Philosophy For Pleasure

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E <OU_1 64451

PHILOSOPHY FOR PLEASURE

By the same Author

THE FLIGHT FROM REALITY
MEN WITHOUT GODS

PHILOSOPHY

FOR

PLEASURE

BY

HECTOR HAWTON

LONDON

WATTS & CO.

5 & 6 JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C. 4

First published 1949

BOOK

PRODUCTION
VW*R ECONOMY

THIS BCX)K IS PRODUCED IN COMPLETE

CONFORMITY WITH THE
AUTHORIZED, ECONOMY STANDARDS

PRINTED IN GRIAT BRITAIN BY RICHARD CLAY AMD COMPANY, LTD.,
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

TO

ERICA

TO WHOM I OWE
SO MUCH

Contents

INTRODUCTION ix

I WHAT PHILOSOPHY is ABOUT i

II THE DISCOVERY OF REASON 13

III THE RAPE OF REASON 27

IV ARCHITECTS OF THE UNIVERSE 38
V THE REVOLT AGAINST METAPHYSICS 52

VI THE GREAT DILEMMA 65

VII THE KANTIAN COMPROMISE 82

VIII THE RETURN TO METAPHYSICS 100

IX THE AFTERMATH OF HEGEL 117

X THE UNIVERSE OF SCIENCE 134

XI THE PROBLEM OF CHANGE 149

XII THE NEW LOGIC 167

XIII THE DEBATE CONTINUES 186

GLOSSARY OF TERMS 202

TABLE OF DATES 207

INDEX 209

vu

Introduction

BY
PROF. A. E. HEATH

WHEN I had finished reading the manuscript of this book I
came to the reluctant conclusion that Mr. Hector Hawton,
though not an academic person, had beaten the professional
philosophers at their own game. How ? Not because his
book is the result of wide and careful reading of philosophical
authors. It is that, but there are plenty of such studies
already in varying degrees of readability. It was because
this harvested material has been passed through a clear and
critical mind, and then presented with freshness and vivacity.
The title of the book, Philosophy for Pleasure, has real point.

Both men of science and philosophers know that wide
learning is only too readily harnessed to prejudice. That is
why the gifted amateur, the outsider, often sees most of the
game. In my opinion Mr. Hawton's book is an excellent
example of this. To his training in the discipline of writing
he adds a restless interest in things of the mind : and, not being
overwhelmed by authority of great names, he succeeds in seeing
the wood in spite of the trees. Too often books on philosophy
give the impression that there are as many philosophies as there
are philosophers. But, as Mr. Hawton rightly says, " It is
quite wrong to suppose that a history of philosophy resembles
a vast Brains Trust, and that students must sit back and listen
to the opinions of Plato, Descartes, Locke, Kant, and so on."
These outstanding men are much more than writers to be
read : they are, every one of them, examples of a centuries-old
and sustained attempt to frame, in ever clearer and more subtle
language, those fundamental questions which we are all (in our
more reflective moments) forced to ask ourselves.

X INTRODUCTION

This mode of approach to philosophical studies enables Mr.
Hawton to present philosophy as a perpetual adventure in the
world of ideas. We know that the chief glory of science is that
it is never finished, because the wider the sphere of knowledge
grows the larger is its area of contact with the unknown. In
philosophy, too, the unending struggle goes on. My own
personal view is that philosophy is not a subject of study, but a
way of studying all subjects.

Mr. Hawton adopts a similar attitude, and so is able, in
this little book, to achieve what many much more ambitious
treatises fail to do : namely, to set recent philosophical develop-
ments in their proper perspective. At first glance modern
philosophical advances seem to be hopelessly destructive of
earlier work. The truth of the matter is that they are only a
more determined effort by philosophers to state their problems
more explicitly. Their discussions tend inevitably towards
the linguistic for a perfectly definite reason. We used to ask
ourselves, when confronted by any particular proposition,
whether that statement was true or false. Nowadays we realize
that there is a prior question which we must ask : namely,
whether the statement has any significance at all. Many
pretentious philosophical bubbles go out bang when pricked
by this analytical needle.

Mr. Hawton's treatment has another quality. It succeeds
in giving us the feeling that philosophical problems, like
scientific ones, are as urgent and interesting now as they were
at man's first intellectual awakening in Ancient Greece. They
have not been settled for all time, as traditionalists suppose.
To those prospective readers who seek from philosophy final
answers to all their questionings, I say in all seriousness that
this book is not for them. For it presents philosophy as
possessing perennial youth just because it is not finalistic. It
is one of the ways in which a man shows that he is grown-up :
the way of constant criticism. Philosophy is a disturber of
intellectual peace, not a sedative.

CHAPTER ONE

What Philosophy is About

IN the sixth century B.C. something stirred into life on the
cosmopolitan coast of Asia Minor that has had a profound signi-
ficance for civilization. Men began to ask questions that had
never been asked before. They began to ask what the world
was riiade of and how it originated.

As far as our records show, this kind of speculation was with-
out precedent. Both the Egyptians and the Babylonians had
studied mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. They had
made surprising progress in these subjects, although the results
were expressed in an occult terminology. But such subjects
had been hitherto studied by priests in sacred colleges. They
had to be fitted into the framework of a religious cosmology.
For laymen to venture an opinion on these deep matters was an
innovation.

There is no evidence that the priestly caste ever debated the
question of how the world came into existence. It would
scarcely have occurred to them that the problem might be
solved by the use of reason. They were satisfied that they
knew the answers. They were guardians and interpreters of a
sacred canon.

The discovery that the origin and meaning of life were ques-
tions that might be solved by rational discussion constitutes a
landmark in human history. Only a very few individuals were
conscious of it ; for the masses in those turbulent times life
went on exactly as before. Nevertheless, the first blow for
liberation had been struck. Man had begun to ask those ques-
tions which not only enriched his own consciousness, but
ultimately led to control over the forces of nature.

The search started, not merely for information, but for

2 WHAT PHILOSOPHY IS ABOUT

understanding. " Much learning does not bring under-
standing," said Heraclitus. And by understanding he meant,
" Nothing else but the exposition of the way in which the
universe works. " Knowledge of this kind could not be derived
from traditional beliefs, as most people supposed. " One
must not act and talk like those reared with the narrow out-
look, ' As it has been handed down to us.' "

Thus a rent was made in the blanket of superstition that had
hitherto stifled free inquiry. A new wind was blowing across
the world. Men were beginning to look at the world with new
eyes. They discovered problems that seemed capable of solu-
tion by this new and exciting method, by observing and reason-
ing. Before long this pursuit of wisdom was exalted into the
highest possible activity ; and those who used the new,
intellectual instrument were called " lovers of wisdom "
philosophers.

Naturally, the lonians made no distinction between
philosophy and science. How recent such a separation is may
be seen by the fact that we still have chairs of natural philosophy
and mental philosophy in some of our universities, though the
subjects taught are, of course, physics and psychology. In
practice, however, philosophy now has a very restricted mean-
ing. It has been the victim of its own success. Starting as an
inquiry into the working of the universe, as soon as some
branch of the investigation yielded positive results, that field
was removed from philosophy and given the name of a special
science.

Science is thus the offspring of philosophy ; but so far from
devouring its parent, as it becomes more mature science turns
again to philosophy for guidance. Hence we find that physics,
the most advanced of the sciences, is becoming increasingly
philosophical. But even if every question about the working
of the universe could be appropriated by a particular science,
there would still be the question of how science itself works.
It has been suggested that science interrogating itself, fashion-
ing a science of science, may well be the last province left to
philosophy. But the prospect is merely an academic possi-

WHAT PHILOSOPHY IS ABOUT 3

bility, because we are never likely to reach finality. The
philosopher can be assured of a place as the critic of concepts,
though he may have to give up constructing world systems.

