an ' undistributed Middle ' would
suffice, and " Substitution of Similars " would be a valid
principle of Inference). This is of course entirely compatible
with the fact that intension may be, and constantly is, a
guide to extension ; e.g. it is because of the inseparable con-
nexion of equality of sides in a triangle with equality of
angles at the base, that I can affirm : All equilateral triangles
have the angles at the base equal.
According to my use of Terms, S is-not P (S is not-P) as-
serts that the intension of P is absent from what is denoted
by S (not that the intension of S is diverse from the Inten-
sion of P that goes without saying and applies in S is P)
the presence together with the absence of P in one Subject,
S is P and S is not P, cannot be asserted, P and not-P as
assigned to one denotation are incompatible. Thus in every
assertion S is P, the presence of P is necessarily accompanied
by the absence of not-P. And similarly, the presence of not-
P is necessarily accompanied by the absence of P, while
Assertion and Inference, as I contend, depend upon Identity
of Extension (or Denotation) in Diversity of Intension. The
principle here affirmed that there is a formal and necessary
connexion of Attributes that is predicable of every Subject of
predication may possibly be regarded as a formal Principle
of Inductive Inference : it asserts (not only that the pres-
ence and the absence of P are incompatible but also) that
the presence of P and the absence of not-P are inseparably
conjoined. And of every subject (S) the presence or absence
of any predicate (P) is predicable (L. of Excluded Middle).
Thus of every subject (S) the presence or absence of every
Predicate in the world (every P) may be asserted. This
52 E. E. CONSTANCE JONES:
measure of uniform connexion and uniform incompatibility
is self-evident.
What inseparable connexions and incompatibilities there
actually are beyond these purely formal, or most general,
ones must be learned by appeal to experience. We cannot
say S is P or A is B until (directly or indirectly) we have
found some case in which S is P, or A is B.
My contention is that my Law of Identity in Diversity
first makes (theoretically) possible a satisfactory statement,
in S is P, S is not P form, of the Laws of Contradiction and
Excluded Middle, and that it, together with them, does
furnish a real and adequate basis and starting-point of syl-
logistic Logic. Granted propositions of the form S is P
with the identity-in-diversity analysis and the corresponding
analysis of S is not P, together with the already accepted
Laws of Contradiction and Excluded Middle, the whole tra-
ditional scheme of Immediate and Mediate Inference can be
built up systematically and explicitly, from the foundations.
In Logic, as in all thinking, propositions of forms S is P, S is
not P, have of course always been used. Thought cannot
live and move without propositions of this form ; but so far
as I know they have not hitherto received a satisfactory and
commonly accepted general analysis, an explicit recognition
by logicians that they are the primary and fundamental
forms of significant assertion, needed even for a satisfactory
expression of the Law of Contradiction and the Law of
Excluded Middle. It is the Law of Identity A is A which
has stood in the way. And it is impossible really to get rid
of this tautology, posing as the self-evident and significant
basis, until it is seen not only that we must admit A is B,
not only that ' mere identity ' is our undoing, not only that
for significant assertion we must have an identity in differ-
ence, must recognise that A is B is preferable to A is A. All
this does not avail until we can give a clear account of
what exactly is meant by the identity-in-difference of A is B.
There are, it is admitted, no more ambiguous words in Philo-
sophy than Identity and Difference, and there are none of
which the meaning has been more elusive, none more mis-
leading. Even some of the acutest thinkers do not seem to
have escaped the snare. The source of the ambiguity is not
far to seek, for of the two fundamental kinds of Sameness, (1)
extensional or denotational sameness, and (2) qualitative
sameness, (2) is very constantly (though by no means always)
a sign of (1). E.g. if a stowaway is observed to have all
the published characteristics of an escaped criminal, the simi-
larity is regarded as an indication of 'identity'. It may
A NEW ' LAW OF THOUGHT ' AND ITS IMPLICATIONS. 53
however turn out to be a case of ' mistaken identity '. For
recognition of likeness there must be a comparison of two,
though the two may be only one thing at two times. It is
partly because all this is so simple, that it has proved so insidi-
ous. But though simple, it is absolutely primary. The A is
A difficulty has been with us since, at any rate, the appearance
of the Eleatic Stranger in the Sophistes, who reports the
view of certain ' tyros ' that of man we can only assert man,
of good we can only predicate good. Neither the Eleatic
Stranger nor any one else in the Sophistes provides a satis-
factory solution of the puzzle, though the Stranger shows
both common-sense and logical insight when he lays down
the principle that those who deny the possibility of the
assertion, concerning any subject, of a predicate different
from itself, are confuted out of their own mouths, they " are
obliged to admit it implicitly and involuntarily in their com-
mon forms of speech. They cannot carry on a conversation
without it, and they thus serve as a perpetual refutation of
their own doctrine." From that day to this the solution of
the puzzle has it seems been still to seek ; though from the
time when the distinction between Extension (Denotation)
and Intension, That-ness and What-ness, was clearly drawn,
it ought to have been easy. Jevons, I believe (like Mill and
many other able thinkers), came in view of it but slipped
aside into hopeless, because concealed, confusion in his " great
rule of inference," the " Substitution of Similars " (Principles
of Science, p. 9, 3rd edition).
Lotze has the merit of having seen that propositions of
form S is P needed to be accommodated with the Laws of
Thought ; but as he could not reconcile S is P with A is A,
he gave up (professedly) S is P. The Eleatic Stranger could
have taught him better.
IV. MOTIVE.
BY J. L. STOCKS.
IN ordinary speech motives are commonly said to be good or
bad, rational or irrational, selfish or disinterested, simple or
complex, conscious or unconscious or half-conscious ; and
there are innumerable other epithets, lending themselves on
the whole, perhaps, as Bentham said, more to abuse than
compliment, which may be attached to the word. But the
term is not often denned, and such definitions of it as I have
come across seem to rule out many if not most of these epi-
thets as illegitimate.
Perhaps the popular distinction which is most uniformly
excluded by definitions of the term ' motive ' is that of con-
scious and unconscious. This distinction certainly is fami-
liar and important in our ordinary use of the word. When
we talk of the hidden motives of an act we mean motives
hidden not only from the spectator but even from the agent
himself. There is a generally recognised meaning in the
statement ' I thought at the time I was acting from disin-
terested motives ; but I see now that it was self-interest
which prompted me to act as I did '. Or to take another
instance I suppose it happens to all of us from time to time
to become involved in a heated argument. In the midst of
such an argument it is almost impossible to believe that our
vehemence is not the direct result of an earnest desire that
truth shall prevail : but afterwards do we not often question
our own motives ? It may occur to us in retrospect that the
opinions which our opponent A was advancing were really
just the same as those which had previously given no offence,
or even perhaps won assent, in the mouth of B. ' Oh, well,'
we may say, ' there are some people with whom it is impos-
sible to agree, and A is one of them.' The unconscious mo-
tive then was antagonism to A. The fact is perhaps even
clearer in our accounts of the actions of nations. Do those
who maintain that the real motive of the Peloponnesian
War was the trade jealousy of Athens and Corinth think
that Pericles or the Peloponnesian leaders were aware of
that fact ? They may, but they need not. They could still
MOTIVE. 55
maintain it even though it were proved that no leader on
either side took that view of the fact, and that the common
soldiers fought either without asking for a reason at all or in
the belief that they were struggling for justice and liberty.
The same might be said of our own recent South African
war. Those who maintain that the financiers were ' at the
bottom of it ' know that neither the generals nor the soldiers
fought knowingly for trade, and that the financiers in ques-
tion would quite honestly repudiate the suggestion that they
engineered the war for the benefit of their own pockets.
Yet the war may have been none the less a trade war, even
though none of the agents responsible or irresponsible ever
to his knowledge allowed trade to count at all in any single
decision. What, again, is the economic interpretation of
history if not one vast assertion that it is the unconscious
motive that counts, that, while orators and statesmen and
men in the street talk of the eternal verities and of the un-
written laws of international justice that behind and beyond
all the froth and foam there is a single operative principle
which is not the less but the more effective because it is
unsuspected ? Eeaders of Thomas Hardy's poem ' The Dy-
nasts ' will remember how the immanent unconscious Will
is made manifest to the supernatural vision of the Spirits
which observe as spectators the human drama.
A new and penetrating light descends on the spectacle, endowing men
and things with a seeming transparency, and exhibiting as one organism
the anatomy of life and movement in all humanity and vitalised matter
included in the display.
Spirit of the Pities. Amid this scene of bodies substantive
Strange waves I sight like winds grown visible,
Which bear men's forms on their innumerous coils,
Twining and serpentining through and through. . . .
Spirit of the Years. These are the Prime Volitions, fibrils, veins,
Will-tissues, nerves, and pulses of the Cause,
That heave throughout the Earth's compositure.
Their sum is like the lobule of a Brain
Evolving always that it wots not of ;
A Brain whose whole connotes the Everywhere,
And whose procedure may but be discerned
By phantom eyes like ours ; the while unguessed
Of those it stirs, who (even as ye do) dream
Their motions free, their orderings supreme ;
Each life apart from each, with power to mete
Its own day's measures ; balanced, self-complete,
Though they subsist but atoms of the One
Labouring thro' all, divisible from none.
This is the vision of the one world-will, operating through
consciousness, but unconscious, ' whose meaning we may
muse on, never learn '.
56 J. L. STOCKS :
These instances are sufficient to show that some meaning
however vague attaches to the proposition ' the real motive
of an act may be unknown to the agent ' or ' a motive may
be unconscious '. But if these phrases have any meaning,
what are we to make of the considered judgments of the
philosophers ? ' A motive,' says Schopenhauer, ' is causality
seen from within.' Is the unseen motive then simply
causality ? Hoffding, in his Psychology, defines motive as
' the feeling excited by the idea of the end V T. H. Green
(ProL, 87) makes motive the 'determining cause' of
human action, and defines it as ' an idea of an end which a
self-conscious subject presents to itself, and which it strives
and tends to realise '. Neither of these definitions leaves
any place for the unknown or unconscious motive. Nor is
that the only point in which they conflict with the ordinary
use of the word. If motive is ' the feeling excited by the
imagination of an end,' it is difficult to see how it should be
called reasonable or the reverse, simple or complex; still
more perhaps how it should be interested or disinterested
or is it the nature of the end which arouses the feeling in
virtue of which it is selfish or unselfish ? or is it again the
fact that this feeling should be excited by this end that justi-
fies the epithets ? There seems to be no simple answer to these
questions. If again the motive is the end aimed at, we may
ask whether an end in itself can be said to be selfish, as a
motive is said to be selfish, or whether it can in itself be un-
reasonable, or why we distinguish ' motive ' from ' inten-
tion,' or again (a curious point of language) why in that case
we tend to speak always of our ' motives ' rather than of
our ' motive '.
What, then, is Motive ? And is it possible to arrive at
some general statement of its meaning which shall be com-
patible with the popular distinctions, and bring together in
one harmony the philosopher, the novelist, and the man ?
Provisionally and in order to clear the ground I would
advance the proposition that ' motive is that characteristic
tendency or disposition of a man in virtue of which a given
act possesses an attraction for him '.
By way of explanation let us consider, first, the relation
of motive to reflexion or deliberation. It is clear that we do
not attribute motives to non-reflective beings we do not
talk of the motives of a dog or a donkey : we attribute mo-
tives only to beings capable of reflecting on their action, and
to them (as a rule) only in accounting for actions chosen
1 " Das durch die Vorstellung vom Zweek erregte Gef iihl. " Eng.
Tr., p. 324.
MOTIVE. 57
after deliberation. Purely instinctive or impulsive action is
not motived. If a man is hungry and eats, if a soldier in the
presence of the enemy is frightened and runs away, we should
not naturally talk of the motives of hunger or terror. If on
the other hand a man who is not hungry eats and a soldier
who is not frightened runs away in the face of the enemy,
we certainly should demand and invent a motive to account
for the action. Curiosity may lead a man to eat when not
hungry, and flight may be a ruse to draw the enemy into a
trap. The action dictated by impulse or instinct is not
directed to any end beyond itself : the hungry man is not
fulfilling a carefully pondered design of eating when hungry ;
nor is the soldier acting upon a deliberate resolution at all
costs to safeguard his own life. The second pair of cases on
the other hand are instances of actions involving purpose and
consequently some degree of reflection. In them we dis-
tinguish the act the eating, the running away from the
purpose to find out what this new kind of fruit tastes like,
to entrap the enemy. In one case we readily specify the
motive as ' curiosity ' ; in the other case it would not be so
easy, and in ordinary speech we should probably identify the
motive with the purpose. If that is the case, clearly we
shall be in difficulties. But for the moment let us confine
ourselves to the single point that the word motive is only
used in connexion with considered action.
A second point which is worth noticing is that as a rule
at any rate in giving the motive of an act we exhibit the act
as the passing manifestation of a general direction of the
will. We appeal from the particular decision to a relatively
stable persistent something in the character of the agent.
The curiosity manifest in the eating existed before the act
and, though satisfied, exists after it. It is capable of innu-
merable other applications in different circumstances. The
same is true of the jealousy which is the motive of crime, or
the fear which is the motive of deliberate treachery. I do
not mean to imply that cowardice or meanness or extrava-
gance or any other weakness of character is readily attributed
to an act as its motive. In point of generality motive seems
to stand midway between ' habits ' of this kind and the par-
ticular act or intention. (Perhaps the Aristotelian distinc-
tion of efi<? and SidOecri,?, habit and disposition, might be
used to express the relation of the motive of the coward to
his cowardice.) Tentatively then we may formulate a second
conclusion that the motive is always more general and less
transitory than that which it is introduced to explain.
Thirdly, what is the relation of ' motive ' to ' intention ' ?
58 j. L. STOCKS:
In a recent text-book of Ethics l Prof. Dewey takes as the
central point of his exposition the contrast between systems.
which lay the chief stress on the goodness of the intention
or the intended consequences of an act, and those which
emphasise goodness or purity of motive. He points out that
in common speech motive and intention are often used inter-
changeably. ' Ordinary speech,' he asserts,
says indifferently that a man's motive in writing a letter was to warn
the person addressed or was friendliness. According to Bentham and
Mill, only so-called states of consciousness in which one feels friendly
can be called motive ; the object aimed at, the warning of the person, is
intention, not motive. Again ordinary speech says either that a doctor's
intention was to relieve his patient, or that it was kind and proper, al-
though the act turned out badly. But the utilitarians would insist that,
only the first usage is correct, the latter confounding intent with motive.
In general, such large terms as ambition, revenge, benevolence, patriot-
ism, justice, avarice, are used to signify both motives and aims ; both
dispositions from which one acts and results for which one acts. It is
the gist of the following discussion that common speech is essentially
correct in this interchangeable use of intention and motive. The same
set of real facts, the entire voluntary act, is pointed to by both terms.
Thus what Prof. Dewey tries to prove is that the controversy
between these contrasted ethical doctrines
depends upon an underlying misapprehension. Their common error-
. . . lies in trying to split a voluntary act which is single and entire into
two unrelated parts, the one termed 'inner' the other 'outer,' the one
called ' motive ' the other ' end '.
Leaving for a moment the merits of Prof. Dewey's conten-
tion, I should begin by objecting that the facts of ordinary
speech from which it professes to start are to some extent
illusory. Ambition, revenge, benevolence, patriotism, avarice,,
are certainly employed to designate motives, but never, I be-
lieve, even by the most careless users of language or in the
widest possible sense of 'intention,' to stand for an intention..
And justice is not even a motive, though the love of justice
may be, still less an intention. Again, I cannot see that it
shows any confounding of motive and intent to say that a.
doctor's intention to relieve a patient, though it ended by
killing him, was ' kind and proper '. Motive and intent are
surely distinguished when the act or intention is called kind
and the motive kindness, unless ' table ' and ' quality ' are
confused when a table is called round and a quality round-
ness. Therefore, though I admit that a presumption of
confusion may be drawn from the statement that a ' man's
motive in writing a letter was to warn the person addressed ''
1 Ethics. By J. Dewey and J. H. Tufts (G. Bell & Sons). See pp..
248 and 237.
MOTIVE. 59
(which is similar to a case already noticed), yet it seems to
me that the distinction between intention and motive is
sufficiently familiar and persistent in ordinary speech to
justify an attempt to fix it by definition. With regard to the
alleged instances of the confusion of the two terms, I should
observe in the first place that though we recognise a sort of
propriety in the term motive as used, ' object ' or ' intention '
would be more natural. And the same is perhaps true of
the statement that a soldier's ' motive ' in running away was
to draw the enemy into a trap. In the second place it should
be noticed that, while it would be meaningless to ask the
motive of an agent's benevolence or friendliness or patriotism,
the warning or trapping of the enemy alleged as motives in
these other cases are themselves motived the warning by
friendliness (for instance), the trapping by patriotism or
by whatever .the motives of a soldier on the battlefield may
be supposed to be.
Further, it may be doubted whether the assertion that the
motive of an act was A and the assertion that its intention
was A really mean the same thing. By an intention we
mean something actually present to the mind of the agent
at the moment of action : a motive is not usually at least a
consideration of this kind at all. It is something (as we
should say) at the back of a man's mind which influences
his decision. If therefore there is any propriety in using the
term motive of what may also be termed an intention, it
may be suggested that it is to be found in the fact that a
deliberately formed intention may drop into the background
of consciousness and yet continue to be operative in our de-
cisions. An intention may under certain circumstances be-
come a sort of disposition influencing decision instead of a
consideration affecting it. In the case of a soldier or a
doctor this is particularly likely to occur. For a doctor, as
Aristotle says, does not debate whether he shall heal, nor
even we might add how he shall heal : he heals by habit :
and a soldier does not consider whether he shall fight : he
knew he would have to when he became a soldier. In each
is operative a sort of vague corporate intention to do what
he has to do ; and often no more precise motive is to be as-
signed to their actions. It is, then, I think, in these cases
the vagueness and remoteness of the intention which gives
the term motive its propriety.
In the light of these reflections let us return to Green's de-
finition of motive the * determining cause ' of distinctively
human action as ' an idea of an end, which a self-con-
scious subject presents to itself and which it strives and tends
'60 j. L. STOCKS:
to realise '. This definition, as we saw, cannot be said fairly
to characterise the motives jealousy, revenge, ambition, etc.
which we ordinarily talk about. These are not ends at all
and are not facts of which the agent in acting is necessarily
aware. But if Green is not denning motive as it is, he may
perhaps be said to be defining motive as it ought to be. As
moral agents it is our ambition to make our Wills insuscept-
ible to all considerations and influences except the character
of the end pursued. 'What is best? 'is the only question
relevant to a moral decision ; and to a perfect will the answer
to that question will be the sole and inevitable determinant
-of action. It makes no real difference whether we say in
such a case that there is no motive but only an intention, or
that motive and intention are coincident. There is really no
motive as distinct from intention. The latter phrase if cor-
rect suggests an alternative answer to the question provoked
by the interchangeable use of motive and intention. If, we
might say, the warning letter was written out of friendliness
to the man warned, it is really incorrect to say that its motive
was to ' warn the person addressed '. The case of the soldier
or the doctor is different. The doctor when he heals, the
soldier when he does his best to defeat the enemy, is doing
his duty ; and if the conditions of these acts are not compli-
cated by the intrusion of special and personal feelings, it
would perhaps be fair to say that motive is coincident with
intention. And it is this coincidence of the two which we
seem to have in mind when we speak of disinterested action.
We do not mean that the agent had no interest in what he did ;
but that the act recommended itself on it own merits, without
reinforcement from accidentally sympathetic tendencies.
We may now summarise our discussion of the relation of
motive to intention as follows. As a rule, in ordinary speech,
motive is distinguished from intention ; and the distinction
is a real one. Most considered acts have a motive or motives
separate and distinguishable from the intention. Sometimes,
however, in the perfect will and, on a lower plane, in the re-
current duties of the routine of life, motive is swallowed up
in intention, or, to put the same fact in another way, there
is no obscure factor distinct from the act contemplated which
influences the direction of the Will. (I put the doctor and
the soldier on ' a lower plane,' because while we rightly de-
mand of the perfect will a thorough understanding of the
nature and bearing of its action, their actions, though equally
* disinterested,' are not equally understopd.)
Fourthly, we must now consider the relation of motive to
feeling. There is a common superstition not perhaps so
general as it once was, but common even now and even
MOTIVE. 61
among quite reputable philosopher-psychologists that there
is some particularly close connexion between motive and
feeling. Hoffding, in the definition already quoted, identifies
motive with a particular kind of feeling, though he does not
attempt to specify the distinctive characteristics of motive
feeling as feeling. 1 Rather improperly, as I think (though
the device is popular with psychologists), the differentia which
he gives is derived not from an analysis of the feeling in
question, but is simply a reference to its cause or occasion.
Motive is 'the feeling excited by the idea of the end'.
Again, it was the much-vaunted discovery of the older He-
donists that pleasure is the only possible motive to action ;
and pleasure is one of the few terms which beyond dispute
fall within the term feeling. Bentham's long and confused
analysis of the meaning of * motive ' ends with the assertion
that ' a motive is substantially nothing more than pleasure
or pain operating in a certain manner'. Similarly Locke
had said (in a familiar passage) : ' The motive for continu-
ing in the same state or action, is only the present satisfaction
in it ; the motive to change is always some uneasiness :
nothing setting us upon the change of state, or upon any new
action, but some uneasiness. This is the great motive that
works on the mind to put it upon action, which for short-
ness' sake we will call determining of the will.' 2 As usual
Locke is more consistent than his imitators. Locke really
means what he says, that the feeling of pleasure or pain
is the motive to action or inaction, but what Bentham
means is that the prospect of future pleasant feeling is the
only prospect which attracts a very different proposition,
which makes it possible to talk of pleasure loosely as a
motive to change, but at the same time robs hedonism of
much of its psychological plausibility. (It may be remarked
in justice to Bentham that in addition to what he calls the
1 motive in prospect ' (i.e. the prospect of pleasure or pain) he
recognises also a 'motive in esse,' which sometimes at any
rate is pleasure or pain actually experienced. Thus he would
in the last resort probably be driven back upon Locke's
position : but his account is complicated and obscure, and it
would not be worth while to examine it in the present con-
nexion.) Now the presupposition of all theories of the Will
which find the motive of action in feeling is surely one and
the same. It is that if Will is to be understood it must be
1 Indeed in the exposition which follows the definition quoted he ap-
pears to surrender the identification of motive with feeling. If motive
is what moves us to act, and ' the aim embraced by the idea . . . de-
termines the feeling ' (p. 345), then the aim itself or the idea would seem
to have a better right than the feeling to be called ' motive '.
2 Essay (ed. Fraser), vol. i. , p. 331.
62 J. L. STOCKS :
interpreted in terms of physical causation. The determina-
tion of the Will is regarded as an event, the cause of which
is to be looked for in a preceding event. The reflective con-
sideration, therefore, of alternative actions, which adduces
reasons for preferring this to that, is not the true cause of
the preference of the one to the other. Reflective decision
has its cause or reason, but the reason of the conclusion is
not a mediating term by which an obscure logical force
called validity is communicated to the conclusion. The
reason comes into being at the same moment as the conclu-
sion and is itself a necessary part of the conclusion. But an
event in the causal series is not allowed to contain its ground
within itself. Where then is the cause of action to be found ?
The choice which is an event in consciousness should have a
cause in an antecedent event in consciousness. It would be
unreasonable (for reasons already explained) to suppose that
what appears to determine decision really determines it.
But feeling is the only element in consciousness which does
not appear to influence decision. Therefore feeling is what
determines the will. Or, we might put it thus, the cause or
motive of action is something hidden ; feeling is something
hidden : therefore feeling is the cause or motive of action.
I need not ask whether such reasoning would be permitted in
the physical sciences, because, whatever Will is, its determina-
tions are not events of the same kind as the fall of a stone
and cannot be explained by the same methods.
My interpretation however of this psychology may be
disputed, and in that case I fall back on a simpler and more
obvious objection. It is surely amazing that these eminent
philosophers should never have asked themselves the question
why is it, if motive is really feeling, that neither pleasure
nor pain are ever alleged as the motives of action ? Why is
it that avarice, revenge, jealousy, and the other motives so
freely imputed to friends and criminals, are none of them
feelings ? Or if they did ask these questions, it is even more
astonishing that they should have avoided the obvious answer
Because by motive we do not mean feeling or any kind of
feeling. On this ground alone I think the doctrine that
motive is feeling stands condemned.
But, it may be asked, if motive is not feeling and not (as
a rule) intention, what is it? Before attempting to answer
this question let us recall our position. The term motive,
we saw, is only used in connexion with considered action,
and that which is assigned to an act as its motive is in most
cases not itself a choice or decision, past or present, general
or particular ; rather it is some tendency or bent of the will,
and thus more general than any particular determination of
MOTIVE. 63
the will, though less general than habits of character such as
cowardice or generosity. When motive is not a tendency of
this kind, it is an intention, an end apprehended and accepted
in choosing the means and the sole determinant of that
choice. In this last case we were uncertain whether it was
proper to speak of motive at all ; but we were clear that there
was no motive as distinct from the intention. In discussing
the identification of motive and feeling we have really been
discussing only the activity of the imperfect will, in which
motive is distinct from intention ; for in the good will there
appears to be no element or agency extraneous to delibera-
tion influencing its decisions.
Now in all action upon consideration what is chosen, if
not necessarily a ' this-fo/ore-that,' is always a ' this-for-the-
sa&e-o/-that,' an act as a means to an end. What is considered
is possibilities of action and what is chosen is an act. But
that which influences the mind must be something in that
which is before the mind ; what influences choice must be
something in the chosen. It is true that in some secondary
sense the influence may be said to reside in a man's character,
since it is from his character that his projects of action draw
their attractiveness or repulsiveness. In the same way we
sometimes trace the ready assent of one man to an argument
which another rejects to some difference in their characters.
Nevertheless, it remains true that it was because the project
or the argument was what it was that they being what they
were greeted it as they did. And when we infer from one to the
other we infer in the first instance from the act to the char-
acter and not from the character to the act. For the act
is to some extent plain and obvious to all, but the character
is only to be guessed at.
It may therefore be presumed that when we impute a mo-
tive to an act we are inferring from something in the act (or
more probably in the series of acts of which it is the latest
member) to something in the character of the agent. From
what in the act ? The answer is so obvious as hardly to re-
quire statement from the result which de facto it is likely to
bring about. In order to arrive at the conclusion that a
man is mean it is neither necessary nor usual to scrutinise
carefully little signs of speech and gesture or to watch, like
a novelist, the waves of emotion which leave their passing
traces upon the agent's features ; it is enough to know that
in spite of countless differences of circumstance and sugges-
tion the same general tendency may be observed in all trans-
actions in which money is involved to spend as little as
possible. The delinquent, put upon his defence, may allege
in each case the most irreproachable intention ; and his
64 J. L. STOCKS :
account of his deliberations may be substantially correct : yet
he will not get his verdict. For in the court of moral claims
the ultimate, indeed the only, evidence of character or motive
is action ; and the only question which is or ought to be
asked is ' what have you done ? '
From this it would seem to follow that the distinction be-
tween the motive and intention of an act depends upon a
distinction between its actual or probable and its intended
issue. (' Probable ' rather than ' actual ' because the standard
by which we judge is the expectation which a fair-minded man
of average intelligence would in the circumstances of the
agent form as to the issue of the act.) But this distinction,
we must now observe, is not present in all cases in which
the motive is distinguished from the intention. For instance,
in the case of a warning letter addressed to a friend, the in-
tention is clearly distinct from the motive, friendliness ; but
there is no dissidence of the probable and contemplated issue
analogous to that observed in the economy of the mean man.
Now the foregoing argument has assumed that a motive, in
the sense of a disposition which accounts for the act, cannot
as such be a factor in deliberation. But disposition or mo-
tive in this sense means a tendency in action to pursue a
certain kind of end : meanness, for instance, is a tendency to
keep one's wealth as far as possible intact. In a sense, then,
all motives in this the usual use of the word are unconscious.
But there is another sense in which some are conscious,
some unconscious. The man who wrote the warning letter,
let us suppose, reflected that as a friend he could do no less
than warn Jones of the danger he was in. The motive,
friendliness, was in that case represented by his awareness
that the act was not simply the helping of a man in danger,
but the helping of a friend in danger. The letter was in
thought addressed not to Jones but to ' my friend, Jones ' or
' poor old Jones '. Motive and intention are thus not con-
trasted or conflicting but the deliberate expression the one
of the other. The Consciousness of a motive, then, means
the attention to that in the act adopted which makes it of
service to the realisation of the end which motive is the dis-
position to pursue.
We have now sufficient ground, I think, for accepting the
propositions that motive is best defined by reference to end,
and that the difference between conscious, half-conscious,
and unconscious motive lies in the different degrees of clear-
ness and obscurity with which the true nature of the act
adopted is apprehended by the agent. Of course, it may be
asked, how can a man be moved by an element in his choice
of which he is unaware ? This is a real difficulty, but one
MOTIVE. 65
which goes far beyond the problem with which we are deal-
ing. The same difficulty in a different form perplexes our
consideration of the relation of thought to perception, and
its solution would (I almost think) be the solution of the
problem of error. The temptation is to fly for refuge to
categories of causation, whose assistance is purely illusory.
We are inclined to think that we have advanced the problem
when, on these lines, we think of the Will as (so to speak)
pushed from behind instead of drawn on from in front. In
that way there is no salvation. Instead, we must in spite of
every difficulty keep to categories of cognition. We must
think of the unconscious motive as operating in and through
apprehension. The act is suitable to one of those obscure
purposes, which under the names of jealousy, avarice, etc., are
alleged as motives : and that fact, though not reflectively
distinguished, is none the less in some dim perceptual manner
known and counted on. The will, not conscious of itself, is
yet conscious of all that it enacts.
There is no longer any need lor a sharp distinction between
character and motive, or between the motive generosity and
the virtue which goes by the same name. Action is character
in activity and motive is that side of character from which a
given act is more particularly thought to proceed. We have
already noticed that in the perfect will (though not there
alone) it is difficult to speak of motive as unambiguously as
on the lower moral planes, and we have to some extent ex-
plained this fact by reference to what is ordinarily called the
disinterestedness of such action. Our present point of view
suggests a complementary analysis. In the lop-sided dis-
harmonious activities of normal imperfect humanity, we see
character moving, like an ill-made and ill-weighted ship, with
much creaking and straining of timbers, uneasily and un-
evenly from point to point. In the vagaries of its wayward
progress we trace a permanent ' list ' to port or starboard a
persistent but unconscious motive. But if the boat were
better made or better manned, she would complain less and
effect more. There would be no list to port or starboard, no
motive but wind and tiller. The image is no doubt inade-
quate ; but what I mean it to suggest is this. The imperfectly
developed character betrays in action a number of dimly ap-
prehended tendencies, purposes which are not yet purposes in
the full sense, which are unreconciled and indeed irreconcil-
able with one another : of these now this one and now that is
the more prominent. In such a character, by a right and
proper abstraction, inferring in the way explained* from act to
character, we refer now to one now to another element as the
5
66 j. L. STOCKS: MOTIVE.
motive of action ; generalising further we see these motives
issuing from habits of action to which we give names as
virtues and vices; and finally by a yet wider sweep of
generalisation we sum up the whole trend of action as char-
acter. Out of these chaotic purposes the hard necessity of
living and the routine of life will of itself inevitably fashion
a sort of unity, a single purpose. But it is for us by our
conduct to decide whether the unity to which we move shall
be largely dumb and unconscious like the purposes out of
which it grows or conscious and self-expressing. The moral
effort is the attempt to attain this harmony, in which the re-
flective determination is the expression, not of this element
to the exclusion of that, but of the whole character. In the
good will, the character, now one and indivisible, is poured
out whole in action, and finds its unity, where alone unity is
found, in knowledge. The good will only does what it in-
tends and knows what it does.
Thus the moral motive is distinguished almost as sharply as
even Kant distinguished it from every other motive whatever.
But the distinction after all is only one of degree: the will in the
individual, in the state, perhaps also in the world, slowly and
painfully comes to the knowledge of itself, which is its goal.
Early in this paper I quoted from Thomas Hardy the
poetic expression of the Unconscious World Will ' the
dreaming, dark, dumb Thing, that turns the handle of this
idle Show '. I will now conclude with a quotation from the
last page of his poem which suggests the hope that the Imma-
nent Will is groping its way towards consciousness of itself.
Last as first the question rings
Of the Will's long travailings ;
Why the All-mover^
Why the All-prover
JEver urges on and measures out the droning tune of Things ;
Heaving dumbly as we deem,
Moulding numbly as in dream,
Apprehending not how fare the sentient subjects of Its scheme.
Nay ; shall not Its blindness break ?
Yea, musb not Its heart awake,
Promptly tending to Its mending
In a genial germing purpose, and for lovingkindness' sake ?
Should it never curb or cure
Aught whatever those endure
Whom it quickens, let them darkle to extinction swift and sure
But a stirring thrills the air
Like to sounds of joyance there
That the rages of the ages
Shall be cancelled, and deliverance offered from the darts that were,
Consciousness the Will informing, till It fashion all things fair !
V. DISCUSSIONS.
ON THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN WAKING AND
DREAMING.
UPON what principle we distinguish waking and dreaming is a
problem which can be outlined symmetrically ; there are two facts
and two fancies. The facts, given for what they are worth, appear
to be these : in waking we take dreams to be hallucinatory, but
the standpoint of dreaming is not converse ; and secondly, we are
sharply aware of a contrast when we wake up, but not necessarily
of a change when we go to sleep. The fancies seem, tor once in a
way, to be no more illuminating than the facts. A common dis-
tinction between waking and dreaming is made in point of vivid-
ness ; but the usual addition, that it is the waking state which is to
be the more vivid, shows the ambiguity of the test. In the terror
qui per tenebras repit nearly every one notes a fine psychological
importunity, of stronger effect since waking life is less and less con-
fronted with_pestes qucepalam spargunt mortem. Dream-fear may
or may not be interpreted as due to the likelihood that when the
trees rocked the anthropoids would fall ; but the intensity of the
fear defies denial, and if the waking consciousness is to be the more
vivid we shall with Hume have to explain rather urgently that
' the force of our mental actions ... is not to be measured by the
apparent agitation of the mind '.
The other fancy is that dreaming is distinguishable because it is
inconsistent. ' Consistency ' may first be taken in its roughest sense,
viz., probability. Even if it is granted that all dreams are improb-
able, no line between waking and dreaming can so be drawn ; thus,
suppose I dream that I go for a bathe, and on turning to the bank
again I see a hippopotamus " That is what I mean," says the
opponent ; " banal enough as a nightmare, but in real life ! " Well,
in the hop-fields of Kent some quite credible constables, it was said
a few years back, reported their cognisance of a casual pachyderm.
Unbelief would have cordially vexed these officers. " Your dialec-
tic," the sergeant would have complained, "has been unjust to our
elephant. In my profession men unlearn probability and its false
ideals. A thorough-going mechanical system can never be com-
plete ; and a plot-interest, embodied in all events that happen, is
never actual." True ; and his mention of a plot-interest recalls a
marked feature of dreaming ; for sometimes a dream-presentation,
68 J. A. J. DBEWITT:
for instance the landscape in a dream, has a singleness of expres-
sion informing the details, and an immediacy and self-justification,
which waking experience does not easily rival. It does rival such
qualities now and then, and in any case the discussion must not
end so simply ; otherwise the needed distinction might be found
in the phrase das Leben ist nicht ein Traum, aber es sollte einer
sein.
Consistency in a stricter sense forms a test applicable in three
ways. A dream may be said to be inconsistent in itself ; but in
that case the standard either distinguishes nothing or confounds
everything. If ' provisionally inconsistent ' is what is meant, then
many dreams are consistent. If ultimate consistency is intended,
then all experience seems inconsistent ; any spaced object, any
timed happening, is still a fresh-springing comedy of contradiction
but there is no need to labour the obvious here. Another applica-
tion of the test is this : dreams are inconsistent with our waking
states. There is still left, no doubt, an obscurity on what prin-
ciple do we believe in which state ? However, that point can be
shirked ; for in fact dreams are not always inconsistent with the
waking state. Let me this time have a simpler dream : one night
it seems to me that I lie in bed, and reflect on the difference be-
tween thinking and picturing ; suddenly I do not remember what
Kant says about schematism ; I must get up and go into the next
room where there is a Kritik der reinen Vernunft lying open on the
table. I read a passage, and then, happy and mystified, I go back
to bed ; when I am in bed I hear the leaves of the book being
turned by the breeze. Upon what principle do I later judge this
to be a dream? "Why," says- the opponent, " the electric light
would show you if measurements were exact enough." Then let
the occasion have been very early in the morning at midsummer,
when daylight should not be denied even to a believer in Kant.
A Cartesian gives the third rendering : When we wake up, we are
aware of a sudden change ; and this gives us the clue for assuming
two distinct states. Now, we notice that the state into which we
change to-day is more or less connected with the state into which
we changed on the previous morning the instalments run on and
on, hanging roughly together ; but that other state, the one out of
which we change, is on each occasion a lonely incoherency, without
introductory or resumptive neighbours. So the waking state is
coherent in a way, while our dreams are utterly incoherent.
By understanding consistency as ' more or less coherent resump-
tion,' the Cartesian raises four questions. Does to-day's waking
resume the waking life of yesterday ? It does. Can waking take
up a dream^ story ? and can dreaming take up the story of waking
life ? Unless it is impossible ever to mistake a past dream for a
waking experience, I must say yes and yes. Can to-night's dream-
ing carry 'on last night's dreaming? The Cartesian must say
Never. '* Serial hallucinations ! " he protests ; " Once allow even
ON THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN WAKING AND DREAMING. 69
the "possibility of them, and you will find no distinction between
waking and dreaming ".
It is indeed plain that the two states are not yet distinguished ;
and the cause of thB failure can already be suspected. From the
isolated individual mind there may perhaps be elicited various sorts
of subjectivism, bat no kind of cognition. The discussion has paid
the common debt of things Cartesian, and has followed the other
unpremeditated proofs of the grand central truism that ' objective '
means ' shared,' and that it is therefore a far cry to objectivity when
we set out from the unshareable. Hence for a discernment of
dreams the criterion is now indicated ; I must appeal to more than
one consciousness. What is dreamed by one is a dream ; what is
dreamed by several is <'ognition.
At this both the philosophers and the plain men are all displeased
together, observing that dreams cannot so be distinguished. When
dreaming, we often dream of people ; thus, you may dream that
some one blacks your eye. That is a sort of sharing. Further, we
must at least allow for coincident dreaming : suppose A dreams
that he blacks B's eye, and B simultaneously dreams that he has
his eye blacked by A ; the time, after lunch ; the place, the High
Street ; the dispute, about Free-will. This is another sort of shar-
ing. Lastly, let us imagine that after the coincident dream A
wakes up with a light heart, and B with an unclouded eye ; the
two men happen to meet and quarrel and this time B has his eye
truly blacked. We have now noticed three kinds of sharing ; and
omniscience alone can tell how on the given principle they are to
be distinguished.
It must be granted that the coincident dream was an embarrass-
ing conspiracy of delirium ; and this annoying fantasy was only
a trial shot there are trustworthy brickbats to follow. For, the
philosophers will say, if two or three flat-earth men get together,
must we not be haggard for the earth's spheroidicity ? Or if ma-
jorities decide used not the sun to go round the earth ? And are
not spaced things made up of tiny bits of hard stuff? for many
men think so, and some shamelessly say so. Objectivity at least,
your objectivity is a function of concerted impudence ; for if all
men, or all but one, were decently dubious, nothing could be ob-
jective.
Let me for a time suffer the other missiles, and look at the last.
The question is what do the philosophers intend when they call me
impudent ? It is not that they mind a layman trying to think
he ought, therefore he can (he can try, they mean) ; but they wish
to point out a certain arbitrariness of process and result. When
once a layman tries thinking, you cannot quite tell what will
happen whether, for example, he will be a circle-squarer, or per-
haps will tie weights to his cycle-wheels ' to assist propulsion '.
Also, misguided laymen may, and sometimes do, agree ; so that
you must not define objectivity as an agreement of thinking sub-
70 J. A. J. DREWITT I
jects for laymen can agree wrong, and metaphysicians cannot
agree at all.
So far the philosophers make themselves clear; but when
they suggest a decent dubiety, what is it that they want now?
They do not want me to model my conversation on Lear's old
lady of Prague. When a philosopher thumps a table, and de-
mands of me "Is this a table?" he is least of all appeased if I
answer "Perhaps". That is not modest scepticism, it is brazen
eristic. He means me to say : " It is a visible table, and you
thumped it most audibly ". I find then that the philosophers'
wish is double ; they ask me to see in some things the possibility
of debate, and in others the necessity of concord, even for lay
thinking subjects.
This is good philosophers' sense and typical philosophers' ma-
lice. They have smuggled away from profane notice the essential
fact, viz., that everything here turns on the sharp distinction be-
tween two aspects of thought one primary, constructive, and
' automatic ' ; the other secondary, critical, and deliberative. Thus,
in the well-known experiment of negative images, 1 the changing
shape of the image clearly depends on an inference ; but any ex-
perimenters, whether psychologists, children, or mammalians 2
generally, will see similar changing shapes. They must, there-
fore, use the same inference 3 ; but their secondary reflexion on the
matter would be widely diverse a psychologist bethinks him of
impetuous polemic ; a child remembers Pears' soap ; a dog might
have convulsions. It is the primary functions e.g. the recogni-
tion-thought, and 'cause' and 'thing,' and so on which put
together the objective world ; and, as reflexion protests, they put
it together inconsistently. The primary thoughts do not, in ordi-
nary consciousness, appear as thoughts at all. Eeflexion exposes
them, but it cannot reform them. Thus, ' cause ' (as a primary)
joins in a special way two bits in a time-picture; and, however
reflexion may insist that in this special way I must either join all
in all or not at all, it cannot check the primary thought, which
imperturbably will so join some bits, and will not so join others. If
I whistle a note, and during it a clock strikes, I cannot with any
effort cognise these events either as cause and effect or as reciprocal
action, though reflexion urges that in objectivity all must be con-
nected, each detail with every detail. Eeflexion has never done
badgering the primary thought ; if ' cause ' would start, e.g., as
causa suij and would go on as universal formula working both
ways, and would end as summum bonum, there might perhaps be
some sense in it ! Amid the clamour, primary thought remains
sweetly unruffled ; and if there is a picture of two bits of hard
stuff, ' cause ' will transfer movement from one to the other with an
engaging simplicity that drives reflexion into dreadful paroxysms.
1 Dr. Stout's Manual, p. 396. 2 A guess.
3 So (I think) Schopenhauer.
ON THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN WAKING AND DEEAMING. 71
The result of the strife is the prettiest paradox possible. In pri-
mary thinking, where inconsistency is the work, a rigid concor-
dance is obtained ; either you cannot, or you will not be allowed,
to walk through brick walls. In reflexion, where consistency is
the aim, controversy is unquenchable ; so, a blind deaf-and-dumb
man is brought to share a common world with other people, and
then he fights with them about Euclid. His squabble incidentally
brings to notice another cognitive factor; viz., picturing; the two
ways of picturing will for the present purpose be regarded as per-
fectly distinct from either kind of thought, and will be classed as
'automatic,' in the sense that reflexion finds a difficulty in them,
but cannot alter them.
OQ such a view, elementary cognition will imply only a rather
special case of consistency, viz., agreement in inconsistency. As
regards the automatic factors, the subjects of cognition cannot be
consistent, but they must agree. It will result that, if a man
pictures communally, and thinks ' cause ' and ' thing ' and so on
agreeably, then he may be a fire-worshipper or a circle- squarer, or
a spiritualist, or a materialist, yet for all that he will be a fellow-
cognisant.
This time we have cornered dreaming. Cognition in the virtual
agreement of the ' automatic ' functions of the subjects of conscious-
ness ; dreaming is their virtual disagreement. Thus let every one
sleep under observation : now if A dreams that he blacks B's eye,
he will be refuted by the watcher ; and if B dreams simultaneously
and conversely, the watcher will refute B too. Clearly, some one
has been dreaming; and to decide which was the dreamer, the
appeal is always to more subjects of cognition and their forced
agreement. The watcher is the yawning hieroglyph of the waking
principle.
" But suppose that when I am asleep in bed, I dream that I am
asleep in bed ; for when asleep we often say ' I am dreaming, and
shall wake by-and-by '. Or, to take a simpler case, suppose that
I always sleep with my eyes open, and at daybreak, while I am
sleeping with my eyes on the window, I dream that dawn is light-
ing the window. I do not yet follow how your principle "
Neither do I, to say frankly ; and I am now racked by the
riddle whether to be cheated is to be cheated, when the cheat is
the same as the truth. Before I can make up my mind, the ob-
jector goes on : " You seem to need help. I am not an idealist
myself ; but I suppose vaguely that an idealist, when he sees a man
awake, thinks the following thoughts : ' This is a subject of cog-
nition. I do not mean the man that I see ; that is a spaced
object, and a subject of cognition is not a spaced object, nor
in space-relation to the objects which it, or any other cog-
nitive subject, constructs by spacing (together with timing and
primary thinking). Still, I note that certain spaced objects are
especially relevant to certain cognitive subjects ; and in that case
72 J. A. J. DEE WITT :
such an object is especially symbolical to other cognitive subjects
who construct it. Thus, when Y kicks Z's shin, each constructs a
spaced shin, a shin symbolical to Y, and relevant to Z. So this
man this object which I construct in space, and in an interesting
way too, a sharing way, with my primary and communal thought-
reference, implying other subjects of cognition, and with our
picturing schemes which for their part (but not without the primary
thought) produce in each subject a different picture that yet is
ultimately a picture of coincidence yes, this man this object
which I construct, and so do they this spaced object, I say, I take
to be relevant to a subject of cognition ; and the behaviour of the
object is symbolical I infer from it that the cognitive subject to
which it is relevant, is engaged in constructing a common world
with myself. And well he may be.' But on meeting a somnam-
bulous man, the idealist changes his last thoughts into ' is not con-
structing a common world ' ! Now let us suppose that during
sleep there is a contraction of some fibres in the brain -complex ;
and let us also suppose that by an accident A's skull and parts of
his brain are transparent, and the fibres in question are shown in
a magnified shape to common sight. When the idealist constructs
A's brain-fibres as shortened, he will from this symbolism infer
that the cognitive subject, to which those constructed objects are
relevant, is not constructing a common world with him. Whereat,
if A dreams that (in a mirror) he constructs those fibres so as to
symbolise waking, he will be impeached by the idealist ; and if A
dreams that he constructs them so as to symbolise dreaming, he
will convict himself."
Much estranged by this crude and tactless violation of a neat
puzzle, I can do no more than gaze coldly on the objector and
remind him of the wholesome rule that 'in idealism you do not
talk about the brain '. Then I pull myself together for one last
wild struggle.
Waking can include dreaming, but dreaming cannot include
waking. In this way : imagine that I am. drowsy after lunch ; I
know that the time is about two o'clock, and that I am in my
chair; I hear people talking, and a gramophone vociferating
and yet I do most undeniably dream that I am reading a page of
Ho-ner, and that I cannot make out why /VeW has been emended
to KAeooi/. The waking state is here the container, and the dream-
ing is part -content ; for if I am wakefully to know that I dream, I
must wakefully know that 1 wake. The other way differs ; I am
not awake when I only dream that I am only dreamirjg.
Hereupon all together, man, woman and child, are offended in
the very principle of thinking, and exclaim deplorably, "Why,
my dear, good, muddled person, you can't distinguish But
let us catch the child apart, since he is more interesting to hear.
''Godfather, is it wrong to dream that you steal?" Well, it
might mean that you would steal, or had stolen. " You see, I
ON THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN WAKING AND DEEAMING. 73
dreamt that I had had a dream that I took an apple and wasn't
sorry ; and I dreamt that I hated having had the dream. Ought
I to be glad?"
Perhaps it is time to end the business. Adopting provisionally
what the enemy would call a Kantian view that we distinguish
waking vermoge eines Vermogens I can drop the subject and
listen once more to the topics of serious speculation. However
serious it may be, theory has at times the not unattractive look of
a TratSia rail/ ju,a0//ftar<oj/. Yet in supposing that e^en so 'philos-
ophy has something to do with life,' we shall hardly be unjust to
the latter; indeed, es singt von lauter Melaphysik Ich hor j es
sogar im Traum.
J. A. J. DBEWITT.
EEPLY TO ME. EUSSELL'S EXPLANATIONS.
THE explanations offered by Mr. Eussell in the July number of
MIND have been read, I am sure, with interest by many readers.
I unfortunately did not see the number at the proper time, but still
I hope it is not too late to ask Mr. Eussell to explain somewhat
further; for in the main I am left still unable to understand. If,,
however, Mr. Eussell should feel that within convenient limits
there is no more to be done, such a position, so far as I am con-
cerned, would call for no justification.
1. In the first place, my difficulty as to " unities " remains..
Is there anything, I ask, in a unity beside its " constituents," i.e.
the terms and the relation, and, if there is anything more, in what,
does this " more " consist ? Mr. Eussell tells us that we have got
merely an enumeration or merely an aggregate. Even with merely
so much I should still have to ask how even so much is possible.
But, since we seem to have something beyond either, the puzzle
grows worse. If I remember right, Prof. Stout some years ago
stated the problem as attaching essentially to the fact of " related-
ness ". What is the difference between a* relation which relates in
fact and one which does not so relate ? And if we accept a strict
pluralism, where, I urge, have we any room for this difference ?
2. In the next place, as to " implication " my troubles continue.
If we have nothing but facts, I see no room for implication, and if
we have anything more or less than facts, I cannot understand
what this is. By all means banish possibility as real, but where
among facts does implication fall ? Is a disjunction with its
" Either-or " an actual fact ? Are " conditions " facts ? Is " de-
ducibility " a fact ? With regard to facts I thought our attitude
was one of " It is " or (perhaps also) " It is not ". I do not in
the least understand the position of " either-or " or of " can be 51 or
" may be ".
3. I urged against the possibility of a term being related to itself
the fact that relation implies diversity, and I should like to explain
my reason for holding to this fact. I do not proceed here by argu-
ing downwards from some assumption or axiom. I proceed on
the contrary by way of actual experiment. With any relation
remove diversity (this is my experience), and the relation is de-
stroyed. You have (I find) no relation left unless you also leave
that diversity which you may have failed to notice. What I of
course am forced to assume here is that I have correctly performed
my experiment. If Mr. Eussell on the other side says that he can
EEPLY TO ME. KUSSELI/S EXPLANATIONS. 75-
perceive a relation where there is absolutely no diversity about the-
terms, I do not see how we are to argue about our difference.
4. With regard to diversity, externality and mere fact, the
assumptions (I do not call them such) which I make are as
follows. I assume first that, where I get the unmeaning or the
self -destructive, I have not got even the possible. And I assume
that what is is, in the sense that, so far as I have truth and reality,
I have not got something which is true and real merely because of
something else. This second assumption, if it is to be called one,
bears on the question of externality and mere fact in a way which
I will explain.
(a) But, first, with regard to diversity Mr. Eussell maintains, as
I understand, that our only reason for denying the relation of
diversity between a term and its own self is that this relation is not
a fact. Whether Mr. Eussell means more than that the relation
has not yet been found, I am unable to judge. To myself on the
other hand the above relation is not possible. To myself it either
is meaningless or self-destructive. In making an ideal experiment
I either have no diversity, or else the terms are different ; and, when
I suppress the difference, the relation is destroyed. I therefore
deny this possibility, and I go on further to argue that any pre-
misses from which such a possibility follows are false.
(6) With regard to externality and mere fact I should first explain
that, in my opinion, these are things which are not and which can-
not be observed. To have bare A in bare external relation to B is.
not possible in any observation or experiment. The supposed fact
is really an inference reached by vicious abstraction. We saw
above how " unities " and " implications," without which Mr. Russell
apparently cannot move a step, involve always a something more
which on his view seems inexplicable. And the same thing holds,
good with regard to any alleged perception of mere conjunction.
To myself the mere fact in which something seems to qualify A
from the outside, is never really the whole fact. There is always
here a condition left outside of what you take as the fact. Your
statement is therefore true not of A itself but of A qualified by x.
And hence the opposite of your statement is also true. On the
other hand to say something about A which in no sense qualifies.
A, remains to my mind meaningless. In other words, no "and"
which is purely external is thinkable. This is once more the
point to which Mr. Eussell is invited to address himself. The
above is. the ground of objection to externality and to mere fact.
You want, that is, to say something about something, and not
about something else, particularly when the something else is un-
known. The demand for " intrinsic " relations 1 take to be an
expression of this want, but 1 agree that here once more complete
satisfaction is impossible. There is of course with me no question
of any "axiom ".
Naturally I realise that in this way doubt may be thrown upon.
76 F. H. BEADLEY : EEPLY TO MR. BUSSELL's EXPLANATIONS.
every possible conclusion, however certainly it seems to follow in
ideal experiment. How are we anywhere to save ourselves from
doubt arising from the 'presence of the possibility of an unknown
condition ? Have we not with every result a counter-possibility ?
This question in its turn leads to the inquiry whether the alleged
counter-possibility is everywhere really possible. But I must not
here digress into a defence of what I have argued elsewhere.
5. I have stated the main principle on which objection is taken
to absolute externality and bare conjunction. I would go on to add
that I am still in doubt as to the sense in which according to Mr.
Eussell relations are external. The terms are to contribute nothing,
and so much I understand. But I still do not know whether Mr.
Eussell takes the relations apart from any terms to be thinkable.
To be consistent he should, in my opinion, hold this view, but I
cannot say that he does so. If all that is meant is that this or that
term contributes no more than any other term, clearly, from so
much, absolute externality and pluralism do not follow. On the
other hand, a relation apart from terms is to me unmeaning
or self-destructive, and is an idea produced by an indefensible
abstraction.
6. I will end by noticing briefly Mr. Eussell's contention that
on his view we are less in conflict with science and with common
-sense. This is an argument which I am very far from undervalu-
ing. In fact the doctrine which I hold I hold largely because it
seems to me to remain, more than others, in harmony with life as a
whole. I am speaking of course only of views which aim at theo-
retical consistency, and not of those where inconsistency and self-
contradiction are of minor importance. But I could not on this
.ground compare the conclusions advocated by myself with those
taught by Mr. Eussell, because on the most important point I do
not know what his conclusion is. To myself the things which
.matter most in life are not to be resolved into terms with relations
between them. And I am ignorant as to what on this point Mr.
Eussell may really hold. The question is in a word as to ex-
periences which, to a greater or less extent, are non-relational.
Obviously, when I do not know whether and how far Mr. Eussell
denies the existence of such facts, or in what sense he admits them,
it is not in my power to judge as to how far his views are in har-
mony with science and common sense, if I use these terms, that
is, in anything like a wide meaning. This is a point on which some
^explanation by Mr. Eussell would be welcome, I am sure, to others
as well as to myself. We return here to the doubt as to " unity "
with which we began. We have again on our hands the w r hole
question as to sensible fact and as to all that is covered by the
word feeling. I should perhaps add that, so far as I can judge, Mr.
Eussell's view as to the inviolability of " facts " would make inde-
fensible the constructions in and by which the entire body of
.history and of natural science consists.
F. H. BRADLEY.
VI. CRITICAL NOTICES.
A Commentary on HegeVs Logic. By JOHN MCTAGGAET ELLIS.
McTAGGAET, Fellow and Lecturer of Trinity College, Cam-
bridge ; Fellow of the British Academy. Cambridge : at the
University Press, 1910. Pp. xv, 311.
WE have here before us in a complete form Mr. McTaggart's
critical account of the various transitions by which Hegel passes
from the Category of Being to the Category of the Absolute Idea. 1
The method of the Logic, and its "application 'to experience," he
has discussed in previous works, familiar to all students of the
subject. But now for the first time there lies before the reader, in
lucid and vigorous English, a complete and careful interpretation,
step by step, of the stages of the philosophical pilgrim's progress, as
Hegel conceived it. I will observe at this point, once for all, that
I am disposed to regret the severity with which Mr. McTaggart
has restricted himself to the passages which he takes to contain the
logical progression. Some lengthy arguments he justifies himself
for omitting. But often, I think, a fuller reference to the context of
the passages cited would have been both interesting and relevant.
One can hardly fancy that John Stuart Mill, if such a work had
been in his reach, would have written as he did: "I found by
actual experience of Hegel that conversancy with him tends to-
depress one's intellect ". 2 It is some forty years since that letter
was written; it is nearly a hundred since Hegel's Logic was pub-
lished. The appreciation of great thinkers, especially of foreign
thinkers, is a gradual and co-operative effort, and means a certain
remodelling of the national mind, which takes place slowly.
I believe there is not in any language another exposition of
Hegel's Logic so thorough and so clear as this. M. Noel's and
Prof. Hib ben's works, which Mr. McTaggart fully appreciates,
are less critical and on a smaller scale. Wallace's studies are
familiar to us all, but their merits are of a different kind. Only
those who have paid much attention to the Logic can estimate the
ir Fhe second, third, and three concluding chapters are based upon
papers which have appeared in MIND. All of them, and especially that
corresponding to the final chapter, have been a good deal altered, to a
great extent by omission. This persistent effort towards conciseness i.s
highly characteristic of the author.
2 J. S. Mill's Letters, ii., 93.
78 CRITICAL NOTICES I
^acumen and the labour that have been devoted to the work before
us ; and the thanks and congratulations of students are due to the
author in the highest measure. One obvious effect of his path-
breaking activity will be to facilitate discussion, and he will not
<take it amiss if varying suggestions arise to group themselves
around his central and classical exposition.
1. The topic of the fundamental importance of the Logic in Hegel's
philosophy ( 2) will lead us into the heart of the subject. I agree
that the Logic is central in the system, and that if it were rejected
the rest of the system would be destroyed ; and further, I accept
what I take to be suggested, that the small part which it has
occupied in the work of students of Hegel is discreditable to their
acumen, or to their courage, or both. But I do not agree that the
Logic is so far separable from the rest of the system, and self-
dependent, thafc it can truly be represented as a foundation on
which the rest of the system depends without contributing to its
stability. The sense in which the Logic is a priori, or depends
solely on the notion of 'pure thought,' has been discussed by Mr.
McTaggart in the Studies in Hegelian Dialectic, and is not before
us here, except as implied in the opinion to which I am referring.
I should prefer to express the relation by saying that the Logic is
central thought, and the rest of the system is pr ( p_yjncial or depart-
mental. And I cannot hold that the latter is an application of the
former. I take it to be common ground * that the progression of the
Dialectic depends upon bringing to bear the mind, which is im-
plicitly the whole, upon a single conception which is before it.
This being so, it is surely not a matter of indifference how much of
the explicit whole the mind carries with it, as its equipment for the
work of interpretation. I do not mean merely that the a posteriori
may furnish material for the a priori. I mean that the so-called
a posteriori may assist both in moulding and in sustaining the so-
called a priori ; and, although in appearance more open to error
and modification, it really bears this character because its content
is so abundant as to survive alteration. The Philosophies of Law or
of Eeligion do not seem to me to rest on the Logic. The structure
of the Notion is in them, and they are able to support themselves,
and, going to meet the central thought, to help in sustaining it as
well as in moulding its corollaries. The ultimate determinant and
foundation of every part is surely the whole ; and you cannot rule
out any of its provinces from participation in these functions.
This does not in any way detract from a recognition of the value
and prime necessity of thorough dealing with the central thought
as such. It is the abstract assertion of what a Universe must be,
and if it were overthrown (not merely not yet'formula4e2^we could
make no predications of the universe.
From this question of the importance of the Logic we naturally
turn to its uniqueness. Many great philosophers have dealt with
1 Studies in Hegelian Dialectic, 32.
JOHN MCTAGGART, A Commentary on Hegel's Logic. 79
philosophy as a kind of pilgrim's progress. Is the Dialectic dis-
parate with all these systems ? We wish well to the Dialectic, but
we do not wish to be deprived of every other philosophy. The
most influential Idealistic metaphysic, apart from Hegel, does not
run quite in the grooves of his Logic, yet has a general direction
emphatically the same. Take any minimum of experience ; work I
out its implications; and it will bring you to a central and concrete/
view of things. So Plato surely taught, and many since him ; so
e.g. Mr. Bradley teaches to-day. Does Mr. McTaggart say the
same, or anything reconcilable with it ? Here we may recall the
view of the Studies that the Dialectic is not so much a chain as
a continuous flow, and that its nature might be exhibited in the
relation of the larger divisions alone. You might, for example, as
I understand, argue upon the connexion of Being, Essence, and the
Notion, without being disqualified if there is somewhere a minor
link which you do not expect to fill up convincingly. In view of
this there is significance in the author's readiness to criticise and to
omit ; or again, to affirm a transition without finally establishing
the local link. 1 His large omissions, it should be noted, are some-
times in agreement with the Shorter Logic. It is to be wished that
when he finally produces a revised Dialectic he would indicate what
he holds to be its relation to the general and classical argument of
metaphysic a contingentia mundi, as above referred to.
Turning to Hegel's own estimate of the Dialectic, we are told in
the Introduction ( 5) that he exaggerated both its objectivity by
thinking that no other valid chain of dialectic was possible, and its
comprehensiveness, by thinking that its conclusions applied not
merely to existents, but to all reality. I shall return to the ques-
tion of comprehensiveness. As to that of objectivity, I should have
thought it right in principle to hold that there cannot be two sound
proofs of the same conclusion which are irreducibly different. To
deny that this applies to the dialectic tends to make it seem excep-
tional and arbitrary, a tendency which I deprecate. I shall return
also to the question of purely external relations, the impossibility of
which Hegel assumes in the Dialectic, and ought, the author con-
siders, to have proved beforehand.
2. Before speaking of the general results which the author draws
from the Logic, it will be well to note shortly the main modifications
of the argument which he proposes, and his most striking interpre-
tations.
In view of the impeachment of Hegel's mathematics, he urges
( 48) that the main object of the Dialectic is to get to the Absolute
Idea. 2 If Hegel is wrong in thinking that his Categories of Quan-
1 So far as I see this is the case in the transition from Life to Cognition
( 277). The author no doubt holds that the local link can ultimately be
supplied, but he holds it, I imagine, owing to the relation of the nature
of f * Cognition " to the general demand of the Dialectic.
2 This is Vi-ry characteristic of the author, and should be noted with a
view to the later argument.
80 CEITICAL NOTICES:
tity are good mathematics, then he has failed in accounting for
mathematical ideas. But to do this was not his leading object,
though no doubt he thought he was doing it. If the dialectic chain
is sound, from link to link, it would still help a skilled mathematician
to judge rightly about mathematics, even if Hegel himself has judged
wrongly. The answer seems good in general, though it involves a
divorce of the lower categories from experience, which is necessary
owing to the abstractness of the treatment, but dangerous, I think, as
a principle.
This seems the right place to observe upon the author's attitude
to Hegel's treatment of the infinite progression. He holds that an "
infinite progression is not in itself a contradiction, and that Hegel /
never said that it is, but always shows a special reason when he '
pronounces one contradictory. As to Hegel's opinion, can the
words " Der Progress ins Unendliche ist iiberhaupt der Andruck
des Widerspruchs, hier desjenigen," etc., 1 be brought into agreement
with Mr. McTaggart's interpretation ? And on the merits, if the
infinite progression is offered as the solution of a problem, which I
understand to be the case ex hypothesi, does it not necessarily con-
tradict the claim to completeness inherent in the demand for a
solution ? In the example which the author gives ( 70) from the
category of the Measureless, it is worth noting that Hegel points
out in the Shorter Logic (EncycL, 110, note) that this Category is
something more than an ordinary " wrong infinite ".
The obiter dictum that Hegel is never at his best when criticising
Kant ( 47) seems to me to reveal a certain enjoyment which the
author finds in shocking the Hegelians. I should certainly demur
on behalf of the Rechtsphilosophie.
The author rejects in toto the triad of Quantitative Eatio, and
proposes a substitute for it ( 71-72). It is impossible to do justice
to his argument here ; but I may say that he hardly seems to me
to make enough of the raising of a datum to a system which im-
plies a quality, in the absorption of quantum in ratio. He complains
e.g. that Hegel treats ratio as a quantum, which it is not ( 66).
But I suspect that Hegel meant to indicate that quanta in ratio
cease to be quanta and so come to be on a level with their ratio.
When a newspaper prints 5 per cent, as 5 per cent, it commits
the error of taking a quantum as entering into ratio, and illustrates
negatively the transformation which ratio effects. The author's
proposed triad, it seems to me, does not so much show quantity
becoming qualitative, as postulate that at a certain point it shall be
accompanied by a quality. This matter of continuity will meet us
again.
" The whole of Hegel's treatment of Measure is invalid " ( 75).
This treatment most people would set down as one of Hegel's
successes. The main objection is that at the end of Quantity he
has only reached the idea that the members of every Quantum must
1 Greater Logic, I, 254 (ed. 1841).
JOHN MCTAGGAET, A Commentary on Hegel's Logic. 81
have a quality in common ; while the idea which he uses at the
beginning of Measure is that a quantum is the amount of a quality
which according to its amount determines another quality. But
after passing through " intensive quantum " must we not be ready
to use the latter idea, viz., a single quantity of a quality, whose
units are qualitative degrees, rather than the idea of a quality
shared equally and alike by all the units of a number ? I should
have thought that the more and less of quality should have
come in at a much earlier stage, before explicit quantity or num-
ber. But this last sentence is a criticism on Hegel and not on Mr.
McTaggart.
In the development of Measure there is a remarkable instance of
the author's belief that categories may be omitted as erroneous
without interrupting the flow of the dialectic. He condemns and
would dispense with the entire " loop " from Eule to Elective
Affinity, which is absent in the Shorter Logic ( 81 and 94). Of
course if, the links omitted are erroneous, they are a for tiori un-
necessary. But the interesting point is that the nature of the series
should be such as to render it arguable whether ten links inserted
by its originator are erroneous or not. It is plain from this that the
continuity is more important than the gradations. I am inclined
to think that the category most incriminated, that of " specifying
measure " in the narrower sense, might be defended. You want to
exhibit the object itself as determining the quantity of a quality,
and you assume an identical external source merely to help you in
stating the point that this determination is differential in different
objects (cf. 81).
Noting the admirable account of the transition to Essence ( 93),
we pass on to observe the important caution as to the implications
of the terms Essence and Appearance, which are not to be taken as
what is real in contrast with what is merely apparent. Both belong
to the nature of the thing as viewed at a certain stage, and neither
is more or less real than the other. The author proposes to apply
to them the terms Substratum and Surface respectively ( 99).
" Appearance " as opposed to Reality, in Mr. Bradley's sense, would
apply, I suppose, to all the categories short of the Absolute
Idea.
Now let us turn to the concluding Categories of Essence, which
Hegel speaks of as exhibiting more particularly the ' genesis of the
notion V Here questions arise affecting the author's attitude to
the continuity of the Dialectic.
From Substance and Accident Hegel proceeds through Cause and
Effect to Reciprocity and the notion ; gradually removing the one-
sidedness of the way in which things affect each other, and exhibiting
its passage into the nature of a system of totalities, all in each and
each in all, which is characteristic of the notion. A link in this
series of transitions is the identity of Cause and Effect. This
1 Greater Logic, iii. , pp. 6, 310 (ed. 1841).
6
82 CEITICAL NOTICES:
identity the author denies, noting the interest of the point, and
supporting his view at some length ( 178 ff.).
I do not think he gives weight enough to the consideration,
which Hegel, from his reference to " Zufalliges Beiwesen " in the
cause, evidently had in mind, that if we are to exclude irrelevant
elements from the cause we are forced to cut down concrete factors
of it into abstract connexions. Of course, in ordinary speech about
causation, we constantly neglect to do this, and so leave cause and
effect standing as separate and successive events. And this usage
is good enough for many purposes if we know what we mean ; but
such usage does not give an account of unconditional causation.
And the same consideration would destroy the formidable objec-
tion that if, in the causal chain, two proximate links are identical,
then all must be identical from end to end for what are the same
with the same are the same with each other. For in relevant
Cause and Effect we are dealing not with a chain but with a com-
plex ; and you cannot find a chain to which to apply the argument
except by tracing forward a factor arbitrarily selected from the
complex ; and then of course the identity is lost ; but the causal
relation is lost also.
I have referred to this discussion partly to introduce a considera-
tion with which I am very strongly impressed on re-reading the
Logic with Mr. McTaggart's commentary. Hegel, with all his
profound insight, was in many ways extraordinarily literal and
naive, and this shows especially in his examples. To be fair 'to
his thought, one would have to interpret him almost with the free-
dom which is necessary in dealing with a writer like Plato, whose
genius wholly outruns the knowledge of his day. It is quite true
that his examples here (and so also later on in maintaining the
incompatibility of different predicates, 215) do not carry out his
intention. 1 They do indeed establish a continuity, which I suppose
Mr. McTaggart would not deny. But to bring out the real point,
which Hegel evidently divined, examplesirom scientific analysis are
necessary, while Hegel uses the first crude facts he can think of.
I believe therefore that his meaning, in matters of this kind, can
the better represented by examples after the manner of Lotze or
even Mill, than he has represented it himself. The same remark
applies to the question of the inconvertibility of the proposition A
( 207), and that of falsity of the positive judgment ( 193), and to
the whole problem of the place of mediation in Judgment and
Syllogism ( 226-227). It is quite true that Hegel shows no way
out of the detached and external manner of handling predicates
1 One, the relation of will to action, is evidently too good, i.e. it is drawn
from a sphere in which the identity of cause and effect is restored at a
Jiigher level, cause as well as effect being spiritual. When cause is physi-
cal and (so-called) effect is spiritual, the relation, as Hegel is surely right
in saying, is only to be admitted "in uneigentlichem Sinne," i.e. as
stimulus and response or something of the kind.
JOHN MCTAGGABT, A Commentary on Hegel's Logic. 83
which is habitual in Formal Logic. But his profound remark on
the nature of the copula (Greater Logic, iii., 72) shows that he was
quite aware of the inherent reciprocity of the Judgment.
We saw that from Substance onwards we were dealing with the
Genesis of the notion.
What, we may now ask, did Hegel mean, by giving the name of
Subjectivity to the first division of the notion,, consisting prima
facie in a treatise on Formal Logic, between Eeciprocity at the
end of Essence, and Mechanism at the beginning of Objectivity ?
As Mr. McTaggart points out, anything like knowledge or con-
sciousness comes very much later in the series, and moreover
the Dialectic deals with predicates of reality, and not with mental
processes.
His answer to this question, already familiar to readers of MIND,
is characteristic both in its definiteness and in a certain exclusive-
ness. Should I be far wrong in saying that Mr. McTaggart is one
of those robust thinkers who hardly consider a statement worth
making unless there is a strong prima facie case against it ? In
this I do not refer to his view that Subjectivity here means con-
tingency, but to his assertion that in Hegel, and consequently here,
it means with one formal exception nothing else ( 183).
The first part of the logic of the motion is called Subjectivity, he
says, not because it deals with the working of our minds a mean-
ing excluded by the reasons given above but because it describes
a characterisation of reality which is contingent and capricious,
abstracting, as formal logic does, from the relative importance of
predicates, and simply emphasising the facts of formal classifica-
tion by similarity. Except in some titles of the Greater Logic, he
says (I.e., footnote), this is the only Hegelian usage of subjective
and subjectivity.
The author's absolute veto on treating this section as concerned
with mental processes is, I take it, sound and necessary. In a very
different way, Wallace and Noel gave the same warning. But in
denying that Subjectivity as a rule throughout Hegel means and
refers to immensely more than superficiality or contingency, he has
really very much against him. 1 I do not doubt that he has con-
sidered it all, and struck a balance that contents him. I only
point out my difficult} 7 " in a word or two. Hegel's transition from
Reciprocity to the notion, which the author rejects ( 187), implies
that in Reciprocity the notion has been brought to its appropriate
form, not, of course, as a mental process, but as a logical structure.
This form, Hegel appears to me to be constantly saying, is Sub-
jectivity, 2 the self-complete organism, so to speak, of the notion.
1 1 may refer to Studies, 40, where Subjectivity is the mainspring of
the notion.
2 A convenient reference is Encycl. , 192. This is only a lecture-note,
but it merely puts in a nutshell what Hegel I should have thought is
perpetually asserting or implying (cf. Studies, I.e.).
84 CEITICAL NOTICES :
And the emphasis of his reference to the transition from Substance
to Subject, which coincides in the Dialectic with what he calls the
" Genesis of the notion," I have always supposed to mean the same
thing. The transition from Subjectivity to Objectivity he actually
compares with the argument from the notion of God to his exis-
tence. 1
I see no difficulty in combining this suggestion with Mr.
McTaggart's view, by observing that the notion in Subjectivity,
though already in its proper triple form, takes the Universal as a
mere common quality, and so represents a highly superficial
characterisation of reality. In this way we should retain the no-
tional form as the mainspring of the dialectic movement (cf.
234) ; and while Mr. McTaggart's distinction of classification from
determination would be substantially upheld, we should not re-
gard them as absolutely incommensurable but as continuous forms
of identity or of the universal, which tend to run into one another. 2
Very many more interesting questions of detail demand treat-
ment, e.g., the criticism of Hegel's criticisms of the Laws of
Thought. In these, again, I should have tried to exhibit Mr.
McTaggart's Puritan correctness of judgment, as, to my thinking,
not wholly doing justice to the inherent logical demand what
you ought to mean by a statement if it is to be worth making.
But it is time to pass v to more general problems.
3. At starting we referred to the question whether the Dialectic
is as comprehensive as Hegel thought. Does it apply to what
is real but not existent such as propositions and their terms, and
possibilities, or to existents only ? And, a question raised at the
same point (as I understand 6) : Are there purely external rela-
tions? Mr. McTaggart holds that in both cases Hegel ought to
have furnished a preliminary disproof, which he has not attempted.
It seems to me, as regards the first question, that the Dialectic
naturally and prima facie deals with all reality ; and ought, within
itself, to explain the relation between existence and any reality
which partly (or wholly if that is possible) fails to appear in
existence whether in person or by proxy. Any one who holds that
there is reality which forms a disconnected world, or disconnected
being, such that a treatment of existence and a treatment of that
world are not logically linked and need not go together, has, I
think, the onus probandi upon him. If reality is a universe, the
natural assumption is that all of it must fall within any treatment
which consistently develops it from its minimum. If this is im-
1 Greater Logic, iii. , 168.
3 This becomes important in estimating the author's argument ( 270)
that in "Life" there cannot arise inadequacy of the individual through
failure to manifest the idea of the kind, because the universal in " Life "
is a system, while the universal of a kind is a class concept. " If all
lions but one were annihilated, the survivor would be none the less a
lion." Is this tenable ? Would it be true of a man ?
JOHN MCTAGG-ART, A Commentary on Hegel's Logic. 85
possible, and there is a second disconnected world, the impossibility
should be exhibited by the believers in that world.
So, I should say, with external relations. The Dialectic takes
us over the whole genesis and ground of relativity, and attempts to
examine all typical wholes within which relations can have being.
Of course its completeness is open to be upset by argument ; but
till that is done, and it is shown how and in what sort of whole
an external relation between its terms could find place, I think the
general examination holds the field. I incline to believe, therefore,
that the author, with an impartiality laudable in itself, has conceded
too much to prima facie claims.
Eecurring now to the question of Comprehensiveness, I should
like to expand it in a sense which will lead up to the fundamental
problem of the Absolute Idea. Whether or no true of existents
only, are all the conclusions of the Dialectic true of all existents, or
do they transcend the nature of some ? Mr. McTaggart readily
recognises that some of the Categories lower or higher as may be
come nearer than others to the apparent nature of some existents.
Prima facie, that is to say, there appears to be distinctions of level
between things ; there appears to be, for instance, an inorganic,
and again an organic world, and bodies which are not all spirit,
unless spirit is more inclusive than we commonly suppose. To
these, if the comprehensiveness of the Dialectic is to be compatible
with the survival of a concrete world, the higher Categories would
apply, so to speak, negatively, as revealing the inferiority of their
rank and position in the universe. Yet they would have sub-
stantial being as appearances of the real, and their contribution
to the Absolute Idea would be distinctive and actual, and not a
mere illusion to be lost in the ascription of a nature beyond their
appearance.
If I understand him rightly the author decisively rejects this
conception. For him all the Dialectic is true of all existents, and,
consequently, everything is a mere illusion in so far as it does not
appear with the character which the Absolute Idea represents.
This seems to me different in principle from saying that everything
is transformed in the Absolute. For, on this latter view, things are
transformed through and by reason of a special nature which makes
a special contribution to the whole. Externality, in short, though
not real alone and per se, is an appearance which is necessary,
and has its special part to play. But, on the author's view, if I
grasp it, we have, in a word, extreme panpsychism. The Absolute
Idea, per se, holds of everything as such, and not merely of the
whole.
Or could we come to terms at this point ? Is it open to discus-
sion how much, so to speak, of the apparent universe is required
to constitute a single existent such as finds its truth in the Absolute
Idea ? Then there might be room for distinctive being on the part
of apparent existents which would only enter into and not per se
86 CEITICAL NOTICES I
constitute such a true and ultimate existence which could not, I
mean, claim the nature of the Absolute Idea for themselves, but
only in virtue of a whole to which they belonged.
4. Disregarding this latter suggestion, we are brought to the
question which I think is ultimate and fundamental in the author's
philosophy and in his view of Hegel. It is stated with perfect
lucidity and fairness in 290-291. I put it roughly for reasons of
space. Is the Absolute Idea just the process of the Dialectic, or ff
has it a determinate content of its own, outside and free from the I
process, which is then merely one of our inference ? Hegel stems,
as the author shows, to say quite clearly both these things. The
author, as clearly, chooses the second and rejects the first. I feel
certain that we must have both, and that the test of a philosophy
lies in its power of combining them.
The author's argument is strong. The Dialectic process, he
irges, need not and cannot enter into the Absolute Idea. The
process involves contradictions which depend on defectiveness of
content. At every stage some defect and with it some contradic-
tion is eliminated, 1 and in the end a content is attained in which
neither defect nor contradiction survives. This is the content of the
Absolute Idea, and the author cites from Hegel (I.e.) descriptions
of it as it is in its own nature.
But granting this in principle, granting that the appearances of
the pilgrim's progress are not taken up as they stand into the
Absolute Idea, yet must not the Idea live in its-an^eajrances ? How
else can it appear, and does not Hegel's argument hold good, that
if you try to begin with the truth, you will find it impossible to dis-
pense with the defective approaches to it ? 2 I take it he means that
without these the content of the truth itself would be pared away
to vanishing point.
We may take as a test case the relation of the two stages of
" Cognition " to the Absolute Idea. The succession is, in a word,
that first the Universal is seen to be the determinant ; then the
Individual ; then, because both alike, therefore neither. Is this to
mean that we end with a static harmony ? Surely not. It must
mean that something is really determinant which lives and is one in
a real difference. " Knowledge " and " Volition " must not be
names for acquiescences, but for energies in a tension ; and the
Idea must transcend them by being a satisfaction of effort and not
its absence.
This real survival of the inferior existents and of their processes
as contributory within the Absolute Idea, is, I think, logically sound,
in spite of the author's argument, for a conclusion in Logic can
1 Space has failed me to deal with the author's elimination of the Cate-
gory of " Widerspruch " ( 118) and of the immanent contradiction in
" Life " ( 268). Even if untenable, which I doubt, these throw light
on Hegel's conviction.
2 Cf. Encycl, 82.
JOHN MCTAGGABT, A Commentary on Hegel's Logic. 87
never contain its full meaning if wholly severed from the proof, and,
however corrected, the inferior Categories must remain at once in-
ferior per se, and contributory to the Idea. And this would make a
difference to the whole content of the author's reading of Hegel,
and, perhaps, to his own philosophy, especially to the problem of
Time and Eternity. If the inferior existents and the process which
they make inevitable are accepted as indispensable appearances of
the Absolute Idea, and actually necessary to its content, all such
questions assume a different aspect.
For the rest, his interpretation (I.e.) of the well-known and
extraordinarily difficult passage in which Hegel speaks of the
notion in its perfection as " qua Person, impenetrable atomic
subjectivity," is familiar to students from his work on Hegelian
Cosmology. Its point lies in construing this " atomic subjectivity,"
not of any single being who forms the Universe, but of Individuals
who constitute differentiations of such a being ( 295). It is one of
Mr. McTaggart's audacious assertions that both Hegel and Spinoza
disbelieved in the personality and consciousness of God ( 168).
I call it audacious, not because it is untenable in the letter, but
because it is thrown out without a guard against the suggestion of
something beyond what we call 'personality and consciousness.
But I do not doubt that as a minimum the result he draws from
the Dialectic both represents Hegel, and is sound in itself. "All
that exists forms a Universe composed of Individuals " (I do not see
that the individuals need be permanent or similar) ; " the Universe
and each Individual is an organic system, and the relation which
exists between the Universe-system and each of the Individual
systems is one of perfect harmony " ( 292). The nature both of
this harmony and of the ultimate unity which includes the in-
dividual systems is left, as I understand, an open question by
the Dialectic.
Mr. McTaggart just refers in conclusion to the results reached
in his Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, pronouncing it impossible
to decide whether Hegel would have assented to his view that
the Absolute is love. One would be inclined to suggest that a
good deal more than this must go to it, and that among single
conceptions it is Eeligion that must come nearest to indicating a
state of consciousness that can exemplify the Absolute Idea.
When Hegel speaks of Philosophy in that reference, I take it
that the idea of Eeligion 'is implied. I am not suggesting that
either of these or both together can -actually fill the place. But
they , present themselves as more capable than other conceptions of
symbolising the fulness of experience which it demands.
I wish at the end of this notice to reiterate my judgment that
the present work affords a basis, such as has not existed before, for
the effective estimation of Hegel's philosophy. My own com-
ments, for instance, such as they are, have only been made possible
by the lucidity of Mr. McTaggart's work. It needed a rare
88 CEITICAL NOTICES:
courage and confidence to devote, as he reminds us that he has
devoted, twenty-one years of his life to the exposition of Hegel's
philosophy. And the result is that he has done what perhaps no
one else could have done, and what certainly no one else has
approached to doing. It is interesting to learn that for all his
judicial attitude he is convinced "that Hegel has penetrated
further into reality than any philosopher before or after him"
(Sj 296). It ia to be hoped that he will himself undertake the
independent investigation which he foreshadows in his closing sen-
tences.
BERNARD BOSANQUET.
Mysticism in Modern Mathematics. By HASTINGS BERKELEY.
Oxford University Press : Henry Frowde, 1910. Pp. xii, 264.
8s. net.
MR. BERKELEY thinks that, as when the Pythagoreans were the fore-
most mathematicians, so even now the philosophy of mathematics
has not wholly freed itself from mystical implications. This is, of
course, a psychological question, and Mr. Berkeley believes (pp.
iii-iv) that it is in general the case " that all ratiocinative processes,
no matter what the subject, in which the current and continual
substitution of symbols (of any kind) for concepts is a prime condi-
tion of the effective conduct of the process, are provocative of that
attitude of mind " (cf. p. 5). Pragmatism in philosophy may be
characterised (p. iv) as " a methodical and determined attempt to
rid philosophy of mysticism," and Mr. Berkeley attempts the work
of purgation of certain mathematical doctrines that of the imag-
iaaries of algebra and geometry, and that of metageometry.
The book is divided into three parts : Part I. (pp. 3-49) deals
with thought and its symbolic expression, Part II. (pp. 53-147)
with imaginary quantities in algebra and imaginary loci in geo-
metry, and Part III. (pp. 151-258) with metageometry. The first
part contains an endeavour to arrive at a clear understanding of the
mental attitude and processes involved in the use of language and
of symbolism in general, both as a means of intercommunication
and as an instrument of reasoning (pp. 4, 250). This part is an
extremely interesting psychological discussion, and contains, what
will interest mathematicians and other students of what is called
" Universal Algebra " (cf. pp. 74-76), a criticism (pp. 36-48) of Prof.
Stout's well-known theory of substitute and other signs. Prof.
Stout's distinction of words and substitute signs is, according to Mr.
Berkeley, too trenchant : there is community of function of such
signs as well.
Fortunately the advance of symbolic logic has removed from
the region of controversy such questions as that whether ordinal
conceptions are necessary for the definition of cardinal numbers.
Hence Mr. Berkeley's remarks on the independence of the concepts
HASTINGS BERKELEY, Mysticism in Modern Mathematics. 89
of (cardinal) number and order (pp. 53, 55) are now superfluous.
Of course, it must be remembered that psychological details about
the origin of the number-concept and its close association with the
concept of order are irrelevant to the logical questions of arithmetic,
though they are often interesting as accounting for certain views
held by Helmholtz, Kronecker, Dedekind, and Cciyley. 1
Mr. Berkeley's explanation (pp. 53-56) of what he calls ' num-
ber,' and what mathematicians now call 'cardinal number,' is that
it is "a certain exact likeness, or identity, . . . which is the con-
cept or abstraction " obtained by comparing various aggregates
that is to say, extensions of concepts which have a (1, 1) cor-
respondence with or, as Eussell, following Dedekind, 2 says, are
' similar ' to one another. Common sense has no doubt that there
is such an entity as abstraction professes to discover, but the chief
advantage of Eussell's definition of cardinal number is actually
to point out such an entity. Certainly, we may, it seems, choose
different entities, each of which would answer the purpose of " the
cardinal number belonging to all the classes similar to a given class
u " ; thus, for all that appears at this stage, we might choose a
definite class say the class of certain ordinal numbers out of
each class of similar classes and consider it as the cardinal number
of those similar classes. This definition would have the disadvan-
tage of unnecessarily making the definition of cardinal numbers
logically subsequent to that of ordinal numbers, and is also subject
to certain objections arising from Eussell's " Theory of Types " ; 3
but it satisfies which Mr. Berkeley's and most people's definitions
do not the requirements of logical definition, and is analogous to
Eussell's 4 definition of the so-called real numbers.
In the note on page 54, Mr. Berkeley asserts that " no significant
-definition of the name or symbol of a number can be given without
the aid of other number symbols or names whose meanings are
already known ". This implies that some number symbols are in-
definable, an opinion which is now known to be incorrect, since the
cardinal number of a class u, can be defined in terms of u, simi-
larity to u, and the notion such that.
In the same note, on pages 54-55, Mr. Berkeley objects to the
opinion 5 that each cardinal number can be defined independently
of all the others " a surprising feat if the conceiving of numbers
involves the conceiving of identity [Eussell's ' similarity '], and
hence also of non-identity, between airsregates ". The ancient
argument that the conception of a thing involves the conception of
1 Collected Mathematical Papers, vol. v., pp. 292-294; vol. xi., pp.
442-443. Cf. also E. Schroder, Algebra und Logik der Relative, Bd. iii.,
Leipzig, 1895.
2 Cantor says ' equivalent with '.
3 Amer. Journ. of Math., vol. xxx., 1908, pp. 222-262, and Rev. de
Me'ta,,hys. et de Morale, t. xviii., Mai, 1910, pp. 263-301.
4 The Principles of Mathematics, vol. i., Cambridge, 1903, pp 270-275.
Cf. L. Couturat, Les Principes de Mathematiques, Paris, 1905, p. 52.
90 CKITICAL NOTICES:
its negative does not seem to me valid : we can certainly conceive
of an entity and certainly not of a non-entity. Mr. Berkeley objects
(p. 55 n.) to Russell's definition on the ground that it " would cer-
tainly not in general be admitted as denning the number of a given
class or aggregate ". That other definitions of ' the cardinal number
of %,' which have the same merits as that of Russell, may perhaps
be given, we have already remarked ; but we hardly think that Mr.
Berkeley had such definitions in his mind. His objections would
seem rather to have their origin in the instinctive and unanalysed
revolt of common sense against the statement that a number is a
class. And yet, the fact of this revolt is quite inadequate to meet
the uncontroverted arguments of Frege and Russell.
Mr. Berkeley then decides (pp. 62-63) that Stallo's condemnation
of the custom of considering algebraic symbols indifferently as,
symbols of number or of quantity has no real basis, the numerical
unit being indistinguishable save in name from the unit of purely
abstract quantity.
Mr. Berkeley earns our gratitude by emphasising (p. 56) that.
" neither names nor mathematical symbols . . . are necessary in
order to form concepts of number, nor are they indispensable for
the effective and ready use of these concepts in the process of
reasoning, so long as the process does not overpass a certain degree
of complexity ". And one of the objects of the first part was (p.
250) to insist upon the necessity, in epistemological considerations,
of keeping a firm hold of the distinction between the process of
thought and that of its symbolisation, a distinction which the per-
petual use of the symbol as a substitute sign is for ever tending ta
thrust into the background. It was the neglect of this distinction
between sign and signification that seems to have been the origin
of the nominalistic theories of number of Helmholtz, Kronecker,
and of those many mathematicians who are criticised most ex-
plicitly and lengthily in the works of Frege. In this protest, psy-
chology and logic join ; " the fact," says Mr. Berkeley (p. 56),
" that we are taught to count by the aid of names from a very early
age, and thus learn to think about numbers by means of symbolic
instead of representative imagery ; and the equally if not more-
important fact that we retain in memory little or no trace of the
mental processes through which we originally elaborated the simple,
fundamental, primary conceptions which are the common property
of all men these facts tend in many minds, and not least in the
most educated, towards a practical obliteration of the distinction
between numbers and the symbols, verbal or mathematical, with
which we have been taught to associate them ". Again, on page 99,
Mr. Berkeley points out " the absolute necessity, in expounding the
principles of any system of symbolising thought, of never allowing
the distinction between the process of thought and the process
of symbolisation to lapse from the mind, however convenient for
HASTINGS BERKELEY, Mysticism in Modern Mathematics. 91
brevity's sake it may be to refer to the symbols as if they were one
and the same with that which they are intended to symbolise.
Once the principles are understood and agreed to, the necessity
is no longer imperative but incidental." In fact, many eminent
mathematicians have committed an error analogous to that of con-
fusing between the town Paris and the sign ' Paris,' 1 and imagining
that the town referred to consists of five letters. 2
Mr. Berkeley characterises (p. 64) as ' mystical ' the process, used
by Cayley when dealing, in 1883, with the doctrine of imaginaries
in mathematics, of explanation of the derivation, from a primary
conception (such as that of quantity or of space), of another con-
ception, followed by such questions as : What is, or what is the-
nature of, this derived conception? (see also pp. 130-131). Such
expressions as ' imaginary magnitude,' ' imaginary locus, ' 'homaloid
and curved space,' do not (p. 65), in Mr. Berkeley's mind, evoke
modifications of his conceptions of magnitude, locality, etc., while
they seem to him to be, for modern mathematicians, expressive of
such modifications; and the criticisms in the chapter on "The
Doctrine of Mathematical Imaginaries" compelled him "to
assume, as at least probable, that mathematicians do not, in fact,,
attain to these alleged modifications or extensions of the ordinary
ideas of magnitude, locality and space ; and that, where they
believe that they do so, that belief results from an illusion of judg-
ment as to the part which symbolism of any kind plays in the-
development of a process of reasoning ; in other words, is the
result of a tendency to mysticism of which they are unconscious,
or not sufficiently conscious " (p. 65).