It is impossible to give a satisfactory definition of philosophy
unless a date is affixed to it. The reason for this is that the
tasks undertaken by philosophers have differed in successive
periods of historical development. No modern philosopher
would have the temerity to tackle the problems that his counter-
part in ancient Greece tried to solve. If we regard the most
valuable part of the Greek contribution as the discovery of
Reason as a new instrument, we can make a convenient division
into ancient and modern philosophy, with the line of demarca-
tion Appearing when the instrument itself began to be critically
examined.

There is an inevitable arbitrariness about all such classifica-
tions ; but some point of departure must be taken, and there was
clearly a very great change in the intellectual atmosphere of
Europe in the sixteenth century. Once again new questions
began to be asked. Once again a new wind was blowing, and
great gaps appeared in the traditional picture of the universe.
And once again this revolution of ideas took place outside the
sacred colleges, and was largely the work of laymen.

During the Middle Ages speculation was practically confined
to the monasteries. The trail blazed by the early Ionian
Materialists had not been followed. The searchlight of in-
quiry had been diverted from a free exploration of the universe,
and for that Plato must bear some of the blame. The logical
tool that Plato and Aristotle had sharpened was used by the
Scholastics to give an appearance of sweet reasonableness to
their utterly preposterous theological beliefs. Unfortunately
it was believed that nearly everything that could be found out
about the universe was known. It merely remained to deduce
the consequences.

It had been a tremendous leap forward when the Greeks
discovered that some problems could be solved by intelligent
discussion. The Scholastics, however, blocked any further
advance by remaining content with mere discussion by using

4 WHAT PHILOSOPHY IS ABOUT

logical arguments, as Galileo protested, " like magical incanta-
tions to charm the new planets out of the sky." It was argued,
for example, that a heavy substance, such as lead, must fall to
the ground at a faster rate than a lighter substance, such as
feathers. As everyone knows, Galileo put the matter to the test.

By appealing to experiment Galileo started a new line of
inquiry. Experiments had indeed been made in the classical
world, but they had been virtually forgotten. Galileo began
the division between experimental and speculative philosophy
which issued in modern science. Almost at a stroke, philosophy
seemed to lose half its kingdom ; but we must remember that
it had sought to embrace the whole universe, visible and
invisible.

Modern philosophy really dates from this severance. No
longer required to show the way in which the visible universe
worked, it was driven to search for other riddles. It did not
have to look far. The problems of the visible universe were
left to Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and their successors ; philoso-
phers looked inside themselves, at their own minds. In doing
so they were picking up the thread spun nearly 2,000 years
earlier at Ephesus, when Heraclitus declared, " I searched
myself."

Thus Descartes asked what knowledge a man possessed with
unshakeable certitude, and he made his famous reply Cogito,
ergo sum : I think, therefore I am.

Bold innovator though he was in some respects, Descartes
could not disentangle himself from medievalism. Both he
and Leibniz asked their questions under the watchful eye of the
theologian, and they had to make room in their systems for the
existence of God and the immortality of the soul.

Locke is in some ways a more truly representative pioneer of
what may be called modern philosophy. Locke asked questions
that are still pertinent. Locke's questions led to Berkeley's,
and such a vigorous opponent as Lenin has expressed the
opinion endorsed by Bertrand Russell that no really new
defence of the theory of Subjective Idealism has improved on
the arguments of Berkeley.

WHAT PHILOSOPHY IS ABOUT 5

Berkeley's views gave rise to the scepticism of Hume, who is
still such a living force that he is the acknowledged inspiration
of the most recent school of philosophy, Logical Positivism.
Hume's scepticism so disturbed Kant that a very great deal of
Kant's philosophy is an attempt to answer it. After Kant
came Hegel, who attempted to answer everyone's questions at
once by claiming to frame a universal philosophy which em-
braced all that had gone before it. But Hegel was not the end ;
the most vigorous offshoot of Hegel was Dialectical Materialism,
the official philosophy of the Soviet Union. This brings us
right into the contemporary world and still the philosophers
are finding new questions to ask.

How Philosophy Progresses

Philosophy is unique in that its progress can be measured by
the kind of questions it asks rather than by the success of its
answers. It would be an over-statement to say that the answers
do not greatly matter, but obviously they lack the immediate
importance of the answers of the scientist. If we look merely
at the answers we are confronted by a bewildering variety of
theories, and with so little common agreement that the whole
subject may seem a futile waste of time. Many histories of
philosophy set these theories side by side, like so many wares
on a shop counter, and the student may be excused for feeling
" you pay your money and takes your choice."

Such an approach is, I am convinced, profoundly misleading.
It is quite wrong to suppose that a history of philosophy re-
sembles a vast Brains Trust, and that the student must sit back
and listen to the opinions of Plato, Descartes, Locke, Kant, and
so on, jtfst as though they were being enunciated for the first
time and could be judged on their individual merits. This is
not history at all, for it leaves out of consideration the passage
of time and the change of circumstances.

Philosophers do not live in a timeless vacuum. They see
their problems in the perspective of the age to which they be-
long. The philosophers of the past, no matter how brilliant
their intellects, were limited by the knowledge and vocabulary

6 WHAT PHILOSOPHY IS ABOUT

available. What would be the use of discussing infinity with
Zeno if he had to remain ignorant of the mathematics which
has solved the paradoxes he propounded ? Or, for that matter,
how could we usefully discuss absolute space and time with
Kant, if no reference could be made to relativity physics ?

It is something of an aifectation for a modern man to call
himself a Platonist or an Aristotelian. The answers that Plato
and Aristotle gave may have been the best possible in their
day, but the experience that has since accumulated cannot be
ignored. We cannot fail to find stimulating suggestions
abounding in many of the philosophies of the past, but we must
make very big reservations. The most profitable course is
surely to note how each philosopher, from Thales onwards,
propounded some new question, found some fresh twist in
argument ; and then we can follow the fortunes of the original
idea as it is passed down the ages, like a ball, from inquirer to
inquirer.

This means that to-day we have a great advantage. We can
tap the experience of centuries. We not only know, for
example, what Locke asked, but what Berkeley thought of it,
what became of the question when it passed through the
furnace of subsequent minds, such as Hume's and Kant's. It
is purged of much dross in this historical process. There are
flaws in many of the arguments that we would not have noticed
ourselves, but which, in the course of time, have been revealed.

Looking very far back, we can also see what was by no
means evident at the time that philosophy emerged from a
background of religion. Just as religion itself, when it emerged
from animistic magic, retained some of the conceptions of the
lower level, so philosophy retained certain religious concep-
tions. It was some time before the cutting-power of Reason
was properly appreciated. The instinct of the early philoso-
phers was to set up a system as dogmatic, in its way, as a
religious cosmology. As Professor Cornford. writes : " The
charm of the early Greek philosophers lies in the fact that, to
a large extent, they did not trouble to invent bad arguments at
all, but simply stated their beliefs dogmatically. They pro-

WHAT PHILOSOPHY IS ABOUT 7

duced a system as an artist produces a work of art. Their
attitude was, ' That is how the world is to be ' ; and the system
itself, as distinct from any arguments that may be constructed
to buttress the fabric, is thrown out, like a statue or a poem,
as the expression of some thought or emotion that lies within
and will have utterance." (From Religion to Philosophy.)

This oracular method was pursued by many great philoso-
phers. They constructed vast and complicated systems which
not only rivalled the religious accounts but made the science
of the day seem very piecemeal and humdrum in comparison.
tThese systems were claimed to be deductions from principles
that were supposed to be self-evident. Consequently they
seemed to offer a royal road to knowledge quite independent of
the trial-and-error methods of science. They now litter the
historical route of philosophical inquiry like the bones of
extinct mammoths, and it seems improbable that we shall see
many more such attempts.

This kind of philosophy is sometimes called " Metaphysics,"
and it was doomed when science took over the study of the
working of the universe. The test of time has shown that it
could not hope to compete with the experimental method.
The study of nature cannot be carried out from an armchair.
Nevertheless there are highly important studies that un- ;
doubtedly can be conducted from an armchair. Mathematics
is one of them ; philosophy, as it is widely understood to-day,
is another.

The Modern Problem

How is philosophy generally understood to-day? What
shift of meaning has occurred in our use of the word ? To
answer this question adequately we must trace the adventures
through history of those ideas thrown out by past philosophers.
We shall see, I think, that progress has been made, albeit of an
unusual and unexpected kind. We shall see that the principal
gain has been framing clearer and more subtle questions and so
increasing our understanding of what we are actually doing.

Subtle as the questions are, the subject-matter is close at

8 WHAT PHILOSOPHY IS ABOUT

hand. We need not leave our armchairs to study it. W* need
not make philosophy our profession. Some of its finest
achievements have been due to the brilliant amateur. It
started its career as a series of speculations made by intelligent
laymen in their spare time ; it was continued by slaves, soldiers,
and statesmen, and at least as important work has been done by
those who had some other means of livelihood by doctors,
opticians, schoolmasters, and civil servants as by the pro-
fessionals.

It would be absurd for an amateur to express an opinion on,
say, the Quantum Theory ; but it is still possible for an amateur
philosopher to say something of importance. Professional
scientists often say very important things in their capacity as
amateur philosophers ; but they often say foolish things, as
Susan Stebbing showed in Philosophy and the Physicists. To
defend the amateur philosopher does not mean that anybody
can sit down at any moment and say something worth while
about philosophy. Referring to Eddington, for example, Dr.
Stebbing comments : " His lack of philosophical training
(which I deduce from his writings, not from any private in-
formation as to his reading list) has made it possible for him to
slip into pitfalls that he might otherwise have learnt to avoid."

Many who rush so eagerly into the fray have not troubled to
consider how the questions that move them so deeply have been
dealt with in the past. Without knowing it, they use arguments
that were long ago exposed as fallacious, and they ask questions
that have long been improved upon by careful amendments.
To ignore the rich legacy of the past is surely presumptuous.
The merchants of Miletus who pondered about the constitution
of the universe several thousand years ago looked on much the
same universe as we ourselves do ; their senses gave them the
same data, their minds were at least as keen as the best modern
minds. But they started with a blank page. There was no
" reading list " to help them, not merely to solve their problems,
but to re-state them in such a form that they were capable of
solution.

Some of the problems which baffled philosophers in the past

WHAT PHILOSOPHY IS ABOUT 9

have been partly, if not entirely solved. They have been taken
over by the scientist. But the advance of science has disclosed
fresh problems ; hence the spectacle of modern physicists turn-
ing their attention to philosophy instead of scorning it, as some
of their predecessors were once tempted to do, because of the
apparent paucity of results. They have turned to philosophy
because it has now learnt to formulate more accurately questions
that are of fundamental significance. When, in the seventeenth
century, philosophy and science separated, the one turning to
the analysis of experience, the other to physical experiment, the
way was made clear for a new problem to take shape.

If anyone asks, therefore, what sort of questions philosophers
are trying to answer to-day, a brief reply would be that they are
mainly concerned with the terms in which we express what we
experience. This should not be taken to imply that modern
philosophy is necessarily subjective. Some, indeed, maintain
that what we experience only exists in the mind ; others would
deny it, though they might still be content to call what they
analyse, Experience. The problem is to state what is meant
by such terms as Experience, Mind, and Existing.

For Bertrand Russell, modern philosophy is neither meta-
physical nor subjective. He writes : "It has been generally
regarded as the business of philosophy to prove the great truths
of religion. The new realism does not profess to be able to
prove them, or even to disprove them. It aims only at clarify-
ing the fundamental ideas of the sciences, and synthesizing the
different sciences in a single comprehensive view of that frag-
ment of the world that science has succeeded in exploring. It
does not know what lies beyond ; it possesses no talisman for
transforming ignorance into knowledge. It offers intellectual
delights to those who value them, but it does not attempt to
flatter human conceit as most philosophies do. If it is dry and
technical, it lays the blame on the universe, which has chosen
to work in a mathematical way rather than as poets or mystics
might have desired." (Sceptical Essays.)

Whitehead has more sympathy with metaphysics, but he is
opposed to the subjective view, although he is satisfied to speak

IO WHAT PHILOSOPHY IS ABOUT

of making an analysis in terms of Experience. " Speculative
philosophy," he writes, " is the endeavour to frame a coherent,
logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which
every element of our experience can be interpreted." And to
make this clearer, he continues : " Every science must devise
its own instruments. The tool required for philosophy is
language. Thus philosophy re- designs language in the same
way that, in a physical science, pre-existing appliances are
re-designed." (Process and Reality.)

It took many centuries of hard thinking before the realization
dawned that words *were not eternally fixed things, that they
could be thrown on the scrap-heap and new words minted,
that some apparently insoluble problems were due to difficulties
of expression, that the accident of the grammatical form of a
particular language itself created artificial problems that were
unconnected with the subject under consideration. To-day
the philosopher is confronted by his experiences or, if you
prefer to call it so, the Given and he is free to make up any
words he pleases, to invent whatever categories he finds con-
venient, in order to sort out these experiences and classify
them. He himself, for example, makes the class which he
calls Illusion ; and he makes another class which he calls
Reality. There is no limit to the number of concepts he
can construct Matter, Mind, Life, Substance, Events, Cause,
Law, etc.

But I am anticipating. The whole story cannot be told
yet. For the moment I merely wish to draw attention to an
important difference between modern and ancient philosophy.
That the modern attitude was latent in bygone controversies
Nominalism, for example is, of course, true enough ; but the
view that language is a tool for the interpretation of experience,
and that the tool can be re-designed, is wholly new in its
thorough-going application. Science, religion, literature, and
even philosophy itself, must be expressed in language ; and so
the criticism of language, because it is a criticism of the very
instrument of thought, is fundamental.

" When / use a word," Humpty-Dumpty said in a rather

WHAT PHILOSOPHY IS ABOUT II

scornful tone, " it means just what I choose it to mean neither
more nor less."

" The question is," said Alice, " whether you can make
words mean different things."

" The question is," said Humpty-Dumpty, " which is to be
master that's all ! "

Broadly speaking we can say that, for most ancient and
medieval philosophers, words were the master ; and this is
what one would expect to find in view of the historical emer-
gence of philosophy from religion, with its quasi-magical
attitude towards names. For most modern philosophers words
are instruments, and although this attitude is held by widely
divergent schools, it is one of the positive gains that have accrued
from centuries of disputation.

To understand its importance, however, we must first study
what has led up to it. No one, however gifted, can open a
book by a contemporary philosopher and understand what he
reads without any previous acquaintance with the history of
philosophy. No one ignorant of the great controversies of the
past could understand the simple quotations I have taken from
Russell and Whitehead. The English is clear enough, but the
dictionary meaning of the terms tells us nothing of their
associations and the battles fought over them. For example,
what is meant by Realism ? What is meant by Subjective,
Objective, Coherent, Necessary, Interpretation ?

The lonians would not have understood what was meant by
re-designing language in order to interpret experience devising
a sort of net of abstract terms in which to fish among the chaos
of the Given and arrange the catch in some kind of order. Nor
can we ourselves understand what is meant by such a statement
unless we know something of the process that the lonians
started and which gradually led up to the modern situation.

This book is primarily about modern philosophy. For
reasons of space our consideration of the questions philosophers
asked up to the seventeenth century must be brief. When,
however, the problem of Knowledge is raised, I shall deal in
more detail with that process of re-designing language which

12 WHAT PHILOSOPHY IS ABOUT

was unconscious to begin with, but which has now become the
conscious and, indeed, the principal task left for the philosopher
to perform.

Our journey will take us far back into history, and we shall
follow the progress of ideas along their tortuous routes ; we
shall run into culs-de-sac and often have to retrace our steps ;
but all the time we shall be witnessing the most fascinating
adventure of the human spirit as its consciousness deepens and
it becomes aware of its own creative power. Such a journey,
among the best thoughts of the best minds, is surely worth while
if only for the intellectual delight it gives. It should help us
to clarify our own ideas and think a little more correctly ; and
it should make us humble when we see how blind even great
men can be, and tolerant as we realize what differing views of
the universe it is possible to entertain.