Thus, dealing with the construction, quoted by Cayley, of the
radical axis of two circles, which passes through the points of
intersection, or, if the circles do not intersect, is said to pass
through "the imaginary points of intersection," Mr. Berkeley says
(p. 71) : " The geometer perceives, in the construction common to
the two opposed cases, a certain analogy ; and this analogy is para-
doxically, or by a violent metaphor, expressed in the statement that,
the line always passes through the intersections, real or imaginary,
of the two circles. Bat then, so far as the expression 'imaginary
points ' alone is concerned, this is the philosophy of the matter.
We require nothing more, save to recollect that we have expressed
a real analogy by means of a verbal paradox, and that we must be;
careful, especially in the development of such an unusual mode of
expression, not to lapse into the mystical by subsequently trying to
read these expressions as if they were literal " (cf. pp. 129-130).
Here we may remark that Mr. Berkeley assumes (p. 69) that a.
philosophical inquiry about a notion is an inquiry into its origin
1 We follow Frege in distinguishing the sign by single inverted commas,
when we wish to speak of the sign itself and not its denotation.
2 Cf. rny articles in the Mathematical Gazette,, vol. iv., 1908.
92 CEITICAL NOTICES :
and derivation. But many important logical questions about a
notion (e.g., the definition of a complex number) are not answered
by an historical or psychological investigation. Still, this fact is so
obvious that we suppose that Mr. Berkeley uses ' origin and de-
rivation ' in a logical, and not in an historical sense. But this
should be made plain : misunderstandings readily arise here, and
the confusion of what is true with what people have thought or
think is true is very apt to be made by pragmatists.
Mr. Berkeley criticises very minutely the accepted explanation
of the difficulty occasioned by the appearance in algebra of the
' imaginary '. This explanation is due to the efforts of some of the
more philosophical of the English mathematicians in the first half
of the nineteenth century D. F. Gregory, Boole, and De Morgan. 1
The views expressed by Dr. Whitehead, 2 which are those to which
Mr. Berkeley chiefly refers, are, in essentials, the same as those of
De Morgan. 3
The symbols of arithmetic, and algebra regarded as arithmetica
universalis, denote numbers, and the operations symbolised by
f ,\ - , and so on with them are subject to rules derived from the
{self-evident, it may be) notions of number. But, according to De
Morgan, in " symbolic algebra " we divest all the symbols, except = ,
of any particular meaning : ' A = B ' means ' A and B have the
same resulting meaning, by whatever different steps attained '.
These symbols are subject only to certain rules, such as + A - A
= 0, + ( + A - B) = + ( + A) + ( - B), + A - B = - B + A,
x A ~ B = ~ B x A. "As soon," said De Morgan, 4 " as the idea
of acquiring symbols and laws of combination, without given mean-
ing, has become familiar, the student has the notion of what I will
call a symbolic calculus, which, with certain symbols and certain
laws of combination, is symbolic algebra : an art, not a science ; and
an apparently useless art, except as it may afterwards furnish the
.grammar of a science. The proficient in a symbolic calculus would
naturally demand a supply of meaning," which would turn his sym-
bolic calculus into a significant one ; and we must remember that
many different sets of meanings may, when attached to the symbols,
make the rules necessary consequences.
De Morgan, in the book mentioned, constructed algebra upon a
basis which enables us to give a meaning to every symbol and con-
struction of symbols before it is used ; the calculus of ordinary
" double " (with two units, real and imaginary) algebra became
significant at every step when interpreted in a well-known manner
in space of two dimensions.
1 Cf. my article in the Quarterly Journal of Mathematics, 1910, pp. 332-
334, 345.
2 A Treatise on Universal Algebra with Applications, Cambridge, 1898.
3 Trigonometry and Double Algebra, London, 1849, pp. 89-105.
4 Op. cit., pp. 92-93.
HASTINGS BERKELEY, Mysticism in Modern Mathematics. 93
Dr. Whitehead defined a calculus as the art of the manipulation
of substitute signs according to fixed rules, and the deduction there-
from of true propositions about the things denoted by the signs.
Thus, a calculus is supposed to be significant; "but when a set of
marks and the rules for their arrangements and re-arrangements are
analogous to those of a significant calculus, so that the study of the
allowable [i.e., permitted by the rules laid down, just as the pieces
at chess have allowable moves] forms of their arrangement throws
light on that of the calculus, . . . then the art of arranging such
marks may be called by an extension of the term an uninterpreted
calculus. . . . The marks used in it will be called signs or symbols as
are those of a true calculus, thus truly suggesting that there is some
unknown interpretation which could be given to the calculus." 1
Mr. Berkeley (p. 76) reminds us of what mathematicians are too
prone to forget, namely, that " if the marks are not symbolic they
are not marks but things, and where the rule of manipulation is
not symbolic it is at once arbitrary and meaningless is not, in any
sense relevant to symbols, a rule of manipulation ". And apropos
of Dr. Whitehead's remark that the study of an uninterpreted cal-
culus possesses serious scientific value when there is a similarity of
type of the signs and of the rules of manipulation to those of some sig-
nificant calculus, Mr. Berkeley remarks (p. 77) : " I do not doubt it ;
only there is one rather important point which is ignored in this
explanation. How or why does one set of signs and of the rule
for their manipulation happen to be similar to another set, unless
there is analogy of conception and of thought-process seeking and
finding expression in this similarity of type of sign and of rule ;
in other words, unless the later calculus is significant ? "
We cannot see the relevance of this question. We may study,
as people did in the eighteenth century, the calculus of imaginaries
as an uninterpreted and perhaps uninterpretable calculus analogous
to the significant calculus of real quantities. It is true that the
calculus of imaginaries is significant, but we fail to see, at any rate
as yet, that analogy with a significant calculus implies significance.
There seems to be no obvious connexion between the two ; and
certainly, if A is true, we cannot say that A implies B unless we
know that B is true. But if we already know that a calculus is
significant, Mr. Berkeley's argument is superfluous.
Dr. Whitehead implicitly adopted Boole's 2 doctrine that, in any
system of valid reasoning by the aid of symbols, the formal pro-
cesses of demonstration are to be conducted throughout in obedience
to the laws determined from the interpretation of the data, without
regard to the question of the interpretability of the particular results
obtained. Mr. Berkeley objects to Boole's arguments that the
knowledge of this law of the mind is derived, like that of the other
laws of the mind, from the manifestation of the general principle in
1 Whitehead, op. cit., p. 5.
2 Lands of Thought, London, 1854, pp. 68, 69.
94 CEITICAL NOTICES I
the particular instance, on the grounds that it is merely an asser-
tion. " If," he says (pp. 78-79), " it were a matter of experience
that intermediate results in a process of reasoning were always, or
even usually, uninterpretable, then we should feel no difficulty we
should recognise the general principle in the particular instance.
For my part I recognise in this case just the contrary : that the
particular instance manifests an unexplained departure from general
principle."
We cannot help feeling that Mr. Berkeley is right, and that it is
only the fact that " double " algebra is wholly interpretable that
made steps which are uninterpretable in another sphere lead to
correct results which are interpretable in that sphere. It is not
difficult to see how strongly a mathematician would feel, like Wood-
house, that, since calculation with imaginaries led to undoubtedly
<correct results, it must have a logic ; how a mathematician like
Boole would be led to make this into a general principle of reason-
ing ; and how a clear but non-mathematical mind like that of Jevons
would fail to grasp this characteristic of Boole's logical work.
Hence Mr. Berkeley's objection (pp. 79-83, 109) that to conceive,
with Dr. Whitehead, algebra as an independent science dealing
with the relations of certain marks conditioned by the observance
of certain conventional laws, is as great a difficulty as the difficulty
of imaginaries it is supposed to remove, because no intelligible
account can then be given of the raison d'etre of the relations, con-
ditions, and laws or conventions affecting the marks.
But while Mr. Berkeley seems to us to be correct in pointing out
that the Universal Algebra of Dr. Whitehead is not a logically ar-
ranged body of doctrine, he does not appear to have grasped what
would seem to be the essential character of this science. In Uni-
versal Algebra we are given, not a completed science, but a method
for future discovery. The signs in it are signs for entities and for
operations on those entities, but the entities and operations them-
selves are, to a great extent, left undetermined ; and thus are said
to be ' variable '. Thus in ' A + B,' ' A ' and ' B ' may possibly
denote classes, and ' A + B,' as in symbolic logic, the least class
which contains all the members of A and B ; or, again, 'A,' 'B,'
and ' + ' may denote numbers and the operation of addition, as
in arithmetic. In both cases we have A + B = B + A.
We can, now, imagine games, so to speak, with marks such as
A, B, + , and so on. Certain of these games may be given a valu-
able interpretation ; and some of us think it worth while to search
in this way for such interpretations, because such searches though
perhaps not made so explicit have often been successful in the past.
We may notice, by the way, that this view is sharply to be dis-
tinguished from the formalist view of algebra, in which the subject-
matter is considered to be a set of marks merely, which are to be
dealt with according to fixed rules.
Lastly, although it seems necessary that the validity of the laws
HASTINGS BERKELEY, Mysticism in Modern Mathematics. 95
of transformation of a set of marks depends, not on convention, but
on interpretation, it is not necessary that algebra should depend on
geometry. For, as Peano has shown, complex numbers may be
interpreted logically, as what are known as ' substitutions '.
There is conformity with the results of the modern logical criti-
cism of Frege and Eussell of the so-called ' generalisation of num-
ber '. Mr. Berkeley's views are summarised on page 252 : " That
the supposition or belief entertained by some mathematicians . . .
that the development of algebraic symbolism leads to a new and
more fundamental, or more extended, notion of quantity than that
with which Algebra starts, is an illusion which appears as the
culminating point of, and for which the way is prepared by, the
tendency to mystical explanation which marks the commonly re-
ceived exposition of the conceptions and symbolism of Algebra in
its most elementary phase " (cf. pp. 85-86). With this end in view,
Mr. Berkeley criticises Prof. Chrystal's Introduction to Algebra,
and finds in it "a belief or supposition that the conceptual develop-
ment follows upon the development of a symbolic system, rather
than that the development of a symbolic system follows upon and
is the expression of a development of conception. We would think
it a very odd statement were any one to assert that the laws of addi-
tion and subtraction in arithmetical symbolism lead us to the notion
of number" (pp. 86-87).
Those mathematicians who are not unacquainted with the history
of mathematics in England during the last century, and who re-
member with sympathy the polemic of Maseres and Frend against
the illogical methods for the introduction of negative quantity in use
in text- books, will feel warm agreement with Mr. Berkeley when he
reads on page 97 : " Any one who can recall his school days, in par-
ticular his initiation into the mysteries of algebra, will, I doubt not,
also recall the bewilderment produced in his mind by the authorita-
tive divulgation of quantities less than no quantity and infinitely
less than no quantity : a bewilderment which gradually yielded to
the lethal effect of a sufficiently oft-repeated formula, accepted as
significant with the trustfulness natural to youth and ignorance at
the bidding of the pastor and master ".
Mr. Berkeley's view of the nature of the ' extensions of the num-
ber-concept ' seems to us a notable approximation to the view which
modern research into the logical principles of mathematics has
shown to be, in all probability, the true one. He says (p. 98) :
*' ' Quantity ' is the name of a relation the conceiving of which is in
no way modified when we combine with it that of opposition in
measure between the ' things ' quantitatively related ; and the case
is in no wise altered when, the nature of the ' things ' becoming
indifferent to the purpose of our thought, we make abstraction of
them altogether and confine the subject of thought to this abstract
combination of quantitative relation and opposition in measure.
96 CRITICAL NOTICES :
This amounts to saying that the term 'algebraic quantity,' or its
equivalent in algebraic symbolism, expresses this abstract com-
bination, and not any modification or extension of the idea of
quantity."
A modern mathematical logician recognises that a number a is a
class, while the relative number symbolised by ' + a ' is, like a,
a relation ; ] so that we cannot identify a with + a. This Peano
virtually admitted by calling, in his Formulario, the definition
( + a = a) an " irregular " definition, made to bring strict logic into
conformity with the excusable conventions of mathematicians.
At this place we may notice that mathematical logicians have
rejected the " principle of permanence " which had become the
mathematicians' orthodox explanation of the "generalisation of
number " from integers to rational, irrational, and complex num-
bers, each class including all the classes which precede it. 2
We think that Mr. Berkeley is, like Stallo, in the right against
the older popular exponents of non-Euclidean geometry. But the
views which Mr. Berkeley shows to be mystical are not the modern
views. For instance, on page 154, Mr. Berkeley quotes from
Couturat 3 the opinion that the point is the indefinable element of
all systems of geometry. Now, both Eussell and Couturat gave
expositions of the previous logical theories of geometry of Pasch,
Peano, and Pieri, before announcing Eussell 's discovery that geo-
metry needs no indefinables, such as were used by the writers just
named. And, rather further on, Couturat 4 said of Eussell' s defini-
tion of the class of projective spaces that " it implies no indefinable
notion, since straight lines are defined as relations of a certain type,
and points are conceived as the (problematic) terms of these rela-
tions, so that their notion does not really come into the theory.
Nor does it imply any indemonstrable primitive proposition, since
all the postulates of projective geometry now form a part of the
definition of the class of projective spaces, and constitute the
hypothetical properties of these spaces. We do not affirm any of
these postulates categorically ; we only affirm that, if a space has
such properties enunciated in its definition, it will possess besides
such other properties enunciated in the theorems. Thus projective
geometry is reduced to the form of a vast implication. ..."
Mainly owing to the development of non-Euclidean geometry,
geometers have been led to abandon the view that geometry is a
certain system of propositions deduced from premises which were
1 Russell,, op. cit., p. 244; Couturat, op. cit., pp. 80-81 ; cf. p. 88.
2 Russell, op. cit., p. 377; cf. pp. 150, 270; Couturat, op. cit., pp.
89-90; Peano, Rev. de Math., t. viii., 1903, pp. 84-87; Frege, Uber die
Zahlen des Herrn H. Schubert, Jena, 1899.
s Op. cit., p. 127 ; cf. Russell, op. cit., p. 382.
*.Qp. cit., pp. 158-159 ; cf. pp. 180, 204-208 ; cf. Russell, op. cit., pp.
397, 429-436.
HUGH s. E. ELLIOT, The Letters of John Stuart Mill. 97
supposed to describe the space in which we live, and to regard
geometry as a subject in which the assertions are that such and
such consequences follow from such and such premises, not that
entities such as the premises describe actually exist. That is to
say, if Euclid's axioms be called A, and P be any proportion im-
plied by A, then older geometers would assert P, since A was
asserted ; but nowadays, the geometer would only assert that A
implies P, leaving A and P themselves doubtful. Thus geometry
no longer professes to throw any direct light on the nature of
actual space. 1
In the main, we agree with Mr. Berkeley's criticism. It appears
to us quite certain that many mathematicians of eminence have
fallen a prey to the mysticism which he attacks usually with such
vigour and correctness, and his book is a valuable contribution to
the explaining of the paradoxical remark (pp. 6-7) that one hears so
often, that some people have logical but ' unmathematical ' minds.
But, although Mr. Berkeley's criticisms often, unlike the various
orthodox expositions of the foundations of mathematics, agree with
the careful work of modern authors like Frege, Peano, and Russell,
on the principles of mathematics, Mr. Berkeley does not seem to
be well acquainted with this work ; and it is this work which most
emphatically deserves the title of " modern," but seems to us, owing
to its almost continual use of a powerful and subtle symbolic logic,
and logic alone, quite free from mysticism.
PHILIP E. B. JOURDAIN.
The Letters of John Stuart Mill. Edited, with an Introduction,
by HUGH S. E. ELLIOT ; with a Note on Mill's Private Life, by
MARY TAYLOR. Vol. r, pp. xlvi, 312 ; vol. ii., pp. 408. Six
portraits.
ALTHOUGH a good deal of family correspondence still remains in
MS. that would cast light upon the life and character of the most
eminent philosopher of the middle of last century, possibly very
little will ever be printed in addition to the materials contained in
these volumes. The letters here published are chiefly from rough
drafts preserved by Mill himself, many of which he had marked
" For publication" : others, filling the first 120 pages, are from the
originals addressed to John Sterling, and from copies of those that
were written to Carlyle and Ly tton Bulwer. Letters that have already
appeared in other collections are not included. The series extends
from 1829 to the last months of Mill's life, and fully illustrates his
social, literary and political activities. Besides the letters, there is
a Diary (Appendix A), from the 8th of January to the 15th of
April, 1854 : it gives no account of his life, but is designed to -record
1 Russell, op. cit., pp. 372-374.
7
98 CRITICAL NOTICES :
each day at least one thought relating " to life, feeling, or high
metaphysical speculation," that should be worth writing down.
On the whole, these volumes show us the growth of Mill's reputa-
tion through the ever- widening circle of his correspondence with
friends and strangers, at home and abroad, but do not add much to the
knowledge we already have of his character and opinions. Much
the most interesting portion is the first half-volume, reaching down
to the time of his marriage. The early letters to Carlyle and Ster-
ling throw some light upon the state of his mind during the period
when, becoming dissatisfied' with the doctrines of Bentham and his
father, in which he had been too exclusively trained, he experi-
mented (as it were) with the influence of poetry, religion, and
mysticism.
The well-known crisis of Mill's life seems to have begun in 1828,
and is marked in, this book by the first letter (1829), which is ad-
dressed to Sterling, and mentions his sense of loneliness and inca-
pacity to sympathise with others. In the Autobiography this stage
is compared to the experience of Methodists in conversion ; but
that hardly explains it. Conversion is the socialisation of the
egoistic child- character, usually coinciding with the maturation of
sex-character, and taking place under religious influences ; because
religion has always been a sanction of social obligations. But
socialisation, like everything else in Mill's life, had been anticipated
by education, so far as intellectual education could do it. We
know of no crisis at which he first became vividly aware of the
claims of others, or of his country, or of mankind : these things
had always been kept before his mind. What happened when he
was about twenty was, I conceive, that, in the first place, he suf-
fered from nervous exhaustion and, at the same time, from the
need of personal affections, which his home life had failed to gratify.
The want of affection had much the same effect as what we call
* home-sickness,' when we miss the opportunity of indulging many
instinctive or customary activities. Just then, or very soon after,
he fell in for the first time with men whose opinions and senti-
ments, in some directions, differed widely from what he had been
accustomed to consider as the sole standard of reason, but whom he
was compelled to respect or even admire. His affections, constitu-
tionally very warm, fastened eagerly upon these men, especially
upon Sterling, with whom he formed, and upon Carlyle, with whom
he believed himself to have formed, a sort of heroic friendship.
This led him to enter into their ways of thinking and feeling not
only with toleration but with a desire to agree with them, which
showed itself by an exaggeration of the degree in which he did
agree with them and of the degree in which he differed from his
former associates.
Thus, in the second letter to Sterling (1831), he sets forth his
" ideas of a Church establishment," ideas that cannot indeed have
satisfied his correspondent, but would have been still less acceptable
HUGH S. E. ELLIOT, The Letters of John Stuart Mill. 99
to James Mill. He goes on to say that he has visited Wordsworth,
and that all his " differences with him, or with any other philosophic
Tory, are differences of matter-of-fact or detail," while with the
Eadicals or Utilitarians his differences are as to principles. About
seven months later, speaking of 'self -culture,' he says that he does
not mean by that word " to prejudge anything whether such culture
can come from man himself or must come directly from God ". In
the same letter his style breaks into picturesque simile ; he dis-
covers that human life is like a river, and works out the parallel
with the zest that is apt to accompany a sense of origination ; apolo-
gising, however, for " the habit of moralising and poetising which
has grown upon me ". But he was not deceived as to the direction
of his powers : in October, 1831, he says, " I have put down upon
paper a great many of my ideas on logic," and " che only thing I
am really fit for is the investigation of abstract truth, and the more
abstract the better ".
Carlyle, " a great hunter out of acquaintances," he first met in
1831. His appreciation of Carlyle grew rapidly. Next year he
writes : " Your parting gift, the paper on Biography and on John-
son, has been more precious to me than I well know how to state " ;
I have " derived from it more edification and more comfort than
from all else that I have read for years past". In the earlier
letters to him there is a charming humility. Mill knew his own
superiority to other men; but he also knew his limitations, and
had the warmest admiration for all the gifts he lacked. "You,"
he says, " I look upon as an artist, and perhaps the only genuine
one now living in the country ; the highest destiny of all lies in
that direction." Later he writes: "I conceive that most of the
highest truths are, to persons endowed by nature in certain ways, in-
tuitive ; that is, they need neither explanation nor proof, but if not
known before are assented to as soon as stated. Now it appears to
me that the poet or artist is conversant chiefly with such truths, and
that his office in respect of truth is to declare them and to make them
impressive. " But he begins to feel that eagerness to agree with his
friends is leading him into some degree of insincerity : "it seems
to me that there has been on my part something like a want of
courage in avoiding, or touching only perfunctorily, with you
points on which I thought it likely that we should differ. That
was a kind of reaction from the dogmatic disputatiousness of my
former narrow and mechanical state." Accordingly, in January,
1834, he makes a clean breast of it as to the most important
matters, "a merely probable God," uncertainty as to immortality,
adhesion to Utilitarianism, though he is not " one of the people
called utilitarians ". These letters come to an end with the arrival
of Carlyle as a permanent resident in London. It is greatly to be
regretted that we have none of Carlyle's letters in reply. We know
from Carlyle's Reminiscences and from the Letters of Jane Welsh
Carlyle, that for some years there was a good deal of intercourse
100 CBITICAL NOTICES :
between them. Visitors, Carlyle says, his wife had in plenty,
" John Mill, one of the most interesting, so modest, ardent, in-
genuous, ingenious, and so very fond of me at that time " ; but, in
some ten years, intercourse came to an end, " why, I never rightly
knew ".
There was of course a continual divergence of their ideas and
sentiments. After "that period of recovery alter the petrifaction
of a narrow philosophy in which one feels quite sure of scarcely
anything respecting truth, except that she is many-sided" (vol. i.,
p. 67), Mill in fact obtained a more complete command of his
former principles. In the Autobiography he speaks (with some
illusion of memory) of " my early opinions, in no essential part of
which I at any time wavered " (p. 168). His friends had helped
him to acquire a wider knowledge of human nature and society : of
what kind may best be read in his Essay on Bentham, where he
sums up the shortcomings of his former teachers. But his object
in life remained, "to be a reformer of the world " ; his experi-
ential philosophy remained ; his utilitarianism (with modifications
uninteresting to Carlyle) ; above all his method. To nothing could
he have been more averse than to Carlyle 's worship of the Uber-
mensc/i. In Mill's Diary we read : " Almost everything Carlyle
says of Goethe appears to me to be mistake and misapprehension "
(6th Feb.). Again (llth April), " the Germans and Carlyle have per-
verted both thought and phraseology when they made Artist the
term for expressing the highest order of moral and intellectual
greatness. The older idea is the truer that Art in relation to Truth
is but a language. Philosophy is the proper name for the exercise
of the intellect which enucleates the truth to be expressed." In
temperament no two men could be more opposite. They walked
together very often on Sundays " with a great deal of discourse,"
says Carlyle in the Letters of his wife, " not worthless to me in its
kind". But in the Reminiscences he says : "Dialogues fallen all
dim, except that they were never in the least genial to me". In
fact Mill was felt to be " rather colourless, even aqueous no re-
ligion in almost any form traceable in him ". Gradually, and
perhaps unwillingly, becoming aware of this, how could he con-
tinue the intercourse?
There may have been something further. In Carlyle's Remin-
iscences we find that Mill "had by this time introduced his Mrs.
Taylor too ; a very will-o'-wispish iridescence of a creature ; mean-
ing nothing bad either. She at that time considered my Jane to
be a rustic spirit fit for rather tutoring and twirling about when the
humour took her ; but got taught better (to her lasting memory)
before long." The parenthesis is as important as a postscript.
Moreover, a little later, " The Mrs. Taylor business was becoming
more and more (we could see) of questionable benefit to him ".
Still later (31st July, 1843), Mrs. Carlyle, after retailing an absurd
story about Mill to her " man of genius," concludes: " He begins
HUGH .s K. ELLIOT, The Letters of John Stuart Mill. 101
to be too absurd that John Mill ". Evidently there was unanimity
in that household, a state of mind that could not be disguised.
Mill never felt estranged from them as they did from him ; and the
failure of this friendship, begun so warmly, may have contributed
to determine Mill's withdrawal from society during the next twenty
years.
This brings us to the second point, and the only other very
important one, upon which these volumes give some interesting
information : Mill's marriage and the influence his wife had upon
his life and opinions, from 1831, when he first made her acquaint-
ance, until her death in 1858. Even in this matter there is very
little to add fco what Bain says in his Criticism. His wife had no
effect on the Logic, nor on the Examination of Hamilton (which
was written after her death), nor on the scientific part of the Poli-
tical Economy and Representative Government ; in fact with none
of the work which, in his own opinion, " he was really fit for, the
investigation of abstract truth ". There remain The Subjection of
Women, the literary treatment of the Liberty (for surely the doc-
trines of that work were traditionary with Mill) and the socialising
of certain economic opinions. What we learn more about in the
volumes before us is his view about marriage itself.
Opposite page 158 (vol. i.) a facsimile is given of a statement,
signed by Mill on his marriage, repudiating the legal consequences
of the act : " the whole character of the marriage relation as con-
stituted by law being such as both she and I entirely and conscien-
tiously disapprove, for this among other reasons, that it confers
upon one of the parties to the contract legal power and control over
the person, property, and freedom of action of the other party, inde-
pendent of her own wishes and will ". Being unable legally to
divest himself of such odious powers, he enters this formal protest,
and declares that Mrs. Taylor " retains in all respects whatever the
same absolute freedom of action, and freedom of disposal of herself
and of all that does or may at any time belong to her, as if no such
marriage had taken place," etc. The marriage contract is still un-
fairly ^onesided, and it was much worse in 1851 ; but still it does,
and did, give important rights to the woman ; and on Mill's theory of
the equality of the sexes, it would be necessary that she should like-
wise repudiate them ; and then I cannot see that anything that
has ever been called marriage any longer remains. Compare the
remarks upon divorce at page 187, vol. i. (1855). In the Diary
under 26th March, he goes still further. Seeing no likelihood of
ever writing out his views upon this subject at length, he desires,
he says, to leave it on record that " Any great improvement of man-
kind is not to be looked for so long as the animal instinct of sex
occupies the absurdly disproportionate place it does therein ; and to
correct this evil two things are required : firstly, that women should
cease to be set apart for this function, and should be admitted to
all other duties and occupations on a par with men ; secondly, that
102 CRITICAL NOTICES :
what any persons may freely do with respect to sexual relations
should be deemed to be an unimportant and purely private matter,
which concerns no one but themselves. If children are the result,
then indeed commences a set of important duties towards the chil-
dren, which society should enforce upon the parents much more
strictly than it now does. But to have held any human being respon-
sible to other people for the fact itself, apart from this consequence,
will one day be thought one of the superstitions and barbarisms of
the infancy of the human race."
That these opinions were matured in conversations with his wife
and under the influence of their peculiar circumstances can hardly
be doubted ; but they did not originate with her. For in the Auto-
biography (p. 167) he says that what he most honoured in the St.
Simonians, with whose speculations he was already familiar in
1831, was " what they have been most cried down for the bold-
ness and freedom from prejudice with which they treated the subject
of family ". It is greatly to be regretted that Mill did not publish
at length his opinions upon this subject, instead of merely leaving
his conclusions for publication (for the Diary was meant to be pub-
lished) without reasons to justify them. His Subjection of Women
is fairly argued, and any one who does not agree with it may, if he
likes, reply in detail. But for his views of marriage no reasons are
given : they derive their interest solely from his reputation. Any
one who does not agree with them may feel tempted, therefore, to
disparage his reputation, may even think it a duty to do so. To
me such a course would seem needless ; because the prevalence of
such views does not depend upon any one man, however eminent.
They are common enough ; though rarely published in this country,
or acknowledged, except in the confidential intercourse of coteries :
a natural rank growth of ' the human mind left to itself,' they are
usually entertained in a spirit very different from Mill's.
Still one cannot help regretting that it should be possible to claim
Mill's authority for a bald conclusion without any of the grounds
and explanations by which he would certainly have raised it into an
ideal region and given it a place in some systematic view of human
life. How he would have done it effectually I cannot surmise. In
his Essay on Coleridge he says : " The second condition of per-
manent political society has been found to be the existence, in some
form or other, of the feeling of allegiance or loyalty " " that there
is in the constitution of the State something which is settled, some-
thing permanent and not to be called in question ". Is there not
also a condition of the permanence of society itself, something
settled and not to be called in question ; and does anything better
deserve this place than legalised marriage ? Not that to call it in
question should be forbidden or penal, but that there should be
such " a feeling of allegiance " as to make all such questionings
vain. As men and women exist at present, and as they are likely
for some ages to remain, the sexual relations contemplated by Mill
A. E. CRAWLEY, The Idea of the Soul 103
would make the enforcement of " important duties toward the chil-
dren " impossible : paternity could not be traced ; there would be
a return to matriarchal conditions. This objection he might have
set aside by alleging the essential equality of mankind and the
power of education. In the Diary (13th Ap.) we read : " A slight
change in education would make the world totally different ". Well,
we have now witnessed a slight change in education.
Some of Mill's expressions of admiration for his wife thafc occur
in the Diary (she was then a confirmed invalid) surpass every-
thing of the kind that has yet been published ; they recall the
raptures of saints. " If human life," he says (14th Feb.), " is go-
verned by superior beings, how greatly must the power of the evil
intelligences surpass that of the good when a soul and an intellect
like hers, such as the good principle perhaps never succeeded in
creating before who seems intended for an inhabitant of some
remote heaven, and who wants nothing but a position of power to
make a heaven even of this stupid and wretched earth when such
a being must perish," etc. There is a sort of profanity in quoting
such words, and I would not do it in a popular journal ; but we
must realise how overwhelming were his sentiments. Having one
day asked Bain what we ought to think of this matter, he answered
pathetically : " Ah, well : Mill was in love ". Love, like hypnosis,
produces a paralysis of attention, prevents attention to other things,
and therefore comparison, and therefore judgment. Most of us
suffer some such incapacity through absorption in our own pursuits
or our own theories. Mill's was a nobler weakness. So far as he
was aware of his passion, it was entirely a spiritual enthusiasm :
Mr. Elliot in his Introduction says that Mill was deficient in the
instinctive life. Yet such deficiency can hardly have been inborn.
Mill was one of a large family, and originally of an unusually
strong constitution. The defect, therefore, was due to education.
I suppose Freud would say that the normal disposition had be-
come a ' suppressed complex ' : for the most part ' sublimated,'
that is, its energies turned into other channels ; but not ex-
tinguished ; displaying its secret power in imaginative attractions
and aversions, and in somewhat fantastic schemes of social life.
However, an imaginative passion may have tragic consequences :
Miss Mary Taylor's JSFotes on the disturbance or rupture of rela-
tions with Mr. Taylor on the one hand and, on the other, with
Mill's own family, are very painful.
CARVETH BEAD.
The Idsa of the Soul. By A. E. CRAWLEY, M.A. London :
A. & C. Black, 1909. Pp. viii, 307.
MR. CRAWLEY, who is well known among anthropologists as the
author of The Mystic Rose and The Tree of Life, essays in this
book to refute Prof. Tyler's widely accepted account of the origin
104 CRITICAL NOTICES:
of animism, and to establish a novel hypothesis in its place : " The
sole object of the present inquiry is to apply what psychology gives
us to the problem of the origin of the idea of the soul ". Prof.
Tylor, it seems, was so unfortunate as to complete his account of
the origin of animism " before psychology could assist the explana-
tion ". "In his explanation of the latter [the origin of animism]
there is no psychological precision the fact being that his ex-
planation was completed before the development of experimental
psychology." " The statement which to-day passes for a solution
[i.e. Tylor's account] is little more advanced than that of Hobbes, two
hundred and fifty years ago, or even than those of Aristotle and the
still earlier Greek thinkers whom Lucretius followed. For all prac-
tical purposes we are no nearer a solution than were the thinkers
of more than two thousand years ago. Yet this problem is the
simplest, as it is the first, of all the problems presented by mental
evolution in man. When once Anthropology employs the verified
experimental results of psychology the solution is obvious. The
origin, not only of the idea of the soul, but of the idea of a spiritual
or supernatural world, is then automatically explained." And the
lack of experimental psychology was not the only grave disadvan-
tage under which Prof. Tylor laboured in restating the theory
of two thousand years ago. At the time he wrote his celebrated
work Mr. Crawley had not yet given precision to the methods of
anthropological research, which hitherto have been " merely those
of unaided common sense ".
The opening pages, the tenor of which is sufficiently indicated
by the foregoing extracts, are calculated to excite in a high degree
the anticipations of the reader. If it should appear that Mr. Craw-
ley has succeeded in substantiating these large claims, this book
would have to be accorded the high place of one that marks an
epoch.
The refutation of Prof. Tylor's theory is extremely simple. That
theory attributed the origin of the idea of the soul in the main to
reflexion upon the facts of dreaming, hallucination, sleep, trance,
and death, especially the first. Mr. Crawley (and this seems to be
his principal contribution to the reform of anthropological method)
lays down the canon that " in order to explain a universal phe-
nomenon, such as the belief in the soul, normal and universal, not
abnormal and occasional, causes must be assigned ". But dreams,
hallucinations, sleep, trance, and death are " abnormal and occa-
sional " events. Therefore they cannot be assigned as causes of the
" universal phenomenon," the origination of the idea of the soul.
To a less exacting writer this syllogism might have seemed suffi-
cient in itself to refute the generally accepted view. But Mr.
Crawley supports it with a number of equally remarkable state-
ments and reasonings, the value of which may be illustrated by the
following extracts : " It is psychologically impossible for the idea of
the soul, as we actually find it, to be originated by the inferences
A. E. CBAWLEY, The Idea of the Soul. 105
from dreams. In the first place, there is frequently at some point
during the dream a semi-conscious realisation of self, that is to say,
of the self as viewing things and persons in the dream. In the
next place, dream-figures are no less intense, generally more in-
tense, and therefore more real, sometimes even larger, than what is
seen when awake. It is quite erroneous to speak of dream-figures
as ' phantoms '. . . . Can such an intensely real sight produce the
idea of ' souls being ethereal images of bodies,' or the idea of a still
more ethereal ' phantom ' ? " "A personal concrete entity like the
soul can only be developed from sensations, chiefly visual." We
pass on from the first chapter, which is devoted to the refutation of
the hitherto celebrated dream-theory, prepared for the revelation
of the true theory by the assurances that " Psychology supplies an
infallible test ; it proves what can exist, and what can not exist
in the brain, and at what stage of evolution a phenomenon can
appear"; and that " we shall find that the idea of the soul is an
automatic result of elementary mental processes ". The revelation
is made in the third chapter. " Spiritual existence is mental exist-
ence ; the world of spirits is the mental world. Everything that
can through perception lay the foundation of a memory-image can
claim the possession of a soul, an existence in the spiritual world
here and hereafter. And this world is, in the incomplete and long-
suffering term, the supernatural." For the idea of the soul of any
man or thing is nothing more or less than the visual memory-image
of that man or thing. Primitive man visualised the objects that he
had seen. But " Many men pass through life without realising the
existence of the memory- images which form all their thought," and
this was the case of primitive man, until suddenly this " naive
person, who has never yet seen or realised a 'memory-image," be-
comes aware of his memory-images, and in so doing discovers " a
new world of mental objects. For this is what his discovery
amounts to a new world. This discovery, doubtless one of the
earliest, was more pregnant with possibility than any discovery since
made by man, inasmuch as it was his first acquaintance with the
soul and with the world of spirits, in other words, with mental
existences. ... In the one case, then, perception, our subject has
the person or object, the thing ; in the other, memory or thought,
he has the soul of the thing. The idea of the soul is thus an auto-
matic result of the reaction to perception ; it is a mental repetition
of sensation." " When primitive man first saw an object in memory
he saw the soul for the first dme ; he was then conscious of some-
thing besides the thing the mental replica, the thought of the
thing."
The third chapter, in which this novel suggestion is made, is
followed by a long chapter on ' Prescientific Psychologies,' which
is a compilation of the beliefs about the soul entertained by savage
and barbarous peoples in all parts of the world. I have read this
chapter with care, but have found among all the many beliefs
106 CRITICAL NOTICES :
described only one instance that might be held to lend colour k>
Mr. Crawley's suggestion, as against the accepted theory (the
Nunuai, p. 100). All the rest are of the familiar types on which
Prof. Tylor's theory is founded. The remaining two chapters are-
occupied with reasonings in support of the new view, of which it
must be said that their psychology is as fantastic and their logic as
slipshod as those employed in the "refutation" of Prof. Tylor's
theory. They may be illustrated by an outline of the argument
which Mr. Crawley seems to regard (rightly I think) as of the
most weight. This argument (chap, v., 4) runs thus : the human
soul is sometimes represented by a doll about three inches in
lengbh ; the memory-image of a man is usually about three inches
in length ; therefore the memory-image of a man is identical with
his soul; further, "in Nias the heaviest soul weighs about ten
grammes. Modern spiritualists estimate the average weight of the
soul at three or four ounces," i.e. about the weight of a man three
inches high; and again, the voice of the soul is thin and feeble,,
about as loud as the voice of a man three inches high. " Conscience
is generally a still, small voice. To put it shortly, just as we have
the size of the soul standardised to a miniature photograph, so its,
voice is that of its master's voice when heard through the tele-
phone." Mr. Crawley, of course, does not state the argument in
so bald a fashion as I have done. He mixes it up with extracts-
from text-books of physiology and psychology, the scientific fla-
vour of which might disguise for some readers, as it seems to have-
disguised for the author, the absurdity of the whole mixture.
And, not content with the statements found in the text-books, Mr.
Crawley has plunged himself into the difficult waters of experi-
mental psychology and has brought up from the depths the follow-
ing confirmation of his views :
" We have ourselves arrived by experiment at the result, that
dream-images remembered on waking are very small, a human
figure being about the size of a miniature photograph ; that memory-
images, where the attention is not concentrated, are very small, but
do not lose detail and colour, and that the memory-image of a man
at a distance of thirty yards is about the size of an object three
inches high at a distance of eighteen inches, that is to say, the
usual distance at which one holds an object for examination.
Eoughly speaking, this is the size of a carte-'de-visite of the
smaller sort, small enough to be grasped in the hand, as the
medicine-man grasps the soul." These chapters contain many
other gems worthy of being cited, but two must suffice. " Similarly
the Chinese place the soul-tablet on the dead man in the hope of
reviving him. This is the method of superimposition, a translation
into action of what occurs when the memory-image is merged in
or placed upon the percept. The idea of the soul as an eject, which
is replaced through the apertures of the body, comes from analysis,
of the percept ; in this form it is not fused with the memory-image ;
A. E. CBAWLEY, The Idea of the Soul 107
the latter, in fact, is temporarily ignored." Again : " It is a com-
mon belief that the soul is restless, and wanders aimlessly about,
until the body is buried. This is the behaviour of the memory-
image until it is safely embodied in the percept, or some symbol
which takes its place."
Enough has been said to illustrate the quality of Mr. Crawley's
psychologising. As to his anthropological method, in which we
were led to anticipate some striking reform, it must suffice to say
that he repeatedly falls into the besetting vice of anthropologists of
the loose-thinking kind, i.e., from the whole immense mass of re-
corded statements about savages he selects one or two that are in
accordance with his view, or in disagreement with a rival view,,
and seeks in this way to establish, or to overthrow, sweeping
generalisations about the savage or the primitive man. Thus in
treating of ' animatism ' (the word used by Mr. Marett to denote a,
supposed stage of primitive thought antecedent to developed animism
in which a vaguely conceived power (Mana, Orenda) is ascribed
to many inanimate objects as well as to animals and men), Mr.
Crawley, who tells us that " certainly animatism is a disease of the
language of modern anthropology," quotes Mr. Dudley Kidd's.
statement that Kaffirs, on being questioned as to the animation of
stones, said " it would never enter a Kaffir's head to think stones,
felt in that sort of way ". If this single instance demolishes the-,
doctrine of animatism, as Mr. Crawley seems to suppose, I may re-
establish it by citing the equally relevant case of my old gardener
who believed that stones multiply as potatoes do.
But that inadequate reasonings are advanced in support of an,
hypothesis does not prove it to be untenable; and though Mr.
Crawley's chapters do not, in my opinion, establish the least
semblance of plausibility for his 'memory-image doctrine,' it may
be worth while to consider it seriously for a moment. To say, as.
Mr. Crawley does, that the idea of the soul is a visual memory-image
or "a mental repetition of sensation " is, of course, as absurd as his-
statement that " the soul ... is about three inches high " ; but it
is prima facie possible that the idea of the soul was reached by
reflexion upon the experience of visual imagery in the waking,
state. The essential question at issue is, then : Was the idea of
the soul reached by way of reflexion upon visual memory-images
of the waking state, or did reflexion upon any or all of such ex-
periences as dreams, hallucinations and the observation of trance,
sleep and death, play the predominant part ? It is of course im-
possible to say with absolute certainty; but surely it is more
probable that primitive men were stimulated to reflexion, to feel
the need of an explanation, of a theory, by experiences of the latter
class, than that such stimulation was supplied by the introspective
observation of memory-images of the waking state. That many
savages remember and relate their dreams and attach importance
to them is abundantly established ; but that savages are prone.
108 CRITICAL NOTICES :
introspectively to observe, describe, or reflect upon their normal
waking memory-images has never, to my knowledge, been shown ;
and, curiously enough, Mr. Crawley adduces throughout his book no
single instance of such observation or reflexion. Yet, if such were
the case, the fact would surely have been reported ; and the proof
of it must be the indispensable first step towards rendering Mr.
Crawley's docirine in any degree plausible. I conclude, then, that
we have no reason to hesitate to continue to accept as in the main
correct or at least highly probable that theory of the origin of
animism which is generally associated with the honoured name
of Prof. Tylor, and which Mr. Crawley would cast so uncere-
moniously upon the rubbish heap of prescientific doctrines.
W. McDoUGALL.
Lectures on the Experimental Psychology of the Thought-processes.
By E. B. TITCHENER. New York : The Macmillan Company,
1909. Pp. ix, 318. 5s. net.
THOSE who complained of the sensationalistic bias of The
Psychology of Feeling and Attention find their answer in this
volume, which sets out frankly to show that a sensationalism is
fit to cope with the psychology of the thought-processes. Titchener
now openly confesses to theoretical bias, which he curiously enough
calls constitutional. He tells us how his mind is of the mixed
ideational type, in which kinaesthesis is the fundamental and pre-
dominant element. All his thinking is ideated in imagery of some
kind, although he detects in it no general relation between abstract-
ness of thought and vagueness of imagery. " Attentional clearness
seems to be the one thing needful to qualify a process for meaning "
(p. 17). Even meaning itself is ideated by Titchener, in a way that
reminds one of the philological methods of obtaining the meaning
of a root ; for him meaning means a " digging out " as represented
by a little mental picture, just as for one of his students it means
.a " straightening out ". The constitutional bias which these habits
represent runs towards sensationalism. The weight of other minds
may drag them towards the opposite. So the extreme verbal type
might champion a pure ideationism or imageless thinking. We
may ignore the irrelevancy of this suggestive introduction to a
criticism of experimental work, but we cannot suppress our doubts
regarding the validity of any law of bias. The psychology of
thought may be in a very poor way still, but the psychology of
bias is surely still worse. Everyday proverbs say that the speech
or theory of a mind conscious of bias runs as often counter to as
with its inclination. Let it suffice that Titchener 's bias has been
frankly confessed.
The sensationalism of the experimental psychologist which alone
can be defended must be distinguished from the older form of the
E. B. TITCHENER, Psychology of the Thought-processes. 109
doctrine in three respects. The modern theorist deals with exis-
tences, and not with meanings. Any meanings that may be en-
countered must be treated sub specie existentice, a method which
Ebbinghaus applied to the study of memory with eminent success. 1
The second difference between the old and the new theories is that
the latter considers elements as " processes whose temporal course
is of their very nature, and not substances, solid and resistant to
the lapse of time ". That may be said to be a change necessitated
by the greater knowledge of the detail and complication of mind
that has been acquired. It is obviously unimportant to a psy-
chologist who tries to be as precise in the definition of sensation
and feeling as Titchener does. Otherwise, we may look for a third
volume to tell us what is meant by process. The third difference
actually states that the new way "is simply an heuristic prin-
ciple, accepted and applied for what it is worth in the search for
the mental elements ; whereas the older sensationalism, just because
it was a preconceived theory, required that the facts conform to it,
whether they would or whether they would not " (p. 34). These
are bold words for one who confesses to a constitutional bias and
sets out to justify it. For the present it may suffice to suggest
that a heuristic principle is surely of use only in a region where
definite and successful search can be made independently (in prin-
ciple) of certain problems which we cannot solve and which may
be laid aside. Such a region is that of the connexion between
body and mind. If Titchener is willing to look for sensations
wherever there are meanings or other mysteries, and to lay aside
the problem of the ultimate connexion between these two groups,
he may have his principle, but not otherwise. Besides, what is
the use of a heuristic principle to one who has a constitutional bias
in the same direction ?
In the second of these five lectures, Titchener discusses the
reference to object as the criterion of mind on the basis of views
of Brentano, Witasek, Stout, Biihler and others. His aim in
doing so is obviously to clear the air for sensationalism. The
act-and-content psychology Titchener believes to be a psychology
of reflexion, not of observation, although " there are in a certain
sense a hearing, a feeling, a thinking, which are distinguishable
from the tone and the pleasure and the thought. Only the dis-
tinction comes to me, not as that of act and content, but as that
of temporal course and qualitative specificity of a single process "
(p. 60). With regard to the object of the idea, Titchener points out
that the extra-mental reference to an object is by some authorities
found wanting at times. Brentano and Witasek, further, claim
that there is no such thing as objective reference in the physical
1 But to do so would be to ignore the very thing that the psychology
of thought is first concerned with - its qualitative elements. The
mechanics of thought lies in another line of interest, and can be
treated sub specie existentice ad libitum.
110 CEITICAL NOTICES:
world. This peculiar pointing relation is not found in nature.
Probably as many will disagree as will concur with Titchener's
view that the very notion of an evolution implies this relation
of forward pointing, especially when they read that he has no
.liking for vitalism, and even a definite dislike for teleology (p. 71).
" Every constituent part of an organism," he says, " points to and
implies all the other parts. In the same way, the ideational pro-
cess which is the vehicle of a conceptual meaning is involved in a
network of reproductive tendencies ; it points to and implies all
the special ideas that fall under the concept in question " (p. 72).
But if objective reference is universal and has not a peculiar psy-
chical form, why offer a theory of it in psychology? Biihler's
-objection to transcendence, as I take it, rests in part upon the
insight that the sort of reference that reproductive tendencies can
give is no proper substitute for that indisputable conscious refer-
ence sometimes called transcendence. I do not understand that
.he means to deny the frequent occurrence of conscious reference as
such, any more than Titchener himself does in the end. It is sur-
prising that Biihler's views do not appeal more to Titchener than
they do, for he himself as a sensationalist has no use for transcend-
ence. Titchener seems unduly to discount and ignore the argu-
ments Biihler brings against the position Titchener himself finally
takes. But, then, Titchener is so extreme and consistent as to
-conclude that " not mind but man, embodied soul and ensouled
body, is the subject of which we may predicate a transitive refer-
once " (p. 75). It is one thing to insist that mental states should
be defined psychologically on the basis of differences of attributes
and not psychophysically, and another, surely, to consign transitive
reference to the psychophysical region. But not even then has
Titchener got rid of the transitive reference.
It may be well to notice that the state of recognition presents as
great a problem to the sensationalist as do any other states incom-
patible with his theory. We do not now suppose that that state
implies the recurrence of one and the same sensation, just as we
may agree that the mind does not transcend itself and reach out to
the object. But it is hard for a sensationalist to see that no present
theory of reproductive tendencies gives a full and adequate account
of recognition, not even if it could show that associations do accom-
pany it in every single case without exception. Yet no one tries
to talk away the peculiar uniqueness of the state of recognition
or to find recognition characteristic of the whole universe, though
some approach to this extreme. The only reason for this I can see
is that recognition has not attained the theoretical importance that
is given to thought and its elements.
From the full and very thorough report of the experimental
work on thought, only a few points need be noted. Of Messer's
paper it is said that " as a mine of introspective information, it
is perhaps the most valuable of those issued from the Wiirzburg
E. B. TITCHENEB, Psychology of the Thought-processes. Ill
laboratory ". " Biihler," on the other hand, " gave a turn to the
inquiry which in my judgment has served to retard the progress
of our knowledge." Titchener agrees with Diirr and v. Aster
that any introspection regarding thought that Biihler obtained was
not description but intimation (kundgabe), a sort of modified ex-
pression or tail-wagging, and therefore useless for theory. But
the experimental investigation of thought, Titchener concludes, has
set up a specific problem, has put forward a principle of explanation
the determining tendency which must henceforth be reckoned
with, and has ploughed up the whole field so extensively, that only
detail-investigations can now be attempted by single workers. In
that and in its general suggestiveness lies its value.
For the future Titchener would have us bear in mind what we
hear repeatedly but never find wholly observed, that we must have
psychology and not logic. Then, again, analytic must be supple-
mented by genetic considerations, both racial and individual. The
third and last regulative maxim we have already eacountered : we
must remember that consciousness may be guided and controlled
by extraconscious physiological factors, cortical sets and disposi-
tions.
What remains of meaning after all this ? Titchener believes
that two ideas do, under certain circumstances, make a meaning.
But what are these circumstances ? " An idea means another
idea, is psychologically the meaning of that other idea, if it is
that idea's context " (p. 175). Of all possible forms of context,
two are specially important kinaesthesis and verbal images. Of
these the former is the original, the latter is derived from it by
what may be roughly called association. But meaning may have
all sorts of imaginal forms. It may even be carried in purely
physiological terms. Titchener tells us that some years ago, in
the course of testing the recognition of shades of grey, he " was
not at all astonished to observe that the recognition of grey might
consist in a quiver of the stomach" (p. 179). He could not
further describe the experience. " It was simply recognition
without consciousness." There was therefore obviously more con-
sciousness in the cases where the grey was not recognised. These
statements are, he adds, made tentatively and subject to correc-
tion. They require confirmation from others. I do not know if
Titchener means this to be an instance of the way in which a
sensationalistic theory would deal with recognition. I confess ' I
do not find his observation intelligible. Either he means that
recognition in this case was accompanied by no other sensation
than that of the quiver, in which case I fail to see why he con-
nects the two, unless it be by the happy use of the heuristic prin-
ciple, or else we have here a case of imageless recognition, which
he finds it rather hard to accept. Finally, " I do not for a moment
profess to have made an exhaustive exploration of my own mind,
in the search for Beivusstseinslagen. But if there were any fre-
112 CRITICAL NOTICES :
quent form of experience different in kind from the kinaesthetic
backgrounds that I have just described, I think I am sufficiently
versed in introspection and sufficiently objective in purpose to
have come upon its track. ... I have not been able to discover
the imageless process " (p. 182).
Finally, what about feelings of relation ? These do most as-
suredly exist, but their designation is equivocal. The question
for psychology is : What do we experience when we have a
' feeling of relation ' ? For Titchener they are, of course, sensa-
tional and kinaesthetic. In others the process may be more auto-
matic and mechanical than in him, and may therefore seem to
them unanalysable and ultimate. But it is kinsesthesis all the
same.
I am unable to conceive how intelligible these results are to
Titchener, and how far they are induced by his heuristic prin-
ciple. But even if every person had imagery when he had con-
scious relations and actual or excited reproductive tendencies when
he had recognition, I should fail to find any identification of these
terms convincing. Analytically their equation may read well
enough at first sight, but synthetically it will not read at any
time, be the images brilliant or mechanised, actual or potential.
That seems to me as impossible as it is to juggle a particular
sensation into a universal meaning by making it stand for many
particulars. I think we should have a clearer view of the problems
of psychology than the old sensationalists had, for we have them
presented to us in many more trenchant cases than they had.
Whatever theories of thought the future may bring, Titchener's
sensationalism seems to be most impossible. The old theorists
faced their problems and choked over them. I think Titchener
shelves his by a process of learned self-deception, of which the
chief elements may be repeated : (1) The irrelevant preliminary
regarding constitutional bias, backed by the heuristic principle ;
(2) the blinding of the attention to facts of thought by the species
existentice ; (3) the solvent action exerted by the notion of process
upon the precisely definable elements of the Psychology of Feeling
and Attention ; and (4) a somewhat too exclusive reliance upon
the method of analysis as carried out by himself. It strikes me
as rather curious that Titchener of all people should set up a
general psychological characterisation of himself against the de-
tailed work of several observers and the floods of introspective
descriptions they gave us. We shall look with interest to an
account of the experiments in which he made some of his obser-
vations, for I can hardly understand how even the simpler forms
of association-reactions can be carried out so as to find imagery for
all the meanings realised in them. But even if they can, things
will remain precisely as they are.
HENRY J. WATT.
DIMITEI MICHALTSCHEW, Philosophische Studien. 113
Philosophische Studien : Beitrdge zur Kritik des modernen Psy-
chologismus. Von DIMITBJ MICHALTSCHEW. Mit einem
Vorwort von Prof. Dr. JOHANNES EEHMKE. Leipzig : W.
Bngelmann, 1909. Pp. xv, 573.
THIS book discusses, more or less fully, an immense number of
different questions ; and I cannot do more than indicate one or two
of the points upon which the author seems most anxious to insist.
He has arranged his matter, for the most part, in the form of an
attack upon what he takes to be the most fundamental peculiarities
of the position called * Teleological Criticism ' (particularly in the
form in which Kickert advocates it) : he criticises those main
peculiarities one by one, and tries to indicate the most important
respects in which they are connected with one another. But he
also inserts near the beginning a long Excursus, in which he
criticises the main positions of the ' Empirio-criticists ' chiefly
Avenarius and Mach ; later on he gives us a long chapter in which
he tries to explain his own answer to the question in what know-
ledge (das Erkenneri) consists ; and he ends with a series of Appen-
dices in which he expounds his own views on various points
connected with what he has previously said.
One of his main objects, as his sub-title indicates, is to attack
what he calls ' Psychologismus '. The 'Teleological Criticists,' the
' Empirio-criticists,' and also (in spite of the fact that their views
are so widely different from those of these two schools) Husserl and
Meinong are, in his view, all guilty of the fundamental error of
' Psychologismus '. And this fundamental error (which has also,
in his view, been shared by an immense number of other philoso-
phers) consists, so far as I can make out, in the assumption that
what is ' given ' cannot possibly ' subsist ' (bestehen) independently
of consciousness, and also, conversely, that anything which does
' subsist ' independently of consciousness cannot possibly be * given '.
Different philosophers, by combining this fundamental assumption
with different views on other points, have, Herr Michaltschew
thinks, been led into a variety of different errors, some of the chief
of which he tries to expose. Whereas, in his view, the truth is :
(1) That what is ' given ' may quite well, and very often does,
' subsist ' independently of consciousness ; and (2) that absolutely
everything which does ' subsist ' independently of consciousness
must certainly be ' given '. The recognition of these two truths is,
he seems to think, of great importance for philosophy.
But what exactly does he mean by the phrase ' subsisting inde-
pendently of consciousness ' and by the word ' given ' ? Obviously
a great deal depends on these two questions. And, as regards the
first of them, I am inclined to think that he does not always mean
by it exactly what he might seem to mean. So far as I can make
out, he himself does not hold that anything whatever can subsist
independently of all consciousness. What he is plainly anxious to
8
114 CRITICAL NOTICES :
insist on is only that what is ' given ' to a particular consciousness
(to me, for instance) may subsist independently of the particular
consciousness to which it is ' given ' ; and, especially, that what is
'given' to us men, very often does subsist independently of us.
But he seems to think that we must infer the existence of a non-
human consciousness to which everything that subsists indepen-
dently of us is always ' given ' at all times when it is not ' given '
to us (p. 555). Apparently, therefore, what he takes to be an
error, and to be the fundamental error of ' Psychologismus,' is not
the view that everything ' given ' is dependent on some conscious-
ness, but only the view that what is ' given ' to a particular con-
sciousness is always dependent on that particular consciousness.
And it is, I think, very important to remember this when we come
to consider what he means by the word ' given '.
As regards this word, I confess I cannot be sure exactly what
he does mean by it. Considering how constantly he uses it,
and what extreme importance he attaches to the conception
(whatever it may be) which he intends to express by it, it is,
I think, remarkable how little effort he makes to explain exactly
what this conception is. But it seems to me that, whatever
he may mean by the word, one or other of his main contentions
must be mistaken. For, as we have seen, it is one main contention
of his that a very great many philosophers have held or implied
that what is ' given ' to a particular consciousness can never subsist
independently of that particular consciousness. And if this con-
tention is to be true, we must surely understand the word ' given ' in
the comparatively narrow sense, which is, I think, its most
natural one, namely = ' immediately given ' or ' directly known '.
But then, if we understand the word in this sense, his other main
contention that everything which subsists independently of us is
always * given ' to us, is surely hopelessly untrue. Can it possibly
be maintained that everything which we know or know about at all
is directly known to us ? This is one horn of the dilemma to which
Herr Michaltschew seems to me to be exposed ; and I am inclined
to think that this is the horn, which he does in fact adopt : i.e., that
he really does hold the extremely paradoxical view that everything
which we know or know about at all is directly known to us. If
,so, it can only be said that he brings forward no arguments which
ihave the least tendency to support this view. But there is one
ipassage, which seems to suggest that it may, after all, be the other
ihorn of the dilemma which he would adopt ; for he says on page
536 that he means by ' given ' no more than " Gegenstand meiner
Betrachtung, meiner sinnvollen Beschaftigung ". If he does mean
this, then his contention that everything which I know or know
about must be * given ' to me, may, I suppose, be admitted ; in-
<deed, it seems to be little more than a tautology. But then his
.other contention, that many philosophers have held or implied the
.contrary, seems now to become hopelessly untrue. For surely it
DIMITEI MICHALTSCHEW, Philosophische Studien. 115
has scarcely ever been held or implied that absolutely nothing that
I can " treat of significantly " can subsist independently of me ? It
has, no doubt, often been held that absolutely nothing can subsist
independently of consciousness. But then, as we have seen, Herr
Michaltschew himself seems to hold that this view is not an error.
And whether he holds this or not, he certainly does imply that
many philosophers have been guilty of holding the view that
nothing which is ' given ' to me can subsist independently of me.
Another main object of Herr Michaltschew's attack seems to be
the distinction, which many philosophers have made, between
* validity ' (Gilltigkeit) and ' reality ' ( Wirklichkeit, Sein, Realitdt,
Existenz). He himself holds the paradoxical view that nothing
except a ' sentence ' (Satz, by which he means a mere form of
words, as distinguished from what is expressed by them) can pro-
perly be said to be ' true ' or ' false ' ; but this is a comparatively
unimportant point. What is important is his view upon the ques-
tion what constitutes the difference between a ' true ' sentence and
a ' false ' one. As to this, he is extremely anxious to insist that a
sentence is ' true ' if and only if it expresses something ' real '
(Wirkliches) ; and he supposes that this is denied by those who
make the common distinction between ' validity ' and ' reality '.
And so indeed it is, verbally ; for the philosophers in question
certainly do imply that a sentence may be ' true ' provided only
that it expresses something 'valid,' and that there is a sense in
which what is ' valid ' is not ' real ' (wirJcUch) and does not ' exist '.
But whether the dispute is anything more than a verbal one
depends, of course, upon the question precisely what is meant by
the word ' real ' ; and here again Herr Michaltschew does not
seem to me to make plain exactly what he does mean by it : he
seems scarcely to be aware that the word may possibly be am-
biguous. Thus he frequently insists that to say "It is true that so
and so is the case " is equivalent to saying, " So and so is really (in
Wirklichkeit) the case " ; and if, when he says that a true sentence
must always express something 'real,' he means no more than that
what it expresses must ' really ' be the case, he is no doubt right.
But then, if this is all that he means, it is not denied by those who
make the distinction between ' validity ' and ' reality ' : if this be
what he means, then he means by ' reality ' exactly the same thing
which they mean by ' validity '. But I am inclined to think that this
is not all that he means : I am inclined to think he supposes that
when we say " So and so is really the case," we are using the word
4 real ' in exactly the same sense as when we say (for instance) that
Julius Caesar was a real person ; i.e., he supposes that every ' true '
sentence must express something which 'exists,' in the sense in
which particular things and persons exist at some times and not at
others. If this is what he means, then undoubtedly the difference
between him and those philosophers who make the distinction be-
tween ' validity ' and ' reality ' is more than a merely verbal differ-
116 CRITICAL NOTICES :
ence : those philosophers do hold that what is ' valid ' is not ' real ' in
the sense in which things or persons are ' real '. But, then, if this
is what he means, it may be doubted whether he is right, and he
certainly brings forward no arguments which have the slightest
tendency to support his view.
I do not think that his treatment of most of the other points
with which he deals is more successful than his treatment of
these two.
G. E. MOOKE.
The Moral Economy. By EALPH BARTON PERRY, Assistant Pro-
fessor of Philosophy in Harvard University. New York :
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1909. Pp. xvi, 267.
THIS little book, whose author is already favourably known by his
Approach to Philosophy, is a real contribution to ethical discussion,
written in a style which is not merely clear and graceful, but which
has the quality of distinction. It is, he tells us. " the preliminary
sketch of a system of ethics," and it cannot but awaken consider-
able expectations regarding the promised work. " Its form differs
from that of most contemporary books on the subject because of the
omission of the traditional controversies. I have attempted to
study morality directly, to derive its conceptions and laws from an
analysis of life. I have made this attempt because, in the first
place, I believe that theoretical ethics is seriously embarrassed by
its present emphasis on the history and criticism of doctrines ; by
its failure to resort to experience, where without more ado it may
solve its problems on their merits. But, in the second place, I
hope that by appealing to experience and neglecting scholastic
technicalities, I may connect ethical theory with every-day reflexion
on practical matters " (Preface). It is an interesting experiment,
and the result, so far as it goes, is certainly very gratifying. The
book ought to be read with interest and profit by many who would
be repelled by a more technical and conventional presentation of
the subject, and, speaking for myself, I should say that it will
prove hardly less interesting and instructive to the student of
ethics. It is a book which could only have been written by one
who had thought and felt deeply about the problem of conduct,
and who was at the same time widely read in literature, both
ancient and modern. And in spite of his desire to avoid the refer-
ence to the history of ethical controversy, the author knows how to
lay his finger upon what he wants in the classical discussions, and
is thus enabled again and again not only to enrich his own state-
ment, but also in many instances to illuminate the ancient text itself
and give it a fresh meaning for the problems of the present. This
is especially true of the chapter on " the moral criticism of Fine
Art," one of the best in the book, which, we are told, is modelled
upon the method of Plato and which concludes with " his familiar
KALPH BARTON PEERY, The Moral Economy. 117
summary of all the wisdom and eloquence that there is in the
matter". At the same time the author has succeeded in entirely
subordinating the history of ethical theory to the independent and
fir-it-hand discussion of the old problems as they reformulate them-
selves in our present experience.
The main divisions of the discussion are "the structure of
morality," "the logic of its appeal," and "its more important
applications" to "the order of virtue," to the philosophy of his-
tory or the interpretation of moral progress, to Fine Art, and to
Religion.
St-irting with the acceptance of "the nucleus of morality" as
" verified truth, the precipitate of mankind's prolonged experiment
in living " (p. 7), and identifying its effort with "the enterprise of
civilisation," or "the organisation of life," the author asserts the
universality of its significance. " The moralist in the nature of the
case can never be impertinent . . . because, contrary to the for-
mula of the day, there is no such thing as virtue for virtue's sake.
Morality is the one interest that virtually represents all interests "
(p. 8). "To understand what morality really is, to recognise its
claims, is to understand also its application, its critical pertinence
to art and religion, to all the great and permanent undertakings of
men " (p. 9). It is the unifying or organising principle through
which " a plurality of interests becomes an economy, or community
of interests " (p. 13). "The fulfilment of a simple isolated interest
is good, but only the fulfilment of an organisation of interests is
morally good" (p. 15). The various stages of virtue are simply
the successive steps in the growing complexity and comprehensive-
ness of this organisation of life or its interests. The transition, for
example, from Prudence to what the author calls Preference or
Moral Purpose is simply a case of this progressive organisation of
interests. "In prudence . . . there is strictly no preference, no
subordination of motives. Action is controlled by an exclusive and
insistent desire, which limits itself only with a view to effectiveness.
It would appear, then, that if I am to justify those types of action
which are regarded as more completely moral, I must persuade
you to adopt interests that at any given instant do not move you.
I must persuade you to forego your present inclination for the sake
of another ; to judge between interests, and prefer that which on
grounds that you cannot reasonably deny is the more valid "
(p. 50). The " higher " interest is, therefore, " simply the greater
interest, and greater in the sense that it exceeds a narrower interest
through embracing it and adding to it. ... The higher interest
owes its title to its liberality or comprehensiveness " (pp. 52, 53).
The higher interest is entitled to replace the original or lower in-
terests only because it represents and incorporates them in a larger
whole of interests. "It follows that no interest can be condemned
except upon grounds that recognise its claims, and aim so far as
possible to provide for it among the rest. No interest can ration-
118 CRITICAL NOTICES I
ally be rejected as having no value, but only as involving too great
a cost " (p. 64). The transition from egoism to altruism is ex-
plained in the same way. " If your action fulfils your interest and
thwarts mine, it is again mixed, both good and ^bad. In order to
define the good act in the premises it is necessary, as in the previous
case, to define a purpose which shall embrace both interests and
regulate action with a view to their joint fulfilment " (p. 59). The
ultimately controlling interest, therefore, is the total interest -of
humanity itself, and the formula of duty must be "so to act in
fulfilment of the interest in hand, as either to promote or make
room for all other interests ". " Eight conduct, since it is incon-
sistent with the least ruthlessness, must inevitably in the end
assume the form of humanity and piety " (p. 67).
The application of the theory to the order or classification of the
virtues follows obviously enough, and is developed with much skill
in chapter iii. Eeference has already been made to the discussion
of "the moral criticism of Fine Art (chap, v.), from which one or
two leading statements may be quoted. Speaking of the claim of
art to exemption from moral criticism, Prof. Perry says: "In the
first place, it is assumed that morality, too, is a special interest ;
and that if the artist or connoisseur lets the moralist alone, it is no
more than fair that the moralist should let him alone. But this
assumption is false ; as false as though the athlete were to chafe at
the warnings of his medical adviser on the ground that general
health was irrelevant to endurance or strength or agility. . . . The
second misapprehension that lends plausibility to the excuses of
art is the assumption that the moralist is proposing to substitute
his canons for those of art." But the moralist "is charged with
defining and applying the principles which determine the good of
interests on the whole ; and while his conclusions can never replace
those of the expert within a special field, they will always possess
authority to overrule them " (pp. 174-176). Speaking of the truth
of art, he remarks : "If art were only realistic in the full sense, an
unequivocal representation of the laws of life, it would invariably
justify and support the moral will; it would be idealistic " (p. 206).
Many other statements of the kind might be quoted from this and
other chapters of the book to show that the author is one of those
of whom Matthew Arnold speaks, in a passage quoted by himself,
" who have laboured to divest knowledge of all that was harsh, un-
couth, difficult, abstract, professional, exclusive ; to humanise it, to
make it efficient outside the clique of the cultivated and learned, yet
still remaining the best knowledge and thought of the time, and a
true source, therefore, of sweetness and light".
JAMES SETH.
HERMANN COHEN, Kant's Begrundung der Ethik, etc. 119
Kant's Begrundung der Ethik nebstihrenAnwendungen auf Recht,
Religion und Geschichte. Von HERMANN COHEN, Professor
an der Universitat Marburg. Zweite verbesserte und erwei-
terte Auflage. Berlin : Bruno Cassirer, 1910. Pp. xx, 557.
THE first edition of this book appeared in 1877. It now appears
in a very much enlarged form. The earlier part has grown to
almost twice its original size. The last 187 pages, treating of the
application of the principles of Kant's Ethics to law, religion and
history, are entirely new.
In a new edition of an important book on Kant we might expect
to find use made of the abundant material made available by the
researches of Beno Erdmann and others. Eiehl, for example, in
the new edition of his Geschichte des Kriticismus, published last
year, has made striking use of Erdmann's Aufzeichungen and Kant's
Nachlass to confirm and illustrate his interpretation of the Critique.
The changes in Prof. Cohen's new edition are not due to his
use of such material. There are no references either to Kant's
Nachlass or his correspondence. The changes are none the less
interesting for this. The author says in the preface that he has
used the material provided by his own working out of Kantian
problems in the second edition of his Kant's Theorie der Erfahrung
and in his Logik der reinen Erkenntniss and Ethik des reinen
Willens. The first edition insisted on the vital connexion between
Kant's Metaphysic and his Ethics. It was only natural that after
prolonged work on Kant's theory of experience and after the work-
ing out of his own system, thoroughly Kantian as that is, that he
should have much to add to his original account of Kant's Ethics.
Prof. Cohen's interpretation of Kant is too well known to need
further review ; but it may be worth while to notice first those
points in his exposition which the second edition has made more
prominent, and secondly to consider that part of the book, the
application of ethical principles, which is entirely new, and see
how far that confirms or throws doubt upon the main lines of
Prof. Cohen's interpretation.
The author says in his preface that the changes in the second
edition are greatest in his account of the thing in itself. In his
interpretation of Kant he lays stress on Kant's distinction of con-
stitutive and regulative, and insists that Kant's idealism has no-
thing to d.o with the questions raised by subjective idealism, but as
transcendental is concerned with the distinction between w r hat is
given in experience and the complete solution of the problems
which experience raises but does not solve. The thing in itself,
assumed originally as unknown substratum, came, he holds, to
stand for the completion of a problem, and hence was identical
with the idea. Therefore he concludes : " The idea remains the
genuine root of idealism, the idea as thing in itself of the problem ".
This interpretation has its difficulties, but it has the great advan-
120 CEITICAL NOTICES:
tage of accepting Kant's empirical realism and his belief in the
objectivity of the sciences and of giving an intelligible account of
Kant's conception of a priori. All Kantian students will be
grateful for the masterly account of the real importance of logical
distinctions in Kant's system given in the third chapter of the first
part. Its purpose is to explain how the ideas are both the com-
pletion of the problems of the scientific understanding and the object
of ethics, and therefore to connect Kant's ethics with his theory
of experience. Prof. Cohen's account of Kant's ethics is based on
the identification of the thing in itself with the idea regarded as
ideal. Further, the distinction between the a priori which is the
concern of philosophy and the a posteriori which science alone
can furnish is applied also to ethics. Hence the notion of a pure
ethic does not mean that all ethical questions are to be solved by
a priori methods, but that constitutive a priori principles and
regulative principles of application are both necessary in ethical
as in scientific experience ; Ohne Anwendbarkeit keine Reinheit. A
pure Ethic is possible through the ideal notion of a community of
autonomous purposes, and this ideal has reality as the perfecting
of what is already implied in all moral action. The moral rules
for this or that occasion are not deduced merely from the principle
of pure ethic, but from the empirical circumstances in accordance
with the principle, as the empirical laws of science are deduced in
accordance with the principle of causation. On this view the
application of a priori principles does not rest with philosophy,
though it may be the concern of philosophy to show that the a
priori principles are implied in the results of science.
When Prof. Cohen treats Kant's application of ethical principles
from this point of view in the last part of this book, he seems to us
to get into difficulties. He complains that Kant recognised in
Ethics nothing corresponding to the mathematical science of nature,
or in other words that the Metaphysische Anfangsgriinde der
Rechtslehre does not really correspond to the Metaphysische An-
fangsgriinde der Naturwissenschaft. He criticises Kant with much
justice for exaggerating the element of force in law and for an
inadequate conception of the state, with less reason he holds that
Kant should have given up altogether the distinction between re-
ligion and ethics. His view is that Kant should have recognised
law and the state as exhibited in history as showing the working
out of the ethical ideal in the same way as the physical sciences
exhibit the application of the a priori principles of experience.
We are to understand law and the history of the state orn^y in the
light of the ideal. There is much truth in this conception, but
surely it neglects the normative character of political theory and
the great difference between the methods of politics and physical
science. Law and moral practice can hardly be regarded as merely
ultimate facts in which philosophy may discover principles but
which it must not criticise, and they can be understood only if we
JAMES LINDSAY, Studies in European Philosophy. 121
add to our apprehension of the ideal towards which they aim
some understanding of how progress is actually made towards that
ideal. The undoubted unsatisfactoriness of Kant's utterances in
political theory is probably due to his not distinguishing as
clearly as in his doctrine of experience between a priori and
empirical elements. But to remove the difficulties in his theory
we must not only make this distinction clear on the a priori side,
as Prof. Cohen has so admirably done, but also examine the
nature and methods of actual moral progress and consider how
the differences between moral judgments and scientific inquiry
must affect the application of a priori principles in either. On
this point Prof. Cohen has little to say. This criticism is suggested
by the contrast between the last part of this book, which seems
scrappy and unconvincing, and the first three parts which give
such a brilliant and profound justification of the a priori element
in Kant's philosophy.
A. D. LINDSAY.
Studies in European Philosophy. By JAMES LINDSAY, D.D.,
Author of Recent Advances in Theistic Philosophy of Religion,
and other works. William Blackwood & Sons, 1909. Pp.
xxi, 370.
THIS is a collection of short Essays on various subjects connected
with Philosophy and the History of Philosophy. The range
covered by the Studies is immense. Some of them relate to
ancient Philosophy, others to the systems of the Fathers and the
Schoolmen, others to quite modern Philosophy. Three are devoted
to French, Italian, and Spanish Philosophy ; three others to the
41 metaphysical," "ethical," and ''psychological development of our
time". One is "a constructive Essay on Idealism," with special
reference to Hegel and Berkeley. The volume represents in the
main a contribution to the History x>f Philosophy rather than to
Philosophy itself, but it is the work of a historian of Philosophy
who has a position of his own and is well able to criticise and ap-
preciate, as well as to chronicle, the systems and the tendencies
which he examines. The range covered by the work is, however, so
great and the amount of space devoted to each subject is so small
that it is scarcely possible for a reviewer to do more than to say
that the volume is very well worth the attention of all students of
Philosophy. For most of us the chief value of the book will lie in
the succinct account given of great periods of Philosophy about
which most professed teachers and writers of Philosophy know little
or nothing (e.g., the recent philosophic output of Italy and Spain),
and in the attempts to treat in a really philosophical manner
periods and subjects (e.g., " the philosophical doctrine of the Logos ")
usually abandoned to Theologians and ecclesiastical historians who
have no pretensions to Dr. Lindsay's philosophical knowledge
122 CEITICAL NOTICES :
and insight. Few students of Philosophy are so well informed as
to be able to learn nothing from the critical and historical portions
of Dr. Lindsay's book.
The "Constructive Essay in Idealism" may be described as an
attempt to criticise Hegel's central position, and to suggest that its
deficiencies can only be corrected by a genuinely Theistic Idealism.
Some of the criticisms seem to me excellent as far as they go : the
reservation is necessary merely because the Essay occupies only
some thirty pages, and the author is obliged therefore to confine
himself to generalities. " The vice of the Hegelian idealism, as
represented by some of its most noted recent expounders, lies just
in this, that it makes thought constitutive of reality, instead of
interpretative of it, and, in so doing, gives the categories of thought
an unwarranted place in the interpretation of the Universe " (p. 211).
" There is thus a sense in which the individual is a whole, as well
as a part. The individual part, as part of reality, may well cry out,
should he find very real sides of his nature sacrificed on the shrine
of 'organic' metaphor" (p. 213). "The absolute experience must
mean the fulfilment of moral ideals no less than the answer to-
rational questions " (p. 216). " The search of Neo-Hegelianism
for a principle of unity, and its sympathy with evolutionary
conceptions, have rendered plausible a presentation in which things
subsist without substance and originate without cause" (p. 224).
The general drift of Dr. Lindsay's criticism may perhaps be
sufficiently indicated by these sentences. When he comes to the
reconstruction of Idealism, he shows a commendable desire to keep
close to experience, and to recognise all facts and aspects of the
real world. The doubt that will be left upon the mind of many
readers is whether he has not sometimes simply left standing side
by side statements which refuse to be reconciled. How God is to
be made distinct from individual souls, while yet including them
in such a sense that the notion of a "finite God" can be in-
dignantly repudiated, Dr. Lindsay has hardly made clear. He
explicitly rejects Eoyce's teaching that " our consciousness is a
portion " of the Divine consciousness ; and yet insists that " Perfect
Being [i.e., apparently God] internally personalised and externally
individuated may embrace a plurality of distinctive and personal
manifestations " (p. 222). I have the same feeling about the
writer's attempt to outline a Metaphysic which shall avoid the
subjective Idealism which he attributes not merely to Berkeley but
to Hegel, and shall yet remain Idealism. "Bodies and their
operations must, I hold, exist independently of our sensations of
extensive motion, and resistance, and matter must be credited with
agency in virtue of its primary properties. The world cannot be
allowed to be a mere system of possibilities of sensation, as with
Mill and Berkeley, for our experience is of objective things, and not
merely of sensations ; it cannot even be admitted to exist, as with
the Neo-Hegelians, only for experience, since our knowledge is pre-
JAMES LINDSAY, Studies in European Philosophy.
cisely such as testifies to extra-mental reality " (p. 225). This last
expression, "extra-mental reality," is hard to reconcile with the
belief in " the Infinite Spirit of God as the one underlying Eeality "
(p. 225). That things exist outside my private mind no post-
Kantian Idealist is likely to deny. But it may be questioned!
whether this can be for any sort of Idealist an immediate judg-
ment, and not rather an inference forced upon him by the necessity
of explaining the identity of some of his experiences with those of
others, which he discovers through intercourse with his fellows.
If Dr. Lindsay presses the immediate affirmation of common-sense
that the table which I touch exists quite independently of my
touching it, will not this involve him in ordinary dualistic Realism ?
' Common-sense ' assuredly will not be satisfied by being told that
the table is indeed 'extra-mental,' but is yet after all only a part of
a Eeality which is all " Spirit". Though I cannot pretend to find
Prof. Lindsay's solution wholly satisfactory, the attempt makes me
wish that he would undertake a systematic exposition and defence
of Theistic Idealism. The wish is strengthened by the perusal of
the three chapters on " the philosophical developments of our time ".
They are full of highly suggestive criticisms and hints at a con-
structive Philosophy. The suggestions are always interesting, and
sometimes even brilliant, but they are very imperfectly worked out.
This is of course inevitable in the attempt to touch upon so many
subjects in a single volume of 370 pages. It is at once the defect
of such a volume, and the highest compliment that can be paid to
it, to say that it leaves the reader unsatisfied.
H. BASHDALL.
VII. NEW BOOKS.
Epochs of Philosophy (Edited by J. J. Hibben) : Stoic and Epicurean.
By R. D. HICKS. London : Longmans, Green & Co., 1910. Pp.
xix, 412.
WHAT promises to be a useful series of text-books in the History of
Philosophy opens well with this generally well-informed and very read-
able volume. In the main I can heartily recommend Mr. Hicks's work to
the English reader anxious to make a first acquaintance with the third-
century Greek philosophical systems. If I might suggest one or two
general criticisms as to points which might be considered when the book
reaches its second edition, I would urge that, as regards the Stoics, the
author might ask himself whether the Socratic elements in their doctrine
do not depend rather less than he follows the fashion in assuming on the
"Cynics" and more on the Platonic tradition derived through Xeno-
crates. Also it would be an improvement to make it clearer that the
Stoic categories are a direct attempt to reproduce Aristotelianism with a
materialistic colouring. E.g., the TTOIOV is simply the Aristotelian et'Sos
understood in a materialistic way as a current of irvfv^ia with a particular
intensity of TOVOS. Mr. Hicks, by the way, should hardly have written
of the first category as " Being or Something " without explaining that
the terms are not equivalent ; the original name was bv which was
afterwards altered to ri on purpose to include the ' ' incorporeals " : which
are not ovra according to the Stoics. It is a more serious defect of
arrangement that we hear nothing of the Academic polemic against
Stoicism until we come to the chapters on Scepticism at the very end of
the volume. The consequence is that the reader runs the risk of failing
to see that the polemic of Carneades is really the turning-point in the
whole history of Stoicism, since it must have been its annihilating effect
which led to the remarkable reconstitution of the whole system by Posi-
donius. This leads me to observe that the most serious defect of Mr.
Hicks s volume is his failure to appreciate the significance of Posidonius,
who is barely mentioned in a footnote as an " heretical " Stoic, and cited
once and again as a specimen of the tendency to Eclecticism in the first
century B.C. What is not brought out as it should be is that Posi-
donius was the one man of real scientific genius the school produced,
and that it was due to his brilliant accomplishments that Stoicism, which
had previously been the faith of estimable but rather ridiculous faddists,
became a possible philosophy for the world. The author's failure to see
that only the genius of Posidonius made it possible for the school to
survive the attack of Carneades causes his account of the Roman Stoics
to be a little puzzling. Any reader will discover for himself that, even
in their English presentment, Seneca and the Stoic figures in Cicero,
and the Emperor Marcus are not quite of the same type as the original
followers of Zeno, but what has crossed the stock is not made sufficiently
plain by Mr. Hicks. It is in reality the vein of Platonism in Posidonius.
NEW BOOKS. 125
Mr. Hicks does not seem to feel quite as much as I do myself that the
same kind of difference exists even between two Stoics so nearly con-
temporary as Seneca and Epictetus, the former of whom is saturated
with the cosmology and psychology of Posidonius, while the latter, for
whom these subjects had less attraction, remains in the main faithful
to the rather wooden intellectualism of Zeno and Chysippus.
The treatment of Epicureanism is full, sympathetic, and learned. In
fact its one defect, to my own mind, is that it is too sympathetic. It is
really a mistake to take Epicurus as a man of science seriously at all.
His real place, as far as science goes, is with the earth-flatteners and the
secularist orators of the London parks. His physical theories are simply
the scientific Atomism of Democritus ruined and made laughable by the
attempt to amalgamate it with the Physics of Aristotle ; in the whole of
his Ethics there is not one idea which has not been either appropriated
from or suggested by the desire to controvert the Philebus and the
Ethics, The real worthlessness of what Epicurus was pleased to call his
" philosophy " may be gauged by the single consideration that he in-
cluded an ultra-sensationalistic theory of knowledge, and the ultra-
rationalist doctrine of Atomism (which can only be maintained, as
Democritus had seen, by regarding sense-perception as inherently il-
lusory), as parts of a single "system".
I could wish Mr. Hicks had called attention to the supreme importance
for the study of Epicurus of the Academic dialogue Axiochus which, as
Immisch has shown, belongs to the first years of Epicurus' activity at
Athens, and opens the long controversy between the Academy and the
Garden, as the representatives of the religious and the secular interpreta-
tions of life. Another work of which mention should have been made is
the De, Mundo, an admirable product of the Posidonian school, which
would have lent itself naturally and usefully to comparison with the poem
of Lucretius. When all allowance has been made for the poetic genius
and impressive moral personality of the Epicurean poet, it would appear,
I think, that the Platonising Stoic represents at once genuine piety and
true science as against the eternal combination of sham science with
secularism.
With regard to the interesting chapter on ancient scepticism, I should
like to throw out a suggestion which has not, I think, occurred to the
author. In his, as in other, accounts of the Platonic succession there is
a puzzling shifting from the definite teaching of the early Academy to
the alleged pure agnosticism of Arcesilaus and Carneades, and back again
to the "dogmatism" of the still later Platonists. But I would ask
whether it is so certain that the New Academy was really agnostic at all.
All the anti-dogmatic reasoning of Arcesilaus and Carneades is strictly
dialectical, as Mr. Hicks often points out in connexion with special
arguments. What they set out to prove is not that there is no such
thing as assumed knowledge, but that on the Stoic premises there can be
no such thing. Now this would have been held as firmly by Plato
himself as by any one, since he always denied that there can be eVto-r^/A?;
of the sensible. Hence the New Academy might have held in every
respect to the positive doctrine of Plato without in any way forfeiting
their right to argue that on Stoic premises ' ' assurance " is impossible.
There are two considerations which suggest to my own mind that this
was actually their position. One is that the tradition of the old
Academy was so well preserved. If the Academy had ever become a
home of mere agnosticism it is hard to see how, e.g., Plutarch could have
been so admirably informed as he is on the traditional exegesis of the
Timceus. The other is that the professed sceptics from ^Enesidemus on
always insisted that the New Academy did not represent the real seep-
126 NEW BOOKS.
tical position. Whatever we may think of the way in which a writer like
JSextus explains the nature of the difference, the fact at least that his
succession refused to admit the genuine agnosticism of the Academics
has to be accounted for. I might even add that the view which he
regards as Academic would only be possible to persons who accepted an
essential Platonic doctrine. The Academic, he says, professes to know
that " assurance " is impossible. If this is correct, the New Academy
must have held at least the Platonic doctrine that there is no science of
yi.yv6u.fva.
A. E. TAYLOR.
Consciousness. By HENRY RUTGERS MARSHALL, M.A., L.H.D. London,
1909. 8vo, pp. xv, 685. Price, 17s.
Nothing is more needed in psychology at present than careful considera-
tion of its fundamental conceptions, and a book on the subject from Mr.
Marshall's pen is sure to be widely read, despite the growing difficulty of
his language. It would be no special compliment to a psychologist of Mr.
Marshall's distinction to say that his book deserves close study and is
full of good things. So much may be taken for granted : the important
question is whether his main positions are tenable. They do not appear
to me to be tenable. Readers of MIND are already more or less familiar
with them, for a considerable part of this book is a reproduction of the
substance of arguments which Mr. Marshall has developed in recent num-
bers of MIND (e.g. N.S., Nos. 37, 44, 57, 61), and a lengthy exposition of
them here is therefore unnecessary.
Mr. Marshall remarks in his Preface that a metaphysician might object
that his initial assumptions " involve metaphysical considerations," and
this objection he tries to counter by the statement that metaphysical
problems are concerned with " complex conceptual systems " which are
" emphatic parts of my consciousness " (i.e. presentations) " when I turn
to their consideration ". Thus he regards the psychologist's problem as
" more general" than the metaphysician's, and so robs of its cogency the
claim which psychologists justly make, and which he makes on pp. 271-
272, to be allowed to assume the existence of an objective order in the
same way in which it is assumed by ordinary thought or in any other
science. For that claim is admissible only if the psychologist remembers
that his study is not final, but starts from metaphysical presuppositions
which it is precluded from examining ; yet, so far is Mr. Marshall from
acknowledging this that, regarding psychology as the more general study,
he actually appends to his psychological analysis a chapter of Corollaries
in which he draws from it conclusions concerning responsibility, freedom,
and immortality. It is not difficult to understand the impatience of some
metaphysicians with psychology when a writer of Mr. Marshall's eminence
can proceed in this fashion.
Nor does Mr. Marshall's analysis of consciousness seem to me at all
satisfactory, and on it the whole of his doctrine depends. By conscious-
ness he means very much what the ordinary person means by mind or
spirit " psychic existence," as he calls it. The object of the analysis
is first of all to enumerate its "parts". Mr. Marshall uses spatial
metaphors so freely, and with so little reflection on then- metaphorical
character, that the map of consciousness on page 6 quite suitably illus-
trates his position. In it appear two great regions of consciousness, (i. )
presentations, and (ii.) the self. Presentations include (i.) " the empirical
ego," and (ii.) objects. The self is the unpresented part of consciousness,
i.e. " the field of inattention ". Presentations are the "emphatic " part
NEW BOOKS. 127
of consciousness at any moment, corresponding to emphatic activities in
the nervous system ; but, just as Mr. Marshall assumes, the nervous
system is always active to some extent in every part, so also, on the
assumption of " noetic-neururgic correspondence," consciousness must be
a system which includes much more than these " centres of emphasis,"
-and the remainder, "the vast undifferentiated mass," is the self. It
receives presentations and reacts upon them. Obviously it changes from
moment to moment, so that there is not really a self, but a succession of
instantaneous selves, each of which is " new and unique ".
Thus thinking consists in the presentation of one " part " of conscious-
ness to another. When I think, e.g., of an if object in the outer world,"
the psychological account of the matter is that a " complex systematised
concept " is presented to and received by the "field of inattention," and, as
psychology is si more general " thin metaphysics, we are left to presume
that this is the last word about knowledge. Mr. Marshall does not seem
to see that he has fallen back into all the old difficulties of the series that
somehow knows itself, and that by laying stress only on difference he has
abolished both knowledge and purpose. A doubt flashes at times across
the reader's mind, whether he is not ironical whether he is not making
a covert attack upon the notion of ( l the stream of consciousness ". Yet,
as I said above, the book is in detail full of interesting and suggestive
passages.
The printer has occasionally treated the author unkindly. Thus,
on pages 10-11, percepi (three times), and, on page 94, "This is the
phenomena ".
T. L.
Mind and Its Disorders. A Text-book for Students and Practitioners.
By W. H. B. STODDART, M.D., F.R.C.P., Assistant Physician to
Bethlem Royal Hospital. With illustrations. London : H. K.
Lewis. Pp. xvi, 488.
This is one of the best text-books I have yet seen. It is well adapted to
its primary purpose, namely, to ' ' provide the student and practitioner
with a succinct account of our existing knowledge of mental diseases ".
The exposition is divided into three clean-cut parts : first, Normal Psy-
chology ; second, the Psychology of the Insane ; third, Mental Diseases.
This division enables the author to set forth in sequence the general
propositions of psychology, to emphasise the special features of dis-
ordered 'mentation,' and finally to fit the practical examination and
treatment of the insane more or less systematically into a coherent sys-
tem. The first part, it is true, is somewhat dogmatic in statement and
tone ; but this is an incident of the method of the book rather than a
sign of a dogmatic attitude. When psychology has to be condensed into
a hundred pages, these to include intelligible indications of the most
recent methods of research, the dogmatic form is unavoidable. For-
tunately, the author, unlike many other writers on insanity, has clear
ideas of the limits of psychology and metaphysics. He frankly states his
<;hief pre-supposition and goes forward : ' ' According to the second, or
' interactionist ' school (I am not sure that the designation is very con-
vincing), ' mind ' is not to be regarded as a * thing,' but ' mentation' is
to be regarded as a process, having its physical basis in the brain. This
is the scientific view of the present day, which will be adopted in this
manual. Incidentally, it commits us to the view that insanity is a dis-
order of the process of mentation and therefore directly dependent upon
disease affecting the brain, either primarily or secondarily " (p. 2). And
again, "that sensation is the essential attribute, the only essential
128 NEW BOOKS.
attribute, of conscious organisms and that all the more complex mental
functions are derivable therefrom " (p. 7). The psychological sketch is
conducted from these standpoints and the result is clear and distinct.