USEFUL REFERENCES

The Problems of Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell ; 1912.

A History of Western Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell ; 1947.

From Religion to Philosophy, by F. M. Cornford ; 1912.

An Introduction to Logic, by H. W. B. Joseph ; 1916.

A Sketch of Medieval Philosophy, by D. J. B. Hawkins ; 1947.

The Open Society and Its Enemies (Vol I), by K. R. Popper ; 1946.

The Grammar of Science, by Karl Pearson ; 191 1.

The Mind and Its Place in Nature, by C. D. Broad ; 1925!

Science and Human Experience, by H. Dingle ; 193 1 .

The Nature of the Physical World, by A. Eddington ; 1928.

Language, Truth, and Logic, by A. J. Ayer ; 1946.

CHAPTER TWO

The Discovery of Reason

THE downfall of Egypt, the rise of Persia, the struggle between
the merchant class and the aristocratic landowner for control of
the city-state, were the background against which the first
philosophers asked the first questions. The great civilizations
of the Nile and the Euphrates were conservative. Their science
was practical rather than theoretical. It was concerned with
civil engineering, irrigation, the construction of a correct
calendar, and it was in the hands of priests who retained a
mythical account of the origin of the universe. Greek religion
was surprisingly free from the vices of ecclesiasticism. Neither
Homer nor Hesiod took their gods too solemnly, and neither
taught that the world had been made by the gods. On the
contrary, as far back as the eighth century it was taught (by
Hesiod) that Chaos produced the earth, which in turn produced
the heavens ; and everything else came from the mating of
heaven and earth.

It was a small umVerse that these inquisitive Greeks con-
templated. The stars were night's candles rather than suns ;
but they were not gods, as the Babylonians supposed. The
stars were the progeny of the earth, and Anaximander (610-
546 B.C.) seems to have pictured the earth gradually drying up
by evaporation, man originally emerging as a fish-like creature
from the sea. Here is the germ of an evolutionary theory the
main interest of which is the early attempt to provide a natural
account of origins.

Another point to notice is that all these Greeks were material-
ists. They had no conception of an immaterial God or an
immaterial soul or immaterial forces. When they said that
everything was ultimately water or mist or fire, they did not

13

14 THE DISCOVERY OF REASON

mean merely that the underlying substance was like water or
mist or fire. When Empedocles (445 B.C.) said that the four
primary elements were moved by two forces, Love and Hate,
he was not merely speaking metaphorically. The forces of
Empedocles were fluids. They were a kind of stuff, just as in
primitive times even'justice was regarded as a kind of stuff, the
proper circulation of which caused the sun to shine and the
crops to grow.

Our knowledge of the controversies that followed makes it
difficult for us to imagine such unsophistication. But there
were no such controversies for the lonians to look back upon.
All they had inherited was the magical theory of a mysterious
something a sort of mana distributed unevenly throughout
the objects of the universe. This mysterious something could
not be seen with the eyes, so it was not a complete novelty for
them to think of a reality behind the veil of appearances. The
novelty was to investigate that reality by means of reason.

What is the world made of ? they asked. What is the stuff
of which everything we see is composed ? Why do things have
different shapes and colours, and why do they move about ?
Anaximander decided that there could .be only one kind of
substance, and everything in the world was some state of it.
He called this substance the Indeterminate (or the Unlimited).
It existed from all eternity, it was infinite in extent, and it was
endowed with motion. This raw material could not be per-
ceived by the senses, but it could be apprehended by Mind.

For our present purposes we need not go into the details of
these early guesses. It is sufficient to note the important ideas
that were thrown off almost as by-products of the game of
speculation. But the belief in a unity behind the shifting
variety of appearances, and the conviction that reason could
discover a deeper truth than the senses, were of the highest
importance.

The Problem of Change

The point was taken up and given even sharper emphasis by
Heraclitus (504 B.C.). He boldly opposed the evidence of

THE DISCOVERT OF REASON 15

reason to the evidence of the senses. The eyes and ears, he
said, were bad witnesses ; the mind must interpret their evi-
dence, and wisdom lay in the interpretation. Wisdom or, as
we should say, Truth did not consist in mere observation.
It consisted in using the reason to perceive the unity beneath
the diversity which otherwise baffled the senses. Wherever
you look you see changes taking place. " Everything is in Flux
and nothing is at rest." Again, in a famous phrase, " You can-
not step twice into the same river."

Thus the question posited by Thales and Anaximander takes
a new turn with Heraclitus. He accepts their belief that reason
can find an underlying unity in the world, but he asks how this
unity can be reconciled with the fact of change ? He asks a
question to which a wholly satisfactory answer has yet to be
found, and in our own time the philosopher mainly preoccupied
with it has been Bergson. The answer which Heraclitus gave
inspired the stupendous system of Hegel. Unfortunately we
have only a few fragments of the book which he deposited in the
temple at Ephesus, where he was, by birth, heir to the priest-
kingship.

The fact of change makes it difficult to describe the be-
haviour of the mysterious substance underlying appearances as
though it were composed of inert lumps of stuff. For when-
ever change occurs and it is always occurring something be-
comes different and yet something must remain the same. So
the stuff of the world, according to Heraclitus, is not water ; it
is fire.

Indeed, material bodies are a sort of fire, waxing and waning,
flaring up and dying down according to law. " The sun will
not overstep the measure of his path ; but if he does, then the
goddesses of Fate, the handmaids of Justice, will know how to
find him. . . . The order of the world, which is the same for
all things, has not been made, neither by a god nor a man. It
always was, is, and will be, an eternally living fire, with a law
that measures its flaring up and a law that measures its dying
down."

To translate this picturesque language into modern speech is

l6 THE DISCOVERY OF REASON

scarcely possible without covertly adding to it. But here, in
embryo, is the very fundamental idea that the world must be
interpreted in terms of processes and not of things. The
apparent stability which makes us mistake processes for things
is like the apparent stability of a flame in a windless place when
it looks solid. Heraclitus explained this stability as a kind of
balance achieved by opposite forces within the same process.
This internal tension, due to warring elements, is the source of
their development. " All things develop through strife and
necessity."

The question " What is the world made of ? " had led on
quite naturally to the question " How does the world change ? "
In the course of the transition there was a great deal of fanciful
speculation that only interests the historian now, but apart from
the detailed answers there were a number of exceedingly fruitful
ideas that added to the intellectual armoury. The essential
ideas that emerged were : (a) That the world is governed by
necessity (law), (b) That its laws can be discovered by the
human mind, (c) That the world, including gods and souls,
is composed of one substance, despite appearances to the con-
trary, which exists in space and time (i.e., it is material).
(d) That the unity perceived by reason presents a public world
for the philosopher in contrast to the private world of un-
enlightened individuals : " Those who are awake have one
common world ; those who are asleep turn to their private
worlds " (Heraclitus). (e) That the world is the totality of
changing processes, and its stabilities result from the union of
opposites.

This was a remarkable achievement for the sixth century B.C.
No doubt the violence and instability of the times helped to
fashion some of the new concepts. The rapidity of social
change brought the abstract problem of change to the forefront.
About the same period as these questions were being asked on
the coast of Asia Minor, similar discussions were taking place
in the Greek colonies founded in Italy and Sicily, whither
political refugees, exiles, and displaced persons had fled from
the menace of Persia.

TEE DISCOVERY OF REASON 17

Mysticism and Mathematics

Pythagoras of Croton (571-497 B.C.) formed a community
whose mystical and political aspirations do not concern us here.
He also asked what the world was made of and how reason could
discover the answer. He offered a very curious solution. He
said in effect that the world was made of numbers, and that the
answers could be found by studying mathematics.

The modern mind thinks of numbers as abstractions. To
say that the world is made of numbers seems as outrageous as
saying that it is composed of words. Pythagoras, however,
thought of numbers as we think of material things. They were
bits of stuff ; and points with magnitude, lines with thickness
were the ultimate furniture of the universe.

The practical significance of his number-mysticism was the
impetus it gave to the study of mathematics. The suggestion
that wisdom i.e., the truth about the working of the world
was largely mathematical was a tremendous step forward.
The belief that mathematics can show us how the mind of God
works fascinated some of the subtlest intellects for thousands
of years after one is reminded of Sir James Jeans's dictum
that the universe is a thought in the mind of the great Mathe-
matician.

The Pythagoreans knew that the pitch of a taut string varied
exactly with the length, and they decided that the heavenly
bodies must obey a similar law that their varying distances
caused them to emit different sounds as they revolved, and that
the whole of these sounds taken together was like a sublime
orchestra, governed by mathematical law. The lonians used
their eyes, so to speak, where the Pythagoreans used their ears.
To them the world was not so much like water, or mist, or fire,
as like sound. It was like a harmony of vibrations, the music
of the spheres.

Unfortunately the real world could not be fitted to the Pro-
crustean bed of the mathematics of the time. For example,
the ratio of the diagonal of a square to the side could not be
expressed as a whole number, and the scandal of irrational

l8 THE DISCOVERY OF REASON

numbers in a rational universe was so great that the discovery
of incommensurability is said to have been hushed up.

Pythagoras failed in his solution, but he succeeded in calling
attention to the importance of mathematics as a clue to the
structure of the world. And after Pythagoras the ball fell to
Parmenides of Elea (504 B.C.), who was a contemporary of
Heraclitus, to whose central problem he offered an original and
paradoxical solution. He went much farther than Heraclitus
in opposing reason to the senses.

Heraclitus had said that everything was constantly changing.
Parmenides retorted that, on the contrary, it could be proved by
reason that nothing could possibly change. If the senses
brought evidence to the contrary they were deceptive. Change
was an illusion, because whatever is, is ; and whatever is not,
is not. It follows that whatever changes both is and is not,
simultaneously. This seemed an intolerable contradiction.
How, therefore, can we believe in change and yet remain true
to reason ? This gave rise to the argument that change must
mean the appearance of something new ; but for something
new, something that did not exist before, to come into exist-
ence, entails that something is created out of nothing, which
again is unthinkable. So, however ridiculous it may seem to
deny the reality of change, there can be no logical escape.

To-day the problem of how something quite new can arise is
central for Emergent Evolutionists and Dialectical Materialists.
By declaring that the emergence of novelty was logically im-
possible, the Eleatics raised another, equally important question
to what extent can pure logic give us information about the
world ? Since those days opinion has been deeply divided on
the point ; those who trusted to logic, come what may, were
Rationalists, in the strict sense of the word, and they con-
structed elaborate systems of metaphysics ; their great rivals
were the Empiricists, who put their trust in experience.

One of the most troublesome of all philosophical problems
has been the relation between the verdict of logic and experi-
ence. By standing on his head so dramatically, and declaring
that everyone else was the victim of an illusion, Parmenides

THE DISCOVERY OF REASON 19

called sharp attention to the problem, though obviously he did
not solve it. No one outside a lunatic asylum could con-
sistently deny the fact of change.

Materialism and Idealism

Parmenides opened the door for the metaphysicians just as
Pythagoras opened the door for the mathematicians. Then
came Leucippus and Democritus, in the second half of the fifth
century, with a theory that opened the door for all subsequent
physics the atomic theory.

Once again, What was the world made of? Atoms, said
Leucippus ; small particles of matter separated from one
another by void. The mysterious something underlying
appearances was an infinite number of atoms. They were as
impenetrable and changeless in their composition as the One
of Parmenides ; they were One. They differed merely in
form and arrangement. All the changes perceived by the
senses were due to the regroupings of these primary atoms.

The details of this brilliant guess were supplied by Demo-
critus of Abdera (c. 420 B.C.). The work of his predecessors
suddenly seemed like blind groping in the face of a solution
that appeared satisfying both to reason and common sense
alike.

The universe was composed of indivisible atoms and void ;
their movements and patterns were due to necessity. Yet, we
are impelled to ask, what is meant by necessity ? What en-
sures the orderly arrangement of the atoms ? What place can
be found in a world of blind, material atoms for the Reason
(the mind) which has discovered this reality hidden behind the
veil of the sensuous world ? How can thoughts be the same as
the movements of material particles ?

The search for the ultimate stuff of which the world was
made was bound to raise questions about the search and the
searchers ; for in a way both seem to lie outside the process
studied. But it was too early for the problem of knowledge, as
it appears to modern philosophers, to emerge. What was in-
evitable, however, was for someone to try to define more

20 THE DISCOVERY OF REASON

accurately the relation between the surprising and paradoxical
world disclosed by logic and the common-sense world which
seemed so very different.

The original statement of Hesiod, that in the beginning was
Chaos, and Chaos produced the earth, was in effect re-written
by Anaxagoras (500-428 B.C.) as follows : " In the beginning
all things were in confusion, then Mind came and reduced them
to order." This was regarded as a cosmic operation. The
Mind referred to is not the mind of the philosopher. It would
have been impossible at that date to re-write it as a modern sub-
jectivist might do : " Primary experience is a chaos, but my
mind reduces it to order."

To begin with, Idealism was objective. The question which
gave rise to the philosophical theory called Idealism is this :
" Is the material universe the result of mind or does it give
birth to mind in the course of its development ? " Now in
classical times Mind could only mean God ; the idea of treating
one's own mind as though one were God, creating the world
out of a chaos of experience, is essentially modern at least in
Western philosophy.

The Problem of Universals

The seeds of Objective Idealism are found in Pythagoras
and Parmenides, but it is in Plato (427-348 B.C.) that they come
to fruition. The pre-Socratics were mostly materialistic,
though not quite in the modern sense. They made no sharp
distinction between living and dead matter ; but the soul was
regarded as a material object.

With Plato the inquiry into the mysterious reality behind the
scenes raises the question of immaterial being, quite apart even
from souls and gods. Just as Pythagoras regarded numbers as
things, so Plato regarded abstract ideas as existing in timeless
independence of the material world.

Plato made no attempt to work out a detailed metaphysical
system. Indeed, we must not look to the Greeks for such
systems. They were explorers rather than builders ; they were
discoverers of ideas, and it is largely with the bricks that they

THE DISCOVERY OF REASON 21

supplied that subsequent systems were built. No summary of
the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle can be made here ; all
I wish to do is to call attention to the most outstanding additions
made to mankind's intellectual equipment.

There are many disputes about what Plato actually meant.
All that interests us now is what he seemed to mean to others,
what new problems his theories stimulated. By Plato's time
attention was focused on the remarkable fact that the world of
common-sense objects seemed utterly different from the picture
that logic had painted.

No one could hear the music of the spheres ; no one could
see the atoms of Democritus. Must it, then, be supposed that
the whol adventure of the mind was a mistake ? Which was
the illusion the world disclosed by logic or the world perceived
by the senses ? Plato answered without hesitation that the
world of logic was real. It must be accepted whatever the
affront to common-sense.

He analysed common-sense beliefs. Everyone must admit
that some things were very beautiful, and others less so ; some
actions were just, and others unjust in varying degrees. This
could only be the case if some things contained beauty, and some
acts had a certain amount of justice. If there were degrees of
beauty and degrees of justice, there must be a Beauty and a
Justice that were perfect, absolute.

To say that these terms are general is merely to say that they
are not confined to a particular case, but are spread over a
multitude of particular cases. So we have particular facts, on
the one hand ; and general or universal facts, on the other.
No amount of examination of the particular will give us the
universal. Beautiful things exhibit beauty, but they must all
fall short of beauty itself.

Now Plato applied this ingenious analysis to all abstract
terms. The gold coin you hold in your hand is what ? To
describe it you have to say it is yellow and circular, etc. You
can only describe it in terms of universals yellowness and
circularity. There is no escape. Every particular is com-
pounded of universals. These universals must therefore be

22 THE DISCOVERY OF REASON

real. They must exist. Beauty, yellowness, circularity must
exist. They define gold.