It opens out the lines of further study without confusion. The second
part, the psychology of the insane, follows the same general course, but
with less elaboration. The third part is fuller and covers all the ordinary
ground of modern diagnosis and treatment of mental diseases. There
are several good illustrations. If the book has a fault, even from its
own standpoint, it is that too many authors are mentioned without
specific references to their books or articles. Doubtless, in a text-book
such as this, space is very limited ; but the practical value of the book
would be immensely improved either by a good selection of references at
the end of the chapters, or by indications in the text. In one matter,
the author seems to me to carry the dogmatic method of exposition to
the danger point, namely, where he says: "The pith of the whole
matter is this : that among savage peoples the interests of the in-
dividual are subordinated to those of the race and natural selection
is at work ; while among civilised nations the interests of the race are
subordinated to those of the individual, natural selection is allowed no
play, and the result is the survival of the unfittest. This is the true
cause of the increase of insanity ; it lies under our very hands. The
medical man is himself responsible for the increase of disease and the
degeneration of the race. The physician who specialises in mental
diseases is, or should be, a comfort and a blessing to his present patients,
but he is a curse to posterity " (p. 163). This is a rather strong statement
to be flung down without analysis. It seems to me unsound in its idea
of natural selection and doubtful in its alleged facts. The author has
got among dangerous abstractions, selection and survival, which are no
more satisfying when issued without capital letters in the name of science
than they were when issued as Election and Effectual Calling with capitals
in the name of ancient theologies. His own book has materials enough
for a strong case against both his assumed premises and his somewhat
figurative conclusion. Those abstractions are too summary for problems
"so complex.
W. L. M.
Examination of Prof. William James's Psychology. By IKBAL KISHEN
SHABGHA. Allahabad : Ram Narain Lai, 1909. Pp. 118. Price,
one rupee.
In this little work, Prof. Shargha, who represents philosophy at Bareilly
College, subjects James's psychological views to a searching criticism. In
its form the book is a running series of quotations of statements regard-
ing the following topics : brain and consciousness, externality of sensa-
tions, indivisibility of sensations and other states of consciousness, the self
as known, the self as knower, conception, emotion and will. The criti-
cism of these passages and their summary in each chapter go to show
mainly that James is either inconsistent or arrives at results which are
untenable. James's large work is still of course a favourite with all
psychologists. Its friends continually increase in number. Even our so
systematic cousins of the Continent have recently shown their devotion by
translating it. But systematic criticism of it brings almost the same
shock of surprise and regret as would the too close examination of the
weather of one's homeland or of a wayward friend. We live not for their
evil days, but for their brilliant, radiant hours. But, perhaps, just because
James's psychology is so vital and attractive, it might be thought that its
NEW BOOKS. 129
hold on life lay in its philosophic build and not in the details of its stiuc-
ture, many of which are long outworn. Beginners especially might be
prone to this belief. These and others interested mainly in the framing of
large systematic hypotheses, Shargha's book is specially devised to en-
lighten.
The criticism of James's views on the relation between brain and
consciousness may be passed without comment, as partially contradicting
statements are more a matter of style of treatment and exposition than of
system, where a progressive science like psychology has to be treated.
Shargha rather overlooks the fact that a wide hypothesis regarding facts
can hardly be final, but must be moulded from time to time to bind
together the facts as they are gathered. From another point of view the
same may be said regarding the chapter on the indivisibility of sensations
and other states of consciousness. There are strong motives which urge
us to maintain that some states of mind are compounded out of others,
as many psychologists maintain, and others, equally strong, which force
us to deny this. He who holds these opposing views in balance, even
under the charge of inconsistency, may often do more to keep the facts
alive than the most consistent apostle of the one side. The longest
chapter deals, as one might have expected, with the self as knower.
James's line of informative inconsistency gives place to a faith in one
abiding substance underlying all modes of thought. u If the meaning of
' change ' can be realised, we cannot be wholly ignorant of that which
undergoes a change. The permanence and identity of the substance of
mind must of course be largely a matter of faith. . . . The inmost nature
of the self must remain a dark mystery, but from that it does not follow
that it is absolutely unknown " (p. 59). The psychology of the concept,
finally, is at the present time altogether too changeable and imperfect to
withstand the charge of inconsistency.
" Most of the errors and much of the confusion which we find in his
psychology are due to his inability to make up his mind as to the relation
between brain and consciousness. . . . Prof. James consciously or un-
consciously leans to the materialistic theory that the body is after all the
real thing and that consciousness is a * supernumerary phenomenon,'
that neural changes are invariably the causes of mental states and are in
no way affected by them " (p. 110). " And yet, unless we are very much
mistaken, Prof. James is not a materialist. He has only adopted the
materialistic hypothesis as a tentative method " (p. 116).
Prof. Shargha's criticism is clear and trenchant, and taken in conjunc-
tion with a thorough study of the originals by the general student begin-
ning the study of psychology will doubtless help towards clear progress in
the broadest problems of mind and so fulfil the purpose for which it is
intended.
H. J. WATT.
The Ethics of St. Paul. By ARCHIBALD B. D. ALEXANDER, M.A. Glas-
gow : James Maclehose & Sons, 1910. Pp. xxiv, 377.
"The special aim of this volume," we are told in the Preface, is "to
present in a systematic whole the various virtues and duties which the
apostle inculcates," and its central thought is, "that morality is abso-
lutely vital to St. Paul's religion". Even if the dearth of special works
on the Pauline Ethics were as great as Mr. Alexander supposes, the
different aspects of the subject have been treated time and again by
writers on St. Paul and on Christian Ethics. And if it were possible to
say anything fresh on the matter, our author has not said it. But the
book has the merit of being a careful, well-informed and fairly complete
9
130 NEW BOOKS.
statement, and the writer lays proper stress on the spiritual experience
which determined the apostle's life and teaching. Mr, Alexander's
standpoint is in the main conservative. He accepts as genuine all the
writings traditionally attributed to St. Paul, although, as he must know,
there are good reasons for doubting the authenticity of the Pastoral
Epistles. The book is divided into three sections : Sources and Postu-
lates ; Ideals and Principles ; Duties and Spheres. The first section
deals with the influences which shaped Paul's teaching, and it also treats
of his Psychology. In the second part Mr. Alexander finds the charac-
teristics of Paul's ethical ideal to be its Absoluteness, Inwardness, Sym-
metry, and Universality. A good chapter on the "Dynamics of the
New Life " follows. But in signalising the defect of Greek Ethics in
this regard, Mr. Alexander surely forgets the theory of aperr) in the
Republic when he speaks of Plato s conception of virtue as "spiritual
aesthetics, the contemplation of the morally beautiful ". In his third
section the author discusses the Pauline doctrine of Duties : Duties to
self and to others, Duties in relation to the family, the State, and the
Church. The final chapter on "The Ethical Ultimate of St. Paul" sums
up the conclusions of the book. " This unity in diversity, this fearless
recognition of the antinomies of life and thought, and the attempt, not to
suppress but to combine them in a higher synthesis, is acknowledged by
every student of St. Paul's philosophy of life " (p. 363).
Detailed criticism is not possible here, but Mr. Alexander seems to us
too anxious to find the Pauline teaching coherent and systematic. For
instance, he thinks those passages where Paul speaks of the flesh as
naturally sinful, must be construed so as to be consistent with the
Pauline idea of redemption. Similarly, the ascetic element in the
apostle's temper, which comes out in his views of marriage, hardly
receives due recognition. Again, though the writer knows the apostle's
mind was greatly influenced by the thought of a speedy Second Coming,
he allows the fact to remain very much in the background. The result
is that Paul's interest in the state and political society is exaggerated.
Only when we remember his eschatological outlook do we realise how it
was possible for the large-minded Apostle to the Gentiles to regard the
external organisation of society, and even the institution of slavery, as
among things indifferent.
G. G.
The Mental Symptoms of Brain Disease. By BERNARD HOLLANDER, M.D.,
with Preface by Dr. Jul. Morel, late Belgian State Commissioner
in Lunacy. London : Rebman, Limited, 1910. Pp. xviii, 237.
As what it professes to be, namely, " an aid to the surgical treatment of
insanity, due to injury, haemorrhage, tumours, and other circumscribed
lesions of the brain," this book will be of great service. It brings to-
gether, from a very wide field of reading, several series of cases classified
and discussed in relation both to their mental symptoms and to the brain
lesions discovered in association with these. As a reference book, there-
fore, every student of cerebral surgery will welcome this scientific sum-
mary of results up-to-date. On the more general question, the relation
of mind and brain as a whole, there is not much that is new, although the
theory of localisation gains greatly in precision from the study of the
individual instances. It is, however, a pity that, on the very first page,
we should have somewhat crude observations like this : " True, no one
would agree to-day with Sir William Hamilton and John Stuart Mill, who
still taught that ' mental phenomena do not admit of being deduced from
the physiological laws of our nervous organisation, ' but it seems that the
NEW BOOKS. 131
influence of antiquated metaphysics based on the results of self-introspec-
tion has not yet worn off entirely. For mind is still regarded by some as
if it consisted of intellect alone, whereas we all feel, as well as think, with
our brains " (p. 1). It is not worth while in a short notice to analyse
out the curious mixture of ideas here offered us as if it were really the
latest thing in psychology, but I give the quotation as an indication of the
extraordinary tendency of works like these to start with metaphysical
tags that have little or no relevance to their special work. When,
however, Dr. Hollander passes to his real text, the localisation of brain
functions and the mental symptoms of definite cerebral lesions, he has
much that is relevant and important to say. A very large number of
references are given in the text, and these will be of the utmost practical
value ; but here and there one finds names of authors without any note of
the specific work or page, and occasionally sentences like this : "F. Bevan
Lewis, Clarke, Nissl, Bolton, Cajal, Campbell, Vogt, Mott, Brodmanhave
done most praiseworthy work in this direction " (p. 13). But where the
references are so numerous and the mass of collected cases so great, it is
ungracious to find fault with minor omissions or unrelated Homeric lists
of names. The book covers discussions on the mental symptoms of
lesions of the frontal lobes, the parietal lobes, the temporal lobes, the
occipital lobes, the functions of the cerebellum, the skulls of the insane
and the operative treatment of insanity. The reader of MIND will find
much to interest him and to show him how much remains to be done be-
fore the functions of the brain can emerge into system or the ' l antiquated
metaphysics " due to " self-introspection " come to its own. We may
leave it to the Experimental Psychologists to say how much truth there
is in the statement : "We are disposed to think that exaggerated notions
are entertained as to what experimental psychology can actually accom-
plish. It is practically restricted to the measurement of sensations and
movements and the gaps between them, and of the simplest mental pro-
cesses " (p. 5). The implication that (i sensations " and "~ movements "
are not fi mental processes " may be left to the metaphysicians or general
psychologists, either of whom, I imagine, will be able to understand what
the writer means in spite of his language. The book is well produced.
W. L. M.
The Power of Concentration. By EUSTACE MILES, M.A. London :
Methuen & Co. Pp. xv, 196.
In this book Mr. Eustace Miles, with the selective skill of a trained
teacher, brings into a small compass a large number of most valuable
directions for the practice of life. He not only writes the book, but
indicates to us how we should study it so that the study shall itself be a
training in concentration. It is here impossible without disproportion
either to summarise the many elaborate and justified instructions or to
analyze critically their foundations. It is enough to say that, from the
experience of himself and others, Mr. Miles is able to put his reader in
the way of progressive education towards concentration. He emphasises
the duty of putting " first" things first, since "ideal concentration"
helps, and does not hinder, proximate concentrations. ie The true physi-
cal parent or grandparent of ideal Concentration is proper breathing and
a relaxing of the muscles from all unnecessary effort. This is against the
popular notion of Concentration, which assumes that a man is not concen-
trating unless he is showing great effort and strain. It is maintained that
the true son and successor of ideal Concentration is delegation, together
with occasional supervision . . . that concentration is not an end, but
only a means to an end namely, liberty to attend more closely to the
132 NEW BOOKS.
highest things in life, because the lower things are handed to our servants
within us " (p. xiii). The whole exposition is lucid and relevant, so
lucid, indeed, that one is apt to forget how difficult of attainment such
lucidity in practical instruction is. The book is a sound addition to the
handbooks of personal discipline.
W. L. M.
Mentally Deficient Childrtn : Their Treatment and Training. By G. E.
SHUTTLEWORTH, B.A., M.D., etc., and W. A. POTTS, B.A., M.D.,
etc. Third Edition. London : H. K. Lewis, 1910. Pp. xviii,
236.
Of this volume all that need be said is that it is the third edition of an
excellent first. Dr. Shuttleworth, after many years' experience, had,
among our earliest workers in this field, set forth in a systematic way his
methods of dealing with "mentally defective" children. In the present
edition much has been added both to text and illustration. In the inter-
val between the second edition and the third the Commission on the Care
and Control of the Feeble Minded conducted its very extended investiga-
tions into the nature and prevalence of " feeble-mindedness ". This
edition takes full account of the latest work. It is, therefore, an admir-
able hand-book to this whole department of treatment and education.
There is a good bibliography, a good index of subjects and an index of
names. As the point of view is essentially practical, the theoretical ques-
tions of the segregation or preservation of the so-called ' ' unfit " and the
related ethical questions are merely touched upon.
W. L. M.
Les Nevroses. Par Dr. PIERRE JANET, Professeur de Psychologie au
College de France. Paris : Ernest Flammarion, Editeur, Biblio-
theque de Philosophie Scientifique. Pp. 397.
This well-filled volume of 400 pages contains a generalised statement,
with adequate detail, of Dr. Pierre Janet's well-known researches and
theories. As he points out in the Introduction, in the last twenty years
he has published large volumes of special studies on the neuroses, giving
psychological and physiological details of some 500 cases. Naturally,
these masses of observations have organised themselves around certain
general hypotheses, which it was eminently desirable to bring together.
The book is divided into two main parts. The First Part deals with
neuropathic symptoms, including fixed ideas and obsessions, the am-
nesias and doubts, language troubles, choreas and tics, paralyses and
phobias, troubles of perception, troubles of the instincts and visceral
functions, such as troubles of sleep, nutrition, respiration, etc. All
through this exposition of symptoms, a distinction is made between
hysteria and psychasthenia. The Second Part expounds the neuropathic
states, including nervous crises, neuropathic stigmata, the mental state in
hysteria, the mental state in psychasthenia. The final chapter is devoted
to the question : What is a neurosis ? It is needless here to re-expound
Janet's doctrines. After a full exposition of symptoms, hysteria and
psychasthenia as states have a chapter each. Dr. Janet lays great
stress on the difference between the two states. ' ' Hysteria is above all
a disease of the personality. . . . It is a form of mental depression char-
acterised by a contraction of the field of personal consciousness and by a
tendency to dissociation and to the setting loose of the systems of ideas
and functions that, by their synthesis, constitute the personality" (p.
NEW BOOKS. 133
345). Psychasthenia, on the other hand, is a " form of mental depres-
sion, characterised by the lowering of mental tension, by the impairment
of the functions concerned with reality and the perception of the real,
by the substitution of operations lower in the functional hierarchy and
exaggerated in the form of doubts, agitations, anxieties and obsessional
ideas, which express those troubles and which themselves present the
same characters" (p. 367). It is obvious that psychasthenic features
may appear in hysterical cases. Both hysteria and psychasthenia are
neuroses. " The neuroses are disturbances of the different functions of
the organism and are characterised by arrest of development without
deterioration of the function itself " (p. 392). The minute psychological
analyses so familiar in his writings, Dr. Janet regards as an indispensable
preliminary to any successful system or psycho-therapeutics, which he
hopes to take up in a subsequent volume. From this brief summary, it is
obvious that the small volume forms an admirable introduction to this
immense and ever-widening field of study.
W. L. M.
Die hermeneutische Induktion in der Taimudischen Litteratur : ein Beitrag
zur Geschichte der Logik. Von Prof. Dr. ADOLF SCHWARZ. Wien
und Leipzig : Alfred Holder, 1909. Pp. 256. Price 7 '40 marks.
Although this work is called "A Contribution to the History of Logic,"
it is evidently intended for that rare type of logician who is fully at home
in the Jewish Oral Law ; for Dr. Schwarz's pages contain untranslated
extracts from the Talmudim and Midrashim, which only a limited num-
ber even of Hebraists could construe with ease. On this subject indeed
he writes as a master ; and those who can follow him will be grateful for
his elaborate analysis of the exegetical methods to which this book is
devoted. Being expedients for the interpretation of the Mosaic Law,
they belong rather to the discipline called by the Arabs "Principles of
Jurisprudence " than to Logic ; and it seems doubtful whether any useful
purpose is served by attiring them in the ill-fitting terminology of the
Aristotelian Organon. Dr. Schwarz indeed tells his reader somewhat
peremptorily that he had better attend lectures on Logic if he cannot see
that a certain form of argument in the Mishnah is a ' ' Spezies-Induk-
tionsschluss " in the spirit of Aristotle; examples are the following:
in Deuteronomy xxii. 1-3 the finder of lost property is told to restore it,
the objects enumerated being an ox., an ass, a garment, and any lost
object. Granting that live stock deserves special mention, the Mishnah
asks why is not a garment included in " any lost object " ; and replies
that it is to indicate that by " lost object " the legislator meant ' ' object
capable of identification and so of being claimed ". In Exodus xxi. there
is a rule about pits, making the digger responsible for the loss of any
animal that falls in and is killed ; the Mishnah makes the term "pit"
cover any form of excavation. Now is the term Induction really suit-
able for processes of this sort ? According to Sigwart's Logic (a manual
to which Dr. Schwarz often refers) the reply would seem to be in the
negative. " In the logic of Jurisprudence the process of disengaging the
legal principle from some special determination of which it is the ground
is known as analogy " (trans. Dendy, ii. p. 209) ; the second of the above
examples (inferring from a pit to caves, etc.) would seem to come under
this head. The first example is far less easy to label, because it appears
to be a thoroughly inconclusive argument. A garment, unless it hap-
pened to be marked, might be as difficult of identification as a coin ; a
coin, if it happened to be chipped, might be as easy of identification as a
marked garment. The legislator might have added " any lost object " in
134 NEW BOOKS.
order to include such as did not admit of identification if there be any,
strictly speaking. The lecture on Logic which would show that this
reasoning was in the spirit of Aristotle ought not to have been withheld
by the writer.
Fortunately the value of his book by no means depends on the appro-
priateness of his nomenclature. The endeavour to reconstruct the
historic development of the Rabbinic exegesis seems to be both praise-
worthy and successful ; though the proof of his assertion that the
commencement of it goes back beyond the time of Ezra, whence Ezra
cannot have been the Editor of the Pentateuch, does not appear to be
given. To the Biblical critic the historical character of Ezra is at the least
doubtful ; nor can he look to obtain any exact knowledge from a mass of
tradition not written down till at least a millennium after the supposed
Ezra's death, and found to be inaccurate whenever it can be checked.
D. S. MARGOLIOUTH.
Francis Bacon und seine Quellen. Erster Band : Bacon und die grie-
chische Philosophic. Von EMIL WOLFF, Dr. Phil. (Literarhistorische
Forschungen, hsg. v. J. S chick und M. Frh. v. Waldberg, XL.)
Berlin, 1910. 8vo, pp. xxx, 301. Price, M.10.
This is the first part of a " gekronte Preisschrift " from the University of
Munich, and, though it appears in a series which is for the most part
devoted to the history of literature rather than philosophy, it deserves
notice in the pages of MIND. It is primarily a study of the references to
Greek philosophers that are scattered through Bacon's works, and, taken
as that and nothing more, it appears to be (so far as I have had
opportunity to test it) both accurate and complete. The connexions
established through some common origin between phrases in Bacon's
philosophical treatises and phrases in his other works are often interest-
ing and enlightening, as also are the author's occasional deviations into
Kepler, Galileo and Montaigne. I would complain only that Dr. Wolff
has not divided up his three very long chapters into sections in accord-
ance with his Table of Contents : as it is, a new paragraph at one time
means only a slight change of topic, at another a jump from one Platonic
dialogue to another, or even from Epicurus to the Pythagoreans, so that
the reader is often confused and disconcerted.
But the author evidently intends his book to be, in the second place, a
disquisition on the relation of Bacon's thought to that of Greece, and thus
regarded it is less satisfactory. It displays a large acquaintance with the
writings of Greek philosophers, but not an equal understanding of their
philosophy. In his view of Plato and Aristotle, in particular, Dr. Wolff
seems to have been unduly influenced by Grote, though he does in one
place (p. 170) indicate his disagreement with a passage from Grote which
he quite unnecessarily cites. Moreover he frequently makes statements
which must seriously mislead readers who have not specially studied the
history of philosophy, though in view of the nature of the series in which
the book appears he ought to have been more than usually careful. Ex-
amples are, the use of ' subjective ' in reference to the concept of causality
(p. 168) and to the Aristotelian dpxai (p. 170), the exaggerated statement
that Bacon's method is in the end the same as Plato's (p. 143), the false
antithesis between the logic of scientific method desiderated by Bacon
as presupposing the existence of empirical science and Aristotle's logic as
' ' entirely independent of all external experience " (p. 232).
Considering the number of languages used in it I find the book singu-
larly free from misprints. It is to be hoped that at the end of the next
NEW BOOKS. 135
volume Dr. Wolff will give a table of the passages in Bacon which he has
referred to their sources and of these originals themselves.
T. L.
I Maximi Problemi. BERNADINO VAEISCO. Libreria Edi trice Milanese.
Milan, 1910. Pp. xi, 331.
If I do not propose to review Prof. Yarisco's work at any great length
the reason is that I am so convinced of its importance that I should
despair of doing justice to it in any notice which did not run to the
length of an elaborate critical article. It is a long time since I have had
the good fortune to meet with a work in which the really vital issues of
Philosophy are discussed with so much knowledge, sound judgment, and,
to my mind, with so much originality. I would especially commend both
the tone of moral elevation which breathes from the author's pages, and
the admirably philosophical method which he has adopted. The present
work is one of those very rare ones which genuinely realise the Platonic
conception of dialectic, that it should be the " discourse of the soul with
itself ". Where the average writer on Philosophy thinks of little more
than successful silencing of opponents from some camp whose flag is not
his own, Prof. Varisco devotes little space to formal controversy ; like
Socrates, he allows us to share the inner dialectical development of his
own thought as he makes his way from simple and every-day assumptions
by the process of self-criticism to a position which leaves him prepared for
the crowning task of the identification of the " good ". This dialectical
procedure, together with the author's devotion to a pregnant and com-
pressed style, makes his book, as he himself confesses, hard reading, but,
as he himself also says, it is no part of the business of Philosophy to be
easy, and I can assure any reader who thinks fit to study the volume
before us on my recommendation, that he will find the time spent in
following it to its conclusion most profitably employed.
The ' ' chief problems " with which the book deals are those which are
involved in the choice between what seem to be the two ultimate atti-
tudes towards the Universe possible to the contemporary European mind,
the attitude of Positivism and that which may be roughly said to be the
attitude of Christianity. We are gradually led on, by a process of unre-
mitting self-criticism, from the postulates tacitly implied in our every-day
theoretical and practical assumptions about reality to a philosophical
theory which, to the British reader, will recall the doctrine of T. H.
Green, but we are not allowed to stop there. Like Green, the author sets
himself to show, and with greater definiteness of thought than Green ever
attained, that the very possibility of conscious reflection on experience
and its development into science presupposes that there is an objective
reason which is numerically one and the same in all persons and in the
world outside them. But, unlike Green, he is not dominated by intel-
lectualistic prepossessions, and so is able to hold equally fast to the con-
viction that the individual personality which forms the supreme " value "
for Ethics, must also for Metaphysics be no less real than the " One ".
The relation between them, whatever it may be, is not, and cannot be
that of ''appearance" to "reality". Hence the metaphysical view to
which we are finally conducted is a Monadism closely resembling that of
Leibniz. But it is a Monadism purged, and, as far as I can judge, suc-
cessfully purged, of the worst features of Leibniz's doctrine, the absence
of real interaction between the Monads, the Pre-established Harmony,
and the rigid Determinism. Even in the purely physical world (which is
conceived of as consisting of psychical elements not united together in
the peculiar way in which our percepts and our purely " private " ex-
136 NEW BOOKS.
periences, our feelings and activities, are held together in a single " unity
of consciousness ") there must be sequences which are not completely
determined, and genuine fresh beginnings, unless every phase of the
Universe is to be indistinguishable from every other. The actual course
of events cannot be simply determined once for all by the laws of relation
subsisting among the various monads ; the spontaneity inherent in the
individual monad must be taken into account as a factor which may in
contradistinction to the causal laws of reciprocal action between the
monads, be called a-logical, but must not be called irrational, since the
really irrational assumption would be the denial of spontaneity.
The author's treatment of this part of his topic calls for special com-
mendation. It is all the more masterly from his entire avoidance of
the rhetorical appeals to feeling with which the case for partial Inde-
terminism is commonly argued, and from his thorough familiarity with
mathematical Physics. So far, however, we have not reached the
" greatest problem " of nil, the choice between belief in a purely im-
manent " reason in the world," without the individual permanence of the
persons in whom it reaches its fullest expression as known to us, and
belief in a Reason which is transcendent as well as immanent, with the
permanence of personalities, i. e. in the Christian conception of a personal
God as the source of the Universe. Followers of Dr. McTaggart should
be interested by the careful argument advanced to show that the ap-
parent third alternative, immortal personalities without an absolutely
supreme personal God, is excluded. The main point is this. The argu-
ments which lead us to assert the presence of rationality as immanent in
the Universe justify us in holding that the action of every individual in
it, from the "bare monad" up to the rational person, are throughout
teleological.- But they do not justify the belief that the Universe as a
whole is a being with an end to be realised. They leave open the possi-
bility that it is not, and in that case, the history of the Universe, if we
may call it a history, might present a mere unending kaleidoscopic re-
shuffling of its elements, in the course of which the "bare" monads
might repeatedly go through the processes of evolution into personality
and reinvolution to the state of mere monads, but there would be a com-
plete discontinuity between the personal lives of a monad in its successive
periods of '' evolution ". Continuity in other words, immortality can
only be guaranteed if we have a right to regard the whole course of the
Universe as having for its supreme law the teleological principle of the
conservation of values. In the author's words : " Absolute continuity of
development, the permanence of values, cannot be preserved if the con-
cretes are the sole determinations of Being, if the potential value of Being
only becomes actual in single persons, which, in that case, being subject
to the chains (external to each of them) of a necessary and therefore non-
teleological causality, can only be transitory. To secure the permanence
of values we need to admit that causal necessity is subordinate to inten-
tional finality, i.e. that Being is endowed with further determinations
than the concretes, and produces the concretes within itself, not from the
necessity of determining itself, but to secure an end, to realise a pre-
established design. In that case, the notion of Being is transformed into
the traditional notion of God."
In the present work the issue thus expressed is allowed to remain
undecided. The writer contents himself with an able vindication of the
position that no decision can be given unless the practical reason is
allowed a hearing. We have to remember that the cheap Positivist solu-
tion by appeal to the li immortality of the race " is nugatory, since with-
out the principle of the permanence of values we have no right to believe
in any such thing, and with the principle we are justified in believing in
NEW BOOKS. 137
the preservation of the individual personality. On this alternative we
have a duty and a right to ask the verdict only of the man who is, in the
Gospel phrase, ex veritate, that is, the man who is " pure of heart," who
" desires only that which is desirable in se," who " regards and feels as
good, as value, that which is good, is value, in se". For himself the
writer is content to say, l ' I believe in the permanence of values. But
I naturally cannot give as an argument this personal conviction of my
own, strong as it is, and justified as it seems to me to be."
A further volume is promised in which the historical affinities of Prof.
Varisco's doctrine to the leading philosophies of the past are to be fully
treated. If it is anything like as good as the present work, it is to be
hoped that its appearance will not be long delayed, and that both books
may soon find competent translators into English.
A. E. TAYLOR.
Received also :
Alfred Sidgwick, The Application of Logic, London, Macmillan, 1910, pp.
ix, 321.
Bertrand Russell, Philosophical Essays, London, Longmans, 1910, pp. vi,
185.
James Lindsay, The Fundamental Problems of Metaphysics, Edinburgh \/
and London, Blackwood, 1910, pp. xii, 135.
F. C. S. Schiller, Riddles of the Sphinx, A Study in the Philosophy of
Humanism, New and Revised Edition, London, Sonnenschein,
1910, pp. xxvii, 478.
Helen Wodehouse, The Presentation of Reality, Cambridge, University
Press, 1910, pp. x, 163.
Henry John Coke, The Domain of Belief, London, Macmillan, 1910,
pp. x, 311.
William Brown, The Use of the Theory of Correlation in Psychology, Cam-
bridge, University Press, 1910, pp. 83.
Edward Bradford Titchener, A Text-book of Psychology, Part ii., New
York, Macmillan, 1910, pp. 256.
F. B. Jevons, The Idea of God in Early Religions, Cambridge, University
Press, 1910, pp. x, 170.
Eric S. Waterhouse, Modern Theories of Religion, London, Charles H.
Kelly, 1910, pp. xi, 448.
William Smart, Economic Annals of the Nineteenth Century, 1801-1820,
London, Macmillan, 1910, pp. xxxv, 778.
Theodore de Laguna and Grace Andrus de Laguna, Dogmatism and Evo-
lution, Studies in Modern Philosophy, New York, Macmillan, 1910,
pp. iv, 259.
F. W. Bussell, Mrcus Aurelius and the Later Stoics, Edinburgh, T. & T.
Clark, 1910, pp. xi, 302.
R. M. Wenley, Kant and His Philosophical Revolution, Edinburgh, T. &T.
Clark, 1910, pp. vii, 302.
D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, Historia Animalium (The Works of
Aristotle translated into English), Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1910.
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, vol. x., Papers of 31st
Session, 1909-1910, London, Williams & Norgate, 1910, pp. 300.
Warner Brown, The Judgment of Difference, with Special Reference to the
Doctrine of the Threshold in the Case of Lifted Weights, Berkeley,
University Press, 1910, pp. 71.
138 NEW BOOKS.
Frederick Goodrich Hanke, A Study in the Psychology of Ritualism,
Chicago, University Press, 1910, pp. 93.
George Plimpton Adams, The Mystical Element in Hegel's Early Theo-
logical Writing*, Berkeley, University Press, 1910, pp. 36.
Rodert Ardigo, An Inconsistent Preliminary Objection against Positivism,
translated from the Italian by Emilio Gavirati, Cambridge, Hefler,
1910, pp. 52.
Joseph McCabe, The Evolution of Mind, London, Black, 1910, pp. xvii,
287.
E. Joyau, Epicure, Paris, Alcan, 1910, pp. 222.
Sixieme Congres International de Psychologic tenu a Geneve du 2 au 7
Aout 1909, sous la presidence de Th. Flournoy, Rapports et
Comptes Rendus, Publies par les soins de Ed. Claparede, avec
21 figures, Geneve, Kiindig, 1910, pp. 869.
Max Yerworn, Die Entwicklung des menschlichen Geistes, Jena, Fischer,
1910, pp. 52.
Ernst Cassirer, Substanzbeyriff und Funktionsbegriff, Untersuchungen
uber die Grundfragen der Erkenntniskritik, Berlin, Bruno Cassirer,
1910, pp. xv ; 459.
J. Mourly Void, Tiber den Traum, Experimental-psychologische Unter-
suchungen, herausgeben von O. Klemm, Erstcr Band, Leipzig,
Barth, 1910, pp. xii, 435.
Paul Haberlin, Wissenschaft und Philosophic, ihr Wesen und ihr Ver-
hdltnis, Erster Band, Wissenschaft, Basel, Kober C. F. Spitlers
Nachfolger, 1910, pp. v, 360.
Gustav Weng, Schopenhauer : Darwin, Pessimismus oder Optimismus,
Ein Beitrag zur Fortschrittsbewegung, Berlin, Hofmann & Co.,.
1911, pp. 189.
Karl Krienkle, J. H. Lamberts Philosophie der Mathematik, Halle,
Waisenhaus, 1909, pp. 101.
Julius Friederich, Die Bestrafung der Motive und die Motive der Bestrafung
Rechtsphilosof>hische und kriminalpsychologische Studien, Berlin
and Leipzig, Walther Rothschild, 1910, pp. 312.
Alfred Brunswig, Das Vergleichen und die Relationserkenntnis, Leipzig
and Berlin, Teubner, 1910, pp. viii, 186.
A. Meinong, fjber Annahmen, Zweite umgearbeitete Auflage, Leipzig,
Barth, 1910, xvi, 403:
Alexandro Bonacci, Veritd e Realta, Modena, Formiggini, 1911, pp. viii,
518.
Giorgio del V ecchio, Sull' Idea di una Scienza del Diritto Universale
Comparalo, Seconda Edizione con aggiunte, Torino, Fratelli Bocca,
1909, pp. 34.
Giorgio del Vecchio, II Fenomeno della Guerra et I' Idea della Pace,
Sassari, 1909, pp. 62.
VIII. PHILOSOPHICAL PEEIODICALS.
PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. Vol. xix., No. 3. H. S. Shelton. ' Spen-
cer's Formula of Evolution.' [Spencer's formula of evolution, and his
principle of the persistence of force, are purely physical, and their truth
or falsehood is wholly independent of metaphysics. Under the per-
sistence of force, Spencer comprises, with modifications, the two com-
prehensive generalisations of the conservation of energy and the
indestructibility of matter. His evolutionary formula must be accepted
as true : its inductive verification, contained in the whole of his philoso-
phy, is overwhelming ; the latter deductive proof is also, in the main, a
piece of sound reasoning. Its practical value is less than that of the
great physical generalisations, simply because it is a qualitative and not
a quantitative formula ; but even so it has proved of service in psy-
chology, sociology, and biology, where the conditions are so complex that
the other principles give us little help. It is not disproved or discredited
by any of Ward's criticisms.] J. Lindsay. ' The Philosophy of Schel-
ling.' [Exposition, with running commentary, of the main positions of
Schelling's system ; distinction of three periods : the Spinozistic, when
Schelling is occupied with the problem of God ; the period of philosophy
of nature ; the period of interest in transcendental idealism.] E. Q.
Spaulding. ' The Logical Structure of Self-refuting Systems. I. Phe-
nomenalism.' [Continuation of paper on the postulates of a self-critical
epistemology, in vol. xviii. Criticism of the internal view of relations.
Generic phenomenalism insists that modification is necessarily involved
in the knowing process, and that, by virtue of a certain characteristic of
knowing, we can never know what reality would be like as not-known or
as thing-in-itself. It is self-refuting, since it presupposes the internal
view of relations and the method of enumeration as applied to the infinite
regress. With the original phenomenalism (Kant) fall also subjective
idealism (Berkeley), transcendental idealism and ontological absolutism
(Fichte, Hegel), and ontological voluntarism (Schopenhauer, Nietzsche) ;
three remains the self-confirming and self-critical system of evolutionary
realism.] W. E. Hocking. ' How Ideas Reach Reality.' [Idealism
rightly declares that the original and naive attitude of the mind to its
objects requires to be interpreted. But the distinction between what I
am and what I think is persistent for finite subjects ; sensation, for in-
stance, is a point of vital contact with an independent reality ; and there
are also ideas and feeling of this reality. Mind has its principles of ex-
periment, the ideas of cause, substance and the like, which are not subject
to correction and error as are its common predicates ; the existence of the
independent object is, in fact, the most general subject-matter capable
of ontological proof ; real objects are independent in whatever sense we
can imagine or think or inquire about or deny their independence. We
are thus led back to Spinoza's definition of substance, not because logic
controls nature, but because logic is nature, the only form in which
nature can now be approached by human consciousness.] Reviews of
Books. Notices of New Books. Summaries of Articles. Notes.
PSYCHOLOGICAL REVIEW. Vol. xvii., No. 3. K. Dunlap. 'The
Complication Experiment and Related Phenomena. ' [Experiments with
140 PHILOSOPHICAL PEKIODICALS.
Burrow's apparatus, to which was added a closely apposed screen of white
mosquito- netting, for the purpose of steadying fixation. . . . There are
three ways of judging the position of a moving pointer, at the moment of
occurrence of a discrete stimulus. The eye may follow the pointer ; in
this case the errors are positive. The eye may, at the critical moment,
be practically at rest ; under these conditions, the errors are small, and
indifferently distributed. The eye may not be obviously following the
pointer, arid yet the image of the pointer is not blurred (as with the rest-
ing eye), but tolerably distinct ; this, the method of natural fixation or of
rhythmic reaction, gives errors which depend on the retardation or anti-
cipation of the ' reaction ' (eye-movement ?) whereby the clear image is
secured ; it is the method of judgment in all the classical work, from
Wundt to Burrow. In the complication experiment, there is no illusion
of time displacement : the displacement is real, and the fallacious percep-
tion is of simultaneity; simultaneous stimuli normally arouse subjectively
simultaneous sensations (unless marked differences of duration are in-
volved), and successive stimuli to different modalities are apt to be per-
ceived as simultaneous even when there is a considerable interval between
them. The interpretation in terms of attention is wrong.] A. S. Ford.
'The Pendular Whip-lash Illusion.' [Renewed study of Dodge's well-
known illusion shows that the result depends, according to conditions,
upon one of all of three factors : the fading of after-image streaks at their
older ends ; the fact that the limen of movement, as perceived by means
of displacement of the retinal image, is lower than the limen as perceived
by movements of the eyes ; and the law of prior entry to consciousness
of the stimulus which receives attention.] J. E. Downey. ' Judgments
on the Sex of Handwriting.' [Repetition of Binet's test. Judgments by
thirteen unpractised observers show that sex may be determined from
handwriting in perhaps eighty out of one hundred cases. The presence
or absence of sex signs, in the writing of a particular person, depends
upon the amount of writing done ; upon age, and, therefore, to a certain
extent, upon practice ; and upon professional requirements (conventional
hand of teachers, rapid hand of bookkeepers). The observers show great
individual difference, both in the rapidity with which they reached their
conclusions, and in the degree of confidence with which they recorded
their judgments. Pressure of social opinion (here leading to a constant
error) is apparent in the tendency to ascribe originality to man's, conven-
tionality to woman's handwriting.] M. L. Billings and J. F. Shepard.
' The Change of Heart Rate with Attention.' [Breathing, in visual atten-
tion, is decreased in amplitude, without regular change of rate ; in audi-
tory attention, is decreased in rate, without regular change of amplitude :
these changes are adaptive, as deep breathing would interfere with looking,
rapid breathing with hearing. In central attention (mental stimuli) there
is very little change of any sort. Heart rate tends to increase with effort
of attention ; it increases also with increase of rate or amplitude of breath-
ing, decreases with restricted breathing. This physiological dependency
explains the decrease of heart rate often observed, especially at first, in
sensory attention ; central attention regularly increases heart rate. Pulse
increases in amplitude with restricted breathing and decreased heart
rate, and conversely ; the change of heart rate seems to be the more
important influence ; its increase may decrease pulse, in spite of retarded
breathing. ]
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY. Vol. xxi., No. 3. The first
four articles of this number are the addresses delivered by invited
American guests at the Celebration of the Vicennial of Clark University,
September, 1909. H. S. Jennings. ' Diverse Ideals and Divergent
PHILOSOPHICAL PEEIODICALS. 141
Conclusions in the Study of Behaviour in Lower Organisms.' [Modern,
biology desires to see the processes of nature occurring, and to control
and modify them as they occur. This desire has led to two methods of
attacking the problems of behaviour in lower organisms : the syn-
thetic method, which takes as its unit of work, or object of in-
vestigation, some physico-chemical principle or agent, and then sub-
jects the organism to the operation of this agent ; and the analytical,
which takes as its unit of work the total organism first watching the
organism in its natural environment, with the aim of discovering all
that it does ; and then varying the environment, to see what differ-
ence this change makes in the behaviour. Workers by the second (and
preferable) method are often charged with vitalism, anthropomorphism
and finalism. But (1) recognition that arrangement of material, rather
than material itself, is the essential point in determining behaviour
does not necessarily make one a vitalist ; it merely expresses the
conviction that the problem is more complex than the orthodox physico-
chemists have supposed. (2) There are, in fact, many fundamental re-
semblances, along with many differences, between the behaviour of even
the lowest organisms and of man. To recognise these resemblances is to
set a problem to physico-chemistry, not to deny the possibility of physico-
chemical explanation. (3) We find again, in fact, certain marked re-
lations between a present process and something that comes into being
later teleological relations, regulatory features of behaviour. To ignore
these things is foolish ; they form precisely the most difficult and the
most complex problem for causal explanation ; fortunately, we have the
hope of a key to them in the observable formation of habits.] F. Boas.
1 Psychological Problems in Anthropology.' [Anthropology is interested
in three great psychological problems : that of hereditary racial differ-
ences in mental equipment, that of the mental characteristics of social
groups irrespective of racial descent, and that of the psychological laws
which govern man as an individual member of society. Taking up the
third problem, the writer insists that we cannot argue from outward
similarities of ethnic phenomena to community of psychological traits, but
we must search for similarities of the psychological processes themselves,
so far as these can be observed or inferred. This thesis is illustrated (1)
by reference to primitive man's classification of concepts : fundamental
linguistic ideas, religious notions, the categories of object and attribute,
the setting off of incest-groups. We must know the basal categories
under which phenomena are classified by man in various stages of cul-
ture ; we shall probably find that their origin is not rational, but un-
conscious. (2) The typical associations of ideas must be studied, as they
appear, e.g., in the nature myth, in decorative symbolism, in totemism.
(3) There is a significant resistance to the change of automatic actions
(table manners, modesty and immodesty, the taboo) ; the customary act
is the ethical act. Tn all these cases conscious motive is often absent ;
man finds himself thinking and acting thus and so, and thereafter invents
secondary explanations of his thought and conduct. The promising line
of research is the tracing of diverse objective phenomena to similar
psychical processes.] A. Meyer. 'The Dynamic Interpretation of
Dementia Prsecox. ' [The writer begins by outlining a number of cases,
which are to form the basis of his discussion. He then criticises, as
empirical, formal and dogmatic, Kraepelin's view of dementia praecox as a
disorder of autointoxication, involving a special (assumed) brain disorder.
Instead of starting from general paralysis as the paradigm of psychiatry,
we must start from the paradigm of the complete action, as a function
which is progressively disorganised by subterfuges and substitutions, at
first harmless, later harmful and uncontrollable ; we must note defects of
balance, special tendencies and habitual ways of bungling ; we must
142 PHILOSOPHICAL PERIODICALS.
define the responsible factors, so far as possible, in terms of the un-
timely evocation of instincts and cravings, and ensuing habit-conflicts,
with their effects on the sum-total of mental metabolism, on actual con-
duct, on the capacity of self-regulation in emergencies ; we must be on
the watch for the Freudian complexes. This dynamic view leads the
physician to the demonstrable facts of the case ; affords such prognosis
as the nature of the disorder in general permits ; suggests the reasonable
course of treatment ; heads off misleading anatomical analogies ; and
brings to the common denominator of experience the abstract teachings
of psychology and philosophy.] E. B. Titchener. 'The Past Decade
in Experimental Psychology. ' [After paying a brief tribute to Ebbing-
haus, and calling attention to the tendency of recent psychology towards
application, the paper refers to the revival of Fechnerian psychophysics,
the development of experimental method in the domain of feeling, the
progress towards a psychology of attention, the treatment of perception
and idea by the Austrian school, and the new experimental departures in
the fields of memory, action and thought ; it concludes with a defence of
the analytical procedure in psychology.] C. W. Perky. 'An Experi-
mental Study of Imagination.' [(1) The image of imagination is closely
akin to perception. A distinctly supraliminal visual perception may,
under suitable conditions, be mistaken for and incorporated into an
image of imagination, without any suspicion on the observer's part that
an external stimulus is present. (2) Memory involves eye-movement
and general kinsesthesis ; its images are scrappy and filmy, and give no
after-images ; its mood is that of familiarity, pleasant ; it implies imi-
tative movements and the correlated organic sensations. Imagination
involves steady fixation and general tension ; its images are substantial,
complete, and at times give after-images : its mood is that of strange-
ness, unpleasant ; it implies organic and kinsesthetic empathy. Memory
images rise more slowly, are more changeable in course, and last less
long than images of imagination ; memory implies roving attention and
a mass of associative material, imagination concentrated and quasi-
hypnotic attention with inhibition of associations.] W. H. Winch.
' Colour Names of English School Children. ' [The order in which the
names are acquired, when the child has equal opportunities of learning
them and of connecting them with the appropriate colours, is Bk-W ;
R ; B ; G ; Y ; V ; O. This agrees with the German order (Meumann),
but not with the Italian (Garbini). Possibly colour-sensation is at first
unitary, and differentiates in the order given.] E. L. Thorndike.
' Practice in the Case of Addition.' [Some 2500 additions by educated
adults increase the general efficiency in adding by 33 per cent. ; here is
evidence of plasticity, and also of the predominant effect of specific
training upon an intellectual function. Practice has a somewhat level-
ling effect.] E. L. Thorndike. ' The Relation between Memory for
Words and Memory for Numbers, and the Relation between Memory
over Short and Memory over Long Intervals.' [Under the special con-
ditions, change from words to numbers reduced the correlation from 1 to
| ; the relation between retention for 1-2 min. and retention for 1-2
days (correlation about '9) is one of the closest yet measured in human
nature.] L. R. Qeissler. ' Professor Wirth on the Experimental Ana-
lysis of Consciousness.' [Abstract and review of Die experimentelle
Analyse der Bewusstseinsphdnomene.] Psychological Literature. Book
Notes. Correction.
JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS, vii.,
16. B. C. Ewer. ' The Tenth Annual Meeting of the Western Philosoph-
ical Association.' I.King. ' The Problem and Content of Educational
Psychology.' [Its fundamental axiom is found to be "that an educa-
PHILOSOPHICAL PERIODICALS. 143
tive process essentially is one involving growth/' and it begins by studying
activity or impulse ; after that the social atmosphere and problem -solving
are considered.] H. Walker. 'Record of an Experience while under
the Influence of Ether. ' B. Bosanquet. ' Cause and Ground.' [Reply
to Shelton in vii., 10. 'The same cause the same effect' is strictly im-
possible^ because there are no repeatable events ; and even tautologies
may be very valuable. Cause and effect are arbitrary distinctions.]
vii., 17. E. B. McGilvary. ' Huxley's Epiphenomenalism, a Criticism
and an Appreciation.' [Argues that " if epiphenomenalism is interpreted
as the physical irrelevance of psychical phenomena " it may be reconciled
with " a causal order which is acknowledged by every sane man ".]
H. L. Hollingworth. ' The Central Tendency of Judgment.' [Experi-
ments showing that the ' indifference-point ' is relative and that " the
error to which it leads is distinctly an error of judgment, and quite inde-
pendent of sensory or physiological conditions ".] vii., 18. J. Dewey.
' Some Implications of Anti-Intellectualism.' [Distinguishes two types,
one anti-rationalistic and sensationalistic, and the other voluntaristic,
and identifies himself with the latter, insisting that it is " an attempt
which, while accepting the complete right and autonomy of knowing and
of logic in its own field, tries to see what this field of knowledge and re-
flective intelligence is and means as a specific type of behaviour ".] H. S.
Shelton. ' On Secular Cooling as an Illustration of the Methods of
Applied Mathematics.' [Criticises the premisses of Kelvin's calculation
of the age of the earth in order " to show, not only that this speculation
has been proved invalid by recent discoveries, but that, if the necessary
limitation of mathematical methods had been clearly understood, it would
never have been put forward ".] H. C. Brown. ' If the Blind Lead the
Blind.' [Brilliantly criticises some dicta of Perry's in his ' realistic pro-
gram ' in vii. , 14, as to the value of mathematical method for philosophy,
and argues that ' ' the unclearness of mathematical logic and the lack of
agreement in its usages make all efforts to transfer its concepts to philo-
sophy impracticable ". The illustrations are chiefly taken from Bertrand
Russell.] vii., 19. J. Dewey. ' William James.' [Thinks that he was
"the greatest psychologist of his time in any country perhaps of any
time," and emphasises his ' sense of reality ' and literary power. His
thought was e unsystematic ' only in the sense that where " things
were not simple or consistent, his philosophy did not consist in forcing
system upon them ". Alludes finally to James's " faith in the human
significance of philosophy ".] J. E. Boodin. ' Truth and Its Object.'
[To say that the object selected or referred to in the truth attitude is
always reality is a clumsy way of putting it, for the judging process does
not aim at the universe generally (like the man who aimed at the bear)
but is fundamentally selective, singling out the object by a conscious pur-
pose. Absolute fact, as our final interpretation of reality, is a conceptual
limit. Similarly absolute flux and absolute identity are logical limits.
Truth, just because it tries to fix a world of process, must to a certain
extent be hypothetical.] H. H. Bawden. ' Art and Nature.' [Art
humanises nature.] W. Brown. 'Note on a Quantitative Analysis
of Mathematical Intelligence.' [Experiments with boys, showing that
" geometry and algebra are not at all closely related ".] vii., 20. A. H.
Lloyd. 'The Passing of the Supernatural.' [Reflexions suggested by a
magazine article on ' Christianity in the Crucible,' and a remark of " one
of America's great college presidents".] J. Dewey. 'The Short-Cut
to Realism Examined. ' [Agrees with realism in so far as it means anti-
idealism, but objects to the ' program ' in vii. , 15, as an attempt to derive
conclusions regarding existence from analysis of a very ambiguous con-
cept. Moreover, the distinction between knowing, i.e. active thinking
and investigating, and achieved knowledge is ignored, and with it the
144 PHILOSOPHICAL PEEIODICALS.
problems of doubt, hypothesis and error. So is the problem of th&
significance of knowing as a natural event in relation to other natural
events. Altogether a weighty and incisive criticism.] vii., 21. E. L.
Hinman. ' The Aims of an Introductory Course in Philosophy. ' [Thinks-
there has been too much Kant and not enough science.] J. W. Hudson.
1 An Introduction to Philosophy through the Philosophy of History.'
[" The reason why it is so notably hard to induce students to do independ-
ent thinking is that the problems with which we confront them do not
seem to them worth while."] vii., 22. H. M. Kallen. 'The Lyric
Philosopher.' [A brilliantly written defence of philosophy as poetry,
but thinks philosophers should become more scientific.] D. H. Parker.
' Knowledge and Volition.' [A criticism of Rickert, Royce and Miinster-
berg from an intellectualistic standpoint.] H. H. Bawden. ' Art and
Science.' [The artist has "a certain justification in his feeling that
science is arbitrary and abstract and unreal, and that his own pursuit
is a more genuine envisagement of the real ".]
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS. Vol. xx., No. 4, July, 1910.
F. Adler. ' The Moral Ideal.' [" Instead of a perfect individual, the
moral ideal is to be described as a perfect society." A brief but very
suggestive exposition of the what, the why, and the how. of this prin-
ciple.] B. Bosanquet. ' Charity Organisation and the Majority Re-
port.' [Contends, against the recent article by Prof. T. Jones, that
there is no inconsistency between the principles and work of the Charity
Organisation movement and the recommendations of the Majority
Report ; and that the preventive aims of the Minority's proposals can
be more effectively realised by those of the Majority. When the State
takes over the responsibilities of individuals, the primary preventive
force is enfeebled or destroyed.] J. W. Hudson. ' The Classification
of Ethical Theories.' [Comments on the lack of unanimity in such
classifications ; and indicates the general conditions, and the outlines, of
a valid classification. The principle of classification must be generated
by the fundamental problem of ethics. This problem is as to the nature
of the norm or criterion. The criterion of moral judgments is an end in
the form of a kind of self to be realised. Hence the basis of classification
is the conception of the nature of the ideal self ; and the fundamentally
different theories are such as emphasise respectively its several aspects
the ideational, the affective, and the volitional.] H. S, Shelton.
'Spencer as an Ethical Teacher.' [A clear and appreciative statement
of his principal doctrines.] F. C. Sharp and M. C. Otto. 'Retribution
and Deterrence in the Moral Judgments of Common Sense.' [A con-
tinuation of the account of a questionary put to students at Wisconsin.
These results go to show that there is no one consistently maintained
standard as the basis of popular judgments in the matter of punishment.
The acceptance of retribution as a proper end of punishment does not
interfere with the acceptance of deterrence. The part played by the
reformative view is relatively insignificant.] C. H. Johnston. ' The
Moral Mission of the Public School.' [A discussion of some of the
problems of moral and religious education, taking as data the findings
given in the recent report of the international inquiry concerning Moral
Instruction and Training in Schools.] N. Wilde. ' Religion : a Luxury
or a Duty ? ' [Differentiates the main types of religion, and discusses in
the light of their distinctions the relation of religion to morality. The
danger lies in the one without the other. " To education in religion we
must add education in morals ; alongside the Church will be the societies
for ethical culture ; as a basis for the luxury of religion, we must lay the
necessity of morality."] Book Reviews. Vol. xxi., No. 1, October,
1910. B. Bosanquet. ' The Prediction of Human Conduct : A Study
PHILOSOPHICAL PEEIODICALS. 145
in Bergson. ' [Contends that prediction is possible, because although (as
Bergson urges) it involves actually being the identical individual whose
action is concerned, individuals can be and are, in various degrees, iden-
tical with others.] S. H. Mellone. ' The Idealism of Rudolph Eucken.'
[A brief summary of his general position. It is idealism with the em-
phasis on spiritual life and on progress. When Eucken appeals to
human experience for the grounds of his philosophical and religious
convictions, it is experience as concrete and as growing.'] J. A. Leigh=
ton. ' Personality and a Metaphysics of Value.' [A tentative classifi-
cation and relation of the most significant and important human valua-
tions. The ultimate principle for the unification of values, and the final
sustaining ground of values, is personality.] Helen Wodehouse. ' On
Thinking about Oneself. ' [Aims at distinguishing and describing various
states or qualities which the moralist calls thinking of oneself namely,
selfishness, self-satisfaction or self-confidence, self-display, and self-
approval or self-respect. Indicates the influence of religion upon moral
self -consciousness.] H. M. Kallen. 'Is Belief Essential in Religion ?'
[Suggests the main lines of an investigation as to whether religion is
identifiable with belief (the attitude of belief) or with the specific object
or occasion of the attitude. Concludes that belief is no more essential to
religion than to any other human institution. Religion is belief, but it
is distinguished not by belie", but by belief's object.] E. L. Talbot.
'Two Modern Social Philosophies.' [Premises that "the problems of
modern society cannot be adequately solved by inducing purely subjec-
tive attitudes in individuals, without relation to objective communal
forces conditioning personal happiness " ; and characterises, with re-
ference to their philosophical an 1 psychological antecedents, the two
present-day objective interpretations of social growth socialism and
anarchism ] Book Reviews.
ARCHIVES DE PSYCHOLOGIE. Tome ix., No. 3. A. Ferriere. 'Laloi
biogem tique et 1'education.' [The procedure of education is subject to two
fundamental laws. The one of these, which governs life at large, may be
expressed in what the author terms the formula of progress : all ascending
erolution implies differentiation and concentration of faculties and energies.
The other, which takes on a special form for every creature, in accordance
with its degree of development, and which determines the stages of its
growth, is the biogenetic law of Hseckel. The writer discusses the view
of Hertwig, Le Dantec, and Stanley Hall . he believes that the biogenetic
law, particularising the law of progress, helps us to distinguish the
normal from the abnormal, the physiological from the pathological, the
useful in education from the harmful.] O. Decroly and J. Degand. * Con-
trition a la psychologic de la lecture. [When we teach a child to read,
we set in action a number of distinct mental functions, and it is ques-
tionable whether the ordinary method, of engaging these functions
simultaneously, is, psychologically, the best procedure ; in particular,
whether the auditory analysis of the word and its representation by
writing should be carried on together. The writers justify their scruple
by au analysis of seven cases, five of which show the disjunction of
mental functions in abnormal, and two in normal children (three and
five years old). Reading may be independent of verbal motor ex-
pression, of writing, and of bhe understanding of language.] W. van
Stockum. ' Le siecle futur de la psychologic d'apres G. Heymans.'
[In his inaugural address MS rector of the University of Groningen (1909),
Heymans discusses the origin of psychology ; the need which gave it
birth and which it fulfils ; its present status as a body of scientific know-
ledge ; and the part which it is destined to play in the civilisation of the
10
146 PHILOSOPHICAL PERIODICALS.
future. He concludes that psychology, since it aids us to know ourselves
and others, will have a direct bearing upon eugenics, and will lead up to
a monistic metaphysics. The writer gives an abstract of the address,
and adds a twofold criticism : Heymans ignores the masses, and speaks
as if the whole world were the world of the educated classes ; and he
places too great a reliance upon the power of psychology to formulate
exact laws, and general uniformities.] E. Tassy. 'Theorie des emo-
tions ; notes preliminaires.' [The difficulty in the psychology of emotion
is the passage from the representative to the organic state. In order
that an emotion sensu stricto, a psychical emotion, may arise, the repre-
sentation and the bodily manifestations must be related by an elementary
mechanism which has connexions with both. The key to tho problem
lies in the ' mental ' emotion, such as the ' mental fear ' set up by pre-
sentation of the unknown ; this mental fear brings with it its organic
correlatf, ' organic fear ' ; at the same time, as a shock to ideation, it
can act upon the ( thought mass ' and excite the consciousness of per-
sonality, of oar own psychical activity ; the self is thus interested in
the work of thought, and the true or psychical emotion is complete.
The three great functions, the organic, the mental and the psychical, are
dissociable, and relatively autonomous each in its proper sphere ; the
mental mediates between the other two.] A. Maeder. * La Langue d'un
alien e ; analyse d'un cas de glossolalie.' [Range of ideas, vocabulary,
and syntax, in a case of dementia />rceco.i\ The speech has the usual
characters of affectivity and iufantalism ; it is, however, rot demonstra-
tive, as glossolalia ordinarily is, but has the cast of preoccupation with
self which is characteristic of the disorder.] A. Reymond. 'Caractere
role de 1'histoire et de la philosophic des sciences.' [Philosophy is
characterised by universality of problem and .subjectivity of its solution ;
science by restriction of problem, and by postulation of principles
whose objectivity may at any time be controlled. The philosophy oi
science has the task of bringing into clear light the methods and prin-
ciples peculiar to the various sciences, and of comparing them with a
view to classification. For this twofold task, the history of science is an
indispensable aid. Further, a knowledge of history is of direct value to
men of science, and a knowledge of the methods and principles of science
is of direct value to philosophers.] Bibliographic. Notes diverses.
REVUE DE PHILOSOPHIE. Septembre-Octobre, 1910. A double num-
ber, all devoted to studies of Darwinism. 1. A. Gemelli. 'Darwinism
and Vitalism.' 2. A. Briot. ' The Problem of the Origin of Life.' 3.
C. Torrend. ' Transform ism in the Lowest Grades of i he Vegetable
Kingdom.' 4. E. Wasman. 'The Psychical Life of Animals.' 5. H.
CoHn. 'Mutation.' 6. R. de Sinety. 'Mimetism and Darwinism.'
7. M. Kollmann. ' The Factors of Evolution, Selectl n and the In-
fluence of Environment.' 8. R. D. 'The Fundamental Law of Bio-
genesis.' [That Phylogenesis is the mechanical cause of Ontogenesis,
doubts thereon.] 9. J. Gerard. % ;S Date of the Controversy in England.'
10. J. Maritain. ' IN eo-vitalism in Germany and Darwinism.' [In
Nos. 1 and 10, the ablest articles of this able and important issue, Dar-
winism is shown to be essentially mechanical, and, as such, to be set
aside by the Aristotelian ' entelechy,' revived upon experiments of the
segmentation of the ovum by M. Driesch. No. 2 details the dispute
between Bastiau and J'asteur on Spontaneous Generation. No. 3, a
shrewd and sparkling article, deals among other things with the per-
manence ot type among the cosmopolitan Myxomycetye, and with the
fiction of a primitive plasm. No. 7 discusses the tran mission of ac-
quired characteristics.] Novembre, 1910. C. de Pesloiian. 'Re-
searches 011 the Nature of the Diamond.' [An interesting account of the
steps whereby Lavoisier arrived at the conclusion what combustion is,
PHILOSOPHICAL PERIODICALS. 147
and that the diamond is combustible.] R. van der Elst. 'Suggestion.'
["There is a twofold suggestion, one morbid, another normal; one
annihilating consciousness and will, the other leaving them intact and
calling them to aid ; one infallible, the other problematical."] S. BeU
mond. 'The Knowledge of God according to Duns Scotus.' [That
Scotus did not lead up either to Hume, for Agnosticism, or to Rosmini,
for Ontologism.] Th. L. 'Positivism and Pragmatism.' [The latter
evolved from the former.] Decembre, 1910. A. Gomez Izquierdo.
'The Philosophy of Balmez.' [What Balmez understands by 'common
sense,' and under what conditions he takes it to be the criterion of truth.]
R. Jeanniere. ' The Theory of Concepts in Messrs. Bergson and James.'
[How to reconcile concept with intuition ? How, on the idealist principle
that esse is percipi, can the same object be viewed by different observers
under different aspects?] Q. Larroque. 'Descartes and Sociology.'
[Traces the creed of Liberal politicians to the philosophy of Descartes.]
P. Le Quichaoua. ' Metaphysical Theories of Movement. ' [An attempt
to set up the Aristotelian theory of matter and form as the sole rational
account of movement.]
REVUE NEO-SCOLASTIQUE. Aout, 1910. P. Mandonnet. ' Roger Ba-
con and the Speculum Astronomise. ' [Reasons for assigning the work
to Bacon, not to Albertus Magnus. Bacon's predilection for astrology.]
C. Piat. ' The Life of Intelligence. ' [Mill's reduction of evidence to
long familiarity ; his ignoring of any essential exigencies of things ; his
admission of a "permanent possibility of sensation," fatal to his philos-
ophy.] F. Palhories. 'The Moral Problem and Sociology.' ["The
moral problem is above all a question of value, which must conse-
quently be solved, not by the pure and simple statement of the manners
and behaviour of man, buo by the higher consideration of what man must
be to have a moral value, a human dignity, to realise in himself that
which his quality of man essentially implies. From this point of view,
the idea of the order of beings must be placed at the very basis of
morality."] F. de Hovre. 'The Social Philosophy of Benjamin Kidd. '
REVUE DE METAPHYSIQUE ET DE MORALE. 17 e Annee, No. 5. L.
LeVy=BruhI. ' L'orientation de la pensee philosophique de David
Hume.' Henri Dufumier. ' Les theories logico-metaphysiques de
MM. B. Russell et G. E. Moore.' Rene" Berthelot. 'Sur le prag-
matisme de Nietzsche ' (suite et fin\ Etude Critique, Supplement, etc.
17 e Annee, No. 6. E. Durkheim. ' Sociologie religieuse et theorie
de la connaissance. ' Q. Dwelshauvers. 'La Philosophic de Jules
Lagneau.' K. B. = R, Aars. 'La nature de la pensee logique. ' Cor-
respondance inedite de Ch. Renouvier et de Ch. Secretan (suite).
18e Annee, No. 1. F. Enriques. ' La metaphysique de Hegel con-
sideree d'un point de vue scientifique. ' A. Lasson. ' Quelques re-
marques sur VEthique a Nicomaque.' Ch. Dunan. 'La morale
positive.' C. Bougie, ' Le Darwinisme en sociologie.' Questions
Pratiques: Guy=Grand. 'Le proces de la democratic.' Supplement.
18 Annee, No. 2. E. Boutroux. ' Hasard ou Liberto ? ' B. Brunhes.
' L'objectivite du principe de Carnot. ' F, Le Dantec. ' II y a fagots et
fagots.' H. Daudin. ' F. Rauh : sa psychologic de la Connaissance et
de 1' Action. ' fitudes Critiques, Varietes, Questions Pratiques, Supple-
ment. 18 e Annee, No. 3. B. Russell. ' La theorie des types logiques.'
Correspondance inedite de Ch. Renouvier et de Ch. Secretan (suite).
H. Daudin. ' F. Rauh : sa Psychologic de la Connaissance et de
1' Action.' Discussion:^ J. Lachelier. 'Note sur les deux derniers
arguments de Zenon d'Elee contre 1'exist.ence du mouvement.' Supple-
ment, etc. Numero Supple mentaire : Trois lettres d'Epicure, Version
franchise par O. Hamelin.
148 PHILOSOPHICAL PERIODICALS.
REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE DE LA FRANCE ET DE L'J&i RANGER. 35 e Annee,
No. 8. F. Mauge. 'La fonction de la philosophie dans la science
positive.' A. Joussain. ' Le cours de nos idees.' M. Millioud.
' La propagation de nos idees.' Analyses et Comptes Rendus, etc.
35 e Annee, No. 9. C. Hemon. ' Recherches experimental sur 1'illu-
sion des amputes et sur les lois de sa rectification.' Q. True. 'La
nature psychologique de 1'etat de grace.' Q. H. Luquet. * L'induction
en niathematiques. ' Notes et Discussions, Revues, Analyses, etc.
ARCHIV FUR SYSTEMATISCHE PHILOSOPHIE. Bd. xv., Heft 4. A.
Berkowitz. ' Identitat und Wirklichkeit.' H. Q, Moreau. 'Le" senti-
ment interieur " et son role dans la psychologic de Lamarck.' M. Horten.
'Die sogenannte Ideenlehre des Muammar, 850.' P. Schwartzkopff.
* Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis.' M. Bar=Kupperberg. 'Die Welt
der Natur- und Geisteswissenschaften, die Metaphysik und die Philo-
sophic.' H. Gomperz. ' Uber Personlichkeitsbewertung.' Dr. Denck=
mann. ' Der Wille. ' Der vii. sociologisohe Kongress in Bern von 20
bis 24 Juli, 1910. Die neuesten Erscheinungen auf dem Gebiete der
systematischen Philosophie, etc. Bd. xvi., Heft 1. Oscar Prochnow.
1 Die Ideenlehre in modernem Gewande.' Qeorg Wendel, 'Ethische
Betrachtungen. ' Emil Raff. ' Zur Wissenschaft des Spinozismus. '
Viktor Stern, ' Die Philosophie meines Vaters.' Lorenzo Michel =
angelo Billia. 'Les quatre regies inexactes du syllogisme.' Lorenz
Pohorilles. ' Die Psychogenesis der Philosophie und der Erkenntniswert
der Mystik.' Qertrud KiihUCIaassen. 'Das Problem der Form in
der Ethik.' Heinrich Romundt. ' Kant und Wundt iiber Metaphysik.'
Otto Neurath. ' Definitionsgleichheit und symbolische Gleichheit.'
Preisaufgabe der Kant-Gesellschaft. Neueste Erscheinungen, etc. Bd.
xvi., Heft 2. Olga Hahn. ' Uber die Koeffizienten einer logischen
Gleichung und ihre Beziehungen zur Lehre von den Schllis^en.' O.
Hilferding. ' Versuch zu einer physiologischen Grundlage der Freiheit.'
Alexander Wedenskij. ' Ein neuer und leichter Beweis fur den philo-
sophischen Kritizismus. ' H. Q, Moreau. ' Le Posit ivisme de Lamarck.'
Martin Meyer. ' Kategorischer Imperativ und Religion. ' Theodor
Kehr. ' Ein logischer Versuch iiber das Kategorienproblem.' Hugo
Bergmann. ' Zur Frage des Nachweises synthetischer Urteile a priori
in der Mathematik.' Jahresbericht : Die Philosophie in Finnland.
Neueste Erscheinungen, etc. Bd. xvi., Heft 3. James Lindsay.
4 The Psychology of Belief.' Hans Prager. ' Henri Bergsons meta-
physische Grundanschauung.' F. L. Denckmann. 'DieSeele.' Kurt
Peschke. 'Politik als Wissenschaft und Philosophie.' Alfred Har=
tung. * Die Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung in Hartmanns Philosophic
des Unbewussten.' Viktor Schlegel. ' Die Entwicklung des Menschen.
Umriss einereinheitlichen Weltanschauung. ' Ernst Kieseritzky. ( Die
Emancipierung von der Folgestrenge.' Aloys Miiller. * Uber den Be-
griffder Wahrheit der Erkenntnis.' Theodor Kehr. 'Die gesehene
oder ungesehene Welt oder der Gegenstand und sein Bild.' Wolrad
Eigenbrodt. ' Die Philosophie in Finnland. ' Jahresbericht : Anna
Tumarkin. ' Bericht iiber die deutsche asthetische Literatur aus den
Jahren 1905-1909. Neueste Erscheinungen, etc.
ZEITSCHRIFT F. PSYCHOLOGIE. Bd. Ivi., Heft 1 und 2. H. Ohms.
* Untersuchung unterwertiger Assoziationen mittels des Worterken-
nungsvorgangs.' [Pairs of words, a-b, c-d, etc., are associated by repeti-
tion, but not so strongly that on presentation of the first term the
second is reproduced ; the associations are subliminal. Nevertheless, if
a is shown, 6 is in some measure prepared for. The problem is to de-
termine the degree of influence exerted by a ; it is solved by the pre-
PHILOSOPHICAL PEEIODICALS. 149
sentation of 6, under conditions which render its apprehension difficult ;
the cognition time of b is taken, and compared with that of a d whose
correlated c has not been previously exposed. Visually, the necessary
conditions are realised by means of the tachistoscope ; auditorily, by
means of an old-fashioned telephone. (1) The words prepared for
(Russian words connected with their German equivalents) are invariably
better apprehended than words not prepared for. (2) The cognition
times show no appreciable differences of a general kind, though their
relations (under the two sets of experimental conditions) vary definitely
with the mental type of the observer. (3) Investigation of the influence
of the age of the subliminal association upon the process of preparation
shows that associative preparation is of small account if a preservative
preparation is already in the field.] S. Witasek. 'In Sachen der
Lokalisationsdifferenz ; zur Klarung und Abwehr.' [Reply to Hilde-
brand's criticism in Bd. liv. ; the author reiterates his conviction of the
reality of the difference of monocular localisation.] W. Sternberg.
'Geschmack und Sprache.' [All languages, living and dead, appeal to
the sense of taste to designate aesthetic enjoyment. The reason is that
the taste qualities are connected, most intimately, with the feelings of
pleasantness- unpleasantness ; taste is the bridge that leads from pure
sensation to ( common feeling ' ; linguistic usage is thus physiologically
justified. As instances in which the guidance of language may be of
service, the writer cites the distinction of nauseous (said of substances in
the mouth) and nauseating (said of substances that may act at a distance,
as by sight, or even by way of verbal description), and the range of the
desiderative verbs in Greek and Latin.] Literaturbericht. Bd. Ivi.,
Heft 3. W. Peters. ' Uber Aehnlichkeitsassoziation.' [In the typi-
cal association by similarity, the perception abed reproduces the idea
abmn ; the factor ab may be absolutely identical in both formations, or
may be only relatively the same (spatial relations in photograph and
original picture, tonal relations in melody played in different keys). It
thus differs in two ways from the typical association by contiguity, or
empirical association : for in this the reproduced idea would be mn, not
abmn, and the reproductive tendency would issue from abed, not from
ab alone. Experiment shows that association by similarity is of frequent
occurrence when a nonsense-syllable is replied to by another nonsense-
syllable or an ordinary word ; that the number of syllables in the associ-
ated word depends upon that of the stimulus word ; that the reactor
tends to error by altering that sound in a syllable whose change results
in the closest resemblance to the original syllable ; that the efficiency of
reproduction depends upon degree of similarity ; that the ratio of
similiarity-associations to memory varies with individuals, and also with
the number of readings of the presented material. These results may
all be explained on the hypothesis of a partial preservation of the
reproducing perception. Incidentally, the author points out that an
association by similarity need not involve consciousness of similarity ;
and that there is no evidence of an effective similarity that can be
defined as ' qualitative propinquity,' such as has been assumed, e.g., in
the case of colours.] Literaturbericht. K. Vossler. 'Erklarung.' A.
Marty. ' Entgegnung. ' [Apropos of a review in Bd. lii.] 'Der VII.
Internationale Kongress fur Kriminalanthropologie.'
ZEITSCHRIFT FUR PHILOSOPHIE UND PHILOSOPHISCHE KRITIK. Bd.
cxxxix., Heft 2. 1910. Bernhard Detmar. ' Carneades und Hume.'
Dr. Hans Eibl. ' Platons Psychologie (Schluss).' Karl Bornhausen.
' Das religiose Apriori bei Ernst Troeltsch und Rudolf Otto.' Dr.
Rudolf Kinkel. ' II. Literaturbericht uber Erscheinungen aus dem
Gebiete der Ethik und Religions-philosophie.' Notizen, etc.
IX. NOTES.
MIND ASSOCIATION.
The following is the full list of the officers and members
of the Association :
OFFICEKS.
President -THE PRESIDENT OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OX-
FORD.
Vice- Presidents PROFS. B. BOSANQUET, J. H. MUIRHEAD, A. S.
PRINGLE-PATTISON, C. READ, W. R. SORLEY, J. SULLY, and J.
WARD, DR. S. H. HODGSON and CANON RASHDALL.
Editor PROF. G. F. STOUT.
Treasurer DR. F. C. S. SCHILLER.
Secretary MR. H. STURT.
Guarantors MESSRS. A. J. BALFOUR and R. B. HALDANE, MRS. HENRY
SIDGWICK and DR. H. WILDE.
MEMBEES.
ALEXANDER (Prof. S.), The University, Manchester.
BAILLIE (Prof. J. B.), The University, Aberdeen.
BAIN (MRS.), Ferryhill Lodge, Aberdeen. Hon. Member.
BALFOUR (Rfc. Hon. A. J.), Whittingehame, Prestonkirk, N.B.
BALL (S.), St. John's House, St. Giles, Oxford.
BARKER (H.), Cairnmuir Road, Corstorphine, Midlothian.
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BENECKE (E. C.), 182 Denmark Hill, S.E.
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BENN (A. W.), II Ciliegio, San Gervasio, Florence, Italy.
BERKELEY (Capt. H.), 304 Woodstock Road, Oxford.
BLUNT (H. W.), 183 Woodstock Road, Oxford.
BONAR (J.), The Mint, Ottawa, Canada.
BOSANQUET (Prof. B.), Heath Cottage, Oxshott, Surrey.
BOWMAN (A. A.), 26 Sutherland Street, Billhead, Glasgow.
BRADLEY (F. H.), Merton College, Oxford.
BREN (Rev. R.), 4.4 George Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham.
BRETT (Prof. G. S.), Trinity College, Toronto, Canada.
NOTES. 151
BROUGH (Prof. J.), University College, Aberystwyth.
BRYANT (Mrs. S.), 12 Gayton Crescent, N.W.
BURNBT (Prof. J.), The University, St. Andrews, N.B.
BUSSELL (Rev. Dr. F. W.), Brasenose College, Oxford.
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CARLILE (W.), Hailie, Lipscomb, Surrey.
CARPENTER (Rev. Dr. J. E.), 11 Marston Ferry Road, Oxford.
CARR (H. W.), Bury, Pulborough, Sussex.
CASE (T.), Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
CODDINGTON (F. J. O.), Training College, Sheffield.
COIT (Dr. S.), 30 Hyde Park Gate, S.W.
COOKE (H. P.), Armstrong College, Newcastle-on-Tyne.
DAVIDSON (Prof. W. L.), 8 Queen's Gardens, Aberdeen.
DESSOULAVY (Rev. Dr. C.), Penuybridge, Mayfield, Sussex.
DIXON (Capt. E. T.) Racketts, Hythe, Hants.
DOUGLAS (C. M.), Auchlochan, Lesraahagow, Lanarkshire.
ELIOT (Sir C.N. E.), K.C.M.G., Endcliffe Holt, Endcliffe Crescent, Shef-
field.
FAIBBROTHER (W. H.), Trusley Cottage, Totland Bay, I.W.
FARQUHARSON (A. S. L ), University College, Oxford.
FORSYTH (Dr. T. M.), 4 Middleshade, St. Andrews, N.B.
FOSTON (Dr. H. M.), Hatherne, near Loughborough.
FRASER (Prof. A. C.), Gorton House, Lasswade, Midlothian.
FREMANTLE (H. E. S.), Bedwell Cottage, Rosebank, Capetown.
GALLAGHER (Rev. J.), Crowton Vicarage. Northwich.
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GIBSON (Prof. J.), Bron Hwfa, Bangor.
GIBSON (W. R. B.), Briardale, Queen's Drive, Mossley Hill, Liverpool.
GOLDSBOROUGH (Dr. G. F.), Church Side, Herne Hill, S.E.
GRANGER (Prof. F.), University College, Nottingham.
HALDANE (Rt.Hon. R. B.), M.P., 10 Old Square, Lincoln's Inn, W.C.
HANDYSIDE (J.), 5 Hatton Place, Edinburgh.
HARDIE (R. P.), 13 Palmerston Road, Edinburgh.
HARRIS (Rev. W.), Badgworth, Axbridge, Somerset.
HEATH (A. G.), New College, Oxford.
HICKS (Prof. G. D.), 9 Cranmer Road, Cambridge.
HODGSON (Dr. S. H.), 45 Conduit Street, W.
HOERNLE (Prof. R. F. A.), South African College, Capetown.
INGHAM (C. B.), Moira House, Eastbourne.
JAMES (Rev. J. G.), The Manse, Christ Church, Enfield.
JENKINSON (A. J.), Brasenose College, Oxford.
JEVONS (Dr. F. B.), Bishop Hatfield's Hall, Durham.
JOACHIM (H. H.), Merton College, Oxford.
JOHNSON (F. H.), c/o Brown & Shipley, 123 Pall Mall, S.W.
JONES (Miss E. E. C.), Girton College, Cambridge.
JONES (Prof. H.), 1 The College, Glasgow.
JOSEPH (H. W. B.), New College, Oxford.
KEATINGE (M. W.j, 40 St. Margaret's Road, Oxford.
KEYNES (Dr. J. N.), 6 Harvey Road, Cambridge.
152 NOTES.
KNOX (Capt. H. V.), 3 Crick Eoad, Oxford.
LATTA (Prof. R.), The University, Glasgow.
LEIGH (E. C.), Caixa 147, Pernambuco, Brazil.
LINDSAY (A. D.), Balliol College, Oxford.
LOVEDAY (T.), 2 Moorgate Avenue, Sheffield.
McDouGALL (W.), Woodsend, Foxcombe Hill, Oxford.
MclNTYRE (J. L.), Abbotsville, Cults, Aberdeenshire.
MACKENZIE (Prof. J. S.), Pendene, Llanishen, Cardiff.
MACKENZIE (W. L.), 1 Stirling Road, Trinity, Edinburgh.
MACKINTOSH (Prof. H. R.), 81 Colinton Road, Edinburgh.
MACMILLAN (Rev. R. A. C.), South Manse, Prestwick, Ayrshire, N.B.
MCTAGGABT (Dr. J. M. E.), Trinity College, Cambridge.
MARETT (R. R.), Westbury Lodge, Norham Road, Oxford.
MARSHALL (H. Rutgers), Century Assn., 7 West 43rd Street, New York.
MOBERLY (W. H.), Lincoln College, Oxford.
MOORE (G. E.), Devonshire House, Sheen Road, Richmond, Surrey.
MORRISON (D.), 23 South Street, St. Andrews, N.B.
MORRISON (Rev. Dr. W. D.), 38 Devonshire Place, W.
MUIRHEAD (Prof. J. H.), 1 York Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham.
MURRAY (J.), Christ Church, Oxford.
MYERS (Dr. C. S.), Great Shelf ord, Cambridge.
OSGOOD (G. L.), 1 Rue Bellot, Geneva, Switzerland.
PETRIE (R.), Queen's College, Oxford.
POLLOCK (Sir F.), Bart., 21 Hyde Park Place, London, W.
PRICHARD (H. A.), 43 Broad Street, Oxford.
PRINGLE-PATTISON (Prof. A. S.), The Haining, Selkirk, N.B.
RASHDALL (Rev. Canon H.), 18 Long Wall, Oxford.
READ (Prof. C.), Ill Lansdowne Road, W.
RIVERS (W. H. R.), St. John's College, Cambridge.
ROBERTSON (Rev. Dr. J. M.), St. Ninian's, Stirling, N.B.
ROGERS (R. A. P.), Trinity College, Dublin.
Ross (Dr. G. R. T.), Government College, Rangoon, India.
Ross (W. D.), Oriel College, Oxford.
RUSSELL (Hon. B.), Bagley Wood, near Oxford.
SANDAY (Rev. Canon), Christ Church, Oxford.
SCHILLER (Dr. F. C. S.), Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
SCHWANN (Lady), 4 Prince's Gardens, W.
SCOTT (J. W.), Hallhill, Crossford, Carluke, N.B.
SETH (Prof. J.), 3 Queen's Crescent, Edinburgh.
SHAND (A. F.), 1 Edwardes Place, W.
SHARGHA (Prof. I. K.), The College, Bareilly, N.W.P., India.
SHARPE (J. W.), Woodroffe, Portarlington Road, Bournemouth.
SHEARMAN (Dr. A. T.), University College, London, W.C.
SHELTON (H. S.), Silvermead, Ashford, Middlesex.
SIDGWICK (A.), Vellansagia, St. Buryan, R.S.O., Cornwall.
SIDGWICK (Mrs. H.), Newnham College, Cambridge. Hon Member.
SMITH (Prof. J. A.), Magdalen College, Oxford.
SMITH (Prof. Norman), Princeton University, N.J., U.S.A.
SMITH (T. 0.), Oriel College, Oxford.
NOTES. 153
SORLEY (Prof. W. R.), St. Giles, Chesterton Lane, Cambridge.
STEWART (Dr. H. L.), Ill University Street, Belfast.
STEWART (Prof. J. A.), 14 Bradmore Road, Oxford.
STOCKS (J. L.), St. John's College, Oxford.
STOKES (Prof. G. J.), Queen's College, Cork.
STOUT (Prof. G. F.), Craigard, St. Andrews, N.B. Hon. Member.
STRONG (Prof. C. A.), Columbia University, New York.
STURT (H.), 5 Park Terrace, Oxford.
SUBRAHMANYAM (Prof. A.), Presidency College, Madras.
SULLY (Prof. J.), 41 Ennerdale Koad, Kew, S.W.
SUTTON (E. W.), Worcester College, Oxford.
TEMPLE (Rev. W.), The Hall, Repton, Burton-on- Trent.
TERRELL (A. a B.), 15 Cranley Gardens, S.W.
THORBURN (W.), 2 Crick Road, Oxford.
TITCHENER (Prof. E. B.), Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., U.S A. Hon.
Member.
TUCKER (Miss A. W.), Newnham College, Cambridge.
UNDERBILL (G. E.), Magdalen College, Oxford.
WARD (Prof. J.), 6 Selwyn Gardens, Cambridge.
WARREN (Mrs. Fiske), 8 Mount Vernon Place, Boston, U.S.A.
WATERLOW (S. P.), Hillyfields, Rye, Sussex.
WATT (W. A.), 183 St. Vincent Street, Glasgow.
WEBB (C. C. J.), Magdalen College, Oxford.
WELBY (Lady), Duneaves, Harrow.
WHITTAKER (T.), 11 Mornington Crescent, N.W.
WILLIAMS (Rev. H. H.), Hertford College, Oxford.
WILSON (Prof. J. Cook), 12 Fyfield Road, Oxford.
WOLF (Dr. A.), Stafford House, Gayton Road, Harrow.
WOODS (Miss A.), Maria Grey College, Salusbury Road, Brondesbury,
N.W.
Those who wish to join the Association should communicate
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Corpus Christi College, Oxford, to whom the yearly subscrip-
tion of one guinea should be paid.
Members resident in U.S.A. may, if they choose, pay their
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SCHILLER) at the Fifth Avenue Bank, corner of 44th Street,
New York, U.S.A.
154 NOTES.
NOTE ON EPICUREANISM AND NATURAL LAW.
Dr. John Masson, in one of the Appendices to the complementary
volume of his interesting work entitled Lucretiu* : Epicurean and Poet
(London, 1909) takes occasion to dispute the late Prof. Sellar's assertion
(adopted by me) that in the philosophy ot* Lucretius " the foedera natural
are opposed to the foedera fati". And he goes onto maintain against
me that Epicurus is justly credited with proclaiming the reign of law (op.
cit., pp. 168-169). It is unfortunate that Dr. Masson's references are made
not to the chapter on Epicurus and Lucretius in volume ii. of my Greek
Philosophers, but to an article in the Westminster Review for April, 1882,
of which that chapter is a revised reprint. Thus it is neither easy for
me to verify his quotations nor to tell how far I am responsible for the
exact wording in which they are given. However, my opinion of the
scientific value of Epicureanism has remained substa Uially unaltered
since it was first published ; and I am prepared to abide by the particular
expression given to it in my Greek Philosophers.
First as to the foedera natural. These, according to Dr. Masson, "are
never really opposed by Lucretius to the foedera fati : '. I admit that
they are not opposed in terms ; but they are practically opposed to an
extent that fully justifies Prof. Sellar's use of the word. For the fcedera
natural are never once mentioned as having been broken, whereas the
foedera jati, on the sole occasio \ when the phrase occurs in Lucretius, are
mentioned only as being broken. The passage runs as follows :
"Denique si semper motus connectitur omnis
et vetere exoritur semper novus ordine certo
nee declinando faciunt primordia motus
principium quoddam quod fati fcedera rumpat
ex infinite ne causam causa sequatur."
(De Rerum Natura, ii., 251-255).
Translated by Munro: "If all motion is ever linked together and
a new motion ever springs from another in a fixed order, and
first beginnings do not by swerving make some commencement of
motion to break through the decrees of fate that cause follow not
cause from everlasting". Or, as he puts it in the note, lf to break
the perpetual sequence of cause and effect' . Thus the foedera fati
stand for two fundamental laws of Nature, the law of universal
causation, and the law that the ultimate atoms of which all existing
things are composed fall for ever downward through infinite space with
the same uniform velocity and in perpendicular straight lines. They
are only associated with fate in a metaphorical way and without any
reference to the predetermination of events by supernatural volitions.
Where Lucretius elsewhere refers to fate, which is not often (bk. v., 110,
310, 874), it is much as we use the word, that is in the sense of an inevit-
able catastrophe. Foedera natural, on the other hand, are not ultimate laws
of Nature, but rather the fixed conditions within which composite bodies,
and more particularly organic bodies, fulfil their appointed and strictly
finite term of existence (bk. L, 580 ; bk. ii., 302 ; bk. v., 58, 311, 922 ;
bk. vi., 906. The last instance is exceptional, dealing as it does with the
cause of magnetism).
What breaks the foedera fati, the law of universal causation and the
first Epicurean law of motion, is what Lucretius calls th.3 clinamen, the
slight occasional deflection of the falling atoms from their rectilinear
descent, assumed by Epicurus in order to account for the fortuitous con-
NOTES. 155
course whence the present frame of things was, hi his philosophy, supposed
to result. That such a breach of natural laws is possible and even of
everyday occurrence the Epicureans thought might be proved by ap-
pealing to the alleged fact of human and animal freewill. But obviously
they did not restrict this immunity from unbroken causal sequence to
men and animals. It is shared by every single atom, and when, or how
often, or with what results it may come into play is an absolutely in-
calculable contingency. Dr. Masson as a close student of Epicureanism
must know this as well as I do, yet in his criticism on my criticism he
utterly ignores it. He suggests that " perhaps Mr. Benn holds that a
belief in free-will is not consistent with a belief in Laws of Nature.
This would help us to understand his assertion that Epicurus did not to
any extent believe in Law" (op. cit., p. 170). What the implications of
human freewill supposing it to exist may be, or what I personally
think about the question does not concern us here. What we are con-
cerned with is the question whether uncaused atomic deflection .is con-
sistent with unbroken natural law or not. I say that it is not ; and at
any rate I have Lucretius on my side. Dr. Masson in the passage where
he attacks me does indeed assert the contrary. I am accused of failing
;< to see that Lucretius draws a sharp distinction between the world of
Nature, subject to law, and the human mind which is free. So far as
Nature that is, the method of the world's ongoings is concerned,
without taking into account the agency of men, Lucretius holds that
causam causa sequitur ' cause does follow cause '. " I may be excused for
failing to see what no one but Dr. Masson has ever seen and what in
fact does not exist. Lucretius draws no such distinction as that with
which he is here credited between the world of nature and the human
mind. On the contrary, as might be expected from his materialistic
philosophy, he clo-ely assimilates the two. There is spontaneity in our
volitions precisely because there is spontaneity in the atoms of which our
minds are composed. Incidentally one might ask to which of the worlds,
nature or mind, do horses belong ? For Dr. Masson seems to forget
that the poet mentions these animals also as gifted with freewill. Nor
can we suppose that horses are the only animals in possession of this
power. All conscious beings might be quoted with equal reason as
exceptions to the law of causal sequence. I am not concerned to deny
that Epicureanism recognises the existence of uninterrupted causal se-
quences as a general characteristic of Nature. But it recognises the
same sequences as equally characteristic of rational human action.
Otherwise there would be no meaning in its appeal to pleasure and pain
as prevailing motives of conduct. Lucretius knew quite well that, free-
wjll notwithstanding, horses were generally amenable to bridle and spur,
and Roman soldiers to the discipline of the Roman camp. But I deny
that one who admits of physical exceptions to physical causation has
what Dr. Masson ascribes to him "the firmest grasp of the fact of law "
(loc. cit.}.
With regard to the ctinamen Dr. Masson makes the remarkable state-
ment that ' ' as we saw, Epicurus held that Freewill, though active in
the atoms is nullified when these combine in matter" (loc. cit.}. No
reference is given ; nor on hunting up every possible reference in the
indices to both volumes have I been able to find any passage bearing on
the subject. Meanwhile the statement is in obvious conflict with the
admission of freewill in human beings and animals, for their minds,
according to Epicurus, are composed of atoms combined in matter.
There is moreover a striking passage where Lucretius seems to admit at
least the possibility of a deflection from the perpendicular in the fall of all
heavy bodies. Arguing that the deflection of atoms from the perpendicu-
156 NOTES.
lar line of descent must be imperceptibly minute, he explains the necessity
of such a limitation in order to bar out the possible objection drawn from
sensible experience, that no such deflection is ever seen to occur in the
fall of heavy bodies ; for on that assumption if it occurred it would not
be seen :
" namque hoc in promptu manifestumque esse videmus,
pondera, quantum in sest, non posse obliqua meare
ex supero cum prsecipitant, quod cernere possis ;
sed nil omnino recta regione viai
declinare quis est qui possit cernere sese ? " (ii., 246-250).