Look again at the gold coin. Try to think away these uni-
versals. Subtract colour, shape, size, weight what is left in
the end ? Only the bare substance that passively underlies all
things bare matter stripped of attributes, and which waits
patiently to receive definition.

This must not be taken as a summary of Plato's actual argu-
ments. It is the train of thought he inevitably started and
which ultimately led to such conundrums as, What is the
difference between mere Being (without any qualities) and
Nothing ? Is a particular thing (a gold coin) composed of a
substratum plus attributes, substance plus accidents ; or is it
just the sum-total of its appearances ?

Democritus tried to reduce the world to two elements, Atoms
and Void. Plato tried to reduce it to Matter and Form.
What is unique about the Platonic solution is that the forms
were believed to exist independently. The everyday world
revealed matter stamped with form ; but the forms are only
imperfectly shown. Behind the scenes, beyond time and
space, there is another world ; it is perfect, exact, and delight-
ful. There the soul can contemplate pure beauty, pure justice
the whole procession of universals can be seen in their
sublime perfection.

Knowledge of reality is not given by the senses but is per-
ceived with the eyes of the soul, \vhose proper object is the
study of forms or universal ideas. Science is therefore inde-
pendent of experience a most dangerous idea, as it turned
out, though the practical merit of Platonism was that by
emphasizing, as did Heraclitus, the uselessness of mere un-
related bits of information it focused attention on the search for
logical and mathematical relationships.

Whitehead puts it : " The safe general characterization of
the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a
series of footnotes to Plato. I do not mean the systematic
scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted
from his writings. I allude to the wealth of general ideas

THE DISCOVERY OF REASON 23

scattered through them. His personal endowments, his wide
opportunities for experience at a great period of civilization, his
inheritance of an intellectual tradition not yet stiffened by
excessive systematization, have made his writings an in-
exhaustible mine of suggestion." (Process and Reality.)

The Foundations of Logic

The brilliant and wayward genius of Plato, so intoxicating
to poets and mathematicians, was corrected on its more mystical
course by the sobriety of Aristotle (384-322 B.C.). Plato had
raised the problem of universals. Aristotle took it over ; but
he could not admit that they had any separate existence. For
Aristotle the actual universe lay between the two extremes of
formless matter and matterless form (God).

Plato's enthusiasm for mathematics had pointed the way to
the physicist ; Aristotle's gift for classification pointed the way
to the biologist. Looking back on two centuries of achieve-
ment, he asked a most fundamental question. Granted that
the world is composed of some primary substance endowed
with general qualities, and that it is in the process of develop-
ment, what makes it move ? What is the cause ?

For long afterwards the task for the scientist seemed to be
mainly to classify phenomena and to search for causes. Aris-
totle classified Cause itself into four types Material, Formal,
Efficient, Final. He recognized very clearly the extreme com-
plexity of Cause. Everything that happened must have a
cause ; every cause must have an eifect. Moreover, effects
must bear some resemblance to their causes. Here was
material for the famous controversy of Freewill versus Deter-
minism, already implicit in the atomic theory. Here, too, was
food for the medieval theologians ; for if everything had a cause,
surely there must be a First Cause ?

Aristotle insisted that there must be a purpose in things ;
they moved as they did in pursuance of some final aim. The
notion of a final cause and the self-adaptation of evolving
organisms towards some ultimate goal still lurks even in the
outlook of scientists who would indignantly deny it, and under-

24 THE DISCOVERY OF REASON

lies the popular query : " What is the meaning of Life ? What
is the purpose of the Universe ? " The vitalism of Driesch is
modern Aristotelianism.

Two other most useful concepts were added by Aristotle
Potentiality and Actuality. The oak-tree is not created out of
nothing ; the sort of change from acorn to oak exists potentially
in the acorn. Matter, stripped of its qualities, is therefore
awaiting passage from the potential to the actual.

Aristotle classified the working of reason, and thus founded
the science of formal logic. He made the basis of it the
simplest kind of proposition, a subject with a predicate : " All
men are mortal " or " The Rose is red."

He demonstrated how it was possible to argue from the first
proposition that all men are mortal : Socrates is a man ;
therefore Socrates is mortal. And why it was wrong to say, for
example, "The. rose is red; the poppy is red; therefore a
rose is a poppy/' He supplied the rules with which fallacies
in this type of argument a conclusion drawn from two
premises could be detected.

No more could be expected of him. His powerful mind
ranged over all that was known of natural science, philosophy,
aesthetics, ethics, and politics. The depth and comprehensive-
ness of his thought remain one of the wonders of the world.
Between them, Plato and Aristotle made the intellectual mould in
which all speculation took shape for more than a thousand years.

That the medieval Church wrought a dogma out of his
philosophy was no fault of Aristotle. He could scarcely have
foreseen that the doctrine of substance and accidents would be
used to explain Transubstantiation, and be made virtually
binding on the faithful.

The limitations of Aristotelian logic have* only begun to be
fully realized. One weakness is that it suggests an invisible,
quality less substratum : even a simple statement, " The rose
is red," smuggles in an independent entity, to which the quality
of redness can be added. Modern philosophy, quite early in
its career, questioned the necessity for postulating such an
underlying substance.

THE DISCOVERY OF REASON 25

We shall return to this topic in later chapters, but for the
moment it is sufficient to point out that when the contemporary
physicist speaks of events and processes, instead of things,
when space and time are regarded as relations between events,
a sharp break is made with one of the most fundamental
assumptions of classical philosophy. When people complain
that contemporary science outrages' common-sense they usually
mean that it outrages Aristotle and they forget how far Aris-
totle himself had travelled from those common-sense concep-
tions which most ancient philosophers were united in despising
as " delusive opinion."

The questions which were asked in the millennium that
followed Pfato and Aristotle seem to the modern ear to be
futile quibbling and word-spinning. They were mainly con-
cerned with the status of universals. There were, no doubt,
excellent political and economic reasons why science could not
yet develop. There were also very good intellectual reasons
why scientific theory was paralysed. It was largely held up
because the wrong sort of questions were asked.

Instead of asking how moving objects actually behaved, men
asked : " What is motion ? " and so on. They mistook the
study of verbal definitions for the study of actual phenomena.
They looked for mysterious " essences " which was as vain
as the search for Platonic forms or the philosophers' stone.

Philosophy would have foundered in a morass of sterile
word-spinning if it had not been given a fresh orientation. Its
progress depends on the insight with which old problems are
given a new formulation. The answers do not give us the final
truth we thirst for, but they stimulate us to frame more and more
cogent questions.

If anyone supposes that I am suggesting that the latest theory
to appear is necessarily an improvement on any earlier theory,
he has misread what I have tried to state very plainly. Theories
themselves do not necessarily improve as time moves on, but
our experience obviously becomes wider and the old formula-
tions can no longer cover the whole of it. We find fresh
turnings in the intellectual labyrinth ; we do not find the way

26 THE DISCOVERY OF REASON

out, but our knowledge of the maze in which we wander is
nevertheless increased.

USEFUL REFERENCES

Greek Thinkers, by J. Gomperz, Eng. trs. ; 1901.

Outlines of Greek Philosophy, by E. Zeller, i3th ed. ; 1931.

Thales to Plato, by J. Burnet ; 1914.

Plato and His Contemporaries, by G. C. Field ; 1930.

Plato's Theory of Knowledge, by F. M. Cornford ; 1935.

An Introduction to Ancient Philosophy, by A. H. Armstrong ; 1947.

Aristotle, by W. Jaeger, Eng. trs. ; 1934.

Stoic and Epicurean, by R. D. Hicks ; 1910.

There are many good translations of Plato and Aristotle. F. M.
Cornford's translation of Timceus (1937) and The Republic (1941)
have valuable explanatory notes. Jowett's translation of the
Dialogues (5 vols.) was re-issued in 1925. The Oxford translation
of Aristotle (ed. J-. A. Smith and W. D. Ross) is complete in 1 1
volumes. Munro's translation of Lucretius was published with
text commentary and an introduction by Prof. Andrade in 1928.
For neo-Platonists see The Enneads of Plotinus, translated by
Mackenna and Page (1926-1930), and Select Passages Illustrative of
Neoplatonism, by E. R. Dodds (1923).

CHAPTER THREE

The Rape of Reason

THE profound social changes in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries were reflected in a new world outlook. The earth
had become vaster. The Mediterranean no longer seemed the
centre of civilization. Italy had lost its importance, America
had been discovered and India was being opened up. The
struggle for material power underlay a religious conflict now
between Catholics and Protestants, and now between rival
Protestant sects themselves.

It is a mistake, however, to suppose that the break with the
medieval outlook was sharp and abrupt. Looking back at those
distant ideological conflicts, we can see how much both Catho-
lics and Protestants had in common. The philosopher had to
be just as careful to avoid offending the one as the other. New
questions were being asked, new formulations of very old
problems, but quite often the answers remained in note-books
or in manuscripts that the authors dared not publish. Quite
often, as in Greece, the philosophers went into voluntary exile.
Galileo was placed under house-arrest, and the nervous Hobbes
spent many years out of England. Spinoza was excommuni-
cated and once stoned by an angry mob, and his Ethics was not
published in his lifetime. Leibniz's Nouveaux Essais, the best
exposition of his philosophy, was not published until fifty years
after his death, and his important notes were only published
comparatively recently.

Philosophy often had the air of a conspiracy. It fell, in some
cases deservedly, under the suspicion of being subversive of
the established order of things. This, indeed, was not new.
Socrates had been judicially murdered. The Pythagoreans and
Epicureans were severely persecuted. AWlard, Roger Bacon,

27

28 THE RAPE OF REASON

and Bruno were variously punished. The popular charge was
usually " atheism," and although it was little more than a term
of abuse, in self-defence philosophers were obliged to take great
pains to disprove it.

Perhaps this was one reason why so many of them have
been preoccupied with demonstrating the existence of God.
The search for proofs of God's existence did not end with
the Middle Ages. Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Locke, and
Berkeley, all tried their hands at it. Another very powerful
motive, it is to be feared, was that God could be invoked
whenever a gap in a rational explanation had to be patched up,
Descartes and Leibniz quite shamelessly employed a dialectical
deus ex machina.

In examining their philosophies, therefore, we must remem-
ber the limitations imposed by the age in which they lived.
Protest against their predecessors as they might, they saw the
world through spectacles fashioned by the Greeks. What
brings them closer to ourselves was their growing awareness of
this very fact that the world seen through the spectacles of
Greek rationalism looked utterly unlike the world they saw
when they removed those spectacles.

With their naked eyes they saw a small sun climbing across
the sky ; they were aware of everyday objects with colours,
smells, and noises, objects that changed shape, grew, decayed,
and seemed to disappear. How was it possible to believe that
the earth moved and the sun was stationary when the evidence
of the senses was utterly to the contrary ?

But looked at through the spectacles of a philosopher the
ordinary world vanished and a wholly different picture was
seen. Admittedly the picture varied, according to whose
glasses you borrowed, but in any case it seemed to bear no
resemblance to the world seen with the naked eyes. So there
seemed to be two worlds the one disclosed by reason, the
other by common-sense. And it was inevitable that men
should continue to ask how these two pictures were related ?
How far should they trust the evidence of reason when it
seemed to contradict the plain evidence of their senses ?

THE RAPE OF REASON 29

The Deception of the Senses

This question was raised afresh by Galileo (1564-1642).
He answered emphatically in favour of the world disclosed by
reason. He was the pioneer of experimental philosophy, but
the impression that he was the first of the philosophical em-
piricists those who give priority to the world of sense-percep-
tion is not quite correct. The full significance of the clash
between the two worlds could hardly have been apparent in
Galileo's time. Referring to the Copernican theory, he wrote :
" I cannot sufficiently admire the eminence of those men's wits,
that have received and held it to be true, and with the sprightli-
ness of their judgements offered such violence to their own
senses, as that they have been able to prefer that which their
reason dictated to them to that which sensible experiments
represented most manifestly to the contrary."

In other words, although we seem to see the sun move across
the sky, the sun does not in fact move across the sky. Reason
shows that the earth moves and the sun is stationary. Reason
does such violence to the senses that he speaks of " the rape of
reason on the senses." But we must trust reason, and not the
senses. They can deceive us, but reason gives us the truth.

Our senses deceive us grossly by representing ordinary
objects as coloured, noisy, tasty, and aromatic. In reality
i.e., according to reason they do not possess colours, sound,
tastes, or smells. These qualities are contributed by our senses
and do not exist in the outside world. " But that external
bodies, to excite in us these tastes, these odours, and these
sounds, demand other than size, figure, number, and slow or
rapid motion, I do not believe ; and I judge that, if the ears,
the tongue, and the nostrils were taken away, the figure, the
numbers, and the motions would indeed remain, but not the
odours, nor the tastes, nor the sounds, which, without the living
animal, I do not believe are anything else than names, just as
tickling is precisely nothing but a name if the armpit and the
nasal membrane be removed."

This sort of language has a ring of familiarity. The old

30 THE RAPE OF REASON

Scholastic controversies about universalia ante rent (Realism)
in re (Aristotelianism) or post rent (Nominalism) mean little to
us to-day. But we can well understand the argument that, in
the phrase coined by Locke, there are primary and secondary
qualities. We know quite well that there is no science of
colours, sounds, tastes, and smells. To treat these facts of
experience scientifically a way had to be devised of expressing
them as quantities. Unless they could somehow be translated
into quantities it did not seem possible to treat them mathe-
matically. To Galileo the credit must largely be given of per-
ceiving this necessity. Democritus had also argued in favour
of primary and secondary qualities, but Galileo put the inquiry
on a practical basis by showing how it was possible to frame
laws by dealing with quantities.

Experience was not thereby neglected ; it was classified.
Part of it was isplated from the rest of reality and studied.
Thus, for Galileo the field of study was matter in motion. To
investigate this he did not merely meditate on the meaning of
the word " motion/' as though an improved definition would
yield new information. He watched material objects actually
moving. He dropped a one-pound weight together with a ten-
pound weight and demonstrated to the astonished crowd that
they struck the ground simultaneously. He used his small
telescope and saw that the Milky Way was composed of separate
stars, that Jupiter had satellites, that the moon had mountains.

Instead of making the easy answer that the planets were kept
in motion by an unmoved Mover, he realized forestalling
Newton that no external force was necessary to keep them
moving in a straight line uniformly ; what had to be explained
was the cause of their deviations. Newton was born in the
year that Galileo died (1642), and Newton led the way triumph-
antly along the trail that Galileo had blazed, giving the first
exact definition of mass, and formulating a law that applied to
all material bodies.

This development was known at the time as " natural " or
" experimental " philosophy. Nowadays we call it " science,"
and although it seems a little hard on the philosophers, it is more

THE RAPE OF REASON 31

convenient to restrict the name " philosophy " to those investi-
gations which have not yielded such excellent results. But it
cannot be too strongly stressed that experimental philosophy
was not mainly concerned with collecting observed instances.
Bacon over-emphasized this aspect. Knowledge, as Heraclitus
had pointed out, is not just the amassing of information
" polymathy," as he rather contemptuously called it but the
rational correlation of evidence. Thus, although science arose
out of an attempt to explain the behaviour of quite ordinary
things that everyone could see, it could only furnish an explana-
tion by inventing things that no one could possibly see. When
Diogenes complained, of the Platonic Ideas, " I can see a table,
but noMableness," he was striking at the root of the scientific
method which Galileo did so much to devise. For whp can
see force or inertia or mass ?

Mind and Machine

The insistence on experiment and observation compelled the
natural philosopher to keep his feet on the ground. In the last
resort he had to account for " brute fact/' and if he failed, the
stately ship in which he set sail into such strange seas of thought
must founder. But some distinction between universal forms
and particulars, or between the world of reason and the world
of sense-perception, had to be maintained. For centuries
philosophers have struggled to reconcile the two within some
single comprehensive system.