In Munro's translation: " For this we see to be plain and evident that
weights, so far as in them is, cannot travel obliquely, when they fall from
above, at least so far as you can perceive ; but that nothing swerves in
any case from the straight course, \\ho is there that can perceive ? " Had
it been an Epicurean dogma that the atomic deflections are nullified in
material combination nothing could have been easier for Lucretius than
to have offered that explanation. The subterfuge to which he has re-
course suggests that in his opinion, and probably in his master's, the
clinamen was always going on. Absurdity for absurdity this seems less
irrational than to suppose that atomic spontaneity remained dormant
through the whole period of inorganic evolution and that it suddenly
reappeared as an accompaniment of con^ious life. Anyhow whatever
its extension or restriction the anomaly remains, "atomos declinare sine
causa," as Cicero says, " quo nihil turpius est physico ". Like the result
of another celebrated lapse the deviation was a very little one ' ' paullum
nee plus quam minimum," as our poet modestly pleads but enough to
entail the loss of his philosophical honour. To say that " Lucretius had
the firmest grasp of the fact of Law," is to betray in oneself the loosest
grasp of the tact of logic.
Dr. Masson further takes me to task for saying that " when Lucretius
speaks of fcedera Natural he means not what we understand by Laws of
Nature . . . but rather the limiting possibilities of existence " (loc. cit.)
a phra e which he understands as meaning that " Lucretius grasped
merely the negative side of natural order " ; adding that " a less fair
criticism than this could hardly be made ". This is unjustifiably strong
language. I have given references above to every passage where Lucretius
talks about fcedera Natural, and I submit that in each instance except
that relating to the cause of magnetism it is the negative rather than the
positive side of natural order that he emphasises. And in that single
instance the object of his very forced hypothesis is probably to dispel the
idea that the loadstone owes its virtue to supernatural agency. Dr.
Masson refers to the Lucretian phrase majettas cugnita rerum as implying
the inspiration of "something more than negative knowledge". But
does that phrase after all refer to Nature ? Munro's translation, "the
acknowledged grandeur of the things," seems to show that he did not take
that view, but rather interprets it as referring to the momentous human
interests concerned. And what Lucretius goes on to glorify in the sub-
sequent lines is not the wonders of Nature or of natural science, but the
unprecedented services of Epicurus in rescuing mankind from the super-
stitious terrors that made their lives a misery and a burden. And so for
his own part the poet promises to teach " by what law (foedus) all things
are made, what necessity there is for them to continue in that law, and
how impotent they are to annul the binding statutes of time " (v., 57-59,
Munro's translation). This is not " merely the negative side of natural
order," and I never said that it was ; but it is a note of limitation and
control rather than of intellectual joy and hope.
NOTES. 157
Lucretius was, in ray opinion, the greatest of Roman poets ; and I am
ready to admit that he was animated, far more than Epicurus, by a
genuine though fatally misguided interest in the details of physical inves-
tigation. But his practical Roman genius, working in almost complete
ignorance of the physical universe as it is actually constituted, debarred
him from rising to such a delighted resthetic apprehension of Nature's laws
in their supreme totality as has been attained, under the influence of
Spinoza, by modern poets like Goethe, Tennyson, and Matthew Arnold.
ALFRED W. BENN.
A METAKRITIK.
Prof. Perry's very suggestive article in the July number of MIND moves
me to offer some observations upon his criticism of Berkeley's famous
argument against the existence of material objects.
The main proposition which Berkeley aimed to establish was in sub-
stance the following : Material objects are not objects of our actual
perception, nor is the supposition of such objects necessary or even
legitimate in explaining our perceptual experience.
Berkeley's reasoning in support of the first part of this proposition is
based upon an analysis of perceptive experience, and of the meaning of
the so-called material object. To take Berkeley's example, the tulip.
Examination of our experience in perceiving the tulip shows that this
perceiving experience consists of sensations (actual and possible), these
sensations being combined into a definite group or complex.
This group or complex of sensations is the content of my idea of the
tulip, idea being the name for that which is before the mind in percep-
tion. My idea of the tulip is, therefore, this definite complex of sensa-
tions, and all that exists as the mind's object in this special instance
of perceiving. To perceive the tulip is to have just this complex of
sensations, just this particular portion or content of experience. This
complex of sensations is object in the sense that it is that of which there
is awareness, consciousness, and which can be described, or named, and
about which assertions can he made.
But the object plainly exists nowhere but in experience, since its con-
tent is the stuff ideas are made of. Now, when I examine this thing or
object which is called tulip, I find that I can give no meaning to any of
its so-called qualities, colour, size, distance, etc. , save as I make them
identical with sensations (actual or possible).
So far as these qualities are knowable they are the stuff ideas are made
of. If they are anything more than experience-content, I am totally un-
able to say what that something more is.
Now, the sum of the qualities of this tulip, taken in their definite
mode of co-existence, make up the content, the esse of the tulip itself.
The name tulip connotes just this definite complex of qualities ; and,
since these qualities on examination turn out to be only modes of ex-
perience or sensations, this word tulip connotes these modes of experience
or sensations, and these only. The esse of the tulip and this complex of
sensations are one and the same thing.
Therefore, when I say I perceive a tulip, I must mean, I have here and
now a certain definable complex of sensations, or definable portion of
experience-content which is named tulip. It inevitably follows from this,
that the tulip as an object of perception can exist only when it is per-
ceived ; for, as our analysis has shown, its very es.se, being experience-
content, the tulip can exist only in experience and as experience ; and
hence to suppose it to exist when not perceived, i.e., when it is not
experience, is to suppose that it exists when it does not exist.
158 NOTES.
Now let us turn to Mr. Perry's criticism of this reasoning. Mr. Perry
admits that the object, when it is known and as known in perception,
exists only as idea, i.e., as a complex of sensations, etc., or rather that
(c Its content is identical, element for element with the idea or content
of the knowing state " (p. 331).
Of the tulip perception Mr. Perry says : " When one perceives the
tulip, the idea of the tulip and real tulip coincide, element for element ;
they are one in colour, shape, size, distance, etc." (pp. 331-332).
The tulip in being known, exists under this form ot idea. Its being
known, is a mode of existence which pertains to the tulip ; it is a status
in which it may exist. This cognition-status is analogous to a political
office, which a citizen of the United States may hold, a status in which he
may exist, say the office of President.
Now, the point of Mr. Perry's contention is, that this mode of its ex-
istence in which the tulip is a known object, is not the only mode of its
existence ; andtha <its existence does not depend upon its existing in this
mode. This cognition -status is one into which the tulip-object enters ;
but it does not need to enter into this status, in order to exist as a tulip.
In short, just as a man can enter into the status of being President of the
United States, arid go out of that status, without affecting his existence
as a man, the status being accidental and not essential to hi^ existence,
so the tulip can enter into the cognition-status, or pass out of it, without
" forfeiture of its nature or identity ".
Berkeley's error, according to Mr. Perry, lay in his assumption that the
cognition-status is the only status possible to an object ; and that, since
in that status the esse of the object is percipi, the object can exist only
when perceived. That is an error as palpable as it would be to infer
that Mr. Taf b can only exist in the status of President, because he can
be known only as President when he exists in that status. Mr. Perry
maintains, therefore, that Berkeley's reasoning fails to establish his ideal-
istic proposition. He maintains that the only thing Berkeley does estab-
lish in the case of the tulip is, that when it is known in perception, its
esse is percipi ; but from this fact it does not follow that the tulip must
be perceived in order to exist, or that the tulip exists only when it is per-
ceived. Now, if I rightly understand Mr. Perry's criticism, I think a
Berkeleyan idealist could make in substance the following reply to it :
Berkeley's reasoning has shown that the esse of any material object, so far
as that object exists, in our human world is of the stuff ideas are made
of, and consequently that an object qua object exists nowhere but in ex-
perience, and as experience-content. The tulip, we know or can know,
has for us no other esse or meaning but that which its name connotes ;
and it has boen shown what that name connotes. The word tulip and
the words " complex of sensations," etc. , are names for the same reality.
The tulip as known is the tulip which exists, and all the tulip-existence
there is for our human minds. Whatever other existence there may be,
whatever other kind of reality there may be in the universe, is another
story ; this tulip-reality is just that which has been defined and verified.
This definition exhausts the meaning of tulip.
Berkeley maintained that there are other real-beings somewhere involved
in the case of the tulip. Indeed it is necessary to suppose a real-being in
order to explain the tulip-existence, but this other being is not the tulip
in some other status of its existence.
Hence, to suppose the same material object called tulip to exist in some
other mode or status, or to suppose it exists when not perceived, is to
suppose it is a tulip when it is not a tulip, or that this object exists when
it does not exist.
JOHN E. RUSSELL.
NOTES. 159
FIRST UNIVERSAL RACES CONGRESS.
London University, July 26-29, 1911.
President : The Right Hon. Lord Weardale.
Hon. Secretary : Mr. G. Spiller, 63 South Hall Park, Hampstead, London.
QUESTIONNAIRE.
(Replies must reach the Hon. Sec. by 15th June, 1911. )
1. (a) To what extent is it legitimate to argue from differences in
physical characteristics to differences in mental characteristics ? (6) Do
you consider that the physical, or mental, characteristics observable in a
particular race are (1) permanent, (2) modifiable only through ages of
environmental pressure, or (3) do you consider that marked changes in
popular education, in public sentiment, and in environment generally,
may, apart from intermarriage, materially transform physical and especi-
ally mental characteristics in a generation or two ?
2. (a) TQ what extent does the status of a race at any particular
moment of time offer an index to its innate or inherited capacities ? (6)
Of what importance is it in this respect that civilisations are meteoric in
nature, bursting out of obscurity only to plunge back into it, and how
would you explain this ?
3. (a) How would you combat the irreconcilable contentions prevalent
among all the more important races of mankind that their customs,
their civilisation, and their race, are superior to those of other races ?
(6) Would you, in explanation of existing differences, refer to special
needs arising from peculiar geographical and economic conditions, and
to related divergences in national history, and, in explanation of the
attitude assumed, would you refer to intimacy with one's own cus-
toms leading psychologically to a love of them and unfamiliarity with
others' customs tending to lead psychologically to dislike and contempt
of these latter ? (c) Or what other explanation and arguments would
you offer ?
4. (a) What part do differences in economic, hygienic, moral and
educational standards play in estranging races which come in contact with
each other ? (6) Is the ordinary observer to be informed that these
differences, like social differences generally, are in substance almost cer-
tainly due to passing social conditions and not to innate racial charac-
teristics, and that the aim should be, as in social differences, to remove
these rather than to accentuate them by regarding them as fixed ?
5. (a) Is perhaps the deepest cause of race misunderstandings the
tacit assumption that the present characteristics of a race are the ex-
pression of fixed and permanent racial characteristics ? (6) If so. could
not anthropologists, sociologists, and scientific thinkers as a class, power-
fully assist the movement for a j us ter appreciation of races by persistently
pointing out in their lectures and in their works the fundamental fallacy
involved in taking a static instead of a dynamic, a momentary instead of
a historic, a local instead of a general, point of view of race charac-
teristics ? (c) And could such dynamic teaching be conveniently intro-
duced into schools, more especially in the geography and history lessons ;
also into colleges for the training of teachers, diplomats, colonial ad-
ministrators, and missionaries ?
6. (a) If you consider that the belief in racial superiority is not largely
due, as is suggested in some of the above questions, to unenlightened
160 NOTES.
psychological repulsion and imder-estimation of the dynamic or environ-
mental factors, please state what, in your opinion, the chief factors are ?
(6) Do you consider that there is fair proof, and if so what proof, of
some races being substantially superior to others in inborn capacity, and
in such case is the moral standard to be modified ?
7. (a) Do you think that each race might with advantage study the
customs and civilisations of other races, even those you think the lowliest
ones, for the definite purpose of improving its own customs and civilisa-
tion ? (6) Do you think that unostentatious conduct generally, and
respect for the customs of other races, provided these are not morally
objectionable, should be recommended to all who come in passing or
permanent contact with members of other races ?
8. (a) Do you know of any experiments on a considerable scale, past
or present, showing the successf til uplifting of relatively backward races by
the application of purely humane methods ? (6) Do you know of any cases
of colonisation or opening of a country achieved by the same methods ?
(c) If so, how far do you think could such methods be applied universally
in our dealings with other races ?
INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY.
The Fourth International Congress of Philosophy will be held at
Bologna from 6th April to llth April, and will be organised in eight
sections : (1) General Philosophy and Metaphysics, (2) History of Phil-
osophy, (3) Logic and the Theory of Science, (4) Ethics, (5) Philosophy
of Religion, (6) Philosophy of Right, (7) ^Esthetics, (8) Psychology. In
addition there will be general sittings with addresses by Arrhenius,
Barzellotti, Boutroux, Eucken, Langevin, Ostwald, Poincare, Riehl,
Schiller, Stout, Tocco, and Windelband ; and discussions, in one of
which Bergson figures as the opener. Papers are to be sent in by the
ISL January, 1911, and not more than one is to be entered in any one
section. The subscription for members is 25 francs. The secretary is
Prof. G. C. Ferrari, Piazza Calderini 2 ; and the treasurer Comte Filippo
Cavazza, Via Farini 5, both in Bologna.
To THE EDITOR OF ' ' MIND ".
May I be allowed to make a necessary correction in my notice of
Dr. Werner's Aristote et t'Idealisme Platonicien (MiND, N.S., 76, p. 593,
1. 6). The mysterious reference to "the great splenic" emanates not
from me but from the compositor, whose work I was by some accident
given no opportunity to correct. What I actually wrote I do not know ;
probably " the great Hellenic [systems] " would give the necessary sense.
Yours faithfully,
A. E. TAYLOR.
St. Andrews, 8th December, 1910.
NEW SERIES. No. 78.] [APRIL, 1911.
MIND
A QUARTERLY REVIEW
OF
PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY
I. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLANATION OF
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PERCEPTION
OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS (III.). (Reply to Prof.
Stout.)
BY H. W. B. JOSEPH.
I VENTURE not without hesitation to make some remarks
upon Prof. Stout's reply in the January issue of MIND
to my articles in the preceding numbers. In replies and
rejoinders and re-rejoinders the original and main subject
of a controversy is apt to be buried out of sight. I will
try to avoid this danger. This will be all the easier, because
Prof. Stout himself has not gone into detail in regard to my
special criticism, but has rather indicated in what important
respects I seem to have misunderstood, or he has modified,
his position ; and a large part of his article is occupied with
an interesting statement of his own present views.
So far indeed as I can conjecture, were Prof. Stout to re-
write his chapter, ' supplying what ' he now regards ' as
deficiencies and rectifying inaccuracies,' it would still leave
me unhappy. I urged (MiND, vol. xix., p. 310) that there was a
confusion between apprehension and what is apprehended,
which, to judge by his reply, he would not admit, and again
(ib. t pp. 461-462) a confusion in the use of the word external,
when he is discussing the emergence of the distinction be-
tween self and the external thing. I believe these confusions,
if such they are, to require for their removal rather a revision
of his principles, than a more faithful and accurate following
out of them ; if they are not confusions, a drastic revision of
principles is demanded of me. I mention these points illus-
tratively ; I could easily find others ; e.g. Prof. Stout writes
11
162 H. W. B. JOSEPH :
that ' Mr. Joseph appears to find great difficulty in the con-
ception of an extensive character belonging directly to sensuous
presentations as such. But his objections seem all to hinge
on the assumption that the parts of the extensive quantum
are distinguished by the qualitative differences which have
been called local signs. This, however, is merely a hypo-
thesis which may very well be false. What, from my point
of view, is important is not the hypothesis but the fact
which it is intended partially to explain.' I am afraid there
is a long way yet between us. It is not merely that I think
the arguments against the hypothesis of local signs conclusive,
while Prof. Stout thinks them only strong. I think them
conclusive against any theory which supposes ' an extensive
character belonging directly to sensuous presentations as
such '. My objections hinged indeed on the assumption that
the parts of this extensive quantum are distinguished and
related by qualitative differences that are signs of place, not
on any theory as to the precise qualitative nature of these
signs ; local signs, it must be remembered, are not any
known qualitative differences, but only supposed qualitative
differences supposed to be signs of place. If Prof. Stout
means by its extensive character that the parts of a sensuous
presentation as such are from the beginning apprehended as
spatially related, then of course no hypothesis of local signs
will be required, since the space-relations which they are
supposed to signify would be apprehended instead ; but then,
when it is granted that I can from the beginning apprehend
directly a whole of parts related in space, I do not see why
it should be said that this whole is a presentation, nor if this
is said, what the relation of the space occupied by presenta-
tions is to the space occupied by things. I do not, however,
either understand him to say that he never expressed, or feel
clear that he now abandons the other view, to which my criti-
cisms were directed, that the parts of the extensive quantum
called a presentation are distinguished originally by qualitative
and not spatial differences. After all, he told us that ' the per-
ception of spatial order is primarily the perception of position,
distance, and direction ' [relations, be it remembered, alleged
not to be in themselves spatial] ' within a system of local
signs ' ; and if for ' local signs ' we write ' qualitative differ-
ences of some sort,' the statement seems to me to remain
altogether false. But if we write ' parts locally distinguished,'
and the parts are parts of presentations, then ' sensuous pre-
sentations as such ' will consist of parts locally distinguished ;
and either there will be two extensions, that of things and
that of\ sensuous presentations as such, or sensuous pre-
THE PERCEPTION OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS. 163
sentations as such will be in the same space with things ;
for I assume here, what I tried to show on pp. 310-311,
that the extensity of sensuous presentations cannot develop
into the extension of things. On the other hand, if the parts
are parts of things, the perception of spatial order will be
primarily what it is ultimately, and no problem of genesis for
psychology arises.
One passage indeed in Prof. Stout's reply puzzles me alto-
gether. 'I certainly did not say or think,' he says (p. 2),
* that the sense-experiences having the required character
[of distinctively conditioning the awareness of "external"
existence] are or can be separately apprehended, so as to
demand or even to admit of a further process of transition
from sensation to external object. On the contrary, the
view indicated is that, from the outset, experiences fulfilling
the assigned conditions necessitate by their nature the asser-
tion of external existence. This is the position of the Manual
and Groundwork. ' I confess I thought that a process of tran-
sition from sensation to external object was exactly what the
chapter was concerned with, though doubtless the transition
was psychologically necessitated by the nature of the original
psychical experiences ; and that the chapter explained what
in their nature necessitated it ; e.g. a continuous change of
local sign in a series of tactual or visual sensations, or the
observed sequence of sensations of a certain sort upon those
of another particular sort called kinaesthetic. These experi-
ences are only gradually accumulated in the lifetime of the
individual ; doubtless they are held to necessitate from the
outset the assertion of external existence, but not, surely, to
necessitate the assertion from the outset of it. For Prof.
Stout distinguishes the psychologist's point of view from
that of the individual whose experience he investigates ; we
psychologists know that there is an independently real ex-
ternal world, of which the body of the individual we are
considering is a part ; ' but we must avoid assuming at the
outset that he himself possesses this knowledge. Our pro-
blem is to show how he gains it.' I took that to mean that
a man begins with sense-experiences, and proceeds to appre-
hension later of external objects. If it does not mean that,
is it held that from the outset there is experience both of
sensuous presentations and of things in space ? and if so, are
sensuous presentations distinct from things in space? and
again if so, and both are apprehended, what does it matter to
the apprehension of the latter that the former should be
* extensive ' ?
I have no desire to carp. I am sure Prof. Stout would
164 H. W. B. JOSEPH :
agree that the use of controversy is to aid in discovering facts,
not to score off one another ; and my own views have under-
gone as radical a change on many of these questions as he
confesses (p. 2, note 1) that his have done ; though my dis-
satisfaction with psychology is of longer standing. I will
try presently to discover the grounds of this ; but I admit I
have always felt great difficulty in adequately stating them to
myself. First, however, as I have misunderstood Prof. Stout's
general philosophical position, and as he has restated it in the
present article, I hope he will let me examine it as he states
it now. For it seems to me still obnoxious to some of the
criticisms I made ; and I do not know whether I have mis-
understood it again, or there are flaws in it which he has not
recognised.
My difficulties centre perhaps in his theory of presentations.
Presentations are opposed to objects, though determining the
thought of objects ; they are mind-dependent, or sense-depen-
dent ; called once an aspect of matter, they nevertheless are
matter as it is in itself ; they do not ' as such ' belong to
the phenomenal order, and are not in phenomenal space,
though, being extensive, they ought to be in some other
space of their own ; yet they are not disparate and dis-
continuous with the phenomenal order, but confluent with
it, while at the same time the presentation- continua of
different finite minds are confluent with one another in
the all-inclusive presentation- continuum of an omnipresent
consciousness. A presentation in my consciousness means
for me or points to a thing or object in space, external to my
body ; but to any one else it is phenomenally knowable as a
state of my brain. What is it of which all this can be said ?
' By presentation,' says Prof. Stout, ' I mean whatever is
or may be existentially present in consciousness as a tooth-
ache is present in the moment in which it is being actually
felt, or as a sound-sensation is present in the moment of
actual hearing, or as a colour-sensation is present in the
moment of actual seeing. What is thus existentially present
at any moment is, in the strict sense, experienced and may
be called an experience,' and may be said to exist in the mind,
in contrast to objects thought of, but not existentially
present, and not experienced, though known through ex-
perience (i.e. presumably, through a presentation), which exist
for the mind and not in it. The experiencing of presenta-
tions and the thought of objects are nevertheless correlated
elements, which all knowledge includes in inseparable unity.
Now when I try to determine from this account what a
' presentation ' or an ' experience ' really is, there are two
THE PERCEPTION OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS. 165
things that sh,ould help me, the general description, and the
examples. If I took the examples only, I should suppose that
feelings of pain and pleasure, sounds, and colours, and any-
thing else of which it could be said that it is just sensible,
were meant : with this addition, that their being lasts no
longer than their being sensed, they are ala-O^ara, not
alo-Orjrd ; and indeed we are told on page 13 that sensations,
which do not seem distinguished there from sensuous pre-
sentations, are 'mind-dependent, inasmuch as they exist
only in being experienced by some one '. I turn, however,
to the general description of them as presentations, or ' ex-
istentially present in consciousness'. I suppose the word
presentation would never have been chosen but for a half-
acknowledged assumption that we are presented with objects,
i.e. that there are things in space, of which our bodies are
some, and that the things are before us ; but that when (as
an onlooker might know) a thing is before me, i.e. before
my body, I experience a ' presentation ' which is not the
thing, nor is my experiencing it awareness of the thing ;
and the word is intended to signify what I thus experience,
divested of all reference to the conditions under which the
onlooker knows that I am experiencing it, and through
which alone he can explain to me what the word is to
signify. An attempt, however, to avoid appeal to these
conditions in explaining its meaning is made, by saying that
it is whatever may be existentially present in consciousness.
But I cannot find any meaning in this expression, except by
substituting for it a familiar word which it is apparently
meant to elucidate, viz. ' sensible ' ; I am afraid it is often
my fate, that terms in psychology, which seem meant to
indicate with scientific precision important ' contents ' or
operations of the mind, seem only explicable through the
familiar terms, whose looseness and difficulty they are to
correct. I can find an instance from this article, in ' ideal
construction,' which seems to me to mean imagining, or
thinking, what the facts are which we do not perceive, and to
suggest no discovery as to the psychological nature of those
operations. But to return to the phrase ' existentially present
in consciousness ' : in the first place, I am puzzled by the
adverb ; it does not express a way of being present ; I sup-
pose what is meant is ' present in the sense in which pre-
sentations are present in consciousness when they exist, and
are not being merely remembered or thought of ' ; but as the
experience of a presentation is being explained by contrast
with the thinking of what is not actually experienced, this does
not take us any further. Secondly then, what am I to under-
166 H. W. B. JOSEPH :
stand by ' present in consciousness ' ; ' present ' has two
proper senses, temporal and local. I presume a local sense
is not intended ; it is not meant that only that is a presenta-
tion which is in a certain space-relation to the body. The
supposed local presence of the thing perceived which perhaps,
as I have said, suggested the use of the word presentation, may
explain also the choice of the expression ' present in con-
sciousness ' ; but it would clearly be impossible to suppose
that consciousness and a presentation are literally in the re-
lation of a body and a thing present to it. Are we then to
take the temporal sense ? does ' present in consciousness '
mean ' now in consciousness ' ? If so, I ask whether the
temple of Diana at Ephesus, now that I think of it, is not
now in my consciousness ; will it be replied ' not existen-
tially, because it does not now exist ' ? What then of Giotto's
campanile ? ' That,' it will perhaps be said, * is an object of
your thought, or exists for your mind, since you are thinking
of it ; but it is not present in your consciousness, since you
are not now perceiving it.' Then ' present in consciousness '
means ' being perceived,' i.e. being felt or sensed : since I do
not think the incommensurability of the diagonal would be
called a presentation, even while I apprehended it. And it
might as well have been said at once that presentations are
sensations, i.e. the sensible that exists only in the sensing
of it.
But common sense holds that I can perceive in Florence
the same campanile which I can think of here. A presenta-
tion, however, is opposed to what is thought of. The one is
experienced, the other not : the one exists in the mind, and
the other for it : ' the object of thought as such is whatever
the mind means or intends ; presentation is what exists in
the mind, and is not merely meant or intended by it '. It is-
important to remember that a presentation is not an object
of thought, nor vice versa, if we are to understand the theory ;
but how then can I think of a past presentation ? The psy-
chological explanation offered is, that I have a mental picture,
which is a presentation, and this is related to, or means, or
specifies the direction of my thought to, the past presenta-
tion, which is a presentation no longer. But what then is it,
now that it is only thought of ? Presentations are sense-
dependent, and the sensing is over. Prof. Stout tells us that
a presentation can be both sensed and thought of ; but he
does not admit that Giotto's campanile can be both sensed
and thought of ; on the contrary, what is sensed is a pre-
sentation, and what is thought of is an object in phenomenal
space, and these are different the one from the other ; the
THE PERCEPTION OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS. 167
former is physically and physiologically conditioned by the
latter, and the latter is intended or represented, or in a pecu-
liar sense presented, by the former. Does the same relation
hold between the present mental picture and the past pre-
sentation remembered by its means ? or if a presentation can
itself be in consciousness at one time and for consciousness
at another, why is that impossible to campaniles ? and if
it were possible to campaniles, might we not dismiss pre-
sentations ? It seems to me as impossible on Prof. Stout's
theory to think of a presentation as on Hume's to recall a
perception.
The presentation is a specifying content which represents the
object (p. 4) ; but we are told this is a special and primary form
of representation. It does not represent the object as a map
represents a country ; for (if I understand rightly) it is already
involved in the awareness of the object, say the map. In
the awareness of the map are inseparably united having a
presentation, and thinking of an object viz. a map which
is not a presentation ; and this object might be said to be
presented in the sense that my thought is directed to it
rather than to any other object by the specifying content of
the presentation which is in another sense presented. But,
as it would expose him to a charge of equivocation to use
' presented ' in these two senses, Prof. Stout says that the
object is represented ; though he has to use ' represented ' in
two senses, for the map-presentation does not represent the
map-object in the sense in which the map-object (or is it the
map-presentation '?) represents the country.
Keduced to choose between a double use of ' presenting ' or
of 'representing,' I have to discover what actual third rela-
tion is intended by reflecting on the facts ; and I find myself
unable to discover any. I think I understand what is meant,
when a map is said to represent a country ; and when the
map or the country is said to be presented to me, I think it
is meant that it is before my eyes, and I see it. But this
attempt to explain psychologically what is meant by seeing
that which is before my eyes seems to me involved in
confusion.
For so far as I can see, it leaves me with an order of pre-
sentations like Hume's impressions, and a material order
like Locke's, with no account of their relation beyond saying
that the former mean the latter, and with this peculiarity,
that the impressions are * matter directly apprehended as it is
in itself. The view that 'the mind starts with a separate
knowledge of its sensations only, and subsequently passes
by a distinct and additional process to the apprehension of
168 H. W. B. JOSEPH :
external things ' a view which I had thought implied in much
psychological writing Prof. Stout expressly repudiates ; ' all
knowledge includes in inseparable unity the experiencing of
presentations and the thought of objects '. The proposi-
tion repudiated is not, indeed, precisely that which I had
ascribed to ' psychology ' (p. 305), for I spoke of starting
with sensations, not knowledge of sensations ; but I suppose
it is now meant that from the outset we do both experience
presentations and think of objects, though nothing is said to
show we might not sometimes experience presentations (e.g.
pains or mental pictures) without thinking of objects, even
if we cannot think of objects without experiencing pre-
sentations. The power to think of objects on the oc-
casion of experiencing presentations it is not attempted
to explain ; but I do not complain of that. Only, if the
presentations are one thing and the objects another, why
does ' apprehension of this world as a whole of parts co-
existent in space ' seem ' dependent on the extensive charac-
ter of certain presentations ' ? (p. 2). When I smell a certain
scent, I think of a violet ; the violet is a whole of parts co-
existent in space ; must the scent be ? Does not the passage
just quoted really imply that I can only learn what the
spatial nature of objects is by studying that of presentations ?
Else, if the presentation is merely the necessary prius of per-
ceiving the extended thing, why need it be extensive ? We
ordinarily suppose we learn about things by perceiving them
and by thinking about them; but if we perceive (or should I
say experience ?) presentations, and think about things, we
must learn the nature of extended things by studying extensive
presentations. This would be possible if they were like ; but
if they are like, and we can experience presentations, why
may we not experience things ? and again, why may we not
then dismiss presentations ? But are they like ? ' An idea,'
said Berkeley, ' can be like nothing but an idea ' ; and it
might be said with equal force that a presentation can be like
nothing but a presentation. And then, why need presenta-
tions be extensive ?
I cannot make out what relation is supposed to hold be-
tween presentations and objects. Objects ' transcend the
existence ' of presentations ; they ' persist, change, and in-
teract, independently of the coming and going of sensuous
apparitions in the consciousness of finite individuals ' (p. 8).
They ' belong to the phenomenal order ' to which * sensuous
presentations as such do not belong ' (and it is not suggested
that sensuous presentations can belong to it as anything
else), and they fully occupy phenomenal space (p. 12); the
THE PERCEPTION OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS. 169
one universe of which we all apprehend fragmentary parts
through different presentations includes them all (p. 5).
Nevertheless ' we must set aside any view which regards
this realm of independent existence as radically disparate
in kind, or as discontinuous in existence with the pre-
sentations through which we, as thinking beings, are con-
versant with it. Such assumptions are irreconcilable with
the ineradicable presupposition of ordinary consciousness
that what is immediately given in sense-experience is itself
matter, and not merely a symbol of matter' (p. 8). On the
next page Prof. Stout writes that 'I agree with common
sense in affirming that what is existentially present in con-
sciousness in sense-perception is matter directly apprehended
as it is in itself,' though it is and is thought to be 'partial
and fragmentary '. Now what is existentially present in con-
sciousness is, totidem verbis, the definition of a presentation. So,
though we all rightly suppose that what is immediately given
in sense-experience is matter, what is thus immediately
given is also presentations. The position is to be saved by
holding that presentations are neither disparate nor discon-
tinuous with material objects, or that the ' realm of material
existence ' to quote a metaphor which I will not attempt to
interpret is ' confluent with our sense-experience ' (p. 9) ;
and thus the individual has in his own presentation-con-
tinuum ' a partial glimpse of the existence and nature of
matter as it is in itself ' (p. 12). I do not know what con-
tinuity between presentations and material objects may be ;
for it cannot be spatial continuity, since presentations are
not in phenomenal space ; but as, to their not being * radi-
cally disparate in kind,' if they are not, I cannot conceive
what is. For presentations are sense-dependent, existing
only as they are sensed in some individual mind, objects
persist, change, and interact, independently of the coming
and going of presentations ; objects gravitate, and presenta-
tions do not ; objects are in phenomenal space, and pre-
sentations are not ; objects are part of the one universe
apprehended by all, and the presentation-continuum in one
finite mind is distinct from that in another.
Let it, however, be granted that presentations are com-
parate (if I may so express the contrary of disparate) and
continuous with material objects ; another view of their re-
lation remains behind. For Prof. Stout's general position
' involves a thorough-going distinction between matter as it is
in itself and matter as it is phenomenally known '. Now if this
is so, I would point out that the same thing may therefore
be a presentation, and be phenomenally known ; for matter as
170 H. W. B. JOSEPH:
it is in itself, and matter as it is phenomenally known must
be the same thing in two aspects ; but matter as it is in
itself is what is existentially present in consciousness, and
what is existentially present in consciousness is a presentation ;
so that what is a presentation is in another aspect phenom-
enally known, in spite of the contrasts just enumerated,
which seem to show the contrary. Here, however (p. 12),.
presentations are called ' an extremely partial and fragmen-
tary aspect ] of matter '. I do not understand how a partial
and fragmentary aspect of matter can be also matter directly
apprehended as it is in itself ; how can an aspect of anything
be what it is an aspect of ? But anyhow, what seems to be
meant is that the same thing can be either sensed or known
phenomenally, though in sense and in phenomenal knowledge
I apprehend different aspects of it. Sense-perception then
should be perception of the thing which I can know phenom-
enally or think of : not of a presentation, which unless in
remembering it I cannot think of, and which I can hardly
be said in remembering to know phenomenally, for it cannot
become a phenomenal object. When then I have that in
my presentation-continuum which I call Giotto's campanile
or should I say, the presentation of Giotto's campanile ?
what is it which I might know phenomenally, and of
which the presentation is a partial and fragmentary aspect ?
Surely, one would suppose, it is something in space, made ot
divers curiously wrought marbles : granting that what is
present to me in consciousness is a portion of matter per se,
it is as this that the same matter would be known phe-
nomenally. This at any rate it is of which 1 suppose that I
get an aspect in the presentation. But this portion of matter
per se must be capable of being phenomenally known to an ex-
ternal observer as a ' physical object '. One would expect,
then, that it would be known to the external observer as the
same physical object, as which it might be known to me
as something in space, made of divers curiously wrought
marbles ; for matter as phenomenally known is contrasted
with the aspect of it which directly enters consciousness,
and of what can the presentation in my mind be called an
aspect but of the campanile in Florence ? This one would
expect ; but we learn in fact, that my sensuous presentation
is phenomenally known to an external observer as my brain,
so far as implicated in the process correlated with my pre-
sentation (p. 12). Now, what I know phenomenally is, I
suppose, the object I think of ; and when the experiencing
1 Italics mine.
THE PERCEPTION OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS. 171
of a presentation is united, as we are told it inseparably is
in all cognition, with the thought of an object, the object is
that to which the presentation specifies the direction of
thought. But my brain-process is certainly not that to
which the presentation in me of Giotto's campanile deter-
mines the direction of my thought. Phenomenal knowledge,
which is said to be a ' thought-construction on the basis of
sense-experience,' did not lead Aristotle to connect sense-
perception with the brain at all ; how then can he have
known as brains that of which the aspect present in other
men's consciousness was presentations ? Yet how, if Prof.
Stout's position here is right, can I know that of which other
men report to me the presentational aspect as anything but
brains? But the world so far as I have not sensuously
perceived it is not phenomenally known to me through my
thought-construction as consisting of brains, except to a very
small extent ; while if others in their thought-construction
put my brains where I put Giotto's campanile in mine, a
mutual understanding would be too much to expect.
No doubt we may come to believe that whenever any one
' has presentations,' there is a correlated process in his
brain ; and this is the theory or fact for which Prof. Stout is
trying to make room. But it has no necessary connexion
with his theory of presentations, and hardly squares, as we
have seen, with his previous exposition of his theory. He cor-
relates the brain-process with the presentation as with what
is experienced ; but it is as easy to suppose it correlated with
the experiencing of what is not a presentation. Indeed when
he asks ' What is the phenomenal counterpart of sense-ex-
perience ? ' one would suppose sense-experience to mean
experiencing; for surely only in this sense is the counter-
part a brain-process, and not (say) a campanile. Moreover,
there is no more reason to say that a brain-process is the phe-
nomenal counterpart of a man's sense-experience than of his
phenomenal knowledge ; but phenomenal knowledge here
must mean 'phenomenally knowing,' not what is 'phenom-
enally known,' since else a brain-process will be the phe-
nomenal counterpart of a brain-process ; so that, again,
sense-experience should mean experiencing. But if it is the
correlate of the experienced, not of the experiencing, and
what is experienced is a presentation, then surely the posi-
tion implied must be, that there exist things in space, some
of which are living bodies, and by the action of others on
these is produced an experience of states of consciousness
called presentations, and these bodies, living or otherwise,
rather than the presentations they produce, would constitute
172 H. w. B. JOSEPH:
matter per se. I do not think Prof. Stout holds this, but
only that his words imply it ; anyhow the whole passage
seems to me to illustrate the danger, spoken of on p. 466
of my previous article, of using words like ' experience ' or
* presentation ' without a genitive after them.
But another puzzle awaits us. My presentation-continuum
is confluent not only with the realm of external existence ; it
is also ' continued beyond itself into a whole of fundamentally
like nature which transcends and includes it ' in which it is
confluent with the presentation-continua of other finite in-
dividuals. This whole presentation-continuum is experienced
by an ' omnipresent consciousness ' (p. 13). Is it the same
as that other whole, the material universe, with which my
presentation-continuum is comparate and continuous ? I can-
not conceive how the answer can be yes, for then the parts
of a presentation-continuum would be the parts of the ' realm
of external existence,' and presentations would be phenomenal
objects. But if the answer is no, I am equally at a loss to
conceive how my presentation-continuum can be confluent
with both wholes. If I may say what seems to me to have
suggested Prof. Stout's statements, it is this. He starts from
a contrast between the knowledge we have of things when
we are actually perceiving them, and that which we have
when we are only thinking of them ; the latter he calls phe-
nomenal knowledge, a thought-construction on the basis of
the former ; its object is the phenomenal order, that of the
former is matter as it is in itself. The omnipresent con-
sciousness is present to everything, in the sense in which I
am present to the things I am perceiving ; i.e. it always knows
everything in the best and direct way, of perceiving it, not in
the inferior and indirect way of thinking about it. I pass the
difficulties involved in thinking out a perceiving which is not
limited by a particular standpoint. But I must urge that on
such a view what is perceived is the very thing which is also
thought of : that it is an object in space, not a presentation
not even an extensive presentation in the mind : and
that to make it a sensuous presentation, sense-dependent,
is to make eTTio-rrjur to be afoOr&w and the eTriarijTov an
I am afraid that criticism has taken longer than I intended,
and I have still to try and put more generally what it is that
troubles me in common psychological procedure. Prof. Stout
says it is a mistake to suppose that psychologists as such have
any philosophical principles in common, and in a measure I
assent ; yet he himself states that they agree so far as that a
prejudice is ' fashionable ' among them against * mixing Psy-
THE PERCEPTION OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS. 173
chology with Metaphysics '. Now so long as this is the case,.
I think there are likely to be certain common philosophical
principles implied in their psychology, however various are the
principles they hold when they leave the psychological for the
philosophical ' point of view '. And this is because they try
to treat the soul, or the mind, as the subject-matter of a
science which can investigate it in the same sort of way as
physiology does the body, or geology the earth's crust. If
any one objects, they say that from another point of view the
soul is something different ; but the points of view are not
adjusted, and it is not explained why, if the other point of
view is the true one, the psychological should ever be taken.
Why for example should William James tell us that you can-
not really give a physical explanation of mind, and then that
association of ideas is fundamentally a fact of neural habit ?
And why does Prof. Stout think that in allowing himself ' to
be influenced by the fashionable prejudice against introducing
general philosophical discussion into a text-book of Psy-
chology,' he has exposed himself to misunderstanding ? Is
it because for lack of the discussion the principles tend to be
undetected, or because its introduction would have involved a
modification of the psychological statements ? I am not sure
which is meant ; but I do think that much psychology im-
plies principles which are false ; if they are known to be false,
I see no use so far in that part of the psychology ; if they are
thought to be true, I think that is often due to the assump-
tion of which I have already spoken, that the soul or mind
can be studied in the same way as material things.
Psychology, it is thought, is to study scientifically the
development of individual minds ; there must then be that
which develops, and there must be conditions under which the
development occurs ; and we want to know the laws displayed
in the process. Various views are taken, of course, on these
points. There have been maintain ers of ' psychology with-
out a soul,' who thought that ' perceptions ' or their equiva-
lent somehow emerge or occur, and that through the influence
of these one on arxother the adult consciousness arises ; and
sometimes the emergence of these perceptions was connected
with physical events, which for this purpose were treated as
conditioning the occurrence of perceptions, though at another
time ' physical event ' was but a name given to certain ' con-
tents ' of consciousness whose formation the psychology was
to explain. Or there is James's doctrine, of a stream of con-
sciousness as the psychologist's datum, which is not a stream,
but a series of total pulsations, each somehow inheriting
part of the nature of its predecessor ; and development takes
174 H. W. B. JOSEPH :
place by distinction and differentiation within this or these,
or again within a ' presentation-continuum '. But some ad-
mit that there is some sort of unity, which is conscious, or
has states of consciousness, and persists through the process
of development ; though again the phases of the development
are sometimes connected with psychical conditions only, and
sometimes with physical conditions, the right to appeal to
which belongs to the psychologist when he takes a different
point of view to that from which he can apply his psycho-
logical theories to himself, though he somehow takes both
points of view at once when he applies his psychological
theories to another. But whatever be the details, so long as
psychology is treated like a physical science, an effort must
be made to connect definite sorts of psychical result with
definite conditions, physical or psychical, according to laws.
It is by no means necessary that these connexions should be
intelligible ; in the inductive sciences of nature we do not
see why the change a in a subject x should occur whenever
another change b occurs in it or in a different subject y ; but
we accept such connexions because we believe that there are
general principles exemplified in the observed facts, and we
can find no others which the facts seem to exemplify. No
doubt in physics, where a mathematical treatment enters,
there is something more than this, and hence the desire to
show that chemical or biological processes are at bottom
those of physics ; but meanwhile we have to be content with
accepting as laws much which is very imperfectly understood
(and even in physics this is so in large part). Now in such
a mode of explanation the occurrence of the required condi-
tions is all that determines the result ; definiteness is given,
if only we can state precisely what the conditions are, which
determine what result ; and if we can calculate (i.e. ascertain
by thinking), from a knowledge of the several conditions
determining divers results severally, the different result that
would be determined by a combination or modification of
such conditions, then we can the more freely use our know-
ledge of these laws for purposes of explanation or prediction.
This then, I believe, is the sort of ideal which psychology as
a natural science sets before itself, inherited in large measure
from the days of the ' science of mind,' which proceeded thus,
and was thought to be the last word of philosophy or ' com-
petent thinking '. But there are two difficulties. In the
first place, the psychical conditions are not found to be ascer-
tainable. Of course in physical sciences we often have to
infer from the observed results the conditions which have
given rise to them ; but then we can state these conditions
THE .PERCEPTION OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS. 175
with some precision there must have been a glacier cover-
ing so much ground, which would therefore have at least
such a mass, and hence exert at least so much pressure : there
must be such a bacillus present, which is destroyed by such
a drug : and so forth. And the early associationist psy-
chology did seek, in the occurrence of determinate simple
4 ideas,' for conditions from which results in the way of
' complex ideas ' could be deduced, at least roughly, accord-
ing to the laws of their combination, or power of suggestion.
But this rather crude procedure is exploded ; instead of it we
have theories that at least seem to formulate facts more suc-
cessfully, such as Prof. Stout's of psychical dispositions. My
criticism here is that I think psychology produces an illusion
on the unwary reader, of making an advance towards a scien-
tific understanding of the facts, when it has in large measure
only found new names for them. For a disposition can-
not be observed directly, as Plato long ago pointed out of a
Svva/jLis, bat only through considering e<' &> re eo-ri,, /cal o
aTrepyd&Tcu ; and from considering these, we cannot so de-
termine the strength or other character of a disposition, as
to make deductions of any accuracy; dispositions are an
explanation only in the measure in which faculties are ; and
we do wrong if we regard them as working together towards
a resultant in the soul like forces that act upon a body. For
the whole soul comes into the account ; and that is some-
thing which does not behave as if it wre an aggregate of
parts interacting according to their several natures. The
action of a particular disposition is modified not merely by
the action of the rest, but by that of the soul as a whole or
unity ; while in a mechanical system the action of a particu-
lar part can be modified only by that of the other parts. But
then, we can never at any time so know, from what we have
observed of its activities, the nature of the whole soul, as to
determine therefrom how it must act under fresh conditions ;
its nature, so far as we are concerned, is as it were inexhaust-
ible ; and scientific explanations of its behaviour are to that
extent precluded. I think Prof. Stout would very likely
accept this, and I do not mean to depreciate psychological
analysis. But I come to the second difficulty. So far it
might be said that the method of psychology is right, though
its results are only approximate. It rightly seeks to ascer-
tain the nature of the soul from its observed behaviour, and
thence to deduce what its behaviour would be under other
conditions, though it cannot ever ascertain that nature com-
pletely, and so its conclusions have a large margin of error.
There is however a most important activity of the soul which
176 H. W. B. JOSEPH :
cannot be explained at all as the result of pre-existing condi-
tions, viz. the activity of its intelligence. Thinking and
knowing are not mechanical processes. I do not say that
we cannot to some extent assign the conditions psychical
or physical under which they occur in the individual mind.
The young Walter Scott noticed that his class-mate thought
best when fiddling with his coat button ; without attention and
retentiveness we should none of us know anything. But
such observations do nothing to explain the process ; the
whole process still remains, as something which has an in-
telligible nature of its own, not mechanical. And the soul,
or the mind, thinks and knows. How then can it be right
from any point of view to treat it as the subject of a natural
science, a thing to be investigated as plants or mountain
ranges are investigated, by seeking to connect its subse-
quent phases with its antecedent phases or other conditions
according to laws : which is what I mean by treating it
mechanically ?
In rational thinking, so far as it occupies time, I pass from
the apprehension of one fact or facts to the apprehension of
another. But it cannot be said that I apprehend the latter
because I apprehended the former, in the sense in which an
electric bell rings because I press the button. So far as I
think irrationally if the expression may be allowed for
transitions in thought which do not express my rational
nature it might be said that I think of one thing merely
because I thought of another. This is what happens in the
so-called association of ideas, 1 which is a mechanical process,
and for that very reason not rational, though not therefore
necessarily anti-rational. And the necessity with which the
sound of a bell makes a man think of his dinner is a fit sub-
ject for the investigation of psychological science. But the
development of a geometrical demonstration is something of
a different kind ; and so also is the development of our appre-
hension of space-relations. If the development of a geo-
metrical demonstration be supposed explicable in the same
way, even from the 'psychological point of view,' it would
follow that there was nothing to choose between the thinking
of the geometer who discovered that a construction produced
a square unequal to a given circle, and that of him who
thought it squared it. The two conclusions would be results
equally determined by the nature of their minds and of the
opinions from which they started, as a fizzle and a flare are
results equally determined by throwing a live coal respectively
1 1 owe the first understanding of this fact to Prof. J. A. Smith.
THE PEECEPTION OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS. 177
into water and into petrol. And it is no use saying this is only
so from the psychological point of view. From that point
of view we presumably see how a mind really works. But
a rational mind does not really work that way, since if it did
it would work in principle like an irrational one. And if it
be said that it is only so from the psychological point of view,
that implies that when any one with a rational mind takes
the philosophical point of view he sees that it is not so ; but
his seeing that it is not so is itself a piece of rational think-
ing on his part, which he cannot regard from the psycholo-
gical point of view without again discrediting what is to
accredit his rational thinking ; if one piece of rational think-
ing then cannot be regarded from the psychological point of
view, how can another ? And similarly with the develop-
ment of my apprehension of space-relations : if my appre-
hension is treated as a mere psychological result, there is no
sense in asking whether it is true. It might be shown that
it would not occur, or would not occur so readily, but for
certain sensuous changes, but no explanation of the way in
which sensuous elements of divers kinds and series come
according to laws to be integrated or associated is an ex-
planation of space-perception.
The difference between a rational and a mechanical process
is what makes the so-called psychology of logic, as I cannot
help thinking, of such little value. The most the psycholo-
gist can do is to determine under what conditions a man will
or will not think ; but the nature of the process of thinking
would be falsely conceived as the determination of a psychi-
cal change from preceding conditions in the soul according
to laws. What then, it may be asked, is this rational process
of which you speak, if it cannot be displayed as like other
processes, which the sciences study ? I find it difficult to
answer ; but I do not feel sure that this is wholly my fault.
For there is nothing else like it ; the only way to understand
it is to reflect on it in oneself. When I try to describe it, I
am at once in danger of assimilating it to a mechanical pro-
cess, because that is how I am accustomed to explain pro-
cesses ; but here that is wrong. Yet it is often found in
psychology, e.g. in Hume's theory of belief, in any theory of
memory which thinks memory can be explained by mental
images, in the comparison of a ' general idea ' to a compound
photograph, in the explanation of the apprehension of neces-
sary connexions through inseparable association, in the doc-
trine of id fas- forces so far as this is used to explain anything
rational : it is of course a different matter to explain by it
irrational or non-rational action, as I have implied above in
12
178 H. W. B, JOSEPH I
saying that association may explain non-rational transitions
in thinking. Perhaps, however, I may illustrate the reality
of the difference between a mechanical and rational process
by a reference to Dr. Archdall Eeid's recent and very in-
teresting book on The Laws of Heredity. He thinks that the
emergence of mind of feeling and intelligence is explicable
in the same way as that of any physical feature of organic
beings; 'throughout the process was one of increasing
adaptation to the environment ' ( 612). But how do feeling
and intelligence help ? Certain movements occur under the
stimulus of feeling; but the feeling is correlated with a
physical process, and that might just as well provoke the
responsive movement direct. It is the same in regard to
thinking. Either the process of thought has a structure
like that of a physiological process ; the definite elements of
one stage determine definitely the elements of the next ; and
in this case it can be correlated (as Dr. Archdall Keid ap-
parently thinks it is) with a physiological process, and its
intercalation will be quite useless ; the same motor response
could have been secured physiologically without it : or else,
if the process is not useless, it is because it has a non-
mechanical structure ; because in thinking rationally we are
doing something rational, which a machine cannot do, and
which is necessary if ends are to be sought, not merely
results produced, if action is to be intelligent and not me-
chanical. The intellectual activity, indeed, by which I
discover what is best to be done, though it often involves
thinking in which I follow out the connexions of facts, and
which, as we have seen, cannot be explained psychologically,
yet is not, it would seem, wholly of that kind. But unless
no judgment on such a question is true, but only a necessary
result in the mind of pre-existing conditions, as twitching is
of tickling in the body, it too must lie beyond the province
of psychological science.
But is there then no such thing as psychology ? Certainly
there is such a thing ; but if I were asked what it really is, I
should say, not a science, but a collection of more or less de-
tached inquiries, of the results of which philosophy must
take account. There are for example inquiries into ' double
personality ' and kindred puzzles, which must affect any
theory of the real nature of the individual soul or self ; there
are experiments about association- time, reaction-time, etc.,
which help to explain why one man's mind works quicker
than another's, but no more throw light on the nature of think-
ing than the determination of the duration of the crotchet
explains the beauty of music ; there are more definitely psycho-
THE PERCEPTION OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS. 179
physical investigations, e.g. into brain-localisation, which may
have therapeutic value ; and of course any facts about the rela-
tion of what is mental to what is cerebral are important to a
theory of the soul, as of a knower belonging somehow to the
same whole with the known. But psychology as a particular
science about one sort of known thing, viz. individual minds,
parallel with sciences about other sorts of known things,
which shall explain all the processes of individual minds,
and no more require us than the other sciences do to raise
the philosophical question of the character of that whole
to which belong both nature and mind, in such peculiar
interconnexion this is the psychology which I mistrust. Its
expounders often defend it by saying that they occupy in it a
provisional point of view ; from the higher point of view of
philosophy the account must be re- written ; though some, no
doubt, really think the psychological point of view correct.
Yet in other sciences I do not notice this tolerant indif-
ferentism. For example, there are biologists who think
that the processes of organic life display unconscious pur-
pose, and that we can never know in mechanical terms how
the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child.
They are far from acquiescing in a mechanical theory of life
as a tolerable point of view for science, but they say that it
is false ; and the supporters of the mechanical theory are
equally against compromise. But the natural sciences, it
may be said, are all in difficulties about their first principles.
Yes, but so far as their students acknowledge this, they regret
it ; and, if they could start from more satisfactory principles,
would do so ; and at least they think that they are deal-
ing with a phenomenon bene fundatum, i.e. that their theory of
the relations of their facts could as it were be translated into
terms of a truer theory without internal distortion. But
psychologists give, it seems to me, an account of what the
soul is, and how it develops and behaves, which could not be
so translated. Suppose it could be shown to be true that
our spiritual activities so influence what takes place in our
bodies, that their movements are not explicable solely from
the laws of motion ; surely the physicist would not go on
talking as if all motions of matter were explicable purely
physically from a physical point of view, though he might
say that, as he could not ascertain and measure these spiritual
agents, he was bound to ignore them, and leave his results
thus far inaccurate. But his physical point of view would
still be the best he could get for the realm of facts he was
dealing with. The psychological point of view, if it is dis-
tinct from the philosophical, is not the best for the facts the
180 H. w. B. JOSEPH: PERCEPTION OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS.
psychologist deals with. Psychology should give an account
of the soul, and an account of the soul must be philosophical
or, if it is preferred, metaphysical ; for the activities of the
soul include knowledge, and intelligent action, and these are
not explicable like the behaviour of material things which
the sciences investigate, while they are connected with what
occurs in a particular material thing, the living body, so that
the soul cannot be understood till we understand the whole
to which bodies and souls belong, and a theory of that will
be metaphysical. What is the use therefore of keeping
metaphysics out of psychology, unless psychology is a name
merely for the investigation of a number of special questions,
whose results a more metaphysical inquiry into the soul is to
utilise ? and even they will very likely be found to have made
some questionable assumptions. But most psychology
seems to me still to inherit the legacy of those who tried to
build up the mind out of perceptions, ideas, or presentations,
mixing it, it may be, with views that imply that the mind
knows things which are not in it, in the sense of being de-
pendent on its perceiving them for their existence, but not
revising the ' way of ideas ' as these views require. I have
tried to show that such a doctrine of presentations vitiates
the position which Prof. Stout has expounded. No doubt he
derives much of it from Prof. Ward. I admire the tenacity
with which Prof. Ward strives to hold to one ' point of view,'
but I think such a soul as he seeks to trace the history of
could never know the world he thinks he knows. I admire
Prof. Stout's work also, but it leaves me dissatisfied : and
that because he will hold it necessary, and possible, to treat
the soul as the subject of a particular science. I am sure my
dissatisfaction is shared by a good many people interested in
philosophy, and better able to pierce to the grounds of their
dissatisfaction than I am. Indeed I am conscious how de-
fective the foregoing statement has been. But to express it
for what it is worth may provoke others to do it better ; and
perhaps it is due to Prof. Stout to show that my criticism of
a chapter of his was not a mere personal attack, but meant to
illustrate the faults, I will not say of a school, for psycholo-
gists are of many schools, and I am aware how very general
my attempted characterisation of their procedure is : may I
say, of a great many writers who seek to construct, and think
that philosophy should be approached through, a psychological
science ?
II. THE HUMANISM OF PROTAGORAS.
BY F. C. S. SCHILLER.
MB. C. M. G-ILLESPIE'S interesting article in No. 76 is a valu-
able contribution to the important question how far the
absolutism of Plato can be regarded as a successful reply to
the relativism of the fifth century B.C., and marks a great
advance in the discussion. It is highly significant that an
academically trained writer should undertake to inquire into
the real position of those who have had the honour to be
misrepresented by Plato, and still more so that his inquiry
should result in so extensive a revision of what has com-
monly been believed. Mr. Gillespie in fact reduces the dimen-
sions of Plato's victory over relativism to quite moderate and
reasonable proportions, and evinces an eminently sane and
sound judgment on philosophic controversies which posterity
has hitherto been far too content to view as mirrored in the
mirage of Platonic eloquence. A less exacting zealot for the
whole truth than myself would therefore doubtless profess
himself satisfied with Mr. Gillespie's revision of the tradition.
But the issue is so important and Mr. Gillespie has associated
me with it so closely that I can hardly decline to comment
on the new situation.
In my previous discussion of the topic in, Studies in
Humanism (ch. ii. and xiii.-xv.), Plato or Protagoras ? and MIND
(No. 68), I had attempted to disestablish the naive belief that
Plato had for ever disposed of all relativism in the Theatetus,
(1) by drawing attention to certain neglected facts, and (2)
by constructing a theory which would give as reasonable an
explanation of them as the scantiness of the whole evidence
permitted.
The point of departure for this theory was the remarkable
fact that it is impossible to find in the Thecetetus any adequate
and complete confutation of the speech which ' Socrates '
makes on behalf of Protagoras in 166-168. That this
difficulty exists was admitted by the high authority of
Prof. Burnet in his review of my pamphlet, 1 and is con-
1 No. 67, p. 422.
182 F. c. s. SCHILLER:
firmed by Mr. Gillespie, who admits that " as against the
doctrine that man has no interpret nature except himself
the (Platonic) argument has, of course, no force " (p. 490
s./.). It may therefore be taken as conceded fact. It must
moreover be taken in connexion with other facts about
Plato's criticism of Protagoreanism, which I have enumerated
in Plato or Protagoras ? and in No. 68 (pp. 523-524), concern-
ing the way in which an understanding of Protagoras's
philosophic importance grows upon Plato in his later dia-
logues, and in connexion with the difficulty Plato perceives
(in the Theatetus itself) about avoiding Protagoreanism, un-
less a satisfactory theory of error can be constructed. 1 There
exist also ancient traditions about the persecution of Pro-
tagoras under the oligarchy of the Four Hundred in 411
B.C., and the destruction of his books by the Athenians at
the instigation of Pythodorus, and of his consequent flight
and death, and it harmonises well with these traditions that
none of the subsequent Greek philosophers seem to have any
first-hand knowledge of Protagoras, and that Plato seems to
be the ultimate source of all their information. Lastly, it is a
curious fact that although the dicta about ' man the measure *
and the gods are universally assigned to Protagoras, our
knowledge of their context is a total blank, and there exist
in consequence great differences of opinion as to their real
meaning.
It is clear, therefore, that the materials for reconstructing
the authentic structure of Protagoreanism are extremely
scanty, and it follows that any theory which is adopted
must rely largely on its intrinsic coherence and plausibility
and the facility with which it covers the facts.
Now the particular theory I ventured to propound starts
by suggesting that the philosophy of Protagoras was the
outcome of his life-long experience as a teacher and observer.
No one could wander up and down the Greek world in the
fifth century B.C. without noticing the discrepancies between
the morals and mythologies of the different States, 2 and the
enormous variations of individual opinion, taste and even
sensibility. 3 Nor could he ignore the manifold signs that
the popular recognition of this same variability of human
affairs was leading to a widespread breakdown of customary
morality, and producing the social debacles so graphically
described by Thucydides. As a thoughtful man Protagoras
would surely try to understand the causes of a moral de-
1 Plato or Protagoras ? p. 25.
2 Cf. Studies in Humanism, pp. 311, 342-343.
*Ibid. t pp. 316-319.
THE HUMANISM OF PBOTAGOBAS. 183
cadence which he was professionally bound to cure. As to
these causes he appears to have come to different conclusions
in the case of morals and of theology. The contradictions
of current mythologies were so great that theology was hope-
less ; it was no use wasting time in trying to find out the
truth about the gods. But the moral problem seemed more
soluble, if one had the courage to face the facts, which were
paradoxical enough. In point of fact what constituted the
moral order everywhere and enforced it on the individual,
was social opinion, and in a sense therefore morality was
always VO/JLW, a matter of social convention. Nor were
there any definite or even visible limits to the authority of
society. Anything might be ordained as ica\ov or Si/caiov
and the queerest customs did in fact prevail. Yet it was
equally indisputable that every individual had his idio-
syncrasy, and that no amount of social pressure could enable
him to see things in any but his own individual way. It was
as useless, for example, to insist that the short-sighted man
must see as clearly as the keen-sighted, or that the colour-
blind must see as red what he saw as. grey, as to persuade
the sick man to taste as sweet what in fact tasted to him
bitter.
How then could these two facts be rendered compatible ?
It would not do to declare either that the social order or
that the individual's judgment was infallible. If the one
were, progress, if the other, education, would become im-
possible, and in the second of these at least Protagoras was
doubtless a fervent believer. At last Protagoras found a
way out of the difficulty. He announced that man was the
measure of all things. This was to assert man's spiritual
autonomy, both against the physiologers and against the
theologians, and recognised also, in a thoroughly democratic
spirit, the autonomy of every individual citizen. But the
principle had to be formulated with discretion. So far it
was no solution of the conflict between social opinion and
private judgment ; for though in different references it
vindicated both, it did not resolve the cases of conflict
between them. If it was merely democratic and merely
asserted that one man's judgment was as good as another
man's, it might easily prove subversive, and aggravate
the spiritual unrest it was designed to heal, besides
reducing to absurdity the honourable professions of the
educator and the statesman. Clearly, moreover, no one
in his senses could seriously contend that one man's judg-
ment was in every respect as good as another man's. It is
certain, therefore, that Protagoras cannot have stopped
184 F. C. S. SCHILLER :
short with the bare Dictum. He must have sought a way
of testing and standardising the ' measurings ' of different
individuals, in order to give to his dictum any scientifically
and socially applicable meaning at all. But if he sought,
is it not possible that he found ? Yet if he found a solution,
where shall we find it ?
Surely the obvious place to look for it is in Plato. Only
the stupidest or most unscrupulous controversialists succeed in
utterly obliterating the meaning of the views they controvert.
And who will call Plato either stupid or unscrupulous ? In
this case, moreover, what has a strong prima facie claim to
be part at least of the missing context stares us in the face.
Plato gives us an eloquent defence of Protagoras, which pro-
fesses to be authentic, which conforms to every criterion of
authenticity we can apply, which makes good sense, and is
internally coherent. If then we are willing to accept the
Protagoras-Speech in the The&tetus as authentic, we shall
have to dismiss as groundless all speculation as to what the
Homo Mensura might have meant in the abstract, and to re-
cognise that Protagoras's actual expedient for giving a practical
meaning to his dictum is known. It consisted simply in
this, that though he admitted that each man's truth was
' true ' for him, and remained so however much his opinions
changed, he did not infer that all ' truths ' were equally ' good '.
I.e. while he admitted that the psychic self -evidence of
personal experience was irrefragable, he strenuously disputed
that this fact equalised the value of all human experiences.
The judgments and perceptions of some might yet be im-
measurably ' better ' than those of others, and these would be
the true experts, who could guide the erring steps of com-
munities and individuals. Among such experts Protagoras
had good reason to include himself.
The Speech thus answers the three main difficulties which
the Protagorean dictum set itself to solve, and might seem an
ample context to one to whom the dictum came merely as a
floating paradox. But it can hardly be denied that it forms
rather a scanty setting for so big a principle, and that
scientifically it suggests questions which it does not answer.
How is the conflict between a man's successive ' truths '
to be interpreted ? Is it enough merely to suggest a practical
escape from facts which seem so subversive of the belief in
the consistency of truth? If one view, though not 'truer,'
can be ' better ' than another, in what ways can it be ascer-
tained which is the better view ? How can a view's ' good-
ness ' influence its * truth ' ? Why is it that the * good ' can
thus make and unmake the ' true ' ? Again, do not men
THE HUMANISM OF PROTAGORAS. 185
differ as much in their views of the ' good ' as of the ' true ' ?
Is not the subjectivity of individual judgments even more
apparent here, and the difficulty of educing objectivity just
as great?
The silence of the Speech leaves us to answer by con-
jectures. Did Protagoras really draw a hard and fast line
between the ' true ' and the ' good ' ? May he not have had
an inkling that the ' true ' was a value too ? If so, would he
not require a common method for passing from individual
judgments to social conventions in both cases, and for evalu-
ating divergent customs ? Was he not empiricist enough to
appeal to the experience of the differential consequences of
acting on the various ' truths ' believed, even if he was not
biologist enough to account for the selection and objectivity
of the ' better ' truths by their greater survival value ?
It is unlikely that none of these questions occurred in any
form to the mind of Protagoras. But, if they did, it is clear
that his answers are not recorded. The Speech therefore
may be authentic, but it is not complete, Protagoreanism.
Why is it incomplete ? Is it the fault of Protagoras or of
Plato ? The former could hardly have avoided reflection
upon some of the further problems which his position (as
stated) entailed, whereas the latter was not compelled (or
perhaps was not able), to make his exposition complete.
But if Plato knew the complete doctrine, the mere fact that
he is reporting it does not excuse its incompleteness. Surely
he was not cramped for space and might have given us more
of the reasons, and less of the moral indignation, 1 of Prota-
goras. The Speech reads like that of an injured man, too
angry to state his case in full.
It begins and ends with rebuke, and only the centre of it
is exposition (166 D-167 C), incisive and to the point, but
manifestly not the whole story. But Plato is no doubt
capable of any amount of the dramatic art he condemns so
harshly. And also perhaps of mutilating and misrepresent-
ing an opponent's position ? No, that must not be said.
What then ? Why did his Speech leave so many unsolved
questions ? Shall it be said that he extracted only the essential
points ? Was Plato, then, so lacking in perception that he
did not see the importance of what he had omitted ? Shall
it be said that he misunderstood, or did not know the whole ?
But surely he, if any one, was in a position to know what
Protagoras had really meant. Aye, he, if any one ; but did
he know?
This suggests that we have so far strangely omitted to
1 166 A-C, 167 D-168 B.
186 F. C. S. SCHILLEK :
inquire how and when Plato may be supposed to have got to
know the doctrine of Protagoras. Did he read his book as a
boy when it first came out, and before it was suppressed ?
That does not seem very probable. Or did he read it late in.
life, just before he composed the Thecetetus, and had he until
then known Protagoreanism only from hearsay ? That
again does not sound probable. If, when he composed the
Protagoras he was acquainted with its hero's books and had
grasped the ethical significance of his doctrine, why does he
betray no knowledge of the avOpwTros fierpov? And why
does so mature a student and so expert an analyst not give
us more of the Protagorean reasonings, when he does show
knowledge of their existence ? Because his eyes were pre-
judiced by the (? ignorant) attack on the Dictum committed
in the Cratylus ? If that is more credible, it is hardly more
creditable. And if the Speech is Plato's amende honorable, why
is it prefaced with scurrilities about swine and dog-faced
baboons quite in his earlier style ? * And why does not the
Platonic reply thereafter ignore his earlier misconceptions,
stick to the argument of the Speech and pulverise that ? It
does the very opposite. Again, why hesitate so long to strike
the deadly blow, -and take refuge in all sorts of irrelevancies,
digressions and inaccuracies ? And, above all, why ignore in
your confutation the very gist of the reply, the very per-
tinent distinction between truth and value, by which Pro-
tagoreauism had seemed to escape from its vulgar travesties ?'
Why leave it in doubt whether your confutation is relevant
at all ?
If Plato knew and understood it all and possessed a crushing
refutation, his tactics are passing strange. But is it con-
ceivable that his knowledge was imperfect ? Well, of course
it is, if we do not arbitrarily reject the story of the downfall
of Protagoras. What if the oligarchic persecution did in
fact successfully suppress the written records of the pestilent
enlightenment of the chief instructor of the Periclean
democracy ? The number of copies of the dangerous book
would be small, and they would mostly be in the possession
of persons in the best society, sympathetic with the new
regime, and willing to sacrifice an ex-tutor's theories to the
pressing demands of political life. The book of Protagoras
may well have perished thus. His doctrine after that would
survive only in the memory of his friends, and be cherished
with that of the man. But human memory is evanescent,,
and the details would fade, or would never have been grasped.
., 161 B.
THE HUMANISM OF PBOTAGOEAS. 187
Still when groundless and grotesque attacks were made on
the true doctrine under academic auspices, might not a man
like Theodorus well grow indignant, and expostulate with
the author of such treatment ? Does not this account
for his entry into the The&tetus ? Is the Speech, in sub-
stance, the protest of Theodorus against the outrageous
travesty of the Dictum in the Cratylus, and did Plato store
it up for future use, and bring it out again, years afterwards,
in the Thecetetus ? There is nothing in the known facts
which excludes this theory and much that supports it. It is
a hypothesis, but it explains all the facts in a simple and
adequate manner.
But it is comprehensible that some should think it too
radical a breach with the tradition. Mr. Gillespie also will
not accept it in its integrity, and tries to construct a via
media between it and the traditional interpretation. His
procedure is ingenious.
(1) He agrees with a good deal of the new view. He
agrees that the Dictum of Protagoras covers ' man ' both
generically and individually (pp. 480, 483), that it had refer-
ence to the moral crisis of the time (p. 481) and that Pro-
tagoras was an empiricist (pp. 472, 492), though he does not
suggest also that his empiricism originated in first-hand
experience. He agrees also that Protagoreanism was not
primarily directed either against the Eleatics or against the
mathematicians (pp. 477, 478). He agrees that the Speech is
intended to state the authentic doctrine of Protagoras (p. 471).
He agrees that the fusion of Protagoreanism with sensational-
ism is a combination of Plato's (p. 472). 1 Lastly, he concedes
also, though reluctantly, that the Speech is not completely
confuted in the sequel. Plato "ignores the element of util-
ity" in his reply (p. 485), and " directs his rejoinder entirely
against the relativism of the Dictum " (ibid.), and does nothing
to confute the contention that man is an ineradicable factor
in human experience (cf. p. 490 s.f. and 491).
But (2) on Mr. Gillespie's theory of the Speech this lacuna
does not matter. For Plato, not the ' pragmatism,' but the
'relativism,' of Protagoras was the enemy, and this he does
assail and confute, as he understands it 2 (pp. 487, 488). Or if he
does not quite succeed, he does so " virtually" (p. 488). 3 As
for the other incidents in the argument to which exception
had been taken, the verbal! ties and irrelevancies and in-
1 Cf. Studies in Humanism, p. 310. a Italics mine.
3 Plato himself is not so cautious, but (falsely) claims to have shown
that Protagoras's truth could not be true even to him : cf. 171 C.
188 F. c. s. SCHILLER:
accuracies, 1 the unfairnesses and harkings-back to miscon-
structions superseded by the Speech, the ' dialectical '
character of the argument covers all that (p. 491). So
criticisms of such procedures " have not the least foundation
in fact " (p. 489). Whoever thinks that Plato's sole business,
after setting up so strong a defence of Protagoras must have
been to knock it down again as speedily and effectively as
possible, is gravely mistaken. In the reply Plato is most of
the time not dealing with the authentic argument of Pro-
tagoras at all. He is diverting himself ' dialectically/ discover-
ing affinities between Protagoras and Heraclitus (p. 472)
or "condemning the polemical methods" of other critics (the
' swine-baboon' methods) who "made game of the Dictum
as an abstract principle," without regard to its context (pp.
472, 488, 492) by the somewhat curious method of repeating
their abuse in his own superior language. Or again (p. 487)
he is showing that common-sense had obvious objections
(which, as obviously fell short of the real doctrine of Pro-
tagoras), or exhibiting the reluctance of certain (imaginary)
sages to apply the Dictum consistently all round (p. 489).
In short, the argument is full of interludes and anything
rather than a straight fight to the finish between Platonism
and the authentic doctrine of Protagoras.
(3) Mr. Gillespie's theory greatly restricts the scope of the
problem. It deals only with the relation of the Protagoras-
Speech to the criticism which follows. It is in no sense a
general theory of the relations of Platonism to Protagorean-
ism. It does not even involve a general view of the structure
of the Theatetus. It renders the Speech and its ' refutation '
a mere episode which is not organically connected with the
whole argument, and neither arises out of what has preceded
nor leads on to what follows.
On my theory, on the other hand, the connexions are clear.
The first attack on Protagoreanism is a repetition of the
1 Mr. Gillespie is mistaken in his account of the argument based on
these (Plato or Protagoras ? pp. 21-23). It was not my contention that
the Speech contained the ipsissima verba of Protagoras (p. 485). It is
not even essential to my point that it should contain the ipsissima verba
of Theodorus. I merely pointed out that it is very strange that there
should be discrepancies between the Speech and the subsequent references
to it, on the theory of a Platonic authorship of its substance, while if its
source was Protagorean (Theodorus) small discrepancies might creep in.
I also pointed out that though they were verbally small, they implied a
profound misconception of the sense of the Speech. And in any case does
not the Protagorean substance of the Speech (which Mr. Gillespie admits)
sufficiently account for the ' dual personality ' I am censured for ascribing
to the author of the Thecetfftus (p. 485 n.) ?
THE HUMANISM OF PEOTAGOEAS. 189
grossly unfair misconceptions of the Cratylm. The charge
is that it cannot discriminate between a good judgment and
a bad. Any ape's judgment is as true and as good x as that
of Protagoras himself. 'Pardon me,' Protagoras is made
to reply, ' as " true" was what I said, taking true in a techni-
cal sense in which the term is restricted to truth-claims, but
never, surely, as "good".' This is the only relevant reply,
and adequate to the only charge advanced. How Mr. Gillespie
can think (pp. 474, 485) that it is not the central feature of the
Speech, but something to be ignored with impunity, I fail to
understand. Even verbally the point is made as emphatic
as the Greek language will allow (167 B). a 8rj r i v e 9 ra
(fravrda/jLara VTT o CLTT e i p la 9 a A, 77 6 r\ /caXovaiv, ey co S e
ft e X r i ft) fjbev ra erepa rcov erepwv, d\rf e a r e p a Be ovSev.
That surely dissociates ' Protagoras ' sharply from the un-
critical persons who could be crushed by ' swine-baboon '
methods of criticism. No one who read the Speech for the
first time, with a mind unprejudiced by Plato's subsequent
polemics and innocent of the disputes about ' relativism,'
could fail to be struck with the fact that the distinction be-
tween the ' true ' and the ' good ' is the * nerve ' of the argu-
ment, regarding it as a reply to what has gone before.
But what of what follows after ? What of the reply to
the Speech ? Certainly that too may throw light on its
meaning. But on Mr. Gillespie' s theory it becomes a farrago
of digressions and irrelevancies and appeals to side issues,
which never, on his own showing, amounts to a complete
answer. From a logical point of view Plato's reply is in-
adequate, and from a literary it is bad workmanship.
On my theory also it is no answer ; but it was not intended
to be. Plato did -not attempt a direct answer to what was
unanswerable. So he gives us a masterly attempt to con-
ceal the fact that no answer was forthcoming, so masterly
indeed that for over 2000 years it has served its purpose and
persuaded mankind that it was an entirely successful answer,
It is a triumph of art ; and this is a sufficient explanation
and vindication of its dialectical windings.
And lastly, how is the whole Protagoras episode logically
connected with the discussion of Error which follows ?
Simply enough : if the doctrine of Protagoras (as understood
by Plato) is false, and if it is not true that all truth-claims
are alike ' true/ some of them must be false while yet claiming
to be * true '. It becomes imperative therefore to discriminate
between true ' truths ' and false. Now the essence of Error is
to take as ' true ' what is ' false ' ; hence the possibility of
1 ' No worse ' would be more literal : <-f. 162 C.
190 F. C. S. SCHILLEK :
Error must be explained, if the ' Protagorean ' identification
of truth and truth-claim, which abolishes Error as such, is
repudiated. If no satisfactory theory of Error can be found,
the result is simply a relapse into Protagoreanism, as Plato
{after several failures) candidly hints. 1
On Mr. Gillespie's theory no such connexion can be traced.
Nor can anything intelligible be made of the lack of all re-
ference to the Dictum in Plato's mentions of Protagoras
before the Cratylus, and of the ignorance of the other Greek
philosophers on the subject of Protagoras. There is no
account of how the Speech came to be authentic ; Mr.
Gillespie merely states that he does not accept my sugges-
tions (p. 470 n.). Nay, even the most proximate and germane
questions have to be passed over lightly. The 1 delicate ques-
tion whether Plato had read the author he was criticising is
regarded as settled by a remark of ' Theaetetus ' in the dia-
logue that he had (p. 471). But what else could Plato plaus-
ibly make him say ? The Speech is supposed to epitomise
Protagoras's magnum opus, but in order to explain why it is so
unlike a cold-blooded epitome, alike in the conciseness of its
reasoning and the fullness of its indignation, it is necessary
to suppose that less than half of it is really an epitome, and
that Plato needed most of it in order to express his repro-
bation of the unfair (' swine-baboon ') methods of the ignor-
ant critics, whose attack on the bare Dictum he had put so
effectively in 161 C, and was going to endorse again in 169 D-
E, after he had set aside the whole Speech (p. 473). This
explanation seems improbable ; but it is perhaps better than
nothing.
(4) It would seem then that Mr. Gillespie's theory does
not cover the whole ground. It neither (1) accounts for all
the facts, nor (2) does it account for those it notices very
simply. Nor (3) does it redound to the honour of Plato. It
no doubt makes him out a great ' dialectician,' but only if the
translation of * dialectician ' into plain English is taken to be
something like ' dishonest trickster'. Now I am aware that
history shows that the word ' dialectic ' is very elastic and can
be made to cover any number of philosophic sins, but surely
there are limits to its fashionable use as a euphemism for a
bad argument. We must not get into the habit of thinking
that gross irrelevance, unfairness, and improbability are
promptly sanctified by applying to them the word ' dialec-
tical '. Elsewhere, e.g. in the first book of the Republic, Plato
shows that he can handle ' dialectic ' quite differently. And
1 190 E. Cf. Plato or Protagoras ? pp. 25-28. I have argued elsewhere
that this is the logical position of rationalism to this day.
THE HUMANISM OF PROTAGORAS. 191
in particular Mr. Gillespie's suggestion (p. 473) that the pro-
tests ' Protagoras ' makes against the captious criticism, to
which his dictum has been subjected in the ' swine-baboon '
passage, is expressive of Plato's own abhorrence of this great
Socratic art, is a severe strain on the most amiable credulity.
With every willingness, therefore, to allow for varying
estimates of the probabilities of internal evidence, I cannot
see that Mr. Gillespie gets round the main fact that on my
interpretation the Speech is a straightforward and effective
answer to the most obvious and effective objection to the
Dictum, whereas on his theory it is not, and the ensuing
criticism, whether 'dialectical' or not, is incomplete and
ineffective.
(5) Moreover, it does not seem as though Mr. Gillespie's
theory admitted of being stated either (a) with a. due re-
gard to the facts, or (6) in a wholly consistent manner.
It requires him at times to make assertions which are
clearly untenable and to come very near contradicting him-
self.
(a) He could hardly substantiate the assertion on page 481
that on Protagorean principles a judgment " does not claim to
be true except for the maker". Not only is this not asserted by
Protagoras, but it denies the real crux of the situation. If sub-
jective experience were content to be merely subjective, it
would lead to no conflict with other similar but incompat-
ible judgments, and would produce no problem. It is pre-
cisely because all men and all societies think their own views
true, because the claim of the judgment is universal, that
there is trouble. For these claims cannot all be valid to-
gether. They must somehow be selected from to form a
rational system and a social order. If Protagoras perceived
this, as his distinction between the ' truth ' and the ' good-
ness ' of an opinion plainly shows, it cannot be correct to
say that "he laid no claim to superior wisdom" (p. 481);
and accordingly in 166 D Plato makes him say that one man's
judgment may differ ten-thousand-fold from another man's.
Moreover, in 167 C it is implied, and in 167 D it is ex-
plained, that the ' better ' judges may properly be called
* wiser '.
Nor again does Mr. Gillespie's exegesis of the Protagorean
philosophy of politics seem to accord either with the text of
167 C or with the logic of the doctrine. The case of a city
which takes a ' worse ' view of the just is precisely parallel
to that of the individual who takes a ' worse ' view of the
true : in eitjier case there is need for the expert, the speaker
or teacher, who can make them take a ' better ' view. Again
192 F. c. s. SCHILLER:
there is no ' restriction ' of the claim, though there is of the
validity, of the individual judgment. 1
Lastly, it does not seem satisfactory to translate the dyaObv
of the Speech by 'utility' rather than 'value,' and Mr.
Gillespie should not have let the use of a-vpfapov in the
Platonic reply colour his translation of the text of the Speech.
He surely would not translate the "ISea TOV ayadov as the
' Idea of Utility ' ? 2
(&) It seerns difficult to harmonise Mr. Gillespie's views
about the substance of the Protagoras-Speech. He began
(p. 471) by agreeing that its matter was authentic. Yet on
page 485 he censures me, for inferring from this same premiss
that some notice must be taken of the wording of the Speech,
and insists that as this is by (or in ?) Plato, it constitutes no
independent evidence of the meaning of Protagoras. In
the next paragraph he again holds that the Speech sub-
stantially reproduces views of Protagoras in the language of
Plato. If so, why may we not take account of the emphatic
passage in 167 B ?
Again, is Mr. Gillespie's apologia for Plato's polemical
procedure really adequate ? He holds that Plato considered
the ' pragmatism ' in the Speech to be so secondary to the
' relativism ' that he confined his attentions wholly to the
latter. But even granting (as I cannot do) that this is a
1 Mr. Gillespie's conception of the relations of claim and validity does
not seem quite clear. The remark (p. 483) referred to should run " this
doctrine implied a restriction of the claim of the moral judgment ". But
it is not true, either in Protagoras or in fact, that it " does not claim to be
valid " beyond each social group. On p. 486 he, more correctly, represents
the Platonic ' Protagoras ' as asserting the identity of ' claim ' and
' validity '. But this seems inconsistent with the passage on p. 481.
2 There are a good many slips, mostly of a minor kind, in Mr. Gillespie's
exposition of my views, and he by no means meets all my arguments.
But I will only refer to his initial misconception that I regard the Pro-
tagoras of the Thecetetus as enunciating ' ' the fundamental principle of
Pragmatism " (which is that the truth of assertions must be tested by
their consequences). This principle certainly does not occur in the text.
What does occur is the suggestion that a question of its ' good ' (or
value) may be raised about a ( truth ' (or fact). As the doctrine stands
this is not a " subsumption of truth under the concept of utility " (p.
479), nor is it my own view, because it does not recognise a distinction
between claim and validity in the realm of truth- value ; but it is some-
thing noteworthy and quite unique in ancient philosophy. I carefully
pointed all this out (Plato or Protagoras ? pp. 17-18 ; Studies, p. 36). But
I also doubted whether the Platonic account, being probably at second-
hand, could on this point be trusted, and hinted that Protagoras may
really have gone further. The real and undisputed feat by which Pro-
tagoras earned the right to be called a humanist, is of course the discovery
of the Homo Mensura itself, and it is this that I regard as- his " central
doctrine ".
THE HUMANISM OF PROTAGORAS. 193
proper interpretation of the text of the Speech, does this
really make the reply relevant ? The relativism of the Speech
was nothing new, like its pragmatism. The bare Dictum
affirmed it. It could have been and was criticised without
introducing the Speech at all, and in fact it continues to
be criticised as though the Speech had never been made.
The other new points in the Speech are ignored similarly, 1
and such minor points as are referred to are misconstrued. 2
As a new document, therefore, in the case the Speech is
quite inoperative, and for all the logical difference it makes
might have been eliminated altogether.
How then can my contention that Plato's reply ignores
the Speech be said to have " not the least foundation "
(p. 489) ? On Mr. Gillespie's own showing, it has abundant
foundation. A distinct, and the essentially new, point in
the Speech is ignored, when it is admitted that the reply is
"directed entirely against the relativism of the dictum"
(p. 485). And to urge that " if Plato in his defence treated
the element of utility as being secondary and ignored it in his
reply we have no right ... to regard it as primary" (ibid.),
is manifestly to beg the question. However much estimates
of the relative importance of factors in an argument may
differ, Mr. Gillespie cannot get round the fact that the ' new
facts ' in the Speech are not examined at all, and that there-
fore the Speech is not completely answered.
And in the end he admits this himself. What Plato refutes
is not ' man the measure ' but ' man the maker ' of the world
(pp. 490-491). But this is ultra-modern, and who ever attri-
buted to Protagoras a belief that man is " the complete
magister natures" and "the sole arbiter of his destiny"?
Certainly not Plato, and certainly not I. 3
Lastly, I cannot extract any really consistent meaning out
of Mr. Gillespie's views of the Protagorean attitude towards
truth-claims and their value and validity. The dicta which
a student of his theory has to harmonise are these : (1)
" Protagoras is made to assert degrees of value and deny
degrees of truth" (p. 479); (2) Protagoreanism implies "a
restriction of the validity of the moral judgment. The moral
judgment does not claim to be valid beyond the sphere of the
social group which forms it " (pp. 483-484) ; (3) Protagoras does
not "see that the judgment claims a universal validity"
(p. 484) ; (4) he " draws a distinction between a belief and its
value ; so do we all " (p. 486) ; (5) ' Protagoras ' does not &-
1 Plato or Protagoras ? p. 18. 2 Ibid., pp. 2 Q
:< Cf. Studies, pp. 320-321.
13
194 F. c. s. SCHILLER:
that the ' value ' of a belief gives it ' validity,' but regards
truth and utility (goodness) as conceptions with no point of
contact (p. 486); (6) to Plato's 'Protagoras' "belief and
validity are the same" (p. 488, of. p. 486); (7) "there is no
justification whatever for the view that Protagoras taught
that truth is a ' value ' or any similar Pragmatist doctrine "
(p. 492). Of these dicta No. 1 seems to me to be true, and Nos.
2, 3, and 7 to be false, while Nos. 4, 5, and 6 seem seriously
misleading. But it seems clear that the first and the last
implicitly contradict each other. For if the Platonic ' Pro-
tagoras ' asserts ' degrees of value ' among * truths,' he clearly
brings ' truth ' and value into connexion, and it becomes im-
perative to consider also how the real Protagoras may have
conceived the relations of truth and value. Hence there is
at least a possibility that he not only described ' truths ' as
differing in 'goodness,' but as sorts of 'goodness'. But this
possibility was not asserted by me as a certainty.
The fourth and sixth dicta similarly seem to be incom-
patible; for if Protagoras identified belief (claim) and validity
in judgments that claim ' truth/ how could he distinguish
between a belief and its value, seeing that it is only by the
.approved value of a claim that its validity is established ?
The way from a belief which is as yet a mere claim to its
acknowledged validity lies through experience of its value,
&nd if validity is conceded to a claim, a fortiori value must
ibe. To make Mr. Gillespie's dicta intelligible it is necessary
to add that whereas ' validity ' is used in a logical sense only,
* value ' is ambiguous, and may be either logical or teleological
(moral). Now ' value ' is used in its teleological sense in the
first dictum and in the logical sense in the fifth, while in the
fourth and seventh it is used ambiguously. The simple
truth of course is that Plato's 'Protagoras' makes teleo-
logical value or ' goodness ' the criterion for discriminating
between conflicting truth-claims, and that to this extent he
does not identify ' claim ' and ' validity/ though he allows all
claims to retain the label 'true/ which however no longer
retains its traditional meaning, just because the distinct on
between truth (claim) and value has been introduced. This
distinction is quite unparalleled in Greek philosophy, and it
seems strange to conceive it as denying a point of contact
between truth and value (c/. No. 5) ; to make the ' good ' con-
trol the ' true ' is surely to bring them into a closer relation
^n they were in before and to deny that they are utterly
<int to each other, even though it does not amount to
' ~uth a sort of value. Mr. Gillespie's account fastens
ical point that truth is not expressly called a
THE HUMANISM OF PROTAGORAS. 195
-value, and overlooks the enormous advance involved in find-
ing any connexion at all between the two conceptions. My
theory recognised the great originality of the ' Protagoras *
of the Speech, and suggested that the real Protagoras must
have had reasons to go further still ; Mr. Gillespie's has to
blind itself to the existence of any novelty at all, and has
no excuse for this arbitrary procedure but Plato's artful avoid-
ance of the novelties in the Speech.
Finally, I will try to explain an argument in my pamphlet
(p. 23) which Mr. Gillespie finds obscure (p. 491), and has in
fact failed to apprehend. It refers to what I called the ' com-
promise ' offered to the Protagorean principle in 172 A-B. It
was to be admitted that what a city affirms in its laws as
' just ' and ' beautiful ' is to be regarded as such ' in truth,'
but that nevertheless it may be no judge of what is ' advan-
tageous '. Now it is clear that this proposal is incompatible
with thorough-going Protagoreanism, and forms a thoroughly
illogical compromise which tries to slur over the real crux,
viz. that though cities have the power to give social currency
to their estimates of the just and virtuous, and no individual
can gainsay them, yet the laws they enact may nevertheless be
bad and wrong, and ultimately ruinous. On my theory this
fact had formed one of the data which the Protagorean theory
was designed to explain. The explanation, as given in
167 C, I took to be that States needed expert advisers
rhetors ') as much as individuals, and that the true states-
man's advice was more valuable and so capable of reforming
the existing laws. Consequently the genuine Protagoreanism
of the Speech cannot make a distinction between what a city
thinks about the ' just ' and about the ' advantageous '. In
both cases what it thinks is ' true,' but may be ' bad '. The
argument of 172 A-B, however, whether ' dialectical' or not,
is totally irrelevant to this position. Whether certain
persons were willing to make an illogical and futile compro-
mise on the question or not, and whether they represented
4 educated opinion ' or not, is nihil ad rem. It is not the posi-
tion of * Protagoras ' in the Speech, and Plato is merely con-
fusing the issue by introducing an indefensible position
which he had not to reply to, instead of an unassailable one
he was bound to deal with. His motives for this substitu-
tion are a matter of conjecture, and Mr. Gillespie is free to
form his ; but he should recognise the facts.
To conclude, Mr. Gillespie's interpretation of the whole
discussion appears to me to suffer from the same prejudice
which has baffled attempts to analyse the Theatetus truly all
196 F. C. S. SCHILLER : THE HUMANISM OF PROTAGORAS.
along : he continues to read the Speech in the light of the
reply, and to accept PJato's official assurances that all is well
with it, instead of noting the actual arguments of the Speech
and comparing them with their soi-disant refutations. 1
In spite of this lingering prejudice, however, Mr. Gillespie's
interpretation means a great declension from any fanatically
Platonist position. He admits that the Protagoras of the
Speech is not disposed of, and that philosophy has reason to
remember the humanism of the genius who discovered that
" in dealing with the problems of life we must ultimately rely
on our judgments concerning things " (p. 491). It is vain to
condemn this as ' relativism,' so long as you can neither deny
the fact, nor explain how it is possible to pass from the
human to the ' absolute ' aspect of things.
1 Another good example of the subtle distortions to which this method
leads may be found on p. 489. In 178-179 * Socrates ' is (irrelevantly)
refuting the ' unqualified ' Protagoreanism of the unexplained dictum and
the unauthentic substitute propounded in 172 A, and incidentally showing
that the anti-intellectualism of 167 A-C has not been understood. But
Mr. Gillespie is led to describe the situation as being that te Protagoras
had reduced the superiority of the wise to superiority in power. Socrates
shows that this power rests on superiority in knowledge." In point of
fact there is no reference in the text to the Speech, and no mention of
* power'; 'Socrates' simply ignores it and dogmatically reasserts that
one man is ' wiser ' than another (the why and how of which was precisely
what the Speech had explained on Protagorean principles), and the
demand of the Speech had been, not that the superiority of the wise
should be ' reduced,' but that it should be enhanced (and paid for !), by
being made practically efficacious. * Protagoras ' had declared plainly
that mere superior knowing was not sufficient and that superior doing was
the real aim both of moral instruction and statesmanship. To all this
there is not the slightest reference in the Platonic reply, and yet Mr.
Gillespie will not see that it is irrelevant and incomplete 1
III. THE GROUND OF APPEARANCES. 1
BY E. D. FAWCETT.
The main contention is that Nature and conscious individuals are
evolved in time out of what can be best likened not to a Cosmic Reason
or Will, &c., but to Imagination.
I PROPOSE to advance what I believe to be a novel view
regarding that Power whose transformations show in Nature
and the history of conscious spirit. And, first, let me fix the
meaning of a term, surely of ambiguous import, which
figures in my title. By ' appearances ' I mean just what are
styled ordinarily, but somewhat uglily, phenomena. In using
this term I am not hinting, in absolutist fashion, that the
said appearances are more or less unreal and that thought
about them is, for this reason, more or less false. Appear-
ances, I must contend, while they do not exhaust, are com-
prised in, Reality. They are such portions of Reality as
thrust themselves with varied degrees of insistence on con-
scious life; sometimes showing fully within experience,
sometimes only partially and darkly, sometimes again not
being present directly at all, though attesting their existence
indirectly through what they work. 3 And an inquiry into
the Ground of these appearances is not a quest of the ' un-
knowable ' not the attempt to refer them, in Spencer's
fashion, to a surd. For the Ground in so far as it sires
Nature and conscious individuals, can be observed in what it
becomes and is qualified by what it does. It is reality which
discloses its fundamental character in the appearances them-
selves. This character, as we shall note, is psychical. But
we need not, perhaps, rest content with this vague char-
acterisation. There seems scope for much richer and more
satisfactory thinking. Nay, it may be feasible to go back in
thought to a remote stage in the history of the Ground to
1 A paper (with certain additional matter) read before the Oxford Philo-
sophical Society.
2 <7/. however, below, p. 208.
3 For such indirectly attested appearances, cf. my Individual and
Keality, pp. 99 et seq.
198 E. D. FAWCETT :
suggest e.g., albeit obscurely, how Space, Time-Succession,
Nature and conscious finite centres that enigma which for
Bradley and other absolutists is insoluble arose. And looking
forward to the future we may be able to form a concept of
the consummation the ' divine event ' as Tennyson would
have styled it towards which the finite centres arising in
the present world-era seem to move. These are bold asser-
tions, I must allow, and, needless to say, I am not prepared
to make them good in the course of a brief paper. Those
who are interested are referred to my work The Individual
and Reality. That essay is an attempt to indicate the general
drift of reality in so far at any rate as it concerns mankind.
It was written, not as idle speculation, but with some genuine
regard to the exigencies of proof ! To-night, however, I have
to take heed of the flight of time and cannot possibly contrive
to make good all my debatable contentions as I go. I am
compelled, indeed, to deal largely in mere suggestions with
the reminder that objectors may find elsewhere some answers
to inevitable criticisms.
In the essay of which I made mention, Idealism or as some,
perhaps, will prefer to term it, Panpsychism is the dominant
note. Sentient life is found to explore reality from the inside ;
experience-content to sample the stuff of which the universe
is made. So far, so good. But there are many forms of
Idealism ; hence the statement just made will not carry us
very far. The object, accordingly, of the essay is to find
what form of Idealism is most adequate to the reality which
has to be thought. Metaphysics is regarded as an inquiry
into the general character of Keality, and the problem is to
interpret Keality, with full appreciation of the deeper riddles
presented by Nature and conscious life, on panpsychistic
lines. I say " full appreciation " advisedly. It seems absurd
to acclaim any system as successful, so long as these all-
important riddles remain unread. Yet, even Hegel ianism,
lost in conceptual mazes, has left the position of sensible
objects and the standing of finite centres, such as humans
and animals, grievously obscure. It has dispelled nothing of
the mystery which enwraps Nature and the appalling tragedy
of sentient life. The individualist metaphysics of the future
will tolerate no pretentious failures of this sort. Metaphysics,,
however general may be its survey, will have to treat these
issues with the supreme respect which they ought to com-
mand.
I must mediate my discussion of the Ground by indicating
briefly in what manner I was led to approach this topic in
the Essay.
THE GROUND OF APPEARANCES. 199
The purpose which animates the metaphysician is the
attainment of one sort of truth truth about the general
character of reality. And what he conies to acquire is just
an arrangement of statements (a human-propositional make-
shift, a poor and unsatisfactory possession, but still his own)
which, in view of his limited end, can be substituted for
reality for reality at large as taken together or 'cow-pre-
hended ' in mental and merely symbolic representation. A
metaphysical system consists of such propositions arranged
according to a plan, and is true if these propositions agree,
sufficiently for the purpose in view, with the reality for which
they have been substituted and stand. Thinking is ordinarily
purposive, though not always so ; for the most part, as ob-
served by Dr. Bosanquet, we judge towards an interest.
And because at this moment I am interested only in abstract
aspects of reality, the truth-system of metaphysics, highly
selective though it is, serves my turn. I can suppose, how-
ever, that there exist superhumans to whom this vaunted
truth-system would seem ridiculous, a mere weariness of the
soul. An intuitive understanding for which there is no con-
trast of 'truth' and 'fact,' strikes me, in sooth, as ideally
preferable.
The truth-system, in short, is just a dodge or device. It
enables me to feign that synoptic view of things which my
limitations, at first sight, seem to preclude. For I am think-
ing, after all, only within the petty circle of my experience.
I have to fish in a very tiny pool, which is held to sample
somehow the ocean. And there can be no quite satisfactory
' catch ' even in the tiny pool, since most of the fish slip
through the meshes of my verbal-intellectual net. Truth to
tell, too little is embraced in abstract prepositional thought.
And, alas ! the portions of that little are not present to me
simultaneously. I have to run over my unfortunate ' system *
bit by bit. I am like a miser never sure of my money save
when I am counting it ! I think, aridly and abstractly, about
the universe. And I am never able to confront the results of
my thinking as simultaneously present aspects of an impres-
sive whole.
Truth on the above showing arises in individuals ; without
presupposing a cosmic Thought- Whole "self-fulfilling and
self-fulfilled ". And with decay of faith in this unverifiable
Thought- Whole, the interest in Hegelian and like intellectual-
ist attitudes is flickering out. We proceed, then, to dethrone
the Concept regarded as prius. It remains to become frankly
empiricists, and return to concrete appearances to the
"flux ". Schopenhauer (real herald of the movement which
200 E. D. FAWCETT :
has as its modern phases pragmatism, Bergsonism and so
forth) is the Luther of this great metaphysical reformation.
Schelling, also, in his later works condemned the cult of the
Concept and with that the imposing Truth-system of Hegel,
doing much thereby to prepare the way for the radical em-
piricism which is active in metaphysics to-day. Did he not
urge us to get back to the dynamic of the live appearances,
not overlooking concrete reality for love of dead substitutes ?
It is well to draw attention to the service rendered by these
two men lovers of new things have forgotten sometimes
where the credit for novel initiative has lain. But with this
bare allusion to the matter, I must pass on.
So much for " Truth ". And now as to the manner of
attaining it. I have laid stress on the need for the return to
concrete appearances. I have to consider forthwith what
text of appearance is available for metaphysics to read.
Well : I am aware of certain indubitable appearances con-
tent of the subjective and objective sides of the centre of con-
sciousness which I call " mine ". I cannot crawl, it seems,
outside the field of this consciousness, save in idea. And all
excursions in idea are attended with theoretical risks. Hence
a provisional Solipsism is adopted, and for this justification
may be sought even in an absolutist quarter. Does not
Bradley aver " My experience falls within my own circle, a
circle closed on the outside ; and, with all its elements alike,
every sphere is opaque to the others which surround it 'V
My own Sentient experience, regarded provisionally as a
' closed circle,' is, accordingly, the starting-point. I pass on
to consider appearances, i.e. the aspects of my sentient ex-
perience, as I am aware of them within the ' closed circle '
and conclude that they are real, and if the so-called " Law "
of Contradiction is taken too seriously, often 'contradic-
tory ' as well. But I must hasten. Considering my Finite
Centre, or * closed circle ' itself at some length I reach the
following results. Its content " is not bare discretes, but
comes whole ; that consciousness is no independent witness,
but is inseparable from this said content ; that content may
be lit by clear consciousness, show dimly in the twilight
of the subconscious, or be continuous with process tbat is
entirely dark. Consciousness is the form which activity
below the conscious level may take. We agreed that the
Changeless, the merely Simple, the merely Unitary Ego,
and the Ego viewed as unknowable substance, are myth.
Psychological idealism is invalid. The empirical ' mind '
1 Appearance and Reality, p. 346
THE GROUND OF APPEARANCES. '201
and ' world ' are distinctions within the Centre : distinctions
preceded by Mill's Neutrum at which stage only a confused
feeling-complex obtains. There is a Whole-Feeling, or
super-relational awareness, answering to the content-whole
in which ' mind ' and ' world ' take their rise. This con-
tent-whole, again, might be lodged in a Monad; but
Monadisrn is unsatisfactory, creating difficulties too grave to
be overcome. Content, withal, implicates a mother-stuff
which appears, or is manifested, in it. If, however, this mother-
stuff is not a Monad,^ what is it? This is the consideration
which is now looming large. Let us admit that the origin
and standing of the Finite Centre are still far to seek." 1
Pursuing always the project of crawling out slowly and
tentatively in idea, from my microcosm into a hypothetical
macrocosm, I pass to the consideration of the tremendous
riddles embraced under the head of Nature. The problem
of Nature is treated at first along with the problem of Ejects,
as was the case in my former work. The belief in a
mechanical Nature is shown to be eminently useful, and ab-
surdly untrue. And by way of an argument based on the
belief in Ejects in transcendent conscious centres whose esse
does not consist in the fact that they are inferred by me I
contend that I have shattered that form of agnosticism which
grew out of Kant's famous inconsequence, the thing-in-itself.
There are no unknowable ' things-in-themselves ' at the back
of sensible objects, but there exist assuredly transcendent
regions of Nature regions which do not fall necessarily within
any direct conscious experience at all. These unpresented
regions, however, are psychical in character. The evidence
justifies belief that they comprise (not, indeed, what have
been called monads but) genuine psychical ' minor centres '
fundamentally akin to the ' major centre ' in which I myself
arise. 1 ' And much, it would seem, may be known (e.g. that
they are spatial, show the secondary qualities, etc.) about
certain of these ' minor centres ' by direct observation of their
behaviour in connexion with my conscious life. Incidentally
it is seen that there are as many ' shadow-natures ' as there are
perceiving individuals, but that there obtains, also, a macro-
cosmic or enveloping common Nature, and that this macro-
cosm is a continuous reality with aspects related in time and
space : a point on which I cannot now dwell. It may prove
feasible to speculate as to how this common giant Nature
came to exist. And when we grapple with the problem, we
1 Individual and Reality, p. 83.
3 William James considered that the case had been made out satisfac-
torily.
202 E. D. FAWCETT:
shall find, perhaps, that it is the so-called ' secondary"
qualities of objects which are truly primary ; a reversal of
the popular supposition which is worth noting.
But ignoring side-issues, let us agree that Nature is psychi-
cal in character. We continue by considering the manner
in which a conscious centre arises and unfolds along with a
body. 1 Tentative solutions of a great variety of problems
become urgent e.g. problems of the relations of conscious
life and body, of sensible perception and the " categories "
(which latter in their German form seem superfluous assump-
tions; no "universals of thought" being implied by the rise
of the object-experience) ; of the sundering of subject and
object, and of the growth of an Imperium in imperio in con-
nexion with brain a growth such that the conscious centre
awakes slowly to hold sway ; though only a ' constitutional *
sway, within the very determining conditions in alliance with
which it arose. The later story of a conscious centre nega-
tives the view that a dynamic operative solely from below,
can furnish a complete explanation of all the ways in which
the centre comes to will and think. Determinism, I have
urged, is untenable, while, pace Bergson, its unsoundness
may not be removed utterly from the sphere of explanation.
I must refrain, however, from dwelling on not directly-rele-
vant topics such as these.
In Part III. we reach our present theme the discussion
as to the character of the Ground. I have crawled in idea
out of my so-called 'closed circle' so as to compass a feigned
experience of other sentient beings and of a giant Nature of
which, in the main, I have no direct knowledge. And now
I want to make my inferred knowledge my feigned experi-
ence of the macrocosm more adequate. I want to know
of what power or powers Nature and the innumerable
sentient finites allied with it are the expressions or transfor-
mations. I say ' transformations,' because it will be borne
on me later that the Ground or Power which lies in and
behind all becoming does not merely reveal, in Hegelian
language, " what it is in itself ". The Universe, it is arguable,
shows alternating phases of changelessness and change. 2
And in a change-phase, that in which histories of progress
and decay, of evolution and dissolution, happen, there seems
to be a continual accession of novelty to the real. The
Ground does not merely turn itself inside out to show in the
1 " Body " can be understood in two very different ways : Individual and
Reality, p. 160. Body, as I perceive it, is merely an appearance within
the " shadow-nature " peculiar to my private experience.
2 Individual and Reality, p. 270 et seq.
THE GROUND OF APPEARANCES. 20&
becoming ; it changes, is indefinitely plastic. A recognition
of this fact prepares us to consider the revolutionary hypo-
thesis which I shall submit later.
The character of the Ground must, of course, be considered
as psychical. There is no empirical case for belief in reality
which is not psychical. Experience-content samples the
stuff of which the universe is made. On the other hand,
psychical reality may not exist universally in forms such as-
we group under the head of ' conscious life '.
Faith-attitudes respecting the Ground of Becoming da
not concern philosophy. Faith speaks in conflicting voices
and that which is said concerns the heart rather than the
head. And Intuitionist deliverances, which profess to dis-
pense with inference, are also in the main very unsatisfactory.
Intuition which does not present the alleged " intuited " is
idle. As I have urged elsewhere l :
" Intuitionism, like Faith, gives rise to a babel of discord-
ant voices. There is, of course, a genuine experience in-
volved, and I conceive it to be just this. What really is
intuited is the Centre-continuum which is genuinely felt (Part
II. Chap II. 8) and which is certainly more than the inward or
restricted empirical self (ibid., 7). Now the use made of the
experience is improper. It occurs within the circle of an
individual. But it is taken to reveal a reality, the vastly
greater portion of which must fall outside this circle. In fine,
the experience is used " transcendently " and serves to vali-
date just what the particular intuitionist requires. Very note-
worthy is the language of Spencer: "Our consciousness of
the unconditioned being literally the unconditioned conscious-
ness or raw material of thought, to which in thinking we
give definite forms, it follows that an ever-present sense of
reality is the very basis of our intelligence ". What is this
" raw material of thought" but the unbroken continuum of
the Centre ? It is an immanent fact, not a transcendent
Absolute. A'^.d seeing, also, that it is " real existence " and is
" known " likewise through and through, it is certainly not
the Unknowable Absolute of which Spencer writes. Clearly
there is a little mistake here and the confusion is well
worth noting.
The attitude of Bradley is no less unsatisfactory than that
of a Spencer or Schelling. He, too, uses the experience above
noted to attest his Absolute. He objects, it will be remem
bered, to the assertion that his Absolute is * 'un verifiable "
and professes not to understand what is meant. He holds
Individual and Reality, p. 238.
204 E. D. FAWCETT:
that "the Absolute is in a sense the given fact and that to
leap to it from fact by transcendence is unmeaning". There
is that in my experience which is above subject and object.
And in this given reality above subject and object he finds
the Absolute.
My reply is that the " unverifiability " alleged means
simply that Bradley's Absolute is not found in my sentient
experience. " My experience," he has informed us, " falls
within my own circle." And the kind of experience on
which he lays stress is not the Absolute any more than it
is the communicative deity of St. Teresa and like ecstatics.
It is just experience of the background of the finite Centre of
that residual unanalysed content in which nothing particular
stands out. But why call this more or less unbroken con-
tinuum the Absolute i.e. reality which is held to be above
time, and space and differences? The continuum is cer-
tainly not above time and space, while differences are found
to swarm in it as soon as the focus of attention shifts. To
leap from this " given" background to an elaborately con-
ceptual Absolute, to the perfect, complete harmony which is
above time, we must proceed " by transcendence ". The said
conceptual Absolute is of the nature of an ' overbelief ' which
sentient experience does not support.
Let us, then, avoid these leaps which a Schelling, a Spencer
and a Bradley, to mention no others, make in different
directions as their particular philosophical proclivities dictate.
We had better proceed by continuing our thinking in the
cautious manner in which we began. It is useless to rely
merely on direct insight ; the individual filling too petty a
tract of Keality to be able to talk about a " consciousness of
the unconditioned " and so forth. His direct consciousness is
of experiences within his little circle. And to interpret these
experiences as revelations of the Absolute or of god is to
supplement the " given" with an inference and to abandon the
original intuitionism in which reliance was placed. It is one
thing to assert that I experience somewhat which I label
the Absolute or god. It is another thing to aver that the
Absolute exists beyond my experience as well as in it that
it is more than a concept which subserves my particular
mode of reconstructing appearances in thought.
Passing, then, to hypotheses which avowedly appeal to in-
ference and supply " proofs," we note that form of Theism
which believes in a " sum-total of all reality and perfection "
which it regards as self-conscious. Our concern is with the
view that God is the ultimate ground of the world-order and
of the finite individuals conceived as in it. It is unnecessary
THE GBOUND OF APPEARANCES. 205
to assail the older Ontological, Cosmological and Teleological
arguments which have been adduced in support of this view.
These arguments are admittedly unsatisfactory. Happily this
" sum-total of all reality and perfection " is not the God of
the plain man, who, when of the theistic persuasion, puts his
trust in a finite being ; in a person who can manifest in
relations of space and time. The philosopher's god of the
Kantian ' unconditioned-ground-of-all reality ' type may be
dethroned without prejudice to popular theism.
The design argument has, withal, a very important bear-
ing on the case for theism and even for polytheism. The
apparent marks of purpose in our corner of the cosmos
may point, as I have urged elsewhere, to a finite god
nay, to a plurality of finite superhumans as a causal
power working in space and time. But even a supreme
finite god, if such there be, need not be regarded as personal
in the customary sense of the term we may be considering
a power born from the coalescence of conscious centres, of
once discrete individuals who, in prior aeons of cosmic story,
have reaped the rich harvest of their plurality of lives. 1 We
may be considering, in fine, not a mere individual, but the
Supreme Society.
There is an argument, much favoured by conservative
idealists, to the effect that the perception of reality, viewed
as experience, justifies an inference to God. God is pre-
supposed by the fact that a cosmos appears. " The analogy
of the preceiving consciousness is transferred to the universe
or universe-consciousness, and, as perceived, reality is simply
relation in time to a subject out of time, so is all the reality
of the universe." God is not the mere " First Cause " of
the crude cosmological argument, but the Self, an eternally
complete consciousness, the presupposition as well of finite
individuals as of things, which both goes beyond, and is
immanent in, the fragmentary time-shows we face. Idea-
lism of this type holds that self-consciousness " never began,
because it never was not. It is the condition of there being
such a thing as beginning or end."
There is inference, then, on these idealistic lines, to a self-
conscious Ground.
Having dealt at length with this argument elsewhere, 2 1
will only indicate its main defects now. (1) The assertion
that reality, as perceived by me, is relation to a subject out
of time, cannot stand (2) self-consciousness is a stage in a
1 Cf. the discussion as to the hypothetical " supreme society " :.
Individual and Reality, pp. 429-449.
2 Individual and Reality, p. 246 et seq.
4 206 E. D. FAWCETT :
development : is what may be called a midway point in a
psychical scale which starts from the subconscious.
Even in my waking hours I am not always seZ/-consciou&
there obtains at times merely consciousness. And, again,
all conscious states have fringes wherein nothing like clear
awareness is present. " Consider my centre. Certain sorts
of content are rapidly replacing old and rising on to the
conscious level in the process, while a background of relatively
permanent content, the nuclear mass of body-feeling, etc.,
maintains a more or less subdued awareness throughout.
Let us note that consciousness shines brightly only in a small
area of the Centre. There is a focal point, and away from
this spot awareness shades off into the sub-conscious. Con-
sciousness, when present, is inseparable from content, is the
"* form ' in which experienced content comes. But content
which takes on this form may be continuous with process
that flows in the dark. In fact, consciousness seems an
island in the sub-conscious : an island whose highest peak
shows clear, but whose lower levels and shores are shrouded
in mists and menaced always by the encroaching sea." And
we do not seem warranted in ascribing self-consciousness to
the Ground. The latter is not one of the islands, but the
ocean !
Belief in the sub-conscious Ground is reached as follows :
" First I examined my Centre, or rather that portion of it
which is conscious. This was found to be real in a relativity,
to be a whole not genuinely closed, but comprising the work-
ings of other relative wholes. . . . These various wholes are
not monads such as Pluralism holds so dear. They are not
discretes which come to relation, each in solid singleness
secure ; separates from whose union might result a world.
They are only as they interpenetrate and mingle ' contra-
dictorily' with one another's being a unity of mutually
constitutive powers which interact. It is a UNITY-PLURALITY,
an active continuum with continua, one stream showing
travelling eddies, which I confront. And when I come to
discuss the Ground I cannot leave this empirical revelation
behind. . . . Experience goes to show that conscious life,
which is of many grades, arises in time. Hence an old argu-
ment, already improved by the theistic idealists, may be im-
proved once more. The sub-conscious Ground is presupposed
by the arising in time of the UNITY-PLURALITY of finite
centres." ... To cite von Hartmann, " The theory of the Un-
conscious [better, sub-conscious, E. D. FJ is the necessary, if
tacit, presupposition of every objective or absolute idealism
which is not unambiguously Theism". If we reject a
THE GROUND OF APPEARANCES. 207
modified Nihilism, i.e. the view that " states of consciousness "
:arise inexplicably in a metaphysical void, we are driven
back on the sub-conscious as the fount and origin of all
sentient life.
Von Hartmann's advocacy of the Unconscious tends to
suggest that the Ground is not really psychical at all. But
in using the term Sub-conscious, I am referring to an activity
which is genuinely psychical, though devoid of self-aware-
ness. It would not be honest to dub this activity "God".
The Ground is not any one individual, divine or other, but
rather that which has its conscious life in all individuals
whatever. In so far, however, as it is considered in the
aspect which lies beyond these conscious individuals, it can be
discussed, if you so desire, as the Sub-conscious.
The Ground, in so far as it has passed into Nature and
individuals, reveals its present character in the appearances
into which it has been transformed. But, in so far as it is
the residual universe below what happens to be mirrored in
conscious life, it falls outside direct knowledge and must be
discussed with befitting restraint. And if we strive to under-
stand what it was at a remote stage of its history, e.g. before
Nature and individuals came to be, this restraint seems very
urgently required. In the present stage of the time-process
reality must be so very different from what it was. But we
seem justified, withal, in proffering various suggestions which
may be discussed without imperilling our self-respect as
philosophers ! * It was psychical (i.e. its nature was akin to
what we call feeling). It was no Absolute save in the sense
that its conditions lay wholly within itself. It was "com-
plete," in respect of these conditions, but it was not, also,
" perfect " and " finished " as the traditional Absolute is held
to be. It was above the " law " of Contradiction, for change
is as "contradictory" as anything can be. It was active 2
and its character included a power to change its character,
so that it was not limited by the phase of changelessness, but
could show alternating phases of changelessness and change
or time- succession and thus have a history or development
as well as static rests. 3 The Ground, in short, shows a
Duration with alternating phases of no-change and change.
Metaphysics, so far from dealing with "eternal and unalter-
1 Cf. Individual and Reality, pp. 259-279.
2 For " activity," cf. Individual and Reality, pp. 266, 273.
3 A no-change Absolute is surely limited by this very characteristic.
For the hypothesis that the universe shows alternating phases of Change
and Changelessness (Days and Nights), cf. Individual and Reality, p. 270
t seq.
208 E. D. FAWCETT :
able reality," confronts at present a becoming of which prob-
ably no finite individual, divine or human, can forecast the
close. This slow transformation of the Alogical Ground a
transformation in which conscious finites, as they develop,
must count for more and more constitutes cosmic progress.
There is spontaneity, a limitless fecundity in this Ground.
The " reign of law" is not original, but supervenes and it
never excludes wholly the play of " Chance ". And, thanks
to the fecundity, strife has proved in verity father and lord
of the natural process which has issued in the evolution of
the higher organisms and conscious life. Maybe, even Time-
succession and Space are direct expressions of this struggle
which broke out spontaneously in the primeval Ground. 1
But time presses ; therefore, ignoring a variety of interesting
issues, I must be content with advancing the hypothesis
which induced me to pen the present paper. The aim of
this hypothesis is to indicate more precisely than heretofore
the way in which the activity of the Ground, regarded as the
power which transforms itself into Nature and individuals,
ought to be conceived. Dr. Schiller has now informed me
that this hypothesis is not new, but has been discussed in a
German work of which, however, I have not retained the
name. However, I have no particular interest in the sup-
posal in the hope that it may be new : I am much more
moved by the likelihood that it may possibly be true. Take
heed that there is no call to shy at its (to some) paradoxical
aspect. Philosophy, as Haldane observes, progresses by way
of hypotheses " tentatively applied and afterwards tested by
and adapted to the facts of experience ". 2 The hypothesis of
the World as Imagination requires no more considerate hand-
ling than is allowed by this writer.
It is contended that the attempt made very unconvincingly
by Plato and Aristotle, but much more plausibly by Hegel,
to find Ultimate Eeality in "Reason" is one of the great
mistakes in the history of philosophy. Hegel's ' romance of
the infinite,' as Renan calls it, served to elicit incidentally
much superb thinking. But the worship of the Concept has
ended by revealing the Concept's defects. The richness of
concrete feeling was thrust somehow into the background
there resulted the suspicion of a concealed dualism, with the
position of one factor therein (feeling) left obscure, and by
degrees the artificiality of this arid intellectualism has made
itself fully felt. Belief in the " Universal " as more than an
invention or acquisition post rem is now menaced. Observe,
1 Cf. Individual and Reality, p. 274 et seq.
a The Pathway to Reality, p. 240.
THE GROUND OF APPEARANCES. 209
by the way, that the attempt to articulate Universals on
Hegelian lines leads to disaster when " afterwards tested by
and adapted to the facts of experience ' ' I am citing Haldane
again in a novel connexion ! The " contingency " admitted
by Hegel to colour Nature the " bacchantic " [why ?] god
and history marks the refusal of reality to accept the hypo-
thesis of the dialectically articulated Universals of Thought.
The Ground cannot, of course, be regarded as Will. Will
is altogether too thin an abstraction, even were there not
other and insuperable objections to this line of thinking.
And there are those who may urge that it is idle to attempt
to liken the Ground to any aspect of the processes of our
psychical life. But if we are determined to detect a close
resemblance between the activity of the Ground and human
mentality, we shall do well, perhaps, to describe the former
as an intuitive Cosmic Imagination. For note that from
Imagination it seems practicable to derive all appearances, while
if you try to " deduce " anything (e.g. Krug's pen) effectively
from Reason or Will or a unity of a Logical Idea and Will
or what not, you fail utterly. Thus when Schelling discussed
Nature as unconscious " immature intelligence " there being
supposed a giant cosmic reason which lies petrified in ob-
jective being he was on a wrong tack. For the processes,
inductive and ratiocinative, which are named, and too often
hypostatised as, "intelligence," imply a highly selective at-
tention and are far removed from that concreteness which
Nature presents. But if Nature be viewed as a phase of the
ever-changing cosmic imagination why, then, you have all
the living detail, storm, and stir of the wonderful reality,
known and transcendent alike, fully provided for. 1 Eeal
Nature is not the ridiculous phantom of " extensions,"
" resistances " and " forces " so dear to mathematical fiction.
It is not simple but indefinitely complex, and it is aglow with
the secondary qualities. We need to seek patiently for the
secrets of the inmost shrine, but we are sure that Cosmic
Imagination can house all possible detail, however complex.
Note that in this Imagination-Nature we can place the concrete
psychical equivalents, rich with all their ' secondary ' qualities,
of all the validly-inf erred " ultimates " of speculative physics
and chemistry. 2 And so on. In the regard, then, of Nature
1 Mr. Morrison points out to me the following remarkable passage from
the works of the mystic Eliphas Levi. " It is by imagination that we see
and this is the natural aspect of the miracle, but we see true things and
in this consists the marvellous aspect of the natural work." The " true
things," I suppose, refer us to objects in the Cosmic imagination.
- Individual and Reality, p. 117 et seq.
14
210 K n. FAWCETT :
we may well suppose Imagination as the primeval reality,
itself unresolved, into which all else can be resolved ; and in
place of a dead 'intellectual' schematism, we appeal to a
principle of a plastic and creative sort fully adequate to the
life and indefinite variety of the facts. With respect again to
the rise of human experience in connexion with organism,
we seem, pending more adequate treatment of the problem,
entitled to say this. There is, at any rate, no difficulty in
explaining the rise of the subject and object experience with-
out appeal to a mythical chorus of "rational " categories
to ' universals of thought ' which are held to inform feeling. 1
" Judgment " in general need not dismay us, for, after all,
what is predication " but the adult form of that self-same
faculty of sign-making which we know as indication "
(Romanes). Judgment stands on selective attention such
attention resulting primarily from struggle and being at first
enforced for, and not by, the purposive life of the finite Centre. 2
That which is attended to stands out of an alogical continuum,
not a "continuous system" of thought? "Reason," again
(a word which refers us merely to the psychical processes
which issue in inference, ratiocinative and inductive), presents
its peculiar novelties, as soon as it leaves concrete imagery
behind and becomes symbolic. But in its more concrete
forms in the ' practical inferences ' of animals and men
we note clearly the stages from which it arose. Such infer-
ence, as I have urged elsewhere, is primarily just imagina-
tive supplementation of sense attended with belief. 4 And in
scientific and philosophical induction itself, be it noted, we
have, as Haldane observes, to " frame imaginative hypo-
theses " which are tested, or ought to be tested, by experi-
1 Individual and Reality, pp. 180-196. *Ibid., p. 192.
3 (( Experience is a continuous system confronting the individual and
knowledge is the making parts or phases of this system definite by
selective attention." Haldane, The Pathway to Reality, p. 296. But
" Universals " are not presupposed by the Continuum !
4 Mill urges in respect even of a train of reasoning (a much more
elaborate affair than a simple practical inference) that "If we had suffi-
ciently capacious memories and a sufficient power of maintaining order
among a huge mass of details, the reasoning could go on without any
general propositions". Quite so, and consequently entirely aloof from
alleged syllogistic forms which are rather ways of testing inferences than
ways of making these.
In the hypothetical case of a superhuman being forecasting the future,
a concrete constructive imagination of all the details would prove ideally
satisfactory. Symbolic reasoning may be merely a human makeshift,
after all !
Logic may not improperly be regarded as a branch of psychology :
treating of the psychical processes which issue in inference with special
reference to the exigencies of proof.
THE GROUND OF APPEARANCES. 211
ence. It is this plasticity of imagination (which appears so
often and with such wonderful concreteness in the life of
even rude ' practical ' folk) which constitutes, perhaps, the
most valuable feature of the human mind as linked to pro-
gress. I need not discuss specially that abstract aspect of
our purposive activity termed " Will " an imaginative con-
tent is implied obviously. To will is to strive to make more
real, if only within the sphere of reverie, a change already
present, feebly, in imagination.
If we pass on to consider the artistic side of human
activity, with its conscious production of beautiful novelties
which are ends in themselves, we have to put an embarrass-
ing question. It is easy to suppose that we are continuing
within our small territories a creative work such as the
Giant Cosmic Imagination is realising on the great scale in
all quarters throughout Nature. But I am entirely at a loss
to comprehend how those who accept the theory that " Kea-
son " is prius, contrive to " deduce " artistic creation from
it. One can speculate as to how " Reason " grows out of a
-constructive " Imagination," but to try to derive such ima-
gination from " reason " seems a vain thing.
The hypothesis of the Ground as Imagination which has
shaped and is shaping itself slowly into all else of which
we have, or are to have, knowledge, is alluring. It has a
most important bearing on many obscure discussions which
have parted metaphysicians. And it suggests that we belong
to a universe which is active in the direction of creating an
ever richer and more satisfactory life-content. In this, per-
chance, lies our surest guarantee that in the long all will be
well with the worlds and the myriads of finite centres who
now, alas ! all too frequently find conscious existence a cheat.
IV. DUALISM, PARALLELISM AND
INFINITISM.
BY ALFRED H. LLOYD.
HUMAN history always appears to him who looks back upon
it to fall into special periods or ages. The stone age, for
example, and the iron age and the bronze age and the ages of
steam and electricity are well known. These ages, too, like
all ages, may be said to be salt ages, if not literally, at least
figuratively, that is, in the important sense that the historian
needs always to take their specific characterisations cum
granis sails. The past as past can never be seen for what it
really was. As past it is a construction of present retro-
spection.
In the history of thought the recognised ages are charac-
terised, not by physical substances or forces, but by philo-
sophical isms, and it is safe to say that these isms require
more salt than all the substances or forces taken together.
Thus, in the history of thought there have been, for example,
the age of dualism and the age of parallelism ; the former
covering the period of mediaeval Christendom, the latter that
of modern Christendom since Bacon and Descartes. And
now there seems to have begun the age of a new ism, which
in lack of a better name is here to be called infinitism. To
this new ism and its relation to dualism and parallelism
attention is asked. The latest ism, I suggest, is always the
salt with which what has gone before needs to be taken.
The logical as well as the historical transition from dual-
ism to parallelism is a very old story. Yet at least in one
respect this story seems not to have been appreciated. Cer-
tainly one's understanding of it must depend upon the
accepted meaning of dualism itself. Dualism, for example,
may be taken flatly, that is, out of any context. It is, then,
but a doctrine, metaphysically significant, of two substances,
these substances being absolutely different and exclusive,
self-existent and independent, and in this character it must
sooner or later pass into what we know as parallelism. But
DUALISM, PARALLELISM AND INFINITISM. 213
suppose it be given a context. Suppose it be taken, as it
may be taken, in the character of an hypostasis of extreme
difference. It then becomes the last term of an infinite
series that in the other terms comprises all possible degrees
of finite difference. As last term it is, of course, peculiar or
sui generis, for any last term within the formal conditions of a
series is only theoretically possible, never practically so, and
is accordingly never found or attained, being only posited,
asserted or indicated. But, the peculiarity aside, in the
context of such a series dualism must have new meaning
and its passage into parallelism must also have new mean-
ing. Moreover, with regard to the understanding of dual-
ism here suggested, it does not affect what is now in hand
whether the position of dualism be supposed to have been
reached quite naively or after careful reflexion. The posi-
tion may result from an intuition, a leap in the dark, which
only subsequent experience has seemed to justify, or it may
result from conceptual processes, being a product of long
observation and critical thinking; but, however reached,
virtually and effectually it may be a last term and, as must
be made quite clear and as historian and logician need to
keep in mind, in its character of a last term it can be dual-
ism only cum grano salis. Thus, is any last term only one
more term or is it in value and meaning an abstraction for
something that, if not quantitatively, at least qualitatively,
sums up the whole series ? Is extreme or infinite difference
just the last single case of difference or is it the summation
of all differences, the totality of all the cases of differences ?
One may take either view and the mere ambiguity is quite
enough to make dualism more than a mere flat dualism.
But, again, whether unconsciously or consciously, intui-
tively or reflectively arrived at, dualism virtually and ef-
fectually can be looked upon as a generalisation, given a
metaphysical basis, from pluralism. In terms of an only
dual multiplicity, which is the general or typical case of
difference, it is a unification, rendered into a doctrine of sub-
stance, of an infinite multiplicity, and as such a unification
it cannot be unmixedly dualistic nor lead only to parallel-
ism, for its duality is plainly functional, not merely structural.
And, such being the value of dualism, the contention in
these pages is that only as its character of a last term in the
series of differences or its very closely related character of a
generalisation from an infinite multiplicity is recognised and
appraised can dualism itself ever be properly understood or
can the familiar transition from it to parallelism ever be
adequately appreciated. Also especially it is contended here
214 ALFEED H. LLOYD:
that infinitism, in fact if not in name the characteristic ism
of the present day, has arisen through a sense, more or less
explicit and self-conscious, for the meaning of dualism that
has been suggested. Doubtless the basal facts and formulae
of the evolution hypothesis, involving as they do the notion
that difference is only through gradation, that opposition or
negation is functional not fixedly structural, or that duality
is a general relation rather than a metaphysical condition,
have greatly stimulated this recent movement of thought,
Or, it never being easy to determine the time-order of chick
and egg, should I speak of the evolution-hypothesis, not as
a stimulus, but as a result ? Evolution aside, however, the
value of infinitism to recent empiricism or pragmatism, SO'
out of conceit with either dualism or the succeeding paral-
lelism, will in my opinion prove to be great and must there-
fore have special interest.
In the history of modern thought, to recite very briefly the
familiar story, parallelism was early recognised as a neces-
sary conclusion from a consistent dualism. Indeed modern
thought must be said to have begun with such a vision. The
state came to be looked upon as equally real with the church ;
the natural with the supernatural. The king as well as the
pope claimed authority by right from God. In the life of
thought induction came to be equally important with deduc-
tion, observation and experiment with a priori reasoning. In
short, philosophically and metaphysically put, two such sub-
stances as spirit and matter could not both be real and sub-
stantial without being to all intents and purposes one. At
least, if both real, they must be co-real and even, as in the
seventeenth century Spinoza declared so cogently, only the
parallel aspects or " attributes " of a single substance, them-
selves not substantial. Things that were co-real could not
be either in any essential respect subordinate to each other,,
as in the case of one being supposed to be acted upon causally
by the other, or wholly independent of each other, as the
metaphysical dualist had often wished to make them. Co-
realities were necessarily parallel with all the meaning that
Spinoza, not to mention Geulincx and many others, came to
give the word. Furthermore, if philosophy thus found its
way out of dualism, or at least out of an unreasoned dualism
and adopted parallelism or " occasionalism " it was not
long in going still farther. Even Spinoza had compro-
mised a dual parallelism by adding to spirit and matter or
" thought " and " extension " other parallel attributes of
substance up to infinity, but closely following Spinoza came
Leibnitz. Leibnitz saw, or seems to have seen, the inner
DUALISM, PARALLELISM AND INFINITISM. 215
meaning, the implication or the hidden content of dualism.
He had, if I may so put it, a feeling for that from which
dualism has been said here to be a generalisation. In a word,
indicative of his approach or point of view, he saw a general
plurality rather than a single duality or rather than a merely
structural duality in the universe. In the confidence of his
vision, too, he made that plurality substantial, not " attribu-
tive " or " modal," and, in loyalty to what dualism, when
thus seen through, must mean, he applied to his pluralism
the essential principle of parallelism, making his infinitely
numerous substances or " monads " analogous or har-
monious. Witness the lex analogic or the pre-established
harmony which gave to each monad, however distinct and
individual it might be on the score of what was only implicit
in it and what was explicit, a part-for-part or one-to-one cor-
respondence with each other monad or with the whole to
which it belonged. But in understanding Leibnitz's plu-
ralism or parallelism or dualism it is peculiarly important to
keep also in mind his notion of substance as self-active, not
just self-existent, and of activity as real or true, not just
mechanical, for in these notions the evidence is complete that
for Leibnitz duality did mean more than structure. Making
plurality substantial and substance self-active and activity
real and regarding all of the really active substances as har-
monious he virtually treated duality, with its parallelism and
all, as a universal function, not a single condition. In doing
this, too, he shows himself neither mere dualist nor mere
parallelist, but more than either. Including by outdoing
either he is, in the sense in which paternity is so often
ascribed, the father of infinitism. Any function is always
the infinity of some structure.
The history of modern thought thus shows an early, al-
though not fully appreciated, association of dualism with
both parallelism and pluralism, and, although less obviously,
of infinitism with all three. Among the continental philo-
sophers, the Cartesians, Spinoza and Leibnitz, this showing
is very plain, but it is not less conclusive, I believe, with the
great representatives of English philosophy, Locke, Berkeley
and Hume. To say nothing of the doctrines of Locke and
Berkeley, in a peculiar empiricism, experimental as it was
rather than passively perceptual or observational, Hume
really left the traditional dualism behind, out-running both
Locke and Berkeley, and very distinctly implied, if he did
not say, that duality was no mere structure, no single con-
dition. The history of modern thought, therefore, affords a
fitting background for the present study. Indeed in the pages
216 ALFRED H. LLOYD:
that follow nothing may be said which at least in substance
some one of the English or the continental thinkers, Hume
perhaps or Leibnitz or Spinoza, has not already anticipated.
Re-wording, however, is always in order and is not neces-
sarily unproductive. Especially to Spinoza and Leibnitz the
writer's debt is large. From this point, however, it is pro-
posed to proceed for the most part independently or at least
with the appearance of independence.
Further, as to the manner of procedure, from what was
said above of the possible logical value of dualism as well as
of the historical associations, it must go almost without say-
ing that a critical examination of the character and meaning
of infinity in general, but particularly of the last term of an
infinite series, is the first and chief task. Only, with en-
trance upon such an examination, a certain danger should be
recognised in order that, if possible, its peculiar disasters may
be avoided. In a study of infinity there is the too easy
descent to mathematicalism, whereas philosophy, although
possibly more threatened by the tempting analogies of phy-
sics, and especially in these days of biology and psychology,
can ill afford to lose itself even in the special phenomenalism
of so general a discipline as mathematics. Just this danger,
then, must be avoided so far as possible, and the writer
suggests, whether quite seriously or not he hardly knows,
that the fact that only as a layman can he enter the temple
of mathematics should do much towards reducing the present
danger of mere mathematicalism to a minimum.
Now the proper entrance to infinity is by the door of the
really and truly finite. That this door is not closed and
locked against all comers, however loudly and persistently
they may knock upon it, is quite counter to what has been
very commonly supposed. Commonly the finite has been
thought to have no connexion with the infinite. The
common view, however, seems to have been standing obsti-
nately in its own light, for just that infinite with which the
finite has been supposed to have no connexion has itself
always been also another finite. The fact is, then, that the
finite is a door that opens freely into the infinite. It opens
into the infinite as the particular into the universal, the real
into the ideal, or the existent into the potential. " Of course,"
laughs someone, " but such comparisons, instead of affording
any proof or explanation, only manifold the problem." The
potential, however, must certainly always lose character if
not founded upon the existent ; the ideal must itself lack
reality if it cannot take the real for better or for worse up
DUALISM, PAEALLELISM AND INFINITISM. 217
into itself ; the universal is no true universal, is not general
or universal enough, unless actually and unequivocally it em-
brace particulars ; and, as already said in so many words, the
infinite is itself only finite if it be not also finite, that is, in
and of the finite, in the multiplicity of things finite, in their
intrinsic relationships, in the very finiteness. The infinite is
not something besides finiteness, but an inner and essential
condition of it.
Language must ever struggle with reality, and doubtless
the foregoing seems more verbal than sound or sane. But
the infinity that dwells in finiteness or synonymously in
all structure may be indicated further as follows. In what
sense the finite always implies infinity is determined by the
fact that infinity, like any negative, must be relative or con-
textual. A finite line, for example, implies, not mere infinity,
but, aside from further implications, hereafter to be indicated,
infinite length. Even anarchy or anarchism really means
other government, not no government at all ; the unknowable
is knowable, but not for beings constituted in a certain way,
and so on. And, infinity being implied by finiteness and
being thus also always relative or in some sense contextual,
any finite can be only one term in a series of structurally
homogeneous terms among which the infinity itself in some
way belongs. The whole series, too, emphatically is an
implication of the single, defined term ; it is only a manifesta-
tion of all that the term itself contains. And the manifold-
ness of the terms, the difference in degree that goes with the
structural homogeneity, and, more than all, the peculiar
crisis of the last term, having value of zero or infinity, but of
course always a contextual zero or a contextual infinity, are
implications that need close scrutiny and that should help
-one to see what finiteness is and how it is the direct door
into infinity.
In illustration there is, again, the infinite line, which was
meaningless except as the " limit " to be reached by some
operation of aggregation or extension based on some unit
and some direction. Whatever else may be said, the infinite
line, implied by the finite line, belongs in a series of com-
mensurate aggregates representable numerically as 1, 2, 3, 4
... oo. In the case of the unknowable, too, let one's
agnosticism be as extreme as you please, this infinite is not
saved by its negative from being commensurate with some
finite base in the region of the knowable. Positive know-
ledge, whatever its formal conditions, be these the conditions
>f sensibility or understanding or reason, always lies some-
218 ALFKED H. LLOYD :
where between ignorance as zero and so I will call it
intuition as infinity, and even these limits or extremes are
made structurally homogeneous or contextual with what
intervenes by the subject-object relation with which, whatever
their content of knowledge, minimal or maximal, they still
do conform.
But now, although emphatically infinity can be infinity
only as an implication of the finite and so, as the last term of
a series, is at least theoretically contextual with the series's
finite or structural base, the indwelling and contextual char-
acter of infinity is far from affording a complete account of it.
Important as this character is to one's first thought, it only
leads to a second thought that is also important. Thus,
whenever there is an infinite series there is also what must
be called a duality or even a dichotomy. Formally and out-
wardly, it is true, this may not or even cannot appear, being
well concealed in the structural homogeneity or in the differ-
ences that apparently are only so-called " differences of de-
gree ". The last term, however, the " limit," although said
to be uniform with the others, is not real, at least it is not
and cannot be real as the others are . real, to use a phrase
already employed here, as in uniformity with the others it is
only theoretically possible. Within the formal conditions and
positive domain or region of the series the last term, although
"contextual," is only imaginary; it cannot be realised or
found. Again, while it must belong to the series, it can
never find a place in the series. It is of the series, yet never
positively in the series. And just this of-but-not-in condition
of the last term makes the duality and the dichotomy, and in
doing this brings to light the further implication of finiteness
above referred to.
Theoretical possibility, or imaginary character, that seems
at once to give and to deny the last term to the series, the
infinite to the finite, is itself an idea that might very well be
made the subject of a long treatise, but, without prolonged
discussion of it now, evidently it must mean the immanence
of something which is, although immanent, yet formally un-
like or different in kind. The only theoretically possible, or
the contextual at infinity, is the real and even in some sense
the present yet formally impossible and, accordingly, as pos-
sessing both (1) a term or terms that are only theoretically
possible and also (2) terms that are practically and positively
so the series is dual. The series is, to use a mathematical
term, two-dimensional, for I understand the essential point
about dimensions to be difference in kind, but such difference
in kind as involves real though not formal unity or con-
DUALISM, PARALLELISM AND INFINITISM. 219
tinuity. 1 Theoretical possibility, again, must mean real
though not formal continuity, and infinity as having such
possibility is thus something like wholeness or completeness,
being necessarily continuous with any of its finite parts but
not formally or literally like any of them.
So much then for the mere duality of the series. But how
about the dichotomy ? Symbolically put, any series, say an
w-series, m being the structural base or form, may indeed be
dual in that it involves some other term or dimension, that is
something qualitatively different from m, say n, but why go
farther than this and insist that the m-series involves, not
merely n, but also, completing dichotomously the universe of
discourse, not-m, which of course would include n and o, p r
q, r, . . . 2 ? The reason is not far to seek, although for
understanding of it one will need to recognise a certain elu-
sive meaning and ambiguity in the term not-m. Thus not-m
may stand for m at zero or m at infinity ; it may stand and,
if the negative be real, not merely formal, it must stand also
for something other than m, as when it is taken as including
n ; and it may or in its fullest implication it must stand, not
merely for n, but for all, including o, p, q, r . . . z, that is
not-m. Of these three meanings the first is plainly formal,
though negative, to or with m ; the second recognises the
duality already explained, and the third is dichotomous ;
while the three in the order given show a progressive un-
folding or explication of what negation must always imply.
The reason for insisting on dichotomy as well as duality in
the m-series is, then, simply that any duality, any group of
two things formally or qualitatively different, must imply
more than just its own simple case of difference. It must
imply difference as a general principle or function, the single
difference and the duality of things working together for ex-
tension of the differentiation. The difference also, as well as
the things, must be dual. In short, the symbol not-m is no
mere zero ; it is not merely an account of m as infinite or
say as big or small beyond recognition ; and it is not just n
as something other than m ; but, significant and essential
as each of these meanings is, it is far more comprehensive.
Even because it has each of these meanings it must complete
the universe.
All of which is quite abstruse, but some exemplification is
to be found in the familiar Tree of Porphyry, which besides
affording examples, will also suggest a very important addition
1 Say, not formal or structural continuity, but continuity that is
expressed only functionally.
220
ALFRED H. LLOYD :
to what has been said. In the Tree l any general class, say
body, shows that the included negative, inanimate, although
negative, is still, if not formally, at least really contextual with
the included positive, animate. The general term body insures
the contextual character. But, also, besides doing this and
besides making the pair of terms, animate and inanimate,
virtually a summary of an infinite series comprising terms
that range all the way from one term to the other, it shows,
as immanent in the series or in the negation or differentiation
of the series, something formally different from the series's
own particular terms. Thus the general term, body, both
unifies the series and at the same time, true to the principle
that the general can never be qualitatively like any of its
particulars, represents the presence of something different in
the series. In the symbols already used, the m-series, m
comprehending all degrees of animate, contains n, n being
body or the corporeal. Moreover, the negative, not-m, or
inanimate, must be said, by implication, to comprehend what
lies below, namely, the series of sensible beings, not merely
the corporeal that lies above. As already suggested, a nega-
tive term in any context must imply both zero and infinity,
both the infinitely minimum and the infinitely maximum
1 Although probably quite unnecessary, I reproduce here a very simple
diagram (Jevon's Lessons in Logic, p. 104) :
Substance
Corporeal
Animate
Incorporeal
Body
Inanimate
Living Being
Sensible Insensible
Animal
Rational
Irrational
Socrates Plato Others
DUALISM, PARALLELISM AND INFINITISM. 221
among its meanings, and this is to give to all negation a
peculiar duplicity, a motive or movement that is at once
towards the general and towards the particular. Still, at
least for the moment, the implication of the general in all
negation, making of negation as a logical operation a process
of generalisation, is that to which I would call special atten-
tion, and is, besides, the additional suggestion that was
foreseen at the beginning of this paragraph. Thus, n is not
merely uot-m ; it is some other thing that all things in the m-series
are. With much the same meaning the limiting term of any
series, which always is a negative term, is only an abstraction
of that general thing which has found expression in every
preceding term. In the series: 1, 1/2, 1/4 ... 0, the last
term being contextual although zero is, so to speak, just half
without being the half of any quantity ; but also all the other
terms are halves. In the series, again : 1, 2, 4, 8 . . . o> , the
last term, of course only theoretically possible, is a double
without being so determinate as to be the double of any de-
terminable quantity, and all the other terms are doubles too.
So the Tree of Porphyry has done us good service. In
giving evidence about m and n it has shown a series to be
contextual from end to end : to be also, because of the
negative or the infinity, dual or two-dimensional, and in its
negation to involve the distinction between the general and
the particular, the second dimension, n, representing not
merely something different from m, but something that all
m's, from the maximum to the minimum, really are. In the
Tree, too, taken as a whole instead of merely with regard to
one of its typical episodes, the dichotomy, m and not-w, is
fully exemplified, in the sense, once more, that the term,
not-w, besides having its value as a zero of m and its value
of n, has also a value that comprehends all other things
besides m and n, namely o, p, q . . . etc. or if m be the ani-
mate and n the corporeal, animal, living being, substance,
and so on. Now, however, I think it possible to find addi-
tional evidence or illustration in a very different quarter,
namely, in Euclidean or three-dimensional space. To use
the Euclidean space in this way obviously is to assume
primarily that the angle or at least the right angle, which
differentiates the dimensions, is, so to speak, the spatial
analogue for distinct difference in kind and that, while the
first and second dimensions are lines that determine a cer-
tain plane, the plane being the region of all possible relations
of the two dimensions, the third dimension, not of course as
just one dimension among the others, but as third, is not a
line but a plane that is at a right angle with the plane of the
222 ALFRED H. LLOYD :
first and second dimensions. There is also the assumption
that the Euclidean space in its completeness is an incarna-
tion or, more exactly, a setting in a medium rather formal
than material, of what I will call the logical whole in extension,
the idea of this phrase being that beyond three dimensions
the multiplication of differences in spaces, for example, of
4, 5, 6, 7 . . . X) dimensions can be only so much internal
analysis and explicitation of what the three dimensions have
already embodied. But these assumptions do not strike me
as too bold nor as calling for any apology because of their
Pythagorean hue.
As to the three-dimensional or Euclidean space being the
logical whole in extension I can further explain my meaning
by a remark or two upon the simple progression of numbers
1, 2, 3 ... Of course this progression may have meaning,
in a very formal and abstract way, as only so much addition
or uniformal extension, and in this meaning the straight line
123
-, j ; . . . affords an excellent representation
of it, but numerical progression really implies more than
this. The numbers although capable of abstraction from
either point of view, are dimensional as well as quantitative.
Their progression, in other words, involves qualitative as
well as quantitative variation. From the standpoint, then,
of dimensions, each new number in its order and context
must have peculiar meaning and in the series : 1, 2, 3, the
development of meaning is special and distinct in the sense
that beyond 3 the numbers may only amplify and intensify
by all sorts of analysis and variations what this basal series
has, so to speak, already achieved and denned. Beyond 3
the development of meaning involves no new elements or
factors. Again, with 3 there is the completion of a certain
circuit in the movement of thought, in the progression of
number-meaning, and from 3 on, although each number
gives new quality, the movement, formally, is repetitious,
suggesting the imagery of a spiral or better the qualitative
variation that comes from rotation. Thus, to illustrate
rather crudely, 4 is only another 2, albeit a different 2, being
2 times 2 or 2 a . Or, as 3 -f 1, 4 is a result only of an opera-
tion already expressed in 2 -f 1, the union of plurality and
unity, but not in 1 + 1, the original or basal expression of
plurality. 5 is only 2 + 3 ; 6, 2 times 3 or 3 times 2, and so
on. And here doubtless some one must protest that all this
is mere logomachy or number gymnastic. So, in truth, it
does seem. Yet 1 cannot see only that in it. My suggested
interpretations of the numbers in respect to their logical
DUALISM, PABALLELISM AND INFINITISM. 223
value or quality, that is in respect to their peculiar meanings
as determined by their different places in the progression,
indeed may not be the correct ones or the best ones, but they
must at least indicate the sort of thing I have in mind and
for that sort of thing there must be good ground and war-
rant. Dimensions do represent qualitative difference and,
this being so, the series of numbers must be capable of a
dimensional interpretation, up to 3 in extension and beyond
3 in intension, because, again, beyond 3 the progression
lacks the peculiar novelty in extension belonging to the
variation of the first three numbers. The Euclidean or
three-dimensional, rectangular space is thus, to repeat the
phrase, the logical whole or base in extension.
But each of the three dimensions of Euclid's space needs
some exposition. In the first dimension we have embodied,
or set, the idea that definition, any definite thing, implies
uniform or homogeneous multiplicity, that is, a contextual
series of things differing only quantitatively. In fact, were
I a poet, seeking positive imagery for such difference or such
multiplicity, I should certainly select the straight line
beautiful presentment that it is of simple uniform variation
and multiplicity. The second dimension, a line perpendicular
to the first, embodies the idea that any uniform series as
a series implies something not uniform with its findable or
finite terms but qualitatively different from these, and the
plane, determined by the first and the second dimensions, is
only the field of all possible relations, the region or sphere of
all functional variations, between these two dimensions or it
is, say, the duality of the series in its complete extension.
Lastly, the third dimension, perpendicular to the plane of
the first two, expresses compounded difference or difference
of difference; a somewhat blind phrase by which I would
indicate difference or differentiation as a general principle
instead of a single case The single case of difference is dual
or two-dimensional, while the general principle in its exten-
sion is three-dimensional. In the symbols used, m occupies
the first dimension ; n, the second ; m and n, the plane of
the first and second ; o, p, q . . . z, the third ; and m, n,
o, p, q . . . z, the region, spatially solid, of all three. A
plane, in other words, which is perpendicular to a plane,
logically or qualitatively has a different value from a line
perpendicular to a line, the difference being just that between
a general plurality and mere duality. 1 A general plurality is
extensively three-dimensional.
1 As for a possible fourth dimension, on the rectangular basis of
differentiation, which has been assumed here, this would consist in a
224 ALFRED H. LLOYD :
And in thus considering the logic of the three dimensions
it would be a very serious mistake to forget what was pointed
out in the discussion of the Tree of Porphyry, namely, that
the negation or the actual difference indicated by nega-
tion or infinity implies more than just something besides
the thing that is negated. The implied other thing, however
different or " other," is also general to that from which it is differ-
entiated. Thus, the second dimension, n, besides having its
own distinct character or quality, was also something that
all ra's were, not indeed formally but really, and in the third
dimension, of course the generalisation would be only so
much more comprehensive. Doubtless to see this progres-
sive generalisation in the 1-2-3 order of the three dimensions
of Euclid's space is not the simple thing which I may seem
to be supposing. Moreover, there is also the implication,
which some may have questioned, that any dimension or any
field, be it of one dimension or of any number of dimensions,
when projected to infinity, implies and even realises the next
in order, this next dimension always being again not just
another, but the explication of something implicit through-
out the lower field. But, to explain with an example, addi-
tion and subtraction, being operations, as I should say, in a
one-dimensional field, do imply multiplication and division,
which are two-dimensional and which when they come to
use divisors or multiples that are larger than 1, are seen only
to generalise and make explicit what the one-dimensional
operations may not show but must always involve. Again,
the one-dimensional field is a field of mere quantities, or
merely component parts and aggregates, while the two-di-
mensional field, relatively to that of one-dimension, is one
of multiples, ratios, areas, sides, and the like. But and just
here lies the important point at infinity any J field of quan-
tities or masses is revealed as also a field of ratios. In any
perpendicular to the region of the first three dimensions and the four-
dimensioned field, so determined, would be the three-dimensioned
solidity made more intensely solid by being, so to speak, turned into
itself. Thus, the dimensional fields, in order, would be : for one dimen-
sion, the line ; for two dimensions, the plane ; for three, the geometrical
solid ; for four, what might be called intensive solidity, a phrase which,
as I am disposed to think, would signify material content. Increase the
dimensions beyond 4, and, so I should expect, content would be succeeded
by force, and so on. But in this note I make these suggestions only as
a layman's speculations.
1 I say " any " here with the thought that what follows really applies
to any spatial field, whatever the number of dimensions. Relatively to
the next higher dimension the terms of any field, one-dimensional or
r-dimensionaJ, are quantities or masses, while for the next dimension
they become ratios.
DUALISM, PARALLELISM AND INFINITISM. 225
infinite series the last, infinite term, only theoretically pos-
sible, that is, impossible within the formal conditions of the
series, is in reality only the constant ratio or function
abstracted from the whole formal series and merely treated
as if it were one of the terms, just as the general is so often
treated as another particular, and this hypothetical term,
being contextually zero or infinity in form, thus necessarily
stands for the reality, in the series, of something formally
different from the series, that is, for another dimension, while
the new dimension, thus disclosed by the negation in the in-
finity, besides being something else, also is something general
to the field or region of the series. So is the case, not only
for the idea that a new dimension always only realises or
expresses an implication of any field carried to infinity, but
also for the idea that this new dimension always represents
something general to the old field, made quite clear. 1
The Euclidean space, however, has occupied the centre of
our stage quite long enough. This three-dimensional, rec-
tangular space and also the Tree of Porphyry were illustra-
tions introduced to show how any infinite series was not
merely dual in its implications but also dichotomous ; how
it involved, not merely two things, but a general plurality of
different things as constituting the universe to which the
basal series belonged ; and, in showing so much, they have
certainly been of great service. Their manifest association
of plurality with duality must have its application to the
suggestion, made near the beginning of this paper, that
dualism involves pluralism. As was then pointed out, duality
is functional and general, not merely structural and single,
and in its functional or general character it implies plurality
and is, as has since been shown, three-dimensional in its
extension, involving not only a difference but also different
differences. As structural duality is two-dimensional, a
functional duality is three-dimensional.
Now, to return to the direct argument of this paper with
1 There may be added in a note an interesting conclusion from the
above. At least what has been said is very near to being an argu-
ment, I will not say for the finiteness of space, nor will I say against
the infinity of space, but for something like the following. Infinity
as applied to space must always involve dimensional variation, not
mere quantitative extension. A space of any given number of di-
mensions must be said in itself to be finite, for infinity would add
a new dimension ; or, if space be said to be infinite, it can be so only
in a sense that takes its asserted quantitative infinity as really meaning
qualitative or dimensional variation. For any region, again, whatever
the number of its dimensions, there can be no merely quantitative
infinity or infinity in mere extension.
15
226 ALFRED H. LLOYD :
a very brief summary, the primary interest was the meaning
of infinity and the proper entrance to infinity was said to be
by the door of the finite. Any finite was seen to imply a
relative or contextual infinite, the last term in a so-called
infinite series. This last term, " only theoretically possible "
within the formal conditions of the series, was nevertheless a
reality of the series and was properly spoken of as immanent
in the series. Further, being immanent in the series and
being also negative, it made the series transcendent of the
visible form or base, that is, although formally homogeneous,
really dual, the quantitative variations implying also a quali-
tative difference, and with this duality, when regarded as not
merely structural but also functional, plurality was found to
be closely associated. Through its negative the series was
dichotomous as well as dual, although formally the dicho-
tomy was a more remote implication than the duality. And,
for the rest, either the duality or the more comprehensive
dichotomy implied generalisation as well as difference.
With so much established, then, we may proceed with the
discussion of implications of infinity as immanent in the
iinite.
Thus, besides the implication at once of duality and plu-
rality, there is that of what I will call a possible or working
parallelism between any two things in the universe. Any
two different things, being like so many dimensions, general
to each other as well as different, must be bases or varying
terms of two parallel and, so to speak, mutually involving or
penetrating or dove-tailing series, which develop quanti-
tatively in inverse orders. The two series are parallel in the
sense that for any term in the one there is always a special
term in the other, the two having a term-for-term corres-
pondence ; and this, although in the typical case, while one
proceeds quantitatively from zero to infinity, from minimal
to maximal presence or prominence, the other in functional
order proceeds from infinity to zero. As for -the dove-tailing,
this is only a figure with which to express the real im-
manence, involved in the functional relation, of each thing
in the other, and as for the quantitative inversion this only
marks or even measures the qualitative difference between
the basal things or dimensions of the two series, being in a
sense proportional to that difference. Indeed in their parallel
quantitative variations certain different things superficially
may appear to change not inversely but directly. Still,
where there is such direct increase or decrease, the amounts
or ratios of change cannot be the same, if the two things be
really different in kind. In some degree, indicative of the
DUALISM, PARALLELISM AND INFINITISM. 227
difference, one thing must lose, or at least gain less, as the
other increases. Such is the logic of real difference, or
should I rather say the logic of the merely quantitative
comparison of things really different. Between widely dif-
ferent things, however, the practical difficulty of any quanti-
tative comparisons must always be very great. In such a
case as that of heat and expansion concomitant quantitative
variations are determinable with reasonable accuracy, while
in that of crime and food supply or of mind and brain,
although the parallelism is just as real, quantitative com-
parison, however suggestive, can never be very satisfactory.
In many instances, also, even a mere term-for-term corre-
spondence may not be evident or even discoverable. But
and this is all that need concern us the parallelism is theo-
retically even when not practically possible ; it stands for the
facts of a real relationship, and it affords a means of in-
vestigating that relationship. Hence, as was said, between
any two things in the universe there is possible a working
parallelism.
Plainly, however, the mere parallelism, however well it
works, is only half of the story ; the half that is usually told
and that being incomplete, makes parallelism seem only a
relation between two independently existing things, that is,
between two things that stand off, so to speak, hypostatically
against each other after the analogy of matter and mind as
conceived by the traditional dualists or the Cartesian parallel-
ists. But seen for all that it means, parallelism, besides
being possible in the case of any two things, in other words
in any case of difference, not merely in that of dualism, really
stands for a dynamic or functional relation, not for a relation
that is static and merely structural. To see what this means,
however, it will be necessary to reflect that in addition to the
duality of the infinite series and to the structural parallelism
which springs from the duality, there is an essentially anti-
thetical character in the relation of the two terms. This
antithetical character of course, suggested by the inverse
quantitative variations, has its very important incidents and
makes all the difference in the world to the meaning of
parallelism.
To indicate very briefly the deeper logical implications of
antithesis, 1 such antithesis, for example, as appears in finite
and infinite, real and unreal, cold and hot, good and evil, or
1 The discussion here given of the logic of antithesis is only a brief
statement, slightly modified, of an article, "The Mere Logic of Anti-
thesis," published currently with this in the Journal of Philosophy,
Pychology, and Scientific Methods.
228 ALFRED H. LLOYD:
recalling the symbols used above m and n, expressing the
duality of any functional series, I suggest the following as
always true of antithetical terms. They are (1) mutually
reproductive, (2) double in meaning, (3) "identical," (4)
serially mediated, (5) dimensionally different, and (6) parallel.
The first of these characterisations springs from the necessary
relativity of the terms. Being relative, or "contextual,"
they must reproduce each other or be, in other words, mixed .
Each term must participate in the character of the opposite,
or, being party to the antithesis, must also be divided within
itself or be a house divided against itself on a similar plan.
Thus, given the two parties, conservative and radical, each
will have its similar factions. Hard and soft are each
similarly differentiated. So are life and death. In short, the
reproduction is a law of all antithesis. But, secondly, if
thus reproductive, if similarly divided, then the terms must
be of double meanings, each having on the one hand a narrow
one-sided meaning, and, on the other hand, a comprehensive
meaning embracing both sides. Take the last of the cases
just cited. Life means both the absence of death and
superiority to death or even to any distinction between the
two, while death means both the cessation of life and the
condition in which one may be said to be even during a so-
called life-time if one be not superior to death ; and, emphatic-
ally, this duplicity of meaning for each of the terms, suggest-
ing, let me point out, a renewal of the antithesis on the plane
of the comprehensive meanings, is a consequence typical of
all antithesis. Thirdly, then, being reproductive and double,
the terms of any antithesis are " identical ". Yet their identity,
so founded, is plainly not a simple or superficial one. Founded
as it is, it must be rather a becoming than a being identical,
and with this becoming it must also involve entrance into the
comprehensive meanings, and so, even as the narrower
meanings are reconciled, renewal of the antithesis. There is
thus identification, but at the same time, thanks to the
duplicity, also persistence of the opposition or difference.
The duplicity, so characteristic of the antithesis, explains
both the identity, here asserted, and the renewal. Closely
related to the identity, however, there is, fourthly, the serial
or functional mediation. This has been indicated already in
former paragraphs discussing the infinite series, but, at the
risk of some repetition, being reproductive, double and in the
sense shown identical, the terms of an antithesis cannot
express a cataclysmic difference. Their difference must be
graded. Indeed it seems to me that the antithesis can be
only the infinite series, or even two complementary infinite
DUALISM, PARALLELISM AND INFINITISM. 229
series, short-circuited. Superficially one can always view it
as only a brute or flat opposition of two things, each fixed in
its own character or value and quite exclusive of the other,
but deeply the antithesis has a much larger meaning than
that, being more perfectly or more extremely antithetical
Thus an infinitely graded difference, a difference, the extremes
of which are mediated by an infinite series, is far greater
than what I have called a single cataclysmic difference.
Were death, for example, cataclysmically only the absence
of life instead of being, as we know it, present even in all
life, the opposition between life and death would really be of
little account. Somehow a real opposition between the two
requires at once difference and intimacy even to immanence.
So, again, dwelling especially on this point, in general the.
antithesis, merely to be complete, to be fully antithetical, to
be absolute and truly extreme, simply demands the cumula-
tive differentiation of the graded series, such differentiation
always showing by its functional character both difference
and immanence. Graded difference, difference in degree, I
know, is often said to be no real difference, and, were this
true, it could hardly keep company with the antithesis.
Degree, however, must not be confused with continuity, as
too often it is. Gradation even to infinity is the very essence
of difference in kind. But now, fifthly, in being different
and yet general to each other, in being formally unlike and
yet serially or functionally related and identical, the terms
of an antithesis have what is best described as a dimensional
difference. Already the test of dimensional difference has
been found here to be difference in kind under conditions
that make the different things mutually implicative or general
to each other.
And so, sixthly, antithetical terms are " parallel," but how
different is become the meaning of parallelism from what it
was. How surely is parallelism more than a merely struc-
tural condition or than a relation between mutually exclusive
things or natures. Thus, to appreciate it, one must take into
account all five of the facts that have been presented here,
the mutual reproductiveness, the duplicity, the identification,
the serial mediation and the dimensional difference. One
must remember, too, the inverse quantitative variations in
the series that are infinite as well as parallel, and the impli-
cations, which have been pointed out, of the infinity. All
these things make of parallelism only a formal presentation,
perhaps a sort of cross-section, of a process in which the anti-
thetical terms actually lose themselves in each other or may
be said even to be transformed to each other and yet also,
230 ALFRED H. LLOYD :
as they are so lost or transformed, instead of thereby over-
coming the antithesis, only renew it on another plane, the
plane of the more comprehensive meanings. Parallelism,
again, being a relation of antithetical terms, means identifica-
tion, qualitative variation and renewal all in one. In the
fact of parallelism there lies, for him whose vision can get
beneath the surface of the mere term-to-term correspon-
dences, not a fixed structural dualism nor even a fixed
structural pluralism, but the conservative Becoming of a
universe.
Very emphatically throughout the discussions of this paper
and particularly in reference to what has just been said about
the two parallel infinite series involving at once qualitative
transformation of their terms, each being gradually identified
with the other, and elevation of the antithesis to another
plane, the controlling idea, already given at some length, is
this : Infinity, although negative, is always contextual with,
or essentially at one with, some finite. Being negative,
however, it can be contextual only theoretically, but, as was
carefully pointed out, instead of meaning the unreality or the
separate reality of infinity or of the so-called last term, this
theoretical possibility means the general presence and reality
of something immediately in the finite but formally different,
say of something immanently transcendent or " transfinite ".
Only under control of this idea has it been possible to treat
the distinction between finite and infinite or very much the
same thing to treat real difference or antithesis as truly
dimensional and so to see even different things without any
limit to the number ! as general to each other although
different or, conversely, as may now be suggested, to see
in generalisation, not a loss of differences, but a process of
dimensional amplification and to interpret parallelism as in
its mere correspondences only a somewhat formal or at least
superficial presentation of the change or " becoming " which
such amplification must involve. 1
But, parallelism and its antithetical terms and all that they
imply aside, the fact of immanence, which has proved to be
so insistent and so important to the proper understanding of
infinity and its various retinue, gives rise to the very impor-
tant question of continuity. Where difference is dimensional,
where even sharply different things are general to each other,
where difference in degree means, not of course cataclysmic
1 Is not one of the corollaries from the above treatment of parallelism
that, where the well-known method of concomitative variation is used by
investigators, the conclusions reached should be of real transformation
rather than of mere ab extra causal relation ?
DUALISM, PARALLELISM AND INFINITISM'. 231
difference but supreme difference in kind, in what sense, if in
any sense, can one think of continuity ?
Perhaps in no question so much as in this of continuity
does one find how great is the struggle of language with
reality. There is a real continuity and there is a formal con-
tinuity. Formally, any series, that is, any group of things
that are homogeneous or structurally uniform, may be said
to be continuous. Does it not, so to speak, fill its own region
and are not continuity and plenitude the same ? Any series,
then, is continuous sub sua specie. But no series is without
its other dimension and the effect of the r + 1-th dimension
is to make the region of r-dimensions broken or discrete, that
is, continuous only relatively. The other dimension makes
virtual gaps, which, although not of course violating the series's
own specific continuity, are nevertheless real, being gaps per-
haps rather by metaphor than by literal conformity with that
which they disintegrate or, again, being gaps which make
room for something formally or -structurally different, for
something immanent but not like, for something functionally
but not structurally identical. Wherefore, although, as was
concluded, any series is indeed continuous sub sua specie, still,
apart from this merely relative view, any series really has both
its terms and its gaps, its plena and its vacua. Only, to say
what now may be quite gratuitous, emphatically it is absurd
to treat this distinction of plenum and vacuum, or of continu-
ity and discontinuity, as if, diagrarnmatically it could be ade-
quately represented in this way, for continuity an unbroken
line : , and for discontinuity a broken
line :
Even the following straight line, formally continuous but
quantitatively determined or measured, thus :
is both continuous, being so sub sua specie, and discontinuous,
being so because of the other dimension which its own de-
terminate character implies. In other words, the distinction
is no mere quantitative one. There are no gaps or spaces
in kind literally between the terms, or plena, of any series.
Quantitatively the plena and the vacua are coextensive, and,
if one is to think in terms of the old saying that nature
abhors a vacuum, it is, I am sure, important to change very
materially the imagery under which this saying is usually
understood. As if the vacuum, as so much space or region
without content, could be structurally or formally like the
plenum, or plena, to which it is antithetical ! The plenum
itself is vacuous ; vacuum is not just something outside of it ;
and, this being so, an interesting conclusion, throwing much
232 ALFRED H. LLOYD:
light on the whole question, follows at once. Thus, there
can be no absolute impenetrability of anything. If I may
even quote myself : l " No single continuum . . . can ever be
merely in and by itself so perfect a plenum as to be impene-
trable to anything else," and, on the other hand, there is
no vacuum " so perfect ... as to offer no resistance ".
Vacuum is merely an innuendo for the immanence of some-
thing else ; it is far from meaning merely the elsewhere
absence of something like. Things alike may not mingle ;
they must be impenetrable to each other and so must prob-
ably fall in the rigid order of some series, but things really
different not merely are mutually penetrable but also are
always mutually penetrated, always, so to speak, occupying
each other. So, finally, although I hardly know that my
words will be understood, if the question be of absolute con-
tinuity, then one can say only that the absolute continuum
is both a very heterogeneous and a very animated mass,
dimensionally differentiated, whose differences are as real as
they are coextensive or as qualitative as they are general to
each other or functional with each other and whose nature
forbids any structural stability. Thus it must be remem-
bered that there can be no finite without its infinity, no
structure without its function, and no function without both
constant qualitative variation and with this at once recon-
ciliation and renewal of the difference.
So, once more in summary, perhaps in needless summary,
of the discussion of the meaning of infinity, it was first said
that to understand the infinite one must know the finite.
The finite just by dint of its own determination was then
found to involve an infinite, a contextual infinite. But this
infinity, a reality of the finite, made the series, to which
both the finite and the infinite belonged, dualistic and also, as
the terms were applied, dichotomous and so pluralistic. The
series, further, in a sense which was carefully defined, as to
its duality was two-dimensional and as to its implied plural-
ity three-dimensional. Apart, however, from any question
of number of dimensions, the dimensional character of the
differentiation in the series, besides making infinity never a
matter of mere quantitative extension, mere quantity or
mere extensive space, however large, always being finite, led
to an important conclusion in respect to the meaning of the
parallelism which the series's duality necessarily involved.
The parallelism, defining a relation between any two different
things, and being therefore functional rather than merely
1 See article, " The Poetry of Anaxagoras's Metaphysics," in the Journal
of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, vol. iv., No. 4, p. 90.
DUALISM, PABALLELISM AND INFINITISM. 233
structural, meant, as the findings were put conclusively,
identification, transformation and renewal: identification of
the original terms, transformation of these to larger mean-
ings, and renewal or persistence of the difference between
them as transformed. Then, following this interpretation of
parallelism, attention was called to certain significant results
to the meaning of continuity. Since gradation and con-
tinuity could not be the same, the one implying hetero-
geneity, the other homogeneity, any series was seen to be
discontinuous, that is, made of plena and vacua, and, as the
vacua could not be structurally or formally like the plena
and were to be thought of not as quantitatively between the
plena but even as coextensive with them and so as making
them penetrable by whatever might occupy the vacua, the
discontinuity of the series only afforded another view of the
duality and of the necessary immanence, possibly to be
spoken of as the graded immanence, of the two terms or
dimensions, in each other. Of course from this conception
of immanence, of a mutual immanence in the relation of the
series's two terms or dimensions, one would have to conclude
a general mutual immanence among all things however, nu-
merous, for plurality, as well as the duality of the single
series or of the single difference, is dimensional.
Here, then, the particular task of this paper finds its
natural end ; but not, as I hope, in the depressing sense of a
finishing. At the outset it was said that dualism might be
taken in the character of an hypostasis of extreme difference,
that is, in the character of the last term, of an infinite series
comprising for its other terms all possible gradations of finite
difference. Again, it was said that dualism might be taken
as a generalisation, given metaphysical support or reality,
from pluralism or as a unification, rendered into a doctrine
of substance, of an infinite multiplicity. Thus all differences
or all cases of plurality naturally falling into pairs, were
thought of as classifiable under dualism as the one great
pair. Very often the One or the Whole has been hyposta-
sised so. But, taken in either one of those ways, the duality
of dualism, as was distinctly asserted, could not be merely
structural, as if a metaphysical status in quo, although man's
habit of easy hypostasis might insist on making it so ; it
would necessarily be functional also. If, however, the dual-
ity were functional, infinity always representing the partici-
pation of some structure in a function, then dualism and, if
dualism, also parallelism would find, not indeed refutation
nor supplanting, but realisation or fulfilment in what, as was
234 A. H. LLOYD: DUALISM, PABALLELISM AND INFINITISM,
rather boldly suggested, might be called infinitism, which
was said to be in fact if not in name the characteristic ism
of the present time.
And the case for this infinitism for the idea, not the name
has now been presented, at least so far as the foregoing
account of infinity or of the infinite series, and its important
implication can constitute a case. Perhaps the direct evi-
dence has been rather that every series is dualistic and even
parallelistic than that dualism itself is the last term of a
series, but I doubt if any one will find cause for objection to
my indirection. The obvious conclusion from all that has
been said that pluralism is only the supreme dualism, paral-
lelism and all, tells the story either way. And, as to duality
being functional, let me point out, even with repetition, that
this must mean, not merely that dualism or parallelism is a
relation of any two things in a pluralistic universe, but also
that as such a relation in each and every case it must involve
else the story of its functional character were only half
told those three deeply important incidents of dualism or
parallelism, the identification, the transformation and the
persistence. A function can hardly be supposed to be wholly
external in what it implies to the things which constitute its
terms and, if nothing else, those three incidents show how
internal as well as external it and its relation are. Thus,
for just one more word, a pluralistic realism, often so keen
about external relations, very properly may find some com-
fort in many of the contentions and conclusions here set
down, but throughout there has been something in mind
besides either pluralism or realism.
V. THE 'MEANING' AND 'TEST' OF TRUTH.
BY J. W. SNELLMAN.
THE pragmatic theory of truth has been charged by Mr.
Bertrand Russell with confusing two different conceptions,
namely, those of the meaning and the test of truth. In his
Philosophical Essays he has given a very lucid criticism of
pragmatism from his peculiar standpoint. Even if truth is
tested by usefulness, what we mean by truth is still a relation
of agreement between thought and its object which cannot
be interpreted in pragmatic terms. When we are consider-
ing the nature of truth logically the question of how we
discover truth is quite irrelevant. It may be admitted that
purpose, will and feeling determine what we call true and
false, but this has nothing to do with the meaning of truth
which cannot be defined in any other way than simply as
agreement between thought and its object. Truth consists
in this relation, and it is therefore to confuse two different
things to say that the meaning of truth has to be defined by
the test of truth.
Pragmatists, however, will contest this reasoning. They
deny that in any usable sense of truth the ' test ' and the
' meaning ' can fall apart. The ' meaning ' which is left to
truth when we eliminate the ' test ' becomes purely formal.
Truth is taken to be merely a relation to an object, and all
further inquiry into the nature of this relation is thought to
be irrelevant to the question of the meaning of truth. But
this is to deprive truth of all meaning and not, as the intel-
lectualists think, to give a warrant for its meaning. If
nothing else is said about truth than that it is a relation of
correspondence between thought and its object, no distinc-
tion is made between truth and error. For all assertions
claim that they express such a relation, and only some claim
this justly. Mr. Russell answers that his intention was not
to give an account of the test of truth, but only to say in
what truth consists. We may use the pragmatic test for
distinguishing truth from error, without denying that the
meaning of truth is something else.
236 J. W. SNELLMAN:
But can we by the test, which remains pragmatic, know
when our assertion agrees with its object in a sense which
is not pragmatic? How can we, in other words, know
whether our assertion is true in the right ' meaning ' ? Is
it not impossible that the pragmatic test of truth could give
a ' meaning ' to truth which is a denial of the pragmatic
conception of truth ? Thus the intellectualist ' meaning ' of
truth becomes unverifiable, if it is deprived of its pragmatic
criterion. Whatever is asserted now becomes ' true,' when
truth is taken formally. Therefore, the separation of the
' meaning ' of truth from its test makes it impossible to ac-
count for truth as opposed to error.
I will now pass to a detailed examination of Mr. Russell's
position. The two chapters in which he deals with prag-
matism are both reprinted from periodicals, and their
chronological order is reversed in the book. 1 To the first
article both Dr. Schiller and Prof. James replied. 2 But the
essay on "Pragmatism " still repeats the same fundamental
mistakes, though in a somewhat milder tone.
In this essay Mr. Eussell states that it at first might seem
correct to inquire what the test of truth is and to infer that
it constitutes the meaning of truth. But, he continues, this
depends on a confusion due to the ambiguity of the word
' meaning '. And the ignoring of the different senses of this
word is a fallacy which is at the bottom of the whole prag-
matist philosophy. 8 These contentions are illustrated as
follows. We may say "that cloud means rain," or we say
" pluie means rain ". In the former case we infer from the
existence of one thing to the existence of another; in the
latter again we think what a person has in his mind when he
uses a certain word. About this sense of the term Mr.
Russell says: " In the second sense ' meaning ' is confined
to symbols, i.e. words, and whatever other ways may be
employed for communicating our thoughts. It is this second
sense of meaning which we expect a dictionary to give us."
Now pragmatism has in its account of truth made the mis-
take of confusing these two senses of 'meaning'. It has
found out the test of truth and thinks that this is the meaning
of truth in the second sense. " Thus pragmatism does not
answer the question : What is in our minds when we judge
that a certain belief is true ? " 4
1 The latter was published in the Albany Review, January, 1908, the
former in the Edinburgh Review, April, 1909.
2 Dr. Schiller's reply appeared in the Albany Review ', March, 1908
Prof. James's in his Meaning of Truth, in the chapter called " Two
Knglish Critics".
3 P. 109. 4 P. 110.
THE ' MEANING ' AND ' TEST ' OF TRUTH. 237
So the author tries to maintain that the ' meaning ' of the
term truth is to be defined in a purely verbal sense. This
procedure can only yield, as he himself sees, a ' dictionary '
meaning of truth. 1 But he is quite mistaken in supposing
that this is what pragmatists were trying to discover. It is
something they are well aware of, but regard as quite trivial
and therefore utterly unsatisfactory. The only ' meaning '
they consider worth discussing is one which will in fact dis-
tinguish the ' true ' from the false. Now Mr. Russell has a cer-
tain sympathy with their attitude. He approves the use of the
pragmatic test of truth as a means of discovering whether
any assertion is in fact true or false, but holds that it is com-
patible with his definition of the meaning of truth. He ex-
pressly states that he admits the influence which feeling has
upon our actual thinking ; nevertheless he denies the rele-
vance of this fact to the ' meaning ' of truth in the abstract.
Thus he says about the pragmatist doctrine of the influence
of desire upon belief : " with this account we have no quarrel ;
what we deny is its relevance to the question : What is meant
by ' truth ' and ' falsehood ' ? " 2
Mr. Russell's whole position arises out of the fact that he
has never perceived any problem in the notion of the ' mean-
ing ' and the ' object ' or ' fact,' in a relation to which truth
according to his theory consists. He has in consequence
ignored the problem of truth as pragmatists conceive it, and
left it entirely unsolved. As has been pointed out to Mr.
Russell himself by Dr. Schiller and Prof. James, his theory
gives no account whatever of truth as opposed to error. The
' truth ' is purely formal ; it is only the dictionary meaning
of the word truth. It is common both to assertions which
are really true and to those which only claim to be so, but
are not. How then can the ' meaning ' of truth consist in
something which does nothing to distinguish truth from
falsehood, but is common to them both alike ?
But, Mr. Russell will answer, the ' meaning ' of truth has
not to distinguish truth from falsehood. This is the task of
the test, which may be taken pragmatically. However, if
we admit that truth is known by usefulness, how can we
infer that the meaning of truth is an inexplicable relation to
' fact ' which cannot be interpreted in pragmatic terms ?
The facts in a relation to which the ' meaning ' of truth is
said to consist, cannot, it seems, be known pragmatically,
and the assertion thus becomes arbitrary and truth unknow-
able. If ' truth ' in the intellectualistic sense has to be
'P. 109. * P. log.
238 J. W. SNELLMAN :
known, this cannot be effected by using the pragmatic test
or indeed by any test at all. The facts must be somehow
given in such a way as to need no further testing. All prag-
matic testing thus becomes irrelevant and superfluous. But
this leads to the conclusion that whatever appears is ipso
facto true. If we once take the meaning of truth in the
intellectualistic sense, we are bound to reject the pragmatic
test of truth, and have only the formal meaning of truth left.
This is, as we saw, quite powerless to distinguish truth from
error.
If, again, the facts are not given as indisputable, they must
be tested, and can only be tested pragmatically. And then
the meaning of truth also becomes pragmatic, and the formal
' meaning' is quite irrelevant. The relation to ' fact,' which
the formal view takes to be the ' meaning ' of truth, is now,
when the pragmatic test is adopted, interpreted pragmatically.
Pragmatism will help us to distinguish between true and
false claims on ' truth,' and to repudiate the merely formal
definition.
Mr. Kussell's position is inconsistent because he tries at
the same time to use a test for distinguishing truth from
falsehood and to state the ' meaning ' of truth without refer-
ence to this distinction. He gives truth a merely formal
' meaning,' and yet admits that truth is known by usefulness.
But how is such a combination possible ? Is it not both to
deny and to assert the pragmatic test of truth ? When the
meaning of truth is taken formally and therefore as inde-
pendent of all testing, how can the pragmatic test at the
same time be accepted ? If a relation to given ' facts ' is the
4 meaning ' of truth, what can be the function of a further
test of truth ? That Mr. Russell's conception of ' fact ' is
quite uncritical is best shown by his attempt to combine
this notion with a test of truth which cannot admit validity
as self-existent. Either there is no difficulty about the notion
of ' fact,' and there is no need for any pragmatic test ; or else
what comes as ' fact ' has to be tested, and then the notion
is to be interpreted pragmatically. In the latter case the
formal use of the notion becomes irrelevant to the problem
of the real meaning of truth.
Mr. Eussell is sometimes himself compelled to admit that
the pragmatic test of truth is not compatible with his notion
of the ' meaning ' of truth. To show this I will quote the
following passages from his book. First he grants to the
pragmatist " that what causes people to judge that a belief,
about which a doubt has arisen, is true is the fact that this
belief is found to further the purposes which led us to inquire
THE ' MEANING * AND * TEST ' OF TRUTH. 239
into its truth". 1 This is the 'meaning' of truth in the
sense in which ' cloud ' means * rain '. Further on he says
that the pragmatist, confusing the two senses of the word
4 meaning,' " is led to argue that usefulness gives the meaning
of truth, and that therefore when a belief is useful it must
be true".' 2 In the latter part of this sentence Mr. Eussell
not only falsely attributes to pragmatism the simple con-
version of the proposition " all truth is useful," but clearly
asserts that usefulness cannot be the meaning of truth in
either of the senses of this word. That this is his meaning
is shown by the continuation of the argument. He says
that the consequence of the psychological doctrine of prag-
matism is that useful beliefs are thought to be true. " This
is an entirely different proposition, and one which, by itself,
throws no light whatever either upon the nature of truth or
upon what beliefs are in fact true. It may well be ... that
there is no connexion whatever between truth and useful-
ness." 3 Here he holds that usefulness cannot even be the
test of truth. And if actual thinking is still supposed to
proceed on pragmatic principles, which Mr. Russell admits
when he says that beliefs are,, thought to be true because
they are useful, our truth and the test we use for it are not
genuine. Moreover real truth becomes unattainable, be-
cause he first asserts that thinking something true depends
on usefulness, and then says that this process cannot decide
what is " true in fact ". The sceptical conclusion that real
truth is unattainable because we never attain more than
pragmatically valid truth tested by usefulness, follows in-
evitably from the premises.
Mr. Russell's illustration of the twofold sense of ' meaning '
rests on a natural, but false, analogy. In the case of cloud
and rain we have two happenings, the former of which is not
exclusively dependent on the latter. The cloud can be ex-
perienced even without the rain. But this is not the case
with truth : it cannot be known without the test. They
can be separated only by dogmatically asserting that truth
has no other meaning except the ' dictionary ' sense. Mr.
Russell's formal view comes out clearly when he says the
meaning of truth is of the same sort as ' pluie is the meaning
of ram '. He is dealing only with the meaning of the word.
But if this is taken as the only and ultimate meaning of
truth, and all further definition is excluded, the question
" what is truth? " becomes utterly trivial, and one which no
pragmatist will desire to discuss.
1 P. 110. 2 P. 112. 3 Pp. 112-113.
240 J. W. SNELLMAN :
Mr. Russell's view of the ' meaning ' of truth explains also
some of his other misapprehensions, e.g. of the doctrine of
the ambiguity of truth. He comes to the conclusion that
the distinction made by Dr. Schiller between truth-claim
and validated truth is a difference between what is thought
to be true and what is true. 1 But this is to ignore the
crucial question of how we are to know what is true. To
answer this question does not seem to interest Mr. Russell
at all : he simply fails to see its importance. We cannot
distinguish what is really true from what is supposed to be
true by defining truth as a formal relation between thought
and its object. The example he uses here is again based on
an analogy of things taken from the physical world. He
states that if the grocer calls margarine butter there is no
ambiguity in the word * butter,' because he means by butter
exactly the same as the customer. But how do we distin-
guish butter from margarine? Not by defining what the
word ' butter ' means, but by testing the thing which claims
to be ' butter '.
The same attitude is exhibited in Mr. Russell's account of
the procedure of the sciences. He urges that there are
" truths of fact" which are true in a non-pragmatic sense.
Scientific induction assumes certain data, the 'facts,' with
which our theories have to agree if they are to be called
true. 2 It is quite true that each science has got its funda-
mental assumptions which it treats as 'facts'. But this
does not prove that they are ultimately so, or incapable of
being interpreted pragmatically. Mr. Russell again omits
to explain how such ' facts ' as he talks about are to be
known. The formal view of truth taken by Mr. Russell
leads him to his notion of the working of scientific hypo-
theses. He says that "what science requires of a working
hypothesis is that it shall work theoretically, i.e. that all its
verifiable consequences shall be true, and none false",
Therefore the pragmatic doctrine that any kind of satisfac-
tion which can be derived from entertaining a belief yields
truth has no support in science. 4 We must again ask, whence
the ' facts ' which have to verify the hypothesis ? If they
can be known only pragmatically, all ' working ' is in the
last resort of the same kind, namely, practical.
Mr. Russell thinks that pragmatists themselves at times
acknowledge a meaning in truth which is different from its
test. He quotes a passage from Studies in Humanism, in
which Dr. Schiller points out that true and false are in a
1 Pp. 111-112. 2 P. 105. 3 P. 106. 4 P. 108.
THE ' MEANING ' AND ' TEST ' OF TRUTH. 241
certain sense as ultimate as sensible qualities. 1 About this
' meaning ' of truth Mr. Russell says that " it is evident that
in the sense in which the meaning of a word is ' what is
in our minds when we use the word,' the meaning of the
word ' truth ' is just that specific character of the truth-
predication " which, as Dr. Schiller confesses, is something
quite other than " furthering our purposes ". 2 This " funda-
mental meaning of truth" is treated as unimportant by
pragmatism, because it does not help us in distinguishing
the truth from falsehood. 2 But it is certainly a confusion to
think that pragmatism has here made a concession to the
intellectual stic conception of truth. When Dr. Schiller
speaks of truth as a specific sort of value he does not intend
to oppose this to what he has pointed out to be the actual
meaning of truth. The ' meaning ' which truth has by
reason of the ' specific character of truth-predications ' is
just what is merely verbal and what has to be interpreted
pragmatically. In speaking of truth as an ' ultimate fact '
the pragmatist does not imagine that he is doing more than
recognising a linguistic usage. He does not take it as
deciding anything about the real meaning of truth. The
merely formal ' meaning ' of truth is to him not only unim-
portant, but not a * meaning ' in any significant sense at all.
The meaning of truth as opposed to error is what he is
aiming at, and it is certainly indistinguishable from its test.
This, however, does not prevent pragmatism from dis-
tinguishing different classes of satisfactions or values. Thus
we have truth- values, aesthetical and ethical values, and we
admit that it is important to distinguish between them.
It follows from their primary character that no further ex-
planation can be given of them, but they must simply be
recognised, like e.g. colours. This is, however, not enough
if we try to account for the meaning of truth as opposed to
error. To call ' true ' and ' false ' as ultimate forms as
* red ' and ' blue ' is in no wise to admit that their application
is not to be inquired into further. It might as well be
asserted that because * red ' does not mean ' grey ' no one
could make a mistake in calling grey what is really ' red '.
To sum up : Mr. Kussell has tried to conceive the meaning
of truth formally, merely as a relation to an object, and at
the same time to use the pragmatic test for distinguishing
truth from falsehood. This position is doubly untenable ;
for if on the one hand the pragmatic test is accepted it
1 P. 110. The passage occurs on p. 144 in Studies in Humanism.
2 P. 112.
16
242 J. W. SNELLMAN : ' MEANING ' AND ' TEST ' OF TRUTH.
makes the real meaning of truth pragmatic, and the formal
' meaning' becomes irrelevant, while on the other if the
formal ' meaning ' is retained as the adequate meaning of
truth, all testing becomes irrelevant, and truth indistinguish-
able from falsehood. Therefore, if truth is to be distinguished
from falsehood, we cannot accept the verbal definition as
sufficient. And this is one motive for adopting the only
alternative, which is to define the meaning of truth pragmat-
ically. In other words, Mr. Eussell has not understood the
meaning of pragmatism because he has not perceived the
problem which pragmatism has set itself to solve, viz. the
giving of a meaning to truth which does not formally identify,
but effectively distinguish, the true from the false.
VI. DISCUSSIONS.
ARISTOTLE AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION.
DB. F. C. S. SCHILLER in his ingenious and interesting work,
Riddles of the Sphinx, has made some remarks about Aristotle's
relation to the philosophy of evolution that seem to me to be open
to very serious objections. These remarks already appeared in
the first edition of the Riddles, and therefore have been before the
public for twenty years, but I do not know that they have ever
been controverted. At any rate in the third edition (1910) they
are reprinted without reference to any adverse criticism directed
against the interpretation of Aristotle which they express. And
had such criticism been put forward Dr. Schiller would hardly
have let it pass unnoticed. What I have to say, then, whether
otherwise valid or not, can hardly be objected to as unseasonable
or belated.
Aristotle, as is well known, was not an evolutionist in the sense
of believing that the present constitution of Nature has been de-
veloped out of a different state of things. According to him the
celestial spheres had always revolved round the centre of the uni-
verse which is the centre of our earth as Greek astronomy saw
them revolving still. The specific types of animal organisation
had been transmitted with no important variation from parent to
offspring from all eternity, and would continue to be so trans-
mitted for ever. What was known even then of early history did
not indeed permit him to believe that there had been the same un-
broken continuity in the civilised life of mankind ; but one gathers
that in his opinion it had run and would run for ever through an
endless series of recurring cycles.
Dr. Schiller is of course perfectly aware that this was Aristotle's
theory of the world. As an accomplished Hellenist he must also
be aware that the pre-Socratic philosophers held widely different
theories, being, in fact, some of them as much evolutionists as we
are, even to the extent of formulating the law of evolution as a
series of progressive differentiations and integrations. And if
Aristotle rejected their theories this was in no spirit of scientific
caution he accepts the monstrous fable that shell- fish are pro-
duced solely by spontaneous generation but from the same crass
conservatism that made him refuse to believe in the axial rotation
244 A. W. BENN I
of the earth, and even of the moon, in whose case it is a matter of
ocular demonstration. So far is it from being true that, as Dr.
Schiller says, " he rejects evolution merely on the ground of lack
of evidence " (Riddles, p. 195). He rejects it on systematic, a
priori grounds. By far the greater part of his universe is com-
posed of the fifth element, the famous quintessence, an eternal and
incorruptible substance admitting of no change except rotation in
space. Within this is contained the sublunary sphere, a scene of
everlasting mutation, consisting as it does of the traditional four
elements : fire, air, water, and earth, whose very nature it is to be
perpetually transforming themselves into one another as the pro-
tyle, which is their common basis, oscillates between the anti-
thetical qualities, hot and cold, wet and dry. The surface of the
earth is peopled with animal species which, as I have already
observed, are, in Aristotle's opinion, unchangeable through all
eternity. And this immutability is no mere fact of experience but
an absolute metaphysical necessity. For, according to Aristotle,
growth is a transition from what exists 'in potency to what exists
in act, and in the case of a new individual such a transition can
only be determined by the operation of a pre-existing individual
in whom or in which the transmitted type is fully realised. Thus
nothing but a man can produce a man : his descent from a lower
animal is impossible.
How then can Dr. Schiller maintain that " the metaphysical
implications of the theory of Evolution in its only tenable form
were fully worked out by Aristotle" (p. 195)? In the first place
by giving what I cannot but consider an unwarrantable extension
to Aristotle's idea of Potentiality. As used by Aristotle that idea
seems to me no more than a pure verbalism. In order that B
may be evolved out of A the process must of course be possible ;
otherwise B would not have been evolved. But we did not
want a great philosopher to tell us that. Why rubbing two sticks
together should be followed by the evolution of heat and light is
not explained by telling me that there was a potentiality of fire in
the wood. It is partially explained by telling me that heat is a mode
of motion. In this connexion Dr. Schiller contrasts the excellence
of Aristotle's method with what he considers to be the fallacy of
"naturalistic evolutionism," which " does not explain the genesis
of consciousness out of unconscious matter, because we cannot or
do not attribute potential consciousness to matter " (pp. 194-195)..
But if so Aristotle was all wrong, for he did attribute potential
consciousness to matter. In order to explain the spontaneous
generation of shell-fish mentioned above, he observes that earth
contains water, water contains air (irv^v^a), air contains vital heat
(tfe/o/xon/ra \J/vxt-Kr)v) ', so that in a way (rpoirov TWO) all things are
full of animal life (lAw? n^im) which we may fairly identify
with consciousness (De Gen. An., 762 a , 21).
True, Dr. Schiller's interpretation seems to cover this remarkable
ARISTOTLE AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION. 245
theory of spontaneous generation when he proceeds to observe that,
" from the lowest form of matter to the highest form of mind, the
lower is the potentiality of which the higher is the actuality or
realisation " (p. 195). I have no objection to this statement; but
I fail to see how it can be reconciled with the denial of potential
consciousness to matter. Nor yet can I reconcile the shell-fish
theory with what follows : "It is true, however, that Aristotle does
not conceive this process from the potential to the actual to be one
in Time " (ib.). To say nothing of those wonderful testaceans, surely
the evolution of individual character and of political organisation
both so well illustrated by the Stagirite are processes occurring in
time. That these should not be mentioned was of course a mere
oversight. But the same cannot be said of the immediate context.
" And so we ascend by insensible gradations from the first matter
(protyle), which is merely potential and never actual, to the Divine
being which has completely realised all its potentialities," with this
difference, however, from modern evolutionism, that Aristotle " supi-
poses the different degrees of perfection to co-exist in Space rather
than to succeed one another in Time " (ib. ; italics in the original).
To talk about insensible gradations in this connexion is to con-
fuse Aristotle with Laibniz. There is indeed a serial order in
Aristotle's cosmology ; but there are points where the different
degrees of perfection, so far from being connected by insensible
gradations, are separated by impassable barriers. Such, as I have
already pointed out, is the distinction between the ever-changing
matter of our sublunary world and the eternal quintessence of the
celestial spheres. Such within the supernal region itself is the dis-
tinction between the planetary spheres and the sphere of the fixed
stars, between this last, which still revolves, and the Prime Mover,
itself unmoved, which is God. Within the sublunary sphere there
are the well-marked distinctions, still preserved by modern thought,
between the inorganic and the organic, between brutes and men ;
in psychology between sense, memory and imagination on the one
hand and reason on the other ; in ethics between moral and
intellectual virtue ; in logic between probable reasoning and de-
monstration ; in demonstration itself between first principles and
the deductions made therefrom ; finally, in politics there is the
profound distinction between the ideal State which is ruled by
the wise and good in the interest of the whole community, and the
actual State which is ruled by the selfish interest of an individual
or of a class.
This Aristotelian method of trenchant, sometimes impassable
demarcations has more than a merely biographical interest. It is
historically of profound importance, having contributed more than
any other cause, perhaps more than all other causes put together,
to stamp on the French intellect that character of admirable lucidity,
combined with a less admirable dogmatism, which has belonged to
it ever since the Middle Ages. And just this Aristotelian charac-
246 A. W. BENN :
teristic has been responsible for the more strenuous resistance
offered to evolutionism in France than in any other great European
country.
Among the " metaphysical implications of evolution," with whose
complete working-out Aristotle is credited by Dr. Schiller, the pas-
sage by insensible gradations from one form of existence to another
occupies the most prominent place. I have shown that Aristotle's
systematic philosophy not only fails to recognise such a gradation
but expressly denies it, and led to its continued denial twenty-two
centuries after Aristotle wrote. In denying it, moreover, he sinned
against the light, for Heracleitus and Anaxagoras, the chosen objects
of his most inveterate hostility, might have taught him better things.
But this is not all. From Dr. Schiller's point of view, at any rate,
there is another almost equally momentous metaphysical implica-
tion of evolution still more conspicuously absent from Aristotle.
Among the solutions offered to the riddles of the Sphinx by our
new (Edipus the most confidently enunciated is the existence of a
guiding superintending Providence, proved, according to him, by
evolution, alone making evolution intelligible, and, therefore, one
might think, entitled to rank as a metaphysical postulate of evolu-
tion. Now if I were discussing the question with my friend, Prof.
Franz Brentano, I should find myself compelled to prove at length
that Aristotle's metaphysics, so far from involving, expressly negates
such a Providence. But with Dr. Schiller it is not so. Not only
does he thoroughly grasp what seems to me, as to him, the true
nature of Aristotle's God, but he denounces it with what is even for
him unusual strength of language. " The Aristotelian account
of a Deity totally unconscious of the world's existence and un-
affected by it, who yet is its prime mover, by a magical attraction
he exercises upon it, is utterly impossible " (pp. 430-431). I
am not prepared to contradict this damning characterisation of
Aristotle's theology ; but as that theology happens to be the key-
stone of his metaphysics and the most definite statement of what
Aristotle conceived to be the relation between Potency and Actu-
ality, I fail to see how so crushing an indictment can be reconciled
with what must now seem the hyperbolical praise of that previous
passage where we were told that " the metaphysical implications of
the potential and the actual, i.e., of the theory of Evolution in its
only tenable form, were fully worked out by Aristotle more than
2000 years ago " (p. 195).
Once more, taking broader ground, when we remember that
Aristotle's theology marks the culminating point not merely of his
own philosophy but of all Greek metaphysics, it seems perfectly in-
comprehensible that Dr. Schiller should commit himself to such
a statement as the following : " It is pretty clear that in the time of
Aristotle Greek metaphysics were far ahead, not only of Greek
science, but also of all but the most recent developments of modern
science " (p. 173). Greek science bequeathed to posterity an enor-
ARISTOTLE AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION. 247
mous mass of positive truth, and in addition to this an example of
the methods by which so much more truth was to be discovered.
And if it accepted some doctrines that we now know to be impos-
sible, can it be said of any of these that it might have been known to
be impossible with the resources then available, whereas Dr. Schiller
surely implies that the absurdity of Aristotle's own theism should
have been evident to Aristotle himself ? My own opinion is that
Greek metaphysics, so far from being ahead of Greek science, lagged
far behind it, and even fatally impeded its progress by expressing its
imperfect and provisional conclusions in abstract formulas which
were passed off by such philosophers as Aristotle on the men of
science as necessary and a priori truths.
A. W. BENN.
"REAL KINDS" AND " GENERAL LAWS".
IN the course of his able exposition of M. Bergson's fundamental
views, in MIND, No. 77 (p. 38), Mr. J. Solomon makes the follow-
ing important observations : " The ' general law ' of the logical
text-books is a fusion by ' endosmose,' as Bergson would say of
the ' law ' of modern science and the ' genus ' (form, species) of
Aristotelian [science]. The two ideas are quite different, though
the modern logician . . . often tries to persuade himself that mod-
ern science no less than Aristotelian is a search for ' real kinds '.
But ' real kinds ' imply a negation of the reality of movement ;
they are the one reality, permanent things that maintain them-
selves generation after generation. Modern science takes move-
ment and change for the ultimate fact and seeks to discover the
laws of its stages, that is, the correspondences among those stages ;
it gives relations ; in its most perfect form it gives quantitative
relations. Such a relation is ' general,' in our sense, but it is not
a genus, a thing, at all. It crosses and confuses all that Aristotle
would have thought the most palpable distinctions of genera."
This passage raises some fundamental and debatable questions,
particularly as to the place of Movement, Development, and
Teleology, in the Aristotelian system. For our present purpose,
however, this is a side-issue, since no one denies that Greek
science gave rise to the conception of Nature as a hierarchy of
forms or essences whose ^differences were fixed ; and Mr. Solomon's
main point appears to be that the idea of 'real kinds,' so under-
stood, and the i.'ea of 'general laws,' characteristic of modern
science, are entirely different, and cannot be fused. He refers to
myself as one of tl a , writers who endeavour to assimilate the two
ideas. I cannot admit that the general logical doctrine, which
finds expression more or less imperfectly in my Introductory Text-
book of Logic, involves in its view of "general laws" a mere
fusion pf two unrelated and even opposed conceptions.
In a Note to chap. v. of the book referred to (pp. 154-156, second
or later edition), the idea of "real kinds," derived from ancient
science, is examined from the point of view of the modern theory
of Development. Just as certain conceptions of modern geometry,
involving the " generation " of geometrical figures, enable us to
conceive of a "geometrical evolution" of one figure from another,
without taking away the meaning of the " real kinds " indicated by
the names ellipse, circle, etc., which the Greeks thought to be
"REAL KINDS" AND "GENEBAL LAWS". 249
absolutely separated from one another ; so, in the world of living
beings, there are natural divisions, marked off by typical differences
which are obvious and clear, although between them there are
margins of debatable ground, as it were, showing transition-forms,
and we conceive them as descended from a common stock and as
subject to further changes. Species have a relative instead of an
absolute stability. And if since the idea of "real kinds "is not
limited to living beings we take it in its widest reference, and ask
what is meant by the " nature " or " essence " of a thing, from the
point of view of modern thought, the answer would seem to be in
brief that a thing is what it does. l< To say that a thing has a
nature or essence at all, simply means that it is capable of definite
modes of behaviour in response to what is done to it. Thus, let
us consider some substance which is being used by man for his
own purposes. However plastic it is to his designs, whatever
transformations he makes it undergo, there remains something that
he cannot alter, and which seems indeed to dictate the limits within
which his transforming power over the substance shall extend.
This is the truth which underlies the ancient doctrine of fixity.
There is a ' nature ' of the thing, not separate from the changeable
qualities, but revealed in the qualities as a law controlling their
changes in action. Hence to understand things we must make an
extensive study of their behaviour, and if possible make them act,
experiment with them." l
Here we come upon the conception of the " general law," which
I must maintain to be simply the expression, in terms of modern
thought, of the philosophical truths underlying the Aristotelian
doctrine of the metaphysical reality of the yeVos and etSos, and
the ^Platonic doctrine of the transcendence of the i8r) (with
their mediaeval counterparts, universalia in rebus and univer-
salia ante res). Here of course the question is not what these
doctrines meant to the consciousness of Aristotle or Plato or the
Scholastic Eealists. The question is, I repeat, of the implicit
philosophical tendency of these epistemological speculations and
of its statement in terms of modern thought. It is irrelevant to
object that the modern statement involves an idea which was not
part of Aristotle's or Plato's conscious thinking and would have
greatly disturbed his general system of the world.
What do we mean by a " law of Nature " ? It seems to me
that this question must be answered by considering the nature of
experimental science, and that to define law as quantitative state-
ment of relations is inadequate, apart from an examination of the
method by which the statement was obtained. We must dis-
tinguish and set aside the meaning of " law" as standing for those
great probabilities or moral certainties, based on past experience,
that such and such things will occur in the future as they have
done in the past ; that " while the earth remaineth, seed-time and
I 0p. cit., p. 156.
250 S. H. MELLONE :
harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and
night shall not cease ". Such laws, or uniformities, are only the
starting-points of scientific investigation. The laws that science
seeks for go deeper than these superficial uniformities. The real
laws of Nature, though they never tell us absolutely that anything
" must " happen, do tell us that if certain things are done then
certain things will follow. Every scientific experiment is directed
by an endeavour to discover or test such a law ; it is a question
put to Nature to see what she will do if we do certain things. The
real laws of Nature are laws with an " if "- 1 They do not them-
selves provide the occasions of their own operation, any more than
the major premise of a syllogism can of itself provide the minor
premise and conclusion.
This is in harmony with the familiar logical analysis of the uni-
versal, hypothetical, and disjunctive Judgments. The truth of the
hypothetical judgment consists in its reference to an actual objec-
tive system within which it affirms the reality " of such a general
law as would, if we suppose some conditions present, produce a
certain result" (Bradley). In its purely hypothetical form, such
a Judgment lacks connexion with a particular case ; in fact it
cannot be connected with any particular case at all unless sup-
plemented by a true singular or collective judgment referring to
concrete existence. In the same way it may be shown that the
disjunctive Judgment, when used in the interpretation of experience,
implies the reality of a system of orderly relations, as Bosanquet
shows, and requires reference to a particular case which is to be
placed in that system.
These conclusions seem to involve the recognition of an impor-
tant element of truth even in the extreme forms of scholastic
Realism. Every real law of Nature is ante rem, and would never
come into action at all if the circumstances to which it is appli-
cable never occurred ; on their occurrence, it is in re, and waits to
be traced by us in the empirical result.
I must confess that the view set forth in the preceding para-
graphs seems to me so nearly self-evident that I do not know how
to argue it. Science implies the reality of universals. Take the
simplest possible instance. One stone falls to the earth when
allowed to drop ; another does the same. Is there any real con-
nexion? If there is none, then it was a chance coincidence.
If a million stones fell to the ground under the given condi-
tion, it would be a chance coincidence, and would afford no
reason whatever for supposing that the next stone would do the
1 If this statement appears too simple, the following may be offered as
its equivalent, in reference to the movements of the most elementary
masses of which the physical universe is believed to consist : the equa-
tions of motion are differential equations of the second order, involving,
therefore, two ff arbitrary constants " for each moving atom or corpuscle,
and there is no mathematico-physical uniformity discoverable in connexion:
with these " constants ".
"REAL KINDS" AND " GENEBAL LAWS". 251
same. The events would be independent in their real nature. If
on the other hand they are not independent, if there is a real con-
nexion, then it is a real universal. It proves on examination to
be a " law ". This points to an element in Nature which no
consistent Nominalist can admit ; though, like Mill, he may en-
deavour to evade the difficulty by speaking of " uniformities " of
Nature. But either the " uniformities " point to real universals to
" laws " in the sense in which we have used the term or Science
is impossible.
The conclusion is, then, that even if we take the extreme and
(I venture to think) quite untenable view that Plato and Aristotle,
like the scholastic Bealists, meant by the universal merely the
abstract " class-concept," even then, there is good ground for
assimilating the ancient doctrine of the reality of universals with
the modern doctrine of general laws of Nature.
From this point of view, it is possible to bring out the deeper
significance of the Aristotelian theory of knowledge, which is sug-
gestive not only in reference to the valid application of systema-
tised knowledge to unsystematised fact, but even to the process of
constructing systematised knowledge on the basis of experience.
Aristotle's suggestions as regards the method of the latter process
(the problem of " Induction " in the ordinary sense) are contained
mainly in his doctrine of the tvOv^fjua. and irapaSeiy/xa. 1 The
method of the former process is essentially the same as the prin-
ciple of the Aristotelian onAAoyioyxos eVto-T^/xoviKos. 2
S. H. MELLONE.
1 Mellone, Logic, chap, vm., 3 (pp. 251 if. ; second or later edition).
2 Op. cit., chap, vm., 7 (pp. 232 if., 237-239, 384).
PLATO'S IDEAL NUMBERS.
PEOF. TAYLOR'S review of Miss Williams's book on The Platonic
Theory of Knowledge (MiND, N.S., No. 76) contains some dark hints
as to his own views of the nature of dSrjTiKol apiOpol. They still
figure in our text-books on Algebra, it would seem, " under the very
transparent alias of ' figurate numbers ' ". They are connected with
' the corpuscular physics of the Tim&us', and apparently with Pytha-
gorean mathematics. Further knowledge is reserved from us, unless
we can gather enlightenment from the works of Theon of Smyrna.
But meantime, until we are all initiated, may it not be of some use to
attempt a reconstruction of the theory from the pages of Aristotle's
Metaphysics ? Or would Prof. Taylor hold that to be too simple a
way ? I would venture to suggest that Aristotle's testimony,
critically interpreted in the light of the latest Platonic dialogues,
will enable us to construct a perfectly intelligible account of the
theory of ideal numbers without reading into that theory any
anticipation of modern mathematical investigations. The relevance
of figurate numbers I entirely fail to understand and should be
glad if Prof. Taylor would explain.
It would, I suppose, be generally admitted that Plato attempts
to analyse all existents into a material and a formal element.
Throughout the earlier dialogues his interest is chiefly in the formal
or ideal element, for that alone is the object of knowledge. Plato
like Aristotle seeks intelligibility by abstracting from the matter
and considering only the form or elSos. But he erects these
formal elements of phenomena into separate existents, separate, it
would seem, not only in the sense that we as knowers can abstract
them, but also in the sense that they possess a being of their own
of a higher order than the being of phenomena. The cufy in fact
are x>prra, and this is the burden of Aristotle's charge against
Plato. We have then two classes of existents, phenomena and
their formal elements, ideas. But already in the Republic we
hear of a third order of existents intermediate between these two,
namely the mathematicals. (I assume that these are the objects of
the third section of the Line, and intermediate in the sense indi-
cated by Aristotle in the Metaphysics, 987 b 15. To attempt a
defence of this assumption, if it be challenged, would take me too
far from my present purpose.) In later dialogues, the Tim&us
and the Philebus especially, Plato considers at somewhat greater
length the relation of these mathematicals to the ideas and to
PLATO'S IDEAL NUMBERS. 253
phenomena. Once more I must be dogmatic in my interpretation
in order to be brief. But the result which in my opinion certainly
issues from these dialogues is that the ideas can no longer be treated
as the direct formal elements of particulars, but that the mathe-
maticals are intermediate between ideas and phenomena in the
sense that they are the direct forms of particulars, while the ideas
in their turn are forms of the mathematicals. In the Tim&us it is
the ' entering and departing ' forms which enter into the vTroSoxv,
not the ideas themselves. These forms are copies of the ideas and
they are identified with the geometrical solids. The fire which is
a "such," determines the V7ro8o^ so as to produce "fiery
parts " of matter. All these ' fiery parts ' have one and the same
form, the universal fire which comes to be in different parts of
the receptacle (compare especially 49 D-50 C). And this universal
fire is equated with a mathematical solid, to wit the tetrahedron.
The formal element of a phenomenon is, therefore, in the first
place a mathematical object. But that in turn is a copy of an idea,
i.e. its formal element is an idea. The phenomenon is a product
of a mathematical object and a matter, the mathematical is a pro-
duct of an idea and another kind of matter.
This result is generalised in the Philebus in the theory of Trepas
and aTreipov. The teaching of the Philebus I take to be that all
sensible objects, belonging to the class of /xei*Ta, are products
of a limit and an unlimited. Plato refuses to give us a general
mark of the nature of the limit, but all his examples are mathe-
matical (25 A and D). Is not the meaning clear in the light of the
TimcBUS ? The formal elements of particulars are the various
instances of the limit i.e. they are the mathematicals. The answer
to the difficulty about the absence of the ideas in the Philebus
classification is surely just this, that in the Philebus we do not go
so far back as the ideas in our process of abstraction. We are
merely analysing the constituents of phenomena, and their formal
elements are the mathematicals. Ideas, as we can see from the
Timceus, are only reached by a further process of abstraction from
the matter of the mathematicals.
These results, thus briefly and imperfectly stated, prepare us for
the interpretation of ideal numbers. A careful study of the Meta-
physics, books M and N, can surely leave no doubt as to the
identity of ideas and ideal numbers in Plato's latest theory. The
only ideas then are ideal numbers with the addition of ideal
geometrical figures (the ' things after the ideas or numbers ' of
Metaphysics, 992 B 13-18, 1080 B 25). What does this mean ?
Surely only that Plato has carried his principles to their logical
conclusion. The theory is already implicit in the results of the
Philebus and Tim&us. Instead of holding that the formal ele-
ments of phenomena were ideas, Plato there said that they were
mathematicals. He must now take one further step of abstraction
to reach the ideas, but the only ideas will be those of mathematical
254 R. PETRIE :
objects, i.e. of numbers and figures, since these and these alone are
the formal elements of phenomena. Abstract from these again
and we reach the One, which is the formal element of the ideal
numbers and therefore indirectly of everything else.
The way from the dialogues to the Metaphysics is clear once we
have grasped the significance of the Timcsus and Philebus. All that
remained for Plato in his latest speculations, which Aristotle criti-
cises in books M and N, was to elucidate the relation of the mathe-
maticals to the ideas. Leaving aside for the moment the objects
of geometry, we may state that relation as follows. Mathemati-
cal numbers in their various ratios or combinations are the formal
elements of phenomena. But they too must be analysed into form
and matter, for they are not wholly intelligible. Abstracting from
their matter, we reach the ideal numbers which are their forms, the
clSrjTiKol aptOfMtl. These are the product of the pluralisation of
the One in the matter which is called the " indeterminate dyad ".
But what is more relevant to our present purpose they are the
intelligible or formal elements of mathematical numbers. They are
the ' ideas ' of these numbers, which in turn are the ' ideas ' of pheno-
mena. Instead of the Republic order of existents, phenomena, mathe-
maticals, and ideas, we now have phenomena, mathematicals and
ideal numbers. Plato has seen that the only ' ideas ' necessary are
those of numbers. All others are superfluous, for the form of a parti-
cular horse (e.g.) is not an ideal horse, but rather certain mathematical
relations of figures or numbers. A particular horse is the arrange-
ment of a given matter in certain ratios or figures which may be
mathematically expressed. This is only another way of stating
the familiar doctrine of Plato that our first attempt to understand
phenomena, or render them intelligible, must be through the study
of mathematics. But we cannot rest at the mathematical stage.
Thought is not content with the imperfect intelligibility of mathe-
matical numbers. It passes farther back to the ideal back from
the third section of the Line to the fourth. But the relation between
these two sections has now been made clear. The ' ideas ' in the
fourth section are no longer the ideas of objects in the second, but
of objects in the third and of them alone. The only ideas are the
ideas of the mathematicals and hence Aristotle can equate ideas
and ideal numbers. Dialectic no longer considers the relations of
all other ideas to the Idea of the Good, but rather of the ideal
numbers to the One, their formal element, which alone is perfectly
intelligible.
I need not stay to emphasise the similarity between this final
development of the theory of ideas and the Pythagorean doctrine
that things imitated numbers. Aristotle has already marked it
(Metaphysics, 987 b 11). Nor need I for my present purpose
consider at any length the difficulties that attend Aristotle's account
of the inaddible units of these ideal numbers. Whether we accept
his account or prefer the simpler theory that Plato held these numbers
PLATO'S IDEAL NUMBERS. 255
to be indivisible into any units whatever and therefore exempt
from all mathematical operations, it is clear that the result will be
to make one ideal number inaddible to another. It is therefore all
the harder to conceive what the relation is between such numbers
and the figurate numbers of modern Algebra whose very raison
d'etre, so far as I have been able to discover, depends upon the fact
of addition. I am conscious that I am probably misunderstanding
Prof. Taylor's position on the strength of his few dark hints, but I
only wish to ask whether some evidence has not been given in
support of the statement that it is possible to give an intelligent
account of the ideal numbers without an elaborate study of Pytha-
gorean mathematics or modern text-books on Algebra, or even, may
one add, the writings of Theon of Smyrna.
K. PETBIE.
THE HUMANIST THEORY OF VALUE.
I AM sincerely grateful to Prof. J. E. Russell for his sympathetic
criticism in MIND, No. 76, of my article on " The Humanist Theory of
Value " which appeared in No. 74 ; but I cannot admit that his argu-
ments meet my difficulties. No doubt in pointing out my inability to
state clearly what is the reality of an idea apart from its value, he has
found the weak point in my article. But I was not professing to
maintain any constructive theory, and I do not agree that the presence
of defects in my position invalidates my objections to his. He asks
me " what content of truth there is left in my idea of God when there
has been subtracted from that idea all that connotes value for our
human lives ". Clearly, none. I admitted expressly that reality for
us must always be connected with value at the very least any
reality must have some importance to gain our attention and so be
experienced (p. 229). Hence it is clear that reality must always
have some connotation of value, and so must any terms which
are used to define it. Moreover, I fully admitted the principle
that the truth or reality of an idea might be tested by the value it
was found to possess. If, then, you take away the value of an idea,
you take away its reality. Conversely, if you take away its reality,
i.e., the reality it claims when used, you take away its value for
the purpose for which it is used. But it does not follow that the
two are identical or that either can be expressed in terms of the
other. My arguments were largely directed to prove that reality is
not expressible in terms of value, and I do not think that Prof.
Russell has answered them. Certainly, to repeat myself once more,
I am quite unable " to define the reality " of any idea " in any other
terms than those which connote values ". But can Prof. Russell
define the value of any idea in any other terms than those which
connote realities? If he cannot, clearly any attempt to subsume
reality under a wider or more ultimate category of value falls to
the ground. And at any rate in one sense the task, to my mind,
is an impossible one, for the simple reason that value in any sense
in which I understand the term is a relation between realities
(whether things, ideas or purposes), and hence in order to have any
meaning must imply realities beyond itself. Now it is notoriously
impossible to define anything apart from its relations, which in my
view of the case is what Prof. Russell challenges me to do. But it
is surely not a satisfactory solution to deny all realities other than
relations and so be left with relations which do not relate and are
therefore meaningless. Granting then that in one sense there are
realities (viz., at the least ideas and purposes) which are other than
values, we are still left with the question whether the objective
reality of an idea is anything more than its relation to a purpose.
THE HUMANIST THEORY OF VALUE. 257
I still reply in the affirmative. The reason I gave in my article
that otherwise the value and meaning of the idea vanish, still
appears to me to hold good. If I am further pressed as to what I
mean by objective reality, I can only reply that when I say that
things or persons exist, I attribute to them precisely the 'same
reality as I attribute to my own ideas and purposes considered
simply as such otherwise their reality loses for me its meaning
and value. Thus if I think I see a man in my room, and find out
subsequently that I was right, I attribute precisely the same reality
to the man's presence as I do to my thought that he was present.
If, on the other hand, the experience turns out to have been illusory,
the reality of the thought remains unaffected, but I hold the pres-
ence of the man to have been totally unreal. I seem to myself to
be using the word " real " in the same sense throughout. In other
words, therefore, my immediate experience of myself, or rather
perhaps the mere fact of experience at all, gives me a notion of
reality other than value, and it is this same reality which rightly
or wrongly I attribute to external objects. I am quite aware that
the explanation I have given is beset with difficulties, but I think it
justifies me in maintaining that reality is other than value, while
confessing my inability to define clearly what it is.
A word or two more is necessary as to truth. Truth in a judg-
ment is constituted by the nature of its reference to reality as dis-
tinguished from value. Koughly speaking, we might say that the
reference is such as to involve a relation of agreement or corre-
spondence, and I certainly do not wish to dispute that it would be
impossible " to give any significant or verifiable meaning to these
terms which does not make them names for concrete experiences of
satisfaction ". Nevertheless (1) the goodness of truth lies in the
nature of the reference to reality, not in the quality of the reality
referred to. Hence although the attainment of truth is undoubtedly
a satisfaction, yet it is a satisfaction which refers outward to a real-
ity beyond itself which is the cause alike of its value and of its
occasional unpleasantness. (2) Prof. Russell does not really answer
my contention that in any case the satisfaction attained in know-
ledge of truth is a satisfaction of a special kind, and the question
is not whether truth is or is not satisfactory, but, what precisely is
it that satisfies our appetite for truth ? To assert that the eating
of meat is a concrete experience of satisfaction does not help us to
determine what meat is ; still less would it justify the inference that
the meat is the satisfaction. I cannot grasp the precise meaning
of Prof. Russell's final statement that "ideas which function so
as to effect harmonious coherent and satisfying experiences or
which bring us into such experiential connexion with reality as
to remove dissentiencies and discontinuities and lead to the fulfil-
ment of purposes ; such ideas have logical value or truth-value ".
Surely this is too vague to meet the case. How, for instance, does
it distinguish logical from aesthetic value ?
OLIVER C. QUICK.
17
FEELING AND THOUGHT : A REPLY.
IN his little book on Memory, Dr. Watt writes : " Thought as
such is independent of all mental imagery. . . . Whatever their
actual nature may be, there can be no doubt that thoughts must be
recognised to be a peculiar form of mental experience, just as feel-
ings are. And yet at one time vigorous endeavours were made to
build up feelings out of sensations of various kinds. The attempt
has now been completely abandoned, as will soon be also the at-
tempt to form thoughts out of imagery." With these sentences in
mind, sentences that lead one to wonder what their author has
been reading for the past few years, I was naturally a little curious
to know how Dr. Watt would deal with my two volumes of Lec-
tures. For if I do not, with Stumpf and Meumann, reduce feelings
to sensations, I derive the sensory and the affective elements of
mind from the same mental stock ; and if I do not form thoughts
out of imagery, I try to analyse thought, without a remainder, into
sensory, affective and imaginal components. Moreover, I come to
these positions after a review, as full and impartial as I can make
it, of the observations recorded and the theories set forth by my
fellow experimentalists. I was, then, interested to learn how Prof.
Watt would deal with my critical survey of the field, and with the
tentative conclusions that I drew from the introspective evidence.
Dr. Watt's comment on the first volume, the Lectures on the
Elementary Psychology of Feeling and Attention, reduces in effect
to the charge that my psychology of feeling and attention is logi-
cally defective. I ought, on logical grounds, to have generalised
the sensory attribute of extent ; I have not made it logically plain
how a mental element can lack clearness ; I have disregarded the
reference of feelings beyond themselves : these are the criticisms.
I had expected a more direct appeal to psychology itself. How-
ever, I am grateful to Dr. Watt for stating his objections, and I
will try briefly to meet them.
A few years ago it was seriously argued that visual sensations
lack the attribute of intensity. It seems to me beyond question
that certain sensations lack the attribute of spatial extent. Follow-
ing out these suggestions, I have maintained that the term ' sensa-
tion ' covers elementary processes of different kinds, and that the
nature, number and interrelation of the ' attributes ' of sensation
FEELING AND THOUGHT : A REPLY. 259
must be determined, in every case, by special inquiry. Hence I see
no logical difficulty in the existence of an elementary mental pro-
cess that lacks the attribute of clearness or vividness. In any
event, however, the issue for psychology is an issue of fact, of direct
observation ; and the explanation of the facts must be sought, not
in logic, but in physiology.
Meantime, Dr. Watt's own logic has not been adequate to the
theory which he attacks. " Are our feelings so unclear ? " he asks.
As well might he ask : Are our spaceless sensations so very small ?
A process can be unclear only if it can also, under other conditions,
be clear ; and, on my view, the affective processes are neither clear
nor unclear, but non-clear ; they do not vary at all, as sensations
vary, from vivid to dim, from clear to obscure ; they show, in ex-
perience, neither vividness nor obscurity ; they lack the attribute of
clearness in precisely the same way in which they lack the attribute
of space.
It was, then, the occasional absence of the spatial attribute that
led me to inquire, separately, into the constituent attributes of all
the elementary processes, and that gave me an open mind with re-
gard to clearness. And the phrase ' total absence of clearness '
means for me what it says : which is something very different from
' total obscurity '. As to the reference of feelings beyond them-
selves, that is a question which cannot arise in a discussion of the
elementary affective process, since the mental element does not,
alone and of itself, ' refer ' ; reference is not an attribute of sensation,
image or affection.
So far we are, at any rate, within the sphere of legitimate criti-
cism. In his second review, of my Experimental Psychology of the
Thought-processes, Dr. Watt strikes an entirely different note; he
speaks the language, not of criticism, but of affronted omniscience.
I shall not discuss all of his charges, which, indeed, so far as they
have interest, are of interest only to myself, but will consider, by
way of illustration, the first and the last.
" Titchener now openly confesses to theoretical bias, which he
curiously enough calls constitutional. . . . We may ignore the
irrelevancy of this suggestive introduction : " so the review begins.
What I confess to, the reader of the book will discover for himself ;
there is no reason to repeat it here. But I protest against the
ignoring of its irrelevancy. If it is irrelevant, let the critic say so,
and give his grounds for saying so. I believe it to be relevant ;
and my opinion is backed up by statements of James, Woodworth,
Ach, and others. If I am wrong, and if the reviewer knows that
I am wrong, let us hear the argument. The psychology of bias,
Dr. Watt declares, is in a very poor way. We all know that:
what has to be shown is that my particular introduction is irrele-
vant to my particular discussion. Dr. Watt does not argue the
point ; he merely pooh-poohs it.
260 E. B. TITCHENEB : FEELING AND THOUGHT : A EEPLY.
' I turn to the final criticism. " It strikes me as rather curious
that Titchener of all people should set up a general psychological
characterisation of himself against the detailed work of several
observers and the floods of introspective descriptions they gave
us." Here it is asserted, first, that I oppose a general character-
isation to detailed psychological description. That, however, is
not the case. The account of my ideational type, in the first
Lecture, is a characterisation ; the observations of the last Lecture
are on all fours with those of the Wiirzburg studies. It is asserted,
secondly, that I oppose my own personal results to those of several
observers. Again, that is not the case. I might have reported in
full the observations of colleagues and students, to whom as it is
I refer in general terms. It is implied, thirdly, that the ' several
observers ' are in agreement among themselves. Dr. Watt knows
that they are not ; that the conscious attitude to-day is not what
it was when Marbe launched it on its career ; that the elementary
thought-process came in with Biihler. It is asserted, fourthly,
that we have at our disposal floods of introspective descriptions.
Yet, again, Dr. Watt knows perfectly well that the question is :
How are we to interpret these introspections? and that Biihler 's
interpretation, for instance, is sharply opposed to that of Diirr, one
of the two principal observers from whom Biihler 's introspective
material was obtained. What strikes Dr. Watt as rather curious
is, from end to end, a figment of his own imagination.
Here are two random samples of my critic's procedure. His re-
course to personalities means, I suppose, that his theory of thought
as a peculiar form of mental experience is hard hit. Eegarded m
that light, his review is entirely satisfactory.
E. B. TITCHENER.
VII CKITICAL NOTICES.
The Working Faith of the Social Beformer, and other Essays. By
HENRY JONES, LL.D., D.Litt., Fellow of the British Academy ;
Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow.
London : Macmillan & Co., 1910.
" WHAT I have to say in this and the succeeding articles was, in
substance, delivered as Lectures under the Dunkin Trust to the
students of Manchester College, Oxford. The lectures were
addressed primarily to young men about to devote themselves to
the service of religion, and to social work as a part of that service.
I have re- written them, but I have not cared to expunge all traces
of their first purpose. My aim still is to speak to those who are
feeling their way into social usefulness, and whose main hope of
comprehending their social work lies in looking at it in the large
context of religiously inspired thought.'' Such is the author's ac-
count of the origin of his book. The lectures were no doubt
admirably adapted for their purpose, and it is needless to say that
they are eminently deserving of being put in a more permanent
form and of reaching a larger public. Like all Prof. Jones's writ-
ings, they are eloquent. If his style is at times slightly rhetorical,
the rhetoric is of a more restrained and academic character than
that of the Lectures delivered in Australia which I had the pleasure
of reading and reviewing not long ago. The book forms an admir-
able introduction to Social Philosophy from the point of view
which the author represents. That point of view is, it need not
be said, that of Hegelian Idealism. He would not, I think, object
to having his social creed described as Hegelism up-to-date. His
personal views are more politically " liberal," more inclined to-
wards Socialism (without being actually socialistic), than those of
Hegel himself. While he holds that the clue to sound think-
ing on political and social matters is still to be found in the leading
ideas of Hegel, that clue is applied to the solution of problems
which had hardly come above the horizon in Hegel's time, and the
view he takes of them is of course coloured by a very different
social and political environment from that in which Hegel moved.
The idea of the book may be described as an attempt to apply
certain fundamental ideas about the world and about the nature of
human society to the solution of actual social problems, or at least
to suggest the spirit in which, in the light of those ideas, such
262 CRITICAL NOTICES :
problems should be faced. Nearly every chapter contains a piece
of Philosophy and an application of it to some actual problem. It
would be out of place to attempt any elaborate criticism of the
general metaphysical system expounded or presupposed by thia
yolume, but I should like to make a few remarks on the more
strictly metaphysical side of the book. The most considerable
contribution to Metaphysics which it contains, consists in a short
criticism of Prof. Ward and another of Mr. Bradley. It may be
admitted that Prof. Jones has put his finger upon some of the
weaker places in the armour of both these great thinkers. He
dwells upon Prof. Ward's tendency to make reality consist in
particulars, and insists on the difficulty in which he is placed by
his reluctance to ascribe reality to Universals while admitting that
knowledge consists in Universals. These and other criticisms of
Prof. Ward do not to my mind do more than point out difficulties
which Prof. Ward, in a book which does not profess to contain a
complete system either of Logic or of Metaphysic, has not fully
met : and I am by no means sure that Prof. Ward has really com-
mitted himself to all the positions which Prof. Jones attributes to
him. His criticism of Mr. Bradley is, it seems to me, more
effective. It would be impossible to put into a single instance a
more trenchant criticism upon Mr. Bradley's conception of "the
Absolute " than the following : " It is assumed that where there is-
oneness, there are no relations, and where there are relations there
is not oneness" (p. 75). But the greater part of the criticism
turns upon a tendency which the two writers have in common,
not upon the side on which they represent opposite poles of ideal-
istic thought. Both of them are accused of an excessive subjectiv-
ism which is, it appears, the failing of all modern Idealism.
Idealism "is still occupied in endeavouring to reduce all things
into spirit : it is trying to show that every natural object,
and every atomic part of every natural object, and, I suppose,
erery point of space and every instant of time, if they are real,
must be spiritual realities, that is, conscious or feeling centres"
(p. 77). If this sentence had not been written by Prof. Jones, I
should have been disposed to say that it represents a misconception
of eyen the most subjective Idealism even that of Berkeley such
as one would expect from an Undergraduate at an early stage of his
philosophical studies. Of course if by "real" be meant "inde-
pendent realities," the statement holds. But Prof. Jones is still
Idealist enough to deny that an atom or a point of space is an
independent reality. And even Berkeley did not deny that an
" idea " was real enough in its way, though it did not exist out of
a spirit : still less has any post-Kantian Idealist that I know of
denied that the world has a reality of its own, though (to use Prof.
Jones's own words I admit that other Idealists have used mora
unambiguous language) " every object, actual or possible, physical
or spiritual, is essentially implicated in the subject" (p. 64). It i*
HKNBY JONES, The Working Faith of the Social Reformer. 263
possible that Idealism has not yet succeeded in giving a perfectly
satisfactory answer to the plain man's elementary difficulty as to
what becomes of the furniture in my room when I leave it empty.
I will not deny that a perfectly unexceptionable reconciliation of
the two statements that " space is real and time is real, and matter is
real " and that " Reality is experience " (a doctrine which, properly
understood, Prof. Jones does not repudiate), may not yet have
been given ; but I do venture to doubt whether even a contribution
has been made to such a reconciliation by such sentences as these :
" Is it not possible that self-consciousness, through which objects
are related to one another, instead of abolishing, maintains the
mutual externality of things in space and time ? Spirit may be as
vitally interested in difference as it is in unity. Under- reaching or
subsuming the successive moments of time, the self -exclusion of
extended space and of cause and effect, and the alternation of the
forms of a constantly transmuting physical energy, spirit may still
leave the distinctions, the differences standing and even give them
fuller play. The not-self through which alone the self builds up
its life may, after all, not be vain show, and the self may not be
condemned to realise itself by reference to its own shadowy pro-
ducts " (p. 77). Putting aside the criticism of Idealism implied in
the last clause, there is nothing in this paragraph which I could
not subscribe to, and so (I presume) would most or all of my friends
in Oxford whose recent lapse into undisguised Eealism has received
at least an Olympian pat on the back from Prof. Jones. But they
would subscribe to it in a realistic sense, and I in an idealistic one.
I find the same fatal ambiguity about every sentence in which (aa
it seems to me) Prof. Jones is attempting at once to hunt with the
hounds and run with the hare. Doubtless he would reply by talk-
ing about a "higher unity " which I am incapable of appreciating :
I can only say that, if this higher unity is capable of articulate
expression, I have, with the best will in the world, failed to dis-
cover it in Prof. Jones's pages. His method seems to me to consist
in balancing every idealistic sentence by a realistic one, and then
"transcending the difference " by an ambiguous one which admits
of either interpretation. Neither Prof. Ward nor Mr. Bradley may
have said the last word about Idealism, but at least all their
writings have this merit : they are everywhere grappling with the
real difficulties of the subject. Prof. Jones, as it seems to me, ex-
hibits infinite skill and ingenuity in evading them, and displays
brilliant literary powers in disguising the evasion. For Prof.
Jones's mind there are no difficulties none which a ready-made set
of phrases and formulae cannot instantly and adequately solve. I
am constantly reminded of the old book which professed to teach
" reading without tears ". There are no tears in Prof. Jones's
philosophising.
When we turn from Prof. Jones's Metaphysic to the practical side
f his book, his social teaching is eminently sane and sensible, as
264 CRITICAL NOTICES :
far as it goes : but I venture to question whether it is as vitally
connected with his Metaphysics and his abstract views about the
nature of human society as he supposes. I do not think that Prof.
Jones sufficiently realises (he would not perhaps formally deny it)
that it might be quite possible for other men to accept all his
generalities about the organic character of Society and so on, and
yet to differ widely from his practical conclusions, because they
took different views of the actual concrete facts of life the ten-
dencies of human nature, the working (as exhibited by history and
statistics) of various institutions, laws, and customs. Prof. Bosan-
quet and the late Prof. Eitchie would each, I imagine, of them have
had little difficulty in assenting to pretty well all Prof. Jones's doc-
trines about human society ; and yet Prof. Ritchie was an avowed
Socialist, and Prof. Bosanquet is at least far more of an individualist
than Prof. Jones. Each of them may be credited with many of
the views which Prof. Jones is disposed to connect with the mental
condition arising from not having mastered the secret of Hegel
His treatment of Socialism reminds me of a little controversy which
took place some years ago in the pages of the Economic Review
between the late Dr. Edward Caird and Mr. Sidney Ball. Dr.
Caird had declared that no educated man is wholly a Socialist or
wholly an Individualist. Mr. Ball replied by insisting that such
a dictum implied a radically mistaken conception of Socialism.
Socialism does not mean a disposition to assert the rights of Society
against the individual, nor does Individualism imply an assertion
of the rights of the individual against Society. The intelligent
Socialist aims at the fullest development of the individual, but he
contends that the existence of private capital (not, as Prof. Jones
seems to assume, private property) necessarily prevents the free
development of the individual or at least of the great majority of
individuals. Socialism is the name of a definite economic theory
about the proper ownership of Capital. The intelligent Individual-
ist, on the other hand, aims at the welfare of Society and admits
the paramount claims of Society as fully as the Socialist, but he
holds that a strict restriction of State activities is the best means
of promoting that welfare. Much of Prof. Jones's discussion of
Socialism seems to be based upon this mistaken conception of what
Socialism means : nor will any a priori formula do much to settle
the controversy between Socialist and Individualist. No doubt
many of the fallacies and delusions which betray people into making
a bogey of Socialism are admirably exposed by Prof. Jones. He
gives abundant concrete illustrations of the fact that State interfer-
ence does not necessarily prevent, but often promotes the true
development of the individual. Nevertheless, I cannot but think
he attaches too much importance to the mere demonstration that
State action need not injure the individual : the real question is
whether State action in this actual world is or is not likely to be of
a character to injure the individual. " Precisely in the degree to
HENEY JONES, The Working Faith of the Social Eeformer. 265
which the purposes of the society are rational, and it attains these
purposes, what is limited for the individual is not his freedom but
his caprice, not his power to do right but his inclination to do
wrong " (p. 107). This is really cutting the knot. The difficulty
is that it is frequently impossible to abridge men's power to do
wrong without limiting their power to do right. Prof. Jones would
hardly deny that the moral ideal includes not merely the doing of
certain actions but the doing them from the right motives TTCOS
ex<*jv, as Aristotle would say : and when a certain course of action
is marked out for a man by law, his actions cease to a certain ex-
tent to be the result of his free choice and the expression of his
character. I need not develop the point, but will only refer to the
social and political writings of Prof. Bosanquet, passim : remark-
ing incidentally that in Prof. Bosanquet's treatment of the topic
there seems to me to be a certain amount of exaggeration on the
other side. There may be some exaggeration about Prof. Bosan-
quet's contention that ' compulsory morality is a contradiction in
terms ' ; but it is undeniable that there is always a danger, when
State interference is pushed beyond a certain point, that it may un-
duly limit the sphere within which the individual is free to develop
his own intellect and his own character in his own way, even when
what he is compelled by the State to do is something in itself
rational and right.
But a still greater difficulty arises from the fact that there is
often no security that the State interference shall be rational.
Even when the State interference is rational on the whole, the
interference may have some bad effects. It is easy to insist, as
Prof. Jones frequently does, on the way in which State education
has aided the self-development and inci eased the liberty of the
individual. Yet even wisely directed State control has a tendency
to stereotype education, to prevent experiments, to damp the
enthusiasm of voluntary organisations, and the teachers employed
by them, to destroy the liberty of original and highly gifted teachers.
Many experts in the subject would tell us that in Prussia education
is not really so good as it is in other parts of Germany just because
State regulation has been carried further than elsewhere. The
fears expressed by Individualists about State interference in this
and many other matters cannot therefore be dismissed, as Prof.
Jones is disposed to set them down, as due merely to a false
antithesis between the individual and the State, or a false concep-
tion of true liberty and the like. There is another aspect of the
matter which is wholly overlooked by Prof. Jones. With habitual
Optimism he always assumes that what is good for the community,
must be good not merely for some individuals but for all. He
refuses to admit that legislation which promotes liberty for some
may diminish it for others. Yet it is impossible to deny that this
is to a large extent the tendency of the institution of private pro-
perty in the form which allows of individual capital. The Socialist
266 CBITICAL NOTICES:
will contend that the existence of such private capital, though it
secures liberty for self-development to some, wholly destroys it for
the non-capitalist bulk of the community : while the Individualist
may reply by admitting that it really does set limits to the self-de-
velopment of very many persons, but may contend that it is of
great social importance that some men should enjoy that freedom
of action which only the possession of considerable private property
can give, even though that freedom must necessarily be enjoyed by
only a few. The real difficulty of the problem lies in balancing
against one another such conflicting considerations as these, and
not in demonstrating a priori how in an ideal world it might be
possible to reconcile the strongest possible social control with tha
utmost conceivable individual self-development. I do not mean of
course to deny that Prof. Jones does here and there admit that,
when the Philosopher has done his best to provide the practical
man with correct views about the organic character of human
society, many problems of detail remain to be decided in the light
of experience, expert knowledge, and practical common-sense. But
the whole tendency of Prof. Jones's social teaching is, as it appears
to me, enormously to overrate the help which formulae about the
one and the many, unity and difference, Society and the individual,
the individual will and the general will, can afford to sound think-
ing in social and political questions, and to underrate the importance
of the appeal to experience, the study of history, the detailed investi-
gation of past and present social facts. In reading his social Essays,
I constantly feel as to Prof. Jones's treatment of metaphysical pro-
blems that the real difficulties of the subject begin just where
Prof. Jones leaves off. As regards the present volume, it mighr.
with some justice be pleaded that the book is intended to supply
the philosophical prolegomena, as it were, to Social Science rather
than Social Science itself. Nevertheless I cannot but feel that,
while students of these pages will be impressively warned against
many of the confusions and fallacies into which students without
philosophical training are apt to fall, they will be in considerable
danger of supposing that the difficulties are fewer than they are,
and will not be particularly encouraged to look to the right quarter
for their solution. I certainly should not deter a beginner in such
subjects from reading Prof. Jones's book ; but I should very much
like to put into his hands im media lely afterwards some counter-
irritant such as Prof. Graham Wallas's Human Nature in Politic*.
By way of illustrating Prof. Jones's tendency to substitute an
abstract and a priori solution of difficulties for one based upon the
patient examination of fact, I may call attention to his attempt
to deal with the problem of " the child and heredity ". He is
inclined to accept from Biology (perhaps somewhat prematurely)
the doctrine that acquired characteristics are not inherited ; but,
when he approaches the question whether moral qualities are or
are not inherited, we are suddenly confronted with an a priori.
HENRY JONES, The Working Faith of the Social Reformer. 267
dogma that " good and evil are in their very nature incapable of being
transmitted" (p. 174). The proof of this assertion seems to turn
on the obvious fact that a man is not good or evil till he has actu-
ally willed. But why should this make it impossible for a child
to inherit a tendency which will react on a given environment in
such a way as to produce good conduct, and another child in such
a way as to produce bad conduct? I cannot discover that Prof.
Jones has given any reason at all against such an hypothesis. The
question is, it would seem, one which ought to be settled by an
appeal to facts : but Prof. Jones makes no attempt to settle it in
this way. No doubt the experience of such work a,s that of Dr.
Bernardo shows that environment is a more powerful element in
determining character than heredity, but after all not all the men
and women who come either from model homes or model institu-
tions turn out well. And if one man's goodness and another's
badness is not due to the original and inherited nature of the self,
to what is it due ? Here is Prof. Jones's answer :
" In every other sense, except this of varying capacities awaiting
realisation by actual contact with circumstance, each child is a new
beginning ; and the way to virtue, so far as internal conditions are
concerned, is as open to the child of the wicked as it is to the
child of the virtuous. The whole stress, therefore, falls upon the
environment, into which from birth the child enters " (p. 177).
On what the " therefore " rests except Prof. Jones's own assertions
I find it impossible to discover ; but what I should like to call
attention to is the absence of the smallest attempt to deal with
obvious facts of the situation. Do we not constantly find members
of the same family, brought up apparently in practically the same
social environment, yet exhibiting from their earliest years the
most strongly marked differences of character one selfish, the
other unselfish, one industrious, another idle and so on? Will
Prof. Jones go so far as to contend (as was seriously contended
by Godwin) that in such cases the difference springs wholly from
small and unobserved differences in the environment? And if they
are not due to the environment and yet not (as Prof. Jones tells
us) due to heredity, to what are they due? If we are to press
Prof. Jones's assertion that "each child is a new beginning," it
would look as if his good or bad conduct had no cause at all, and
as if Prof. Jones had adopted the position of pure Indeterminism.
If this is really his position, it should surely have been stated with
more clearness : if this is not his meaning, some attempt should
kave been made to explain why the same environment seems at
least to act so differently on different individuals.
No one will rise from a study of this book without admiration
for Prof. Jones's powers both of thought and exposition. The lessons
which he teaches about the nature of human Society and the rela-
tion of the individual to it that the individual owes everything
to Society and yet the Society is the creature of individuals, that
268 CRITICAL NOTICES:
"the State is never a merely secular power," "that the State is
a moral agent," " the economic and political importance of char-
acter," and the like, are lessons which need constant reiteration,
and which have not yet been really appropriated by the average
man, even if he be a candidate for some branch of the Christian
Ministry or an intending student of Social Science : and they have
never been more impressively expounded and illustrated than by
Prof. Jones. And yet, for the reasons which I have suggested, I
must confess that I have learnt more from the social and political
teaching of less brilliant writers.
H. EASHDALL.
Manual of Mental and Physical Tests : a Book of Directions Com-
piled with Special Reference to the Experimental Study of
School Children. By GUY MONTROSE WHIPPLE. Baltimore,
U.S.A. : Warwick and York, 1910. Pp. ix, 534.
PROF. WHIPPLE has performed a most valuable service in pre-
paring the present volume. It is pioneer work of an onerous
kind. An attempt to collect into one volume the methods and
results from the widely scattered literature of mental and physi-
cal tests is noteworthy even in attempt ; much more noteworthy,
therefore, is a successful achievement.
This book is not a manual of laboratory practice ; it is intended
for quicker and less analytical work than that which the well-
equipped laboratory of experimental psychology may most profitably
undertake. It is especially compiled for the use of those whose
daily work, so to speak, demands a knowledge of, and some insight
into, the best mental and physical tests for school children. But
it is useful also to the trained psychologist, often introducing him to
a body of practical knowledge which may reflexively modify his
science, and always valuable in the excellent bibliographical re-
ferences which are to be found at the close of each chapter. There
are chapters on Anthropometric Tests, Teats of Physical and Motor
Capacity, Tests of Sensory Capacity, Tests of Attention and Per-
ception, Tests of Description and Eeport, Tests of Association,
Learning, and Memory, Tests of Suggestibility, Tests of Imagination
and Invention, Tests of Intellectual Equipment, and graded Tests
for Developmental Diagnosis.
First a word as to the tests themselves. Prof. Whipple cannot
be blamed for not presenting tests which are either not in exis-
tence or have not been applied under school conditions with suffi-
cient frequency to guarantee their use. But I do not think and it
is my one point of serious disagreement that the author realises
the necessity for new tests of what may be called the higher mental
' faculties ' as acutely as he would if he were facing the sort of criti-
cism which an educational psychologist has to meet in England.
GUY M. WHIPPLE, Manual of Mental and Physical Tests. 269
He says, " What we need is not new tests, though they are welcome
enough ". I believe, however, that a second edition of his book,
which is certain to be called for, will show that he has not merely
accepted, but heartily welcomed, any new tests of the ' higher func-
tions ' which, meanwhile, have been shown to work in practice.
With the Binet- Simon tests it seems clear that English and, pre-
sumably, American children will show, either through training or
natural capacity, some marked differences from their French con-
freres.
In a book of this size for this is a big book there must neces-
sarily be included much material of varying value. An author of
such a book is faced with the extremely difficult task of deciding
what to include and what to exclude. In my own judgment, the
right policy has been adopted. Prof. Whipple has aimed rather
at inclusiveness than exclusiveness. Of course there are dangers
in the use of a wide-spreading net ; but the dangers of small and
narrow ones which take up only those specimens which are of a
certain make are, in my judgment, much greater, especially in the
present position of the science of educational psychology. Doubt-
less, at times, this method of inclusion and balance leaves the reader
in a state of indecision which, unless he be prepared to go up to the
original sources and make an intensive study for himself, will pro-
bably remove the particular test discussed outside the ' range of
practical politics '. As to the validity of the esthesiometric test for
mental fatigue, to take one example, there is such a conflict of com-
petent opinion, great names and careful researches are quoted on
both sides impartially and lucidly, as always that the net result
to the practical person is likely to be a conviction that he had better
let that test alone. Notwithstanding such results as these, I am
still convinced that, even for practical purposes, the author's method
of inclusion and balance is best. No experimenter can easily be
dogmatic when he knows the weight of competent opinion on the
other side. He will doubtless feel more respect for those experi-
menters whose results agree with his own ; but, if he reads this
book, he will be less likely to generalise beyond his own evidence.
There is much discussion just now as to the best methods of
statistical evaluation. Prof. Whipple gives a long chapter to
the subject which cannot fail to be of service to the educational
psychologist. Again I have to say that his standpoint appears to
me to be the right one. He includes and balances opinion against
opinion. The educational psychologist, as such, cannot be expected
to decide on disputes which are purely statistical. He may legi-
timately demand that the assumptions, psychological and logical, on
which the formulae are based, shall be set plainly forth, before he
be expected to use the formulae in his daily work. If this is done
and he accepts the presuppositions of the formulae, the question
then becomes a matter for the mathematicians, and the disputes
may be left to them. It is probable that in the measurements of
270 CKiTiCAL NOTICES
mental functions, more * play ' for variation will have to be conceded
than has been usual in physical measurements ; otherwise we may
find that formulae based on the nature of physical measurements,
whilst valuable for negative work, will be found obstructive to the
constructive aspects of the mental sciences.
I feel that these few paragraphs are very inadequate as a
' notice ' of such a big and various book. If they are sufficient to
mark appreciative recognition, they will, perhaps, have served
their purpose.
W. H. WINCH.
Die Logischen Mangel des engeren Marxismus : Georg Plechanow
et allii gegen Josef Dietzgen ; Auch ein Beitrag zur Geschichts
des Materialismus. Von ERNST UNTERMANN. Herausgege-
ben und bevorwortet von EUGEN DIETZGEN. Miinchen, 1910.
Verlag der Dietzgenschen Philosophie. Pp. xxiii, 753.
Josef Dietzgens Philosophie, gemeinverstdndlich erldutert, in ihrvr
Bedeutung fur das Proletariat. Von HENRIETTE BoiiAND-
HOLST. Miinchen, 1910. Verlag der Dietzgenschen Philo-
sophie.
THESE volumes, published by the firm for issuing works bearing on
the philosophy of Dietzgen, mark one of the reactions against the
sectionalism and opportunism of much modern German Socialism.
Josef Dietzgen was writing in the " fifties " and has been dead now
for nearly a quarter of a century. He was the author of a philo-
sophy which he contended was of especial importance in its bearing
on the social problem. The character of this philosophy is not the
chief subject-matter of the two volumes now reviewed, but a
popular exposition of it will be found in the smaller of them, and a
short account of it in the third part of the larger. The system is
monistic and materialistic; it is described as 'Naturmonismus'.
But it is not materialism of the eighteenth century type, we are as-
sured by Untermann. The brain does not secrete thought as the
liver secretes bile, according to Dietzgen, but the brain thinks as
inevitably as the lungs breathe ; or, as it is put elsewhere, thought
is a function of the brain as writing is a function of the hand. But
mind and the world are one. Consciousness and the brain are
united, and the brain is united with the blood and food and all
the external universe. Emphasis is laid on the materialistic and
empirical aspects of this system and on its 'anti-metaphysical'
nature. A priori speculation and idealism were to Dietzgen de-
lusions. It is argued by Untermann, who is a socialist of the non-
revisionist order residing in America, that Marx's philosophical
groundwork was incomplete. Marx, for a part of his system, took
over the Hegelian dialectic and introduced what, to give it its full
title, may be called the "Historical materialistic dialectic". But,
The Philosophy of Dietzgen. 271
obviously, readers who were captivated by the dialectical part of
his argument and followed up their interest in Hegel would meet
with conclusions which are not in accord with socialistic teaching.
Marx, it is affirmed, ought to have included in his system factors
other than the economic, and to have extended his materialistic
mode of thought to Welttheorie, and Erkenntnistheorie ; and so
have left no way of escape from the conclusions of 'scientific
socialism '. What he failed to do, Josef Dietzgen attempted with
what success those who are curious to study his philosophy may
judge for themselves. The alleged importance of Dietzgen's in-
direct contributions to socialism are insisted on by Untermann
and illustrated from the teaching of socialists, notably Plechanow,
Mehring, Kautzky and Bernstein, from the disagreements amongst
socialists, and also from the pronouncements of other writers.
Both Untermann and Roland-Hoist declare that Dietzgen's work
is not antagonistic but supplementary to Marx's, and the former
affirms that Dietzgen did not borrow from Marx but was equally
an originator. It should be noticed here that large numbers of
socialists, even of those in Germany, attach no importance to
Marx's historical materialism and dialectical exercises, and regard
it as a special recommendation of much modern socialism that it
has shaken itself free from the religious and ethical dicta which
used to be presented as corollaries but which they consider to be
false or irrelevant. Dietzgen's followers want to make their
socialism all things to all men, even in a higher degree than it ever
was, and of course in trying to do so they expose a wider frontage
to attack. Untermann's book contains as appendices three short
articles by G. Pechanow, F. Mehring and E. Dietzgen respectively.
S. J. CHAPMAN.
VIII. NEW BOOKS.
Marcus Aurelius and the Later Stoics. ("The World's Epoch Makers.' )
By F. W. BUSSELL, D.D. Edinburgh : T. & T. Clark, 1910. Pp.
xi, 302.
I SHOULD hardly like to recommend Dr. Bussell's book to an English
reader desirous of making his first acquaintance with Seneca, Epictetus,
or the Emperor Marcus, though the student who knows them already
may very possibly derive considerable profit from some of the writer's
freely scattered epigrams. In the first place, Dr. Bussell has fallen into
the bad mistake of filling whole pages with Greek and Latin quotations
most of which remain entirely untranslated. In the second, he has
adopted a style of writing most unsuitable for the purposes of a series like
that in which this book appears. What was required was an accurate
historical account of the personality of the thinkers with whom the book
deals, and a lucid analysis of their thought such as would have made it
clear how much of what they teach is the tradition of the school to which
they belong and how much may be accounted for by the peculiarities of
individual temperament and position, and by the state of the Roman
world in the first two centuries of our era. Dr. Bussell has deliberately
chosen to sacrifice straightforwardness and lucidity to the trick of allusive-
ness and the hunting after the not " inevitable " word. He never allows
us to forget for a moment that he is a member of the same College as the
late Walter Pater, and his style may not unfairly be described as inferior
Pater with a strong dash of Maeterlinck. He has the persistent decadent
mania for sacrificing the paragraph to the sentence, and the sentence to
the epithet. Whether this is the kind of style best suited to historical
exposition I will leave it to others to judge. What I do know is that in
the present example history is persistently ignored for the sake of epi-
gram. There is no attempt to present the reader with any living
picture of any one of the personages dealt with ; no record of their lives ;
no notice of the general history of Roman Stoicism ; no account of the
influences which had modified the Stoic system between the days of Zeno
and the age of Seneca. This neglect of history leads to strange conse-
quences. Dr. Bussell begins his description of the Stoic attitude towards
life by calling it, in our hateful modern "literary " jargon " feminine " and
"quietist". Now there may be some excuse for this language if one
derives one's notions of Stoicism exclusively from Seneca and Marcus, but
it would be hard to find a less ' ' feminine " moralist than Epictetus or his
master Musonius (who, by the way, is unaccountably ignored throughout
the book). And the mere recital of the part played in the public life of
the fourth century B.C. by the disciples of Zeno (e.g., Persseus), and by
the Roman Stoics of the first century A.D., in keeping up the opposition
to the Caesars should be enough of itself to dispel the accusation of
quietism. Epictetus, to be sure, aspired to play no part in the political
life of the Empire, but neither did St. Paul, and there were much the
NEW BOOKS. 273
same reasons in the two cases. In fact, St. Paul has laid himself open,
in a way in which Epictetus never did, to the charge of preaching the
doctrine of absolute non-resistance and passive obedience, yet no one r
and least of all Dr. Bussell, abuses St. Paul as a "quietist". It is an
odd conception, too, that the element of Platonism in Seneca and Marcus
is due to their personal need of a basis for devotion which Stoicism did
not supply. I agree with Dr. Bussell that the Stoic theories do not
afford logical justification for the rapturous worship which is character-
istic of Stoic writing, but this element, rightfully or not, belonged to tl\&
school from the beginning ; I suspect Dr. Bussell can hardly have re-
read the Hymn of Cleanthes during the years which he tells us have
been given to the elaboration of his book. And the Platonism, of Seneca
in particular, is no new importation of his own. It goes back, as is
absolutely proved by the Quczstiones Naturales, to the recreation of the
Stoic system by Posidonius in the first century before Christ. So again
"pessimism," which Dr. Bussell declares to be a special note of th&
system, has no real place in it at all. Of all the ancient sects the Stoics
were the most determined optimists, and it was particularly their super-
ficial optimism which Carneades set himself to shatter in the attacks on
the Stoic Theodicy which have been transmitted to us through Cicero and
Plutarch. The world-weary tone of Seneca and Marcus is explained by
the fact that each had borne the burden of the management of the
Roman world. In Seneca we have, moreover, a further ground for low
spirits in the keen sense of personal sinfulness which makes his Moral
Epistles more like the outpourings of a Christian saint in the making
than like the exhortations of a Hellenistic "sage". Marcus gives his
secret away in his pregnant counsel to himself, " bsware of growing into
a Caesar ". Any man, whatever his creed, who was alive to the possibili-
ties of personal degeneration under the burden of irresponsible power, as
they had been illustrated by the career of a Domitian, would find himself
moved to habitual depression and self-distrust. The fact is Dr. Bussell
has been led astray from the outset by his adhesion to the exploded
theory that Greek Philosophy is a thing of *' Oriental" origin, to which
he adds the corollary that "Orientals" are all by nature quietists and
pessimists. (Yet one would think the history of the Hebrews and Arabs
should have done something to dispel this conception of an inherent
quietism and pessimism of the Semitic character. Dr. Bussell's view of
the Oriental seems based on acquaintance with Buddhism and Hinduism,
but it is demonstrable fact that India, at any rate, had no influence on
the development of Grseco-Roman thought. Until the conquests of
Alexander it was terra incognita to the Hellenic world, and Buddha is
first mentioned, so far as I know, by Clement of Alexandria.) Even of
Semitic influence there is, so far as I know, no real trace before the time
of the Pfcolemies. The stories of the Eastern travels of Pythagoras,
Democritus, Plato, are Alexandrian romance, and if it is really true that
Zeno had Phoenician blood in him, there is nothing in his doctrine which
indicates anything but purely Hellenic sources.
There is one particular piece of bad history to which I must call
special attention, because it is connected with a grave injustice to the
moral character of the great philosophers. According to Dr. Bussell,
Zeno never aimed at raising the ethical standard of life, and, in proof of
this, we are told (p. 160), that the school never interfered with " Hellenic
/>o>s," by which the writer, to be quite plain, means sodomy. Now, in
spite of popular misapprehensions due to the confusion of Greek habits
with those of the debauched Roman populace who patronised writers of
the stamp of Martial, it is absolutely certain that Greek Philosophy was
as much opposed to abominations of this kind as the ethical code of our
18
274 NEW BOOKS.
own day. What Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle thought of them we
know, and there was no need for Zeno to make a special point of pro-
nouncing them Trapa fpixriv, because it was already a common-place of
philosophic ethics that they were " beastly". Perhaps Dr. Bussell has
not read the acute discussion in Wilamowitz's Antigonus von Karystos
where it is shown how the scurrilous gossip-mongers like Athenaeus
contrived to asperse the reputation of the great moralists by misinter-
preting in their own filthy way harmless notices about their personal
habits. (E.g. all manner of evil was read into the harmless remark that
Zeno, though he once or twice employed maid-servants, preferred, like
Kant, to be waited on by a page. So epigrams were fathered on Plato,
attributing to him a passion for Agathon and Phaedrus, no doubt by some
one who remembered that Agathon and Phsedrus figure in " erotic "
dialogues, but conveniently forgot that both of them were grown men
when Plato was a boy of eleven.) Dr. Bussell might at least have
remembered the standard of chastity demanded by both Musonius and
Epictetus, and compared it with that of the Roman populace, as revealed
by Martial and Juvenal, before he formulated his charge of indifference
to the improvement of moral standards against the Stoic school.
The reader who is already acquainted with the facts from other sources
will find many interesting obiter dicta among Dr. Bussell's unfavourable
contrasts between Stoicism and -the Christianity which is, in some ways,
and particularly in its ethical imagery, so curiously like it. In the main
I should agree with what seems to be his opinion that the essential
weakness of Stoicism lay in its Pantheism, which effectively excluded
from it anything like the conception of "grace to help in time of need".
In these days of the popularity of theories about " divine Immanence,"
it may be useful to insist that any faith which is to regenerate the world
must be faith in a God who is "without" as well as " within". Yet
Dr. Bussell can be curiously blind even on points of theology when he
likes. In one place he echoes, apparently with sympathy, the complaint
that the Christian insistence on God's omnipotence is " meaningless ".
But then Dr. Bussell does not believe, as the Hellenistic world did, in
astrology. Early Christians who had been brought up to stand in dread
of the Koo-poKpdropes (and it will be remembered that St. Paul himself
thought these beings too dangerous to be met with anything less than
the whole armour of God) had a very practical reason for wishing to be
assured that above the Koa-fioKparopcs and their likes there was always
6 Qfbs o rravTOKparap.
A. E. TAYLOR.
English Philosophy : A Study of its Method and General Development.
By T. M. FORSYTH, M.A., D.Phil., Lecturer in Logic and Meta-
physics in the University of St. Andrews. A. & C. Black, 1910.
Pp. xii, 231.
* The stages of English philosophy,' says Dr. Forsyth, ' are steps in the
discovery of what, is involved in the principle that experience is the basis
and ultimate criterion of truth.' It has been characteristic of the English
school from the beginning that its members have endeavoured to make
philosophy as well as science rest upon experience, as upon the one
foundation of all knowledge.
The development which follows on this endeavour will have various
aspects. In the first place, the relation between philosophy and the
sciences will be worked out as philosophy grows. At the outset, the
experiential method * is regarded as mainly implying faithfulness to fact
through all the different spheres of knowledge, and a gradual and regular
NEW BOOKS, 275
transition from fact bo fact and from sphere to sphere. . . . But it soon be-
comes evident . . . that a stable and intelligible system of knowledge
must be grounded on a critical study of the meaning and scope of know-
ledge itself. Accordingly, the experiential method in philosophy is con-
sidered equivalent to the application of the general method of science to
.ascertain the nature of the processes and evidences of knowledge. The
next step is the conception that this critical inquiry . . . cannot be merely
on a level with other inquiries, but rather gives to these their whole signifi-
cance as conveying a certified knowledge of reality. Lastly, it appears that
the fundamental inquiry is the application of the common method of know-
ledge to experience in its widest extent and at its deepest level, in con-
tradistinction to limited views of its content adopted for special purposes '
(pp. 214, 215).
Secondly, there is the continual endeavour to get rid of assumptions
and to get a clear view of the facts. * Thinker after thinker . . . con-
tends that the start from experience consists in the renunciation of pre-
possessions and the beginning anew from consciousness as the only source
of knowledge. . . .' The contention has been used in the service of
many different views and with many different applications, but the
principle is the same ; ' we must get behind the conceptions which we
habitually employ for the interpretation of experience, and see them in
their origination and proper setting with reference to our experience as
* whole'.
Thirdly, there is naturally involved along with this an increase in
clearness of view with regard to experience itself. As time goes on this
is no longer supposed to consist merely of sensation, nor merely of olear
and distinct ideas ; the whole of experience ta^es its place equally as
experience and as the foundation of philosophy.
Dr. Forsyth finds the beginning of the English school in Francis Bacon,
of whose work he gives a full and illuminating account. 'The place
Bacon occupies as first and representative English philosopher,' he says,
' is due, above all, to his propounding a doctrine of the method of know-
ledge ; and his philosophy is bound up with his method of knowledge in
such a way as to have become inseparable from it.' Bacon's undervalua-
tion of the use of hypothesis in the experiential method is balanced by the
merits and defects of Hobbes' work, arising from the emphasis laid by the
latter on the conceptual side of scientific procedure. Locke is ambiguous
because of a struggle between less and more adequate views of what ex-
perience is, and henceforth ' the successive phases of English philosophic
thought are coincident with the stages in the evolution of the conception
of experience '. After the evolution through Berkeley and Hume comes
the work of the Scottish school, ' in its origin a recoil against the conclu-
sions from Locke's principles which are presented in the doctrines of
Hume '. Its characteristic appeal is to ' such principles of experience as
seem to have universal acceptance, and to express the very nature of the
rational mind,' and Reid considers his own philosophy, freed from the
presuppositions about ideas which have misled his predecessors, to be
the true application of the method inaugurated by Bacon. Next, ' the
philosophy of Thomas Brown and the two Mills, though in part directly
descendant from the work of Hobbes and Hartley, may be considered
a counter-reaction towards a standpoint akin to that of Berkeley and
Hume '. The distinguishing feature of J. S. Mill's thought is ' his
recognition of the futility of seeking an explanation of experience in
anything outside itself '. Ferrier concentrates attention on the nature
or implications of knowledge as opposed to its origins. Grote leads up
to an important development in ' giving a theory of knowledge according
* which it is essentially a continuous outgrowth from sentience or imme-
276 NEW BOOKS.
diate experience as the source or medium of all apprehension of reality *.
' This conception suggests, further, that the reality which knowledge-
interprets is continuous in its existence and nature with the experience
of it. Not only does experience constitute the sole means or the entire
^character of our knowledge of reality ; it is the very material or the con-
stitutive character of reality itself.' Green is the first English writer
definitely to identify reality with experience, and his philosophy is de-
veloped and corrected by Bradley. (The account of this last author is
given in half a dozen admirable pages, which in clearness, precision, and
just selection are a model of what a summary should be.) The com-
pletest embodiment of the English tradition Dr. Forsyth finds in the
work of Mr. Shadworth Hodgson, with whom, however, he is by no
means entirely in agreement.
This is a satisfactory book. It is written in a plain and dignified style,
the only fault of which is that the author occasionally goes near to repeating 1
himself in successive pages through his anxiety for clearness. The unity
of the whole is preserved throughout with remarkable success ; the book
is one book and not a series of essays ; the details are held together and
hang together. So far as the present writer is able to judge the accounts
of the successive philosophers are just ; they are certainly interesting and
suggestive, opening doors as a summary should instead of closing them as
most summaries do. The only assistance that one desiderates is some
addition at various points of ' explanation by contrast ' ; some reference,
for instance, to Continental writers. The experiential method and its
developments are presented in so clear and natural a way that one fails
sometimes to understand what alternative there could be.
Dr. Forsyth is to fye congratulated, and it is o be hoped that he will
presently pursue some of the many further investigations which the book
opens up.
HELEN WODEHOUSB.
The Philosophy and Psychology of Pietro Pomponazzi. By ANDREW
HALLIDAT DOUGLAS, sometime Professor of Apologetics and Pastoral
Theology in Knox College, Toronto. Edited by CHARLES DOUGLAS
and R. P. HARDIE. Cambridge University Press ; London : C. F.
Clay (Manager), Fetter Lane, B.C. ; Edinburgh : 100 Princes Street.
1910. Pp. x, 318. Price 7s. 6d. net.
This essay was submitted by Halliday Douglas as his thesis for his degree.
He did not publish it, and it had been his purpose, had he lived, to treat
it merely as a preliminary collection of material for a deeper-probing
inquiry into the nature of that imperfectly understood movement of later
mediaeval thought, in which Pomponazzi played his part. That Douglas
was well fitted for such a task, alike by his flair for essentials in research
and by his gift for speculation, none will doubt, but he was not destined
to accomplish it. We are left with his account of the protagonist as here
set forth.
This is eminently judicious and at first hand, and it displays a sufficient
independence even of the altogether indispensable Ferri. And if the
survey with the purpose of orientation, with which Douglas preluded his
study, rests in the main on good secondary authorities, on Nourrisson, for
example, when dealing with Alexander, on Kenan and Munk for Averroes,
while Aristotle is read perhaps somewhat too much through the spec-
tacles of Siebeck, yet the threads are successfully disentangled which were
warp and woof to Pomponatius. Douglas shows that Pomponazzi was no
Alexandrist, that the streams which meet in him are the Aristotelianism
of St. Thomas on the one hand and Averroes on the other, and the
NEW BOOKS. 277
stream from the fountain head, ' a little troubled, and coming partly by 1
way of Alexander '. If it be added that Pomponazzi's modernism cornea
out chiefly in his emphasis on the positivist, the psychological element in
Aristotle, while the essentially commentatorial way in which he grounds
and develops a thesis and the wholly dialectical method in which he
argues it display how irrevocably his look is directed not forward but
back, we have the elements of the tragedy of this single-minded and for-
lorn thinker. Against the Averroist severance of reason from soul, as
metaphysical principle from natural being, he is prepared to play off the
arguments of Albert and St. Thomas, of Alexander, probably at second^
hand, and of Aristotle, not necessarily from the Greek. Against scholastic
orthodoxy, with its committal to the doctrine of the multiplicity of indi-
vidual souls separable from matter he is prepared to use Averroist weapons,-
but before all things to appeal, with the stress on the empirical side of the
doctrine of the soul, to ' Aristotle and the truth '. The extent of Pom-
ponatius's ' reform of the Aristotelian psychology ' is well brought out by
Douglas from the material supplied by the commentary on Aristotle's
Treatise of the Soul, printed for the first time but a generation ago. But it
is the tractate de Immortalitate on which Pomponazzi's claim to a literary
immortality will always rest. Leaving immortality an indeterminate
problem for faith he aims at divesting it of all rational grounds and all
grounds of Aristotelian authority. It was for this ' truth ' that he was pre-
pared to risk life itself, so that only the high-handed protection of Bembo
saved him from the translation of the anathema of the Church into fire
-and stake, and left him to the mere discomfort of refutation by renegade
Averroists at the bidding of an unbelieving Pope.
Douglas handles especially well Pomponazzi's defence of the ethical
consequences of his doctrine. This section of the tract on immortality is
altogether modern in its ring and is still of controversial significance.
Here at least there is no necessity for historical research into the mean-
ing of obscure entities such as intellectus passivus and vis cogitativa.
But therefore there is no need of more than analytic power for complete
exposition It is rather in his treatment of the Incantations that Douglas
has and seizes the opportunity for a really effective originality in his vin-
dication of Pomponazzi's astrological explanations from the charge that,
on his own premisses, they involve causation no less supernatural and
arbitrary than the figments of demonology that he rejects. * The astral
order is in truth the other side of nature.' Under the prepossession
of current astrological beliefs in celestial influences permeating nature
through and through it was possible to accept of these causes within a
fundamental naturalism. Pomponazzi was touched with the positivism
of the scientific revolt, if he still coupled a somewhat scholastic ' Aristotle
and the truth '.
The treatise de Incantationibus, dear to the soul of Robert Burton, had
for its occasion certain alleged cures by means of the pronouncement of
magical formulae. Pomponatius's attitude on such matters is, after sift-
ing the evidence, to accept all that is reasonably avouched for. We must
not reject simply because we cannot explain offhand by normal material
causation. Stamus experimentis. But he does not therefore allow the in-
ference to the agency of demons and angels. Rather must we seek, in terms
of the subtitle t > the tractate, for ' causes of remarkable effects in nature,'
infra limites naturale*. Omens, apparitions and so forth do occur. Not
that the dead return to warn us nor that spiritual beings enter into com-
munication with us, but because the hidden machinery of the astral world
comes into action through physical media. So it is possible salvare ex-
perimenta. Pomponatius's rejection of the astral explanation of answer
*o prayer will interest the modern reader. That explanation could, he
278 NEW BOOKS.
holds, doubtless be defended, but the truth is preferably that prayer in
incidental to its own fulfilment, because included with it in one divine
purpose. It is not the cause of its accomplishment but is ordained in the
course of its execution. On this whole subject, as on that of Pompo-
nazzi's whole view of the symbolism of nature, Douglas has clearly throim
new light.
One or two slips there are in the book, reminders that it lacked it
writer's final touches. The discrepancy between the date of Pompo-
nazzi's death given by Douglas's editors, page 1, and that given by Douglas
himself, page 70, is one of these. But as a whole the essay is singularly
correct, and indeed the fully transcribed citations leave little room for
error. What Pomponatius said and thought is laid down clearly and
decisively, and on Pomponatius the book is likely to be the last word in
English for many years to come.
HERBERT W. BLUNT.
The Presentation of Reality. By HELEN WODEHOUSE, D.Phil., Lecturer
in Philosophy in the University of Birmingham. Cambridge : at the
University Press, 1910.
This book is described in the introduction as a psychological preface to-
philosophy. More precisely it is an effort to bring psychological theory
into conformity with a definite epistemo logical doctrine, the doctrine
namely that in all cognition there is direct and immediate apprehension
of an object by a subject. We must, according to Miss Wodehouse, dis-
card all intermediate 'presentation/ or 'psychical contents,' as distin-
guished from the known object, and deny the existence of any experience
below the objective level. There is no cognitive experience but apprehen-
sion, and apprehension must be regarded as a simple activity of reception,
unique in kind, and incapable of more or less. The traditional distinc-
tion between ' content ' and ' object ' must be reinterpreted : content is
what is known of the object, or as much of the object as appears ; the
relation is no peculiar relation, but only the ' immense and ordinary
relation of universal to particular, or substance to accident. Finally
all varieties of cognition must be distinguished without any subjective
reference, solely by differences in the objective contents apprehended.
This rigorous doctrine of immediacy fulfils the two main intentions of
the author it emphasises the intimacy of our contact with real objecte,
and it relieves psychology from the difficult task of providing any inter-
pretation or schematism to explain the development of simple presenta-
tion into knowledge. The question is whether these advantages may not
be obtained at too great a cost, a question to be answered only by the
success of the application of the doctrine and problems of detail. It is no
fair objection to point out that the theory means the end of any psy-
chology of cognition as distinct from logic, for that is a conceivable merit.
But I think that Miss Wodehouse has failed in the development of her
thesis on two cardinal points she has been unable either to justify the
variety of cognitive experience, or to give any adequate apology for the
existence of error. In regard to the first : One great difficulty for such
a theory must be the fact of that rearrangement of cognitive content
which is implied in volition, and which is the essential activity of artistic-
creation. If content is wholly objective, alteration of content must be
solely objective, and the ' play ' of imaginative creation has no sphere
within which to operate. Miss Wodehouse thinks she has solved all the
difficulty of assumption, if she has distinguished between play -creation,
and apprehension of the creation. But the real difficulty is ignored. We
may note that her brief discussion of the relation of ' image ' to sense
NEW BOOKS. '279
leaves it as ' in the end a mystery '. An equal difficulty for the theory is
the existence of doubt, since doubt is no more contact with the real than
frustration of such contact. Miss Wodehouse's necessary explanation of
it as due to instability of objective content is highly paradoxical in the
absence of any metaphysical theory. But more significant perhaps than
either of these difficulties is the failure to provide a place for the fact of
apperceptive disposition. For how can ' content ' be selected if appre-
hension is simple reception ? Miss Wodehouse's explanation of associa-
tion as habitual transition between successive acts of apprehension does
not give much enlightenment or aid ; for not to press the point that her
right to presume on such cognitive habituation is questionable, it will
only explain connexion of contiguity and is far from being adequate for
a theory of apperception.
Finally, and most disastrously for such a doctrine, there is the fact of
error. If our knowing is an activity of simple reception, reality ought
to accept full responsibility for all the content of apprehension. Miss
Wodehouse is fully aware of this difficulty which she recognises to the
extent of saying that we have no assurance of even a single infallible
judgment. Yet she does not weaken in her position. In all cases there
is reality enough for the object to appear ; it is for us to discover how
much more reality it has. This is a plausible remark, but its plausibility
rests on an assumption impossible for her, that the appearance is simple
appearance, devoid of objective reference. But if erroneous judgment has
really such a reference, then the object must not only have reality
enough to appear, but reality enough to appear falsely. But if it has
reality enough to appear falsely, the false appearance is after all a true
appearance. Miss Wodehouse, however, does not pretend to settle the
question but prefers to hand it over to metaphysics and be content with
a description. Regarding this two remarks may be made : first, that
since she has recognised the presentation-delusion of psychology to have
sprung from a consideration of error, and yet pretends to be giving a mere
philosophical account, this way out of the difficulty is hardly open to her :
secondly, that if she has to be contented with a description of error, she
must, since every judgment is for her fallible, be content with a descrip-
tion of truth, that is revert to a psychology which still requires a solution
for the distressing problem of knowledge.
Such difficulties ignored or postponed would perhaps if duly considered
lead Miss Wodehouse to a better understanding of the intention of Dr.
Stout's theory of sensation by which she is so greatly perplexed ; tor that
theory is essentially prospective, and cannot be appreciated justly unless,
so considered.
It would be unjust to conclude without remarking that within its
limitations Miss Wodehouse presents her theory ably : she handles logical
problems with ease, and her readers will be grateful for the incisiveness
and felicity of phrase and illustration that characterise her writing.
L. BREHANT.
The Philosophy of the Enlightenment. (The Epochs of Philosophy Series. )
By JOHN GRIER HIBBEN, Stuart Professor of Logic, Princeton
University, Chicago. Longmans, Green & Co., 1910. Pp. x, oil.
The aim of the series on the Epochs of Philosophy is "to present the
significant features of Philosophical thought in the chief periods of its
development". No attempt is made to deal fully with any single
philosopher or with any particular work : but the general tendencies of
each age are carefully analysed and correlated, and their significance as
280 NEW BOOKS.
effective factors in the progressive movement of philosophical thought is
specially emphasised.
In the present volume, Prof. Hibben shows the same ability to furnish
his readers with a bird's-eye view of the philosophical territory as he
showed in his early work on the Problems of Philosophy, and, indeed, the
Aye of the Enlightenment is a model of what a work of this kind should
be. There is a happy absence of unnecessary biography, and a keen
sense of proportion is evident in the amount of attention devoted to
minor influences. This economy is specially noteworthy in the admirable
paragraphs on Hartly, Priestly, Voltaire, Condillac and Diderot : but the
hardened student of Philosophy will probably welcome most the unusually
concise account of Christian Wolff, which leads to the important chapter
on Kant, and the more detailed attention given to Leibniz, Rousseau and
Lessing as his spiritual precursors. The general aim of the series to trace
the fundamental unity which characterises the progress of Philosophy
through the many phases of its development is well preserved in the
volume, and the interest in the great theoretical and practical problems
of the age, aroused in the earlier chapters, is maintained and deepened to
the very end. Great care is, however, taken that there shall not be read
into any author more than legitimately belongs to his general position.
Locke is nob a rudimentary Kant, although many of his isolated utter-
.ances may be interpreted in the spirit of the philosophy of rationalism,
nor is Berkeley an immature Hegel because his conception of the soul
develops from " a mere congeries of perceptions" to the opinion that
" sense or soul, so far as it is sensitive, knoweth nothing". A very in-
structive feature of the book is the manner in which some of the opinions
of Rousseau are shown to foreshadow modern Pragmatism, and the monad
theory of Leibniz the modern theories of force, evolution, and psycho-
physical parallelism as a description of the relation between mind and
body. The moral, political, and religious implications of the Aufklarung
are well summarised in a final chapter. The book is excellently done,
and if any fault does occur to the reader at all it will probably be that
the mechanical interests of the period do not occupy a more prominent
position in the first chapter. A chronological table of the philosophical
books of the epoch, and a copious list of references are an additional
merit of the volume.
The Domain of Belief . By HENRY GEORGE COKE. Macmillan & Co.,
1910. Pp. xxxi, 311.
Some years have passed since Mr. Coke wrote his Tracks of a Rolling
Stone, and those who are familiar with its homely philosophy will be
somewhat surprised in the Domain of Belief to find their author
" sounding the depths " with all the enthusiasm of a professional philo-
sopher. Nevertheless, Mr. Coke is not this, and his book, rightly or
wrongly, leaves the impression that he is an amateur, though an interest-
ing amateur in the domain of belief. He has read widely, but on certain
well-defined lines, and his interest in Idealism seems to have stopped
short on his acquaintance with Kant. In discussion, he is quite willing
to listen to the voice of " feeling," and in supporting a position he uses
the argumentum ad hominem freely.
However, the book is not primarily intended for the experienced
student but for the general reader, and, as such, it will appeal to many
who take a casual interest in philosophy. Its main object is to substan-
tiate the three great postulates of religion, God, Freedom and Immor-
tality, and in the process, much really profitable knowledge is imparted
on the general problems of philosophy, the theory 0f knowledge, and the
NEW BOOKS. 281
Siting of heredity and instinct on the progress and destiny of man. It
is confessedly written to strengthen and promote religion, and it faces
the problems squarely. But Mr. Coke's philosophy is built upon a
naturalistic basis, and its chief interest for the philosopher will be the
attempt which it makes to escape the consequences of naturalism by
espousing an agnostic faith. In the end we are bidden to believe in a
God, who has only a probable existence, who is neither omnipotent nor
omniscient, and yet possesses spiritual attributes remotely analogous to
our own. The most valuable part of the book is undoubtedly that in
which the author combats the claims of the modern materialists. His
knowledge ot the current scientific theories of life, matter and force, is
full and systematic, and his quotations are always well-chosen and in-
teresting. Like Huxley and Spencer, however, he places his faith on a
reality which is inconceivable, but which nevertheless remains the founda-
tion of all appearance. Reality is monistic but unknowable : God exists
but His existence lies beyond the power of reason to prove : Immortality
is probable but not demonstrably necessary : Evil is incompatible with
the omnipotence of God : Matter is co-eternal with God and offers an
intractable material upon which He is forced to work. These are some
of the positions which Mr. Coke is compelled to maintain by the inherent
dualism of his general philosophy, and they prove conclusively the
impossibility of holding a vital religious faith based upon an agnostic
philosophy. Whatever opinions may be taken upon the book, it is
unquestionably readable.
N. FENDER CRICHTON.
The Work* of Aristotle : Ue Generation* Animalium. Translated by
ARTHUR PLATT, M.A. Oxford : Clarendon Press.
This translation of the five books De Generatione Animalium seems to
be in all respects an excellent and serviceable one. The centre of interest,
of course, is necessarily considerably removed from the philosophical one ;
and hi this sphere we are forced, as Prof. Platt, puts it, to *' smile at all
the importance attached to ' form ' and * matter ' ". The notes are fuller,
on the whole, than in some of the other volumes of the series. As to
their contents, Prof. Platt may be allowed to speak for himself. " With
regard to the information in the notes, I have been thankful to get it
wherever I could. If some of it is not exactly up io date, it is all at any
rate two thousand years later than Aristotle, and compared with that
interval of time, what are a few years more or less ? " Examination
indicates that the annotator holds the scales fairly in judging Aristotle's
contributions to the subject, neither over- emphasising his accuracy and
" anticipations " of modern views, nor making too much of his inevitable
errors of observation. I should like to remark, however, that there are
at least two senses of teleology, and that the fact of a part of an animal
subserving a ' ' purpose ' ' does not necessarily help out teleology in the
other sense. This remark is called for by such notes as that to 717 a 15.
Some of Prof. Platt's emendations strike me as rather bold, but drastic
measures, in this work, are sometimes needed. I might point out that
the insertion of words in brackets in one instance (772 6 29) rather upsets
than improves the sense to one reading it as it stands. But usually the
English reads well enough. The translator professes, indeed, that he has
sacrificed " all graces of style " to an u endeavour to represent as exactly
as possible what Aristotle said or meanb to say". But "graces of
style " and the De Generatione Animalium might not go well together.
J. HANDYSIDE.
NEW BOOKS.
L' Evolution de la Mtmoire. Par H. PIERON. Paris : Flammarion, 1910,
Pp. 360. 3 fr. 50 c.
Using the term memory to cover all "the phenomena of persistence of
the past shown in the activity and behaviour of living things considered a&
individuals " (p. 45), M. Pieron in this book proposes to examine the facts
of memory as shown by the behaviour of the principal types of animals,
and see whether there is continuity in them. He discusses the subject
from the purely objective side, which he considers to be the only scientific
method of studying it (p. 33), for consciousness is "personal, and for
that reason incompatible with scientific generality" (p. 34), and "in-
trospection appears to add nothing useful to what objective research
furnishes" (p. 34).
The book is divided into three parts : in the first, plant, animal, and
organic rhythms are discussed ; in the second, animal memory ; in the
third, human memory. There is no lack of material ; indeed, the
author anticipates the reader's first impression of this work when he sajs
that it will probably appear crowded with facts rather than with ideas.
The book will commend itself to those who want a good summary of all
the more important experiments that have recently been made on the
formation of habits in animals, especially as its value is enhanced by the
numerous references given on nearly every page.
M. Pieron is obviously most at his ease in the first part of the book.
This may be due partly to his having made a special study of the be-
haviour of plants and the lower animals, partly to the ease with which
his objective test of memory can be applied here. As he advances to the
study of memory in the higher animals his task becomes more and more
difficult, and he does not always keep to his objective test ; he writes
about experience, mental images, and recognition, which are facts of
consciousness, not of behaviour.
He appears to hold a brief for the animal mind, and seldom fails to
put the most favourable interpretation on their behaviour, for example,
he puts aside all evidence against imitation in cats, dogs, etc., without
the least discussion ot methods, his object being to prove that these
animals have mental images, for he claims that imitation is impossible in
their absence.
The title, Evolution of Memory, is misleading, for it suggests the
development of complex forms from more simple ones, but there it&
nothing of this in the book : M. Pieron has merely described the
rate of formation of habits by animals of all kinds ; he has not attempted
to trace the development of the complex out of the simple, as the evolu-
tionist does in the matter of bodily structure. It is doubtful whether
such a method would be profitable in studying memory, for memory is a
psychological fact, and, as psychology rests ultimately on introspection,
it seems preferable to begin with adult human memory, and then, after
comparing objective evidence of it with the behaviour of animals, to draw
inferences about the memory of the latter.
The best feature of the book is the insistence on the comparison of the
objective evidence of memory in man with the rate of formation of habit*
in animals. The author compares Ebbinghaus's memory curves with those
showing the rate at which habits are formed by Limnees, a kind of Gas
teropod, and finds them very similar (pp. 139, 259). Much attention has
been given by some psychologists to habit-forming in animals ; it remains
to make similar investigations on man, for curves showing the rate at
which an animal finds it way out of a labyrinth are psychologically
meaningless until they are compared with those obtained when men are
NEW BOOKS. 28$
put under comparatively similar circumstances, and the curves are inter-
preted in the light of the subject's introspection.
S. DAWSON.
Le Ann&e Psychologique. 16 me Annee. Published by ALFRED BINKT.
Paris : Masson, 1910. Pp. ix, 500. 15 francs.
More than half of this large volume is devoted to papers of Binet and
Simon on the definition of the chief mental states of alienation (pp.
62-371). The forms investigated are those of hysteria, " la folie
avec conscience, la folie maniaque-depressive, la folie systematise^,
les demences, 1'arrieration," and these six papers are followed by a short
summary of conclusions (pp. 361-371). The whole work is concentrated
in the form of a table on page 370. It is interesting to notice on pages iii.
and iv. of the introduction that Binet has abandoned his much criticised
views regarding thought, and has now arrived at the conviction that we
do not at all know the difference and the relations that exist between a
thought and an emotion. How, then, shall we replace images and words,
he asks. In reply, he throws himself with enthusiasm upon the new psy-
chology of the " intentions," or attitudes. Thus he is able to analyse
the mental state of the alienated into two elements : the symptom and
the attitude, whereby the former corresponds to lower, and the latter
to higher cerebral processes or functions. Symptoms are striking and
visible, and have, therefore, already been made well known. But a
diagnosis based solely on external symptoms is liable to be faulty and
mistaken. We must also take account of the attitude of the patient to
his symptoms, and it is by a careful study of these that Binet is able to
differentiate between the six forms of alienation mentioned above. The
rest of the volume is devoted to separate papers, of which all, with
one exception, are written by Binet himself. The first, "Les signes
physiques de 1' intelligence chez les enfants," hardly gets beyond purely
negative results. The second paper by A. and A. Binet, entitled, " Rem-
brandt, d'apres un nouveau mode de critique d'art," tries to show that
Rembrandt's method consists simply in the art of avoiding great con-
trasts. "Pour Rembrandt, tout objet eclaire se comporte comme un
objet eclairant, qui penetre de ses rayons les ombres voisines, et contri-
bue ainsi a nous donner la sensation de la vraie lumiere " (p. 50). A
wholesale condemnation of the methods of the more mediocre and popular
art critics is very easy, but it cannot be said that this effort rises much
above their level. On its positive side it is much too dogmatic. The
following paper by B. Bourdon on tachistoscopic experiments with reac-
tion-times contains nothing really new. To be of any value now, such
work calls for mucii greater elaboration of results and for much fuller
introspection than we find here. The last paper is a sharp critical study
of the work of Yerkes and Berry and of Henke and Eddy on judiciary
diagnosis by the method of associations. Binet calls the method an art,
a practice, which presupposes much ingenuity of mind, a sort of prestidi-
gitation, while the results drawn from it must vary enormously with the
degree of virtuosity of the " judge " (p. 382). The remainder of the
volume contains excellent notices of the more important psychological
work of the past year, which are written mainly by Binet, L. des Bancels,
*nd E. Maigre. These reviews are a valuable addition to the volume.
HENRY J. WATT.
L&s Grands Philosophes Epicure. Par E. JOYAU. Paris : F. Alcan.
Pp. 223.
M. Joyau's volume cannot be said to add anything to our knowledge of
Epicurus or his system. For a reader who really knows anything of the
384 NEW BOOKS.
sources of our information about Epicureanism it will be sufficient to say
that the author is not aware that the great champions of the religious
view of life in opposition to the secularism of Epicurus were not the
Stoics (who seem not to have been as yet constituted into a regular school
when Epicurus settled at Athens), but the Platonic Academy, and that
he never so much as alludes to the Axiochus. He has consulted Usener's
Epicurea, but is so far from making a proper use of it that he constantly
cites " Diogeues Laertius " as a writer on the life of Epicurus, instead of
appealing, as should always be done, to the authorities from whom the
often inconsistent notices of Diogenes are drawn. Even so, his quota-
tions are not always exact. " Diogenes Laertius," we are told, " says that
he was born at Gargettus ; it seems that this is a mistake." Of course it
is a mistake, but M. Joyau ought to have told us that we know it to be
so because we have the express testimony of Timon of Phlius, an author
of the next generation to Epicurus, to his birth at Samoa. Moreover,
Diogenes does not make the mistake. What he says is simply that
Epicurus belonged to the deme Gargettus, and this is correct. Indeed,
M. Joyau's scholarship is far from being above suspicion. Oenandra for
Oenoanda may be a printer's error, but its occurrence, taken with other
matters, donne a penser, while the suggestion that Epicurus nicknamed
his teacher Nausiphanes, rrXevftw, "a cause de la force et de la beaut^
de sa voix " (p. 56), is almost too funny for words. M. Joyau, by the
way, tries to make light of his hero's ill-bred abuse of his predecessors.
He suggests that ill-natured gossips have represented as habitual with
Epicurus what were mere occasional outbursts in his unguarded hours.
Unfortunately we know the actual context of some of the abuse. The
attack on Nausiphanes, for example, is expressly cited from Epicurus's
famous manifesto to " the philosophers at Mitylene," an official summary
of his doctrines for the benefit of his Ionian friends, and thus cannot
claim the indulgence properly allowed to " table-talk ".
A. E. TAYLOR.
lieitrdgo zur Akustik und Musikwissenschaft. Herausg. von Dr. CARL
STUMPP. Leipzig, 1909. Heft 4. Pp. 182.
All the papers contained in these Beitrdge have been published else-
where, either in the Zeitschrift fur Psychologie und Physiologic dr
Sinnesorgane or in the Zeitschrift fur angewandte Psychologic. Most of
them, therefore, have already received passing notice in the pages of this
journal. A more detailed account may be of value to those who are
interested in the psychology of hearing and music. For them the collec-
tion and republication of the various papers in their present form must
prove very welcome.
The first paper is by Stumpf on the recognition of intervals and chords
of very short duration. In most of the sittings the duration of the
sounds was 225". By providing the terminal part of the tube conducting
the sound with four right-angle branches, it was possible to obtain
judgments from five observers simultaneously. The latter were all
highly musical, and independently recorded their judgment in writing,
after each interval was sounded. The great certainty of their judgments
was remarkable, as was also the preponderance of right over wrong
judgments in nearly all the observers. If the occasions in which the
intervals were judged as single tones be neglected, the octave was always
the interval most often correctly judged and the 12th, 5th and 4th were
always high on the list, whilst the 6th, augmented 4th, llth and aug-
mented llth, were always low ; on the whole, the larger intervals were
recognisable with greater difficulty than the smaller.
NEW BOOKS. 285
Next follows a paper by L. William Stern, setting forth the principles
of construction and the utility of his well-known ' tone variator '. The
chief objection to the instrument is its sensitivity to slight variations in
temperature and to accidental fluctuations in the pressure of the air
employed to produce the sounds. For these reasons it is impossible to
standardise once and for all the pitch of the tones with accuracy.
K. L. Schaefer and Alfred Guttman contribute a paper on the dis-
criminative sensibility for simultaneous tones ; these were generally
produced from two variators. Starting from unison, one of the instru-
ments was mistuned by one or two vibrations until the subject, sitting in
a neighbouring room, was able to say that two tones were present. As
was to be expected, the discriminative sensibility for simultaneous tones
was found to be considerably less acute than that for consecutive tones,
In the middle tone region it amounted to a difference of ten or twenty
vibrations per second, and this was the region of maximal sensibility.
Beyond d* it decreased rapidly ; for example, tones of 40,000 and 48,000
vibrations per second, when sounding together, still appeared as one tone
although the difference tone was clearly audible. In the case of low
tones, at least, much must depend on their purity ; if strong overtones be
present the subject's judgment may be indirectly influenced by his ability
to discriminate between the neighbouring overtones in the two sounds.
The next paper by Stumpf is based on the consideration of a number
of valuable and interesting curves of compounded wave forms drawn for
him by Frau and Dr. Schaefer. Sinus waves in such length ratios as
1 : 2, 1 : 3 . . . 1 : 12, 2 : 3, 2 : 5, 2 : 7 2 : 11, 3 : 5, 4 : 5, etc.,
are compounded and the resultant waves are drawn. The composite
curve 2 : 3 is drawn with the components in various phase relations ta
one another, and the curves 3 : 8 and 5 : 8 are drawn in various am-
plitude relations of the components to one another. Consideration of
these composite curves gives no adequate explanation either of the
high value of the discrimination threshold for simultaneous tones
nor of the well-known fact that the higher of two simultaneous tones
needs much less weakening than the lower before it becomes in-
audible. It does show, however, that the number of beats (or rela-
tively highest beats) given by tones more than an octave apart, obeys
a very different rule from that determining the pitch of the difference
tone, and consequently affords another argument against Konig's view
that beats, when sufficiently rapid, pass over into difference tones.
The next paper is a criticism by Stumpf of Kruger's theory of consonance
and dissonance, according to which dissonant intervals always contain,
at least at one point, a confused, rough and beating tone mass, which is
the beating intertone formed among near-lying difference tones of differ-
ent orders, while in consonant intervals the various orders of difference
tones to a certain extent coincide, and preserve the same relation to one
another as the harmonic overtones of a fundamental. Thus, according to
Kriiger, consonances give the feeling of familiarity, clearness and simpli-
city, while dissonances come to be regarded as mistuned consonances
and give the impression of strangeness, roughness and complexity.
Stumpf retorts that there are highly dissonant intervals, the difference
tones of which lie too far apart to beat with one another. The interval
800 : 1100, for example, gives according to Krliger's orders of difference
tones, the difference tones 100, 200, 300, 500 ; none of which can be
held to beat with any other or with the primary tones, forming inter-
tones. Various other intervals (11 : 15, 13 : 18, 5 : 7, 12 : 17, 9 : 14, 7 :
11, 11 : 14, 7 : 9, 9 : 11, 10 : 17 ; 5 : 9, 3 : 7, etc.) are cited as evidence
that Krliger's definition of dissonance is by no means always fulfilled.
; 286 NEW BOOKS.
Stumpf's second objection is that dissonances can still be recognised as
such, when the difference tones and beats are rendered so feeble (this
may occur when one tone is led to one ear, the other to the other) as to
be nearly or quite inaudible.
In the next paper Stumpf gives an account of the Spanish musical
prodigy, Pepito Arriola, at the age of six and a half years.
Then follows a most interesting paper by von Liebermann and Revesz,
in which the former was the chief subject of investigation. In 1905 he
suffered from two attacks of aural disease, sequelae to typhoid fever. The
most characteristic feature of his condition was a false perception of pitch
of certain tones. To determine the pitch of these * pseudotones,' as he
calls the resultant subjective disturbances, the corresponding objective
tone was sounded successively with various other objective tones ; the
interval d 2 -d 3 was recognised as a minor 10th, f*-d 3 as an octave,
g'*-d s as minor 7th, b 3 -d :i as a 5th. Hence d 3 evidently produced the
pseudotone f 3 . This was further proved by the subject rejecting the
interval as d l -d 2 , and accepting d 1 -/ 2 , as being the same interval as
d^-d 3 . In the two attacks, the range of tones, affected in this way,
varied considerably. It was also found that the pitch of the pseudo-
tones varied from hour to hour, approximately through a semitone, and
also with the instrument employed. It was found that beats were
determined by the objective pitch of the sounds and were independent
of their subjective pitch.
The authors of this paper make the striking statement that in their
two subjects (a second subject was later available) the total impression
of a chord is independent of the subjective pitch of the component tones
when they are presented successively. For example e 2 when sounded
successively with e 3 appeared as a minor 9th ; that is to say e 3 was per-
ceived as the pseudotone f 3 . Yet when e 2 and e z were sounded simul -
taneously, the interval was judged to be an octave. Similarly a 2 and e :i ,
sounded successively, appeared as the minor 6th, g* and e 3 as the minor
7th. Yet, when sounded simultaneously, these pairs were recognised as
being respectively a 5th and major 6th. The authors assert that the
consonance of the interval is not affected by the subject's analysis of
the chord whereby he hears the tones as pseudotones. If we accept
Helmholtz's theory, we must suppose that certain of the resonators hav
become mistuned but that the total impression, corresponding to the
degree of fusion or consonance, is independent of this mistuning.
A very valuable series of experiments by Wolfgang Kohler forms the
subject of the next paper. He succeeds in fastening a very light mirror,
weighing 17 milligrams, on the tympanic membrane of the living person and
in photographing, by means of a beam of reflected light, the movements of
this membrane. He finds that the movements could be classified under
five heads : (1) movements due to accidental head movements, (2) move-
ments due to swallowing, (3) movements due to the pulse in the tympanic
membrane, (4) movements due to auditory reaction, which are of two
kinds, (a) a simple inward movement immediately on the reception of
the sound stimulus, and (6) oscillations corresponding to the vibration
rate of the stimulus. Kohler's researches leave little room for doubt
that the effect of an auditory stimulus is to cause a prolonged contraction
of the tensor tympanic muscle, thus reducing the amplitude of the vibra-
tory excursions of the membrane which it executes in response to the
stimulus. The muscle remains in tetanic contraction so long as the
stimulus continues unaltered in strength. Contrary to previous less
satisfactory investigations, Kohler finds that variations in intensity, not
in pitch, are responsible for the different degrees of retraction of the
tympanic membrane. Hence Mach's and Heinrich's accommodation
NEW BOOKS. '287
theory must give way to Johannes Miiller's protection theory of the
ftmction of the tensor tympani muscle.
The second part of Kohler's work concerns the nature of timbre. He
uses the illuminated tympanic membrane of the living ear to obtain
curves of the sounds of the trumpet, the horn and the tenor trombone.
His conclusion from the analysis of these curves is in favour of Helm-
holtz's theory of timbre, and is in opposition to the recent hypothesis put
forward by Hermann-Goldap that overtones of approximately constant
pitch are present in the tones of any one instrument and that these con-
stant overtones are the cause of the peculiar timbre of the instrument.
Finally, Kohler studies the vowel character of different tones. He
points out that high tones have clearly an I character, the low a U
character, and that intermediate tones played quickly in ascent give O,
A and E (all pronounced in continental fashion). He concludes that
vowel character is something quite different and separable from pitch
an$ timbre, and that every vowel contains tones of definite pitch which
are responsible for its vowel character.
C. S. MYERS.
Beitrdge zur Akustik und Mussikwissenschajt. Herausg. von Dr. CARL
STUMPF. Leipzig, 1910. Heft 5. Pp. 167.
The greater part of this number is devoted to a paper by Stumpf embody-
ing the results of his most recent investigations on combination tones.
These, in many important respects, contradict the results of Kriiger,
whose work has hitherto been the most exhaustive and generally accepted.
According to Stumpf, the higher orders of difference tones are formed
independently and directly from the primary tones, not as difference
tones from the interaction of the lower difference tones or from their
action on the primary tones. Indeed, Stumpf so far disagrees from
Kriiger as to add orders of difference tones (e.gr., 2 h-l, 3 h-2 I, when h
and I are the vibration frequencies of the higher and lower primary tones)
which the latter has never recognised.
The concluding paper is by von Hornbostel on comparative acoustic
and musico-psychological investigations. This gives an excellent sum-
mary of the kind of work which has already been undertaken in this field,
and suggests many further directions in which inquiry is likely to bear
valuable fruit.
C. S. MYERS.
Theorie der kinematugraphischen Projektionen. Von KARL MARBK.
Leipzig : Earth, 1910. Pp. 80, 8vo. Price, marks 2.40.
This useful little book endeavours to show the bearing of certain physio-
logical and psychological investigations and their results upon the
technique of the cinematograph. Mar be has pursued the study of the
phenomena that fall under Talbot's law and the factors that affect the
moment of disappearance of flicker zealously for many years and has
already expounded his own extensive results along with those of other
less persistent workers in Pflugers Archiv, vol. xcvii., 1903. Talbot's
law is of such wide validity and of such importance to physiologists that
a fresh summary of main facts and theory should be heartily welcome.
To these Marbe adds new observations on the perception of movement
(pp. 57-74). At the same time all the exact knowledge bearing on the
theory of flicker is made available in simple, clear, generally intelligible
form for those who otherwise desire to acquire expert technical control
288 NEW BOOKS.
of the cinematograph. For the sake of the scientific reader, however, it
may be noted that Marbe has not treated the perception of flicker by
binocular, as distinguished from uniocular vision, nor has he attempted
to bring their differences or similarities of function into relation to his
theory of Talbot's law or vice versa. The special consideration of the
needs of the cinematograph, of course, hardly called for this.
H. J. WATT.
Uber den Traum : Experimental-psychologische Untersuchunyen. Von Dr.
J. MOUBLY VOLD (late Professor at the University of Christiania).
Ed. by O. KLEMM. Leipzig : J. A. Earth, 1910. Vol. i., Pp. xiii,
435. Price, marks 11.
Prof. Mourly Void died in 1907- During a period of twenty-five years
he had collected a large number of records of experiments on dreams.
So extensive are these, that the present volume will be followed by a
second. One cannot but admire the way in which these experiments
were carried out. Although there is nothing really new in the methods
or devices used, it may be noted that they are all thoroughly accurate
and well founded. Void made systematic use of comparisons between
dreams which resulted under experimental conditions and those that
occurred under ordinary circumstances, and was thus able to give a very
clear characterisation of the effect of certain stimuli upon the formation
of dreams. He deserves the credit of being the first to apply this
strict method to the evanescent phenomena of dream life. The effect
of certain stimuli applied to the skin or joints of the lower extremities
and kept continuously in action during sleep was carefully traced by the
enumeration and counting of all the elements of the dream-experiences
which could be referred to the action of these stimuli, in so far, at least,
as these were preserved in very careful reports made immediately after
waking. The long list of questions which formed the skeleton of each
report is given on pages 31-36. The editor has, however, unfortunately,
put an undue restraint upon himself in dealing with the very broad form
of exposition used by Void.
In the first series of experiments (pp. 61-215), which consisted of the
normal and experimental dreams of nineteen students on two successive
nights, it was found that the experimental dreams contained two and
a half times as many elements referring to the lower extremities and
therefore evoked by the stimulus a band round the ankle. Several
classes of cutaneous and especially of motor elements were distinguished.
Of the latter the most important were active rhythmical movements of
the limbs or static plantar positions, of which the experimental con-
tained twelve times as many as the normal series (v. pp. 214 f.). It is
curious to find (p. 252), that the stimulation of both of the lower extremi-
ties by constriction produces in the resulting dream a sense of passive
movement. In the third series of experiments both feet were con-
tricted and bound together. The dreams which followed contained a
new symptom with double reference to the feet, e.g., elevation from
the toes, as well as the previous passive movement of the whole body.
Rhythmical movements, on the other hand, such as running and dancing,
were much less pronounced. Purely sensory elements evoked by the
stimulus were not frequently found and the exceedingly frequent motor
ideas were seldom referred to the circumstances leading to the experi-
ment and therefore to the dream. The results of these experiments
must not, of course, be rashly generalised, but they contain, at least, the
promise of a welcome release from the vagaries of interpretation advo-
cated by the school of Freud. And yet it seems a pity that so much
NEW BOOKS. 289
ingenuity, exactness and patience as is shown by Void in all this work,
should riot have been directed upon a better object than the events of
dream-life.
H. J. WATT.
II Diritto nel Mondo dello Spirito. Da IGTNO PETRONE, Libreria Editrice
Milanese. Milan, 1910. Pp. 197.
The author of this book is Professor of Moral Philosophy at the Uni-
versity of Naples ; but his affinities are less with the Hegelianism for
which Naples has long been famous than with the neo-Fichtean school of
thought. In this work, at any rate, he founds the philosophy of right on
the primary act of self-consciousness. As I become aware of myself and
of my cognitive faculties by reaction against a world which is not myself,
so by a higher effort of spirituality I come to the consciousness of myself
as a free agent, a being possessed of natural rights through the re-
cognition of other beings co-ordinate with myself, equally free, equally
possessed of individual rights, and constituting together with me a spiritual
world.
According to this view, the State, conceived ideally, comes into existence
as an institution having for its end to secure the citizens composing it in
the enjoyment of their several rights, among which the possession of
property takes rank directly after personal inviolability. It then becomes
necessary to define what power the State should possess in order to the
enforcement of perfect justice among its citizens. Prof. Petrone, starting
from a point of view which seems to have nothing in common with Ben-
thamite utilitarianism, seems to agree with the Benthamite John Austin
that the State, to fulfil its end, must be omnipotent. But, so far, not
a hint is given as to the safeguards whereby this omnipotence is to be
secured against abuse. Indeed there would seem to be something like a
self-contradiction in their institution. Yet that the State should be neces-
sary at all argues an imperfection in human nature which the rulers, being
human, must share with their subjects. It seems then inadmissible,
at least from an ethical point of view, that the State should claim th
unlimited obedience of its citizens.
Again, Prof. Petrone has not been more successful than any other
a priori constitutionalist, either in identifying the right to property with
the right to individual liberty ; nor, so far, has he attempted to adjust
their respective claims as principles of legislation. He must know that
' the liberty of each bounded only by the equal liberty of all ' has by his
predecessors been made the basis not merely of incompatible but of
directly contradictory systems. Fichte argued that the State could not
guarantee the liberty of the citizen unless it guaranteed him also a certain
amount of property ; and he went on to provide for the needs of individ-
ualism by the most rigid system of Commercial Protection ever framed.
From the same premises Herbert Spencer first deduced the nationalisa-
tion of land, and afterwards its private ownership, while maintaining
from first to last the unqualified moral obligatoriness of Free Trade. The
a priori method is in truth a 'leaden rule,' capable of adaptation at will
to demonstrate any system of Right.
A. W. BENN.
Diritto e Filosofia, /. : Criteri Preliminary circa il Metodo. Da MICHELE.
BABILLAKI. Tipografia della Universita. Naples, 1910. Pp. xii, 200.
For a method of studying the philosophy of law aud indeed, for that
matter, of studying all philosophy Signor Barillari goes back to Vico..
19
290 NEW BOOKS.
According to him the quintessence of all wisdom is contained in the for-
mula of the celebrated Neapolitan thinker : Truth is an act ; the criterion
of truth is its realisation in action (II vero e il fatto. Criteria certo del
vero e farlo, p. 171). Or as Vico puts it in words not quoted by this
author : Man knows what he makes. On the strength of this principle
Signer Barillari puts up Vico as not only anticipating Kant but as going
beyond Kant to Schelling and Hegel. Now all this sort of thing strikes one
as not merely provincial but even as rather childish. Vico had extraor-
dinary abilities ; but he was not precisely what some of his countrymen
seem to regard him as the greatest thinker that ever lived. The words
quoted above are merely an epigrammatic summary of what he had
learned from the Republic of Plato and the experimental method of
Bacon. And the epigram is only very partially true. Man does many
things without understanding how he does them ; and he knows many
truths that cannot be verified experimentally. Nor has Vico anticipated
Kant, still less Schelling and Hegel. Kant did not merely say that
geometry was demonstrably true because we prove it by constructing
geometrical figures, but he argued the other way round that our certainty
about the properties of space proves space to be a subjective creation an
idea, true or false, which never entered Vice's imagination.
In one way the author might have profited better by the example of
his model and guide. Like Rousseau and Wordsworth, Vico seems to
have read only a dozen books in his life. But he knew those few books
thoroughly and used them to the best advantage. Signer Barillari has
read many books and the titles of many more, with the result of getting
his mind thoroughly confused over their meaning. The second part of his
book is an attempt to deal with the literature of the philosophy of law as
illustrating the two fundamental methods supposed to be reconciled by
Vico and himself. But his survey is neither complete nor accurate nor
^systematic. The great name of Montesquieu does not occur in the index,
nor do I remember meeting it in the text. The account of Greek Sophis-
ticism on page 41 is thoroughly false and antiquated. If the English
authorities containing the modern interpretation were not accessible to
this author he might have learned it from the writings of his countryman
and colleague, Prof. Chiapelli. Then we find Austin coupled with Gum-
plowicz as a supporter of the theory which identifies right with might
Austin, whose comment on Louis Napoleon was : ' the man is a scoundrel ! '
Utter ignorance is shown of the fact that Hedonistic Utilitarianism was
created by Plato. Generally speaking, the historical sections of this work
may be described as having for their object not to teach truth but to
advertise the writings of the author's Italian contemporaries.
A. W. BENN.
Received also :
Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, Principia Mathematica,
vol. i., Cambridge, University Press^ 1910, pp. xliii, 666.
Keary, Charles Francis, The Pursuit of Reason, Cambridge, University
Press, 1910, pp. vi, 456.
Warner Fite, Individualism, Four Lectures on the Significance of Con-
sciousness for Social Relations, London, Longmans, 1911, pp. xii,
301.
Addison Webster Moore, Pragmatism and its Critics, Chicago, University
Press, 1910, pp. ix. 283.
Abhidhammattha-Sangaha, Compendium of Philosophy, translated for the
first time from the original Pali, with introductory Essay and notes
NEW BOOKS. 291
by Shwe Zan Aung, revised and edited by Mrs. Rhys Davids,
London, Frowde, 1910, pp. xxiv, 298.
James Mark Baldwin, Darwin and the Humanities, London, Sonnen-
schein, 1910, pp. xi, 125.
James Lindsay, The Psychology of Belief, Edinburgh and London, Black-
wood, 1910, pp. xi, 71.
Herman Harrell Home, Idealism in Education, or First Principles in
the Making of Men and Women, New York, Macmillan, 1910,
pp. xxi, 183.
-George Santayana, Three Philosophical Poets Lucretius, Dante and
Goethe, Cambridge, Harvard University, London, Frowde, 1910,
pp. viii, 215.
Irving Babbitt, The New Laokoon, an Essay on the Confusion of the Arts,
London, Constable ; Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin
& Co., 1910, pp. xiv, 259.
William Jerusalem, Introduction to Philosophy, authorised translation by
Charles F. Sanders, New York, Macmillan, 1910, pp. x, 319.
Karl Alois Kneller, Christianity and the Leaders of Modern Science, trans-
lated by T. M. Kettle, London, St. Louis and Freiburg, B. Herder,
1910, pp. vii, 405.
Hiralal Haldar, Hegelianism and Human Personality, Calcutta, Univer-
sity, 1910, pp. v, 61.
'Charles Kendall Franklin, What Nature Is. An Outline of Scientific
Naturalism, Boston, Sherman, French & Co., 1911, pp. 74.
Prolegomena to Theism, New York, Kellog, 1910, pp. 70.
Transactions of the International Swedenborg Congress (Swedenborg
Society's Centenary}, London, July, 1910, London, The Sweden-
borg Society, 1910, pp. xii, 373.
Gerald Fowke, Antiquities of Central and South-Eastern Missouri (Smith-
sonian Bulletin), Washington, 1910, pp. vi, 116.
Francis Densmore, Chippewa Music (Smithsonian Bulletin), Washington,
1910, pp. xix, 209.
J. J. Gourd, Philosophic de la Religion (Preface de M. lmile Boutroux),
Paris, Alcan, 1911, pp. xix, 313.
-J. Second, La Priere, Essai de Psychologic Religieuse, Paris, Alcan, 1911,
pp. 364.
Simon Deploige, Le Conjlit de la Morale et de la Sociologie, Paris, Alcan,
Bruxelles, Dewit, 1911, pp. 424.
('orrespondance de Renouvier et de Secretan ; avec 2 portraits, Paris, Armand
Collen, 1910, pp. 168.
*ixieme Congres International de Psychologic, Geneve, 1909, Rapports et
Comptes Rendus, par les soins de Ed. Claparede, Geneve, Kundig,
1910, pp. 877.
<*. Hey mans, Die Psychologie der Frauen, Heidelberg, Winter, 1910, pp.
vi, 308.
Hermann Goaf Keyserling, Prolegomena zur Naturphilosophie, Mtinchen,
Lehmann, 1910, pp. xi, 159.
Paul Bernays, Das Moralprinzip bei Sidgwick und bei Kant, Gottingen,
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1910, pp. 75.
Karl Krienelke, J. H. Lamberts Philosophic der Mathematik, Halle,
Waisenhaus, 1909, pp. 101.
F. Schumann, Bericht uber den IV. Kongres fur Experimented Psy-
chologie, Innsbruck, 1910, pp. xxviii, 312.
Giovanni Marchesini, Cor*o Sistematico di Pedagogia Generate : 2* edizione
migliorata e accresciuta, Para via, Roma & Co., 1911, pp. 355.
i di G. Vailati (1863-1909), Leipzig, Barth, Firenze, Successori B.
Seeber, 1911, pp. xxxiii, xxxix, 972.
IX. PHILOSOPHICAL PEEIODICALS.
PHILOSOPHICAL RE VIEW. Vol. xix., No. 4. A. Lalande. 'Philosophy
in France, 1909.' [Calls attention, first, to three phases of literary
activity in the philosophy of religions : (1) Boutroux' Science et religion
dans la philosophic contemporaine ; (2) Durkheim's work on the classical
theories of the origin of religious thought, with the related articles by
Belot (La triple origine de I'idee de Dieu) and Lalande (L'ide'e de Dieu
et le principe d' assimilation intellectuelle) ; and (3) Durkheim's Socio-
logie religieuse et the'orie de la connaissance, with the related work of
Levy-Bruhl, Les fonctions mentales dans les societes inferieures. Turns,
secondly, to the philosophy of science, with special emphasis upon
Brunhes' La degradation de I'dhergie and Meyerson's Identitd et realittf.]
J. E. Boodin. ' The Nature of Truth.' [Truth is an adjective of think-
ing, and has no meaning outside of systematic judgment. Pragmatism
has been occupied with the function of truth ; to understand its nature,
we must go to the laws of thought. (1) Four postulates are implied in all
thinking, and condition its procedure : the law of consistency, which in-
cludes the old logical laws of identity and contradiction, and also brings
out the fact that we have to do with identity within a variety of in-
dividuals and changes ; the law of totality, which includes the law of
sufficient reason, but is broader, stating that facts are not isolated but
belong with other facts ; the law that truth must be representative, or
that it presupposes the subject-object relation ; and the law of finitude.
(2) What is the basis of their authority ? Epistemologically, only the
argument that we cannot think at all without implying these postulates
establishes a universal for their necessity ; we must show that there can
be no negative instance without making truth impossible ; the process is
circular, but brings out the implication. Ontologically, the postulates
must be treated as hypotheses to be verified in the procedure of experi-
ence ; if truth is found to be possible, then in so far the presuppositions
are ontologically valid. It follows that there is no difference of priority
or primacy between these laws : each one holds for all thought and
includes itself as well as the others. (3) We may sum up the place of
thought in the economy of life by saying that it is an activity of the
will, predetermined as regards its form by certain presuppositions which
are posited by the will to think.] C. V. Tower. 'A Non-Dualistic
View of Natural Selection.' [The phrase f natural selection ' is unhappy,
since natural has meaning only as opposed to supernatural, and selection
misleadingly emphasises one factor in the general requirement of adapta-
tion or conformity to environment. Yet there are obvious analogies, that
justify the transference of the phrase to ethics. (1) Let us consider the
objections. Natural selection is soulless, mechanical, careful only of the
type : but conformity to type is also the condition of individuality. We
progress by deliberate selection and rejection of ideas : but, if natural
selection is not a theory of causes but the effect of aggregated causes,
these may be teleological. Natural selection presupposes variation : but
PHILOSOPHICAL PERIODICALS. 293
this favours its ethical application. It is relative to environment : but
environment consists, in part, of the effort of adjustment made by the
individual. (2) Rightly understood, then, natural selection furthers, by
its negation of maladjustments, efficiency for the performance of those
functions which society is selecting in its progressive definition of life in
terms of function ; life and personality become one, though the end is
better defined in terms of personality than in terms of life. Natural
selection, negating the individual as opposed to the type, favours
personality ; to be all that men are would satisfy the conditions of unique
individuality and ideal personality far more than to be what no other
man is.] Reviews of Books. Notices of New Books. Summaries of
Articles. Notes. Vol. xix., No. 5. O. Ewald. ' German Philosophy
in 1909.' [Kant is still the central figure in discussion, and attempts
are constantly renewed to retravel, on a new basis, the path that led
from Kant to Hegel. There has been, however, a marked turn from
epistemology to metaphysics, shown e,g. in Windelband's Der Wille
z'ur Wahrheit, in Rickert's Zwei Wege der Erkenntnistheorie, in the
German translations of Croce and Bergson, and (in a different way) in the
collected works of Spir. Pure logistic is exemplified by the recent
publications of the Fries school, and by Pichler's uber die Erkennbarkeit
der Gegenstdnde ; it is opposed, from within, in Michaltschew's Philoso-
/jhische Studien, which may serve at the same time as introduction to
Rehmke's Philosophic als Grundivissenschaft. On the historical side are
to be mentioned Windelband's Die Philosophie im deutschen Geistesleben
dvs XIX. Jahrhunderts, new issues in the Philosophische Bibliothek, and
various works on Nietzsche.] E. P. Howes. ' The Study of Perception
and the Architectural Idea. ' [The problem of beauty is philosophical ;
the problem of aesthetics is psychological and physiological. In archi-
tecture, this latter problem has been neglected, save for Lipps' theory of
empathy. Yet the manner of solution is given with the insight that per-
ception is a matter, primarily, of responses and reactions. The study of
perception is the study of the moulding of our attention (response and
reaction) by the behaviour of things ; architecture is the art of the
behaviour of things ; the reactive elements in perception are immensely
reinforced by the real bodily presence of the architectural forms ; so the
presence of real forces in the object makes a difference in our image of it,
and the element of structure is directly felt, like distance or solidity.
The special questions that centre about this feeling then open up a whole
field of experimental aesthetics.] R. A. Tsanoff. ' Schopenhauer's
Criticism of Kant's Theory of Ethics. ' [(1) Schopenhauer brings two main
criticisms against Kant : first, that Kant's moral law, if it is to have con-
crete significance, must derive its ultimate sanction from human experi-
ence ; as it stands, it is hypothetical, a mere finger-post, pointing behind
^nd ahead to other considerations ; and, secondly, that the Kantian ethics
is only an abstract reformulation of the old theological morality, and like
this is at bottom egoistic. (2) He himself finds three springs of human
conduct : egoism (non-moral or immoral), malice (immoral), and com-
passion or sympathy (moral). The metaphysical basis of sympathy lies
in the fact that, when we recognise the illusoriness of the distinction
between the ego and the non-ego, we experience reality as it is in its
essence. (3) Schopenhauer is right in his appeal to experience, but his
own mystical realm of self-renunciation is. after all, no more concrete than
is Kant's noumenal kingdom of ends. Efts morality is that of oriental
meditation, the ethics of Jesus ; Kant's is the morality of the Hebraic
spirit, which deified law. If the latter means Puritanism, the former
means race-annihilation. (4) Ethics must study man, but for what he
adeally is in his concrete totality ; no single formula, virtue or happiness
294 PHILOSOPHICAL PEBIODICALS.
or sympathy or self-assertion, is adequate to ethics ; man's emotional and
volitional nature must be ideally transfigured into a motive power for the
realisation of his complete self.] Reviews of Books. Notices of New
Books. Summaries of Articles. Notes. Vol. xix. , No. 6. G. N. Dolson.
' The Philosophy of Henri Bergson i.' [The conceptions of duration as
the ultimate reality and of intuition as the instrument of true knowledge
lie at the root of Bergson's metaphysics and epistemology. By their aid he
seeks to show that philosophy, science and common-sense consist of that
intellectual construction of reality which is best suited to our practical
ends, while from intuition he would wrest a metaphysic which shall be
the living truth. (1) Space and time. Real space is without duration ; in
it phenomena appear and disappear simultaneously with our states of con-
sciousness. Real duration is made up of heterogeneous moments, all
interpenetrating one another, but where each moment may be brought into
relation with a contemporaneous event of the external world, and by this
relationship is separated from the others. From the comparison of the
two realities is born the symbolic representation of duration, which
depends upon space. (2) Perception and Memory. Matter is the whole
sum of images ; such portions of this latter as are related to the possible
action of my body constitute perception, which is thus a selected part of
matter, and belongs to the object rather than to the subject. Memory
is idea with no motor elements ; it belongs to duration, to the eternal
flux ; lesion of the brain cuts off only the motion by which memory enters,
consciousness and thus externalises itself. (3) Freedom. Determinism
and indeterminism, mechanism and teleology, all alike rest upon intel-
lectualised concepts, and are thus inadequate, though the libertarian and
the teleologist are nearer the truth than their rivals. True liberty is to be
found in a certain quality of the action, not in the relation of the act to
what it is not or to what it might have been ; deliberation is a dynamic
progress of the ego and its motives. (4) Life and reality. The develop-
ment of life is the history of reality ; we must work out a philosophical
interpretation of the scientific theory of evolution, which regards life as
a spontaneously developing activity. The vital impulse is checked in two
ways : by the inverse motion of matter, and by the limit of possible
action, i.e., by intellect. (5) Instinct and intelligence. Intelligence
represents the spatial, the immobile, the discontinuous ; it can form cate-
gories, analyse, catalogue, and make all this into an instrument of ac-
tion. Instinct knows only continuous motion ; it is in direct contact with
reality, moulded on the very form of life, but its knowledge is not intel-
lectually expressible. In feeling and will, sympathy and antipathy, we
come nearest to it. Intuition is instinct become disinterested, self-
conscious, and capable of reflection.] B. H. Bode. ' Objective Idealism
and its Critics.' [Objective idealism is transcendentalism ; the analysis
of experience is held to reveal an element that holds over from moment
to moment, Idea, Thought, the universal, the element of mediacy,
identity in difference. Then, as regards realism, the issue lies in the
question whether the relation of the experiencing subject to the objects of
experience is essentially additive or organic ; as regards pragmatism, in
the question whether this relation, admittedly organic, must or can be
interpreted in transcendental terms ; as regards both, in the question of
the method and assumptions whereby the conclusions of transcendentalism
are obtained.] E. C. Spaulding. ' The Logical Structure of Self-refuting
Systems: n. Ontological Absolutism.' [These systems exclude the ex-
ternal view of relations, and the constitutive interpretation of the in-
ternal view ; accept or argue for the interpretation of this view in terms
of an underlying reality ; choose the cognitive relation as the centre of
manipulation ; make the nature of the underlying unity like that of some
PHILOSOPHICAL PEBIODICALS. 295
aspect of self, ego, etc. , which is held to be involved in this relation ; and
conclude that the underlying unity manifests itself in conditions, etc.,
all other existence. Illustrations are given ; and the proof of self -refuta-
tion is conducted on the lines laid down in the paper of vol. xix., 3.]
Discussion. R. A. Tsanoff. 'Prof. Boodin on the Nature of Truth.'
[Thought either sums up the essence of metaphysical reality, or is a sport
of the will to think. In the former case, there can be no adequate re-
cognition of the non-cognitive aspects of experience ; in the latter, meta-
physics is necessarily irrationalistic. This is Boodin's dilemma. In fact,
thought is the rational activity towards ever- progressive organisation,
which essentially characterises the only reality we can be concerned with,
that of concrete intelligible experience.] Reviews of Books. Notices of
New Books. Summaries of Articles. Notes.
PSYCHOLOGICAL REVIEW. Vol. xvii., No. 4. F. M. Urban. ' The
Method of Constant Stimuli and its Generalisations.' [Condensed pre-
sentation of topic treated in the Arch. f. d. ges. Psychol., xv. and xvi.
The purpose of the psychophysical measurement methods is an analysis
of the material conditions which determine our judgment on the com-
parison of stimuli, but for this purpose an understanding of the formal
conditions of these methods is needed. The method of just perceptible
difference, when looked at as a method of calculation, is only formally
different from the method of constant stimuli ; both methods give the
same results.] S. S. Colvin. ' A Marked Case of Mimetic Ideation.'
[The writer's ideational type is that of Strieker and Dodge, with the
addition that his motor thinking is commonly dramatic or mimetic. The
mimetic ideation may be either concrete (representative or ideographic)
or entirely symbolic. All meaning is attitude, i.e , in the last resort a
motor affair ; and this general dependence of experience for its significance
upon motor adjustment has, in this case, left a deposit of kinsesthetic
mind-stuff that symbolically and ideally represents concrete situations.]
From the University of California Psychological Laboratory. Q. M.
Jones. ' xi. Experiments on the Reproduction of Distance as Influenced
by Suggestion of Ability or Disability.' [A visual point-distance was
exposed, and reproduced by the setting of pegs, under visual, vocal and
auto-suggestions of ability and disability. The constant error was always,
and the variability usually, greater with any mode of suggestion than with-
out. The negative were about twice as effective as the positive sugges-
tions. Vocal negative suggestion gave the greatest constant error, vocal
positive the least ; visual negative suggestion gave the greatest variability,
while here the positive auto-suggestion had as little effect as any.] E. K.
Strong, Jr. ' xn. The Effect of Various Types of Suggestion upon Mus-
cular Activity. ' [Test of strength of grip, under visual, vocal and auto-
suggestions of strength and weakness. Suggestion as a whole heightens
the maxima, auto-suggestion being most effective ; there is no clear
difference of (positive) result as between the positive and negative sug-
gestions. It seems, then, if we compare the outcome of these and the
foregoing experiments, that for accuracy of work all suggestion is harm-
ful, but that for amount of work anything that serves as a stimulant to
the attention is useful.] G. M. Stratton. ' xm. The Localisation of
Diasclerotic Light.' [Repetition of Veraguth's experiments, with the
result that, temporally forward stimulation is localised on the same side,
backward stimulation on the opposite side, while stimulation of the
intermediate region gives double localisation ; and, nasally, all stimulation
tends to be localised on the opposite side, though stimuli well forward
may be placed on the same side. Explanation : temporally, lighb tailing
posteriorly to the ora wrrata arouses the subjacent retina, and is thus,
296 PHILOSOPHICAL PERIODICALS.
localised, as a figurate sensation, on the opposite side ; light falling an-
teriorly is diffused through the bulb, strikes the opposite side most
intensely, and is thus localised, as a diffuse sensation, on the same side ;
nasally, the forward reach of the ora serrata means that practically all
entering light strikes adjacent, if not subjacent retina ; there may also
be reflection from the peripheral surface of the lens. In all cases,
therefore, the localisation is based on the positions which objects normally
occupy when stimulating the different parts of the retina.]
AMERICAN JOURNAL OP PSYCHOLOGY. Vol. xxi., No. 4. E. C. Rowe.
* Voluntary Movement '. [Aims to characterise the cognitive aspect of
experience in voluntary movement. After a review of previous work, the
writer describes experiments (writing ten standard words on an apparatus
resembling a typewriter ; writing with the hand under novel conditions
and also with distraction) designed to yield introspective reports of the
cognitive processes involved, and especially to trace the course of auto-
matisation of a highly volitional series of acts. He then discusses certain
anatomical, physiological and pathological data, bearing on the role in
voluntary movement of the centripetal impulse and of sensation, and
finally arrives at a theory of voluntary movement itself. Feeling doubt-
less initiates many voluntary activities ; but voluntary movement is
neither a matter of initiation of movement nor a peculiar species of move-
ment ; it is essentially a form of control, and only as such differs essenti-
ally from other forms of movement. Biologically, it is a peculiarly
individual form of adaptive control ; psychologically, it is a kind of
movement in which ^sensory or ideational processes are of necessity
functionally present ; instinct becomes voluntary in direct proportion as
the cognitive processes gain in clearness ; the first control in learning a
new movement is always gained by attention picking out certain elements,
which in their own first appearance were entirely functionless.]
T. Okabe. ' An Experimental Study of Belief.' [Experiments by the
method of systematic introspection (presentation of sentences singly and
for paired comparison). Two modes of the belief-consciousness were
found, the explicit and the implicit. In the former, belief is carried by
such things as internal speech, a represented gesture, the disposition of
visual imagery, supervening upon the previous consciousness of under-
standing. In the latter, there is no specific vehicle of belief ; belief
inheres in the course or procession of consciousness as determined by the
instruction to believe : a similar implicitness or inherence has been
demonstrated also for assurance, recognition, intention and volition. The
psychological opposite of belief is not disbelief, but doubt. A new
feature of the method is the submission to the observers, ab the end of
the work, of a condensed summary of their introspective reports, which
they may then accept or amend.] L. R. Qeissler. * A Preliminary
Introspective Study of the Association-reaction Consciousness.' [With
insignificant words, the general state of consciousness is attentively
stable ; with significant, it is extremely labile. Many of the processes
occurring during an experiment (in this case, notably internal speech and
local kinaesthesis) are wholly indifferent to the presence or absence of a
complex. The complex itself is a strongly unpleasant group of ideas
(connected with the concealed object), reinforced by organic sensations,
and characterised by a quick change from focal crowdedness through a
momentary blank to the dominance of a single focal idea.] E. B.
Titchener and L. R. Qeissler. 'A Bibliography of the Scientific
Writings of Wilhelm Wundt.' [Second supplementary list.] The
Editors, 'William James.'
PHILOSOPHICAL PERIODICALS. 297
'JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS.
vii., 23. A. W. Moore. ' How Ideas Work.' [Ch. v. of the author's
Pragmatism and its Critics. Discusses whether it can be held that ' ideas
work because they are true/ and is in the main a criticism of realism, as
absolute idealism does not on this point depart from realism. It does
not believe that human ideas can alter reality.] Discussion between
R. B. Perry and H. C. Brown about the < Program of the Six Realists '
in vii. , 14. Cf. vii. , 18. vii. , 24. D. S. Miller. ' Some of the Tendencies
of Professor James's Work. ' [A long and well- written appreciation, which
however steers clear of controversial points.] vii., 25. S. J. Franz.
'On the Association Functions of the Cerebrum.' [It is becoming prob-
able that Association-areas may be located both in the frontal lobes and
in the so-called posterior association-area.] A. O. Lovejoy. ' The Place
of the Time-Problem in Modern Philosophy. ' [Idealistic eternalism
rests on "a deep-reaching confusion of conceptual time with the real
time of our inner life of thinking about a transition with the transition
itself".] vii., 26. J. E. Russell. 'Realism a Defensible Doctrine.'
[Royce's polemic does nothing " to establish the monstrous proposition
that the real beings of the pluralist are absolutely unrelated beings,"
Taylor's tells against himself, and the only proof on the subject must be
pragmatic.] H. L. Hollingworth. 'The Oblivescence of the Dis-
agreeable.' [It is a psychological law of life, despite the inferior wealth
of the vocabulary for the agreeable.] viii., 1. H. B. Alexander. 'The
Goodness and Beauty of Truth '-^i. ; viii. 2 n. [On the problem of evil ;
representing a view that is ' " Manichsean and unorthodox, for it repre-
sents evil as real and God as a struggling God, hating sin because sin is a
cosmic danger, and hating ugliness because the creation of beauty is not
complete". It is "unorthodox but it may be that God himself is not
orthodox". "The God who is the sum of perfections was Greek and
Hindu before he was Christian, and the intolerable burden of Christian
theology has ever been its notion of an omnipotent and omniprescient
creator who could frame a cosmos with such a core of evil that he must
sacrifice for its redemption." But "omnipotence and omniscience are
out of place in the drama of redemption, and so the hero of this drama
is never the all-powerful creator but always his human and suffering
delegate". Thus the Manichaean view gives the only square and
downright solution of the problem of evil while "metaphysical trini-
tarianism " is "bankrupt".] Discussion between H. S. Shelton and
B. Bosanquet as to whether the ' philosophic ' conception of ( cause' as
.ground ' is or is not scientifically worthless.
THE SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW. Vol. ii., No. 4. Laurence Qomme.
'Sociology the Basis of Inquiry into Primitive Culture.' B. L. Hut-
chins. ' Woman's Industrial Career. ' Francis Hoggan. ' The Ameri-
can Negro and Race Blending.' R. H. Tawney. 'The Theory of
Pauperism.' Ernest Roberts, 'Natural Vicissitudes and the Social
Organism. 'Vol. iii., No. 1. W. H. R, Rivers. 'The Genealogical
Method of Anthropological Inquiry.' Rev. Prof. Caldecott. ' Inter-
national and Inter-Racial Relations.' C. Delisle Burns. c The Re-
ligious Order in the West.' Sybella Qurney. ' Civic Reconstruction
and the Garden City Movement.' Graham Wallas. ' The Beginning
of Modern Socialism.' Discussions, etc. Vol. iii., No. 2. Frederic
Harrison. Presidential Address : ' .Sociology --Its Definition and its
Limits '. J, A. Hobson. ' The General Election : a Sociological In-
terpretation.' Hon. Justice Sankaran Nair. ' Security of Property
under Indian Law.' S. K, Ratcliffe. ' Sociology in the English Novel.'
E. J. Urwick. ' Sociology and Social Progress.' Discussion, etc. Vol.
298 PHILOSOPHICAL PEKIODICALS.
iii., No. 3. Sir Horace Plunkett. 'The Sociological Aspects of the
Agrarian Revolution in Ireland. ' J. H. Muirhead. 'Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity.' Grace Kerneys=Tynte. ' The Doctrine of Laissez Faire
i.' Israel Cohen. 'The Jewish Community.' Discussion, Notes,
Reviews, etc.
ARCHIVES DB PSYCHOLOGIE. Tome ix., No. 4. A. Leclere. ' La vanite'
de I'exp6rience religieuse. ' [As philosophy has become secularised, and
has ceased to pay court to theology, those thinkers who cling to theological
doctrines have sought to ally themselves to inductive science, and have
worked out systems of a quasi-experimental character. The thesis of the
present paper, which is closely related to that of the author's recent book,
Pragmatisms, Modernisms, Protestantisms, is that religious experience, the
internal religious experiment, cannot be compared with the experiment of
science ; "interesting as it is from the point of view of psychology and
history, it is literally empty, altogether valueless, from the point of view of
epistemology and fortunately so, since, if it could prove anything at all,
its proofs would be as demonstrative against faith as for faith".] P. Bovet.
' La conscience de devoir dans 1' introspection provoquee ; experiences sur
la psychologic de la pense*e. ' [The writer repeated the work of Messer
and Buhler on thought ; and, in working over the introspective reports,
found many that dealt with the 'feeling of ought,' which is the topic of
the present paper. He classifies the data of consciousness as states and
functions, and divides the states into two classes, sensitive (aestheses)
and reflective (noeses). Two chapters are devoted to the problem ( Auf-
gabs, consigns) ; the discussion of the changes of problem is the most
valuable part of the study. Then follow chapters on the different modes
of the 'consciousness of ought,' and on the affective coefficient of this
consciousness ; the work here is preliminary only. A final chapter gives
brief characterisations of related consciousnesses : of will, of power, of
having the right, of must.] E. Claparede. 'Remarques sur le con-
trole des mediums a propos d'experiences avec Carancini.' [Report of
sittings, which gave clear evidence of persistent fraud. Influences which
may prevent an adequate control of the medium are : fatigue, distraction
of attention, the difficulty of perception with the foot, illusions of inter-
pretation in the control of the hands, forgetfulness or inaccurate memory
of the situation, illusions of interpretation of touches, of localisation of
sounds, of simultaneity or succession, of failure to perceive, forgetfulness
of minor details of the experiment, subconscious complaisance, self-
confidence.] Recueil des faits : Documents et Discussions. E. CIapa=
rede, A. Maeder. 'Reunions pour 1'tStude de la psychoanalyse.' E.
Claparede. ' Jubile de J. H. Fabre.' Bibliographic. Notes diverses.
REVUE DB PHILOSOPHIE. ler Janvier, 1911. Editorial. ' Ten yearn
of existence.' [The spirit of the Revue de Philosophie is Peripateticism,
convinced as we are that the Aristotelian and Thomist philosophical
tradition constitutes the metaphysical atmosphere which is natural to the
sciences of nature and the sciences of -mind.] J. Pachen. 'Mystical
Experience and Subconscious Activity.' [Can experiences, such as those
which characterise St. Teresa, be explained (with M. Delacroix) by the
natural workings of the subconscious, or, while admitting the subconscious
or subliminal self as the theatre of such experiences, are we not rather
to ascribe them to an extraordinary influx of the Divine ?] A. Qemelli.
'The Notion of Species and Theories of Evolution.' [History of the
notion of animal species from Aristotle to Darwin. Jordan's interesting
discovery of multiplied permanent species of plants.] F. Mentre.
* Philosophic Tradition. ' [Intellect not to be discarded for Emotion and
PHILOSOPHICAL PERIODICALS. 299
Intuition.] J. Toulemonde. f Influence of the Subconscious Idea on
the whole life of Man.'
ZEITSCHRIFT F. PSYCHOLOGIE. Bd. Ivi. , Heft 4. K. Marbe. * tJber
das Gedankenlesen und die Gleichf ormigkeit des psychischen Geschehens. '
[The author found that he was usually able to guess a card that another
person had chosen, by selecting the card that he himself would have
chosen under the same test-conditions. The success of this egomorphic
method of thought-reading suggested that the uniformity of mental pro-
cess in different individuals may be greater than is commonly supposed.
Group-experiments upon the choosing of cards, the writing of numbers,,
the naming of colours, and the writing of words gave positive results ;
similar instances are found in articles already published. The paper ends
with a brief discussion of social suggestion, and of the part played by
similarity of mental process in history (independent discoveries, amateur
vs. professional, etc.).] M. Beer. 'Die Abhangigkeit der Lesezeit von
psychologischen und sprachlichen Faktoren.' [All changes in rate of
reading are referable to changes in the distribution of significant terms
(Sinnwerte). These latter changes are always bound up with variation of
the number of unaccented comprised between two accented syllables (in-
crease or decrease of monosyllables, shortening or lengthening of the
average number of syllables). On the other hand, so long as the dis-
tribution of significant terms is uniform, the rate of reading is constant.
And this constancy is always bound up with a constancy of the number of
unaccented comprised between two accented syllables, irrespective of
changes in the relative frequency of monosyllables or in the average
number of syllables.] H. Berger. ' tJber die korperlichen Aeusse-
rungen psychischer Zustande.' E. Weber. ' Ueber die korperlichen
Aeusserungen psychischer Zustande ; Entgegnung.' [Reply to criticism,
and rejoinder.] Besprechung. [Guttmann on Nelson's Ueber da*
sogennante Erkenntnisproblem.] Literaturbericht.
ARCHIV F. D. GESAMTE PSYCHOLOGIE. Bd. xvi., Heft 1 und 2. 0.
Selz. ' Die psychologische Erkenntnistheorie und das Transzendenz-
problem. Untersuchungen zur Entstehung des Transzendenzproblems
und zur Transzendenztheorie des alteren englischen Empirismus.' [The
writer first discusses the origin of the problem of transcendence. The
epistemology of natural science culminated in a sharp dualism of nature
and mind, internal and external world ; the way was thus paved for the
appearance of the problem. Psychological epistemology, by the mouth
of Locke, declares that all knowledge is founded in and derived from
experience. The clash of the two raises the question : By what method
can we deduce, from the contents of perception, the existence of a trans-
cendent material world, which can never be given us in experience ?
Locke, who is not wholly clear, evades the issue by his sensitive knowledge
of particular existence ; he is concerned only to head off unfruitful
speculation. Berkeley, the first thinker for whom the alternative of
realism or idealism is actual, uses his psychological epistemology to combat
the metaphysics of science and to establish idealism. In other words,
the problem of transcendence, once raised, becomes the problem of
immanence. The second section of the paper comments on the factors
which enter into the principle of immanence in the English school : the
logical, psychologistic, idealistic and empiristic aspects of Berkeley's
idealism, and the psychological, methodological and sceptical aspects of
Hume's theoretical utilitarianism. A concluding section shows how the
principle of immanence is superseded in Hume's theory of transcendence ;
the validity of our belief in an external world turns, simply, upon the
300 PHILOSOPHICAL PERIODICALS.
epistemological justification of the inductive method.]
1 Leibniz's Lehre vom Gefiihl.' [It might seem that \*
C. Albrich.
we should read
Leibniz in vain for a psychology of feeling, since his concept of mind
includes only intellect and will, and since the terms '* sensation ' and
' sentiment ' are identical in meaning. Yet we find a number of specific
references to pleasure-pain, and it is worth while to follow them up ; we
note that Leibniz does not definitely distinguish between sensible pain
and unpleasantness. (1) In relation to intellect, pleasure and pain appear
as passions and also as elements of consciousness ; they thus enter the
company of sensations, and are incapable of nominal definition, though
(by way of the lex continui) they may be genetically defined as sensations
of perfection and imperfection ; they have a right to existence as the
attendants of intellectual phenomena, which never occur without them.
(2) In relation to will, the feelings appear as the sole motives to action ;
they thus evince their teleological character, and are thereby set off from
the phenomena of intellect. (3) Leibniz has something to say, in detail,
-about sensory and intellectual feelings, about the emotions, about the
laws of feeling (variation of the affective tone of a perception or thought ;
dependence of this tone upon intensity and duration of the intellectual
substrate) ; he localises feeling in the filaments of the pia mater and
related membranes. Much of his detail is, of course, wrong or inade-
quate ; his lex continui has also disappeared from psychology ; but the
core of the doctrine of pre-established harmony remains as psychophysical
parallelism.] F. M. Urban. * Die psychophysischen Massmethoden als
Grundlagen empirischer Messungen.' [Deals with the treatment of the
results of observation on the basis of definite assumptions regarding the
psychometrical functions : continued and concluded from Bd. xv. The
method of constant stimuli is the least accurate of the four psychophysical
methods.] E. Meumann. ' Weiteres zur Frage der Sensibilitiit der
inneren Organe und der Bedeutung der Organempfindungen ; zweite
Mitteilung.' [According to Hitter's observations, all the organs of the
abdominal cavity are sensitive to pain, though all do not react to the
same stimuli. Contrary observations, in operations on the human sub-
ject, are due, not to the suspected spread of the local anaesthetic, but to
the injury done to the pain-sensitive nerves by the laparotomy itself.
All contradictions in the evidence are thus reconciled.] Preisaufgabe.
[Advertisement of prize offered by the Kantgesellschaft.] Literatur-
bericht. H. Keller. ' Sammelreferat iiber die Neuerscheinungen der
Akustik : Fortsetzung. ' Einzelbesprechungen. [Biihler on H. Maier,
Psychologie des emotionalen Denkens ; Schanoff on Mercante, Ensefianza
de la Aritmetica.] Referate. J. Pikler. ' Schlusswort liber Dr. L. v.
Renaulds Kritik meiner Lipps-Kritik. ' L. v. Renauid. ' Endgiiltiges
Schlusswort gegen Pikler.' Bd. xvi., Heft 2 und 3. B. Kerstiens.
' Untersuchungen zur Seelenlehre des Descartes.' [Seeks to prove that,
if context and relative emphasis are taken into account, Descartes'
doctrine is far more consistent than critics have admitted. The soul
is identified with conscious thought ; and the essence of the soul is
intellectualistically conceived (geistig). The constitution of thought
is twofold ; there are two powers of the soul, cognition (passive) and
volition (active). The soul is unitary ; these powers are only two
forms of the same thing ; and it is also substantial ; Descartes is far from
parallelism. That the soul is immortal, he does not expressly say,
though he is evidently convinced that it is not destroyed. The will is
free, in the sense of a complete indetermimsm ; but this freedom is com-
patible with the concur sus Dei ; Descartes was quite unconscious that
the two positions might be taken as contradictory. As regards judgment,
we find apparently conflicting statements : that judgment is an act of will,
PHILOSOPHICAL PERIODICALS. 301
that we cannot refuse to accept what we have clearly cognised, and that
both understanding and will are concerned in judgment : the conflict is
resolved, however, if we recognise that the force of conviction is moral
and not absolute, and that, apart from this, the will is able in its own
right to suspend judgment. The will may be influenced by the passions ;
but, if it exerts its power, can always conquer them. The feelings (which
Descartes does not attempt strictly to define) are, like the passions, part
intellect and part will : with the difference, however, that the intellectual
element is the stronger. Feeling is not a third power of the soul, though
the sources of the later tripartite classification may be found in Descartes.]
Z. Treves. ' Beobachtungen liber den Muskelsinn bei Blinden.' [The
author maintains, as against Heller, that the kinsesthetic sensations
involved in movement may furnish ithe blind with adequate ideas of space,
as regards both direction and extent, and can therefore serve as the
basis of an intelligent expression of spatial ideas in the terms employed
by normal individuals. Experiment shows, for instance, that the blind
recognise a straight path as straight, when the hand is moved passively
along it, whatever may be the direction of the path in reference to the
body ; and that they are able, in the same way, to discriminate between
rectilineal and curved paths. It accordingly seems worth while to under-
take a special education of the ' muscle sense in blind children : and the
writer reports (with tables and diagrams of results) the beginnings of
such a course of education, in the case of children from five to sixteen
years of age.] M. Ponzo. * Intorno ad alcune illusioni nel campo delle
sensazioni tattili, sull' illusione di Aristotele e fenomeni analoghi.'
F. Kiesow. ' Kurze Zusammenistellung des Inhalts der vorstehenden
Arbeit.' [If a part of the body (finger, shell of the ear) is placed in an
abnormal position, and stimulated by pressure, the sensation is localised
as it would have been under normal conditions. The author brings this
result into connexion with Aristotle's illusion, which he discusses in
detail, adding experiments upon the confusion of the crossed fingers in
the localisation of pressures, and upon the inversion of the original
illusion (two objects perceived as one). He then shows that an abnormal
position of a part of the body may condition illusions as to the form of
the stimulating object ; the key, throughout, is the observer's reference
to the normal position. Finally, he points out that if two parts of the
body, of whose position we normally possess differently clear ideas, are
brought into abnormal contact, the less clear idea of position is modified
by the more clear.] F. Kiesow. ' Beobachtungen liber die Reaktions-
zeiten momentaner Schalleindrucke'. [Reports of auditory reaction ex-
periments, (1) in which the observer was under no instruction as to
direction of attention (3 observers, of sensory, muscular, and mixed
type, respectively ; 2 intensities of stimulus), and (2) in which the direc-
tion of attention was prescribed (one observer ; sensory, muscular and
indifferent reactions ; sensory reactions with all fingers of the two hands ;
sensory reactions without ready-signal ; 3 intensities of stimulus).
Among other results, confirmation of Wundt's law, that the length of
reaction-time quickly decreases as the stimulus rises from liminal inten-
sity, and remains approximately constant when a certain degree of in-
tensity has been reached.] F. Kiesow und M. Ponzo. ' Beobachtungen
iiber die Reaktionszeiten der Temperaturempfindungen.' [Experiments,
by an improved apparatus, upon temperature spots or small groups of
spots, with elimination of pressure. Natural reactions (one observer,
mixed type) gave 193 for cold and 207 for warmth. Sensory times (two
observers) were about 230 and 255 ; muscular times (same observers),
about 143 and 150, for cold and warmth respectively. The temperatures
employed were and 48-49 C.] E. Becher. ' tfber umkehrbare
802 PHILOSOPHICAL PERIODICALS.
Zeichnungen.' [Experiments with perspective figures (white on black
in dark room ; tachistoscopic exposure) show that Wundt's rule of di-
rection and movement of regard, while its correctness is in most cases
confirmed, is not the sole rule of interpretation, and in fact is oftentimes
broken ; and show, further, that explanation cannot be sought solely in
the facts of direction and distribution of attention. What we see depends
also upon our predisposition, upon the ' readiness ' of the reproductive
elements that transform the plane figure into a perception of solidity ; the
readiness does not necessarily imply the appearance of a tridimensional
figure in consciousness. In a word, the specific character of the illusion
is the resultant of a very large number of co-operating influences, no one
of which can be given a predominant place in theory.] H. D. Cook.
4 Die taktile Schatzung von ausgefiillten und leeren Strecken.' [The
comparison of filled and empty tactual distances depends, in large
measure, upon the distribution of attention and upon the observer's
method of apprehension and judgment ; every mode of presentation of the
stimuli with active or passive movement, with simultaneous or successive
stimulation of the resting skin tends to educe its own typical reaction,
and therefore to condition its own special form of illusion. Analysis
reveals the following factors as influential in judgment : a direct tactual
impression of continuous extent, the absolute impression of largeness or
smallness of the variable stimulus, localisation of the limiting points of
the distance, the qualitative character of the terminal sensations, relative
intensity of the total pressure ; visual ideas and peripheral irradiations
are unimportant ; distribution of attention is of extreme importance.
The writer posits, as so far unanalysable, the impression of continuous
extension, mentioned above, and a local sign (von Frey's Merkzeichen) of
pressure-sensations. Analogies are found with Benussi's distinction of
synthetic and analytical apprehension, and more especially with
Schumann's discovery of the effect of distribution of attention, in the
case of optical illusions ; but the author does not press them, believing
rather that the spatial illusions in general demand various and particular
interpretation.] A. Mueller. ' Einige Bemerkungen iiber die Tauschung
am Himmelsgewolbe und an den Gestirnen.' [Critique of work by
Pozdena, published in Zeits. f. Psychol. , li. Pozdena's principle that the
moon (or other heavenly body) may be identified, as regards our visual
perception, with a portion of the area of the vault of the sky, is neither
proved nor free from objection. The writer believes that we must have
exact measurements of the facts of illusion, both for the vault of the sky
and for the heavenly bodies, and an exact determination of the separate
influence of the various causes of illusion ; observatories and psychological
laboratories should here co-operate.] E. Meumann. ' Mitteilung.'
Literaturbericht. Einzelbesprechung. [Oesterreich on Dessoir's Das
Unterbewusstsein.] Referate. D. Katz und Q. Re've'sz. ' Uber das
Referat unserer Arbeit : Experimentall-psychologische Untersuchungen
mit Huhnern.' S. Berger. ' Zur Erwiderung gegen die Herren Katz
und Revesz.'
ZEITSCHRIFT FUR PHILOSOPHIB UND PHILOSOPHISCHE KRITIK. Bd.
cxl., Heft 1, 1910. Elizabeth Schmitt. < Die unendlichen Modi bei
Spinoza.' Benno Urbach. 'Uber das Wesen der logischen Paradoxa.'
Josef Mtiller. ( Jean Paul und Jacobi.' Selbstanzeigen, etc. Bd. cxli.,
Heft 1, 1910. Wilhelm Bronner. 'Zur Theorie der kollektiv-psychis-
chen Erscheinungen.' Franz Liidtke. f Kritische Geschichte der Ap-
percepzionsbegriffe.' Rezensionen, etc.
PHILOSOPHICAL PEKIODICALS. 303
BIVISTA DI FILOSOPIA. Anno ii., Fasc. 3, June-July, 1910. Roberto
Ardigb. * I presupposti Massimi Problemi.' [The neo-mysticism of the
present day is responsible for the assumption that philosophy has for its
principal function to reconcile the old theological beliefs with the results
of modern science and modern thought. But as, according to Ardig6, the
beliefs in question are entirely obsolete the supposed necessity of recon-
ciling them with positive knowledge is imaginary, and the problems re-
sulting from it are insoluble.] Antioco Zucca. ' II grande enigma.'
[Beginning with the care for one's own personal preservation and aggran-
disement, our interest in life gradually transforms itself into devotion to
family and friends, to the service of the State, and to the welfare of all
mankind. But the attainment, actual or prospective, of every limited
ideal leaves behind it a feeling of dissatisfaction and unrest. For not
only the individual but the State and humanity are doomed to ultimate
extinction. It is therefore necessary to assume, as a postulate of sus-
taining faith, not only that the universe is infinite and everlasting but
also that it is always and everywhere realised as so existing by the evolu-
tion in all worlds of living sensitive and rational beings like ourselves.]
Ciuido De Ruggiero. * II nuovo Spiritualismo francese.' [As a sequel
to his paper on French Eclecticism in the preceding number the writer
discusses with equal severity the more or less mystical philosophies of
Ravaisson, Vacherot, Janet, and Fouillee.] Kuno Schalk. ' Gli ele-
inenti di una nuova psicologia del vero.' ['Truth is good in so far
as it is true, not true in so far as it is good.' But Schalk fails to
provide us with a working rule for the discrimination of truth from
error. For we can hardly regard as such his requirement that the
believer shall be sincere, and that every new belief shall be more com-
prehensive than the old belief to which it succeeds.] B. Varisco.
4 Cognizioni e convenzioni. ' [The most certain of our cognitions, includ-
ing the truths of mathematics, are based on postulates the certainty of
which is merely a matter of agreement. But this principle is not itself a
matter of convention ; it is absolutely true. More generally, the cogni-
tive process is itself cognised ; and ' the reason that is an element in my-
self must be immanent in reality because the laws I derive from it are
/alid for reality '.] Evaristo Marsili. ' Considerazioni critiche sulla
educazione dei sensi.' [The power of the senses cannot really be in-
creased ; and what goes by the name of their education in infant schools
is, properly speaking, rather a training of the intelligence under the forms
of observation, attention, judgment, etc. Wrongly applied it may even
impair the innate powers of sense.] Bibliografia, Recensioni, etc. Anno
ii., Fasc. 4, August-October, 1910. Roberto Ardigb. f ll positivismo
nelle scienze esatte, e nelle sperimentali. ' [A difficult study, having
apparently for its object to prove that the derivation of geometrical
principles from experience through the senses is consistent with the
utmost precision and truth in the concepts and propositions of geometry.
Ardig6 seems to think that the possibility of non-Euclidean space can
be philosophically proved. ] Pasquale d'Hercole. ' La Reintegrazione
delta Faculta teologica.' [Pleads for the rehabilitation of theological
studies in the Italian Universities on undogmatic lines, as the science
of Comparative Religion and religious history.] Salvatore Minocchi.
1 Religione e Filosofia.' [The distinguished Modernist thinker con-
ceives religion as morality raised to its highest power by the identifi-
cation of matter with spirit, God with the world, the life of the
individual with the life of universal Nature.] E. Juvalta. 'Postulati
etici e postulati metafisici. ' [There can be no genuine ethics the
principles of which are not independent of metaphysics ; but ethical
304 PHILOSOPHICAL PERIODICALS.
truth may be explained and corroborated by metaphysical principles.]
Giovanni Calo. ( Le ragioni dello spiritualismo.' [Materialism cannot
explain the fact of self-consciousness, from which logically follows
the substantiality of mind, the reality of the objective world, then
God, freewill, virtue, and immortality.] E. Troilo. ' Bernardino
Telesio.' [An interesting sketch of a great and attractive figure in
the history of Renaissance philosophy.] F. lodl. 'Liberta di scienza
e di coscienza.' [A translation of an article by the Viennese professor,
maintaining, against Luzzatti that freedom of thought has been won not
by religion but by science and philosophy.] Luigi Luzzatti. ' I martiri
nella Storia del pensiero.' [Whatever Benedetto Croce may say to the
contrary, even from a purely historical point of view it must be admitted
that the martyrs of all ages have been intrinsically superior to their
persecutors.] B. Varisco. ' Realita e cognizioni.' [Reviewing Prof.
Bonucci's work on Truth and Reality which by the way the critic
describes as largely inspired by Mr. Bradley Varisco concludes, against
Absolutism, that the subject of knowledge, i.e. the ego, possesses an es-
sential individuality which can neither be identified with anything else nor
dissolved in the Whole.] Bibliografia, etc. Anno ii., Fasc. 5, November-
December, 1910. Roberto Ardigb. c L'Individuo.' [Individualism is
a purely relative idea. However far our analysis of the external world
may be carried it never brings us to real indivisible monads. And in the
highest organisms we are not entitled to assume any transcendental prin-
ciple of unity outside and above the convergent activities of the elements
composing them.] B. Varisco. 'Conosci te Stesso.' [Science deals
with the facts and ]aws of the external world, philosophy with the
mental processes by which the worlds of outward perception and inner
consciousness become known to us. That the external world should only
be known to us through its reproduction in our minds does not involve
agnosticism. For there is no reason to believe that anything exists
beyond what is perceived and thought.] Annibale Pastore. ' II valore
teoretico della logica.' [Hegel was right in identifying the world with a
process of thought. But his method involved him in serious scientific
errors which we may avoid by interpreting the immanent logic of Nature
as a pure formal logic.] Giovanni Marchesini. ' I metodi critici di G.
Gentile.' [An unsparing reply to what the writer represents as an un-
justifiably brutal attack on his master, Ardig6.] Bibliografia filosofica
italiana, recensioni, etc.
X._ NOTE.
MIND ASSOCIATION.
V
THE Annual General Meeting of the MIND Association will .be held
in Corpus Christi College, Oxford, on Saturday, 10th June, 1911, at
4.30 P.M. A paper may be given in the evening.
Those who wish to join the Association should communicate with the
Hon. Secretary, Mr. HENRY STURT, 5 Park Terrace, Oxford ; or with
the Hon. Treasurer, Dr. F. C. S. SCHILLER, Corpus Christi College,
Oxford, to whom the yearly subscription of one guinea should be paid.
NEW SERIES. No. 79.] DULY, 1911.
MIND
A QUARTERLY REVIEW
OF
PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY
I. ON SOME ASPECTS OF TRUTH.
BY F. H. BRADLEY.
I MUST begin this article by once more asking for the indul-
gence of the reader. Once again I am writing on a theme
where I doubt if I have anything really new to offer. My ex-
cuse is that there are some questions on which, even at the cost
of repetition, I desire to be explicit. And these questions are
so difficult and so important, that the reader, if led to dwell
on them, may, I hope, be too much occupied to ask after
novelty. " When I think truly, can I think that which has
never been so thought before?" and " Can I in any sense
make truth ? " these were the two problems which I wished
specially to notice. And I have thought it better to take
these problems more or less in connexion with some other
enquiries.
In any discussion about truth I am met by what to myself
is a great difficulty. It is impossible, in my opinion, to deal
with truth apart from an examination of the nature of reality.
Not merely has every one (though perhaps only at the back
of his mind) a view as to reality which is sure to affect his
result. The very questions as to truth with which a man
begins, involve in the end an answer to certain questions
about the nature of things. And to deal with these final
inquiries here is obviously not possible. Hence I am forced
to refer the reader to that which I have published elsewhere.
In what follows I am in the main confined to showing how
various problems are dealt with, supposing that you adopt a
certain view as to the Universe. If the reader insists on
asking throughout for more, I can only reply that here I am
writing for others.
20
306 F. H. BRADLEY I
I will however begin by noticing some misunderstandings
as to the method employed in ultimate inquiry by writers
like myself. There is an idea that we start, consciously or
unconsciously, with certain axioms, and from these reason
downwards. This idea to my mind is baseless. The method
actually followed may be called in the main the procedure
used by Hegel, that of a direct ideal experiment made on
reality. What is assumed is that I have to satisfy my theo-
retical want, or, in other words, that I resolve to think. And
it is assumed that, if my thought is satisfied with itself, I have,
with this, truth and reality. But as to what will satisfy I
have of course no knowledge in advance. My object is to
get before me what will content a certain felt need, but the
way and the means are to be discovered only by trial and
rejection. The method clearly is experimental.
Speaking from this point forwards simply for myself, I
find an object which is plural. I do not of course mean that
it is only plural, but I mean that it has maniness. Now
how am I to take this object ideally so as to satisfy my mind ?
If I try to take the object as merely many, it is forthwith
dissipated and is lost. Therefore the object is not a mere
many. Let me now, starting from this result, try to take
the object as a mere conjunction of terms and external rela-
tions. The aspect here, other than the mere many, will be
a bare " together " or " and ". But I want to see what this
aspect is. I take it first as adding to the many only another
one, a something more of them. And, as soon as I do this, the
object once more is dissipated, and the whole conjunction
disappears. Therefore the ''together" or "and" does not
consist in terms and external relations. It is something
else. It may perhaps be called a form of unity and totality. 1
I take the plural object as many in one, and with that so far
I am satisfied. But on this naturally succeeds further in-
quiry and further trial, not going backwards but endeavour-
ing to advance and to specify the How. And where the
alleged downward deduction from axioms comes in here, I
am myself unable to discover.
As to what has been called the axiom of internal relations,
I can only repeat that "internal" relations, though truer
by far than "external," are, in my opinion, not true in the
end. You have no alternatives here by denying one of which
you can go on to assert the other, for truth in the end is not
merely relational. And the alleged axiom is a comparative
truth which is not a premiss but a result. The same remark
1 On the nature of " and " see MIND. No. 72, p. 497.
ON SOME ASPECTS OF TRUTH. 307
applies to any " axiom of ground ". Where A is not real by
itself but implies and belongs to an ideal whole, you want a
reason for A, for you want to know the How of this unity.
Mediation is called for, and, if external merely, is none. But
the " axiom," once more here, is a result and not a premiss.
I will venture to enlarge on this second supposed axiom.
Is it true that everything must have a reason, a " how " and
a " why " ? In the end this assertion is not true, we see at
once, of the Universe. The " axiom " holds only so far as a
thing is not complete in itself, and is therefore, on our view,
ideally beyond itself. The demand for the making good of
such imperfection, not as real but as ideal, the completion of
the thing in idea so as to satisfy us theoretically, is what we
mean by the search for a " why " and "how ". Wherever,
in other words, you have an "implication," you want a
reason, because you desire to see the whole nature of your
implication.
Where you have a felt whole, as felt, where you have a
non-relational unity, as in a work of art, there, so far, you
need not ask " why ". The tendency of the content to pass
beyond the limits of the thing is not always forced on your
notice. The case is different where, by analysis or otherwise,
the self-contained unity has been lost. Wherever the oneness
of "what " and "that " has perished before us, or has been
destroyed by reflection and analysis, and wherever we seek
to reunite these aspects not really but ideally, we have a
demand for a "reason".
Every felt whole changes in time, and the felt " present "
has narrow limits. We are left, when we notice this, with
two things, a felt present and a recalled past ; and these two
things come to us somehow together. But are the two felt
or perceived as one in the sense that their contents are
throughout in immediate unity ? Clearly not so, and hence
the " somehow," as it is, does not satisfy us. It is the name
of something which, for us, is not all there, and is not
actually contained in our fact. And we want the whole of
the "somehow" actually and in detail. Such a complete
totality we cannot directly experience, so as to have once
more something which is or seems to be self-sufficient. We
therefore attempt to supply this defect by ideas. We seek
to understand, to make good ideally our lost unity.
Passing by the question raised by space, let us go on also to
ignore change in time. Let us take some sensible whole, or
other non-relational unity ; let us suppose that this does not
change in time, and let us, for the sake of argument, assume
also that within this, as it comes to you, there is no tendency
308 F. H. BEADLE Y :
of the content to pass beyond the limits of the thing. Here
so far, it will be said, there is no " why " or " how ". I agree,
but I ask whether you intend to remain here. And that, as
I observe, is precisely what you do not intend to do. You
go on to think, you analyse, you introduce terms and re-
lations, whereas in your immediate whole there were no
relations or terms ; or, at least and in any case, the whole
itself was non-relational. And, so far as you have terms
and relations, the unity is destroyed. It now, as the fact of
" relatedness," falls outside of the relational scheme, and this
fact you have not specified. The attempt to specify this
fact, to re-include it not really but ideally, and so to make
good the broken unity, is the demand and the search for
the "how" and the "why". We wish in other words to
perceive the full nature of the "and," or the "implication ".
We desire in short to understand.
To ask us here why we cannot remain content with " the
brute fact," seems even ridiculous. What is the brute fact ?
Is it the fact as merely felt ? Is it an immediate unity
taken non-relationally and so not understood ? On the con-
trary your "brute fact " is that ideal scheme of terms and
relations which comes into being only through the destruc-
tion of the felt whole. Such a fact is not brute, but is ideal.
It is a thing, which, as itself, is only for thought. And it
itself is not a fact. It has no unity except that which is
added from outside itself, and is supplied irrationally from
elsewhere. Your ultimate brute fact is in brief your own
half -thought-out theory.
We have now seen the nature of the demand for a reason,
a " how " and a " why ". We have here no axiom standing
on which we proceed to argue downwards. So far as this
truth is true, it is a result and a character of our procedure
itself.
Passing now from this misunderstanding about axioms, I
will venture (if the reader will pardon this repetition) to try
to throw some further light on the general method which
I have used. In theorising we put questions directly to
Keality. In other words we experiment ideally on the nature
of things. We find that, given a, we have b, and that this is
how the world behaves. 1 The objection that in this way we
learn nothing about Reality itself, is ill-founded. It depends
on a false separation between Reality and ourselves, and it
may therefore be dismissed. Reality is such that a is b. All
1 Cf. Principles of Logic, p. 87.
ON SOME ASPECTS OF TRUTH. 309
our truths are true of Reality, but all are subject to a con-
dition. We can say indifferently "a (x) b is real," or
"Eeality is a (x) b ". Such is the doctrine of judgment
which I have found to be the one doctrine which holds.
But obviously with an unknown condition we are but
partly satisfied. To pass from one term to another term, we
do not know how, is not enough. We have to seek know-
ledge where the mode of transition, the mediation itself, also
is known. And, even if we had various pieces of knowledge
which held good, each in itself, that would still fail to satisfy
us, as long as we are ignorant as to the connexion of these
pieces. For some connexion there is. If we had no " and "
or "together," we should not even have pieces, and "to-
gether " or " and," as we have seen, is an expression of unity
and totality. It asserts a whole, but it couples this assertion
with blank ignorance as to "how". And such ignorance
does not content us. We are led, therefore, to search for
the reason why we pass from one term to another term.
We seek in other words a mediated intelligible whole. That
whole, if we could reach it, would fulfil our theoretical want.
That would be true and real ; and reality and truth, we
have to assume, is that. But whether we can say " merely
that," is of course a further question.
The reader may object that, even if the above, so far as it
goes, is admitted, it still is useless. It tells us nothing as to
the world, since all it tells us is formal. The word "formal"
I put on one side as a probable source of misapprehension.
But I fully agree that all the knowledge we have reached so
far about reality, is too general and empty. To the question
" What do I know ? " the above is an answer which by
itself does not. satisfy. And not only do I hold this, but I
have urged also that by itself no such knowledge could even
exist. For the whole of our knowledge may be said to de-
pend upon immediate experience. At bottom the Keal is
what we feel, and there is no reality outside of feeling. And
in the end the Keality (whatever else we say of it) is ex-
perience.
Our fundamental fact is immediate experience or feeling. 1
We have here a many in one where, so far, there is no dis-
tinction between truth and fact. And feeling again is mine,
though of course it is not merely my feeling. It is reality
and myself in unbroken unity. We in a sense transcend
this unity, that is clear, for we could not otherwise speak of
it. But that we should ever in any way reach a reality out-
1 See especially MIND, No. 69.
310 F. H. BRADLEY :
side of it, seems impossible. And if this is so, as I have con-
tended more fully elsewhere, then experience is reality. For
in attempting to deny this thesis, or to assert something
else, we find on experiment that we have asserted this thesis
or nothing. 1
If then Reality is an intelligible whole and Reality also is
experience, can we assume that, above relations and inclusive
of them, there is an Experience which reasserts our original
unity? If this is possible, our theoretical want would be
satisfied. Such a whole would be Reality, and nothing else
could in the end be called even possible. There is of course
no question here of explaining everything. Such an idea, at
least to my mind, is ridiculous, not to say insane. The real
question everywhere as to the inexplicable is whether it falls
within the general view, or whether, falling outside that, it
becomes a negative instance. In the latter case, and in the
latter case only, the general view is refuted. But into the
discussion of such alleged instances there is no space to enter
here. 2
My object in the above has not been to indulge in idle
repetition, nor again to argue that the conclusions which I
hold are not refutable. What I have been aiming at is to
help the reader to understand how it is that such conclusions
as mine are reached, in what way, that is, and by what
method, starting from what is given, we arrive at our goal.
I wish finally to point to a merit possessed, I think, by no
view which is not akin to my own. In philosophy it is not
enough merely to state the connexion between truth and
reality. One is bound to show in addition how, this con-
nexion being so, we can know that it is so, how in short our
knowledge is such that it can comprehend itself and reality.
I will not repeat here how, on the view which I hold, this
vital question is answered. What I wish to urge is this,
that on no opposite view (so far as I see) can the question
1 We have here a matter for observation and experiment and not
for long trains of reasoning. In MIND, No. 75, p. 335, I notice, for
instance, that Prof. Perry, while uprooting Idealism, demolishes in
passing myself. He takes me to argue to a conclusion which I do not
hold, from a basis which I have rejected as an error, and then wonders at
the unnameable vice of the process. But, if Prof. Perry wishes to get
an idea as to the view which he is anxious to refute, why should he not
suppose (for a moment) that on my side there is no argument at all, and
that on his side there is an inference by way of vicious abstraction ?
2 Any critic who desires to be fair, should, I think, make up his mind
on these two questions, (a) Has or has not a philosophy got to explain
everything ? (6) What is it (if anything) that a philosophy may leave
unexplained? Without some consideration of these points I do not
myself see how rational discussion is possible.
ON SOME ASPECTS OF TRUTH. 311
be answered at all. The problem of the ultimate Criterion
must be faced, and on any other basis it cannot, I think, be
fairly encountered and solved. I will now point out this
failure in the case of two widely held doctrines.
The theoretical criterion, for myself, is in theory supreme.
The truth for any man is that which at the time satisfies his
theoretical want, and ''more or less true" means more or
less of such satisfaction. The want is a special one. We
do not of course know beforehand what it is and what can
satisfy it. We only at first feel that there is something
special, that we miss or gain, and we go on to discover the
nature of the want and its object by trial, failure and success.
I will now proceed to ask what will happen if we take the
Criterion to lie in satisfaction not specific but general. The
necessary result to my mind is failure and bankruptcy. 1
We must not confuse this position with that taken in
ordinary Hedonism. The Hedonist, as such, has no doc-
trine of his own about truth. The means to the one
Desirable are sought by the intellect, but, as to the na-
ture of the intellect and of truth and fact, almost any
view can be joined with Hedonism. But in the position
to be now examined the ground is changed. Satisfaction
has itself become the criterion of truth. And this satis-
faction we are not to understand in any narrowed sense. It
is not to be merely hedonic, nor is it to be merely practical
as belonging to what we do, as against what we feel and are.
Satisfaction in general is to be our criterion of truth and
error.
There is a mental attitude from which the above must
again be distinguished. We may, despairing for ourselves
or in general, of ultimate truth, or finding the quest of it too
costly, resolve to abandon it. The satisfaction of our human
interests, truth included, is our end ; and we decide for our-
selves to limit truth to those ideas which subserve our in-
terests so far as they subserve them. Truths are to be
working ideas. And if we really understand our present
position (as we seldom do), any ideas, no matter how in-
consistent, are to be counted true, if and so far as they are
required in our spiritual interest. What we feel to be the
general health and harmony of our being is the end, and
truth is to be subject absolutely to dictation from that. But
within these limits we, like the common Hedonist, use the
everyday notion of truth, and confine it to the search for that
1 What follows may be taken as a commentary on Appearance, pp.
373-374.
312 F. H. BEADLEY :
which, in the above sense, works. I myself have much sym-
pathy with the above attitude which of course, in theory, is
not mine. 1 But we must remember that this attitude is not
a doctrine about truth and the criterion, and, if it under-
stands itself, it makes no pretence to the name of philosophy.
And, keeping this in mind, we may pass onwards.
The position which we are to examine claims to be a phil-
osophy and to offer an account of truth which is valid. Its
criterion, we have seen, is satisfaction not one-sided but
general. As to how on this view we are to know what is
one-sided or general, a doubt might be raised. But, leaving
this, we are face to face with a serious difficulty. Is the
general satisfaction to be that of my own self or of others, or
again of both at once ? And who are others ? Let us decide
to mean by others the present and future inhabitants of this
our planet, so far as they are known, and, if you please, let
us consider only those inhabitants which are human. But in
any case my satisfaction and that of others seems able to
collide. Are we to assume that really this is not so, or are
we on the other hand to subordinate my satisfaction to that
of others, or that of others to my own ? Whatever attitude
we adopt, our procedure seems irrational and arbitrary, and
we shall hardly save ourselves by trying to take all three
positions at once, or as each serves the turn. But oar theory,
if so, has been shaken by the first simple question.
It is better however to examine it further. The general
satisfaction includes the future and is not merely present.
Let us call it satisfaction in the long run for myself or for
humanity. And " in the long run " does not mean what
" will be " in an ordinary realistic sense. For that sense is
excluded by our doctrine of truth. What " will be " is that
which satisfies now as tending to satisfy in the long run.
Whatever idea of means to our end satisfies most iww, is the
truth.
And " satisfies " does not point solely or specially to theo-
retical satisfaction. That would be a return to the view of
truth which has been abandoned definitely. Then satisfies
(we must at once proceed to ask) ivhom and how ? It cannot
be my future self, or humanity in the future, which has to be
satisfied, for these surely are inaccessible. The satisfaction
clearly must be present. And the present satisfaction of
humanity once more cannot be reached. For this is known,
I presume, only by an inference, and an inference on our
present view of truth must rest on actual satisfaction. Thus
actual satisfaction in the end must be now and be mine.
1 Of. MIND, No. 66, p. 230.
ON SOME ASPECTS OF TRUTH. 313
Truth is the idea which satisfies me DOW. Then in what
way ? Not theoretically, for to say that would be to relapse
into a discarded attitude. You may say "It satisfies me
most now to adopt and act on a certain view as to the prob-
able future. This view rests on my present satisfaction and
hence all is consistent." But no such defence is really valid.
For it is an obvious fact that (not to speak of other persons)
to adopt and to act on other views sometimes satisfies me as
much or more. If we admit this fact, then all these opposite
views will be equally true. And we can only deny the fact
by a collision with everything like common experience and
common sense. To identify my satisfaction now with a cer-
tain view and a certain object which I take as real, with an
ideal construction capable of appearance at other moments
and in other persons, would be to make the criterion theo-
retical. And on our present theory there is no essential con-
nexion between the satisfaction and any special quality in
the object. The idea therefore, whatever it is, which satisfies
me most now, is true. The truth is whatever idea at this
moment is felt to satisfy me most, and, beside this, there is
no other truth.
Theoretical satisfaction may be rejected (and this is the
better course) as not existing or as subordinate. Or it may
be admitted as one element in the satisfaction which is gen-
eral. This admission leads inevitably to a collision between
the truth which is theoretical and the truth which is true.
And there would be no principle on which to decide between
these conflicting claims. The only criterion left in any case
is the feeling which at the moment prevails. Truth is no-
thing but whatever idea I feel at a given moment to give
most satisfaction. And with this I submit that we have
ended in bankruptcy.
I will pass on from this to say something on the doctrine
called Darwinism, so far as it bears on the question of the
criterion. We have here at first sight the antipodes of our
former view. That stood on satisfaction, while for Darwinism
there is nothing in the world like value or good or evil. Any-
thing implying evolution, in the ordinary sense of develop-
ment or progress, is wholly rejected. But the two views meet
positively so far as there is coincidence between that which
prevails and that which satisfies. And negatively they meet
in their exclusion from the criterion of anything like a special
quality, type or character, as essential to the object. What-
ever idea satisfies or prevails (no matter what else it is) is
true.
314 F. H. BKADLEY :
Darwinism often recommends itself because confused with,
a doctrine of evolution which is different radically. Hu-
manity is here taken as a real being, or even the one real
being, and Humanity advances continuously. Its history is-
development and progress to a goal, because the type and
character in which its reality consists is gradually brought
more and more into fact. That which is strongest on the
whole must therefore be good, and the ideas which come
to prevail must therefore be true. This doctrine, which
possesses my sympathy, though 1 certainly cannot accept it,,
has, I suppose, now for a century taken its place in the thought
of Europe. For good or for evil it more or less dominates or
sways our minds to an extent of which most of us, perhaps,
are dangerously unaware.
Any such view of course conflicts radically with Darwinism,
and let us now ask how the latter can deal with our inquiry
as to truth. The ideas (it may explain) by which our world,
and our human world, has got on so far, are called true.
There is some probability, though we cannot estimate the
balance, that by using the same ideas we shall continue to
get on in the same direction. Therefore (a) truth is merely
the ideas by which we get on, or (6) at any rate these are the
ideas to which we should confine our attention.
(a) The first conclusion is suicidal, since it contradicts its
basis. 1 Its basis obviously is positive doctrine, right or wrong,
which assumes and rests on the validity of theoretical truth
in the sense which Darwinism denies, (b) The second con-
clusion, if, that is, it admits truth in the ordinary sense with
regard to human history, is so far consistent. But, so far as
Darwinism has anything to say, this conclusion seems ar-
bitrary or worse. For the word " should " falls outside of
Darwinism, just as to " get on" means nothing if it means
more than to "go back ". And the historical assertion that
only ideas of " getting on " have so far worked, is clearly
untenable.
For Darwinism the true idea is the idea which prevails,
and we may perhaps identify satisfaction with inward preva-
lence. Then the question, which at once arises, is "pre-
vails where and when ? " As to the " how " we need not ask
because we know that " how " means " anyhow ". If the
where and when are taken as in our world in general, then
(as we saw before) such knowledge on our part must rest on
the very theoretical truth which we deny. But, if the preva-
lence is in myself, and in myself here and now, then any idea,
1 Cf. Appearance, p. 137.
ON SOME ASPECTS OF TEUTH. 315
no matter what, if it prevails, is true, and all such ideas are
true alike. There is no criterion, and from this result we
cannot escape hy refinements. The argument that Dar-
winism's idea of prevalence prevails in me here and now,
and so proves itself by a circular reinforcement, will not
stand scrutiny. For all that we have here is the moment's
coincidence, unessential and external, and any of the other
ideas which elsewhere or at another time prevail, are as un-
questionably true. A contention like the above is good only
if the other, the incompatible, doctrine of development is
accepted. And it rests probably, wherever it is used, on
some reminiscence or result of this other doctrine. The one
criterion for Darwinism is the abstract success or prevalence
of whatever happens to prevail, without any regard for its
character. And this must surely leave us in the end with no
criterion at all.
It may however repay us, before we go further, rapidly to
view this matter from the other side. To maintain that
Keality or Truth is what prevails, or is that which satisfies
us, is not wrong. And similarly it is not wrong to affirm
that Keality is "this," "now" or "mine". The mistake
here, so far as there is a mistake, lies in our simple identifica-
tion of both terms, and in our addition of the word " only ".
Any positive attribution, in other words, to Eeality must
be right, so long as it abstains from the denial, implicit or
explicit, of "something more". To say "only" is to lay
emphasis on the negative side of the positive identity.
" Only " or " merely " excludes any " other," or again it may
warn us against making an abortive attempt to find an
" other " where any other is meaningless, Hence such an
assertion as that Eeality is merely prevalence, is, on our view,
inconsistent with itself. Since an other than mere preva-
lence has, on that view, a meaning, we have set up within
Eeality the distinction of E (a) and E (b). This distinction
however must imply a higher and more inclusive E within
which it falls, and the exclusive identification asserted by
our "merely" is thus in contradiction with itself.
Even the judgments that Eeality is one in many and is
experience, would be untenable, if we meant by these judg-
ments to deny that Eeality is in any sense more. But no
such denial should be the intention of our judgment. What
we really exclude here as senseless is the idea of any " other "
falling outside of our predicate, and able to be set over
against it in idea as being itself also an attribute of the Eeal.
And we deny no qualification of our predicate which, re-
316 F. H. BRADLEY :
maining still under it, fills out its character merely from the
inside. But how a truth, claiming to reach reality, should
at once be absolute and yet for ever consciously incomplete,
I have elsewhere discussed. 1
I will now proceed to deal with a number of special ques-
tions as to truth. Any knowledge which on my view can in
a proper sense be called truth, is the qualification of Reality
by ideal content. The Real must here have the form of an
object, and the idea must in some sense have an existence
other than that of the object. With these points I have
dealt fully elsewhere, and I propose to go on here to ask first
as to the meaning of qualification. That meaning is derived
from immediate experience and sensible perception. If you
take, for instance, an object such as an apple, this is qualified
by its adjectives. It is each and all of them, and yet it is
something more, though you are unable to say what. It is
different from its qualities, and it is also the same and one
with them. This is the idea of qualification which we apply
to judgment. It is an imperfect idea obviously, and it is not
" thinkable" or "intelligible" if that means that you can
analyse it without destruction into terms and relations. But
it has a positive sense which, however inconsistently, you
use. And, because this sense is not "intelligible," there is a
constant tendency to deny or to destroy it. You may seek
for the essence of qualification in an arrangement of relations
and terms, or in a simple identity ; and in either case what
you will find is anatomised death or vacuity. Or again,
shrinking from these, you may still deny that anything other
than these is there. But the positive meaning exists, and,
with all its imperfection, it is applied in truth. On the
nature and the result of this imperfection I have written
elsewhere.
From this I go on to approach another question at once
important and full of difficulty. Does truth always refer to
something other than itself ? And, if this is always the case,
in what sense are we able to affirm it ? As to what is the
obvious view, there is no doubt. Truth, to be true, must be
true of something, and this something itself is not truth.
This obvious view I endorse, but to ascertain its proper
meaning is not easy. And it commonly is misinterpreted so
as not to be tenable. I will begin the discussion by the state-
ment of what is called an antinomy.
1 See Appearance, chap, xxvii.
ON SOME ASPECTS OF TKUTH. 317
(i) No judgment is self-contained. For (a) on my side
there is always something which does not qualify the object,
and which therefore falls outside. There is always my psy-
chical state of the moment, a context in which the assertion
happens and which it has to transcend. So far, for example,
as my judgment pleases and satisfies, that feeling, where we
are confined to truth, does not qualify the object. And,
again, I may be aware of an act which proceeds in and from
me with more or less of difficulty or ease, and either faster or
more slowly. But this difference is irrelevant to the judg-
ment. And (6), on the side of the object, Reality is never
confined in and limited to my special object, but is always,
also beyond it. 1
(ii) No judgment is self-transcendent. For (a) it refers to
and qualifies something real. But how it could qualify
something which is not there for me and present, or how this
something could be present and yet not within the judgment,
seems not intelligible. Or rather we see that, when we at-
tempt such assertions, we have really implied the opposite.
And (6) that activity which seemed to lie merely in myself,
is not external to the object. To take the felt activity as.
falling wholly in or on something outside the judgment, is
not a tenable view. We cannot regard the act as expended
merely by myself on myself, nor does it move or hang some-
where between myself and the object. And, asking in general
for the sense of this " between," we find that we have nothing
beyond a self-inconsistent metaphor. Judgment cannot con-
sist in the external relation of two independent things, nor is
it the presence (one-sided or otherwise) of one merely to the
other. 2 If you imagine two foreign bodies, one impressing
or soliciting the other, and the second body attempting to
grasp the first which has impressed or excited it you have
passed away from an actual judgment. For somehow un-
deniably there is an awareness of that whole judgment as
one, and we belie that fact when we take its felt activity and
its entire psychical existence as falling somewhere apart from
it. The act of judgment itself must belong also to the object
and itself make an element in the judgment.
A dilemma such as the above is insoluble so long as we
remain on the ground which supports it. The notion of
myself as a thing standing over against the world, exter-
nally related to it in knowledge, and dividing with it some-
J Even where Reality or the Universe is the subject, this still will hold
good. See MIND, No. 60, p. 455.
2 What some one should explain is how the merely external relation of
two terms is able to be aware of itself.
318 F. H. BRADLEY :
how unintelligibly the joint situation or result, must once for
all be abandoned. This point of view rests on the ideal con-
struction which we call the soul or the mind, and it assumes
this construction to be an absolute fact. But, as I have
.argued elsewhere, 1 such a position is untenable. To take
my self or soul as a separate thing, and to regard everything
that happens to it as its psychical states, is, in its own place,
proper and necessary. For certain purposes we are right,
:and we are even compelled, to adopt such an attitude. And
not to realise this necessity is to fall into dangerous error.
On the other side to rest in this position as ultimate, is fatal.
It is to turn a relative truth into ruinous falsehood. And,
if we are to understand knowledge and judgment, we must
discard the doctrine of a self which by itself is or could be
real. 2
Here, as everywhere, so far as I can discover, there is no
way except one which holds good in the end. We must
view the Reality in its unbroken connexion with finite cen-
tres. We must take it as, within and with these centres,
making itself an object to itself and carrying out them and
itself at once ideally and practically. The activity of the
process is throughout the undivided activity of the Keality
.and of the centre in one. There is in the end no " between,"
nor any external relation. The striving of one side or the
other merely for itself is impossible, and to seek to verify
such a striving, for instance, in selfishness or its opposite, is
futile. And in knowledge the impression by the object and
the will to experiment in fact with the object or to grasp it
ideally, all belongs to the single activity 3 at once of myself
1 Appearance, chap, xxiii., MIND, No. 33.
2 In his interesting book, Pragmatism and its Critics (p. 31), which I
have seen while reading over this article, Prof. Moore states that the
doctrine that the individual consciousness is a function of the " com-
munity life," has appeared only within our own generation. Such a
statement surprises me. Is Prof. Moore really prepared to deny that
the doctrine was taught by Hegel, and that I, for instance (if I may
mention myself), following Hegel, fought for it in 1876 ? What Prof.
Moore, I think, has failed to realise is the necessity for defining the
" community life," and for deciding whether this is merely social, and, if
so, precisely in what sense. We seem to have here once more the well-
known old ambiguity which obscures, and which assists, that which calls
itself Humanism. But is Prof. Moore ready to identify reality with the
" community life," and, if so, in what sense of this term ? The question
left unanswered surely threatens with ruin Prof. Moore's doctrine as to
the perception of material objects. But I am glad to find that on the
whole the differences between Prof. Moore and myself are small in com-
parison with the amount of our agreement.
3 The same thing of course holds with regard to passivity. My present
actual contents are, for instance, disturbed by the felt inroad of an uu-
ON SOME ASPECTS OF TRUTH. 319
and the whole Universe. For certain purposes (if I may
repeat this) the division of subject from object, and the rela-
tion taken as existing between them, are ideas which are
requisite. But beyond these purposes such ideas are ruin-
ously false. They are directly opposed to our immediate
consciousness of the whole relation in one, and, if you start
from them as premisses, you are inevitably entangled in a
network of dilemmas.
You cannot however, it will be urged, deny that with
every judgment there goes an element which is only personal
and merely " subjective ". There is surely something, when
I judge, which you cannot take as belonging to the object.
Certainly to this I agree, and to myself it seems even incon-
testable. But what. I ask, do we mean by the " subjective " ?
For myself it is merely the irrelevant. It is that which does
not count, it is that which falls outside of the matter here
in hand, and does not now serve our purpose. Our purpose,
when we seek truth, is the ideal qualification of the object.
In our search for goodness or for beauty again in each case
we pursue a different end, and the subjective is whatever in
each case is irrelevant to our end. The irrelevant may be
called the " mere this," because it is left behind in the general
immediacy of the moment. And it may be called the " mere
mine," because my self is a construction based upon the
feeling of one finite centre. But there is no mere "this"
or " mine " which is such absolutely. These things are
everywhere illusions, unless we take them as relative. 1
The merely personal is the irrelevant, but this brings us
to a serious difficulty. How can anything in the end be
irrelevant ? If all in the end hangs together, then, whether
in the world inside us or outside, there seems no place for
irrelevancy. Nothing can really be quite loose from any-
thing else in the Universe. On this conclusion I have to
insist, and I accept the consequence that all irrelevancy,
when you go further back, becomes a matter of degree. The
alleged bare conjunction of mere facts is itself a lower kind
of connectedness. It lies at the bottom of the scale of truth
and reality, but not somewhere outside it. And even degree
itself, I have to add, in the end is transcended. Our distinc-
tions all hold good, but not precisely in those forms which
for us are necessary. 2
expected perception or of a sudden and surprising thought. And on the
other side the object is passive where in reflexion I attack and analyse
it. But such passivity is on neither side the change made in a thing
acted on merely from without. Truth does not break into my premises
like a burglar, nor again like a corpse does it suffer my anatomy.
1 See Appearance, chap, xix., and MIND, No. 62, p. 174.
2 Cf. here MIND, No. 74.
320 F. H. BKADLEY:
All judgment and truth depend on distinction, upon ab-
straction and selection. That which falls outside a particular
judgment is hence taken as not counting for the purpose, and
this not merely in degree but utterly. And, if truth is to
exist, such an attitude is necessary. You cannot (to put the
same thing otherwise) condition your judgment from the out-
side. After it is made, you can of course go on to reflect
on it and to correct it, but for you, while you make it, its
truth must be absolute. 1 Apart from a selection to which
you commit yourself unreservedly and unconditionally, no
truth is possible.
The selection is not arbitrary for its object is truth. Our
goal is in the end to gain Keality in an ideal form, to possess
ourselves of a self-contained individual whole. The criterion
here, as everywhere, which we use is the Absolute. And the
justification of our procedure is through its result. We seek,
that is, to include the conditions of the assertion within the
assertion itself. And those conditions which we take any-
where as falling outside of our assertion and as irrelevant,
are so actually for our purpose.- They are disconnected from
that purpose to such a degree that we can treat them as
"matter of fact," which is only coincident and which there-
fore is negligible. And our object can be gained, so far as
we gain it, by no other method. 3
Every judgment therefore transcends immediacy. It in-
volves a distinction and selection, and it may be said to pass
beyond whatever for its purpose it leaves outside of its object.
But the notion of a psychical subject, standing opposed to
the object and then transcended somehow in knowledge,
must be rejected as illusory. It holds good elsewhere, but
only so far as it is an idea which works usefully.
1 Cf. MIND, No. 66. It is impossible in the end by any judgment to
qualify Reality as conditioned. R, taken with the condition, implies a
higher R within which it falls and of which it is asserted. This general
principle has of course many applications. Thus (as we have seen) you
may attempt to make the'qualificationof the object in a judgment include
also the personal satisfaction of the judger. But this inclusion forth-
with makes a new object, and so on indefinitely. Hence the satisfaction
of the judger, as and while he judges, is necessarily excluded from the
judgment. From the other side, the satisfaction, or the psychical preva-
lence, which is asserted, cannot be the satisfaction or prevalence be-
longing to the act of such assertion. It may or may not be consistent
with this, but to judge concerning such a point belongs to and involves a
further reflexion.
2 Cf. MIND, No. 74.
3 The same thing holds again of course mutatis mutandis in Ethics and
in ^Esthetics, in short wherever you have an object.
ON SOME ASPECTS OF TRUTH. 321
And even the account of truth which we have just given
cannot satisfy in the end. It implies that dualism which,,
involved in truth's essence, for ever stands between it and
its goal. Truth is not perfect so long as it fails anywhere
to include its reality, and its reality is not whole so long as-
any of its conditions are left out. Truth, compelled to select,,
is therefore forced to remain for ever defective. Its purpose-,
though realised increasingly, is not utterly fulfilled, and to*
fulfil that purpose would be to pass beyond the proper
sphere and limits of truth. The problem cannot be solved
by any alleged creation, in and by one act, of truth and
reality in one. And it cannot be solved by that reunion at a
higher level of fact and idea, which we can produce (I will
not ask how far) in our intuitive knowledge or again in
aesthetic perception. For everywhere there is an object
which remains incomplete in itself, and which in any case
could not be an object if nothing else remained outside.
Truth in short is about the real, while that which is only
" about," has stopped short of the truth. The complete
attainment of truth's end is reached only in that Reality
which includes and transcends intelligence.
The question, How far a judgment refers to something
beyond itself, can now be answered as follows. If you take
a judgment as my psychical state, then certainly it refers to
that which is beyond itself. But to take a judgment thus is-
to destroy its essence and to be lost in dilemmas. From a
better point of view our answer to the question is twofold,
(i) No judgment can refer to anything beyond itself, since in
every judgment the ultimate Reality is actually present. In
any judgment on the other hand this Eeality is incomplete,
and there will therefore be a difference between the Reality
present and the truth actually reached in the judgment. But
this difference remains within the object, and for truth to pass
or to refer beyond that is impossible, (ii) In the second place
every judgment isconjoined with irrelevant existence and must
transcend this. For a judgment to exist, you must have that
which, as you judge, you do not in any sense include within
the object. This attitude, untenable in the end, is essential
to truth. But if, going further, you desire to know how in
the end irrelevancy is explained, the answer is that it cannot,
be explained. Irrelevancy belongs to the fact of finite cen-
tres and the process in time, and this aspect of the Whole I
at least have set down as inexplicable. 1
1 Those who have done me the honour to read my book will know this.
Other critics may be referred to the Index (in any edition of my work)
under the heading Inexplicable.
21
322 F. H. BRADLEY:
I will dwell further on one of the points which has just
been noticed. Judgment refers always an ideal content to
reality. Now in every judgment this reality is at once the
whole Universe and something less than the Universe, (a)
Although judgment is mine, and again involves a selection,
still what it qualifies is the one all-containing Keality, present
alike to you and to me and to every one else. Let us sup-
pose this to be otherwise, and knowledge is destroyed. For
knowledge apart from the real is nothing, and the real again,
on our view, is nothing if apart from the Universe. And we
may once more remind ourselves that to leave truth for
something outside which it does not include, is illusory and
senseless. On the other hand, suppose, for instance, that
the lapse of time were ultimately real in our experience, then
what on such a view would have become of our past ? To
us it could be nothing, unless indeed we possessed a mira-
culous "Faculty of Memory". If there is not, present in
this passing ''now," a Keality which contains all " nows "
future and past, the whole of our truth and knowledge must
be limited to the " now " that we perceive. For to reach a
larger Universe by transcendence would really be nonsense.
On the other side (6) what I have in judgment is not the
whole Universe at once. This seems obvious, and, for
example, it is clear that I must leave the present to gain, so
far as I am able to gain, the past and future. For I do not
possess these as present. I have everywhere indeed present
to me the whole Universe, but I have not all of its detail
or even its actual complete form. In knowledge what is felt
and perceived at any moment is but little, and what again is
true is but ideal. That which we call our real world, the
past and future of ourselves and of others, and the whole
body of things common to us all this in the main is ideal
^construction made by selection and synthesis. It is the
Universe realising itself as truth within finite centres. And
the immediate experience on which this common world, so
far indeed as it is common, is based, is at any time and in
any centre obviously incomplete. The entire undivided
Universe in short is everywhere present, but it is present as
appearance and but partially. And, though it again in and
for us transcends this partial character, it never does so
completely. 1
We have to guard ourselves here against a double mistake.
Truth, we have seen, qualifies the Reality by an ideal con-
1 The reader must not here take me to have forgotten the worlds of
art and of social reality. I am confining myself here to the problem of
knowledge and of truth in the narrower sense.
ON SOME ASPECTS OF TRUTH. 323
tent. And we may be led to take on one side this ideal
content as detached wholly from the Keal, to which then we
apply it. And the Eeality on its side may perhaps be re-
garded as an undetermined object, such as mere Being or
again the Universe at large. But, in the first place, there
is no such thing as an ideal content which absolutely fails to
qualify the Real. Except in a relative sense, there are no
ideas which float or are suspended, or are assumed or pre-
sumed or in any way entertained, except as adjectives of the
Real. This is a common mistake which leads everywhere
to dangerous confusion and error. 1 And in the next place
the Reality (as we have seen), while it is the Universe, is
never the mere Universe. It is always also a selected reality.
The selection may be made only by a designation that does
not seek to specify, but the selection always is there. My
idea is not attached to a blank object, but is launched into a
context which more or less is distinguished and ordered.
And thus judgment in principle, we can say, involves media-
tion and is in a sense inferential. It asserts something of
and in a whole, and the place of this something in the whole
and the relation which it bears to other elements, are prob-
lems implied in the assertion. " Reality is such that S is
P," may be taken, we saw, as a formula which expresses the
nature of truth. S is P (to put it otherwise) because Reality
is such. The " such " is that order which we realise pro-
gressively in an ideal system. The " because " is the con-
ditions more or less specified, the intermediaries which ideally
connect S and P. 2 This mediation must remain, while truth
is truth, a work for ever unfinished, but the search for its
completion is implied in the very essence of judgment.
I will pass on now to consider two questions which the
reader perhaps may find more interesting, (a) Has every
truth which I think been thought before ? Did it, as truth,
always exist before ? And, together with this, I will ask,
Can truth or knowledge alter reality ? (6) Further again in
what sense, if in any sense, can I be said to make truth ?
(a) Neither this problem nor any other problem can be
solved by bringing in the potential or virtual. 3 This is a
1 See MIND, No. 60. Into this error, with really no decent excuse, I
fell myself for a time (Principles of Logic, chap. i. ). The second mistake
I certainly never made, though I failed to be clear on the matter. But
see pp. 109, 438 (ibid.).
2 To take the intermediaries as mere events in time is a ruinous error
to be examined later.
3 Other phrases of the same kind are " nascent," or some word ending
in " ible," or, possibly again, V\TJ.
824 F. H. BRADLEY :
device specially favoured by " empiricists," and is perhaps
the screen that serves most to veil their bankruptcy. Prof.
James, as we shall hereafter see, can furnish us with a signal
illustration of this misuse. But I cannot pause here to dwell
on a matter which I must venture to regard as settled. The
recourse to the potential is everywhere a worthless self-
deception, and, so far as I know, no serious attempt has been
made to justify it against criticism.
Passing from this point, there is a sense in which we may
maintain that every truth, however old, is new at any time
when it is affirmed. And, for myself, I agree that in this
sense no judgment ever is repeated. The occasions are dif-
ferent and so are diverse, and, for myself, I am bound to
hold that the diversity of each appearance in some sense in
the end qualifies the identical content. But this qualification,
we have seen, must here be disregarded as irrelevant.
What then am I to answer to the inquiry whether a truth,
which I think, is possibly now thought for the first time.
To go beyond possibility to myself seems here out of the
question. For the full extent of finite mind, and of the
events which happen there, is to me clearly unknown. To
this you may reply that, for anything we can tell, the world
of finite minds, with the exception of a small province, is out
of temporal relation with ourselves, and that therefore any
general assertion of priority in time could have no meaning.
With this naturally I agree, but our doubt cannot in this
way be removed. Let us confine ourselves to those finite
minds among which our before and after hold good, and yet
how much even of this region do we certainly know ? Even
here to assert positively that my truth has never been for
another mind before me, seems not in my power. On the
other hand the possibility of such a first appearance must in
many cases be admitted. The description of truth as that
which is essentially common to more minds than one, must
(we may remark in passing) be rejected as false. Within
our series the individual conditions may, for anything we
know, neither be shared nor recur, and the truth may appear
never but to one person, and only once.
I shall be told perhaps that there is a higher Mind and
Intelligence by which all truths are thought. Even if we
admit this, there however remains, in connexion with this,
a question as to the validity of before and after. I will not,
however, discuss this question, since I do not accept the
Intelligence referred to. I am not asking here how God
is to be conceived by the religious consciousness. For me
(readers of my book will know) the Absolute is not God, and we
ON SOME ASPECTS OF TRUTH. 325
here are dealing theoretically with first principles. Certainly
I admit that the Absolute Experience may possibly contain
matter which is not included within the experience of any
finite mind. I incline to the opposite view, but I still think
that the doubt must be admitted. 1 Here however the ques-
tion is confined to judgment and truth, and I see no reason
to suppose that, outside of some finite mind, truth and judg-
ment are possible. And hence on the main issue without
hesitation I can reply thus. It is possible for a finite mind
to have a truth which, as truth and judgment, is for no other
mind whatever, and has never in time existed before.
But I must hasten to add that any such answer is one-
sided. It pays its regard solely to that which is but one
aspect of the whole matter. Wherever you have truth you
must have one or more series of appearances in time, of events
which occur one before or after another. On the other
hand, with no more than this, truth would have no existence.
Events happen because of that which is beyond all happen-
ing and at once contains and subordinates its temporal form.
The Keality, above mere time and mere relations, possesses
now and always all truths, whether actual or possible. And
hence the whole view for which a truth first was not
and then is, must be set down as in the end inadmissible and
false. You may therefore insist that my present truth was
waiting there and has been found. Such a statement once
more must in the end be called untenable, because it again
is but partially true. But it is truer far than the assertion
that a truth can originate as this or that person first con-
ceives it.
Starting from such a basis we can now dispose rapidly of
a further question, Is it possible that any knowledge should
alter its object ? It is easy here to answer in the negative,
and even to insist that the opposite is really self-evident.
But the assertion, however self-evident, that reality or fact
is not altered by knowledge, is still but a partial truth, which,
taken as more, becomes false. For if truth and knowledge,
when they come to exist, make no alteration in reality, to
what other region, we have to ask, does their appearance
belong ? To deny that knowledge happens, or to assert that,
happening, it makes no difference to reality, seems a mon-
strous paradox. And you cannot dispose of such an objection
by insisting blindly on your opposite thesis. Both thesis and
antithesis are but aspects of a truth which at once over-rules
and embraces them. The Keality was known always, and
1 Appearance, pp. 273-274.
326 F. H. BRADLEY:
now its knowledge occurs. My contribution leaves it unin-
creased, and yet is indispensably requisite. The fact of rny
knowledge makes an evident change in reality, and yet the
idea that the Universe is changed by me must be rejected
as folly. We are moving here in a region of partial truths
broken away from that which includes all aspects in a higher
experience. 1
We cannot always be labouring to express at once the
complementary aspects of the whole. We are forced, to suit
our varying purpose, from time to time to make statements,
which, as they are made, contradict one the other. Unless
the Eeality itself enters into the process of events, unless it
itself is what it becomes there, unless it itself discovers itself
to itself and us, and takes on a change from that discovery
the Eeality remains outside of knowledge, and itself is un-
real. On the other hand if that which is discovered is not
found, if that which appears is not revealed, if in short the
thing, which we get to see, was really not there then reality
and knowledge once more are illusory. But we are unable
to combine these partial truths so as to understand in detail
how both of them go to make the Universe.
The position, just reached, anticipates our answer to the
question which follows. Prof. James and Prof. Dewey have
each advocated the view that truth is made. I cannot how-
ever find that either of them has made an attempt to consider
seriously the whole subject. 2 If I can make truth, I can
make also, I presume, error and falsehood, and goodness and
beauty, and whatever is opposite to these. Everything, in
brief, that is covered by the terms value and worth, is in
the end merely made. It will repay us at some length to
examine this statement. The conclusion which I have to
advocate is briefly as follows. The doctrine that this or that
man, or set of men, can make truth, is in the end false and
even monstrous. From one point of view I can be truly said
to bring truth into being, either for the first time or once
1 The attempt to escape by urging that a difference is made but made
only to me, cannot succeed. The difficulties which arise here should be
well known, and can never, I think, be met. To fall back on an external
relation, which, though external, is lop-sided and so makes a difference to
one term, seems even ridiculous. The conclusion which will follow really,
is that neither knowledge, nor anything else, can make any difference to
anything, and that anything like alteration is an illusion which itself could
not exist.
2 <7/. MIND, No. 66, p. 237. Prof. Dewey has republished the article
there noticed, but has not tried, I think, to go any further into the matter.
(The above was written before Prof. James's lamented death. )
ON SOME ASPECTS OF TEUTH. 327
more. But there is no tenable point of view from which I
can be properly said to make truth.
Any such expression is condemned, we may notice first, //
by the usage of language. I may make a true assertion or a
mistake, cr again an experiment, but, unless I violate lan-
guage, I cannot make either a truth or an error or a lie. 1 Now
I am not suggesting that such usage is everywhere infallible,
but I am sure that it deserves everywhere our careful
attention. And in this case it is based, I submit, upon a
distinction and on a principle which is valid.
What is "to make " ? It is to produce in time, and f
usually also in space, a certain existence. What so exists may, ; '
or may not, be what we call a thing which goes on to endure
for a period. Neither endurance, nor again the character of
being a thing, is here really essential. I can, for instance,
make a noise or an experiment. What is essential here and
essential absolutely is the aspect of event and of temporal
existence. It is this aspect of happening in time on which
the word "make" lays its stress. And hence to make any-
thing, so far as anything goes beyond existence in time, is
not possible. I can make a box but not the nature of the
materials, nor again the properties of the box itself when
once made. I can make, as we saw, a noise, but to make an
explosion begins at once to strain language. The explosion
refers to that which is beyond the mere course of events. In
this respect it is like an act, and I cannot be said to make an
act. And on the same principle truth and error, or beauty
or goodness or badness, are none of them things which are
made. The life of none of them is confined within that
element to which making points, and to which it gives em-
phasis. They appear in time certainly, and as certainly
they can be made to happen, but they cannot be identified
wholly, or even mainly, with their aspect of existence and
fact. 2
Truth, beauty and goodness must appear as temporal facts,.
1 I can make a lie only when the lie is regarded as a thing which exists-
2 Illustrations, I know, are dangerous, but perhaps to some persons the*
above may be clearer if I state it as follows. Suppose that there is a
necessary way of doing something, say of making a box, can you be said
to make this way ? No, it may perhaps be answered, but all the same I
make the box, and, if so, why not truth ? The reason why you cannot',
may be put thus. The box can be regarded, and is regarded, as separable
from the way in which it has to be made. But, with truth, an ab-
straction of this kind is not possible. There is no truth left if you
abstract from the way in which truth is made, a way which itself is not
made. What is made is therefore something which, taken by itself, is
not truth.
328 F. H. BKADLEY:
but their essence does not consist in that appearance. It
transcends the lapse of time and the flux of change, and it
everywhere in this sense is eternal. Wherever you have an
object taken as good or beautiful or true, or as the opposite
of one of these, 1 you have at once something which reaches
and holds beyond time and event. And, if it were otherwise,
a truth, true at one moment, might at another moment have
become a falsehood ; and, if so, obviously the whole notion of
.truth is destroyed. " Oh no," I. may perhaps hear, " a truth
-at any moment may become false, and I can make it false
&nd can make something else true." Such a reply to my
mind is based on sheer confusion and want of thought. We
<can say of course first, " Now it is light," and then " Now it
is dark," but obviously, with this, the first truth is not fal-
sified. That truth was stated ambiguously and imperfectly,
and involved a condition not made explicit. 2 But assuredly,
so far as it was true, its truth is eternal. And of course
again you can alter the fact. You can make it so that now
not the former truth but another truth holds good. You
have brought this other truth into existence, and you have
made it appear. But on this ground to assert that you have
made it, shows, to my mind, mere confusion.
And even if " Humanity " is brought in, the same answer
applies. This seems to be obvious if by Humanity you mean
merely the set of beings on our planet. Or if, attempting to
profit by a wretched ambiguity long since exposed, you seek
tacitly to identify Humanity with all finite mind, or perhaps
-the entire Universe, still your conclusion is false. Even from
such an extreme paradox it does not follow that truth can be
made. The issue still turns upon the way in which Human-
ity or the Universe is taken, and on the position given there
to the aspect of temporal event. But it is difficult to discuss
a doctrine which its supporters seem afraid even to try to
state clearly. 3
Every truth is eternal, even, for instance, such a truth as
"I now have a toothache ". Truth qualifies that which is
beyond mere succession, and it takes whatever it contains
beyond the flux of mere event. To be, it must appear there,
but, to be truth, it must also transcend that appearance.
The same thing holds again without exception of all beauty
and goodness, and of everything in short, however mean,
1 You can, we saw, " make a mistake," but this is because, and so far
as, you can regard a mistake merely as an event.
2 See MIND, No. 74, pp. 164 foil.
3 1 have repeatedly called attention to what I must now regard as mere
bankruptcy veiled by ambiguity.
ON SOME ASPECTS OF TBUTH. 329
which is apprehended as an object. 1 You may be said to
make me happy, but to make it beautiful or right or good or
true that I am happy, violates both language and reason.
Such characters do not happen, and still less are they made.
In a sense you make them to be, but for any man to make
their being is inconceivable. Though revealed in time and
in our "mortal world," they are not subject to its chance
and change, and, though in this world, they remain some-
thing which never is of it.
The conclusion is suggested that if that which calls itself
"empiricism," takes reality to have its life in the mortal
world of events, and holds time and change to be ultimately
real, no empiricism can give an account of truth or beauty,
or, generally, of goodness or worth. It will be compelled
to break openly with the plainest of facts, or to obscure its
bankruptcy in a mist of phrases such as "potential" and
" virtual ".
I will ask finally, at the cost of repetition, how far it can
be said that "Truth does not depend on me". There are
misunderstandings here against which it is vital to guard
our minds. Obviously, first, in the case where the truth is
about me, the assertion that it in no way depends on me is
false. On the other hand, if the " me " stands for that which
is irrelevant in and to the judgment, this same assertion (we
have seen) will hold. Its more probable meaning, however,
is that truth does not depend on my act. 2 And here, as we
have argued, a distinction must be made. My act certainly
can be said to bring a truth into existence, but there is that
in the truth which essentially is beyond any act in time.
The truth can also' (we have seen) be said to be prior to my
act and to be found.
My act never is creative. It presupposes always what we
have called the dualism between fact and idea, and to create
both at once is beyond us. And thus the truth about a fact
must be for ever beyond it. It would be otherwise if truth
were the immediate experience which to some extent my will
can produce. It would be otherwise, again, if the ultimate
real union of both aspects could be brought into being by me.
But, since creation is impossible for my will, that must still
be limited to and by fact. Any act of mine is therefore com-
pelled to be one-sided. It brings into temporal existence
1 Not only is all beauty an object, but it is even taken as that which is
self-existent. Cf. Appearance, chap. xxvi.
-If the u my" is here taken in opposition to the object, and ifc is
assumed that my act is not also the act of the Reality, that would be
of course once more an error which has been dealt with sufficiently.
330 F. H. BEADLEY:
something which, except for its aspect of existence, cannot
be properly said to depend on the act.
You may reply that the whole thing is a matter of em-
phasis. You may object that in acting, and even in making,
if you insist on emphasising too strongly the aspect of mere
event, you in the end would have no act, and nothing in the
end could be said even to be made. In the end both aspects
are inseparable. I do not seek to dispute this, for in what
has gone before I have been endeavouring throughout to urge
(if you please) that falsehood lies in a one-sided emphasis. 1
And to say that truth depends on me, and still more to assert
that it is made by my act, is therefore certainly false. For
by its emphasis on the aspect of event such an assertion really
means that in this aspect consists truth's essence. And it
really denies that other aspect of eternity apart from which
truth has utterly perished. Whatever else you find to say
about truth, you must still be able to add that it was, and is
waiting there to be found, and that it is made by no man.
I will now proceed to touch in passing on two further
questions, (a) What is the relation between reality and
truth? and (6) Does truth copy reality? I have dealt else-
where with these subjects,' 2 but, in view of persistent mis-
understanding, I will venture on a brief repetition.
(a) You cannot ask how in any proper sense truth is re-
lated to the real. For such a relation to be possible, you
would require reality on one side and truth on the other.
And, since without truth reality would not be real, and truth
apart from reality would not be true, the question asked is
ridiculous. There cannot in the end be a relation between
two inseparable aspects of one whole. On the other hand
you can inquire as to how truth stands to reality, in this
sense that you can ask in what way truth is different from
and falls short of the Whole. What is it lacking to truth, on
the addition of which truth itself would be reality ? This
is a question which to some extent can be discussed and
answered.
Reality for me (if I may be pardoned such repetition) is
one individual Experience. It is a higher unity above our
1 See above. Everything (to repeat this) in the end depends on every-
thing else, and connexion is in the end a matter of degree. It is our
selective emphasis for a certain purpose which makes the relative absolute.
And the point here is this, that, in asserting the dependence of truth
on my act, the emphasis and the selection is not warranted by the degree
of connexion.
2 1 may refer in particular to MIND, No. 62.
ON SOME ASPECTS OF TEUTH. 331
immediate experience, and above all ideality and relations.
It is above thought and will and aesthetic perception. But,
though transcending these modes of experience, it includes
them all fully. Such a whole is Reality, and, as against this
whole, truth is merely ideal. It is indeed never a mere idea,
for certainly there are no mere ideas. It is Eeality appear-
ing and expressing itself in that one-sided way which we call
ideal. Hence truth is identical with Reality in the sense
that, in order to perfect itself, it would have to become
Reality. On the other side truth, while it is truth, differs
from Reality, and, if it ceased to be different, would cease
to be true. But how in detail all this is possible, cannot be
understood.
Further, the ultimate Reality is not a development, and it
is absurd even to ask if it progresses. On the other hand it
essentially contains a process, or rather processes, in time.
And, looking at it from this partial aspect, we may say that
the Reality uses ideas in order to realise itself. Immediate
experience, itself showing ideality in lapse and change, in its
endeavour to complete itself develops truth. It produces
ideas progressively freed more and more from union with
particular objects of sense. It uses these ideas to procure
for itself a fuller experience, both practically and in higher
perceptions and in intuitive understandings and in apprehen-
sions of beauty. It is the nature of ideas, we may say, to
pass over into a completer whole which both subordinates and
includes them. Even for us in our experience this end
partially is attained. And in the absolute Reality it is
reached entirely and throughout, though obviously for us
not visibly.
On the one side therefore our experience remains in part
merely ideal, and thus, within certain limits, an activity
which is but theoretical is called for and is justified. With
every side of our life all the other sides are inseparably im-
plied, but it is impossible that everywhere in detail these
other sides should be verifiable. So far as the detail goes,
we everywhere, and not merely in theory alone, may be said
to rest upon faith. But on the other hand the character
of the absolute Reality is everywhere manifest, and we can
possess no other possible criterion of truth.
(b) For a discussion of the question as to how far truth is
a copy of Reality, I must once more refer the reader to an
article in MIND (No. 62) , but I will repeat briefly what seems
called for here. On any view like mine to speak of truth as
in the end copying Reality, would be senseless. To copy
is to reproduce in some other existence more or less of the
332 F. H. BRADLEY :
character of an object which is before your mind. Now,
apart from knowledge and truth, there can be no original
object before you to copy. And hence to make truth consist
in copying is obviously absurd. This question I take to
have been settled, once and for all time, by the post-Kantian
criticism of the doctrine of the Thing-in-itself. That criti-
cism I take to have proved that, outside of truth itself, there
can be no criterion of truth.
The working to carry out a certain general character, to
construct an ideal world according to a certain prescription,
would surely not be copying in detail. And, when the gen-
eral character and prescription is itself again not copied, the
idea of copying is nowhere applicable.
Copying, as an ultimate account of truth, is therefore out
of the question, and to ask what would be gained by it, if it
were possible, is an idle inquiry. I have spoken of course,
so far, of that copying which is absolute, that which has to
reproduce in truth an object which does not already itself
more or less consist in truth. On the other hand with copy-
ing in a relative sense we are all familiar, though the extent
even of this we are prone to exaggerate. Past and future
facts, for example, can scarcely be copied, unless we are
assisted by some miraculous " Faculty". We come nearest
to copying intellectually when we attempt to describe a per-
ceived fact. But, even here, the fact itself depends more or
less upon idealisation, and the reproduction of it involves a
further process of the same kind. And, where this can per-
haps be doubted as to the fact itself, as, e.g., in sensations of
pleasure and pain, the conclusion as to our truth about this
fact will still hold. Truth must select and abstract, and, if it
failed to do this, and if it repeated feeling, it would be itself
mere feeling and no longer truth. But I will not venture
here further to abuse the reader's patience, 1 but will pass on
to deal with another well-known topic.
What is the good of truth ? To ask a question is here, as
everywhere, to imply an assertion. And the assertion in-
volved in the above inquiry is often as follows. The inquirer
may affirm (a) that truth itself is not good, and he may (b)
imply also that some other aspect of life, taken by itself, is
good. This is the position of the ordinary Hedonist, and
1 It can of course be said that with truth we have the same idea in two
different contexts. We have it before us as an adjective of the real, and
at the same time it has its place in the series of psychical events. ThL*,
I should agree, is indubitable, but, once more here, there is obviously
nothing like copying from an original.
ON SOME ASPECTS OF TRUTH. 333
he at least knows, or may be supposed to know, what he
means. But it is the position of others also, who possibly
may know what they mean, but whose mental state, for any-
thing that appears, is certainly otherwise. Any one however
who in philosophy asks such a question as " What is the
good of," l is obviously bound, when challenged, to state his
answer to the inquiry, " What is good ".
On any view such as mine no one aspect of life is good
ultimately by itself. To set up any one aspect of life as the
absolute Good or Evil, and to reduce the rest of life to mere
means, is a most serious error. Relatively of course with
every aspect of life this point of view is tenable. Morality
and religion can be regarded as means to worldly success or
to bodily health. We can say the same thing of pleasure, or
again pleasure may be taken not as a means but as the end
which all else should subserve. The pursuit of beauty in art
may be spoken of as a more or less useful amusement, or as
a way perhaps of keeping out of vice. And truth again also
undeniably is useful, and is a means and instrument valued
for the sake of other purposes. All this is justifiable, but
justifiable only when we remember that it is but relative. To
turn any one aspect of life by itself into the end is false ulti-
mately. What is ultimately good is life itself or experience
as a whole. 2
The question, What is the good of truth ? can (as we have
seen above) be asked properly, if it means, How does truth
stand to, and how does it conduce to experience or life as a
whole. And, except as so conducing, you can certainly
affirm that truth is not good, and that it possesses no value
whatever. I emphasise this assertion, and I once more re-
peat that truth's natural destiny is to return once more into
unbroken union with Reality, and to restore at a higher level /
that totality out of which it has emerged. But that this
destiny is accomplished, verifiably and in detail, within and
throughout our experience seems demonstrably false. And
(as we have seen) within our experience truth remains and
must for ever remain relatively free. 3
1 The same remark mutatis mutandis applies to the covert assertion
contained in such phrases as " instrument" and " use ".
2 It is possible to identify Reality with the Good, but I prefer not to do
this. It is unnecessary to enter on the question here.
3 While denying this freedom, Prof. Moore, speaking for the " prag-
matist " (Pragmatism, p. 168), allows, as I understand, to thought a value
of its own, though not in " independence". It is, I think, important to
have got even as far as this. But what surely follows is that to speak of
thought, e. g. , as instrumental, is not permissible. The rest of the whole
process is surely also instrumental, as thought is, and may itself, by the
334 F. H. BKADLEY :
The attempt to deny or to condemn the relative freedom
of truth and of art, involves to my mind, in general, mere
prejudice and error. And it is difficult to argue where, as
opposed to you, you for the most part can perceive little else
but confusion. But it may perhaps tend to make this whole
matter clearer, if we consider it from another side. Let us
take the instance of a high and heroical will for good at any
cost to oneself, an effort which, so far as we can see, has
failed to carry itself out. This effort, for anything that we
can discover, has failed, even when you look at its indirect
result in human history, and it has failed even when you
regard merely the inner life of the man who has made it. It
may have left that life more frustrated and more discordant,
and in a sense really lower, than if the man had never risen
to the struggle. Now, is an effort of this kind to be set down
as sheer waste and loss ? I abstract here from any belief as
to a difference made to a state of existence after death. For
such a belief may be true or false, but to call it verifiable
.seems nonsense, if we mean by that to imply that we can
find that and how it holds in every detail. Apart then from
.any belief as to a future state, what are we to say of those
moral efforts which, with all their intensity, appear to have
failed ? Are we to call them mere waste, or perhaps some-
thing even worse than waste ? While on some other views this
seems inevitable, I can give an opposite reply. For me the
Absolute is there to see that nothing in the world is lost.
That effort which for our vision is wasted, passes over be-
yond our vision into reality and is crowned with success. Of
all the foolish criticisms (and they are many) which have
been directed against the Absolute, the most foolish of all
perhaps is that it is useless. And this does not mean that,
whatever I do, it is all one to the Absolute. The Absolute
is there to secure that everywhere the highest counts most
and the lowest counts least. For it is at once the active
criterion and the supreme power.
Truth and beauty then on the one hand within limits are
free. On the other hand truth and beauty, all without ex-
ception, conduce to a higher Eeality. But in detail this
consummation must remain for us invisible. The idea, how-
same right, be taken as instrumental to thought. But Prof. Moore does
not say this, and once more as to the position of beauty, so far as I have
seen, he says nothing at all. But to deal with these matters is surely
imperative. However, between such a " pragmatist " as Prof. Moore
and myself, the points of difference (as I said before), in comparison with
the amount of agreement, seem really small. And again with regard to
Prof. Dewey the same remark, I think, would hold good.
ON SOME ASPECTS OF TKUTH. 335
ever, that any one truth is just as good as another is sense-
less. A truth is true so far as it works, in the first place
theoretically, and truths, so far as they are empty and are
idle, fail to work. They fail proportionately to make a con-
tribution to the Absolute. But there are criticisms to which
I feel that it is useless to reply. It is not given to any man
to argue against self-satisfied ignorance.
In conclusion I will ask how far the view which I hold is
open to the charge of "subjectivism" and "relativism".
What I mean by relativism here is the consequence that,
beyond this or that man or set of men, there is no truth or
reality. In neither of these senses (between which of course
there is in principle no difference) can my view be said to
end in relativism. With regard to Solipsism there is, I
think, no occasion for me to notice any criticism which ig-
nores or is ignorant of what I have said on this subject. 1
And it is equally obvious, I presume, that, for me, reality and
truth are not confined within the limits of any one set of
finite beings, such, for example, as the human race.
Certainly for me beyond and outside of all finite minds
there is no truth. From the doctrine which I inherited all
such transcendence has in principle been banished. And
certainly for that doctrine, once more, the desire and the
striving of finite minds is essential to Keality. The im-
manent will of the Universe, for knowledge and truth within
those minds, is impossible unless it is in one with their
personal endeavour. If to hold this is to embrace subjectiv-
ism, then assuredly to subjectivism I have always been
wedded. But, upon a view such as mine, that which is
" objective" can be distinguished from that which is merely
personal, and I have shown the principle upon which this
vital distinction is made. And any view, I would add, in
1 Appearance, chap. xxi. While revising this article I notice that
Mr. E. D. Fawcett (MiND, No. 78, p. 200) takes me to start from a
* 'pro visional "Solipsism ". Mr. Fawcett has attended, I think, merely
to one side of my view. On that view the whole Universe is directly
aware of itself in each finite centre, but so as not there to be aware of
the contents of any other finite centre as they are experienced immediately
by itself within that other centre. The highest all-embracing experience
is never reached in any finite mind. How this is possible, I repeat, is
inexplicable. I fully understand that the logical result of applying here
an "Either-or," is either a denial of any self or else an assertion of So-
lipsism, whichever of these alternatives you please. What I do not
understand is how any one can suppose that I accept either of these
alternatives. I may add that if I accepted either of them provisionally,
I should have to accept it as final. But how much real disagreement
there is here between Mr. Fawcett and myself, I cannot say.
336 F. H. BEADLEY:
which such a distinction does not hold good, is ruined ir-
retrievably. 1
For me truth gives the absolute Reality, the whole Uni-
verse as in its general character it really is. It gives its
result imperfectly, as I have explained. But, so far as this
truth goes, it is impossible to think that for any other mind
it is otherwise. And, in attempting to entertain such an
idea, you succeed merely yourself in thinking inconsistently.
On the other hand, outside of this general character, in a
sense relativism holds good. That which in particular, for
one mind or one set of minds, is true or real or good, may
be the opposite for another individual or set of individuals.
And how far in detail this diversity may extend we have no
means of knowing. In such a sense our knowledge must
always be relative. But this detail remains subordinate to
our general principle. It is not mere "matter" conjoined
externally to an indifferent " form". Any such indifference
(some critics tend to forget) is a positive doctrine which it is
incumbent on them to prove, and which for me is untenable.
The detail, upon our view, can vary only so far as the
general character is preserved. Hence our faith in the world,
in truth and in beauty and goodness, is unshaken by doubt.
And, if so, to hold that belief in an Absolute can make no
difference to any one or to anything, seems ridiculous, while
to intimate that this is even my own opinion is worse than
ridiculous. The Absolute is that by which all reality, and
all truth and goodness and beauty, in their various degrees
are, and without which they are nothing. And, if there is
any one in whose eyes this makes no difference, I address
myself to others.
The above are those aspects of truth on which I wished to
remark. I cannot hope that I have succeeded in not tasking
the patience of the reader. My remarks have at the best
been disjointed, and I have repeated (it is the vice of ad-
vancing years) what I have said, and have said perhaps too
often before. But I will end by insisting once more on that
1 A point on which difficulty, I believe, has been felt, is the account to
be given of Nature and of its position in the Universe. Nature has
seemed on my view to possess no external reality. But this apparent
failure is mainly perhaps due to a defect in my exposition. I have
emphasised perhaps too one-sidedly our inability to arrive here at an
ultimate explanation. I never sought to deny that in our own wills we
have the experience of what we may call a power of real externalisation.
Certainly the idea that any such externalisation can break somehow
quite out of the absolute Experience, to my mind remains untenable.
But to a conclusion which stops short of that, I am far from being in
principle opposed.
ON SOME ASPECTS OF TEUTH. 337
with which I began. Except in connexion with a view or
views as to the nature of Reality, any controversy as to the
nature of knowledge and truth in the end is futile. Such a
discussion may be more or less instructive, and it may be
stimulating more or less, but it never can deal with the real
question at issue, or arrive at any final result whether positive
or negative.
In connexion with the foregoing paper I had written, some months
before Prof. James's lamented death, a criticism of some of the views set
forth in his Meaning of Truth. My purpose in writing this was to
invite Prof. James to furnish certain explanations. And now, especially
as the following remarks are not a general estimate of his work, and as
they give no expression to my feeling of admiration and genuine respect,
I have hesitated to publish them. But for the reader who will take
them merely for what they are, I think it better to do so. And I will
begin with the question of Relativism.
We must here understand relativism in two senses, (a) In the first
of these, truth and reality are simply for this or that finite individual,
while (fr), in the second meaning of the term, it is some set of indiriduals
on which everything depends, (a) In the first sense Prof. James cer-
tainly did not advocate relativism. What he calls Pragmatism and
Humanism are obviously compatible even with an undue disregard of the
individual person, and with an exaggerated emphasis laid on the universal
side. With regard to Humanism, the tendency of what may be called
Humanism to depreciate the aspect emphasised by "Personal Idealism,"
may be called historical, for it appeared years ago in one part of the
Hegelian school. In other words there is no connexion in principle
between "Personal Idealism" and the doctrines of Pragmatism and
Humanism. Certainly then, Prof. James did not intend to teach rela-
tivism in this first sense, though whether his doctrine, when worked out,
would have led to that result, I am unable to judge. 1
(6) In the second meaning of relativism truth and reality are something
merely for this or that set or collection of persons. And, in inquiring
how far Prof. James was in this sense a relativist, we are brought up
short by an ambiguity, which (though invited to do so) he, so far as I
know, made no attempt to remove. The only thing, I would submit,
which lends plausibility to Prof. James's doctrine of Humanism, is the
equivocation by which Humanity stands, at discretion, either for the in-
habitants of a certain planet or for the whole of finite mind, however and
wherever and whenever finite mind appears. If we take Humanity in the
first sense, as being merely one set of creatures, then relativism seems to
follow. How am I to deny that our truth, our goodness and beauty, may
be utterly false and bad and ugly to another race of beings, and that this
other race is, notwithstanding this, as good as ourselves if indeed there
were any sense in such a comparison ? And, if I cannot deny this, am
I not really a relativist ? What is the ground (I ask once more) on which
the human race is to dictate to the Universe ? (Cf. MIND, No. 72, p. 507.)
What is the value of our inference to the nature of reality at large simply
lioiu what we happen to know of the history of one set of creatures?
Prof. James's doctrine, I would repeat, to myself seems plausible merely
1 The words quoted by Prof. James from myself (Meaning of Truth,
p. 71) as applying to the "humanist," were used by myself of Personal
Idealism. See MIND, No. 51, p. 14.
22
338 F. H. BRADLEY :
so far as he succeeded (I do not of course mean intentionally) in keeping
it ambiguous. a
Possibly Prof. James really held that our race on this planet is the same
thing as all finite mind, or as all the finite mind, at least, that anywhere
counts. His Humanism, if so, would have meant nothing new. He would
have been in company which to myself is respectable, but, in attempting
to make good this thesis, his hands, I think, would have been more than
full. And such a conclusion, so far as I know, he never endorsed un-
equivocally. But, apart from some such conclusion, is it not futile to
speak of getting to absolute truth by " simple inductions from the past
extended to the future by analogy " ? (Meaning, p. 267).
I am not saying that Prof. James's doctrine really consisted in a blind
oscillation between two meanings of the word "human". He had, I
must imagine, a view with two aspects, the connexion between which he
did not, and perhaps could not, work out. On the one side this view
seems much the same as that made popular by J. S. Mill. It differs,
so far as against J. S. Mill Prof. James insisted on continuity. The
difference, certainly, is real, but a question remains as to how far it will
carry you ? Continuity takes you, in some sense doubtless, beyond the
present, but can it take you, and on what ground can it take you, to-
a real past and a real future ? I will return to this point, and will
merely say at present that Prof. James seems to myself to follow here
J. S. Mill to a common bankruptcy.
But Prof. James's teaching presents another and a very diverse aspect.
It suggests to my mind that in a great measure he really shared that view
of the world which in the main I, for instance, inherited from Hegel.
Prof. James desired to insist that there is much more in human society
and in its history, and, I presume, in the Universe at large, than the
changing accidents of a mere collection. And he held, I think, that in
our own experience we touch intimately, and to a certain extent know,
the real character of the whole Universe which there is immanent. Natur-
ally I do not suggest that the difference between asserting and denying
the ultimate reality of change, is a trifling difference. But the necessary
consequences, as regards the value of the individual person and his place
in the Universe, are surely far from being evident. And in short the
radical opposition which Prof. James took to exist throughout between
his own doctrine and that of monistic Absolutism, rested, I venture to
think, on what I must call his partial ignorance about the latter. There<
are certain points in Absolutism which he did not like, and I myself could
not say that I like everything in Absolutism. Clearly it is a " hard " doc-
trine. But to expect to get in detail all that you want just precisely as
you want it, is to take a position which seems to myself justifiable only
when stated with the very last degree of honesty and explicitness. And,
apart from such a position, the real question is this, How, if you reject
Absolutism, are you going to secure that which you must have, any more
cheaply elsewhere ? 2 This second aspect of Prof. James's teaching, in
1 Prof. James, in Pragmatism, p. 30, inveighs against the monstrous-
ness of holding that, given certain hideous crimes, good on the whole is
realised. He insists, that is, on taking the crime in its abstraction as
absolutely real. And then he goes on (Hegel would have smiled) to de-
nounce " abstractionism ". But, apart from that, on what ground could
Prof. James have denied that a crime, however hideous, is no crime at
all except for certain persons, while for other persons (for anything that
he really knew) it might be a virtue ? And what other aspect is there in
his doctrine to save it from relativism in the extremest sense ?
2 Prof. James's idea as to Absolutism, that it is a way of getting what
you want without paying anything for it, is surely (to any one who knows)
ON SOME ASPECTS OF TEUTH. 339
which emphasis is laid on the universal side, appears to myself joined to
the former aspect of individualism by no intelligible bond. The con-
nexion in his mind between these two characters of the Universe was, so
far as I know, ne.ver clearly set forth.
I will proceed now to offer a few critical remarks on some of the
doctrines contained in Prof. James's Meaning of Truth. The misunder-
standings which these remarks are likely or certain to involve, may
even themselves, I hope, lead to the removal of what, I submit, is real
obscurity.
(1) Prof. James calls his own view the " pragmatic " view. If by this
he means (as he sometimes seems to mean) merely that view which works
best, we have here an attempt to beg the question at issue. The objec-
tion taken to Prof. James's account of truth, is taken precisely on the
ground that this account fails to work theoretically. And practically (as
I have urged elsewhere, MIND, No. 66, p. 230) Prof. James seems never
really to have faced the problem of a genuine working creed. He never,
I think, saw what is involved in treating all ideas, without exception, as
merely useful. He, so far as I know, never even inquired whether truth
in the end has to be consistent with itself. With regard to the practical
character of all truth I will say no more here, as Prof. James himself
seems willing (pp. 206 foil.) to treat the matter as of no moment. If this
is really so, he would be at issue, 1 presume, with Prof. Dewey, and little
or nothing of Pragmatism would, I imagine, be really left but the name.
(2) To pass to another point we have seen that judgment involves
mediation. This aspect of the matter has not escaped Prof. James, but
he has, in my opinion, turned truth here into ruinous error. For he has
taken intermediation to consist in a temporal process from the idea to a
perceived object. To this conclusion, in spite of much obscurity, he
seems committed. Where an idea merely leads to an object, we, accord-
ing to Prof. James, have knowledge. Whether there is a relation of
identity in difference between the idea and the object, a relation which is
also for the knower, I am unable to say. The importance of both these
questions is obvious, but the answer, if there is an answer, remains to me
obscure. Apparently we have truth wherever an idea leads to an object. 1
Any such doctrine is liable to objections which, I think, can never
be fairly met. I recognise that I have now my chronic pain for which
nothing can be done. I notice that a tree is about to fall upon the head
of a distant person. The suggested idea of some action leads in me to
its performance. In the third of these cases we have the definition with-
out truth, while in the two former cases we have truth without the
definition. With abstract truths, again, the verification in every instance
by a process of events leading to a particular object, cannot be shown.
Or consider truths about the past. Is there a real past, and, if there is
such a thing, can it turn into a perception ? Or have our ideas about it,
if it is there, really nothing to do with it ? Or, again, is the reality of
the past merely ideal ? I will lower down return to the difficulty raised
by these questions. Even with regard to the future Prof. James's view
will not work. Suppose that I foretell an earthquake to happen next
year or after my death, how does my idea lead to the earthquake, and
where does the process of truth fall ? The doctrine that there is no
a striking revelation of the limits of his knowledge. (Cf. MIND, No. 66,
p. 230.)
I 1 am of course prepared to give references throughout, but (since I
admit that I do not understand) I think it useless to trouble the reader
with them. And I confine myself here to the teaching of the volume
mentioned.
340 F. H. BEADLEY I
truth apart from the action of some person here and now, is, I believe, a
true doctrine, while the view that truth's essence is limited to that action
I reject as false. And even this latter view seems hardly to coincide with
Prof. James's teaching. 1
If what Prof. James meant was merely this, that truth, to be true,
must be in vital connexion with the world of particular feelings and per-
ceptions, and in some sense is verifiable in this world, I am of course
fully in accord with him. But to offer such a doctrine as something new,
and as something which is to make a revolution in philosophy, would be
to my mind ridiculous.
(3) I will notice now one method by which Prof. James appears to
have thought that at least some troubles could be met. This is the old
device by which at discretion the potential or virtual is substituted for
the actual. As a good ee empiricist " Prof. James here followed the tra-
dition of his school. I could not say that he has here done nothing more
than blindly follow his blind leaders, but I at least have not been able
to discover what more on this point he has done. What has to be proved
is, for instance, the existence of actual intermediaries in time. The
possibility of such intermediaries does not assert their existence. It
asserts something else, and what it really asserts is not a lapse of
events. 2
(4) I will return now to a point of extreme importance. Prof. James is
of course against transcendence, but in this very matter he (so far as I can
perceive) is threatened with ruin. The question is whether the object-
reality, which he has to know, is not often in a world which should be
beyond his knowledge. Take once more the instance of a past cr future
event. What are we to say with regard to the existence of such a fact !
Does it transcend, is it outside of and beyond, the present Reality now
immanent in my knowledge ? To this question, as I have already ex-
plained, I myself reply with an emphatic negative, but Prof. James's
answer to it remains to my mind unintelligible. And any intelligible
answer, I submit, must ruin his theory. Let us say, first, that the
reality of dead Csesar is nothing beyond that which is immanent in what
I know now then what, if so, becomes of the absolute reality of time and
particular events ? How does this latter doctrine agree with the idea that
the past is only ideal ? But take a different view, and then what for me
now is the past object ? It has become a Thiug-in-itself which for know-
ledge is nothing. And the intermediaries, which lead to this nothing,
what are they for me ? Obviously, through nearly all their extent, they
again for me are nothing. And to speak of approximating where you can
know neither the goal nor the road, appears really to be senseless. The
above dilemma, I urge, entails ruin if left unmet, and I cannot believe
that it ever was steadily faced by Prof. James. 3
1 Cf. here MIND, No. 66. I cannot venture to attribute to Prof. James
the doctrine that the earthquake is a social event to which my idea leads
by a human process.
a "A fact virtually pre-exists when every condition of its realisation
save one is already there" (Meaning, p. 93). An explosion therefore
has pre-existed whether I have, or have not, gone on to apply the match
or pull the trigger. But the real question surely is as to what in every
such case it is which does actually exist and pre-exist. And here the
reader is of course put off with mere phrases. And I ask myself whether
this really is to be taken as a great advance in philosophy ?
3 The question of truth about the past has been discussed by Prof.
Dewey in his interesting volume, Influence of Darwin, pp. 159 foil. The
ON SOME ASPECTS OF TRUTH. 341
We obviously are here concerned with the relation of truth to know-
ledge and of both to reality. Have they any essential connexion at all ?
Can reality be a something outside which makes no difference ? Can truth
have no relation to it, or again a relation which is merely external ? On
the other hand, are we ready to bring reality within truth and knowledge,
and both within ourselves, and to do this in earnest ? After the criticism
of now a century back one might expect that questions such as these
could not be ignored. And it certainly would not be true to say of Prof.
James that he ignored them. But, if any one can understand his answer,
I cannot.
In a succession of volumes, perhaps too hastily composed and too hur-
riedly published, Prof. James wrote, I must believe, from a central point
of view from which these essays were thrown oub. But for a reader to
discover this centre by following the opposite direction is far from easy,
more especially when the reader stands outside and is perhaps not sym-
pathetic. And if the central point of view has never really been worked
out, have we, after all, any right to say that in a proper sense it was
there ? It is, I think, for those who believe that Prof. James made a
revolution in philosophy, to justify that belief by an explanation of his
doctrine as to the ultimate nature of reality and truth . And if the mis-
takes, which I doubtless have here made, serve to contribute to this result,
then, however great they are, I shall not regret them. If on the other
hand I am told that I have no right to ask for metaphysical doctrine
where none was ever offered, I shall content myself with a smile. If
there is anything in philosophy of which I am fully assured, it is this,
that to seek to discuss the nature of truth apart from a theory of ultimate
reality ends and must end in futile self-deception. And I can hardly sup-
pose that the answer suggested above would have satisfied Prof. James.
But, however that may be, and even though I fear that they may have
robbed us of something better, the later works of Prof. James will have
profited philosophy. To have excited inquiry and to have stimulated
interest in the highest problems of life, is to have succeeded where, I sup-
pose, most philosophers have failed, and where it can always be doubted
if any further success is possible. But Prof. James's contribution to
psychology will remain, I believe, indubitable. 1
result to my mind is failure. If Prof. Dewey would remember that the
person whom he calls the " intellectualist " has been long ago refuted, and
that the real question is as to the nature and truth of his own view, the
issue, I think, would become clearer. But nothing, I am sure, can fully
clear the issue except a definite statement by Prof. Dewey as to what he
means by reality. Why we cannot have this I do not understand.
1 1 need hardly inform the reader that Prof. James's posthumous volume
appeared only after these pages had gone to be printed. I am unable,
therefore, to my regret, to take any account of its contents.
II. REALITY AS A SYSTEM OF FUNCTIONS.
BY GERALD CATOE.
I CALL those things functions of each other each of which is
itself in the same degree as it is not-its-other.
Every function is analysable into a system of subordinate
functions and these again into subordinate functions and so
on endlessly. A function regarded under this aspect of
plurality I shall call a functional system. Though, as I shall
contend, everything that can be in any way referred to is a
function and nothing at all else, yet since there arises in its
due place in the involutions of the functional system, one
function, to wit the human intelligence, as unaware of the
functional structure of its object-world, it is desirable to have
a word ' functionisable ' to express the recognition of this
structure as a potentiality, and another ' f unionisation ' to
express the corresponding act.
My thesis is that functionisation the becoming of a
function itself-and-not-another is that in which the Kealness
of Keality and the Being of Being consists. The more func-
tionised the more real. So far as anything is it is as func-
tionised, as A-not-not-A.
To give some examples, matter, time and space are func-
tions. A Human Life having any thread of unity is a
function, so is the development of an idea or the history of
a nation.
Each of these taken as a whole, is, in so far as it has dis-
tinctness, and it has distinctness by the simultaneous and
correlative development of positive and negative relations.
It is important to note that functionisation is not a form
imposed on a pre-existent matter of some kind but it entirely
supplies both matter and form. Similarly a functional sys-
tem never exists completed as something containing but not
contained, but always taken as a whole it is a function op-
posed to its other.
Thus it is capable of endless analysis, for the elements re-
sulting from each analysis will always be functional systems,
and it is capable of endless synthesis, for the whole resulting
REALITY AS A SYSTEM OF FUNCTIONS. 343
from each succeeding synthesis will always be a functional ele-
ment, contrasted with and calling for synthesis with, its
other.
Prop. I. Proof of the functional structure of all possible content
resting on its entire determination through a process which
is a process of functionisation, viz., the continuous differentiation
and integration of a continuum.
When I say the world, the universe or Eeality the picture
called up before my mind's eye is somewhat as follows :
The Round Globe swinging through space, some pic-
ture of the distribution of Land and Water on it, the peoples,
their industry and history, leading back to Borne, Greece,
Babylon. Present events, political activities, reminiscences of
scraps from the /newspapers, debris of recollections of reading,
the room I sit writing in, the scratching of the pen, the play
of the firelight, the children sleeping upstairs, the fore-
shadow of to-morrow's work.
Now that this world is functionally determined I may show
in several ways, but of these the most suitable for the present
purpose is to exhibit the breakdown of the attempt to draw
a line between what is present to sensation and its Ideal
extension.
Directly we attempt to do this we become aware of ideal
elements in the very heart of the given and of a factual as-
pect in the Ideal. Nothing is merely given, nothing merely
ideal.
The This-Now which supports the ideal extension, is ap-
prehended as determined in illimitable time and space in which
it occupies an unique place.
Alter anything however far back in time and however far
off in space and you simultaneously give the This-Now a
compensating re-determination. The Matter which bulks so
largely in my this-now is there known in a concept which
has a history dependent on my past studies, and on my hav-
ing partly absorbed certain current philosophical and scientific
ideas ; it would not be for a savage as it is for me, his world
is as his mind is : his lack of general words is not a mere
lack of tools for expressing his ideas.
Any one who thinks of the senses as mere windows through
which the mind receives information of an independent and
ready-made world of sounds and sights may also think of ideas
in a similar way.
But whoever has got over this way of thinking will under-
stand that it is just as true, no more true, and true for the
same reason, to speak of the same world as known by different
344 GERALD CATOB :
knowers as it is to speak of the same object as perceived by
different senses.
It is in each case an inference of which the justification is
not its verification by experience but that it effects an inte-
gration of experience. The verification itself where it occurs
is only a special case of integration, for the fact verifying is
as much ideal as the idea verified.
Finally the ' I-myself ' at the centre of my this-now is quick
with Ideality, intensely sensitive to every happening, mirror-
ing every possibility, a function of infinite variables. The sort
of man I believe myself to be, the history that I (sometimes)
suppose myself to have had, the beliefs and dis-beliefs which
I suppose myself to possess : all these not only are deter-
minate only as loci, but even as loci they are the variable and
precarious resultants of ideal activities of inconceivable com-
plexity of actions and re-actions and re- reactions echoing back
on each other, modifying, annulling, intensifying each other,
entering into new cycles, going through evolutions of evolu-
tions, a swarming seething life of which every part is at every
moment balanced upon and supporting the whole, a veritable
microcosm, containing its histories, its pauses, its romances,
its tragedies.
It is no more true that the given this-now supports the
Ideal extension than it is true that the extension gives rise
to and supports the given ' this-now '.
Extension and given are interdependent, they rest on each
other : the real is a construction from the basis of the ideal.
Thus the whole universe, the given and the extension which
is intimately continuous with it, is in its entirety a functional
product, a product of contradiction disentangling differen-
tiation and reaction.
The Given and the Ideal extension reciprocally constitute
and determine each other by their difference from each other.
The character of Basis so far as the given has it is not an-
terior to the construction, but is a functionally bestowed char-
acteristic.
Prop. II. Proof that everything nameable is functionally deter-
mined and that it is nothing but a function.
We are tempted to think of the functional system as some-
thing the being of which needs to be accounted for, that is
we think of some primaeval nothing the dispossession of which
needs accounting for.
This is a great fallacy there is no such prima facie pre-
sumption in favour of the aboriginal being of nothing, as
against the being of something.
EEALITY AS A SYSTEM OF FUNCTIONS. 345
Take the most extreme case ; think of that formless, time-
less, spacelessness which would remain if God annihilated
every trace of Himself and of everything else.
This ' nothing ' is as plainly an ideal or functional con-
struction as ' the universe ' for it is a universal ablation, a
negative reflexion of all possible being.
In short alter anything anywhere and you alter everything
everywhere for everything is ' alter ' to everything else, that
this is so is the presupposition of all possibilities ; Being and
nothing alike arise within and depend upon their reciprocity.
How necessary this reciprocity is we may see by this, that if
everything could absorb its other it would annihilate itself in
doing so.
If we cannot say at once : anything which was everything
would fail to be even nothing, we cannot say it only because
in regarding the everything as failing to be nothing we invest
it with a character of exclusion and so we regard it as not
everything, i.e., as not including nothing, for nothing is
something so far as it is ' not-any thing '. . . .
If the reader is a student of Idealism, he will find the
route traversed in this paper so familiar to him that he may
well be tempted to inquire whether there is anything at all
novel about it, except the replacement of the ordinary ter-
minology of subject and object by an awkward ' functional '
terminology.
Now, though I am by no means in a position to claim or
anxious to claim any degree of originality (since by doing so
I should expose my conclusions to be criticised as nothing
but the fads of an amateur speculator, whereas I believe that
in very great measure they are the common possession of
many thinkers of this time and of previous times also), yet
I must say for myself what the reasons are which have led me
to regard Functionalism as an improvement on Idealism not
only as a terminology but also in substance.
The ego the ' subject ' of Idealism is always clogged with
the associations which cling to the subject, I myself ; you,
, Psychological Individuals with histories. The Psy-
chological Ego, is so much besides a thinker of thoughts that
inevitably its thoughts appear like mere passing accidents in
its substance, like reflexions in a mirror.
Idealist thinking then starting with ' subject ' loaded with
these associations is exposed to a constant warping tendency
to think of the subject as a thing, a substance.
For me subject and object are completely correlative func-
tions, the subject is subject of the object and the object object
of the subject. The object is not more dependent on the sub-
346 GEEALD CATOB :
ject than the subject on the object. Esse is percipere for the
subject and percipi for the object. This interdependence and
co-relativity is complete, like that of the S. and N. Poles of a
magnet. No object without a subject, no subject without an
object. To such and such an individual subject such and
such an individual object. They are a true functional pair
of which the test is this, each would be the other in the
other's place. So far as the same object is object for several
minds, so far they are the same subject. So far as there is
difference of subject there can not be identity of object. To
the diffused undifferentiated object of early soul life corre-
sponds a diffused undifferentiated subject, the differentiation
of the subject proceeds pari passu with that of the object.
By regarding the matter in this way w T e not only gain an
apprehension of the interdependence of subject and object so as
to see that there can be no subject without an object and no
object without a subject, but we also learn to regard
the subject side of Eeality as an ideal construction equally
with the object side, by doing thus we are entirely freed from
the familiar difficulty of solipsism. I do not know my mind
by experience" simply and yours by inference simply. I, at
least, so far as ' I ' has definite import, and you subject to
the same condition, are alike for me ideal constructions stand-
ing or falling together.
' I ' arise in an experience which I then call ' mine ' just in
the same way as time or space or matter or indeed any other
definite object of representation, whether present or absent,
concrete or universal, material or immaterial, that is through
the activity of a synthesising principle. All alike arise as, and
all alike strictly speaking must ever remain, hypotheses, in
principle at least, subject to correction. This is a direct and
most vital consequence of the view adopted in this paper, and
therefore I cannot insist too strongly upon it.
According then to the functional view the universe, matter
and form together, is a system, a complete and therefore an
exhaustive, an infinite, a self-conscious, a self-contained, a self-
representative system.
Whenever within it is found independence, individuality,
exclusiveness, uniqueness, isolation, the reason of these char-
acters and their assignment to such and such points of the
system must be sought in the inner necessity of the system
itself, they and all other characteristics are functionally con-
ferred.
Take as example the difference between ideal and real,
consider how the idea of the inkpot now before your eyes
differs from the thing itself and you will find the reason is
REALITY AS A SYSTEM OF FUNCTIONS. 347
this, the idea is universal because ideal and ideal because
incompletely determined, i.e. determined in an incomplete
system, which, because incomplete, in turn is subordinate to
.an including system.
The real inkpot is completely determined and rests in its
place in the ultimate system. The Eeal is real for no other
reason than because it alone is completely ideal. 1
I have already done something (Props. 1 and 2) towards
proving by analysis the functional view, but I now propose to
give another proof by synthesis.
Prop. III. -The Functional vieio is true, because it is incapable of
being false, every possible adverse suggestion is not only con-
sistent with it but is necessary to it, that is every such adverse
suggestion far from contradicting the functional view is one of
the subordinate functions necessary to its completeness and as
such ministers to and supports it.
Just so one can imagine that given a full insight into cir-
cumstances one might see in a given case of conduct the only
way to act, the only honourable thing to do might be some-
thing indefensible, according to all ordinary rules. The point
of the illustration is that in the end all apparent exceptions
to the functional view are instances of it.
Let us consider that no possible representation can have
other characteristics than functional ones, which therefore
will place it in its own unique place in the exhaustive func-
tional system. The Character which seems to resist inclusion
in the functional system, derives its whole strength and being,
its character of resistance too, from that system.
For the present purpose, and as I think for all purposes
actuality, present existence, with all its determination, if so be
here in the time series and here in space, is a matter of con-
tent is a characteristic of content, a quality like redness or
pungency. A merely possible object differs in content from
the same object as actual, just as triangular differs in content
from square, and therefore just as the completion of the
series of geometrical figures will give rise to triangularity as
well as to squareness and then to triangles as well as to
squares, so in the ultimate functional system there must be
actuality as well as possibility and then individual actuals,
with all their individuating principles and entourage of
accidents.
1 I may refer the reader to my two previous papers on this same subject.
The first published in MIND (N.S., 61) under the title 'The Structure
of Reality,' the second in the A/o>m-, October, 1908, 'Id quo majus
cogitari nequit '.
348 GERALD CATOR :
What is your objection to this syllogism demonstrating the
content of the functional system by means of the idea of
completeness
A complete system must include everything
The functional system is a complete system ergo
Perhaps you distinguish, saying
A complete system (if it exists) must include everything,
adding that, from the fact that I have what I suppose to be
the Idea of a complete system, it by no means follows that
such a system exists without the mind.
I answer that a complete system with all that belongs to
its completeness is incapable of not existing. For you can-
not avoid this that if the system were complete it would
include this your doubt of its actual actuality. Your doubt
is in fact a function of the complete system ; one of its ne-
cessary elements.
But from (1) ' if the system existed this doubt would exist '
to (2) ' this doubt exists, therefore the system exists ' is a per-
fectly good and stringent inference.
This inference it will be seen is in the form If A then B
to If B then A. Take a complete system and as it were draw
a line across it anywhere so as to divide it into two parts, A
and B, then since the system A + B is complete, all that
is not B is A, and all that is not A is B, then A and B are
functions, each is not-the-other ; each in the other's place
would be that other, for they differ only by their systematic
positions. Therefore the completement of each, that which
follows from each, which fills up the gap in Eeality left by the
inclusion of either alone, is precisely the other.
To summarise this argument. If your doubt of the actual
existence of a complete system does not stand between it and
actual existence, then nothing stands between and it exists.
But your doubt does not so stand, on the contrary regarded
as standing alone it is precisely that last determination which
confers actuality.
Prop. IV. The functional system because of its completeness is-
eternally and perfectly self-conscious at the point and in the
mode dictated by its nature.
As complete or perfect (which is the same thing) the func-
tional system must possess itself, be for itself, be object to
itself as subject, and this is self-consciousness. Moreover
only by making it self-representative, containing itself with-
in itself, which again is self -consciousness, can its infiniteness
be conciliated with its individuality and completeness.
By repetition of the same reasons, it is necessary that the
REALITY AS A SYSTEM OF FUNCTIONS. 349
self-consciousness of the functional system should be entirely
concentrated at and vested in its Functional Absolute, God
the Absolute. Absoluteness like all else is a functional de-
termination, the Absolute would be nothing apart from the
relative, and plainly this relativity of the Absolute to the
Relative, this dependence of the Absolute on the Relative is
no prejudice to its Absoluteness.
The independent to be that needs something to be indepen-
dent of, for this is part of the meaning of independence, and
similarly the Absolute needs something to be above external
relation to.
By maintaining this we do not in any way taint or dim the
Aseity of God, nor do we even inchoatively give the Universe
anything like a pluralistic or Federal Constitution by making
God in some sense only the first among equals.
For us as for S. Bernard, God is
Purus, simplex, integer perfectus constans sibi.
There cannot be any ideal of a non-functional Absolute
which should be as it were the Real thing, the standard which
our Functional Absolute invites comparison with and is
condemned by. The Functional Absolute is the Absolute
Simpliciter. Philosophy is every bit as much concerned as
Theology in maintaining the incommunicability of God.
In accordance also with our functional view, we say now
that in the Perfection of God's Self-Knowledge there is in-
volved the Perfect possession of Other-Knowledge. Knowing
Himself as Super-Being Super-One super-measure, i.e. above
all measure and degree, He knows also in the intimacy of its
presentation in its full detail and individuality all possible
other. We are tempted to think of God as possessing a sort
of bird's-eye view of the universe like one would have of a
landscape from a balloon, a chequer work of fields and hedges,
little toy cottages with smoke coming from the chimneys, little
dots of men working in the fields. Instead of this way of think-
ing we ought to think of God as having a magnified view of
everything. Compared to His Eternal Knowledge my present
knowledge of my sensations, the feel of my pen, the taste in
my mouth is phantasmic and unreal. 1 Neither should we
think of God as lacking any kind of experience, for though as
S. Thomas says, desit sibi sensitive/, cognitio, as such yet He
possesses it ' Eminenter '. He does not know the freshness
of the morning only through our senses, as object He pos-
sesses in Himself all objectivity, and as subject all subjectivity
1 God working in man is more intimately present in him than man is
even in himself. (The Encyclical Pascendi, official translation, p. 23.)
350 GEEALD CATOR :
including that of sensitive creatures. He knows in eternity
not as excluded from knowing in time. He lacks nothing.
We must now steer our course past one of the most dan-
gerous rocks in all Philosophy by inquiring what is the
relation between the Human or other finite intelligence and
the Divine intelligence, and between the Human objects and
the Divine objects. Also what is the corresponding relation
between one human intelligence and another, and between
the same human intelligence and itself when turned to differ-
ent subjects or at different times.
I will here remark that the view which as I understand it
is now held by Psychologists as to the structure of the mind,
namely that it is an apperceptive system itself in some degree
subordinate to a social consciousness and having other apper-
ceptive systems subordinate to it, the minds of the individual
as it were on various subjects, seem to me to support very
strongly the general functionalist view upheld in this essay.
For not only in this view is a mind regarded as a hier-
archical system of ideas, a subsistent theory, not only is it
shown as plainly a construction and not a datum, but for it
the private mind of the individual enters as an element into
a wider common-consciousness to which it stands in the same
relation as the subordinate minds or apperceptive systems
within it to itself. The whole process of the building up of
a mind is presented as one of individuation by the differ-
entiation of an original continuum.
A dictum of Aristotle's repeatedly used by S. Thomas, is
that the knower and his knowledge are one, and the reader
will see how entirely this harmonises with the view as to the
absolute correlativity of subject and object maintained in this
w 7 ay.
But this view leads us as it led the scholastics straight up
to a difficulty ' de Unitate Intellectus '.
If the knower and his knowledge are one, then to one
knowledge one knower, If the knowledge is absolute truth,
then the knower is absolute mind. If the knowledge is uni-
versal, can the knower be individual and separate. 1
Again, on the side of the object if being is univocal, we who
know (some) being therefore know what God knows, our in-
1 Licet enim intellectus meus sit individuus et separatus ab intellectu
tuo, tamen secundum quod est individuus non habet universal in ipso et
ideo non individuatur id quod est in intellectu sic igi 