Physical science was amazingly successful within the isolated
domain it had selected. Was it not possible to describe the
whole of human experience in this manner ? Hobbes (1588-
1679) thought so. Influenced by Galileo, he was deeply im-
pressed by the enormous simplification of reducing the entire
universe, animate and inanimate, to matter and motion. If
everything that existed consisted of purely material particles,
then all changes boiled down to changes in position, and were
accordingly amenable to mathematical treatment. Why should
not human beings and human societies be regarded as systems
of mechanical motion ?

32 THE RAPE OF REASON

Descartes (1596-1650) was also stimulated by this somewhat
startling view, and he accepted a good deal of it. Like so many
of the great thinkers of his age, he was a mathematician, and he
was anxious to apply mathematical reasoning as widely as
possible. It seemed like a sheet-anchor, giving certainty and
security, amid the shifts of mere opinion and guesswork. But
to Descartes it seemed that Hobbes had thrown away the baby
with the bath- water. The world of reason, the world of atoms
moving in accordance with mathematical law, constituted,
indeed, a reality behind appearances, but one thing was left out
the reasoner.

For present purposes we can neglect the purely personal
problem which confronted Descartes as an orthodox Catholic.
We will ignore the unpleasant fact that when he heard of the
condemnation of Galileo he suppressed a book he was writing
which accepted the Copernican hypothesis. His objection to
the full doctrine of mechanical Materialism was unquestionably
genuine, and in different ways the same objection had been
expressed by many other philosophers. Granted that the
world is material, and even a machine, how can we account for
mind reason which studies this machine and discovers its
laws ?

There is matter in motion, said Descartes ; but there is also
something else there is thought. If anything, it is easier to
reduce matter to thought, than thought to matter. We can
imagine, for example, what it would be like to lack the organs
of sight, smell, touch, and hearing. We can imagine a state
of affairs in which the whole of what we call the external world
is no more than a dream. Everything we assert of the external
world may be an interpretation of the elements of our conscious-
ness, and a determined sceptic could cast doubt upon it.
What the sceptic cannot doubt is the fact that someone is
doubting, the fact that he himself is thinking.

Descartes was searching for a starting-point. In this he
believed that he was applying the method of mathematics to
philosophy. The mathematician begins with very simple and
discrete notions, and from these he proceeds to make deduc-

THE RAPE OF REASON 33

tions. What simple notion could the philosophers start from ?
What truth can he take as a basis which is utterly beyond
dispute ? And so Descartes arrived at his famous Cogito,
ergo sum I think, therefore I am.

By thinking, he meant consciousness in general. What he
was really saying was that the fact of consciousness, which was
indubitable, implied a conscious subject. He felt that that was
axiomatic, because he was expressing himself in the logical form
clarified by Aristotle a form of language so ingrained in Euro-
pean thought that it seemed to show forth the very texture of
the universe. If he had met a Buddhist when he was in
Amsterdam, he would probably have been very surprised indeed
to discover that there were people to whom thinking did not
seem to imply a permanent ego. But Descartes cast his
experience in the subject-predicate mould. He inherited the
Greek tradition with its belief in a mysterious " something,"
underlying phenomena, a subject which was qualified by
adjectives.

Why should there be only one kind of substance ? Why not
two, three, four, or even an infinite number of substances ?
Indeed, on the Cartesian definition, there seems to be no reason
whatever to restrict the universe to one kind of fundamental
stuff. " When we perceive any attribute/' he writes, " we
therefore conclude that some existing thing or substance to
which it may be attributed, is necessarily present." Attributes
require a substance, just as a predicate requires a subject. But
substance, in Descartes' famous phrase, " requires nothing but
itself in order to exist."

Dualism

It is no exaggeration to say that most people are still Carte-
sians without knowing it. The popular, common-sense
philosophy, based on the Christian tradition, separates man into
body and soul. The body is composed of matter, which is
ordinarily conceived of as tiny particles in motion. The soul is
regarded as a separate substance ; accordingly it survives the
loss of the body.

34 THE RAPE OF REASON

On a somewhat higher level of discussion, a distinction is
still made between the concepts of psychology. We talk of
mind and body. We consider a variety of theories as to how
such totally dissimilar things can act on one another. It seems,
on the face of it, quite impossible that a material substance
should influence, or be influenced by, an immaterial substance.
There are all kinds of theories Parallelism, Epiphenomenalism,
Instrumentalism, and so on and in sheer despair the Be-
haviourists have been driven to deny the existence of conscious-
ness, which was Descartes' fundamental postulate. Unless we
adopt this extreme position, no matter what theories we hold in
private, we seem to be compelled in practice to act as though
mental concepts and material concepts were not capable of
being translated into a common language. We may believe, or
merely hope, that the psycho-analyst and the physiologist are
really talking about the same thing in different words, but it is
evident enough that they must still go on using different words.
If it is true that every thought can be correlated with the move-
ment of an atom in the brain, no one can yet do the trick.

Hence the extraordinary importance of the problem that
Descartes formulated. His solution was a model of neatness
and ingenuity. In brief, he said that ,two substances were
required for any explanation of the world that included the
author of the explanation. One substance was matter, which
had the characteristic of extension. Three-dimensional matter
in motion was all that was needed to account for the world of
perception. The visible universe was a vast machine ; even
animals were no more than pieces of clockwork. If it should be
asked whether this external world really existed and very
soon, as we know, that question was to be raised the answer
was that God would not deceive man. It would be blas-
phemous to suppose that we were dupes of a Supreme Illu-
sionist.

In addition to extended substance (matter), there was think-
ing substance (mind). The mind (Vdme raisonnable) was not a
blank, which passively received impressions from without, as
Locke subsequently taught ; on the contrary, it was internally

THE RAPE OF REASON 35

supplied with a certain number of fixed ideas. With the help
of these innate ideas God, self, cause, motion, extension, etc.
the human reason could arrive at truth by reflection. It
could also make mistakes, because an act of judgment involved
the will. That such a mind should be able to modify matter,
that the fluent world of thought and extension should go on
existing from moment to moment, instead of being annihilated
by the passage of time, were due to the action of God, whose
existence could be proved by logic.

Now here, if we ignore the theology, is a mine of suggestion
of extraordinary richness ; future philosophers were to dig into
it deeply and to find, at every turn, that fresh possibilities were
excited m their minds. By stating such a problem, and
elaborating a method, Descartes started investigations that
would have astonished him. Let us look more closely at some
of the vistas opened up.

Deductive Rationalism

(i) Method. The most fundamental of Descartes' assump-
tions is that truths about the existent world can be discovered
by reasoning only. This was the almost universal belief of his
Age. He claimed to proceed by systematic doubt, yet it never
occurred to him to doubt that logic could give genuine informa-
tion about the world. The possibility that logic might be a
closed system, that its conclusions were contained in its pre-
mises, that its axioms were tautologies, that the whole procedure
of deduction from simple and distinct notions might be really
an argument in a circle, did not very seriously disturb the con-
fidence of philosophers until later.

A similar procedure, though it led to different results, was
followed by Spinoza and Leibniz. This was the Golden Age
of Rationalism using the word in a strict, technical sense.
Modern Rationalism is something quite different, and in some
respects quite opposite, since it is closely identified with
what the seventeenth-century thinkers called experimental
philosophy. """"""

The method of introspection, which Descartes used, although

36 THE RAPE OF REASON

not essentially novel, was original in its application. It was
bound to lead to subjectivism. The argument that God was
incapable of deceiving was too weak to save the objectivity of
the external world.

(2) Substance. Descartes formulated his central problem in
terms of substance and attribute. He decided, as we have seen,
in favour of two substances. This naturally gave rise to dis-
satisfaction, especially as he had to invoke God to meet the
difficulties inherent in such a view. Once an analysis has been
made in terms of matter and mind, it is inevitable that someone
should appeal to the maxim attributed (falsely) to William of
Occam, which stated (1347) Entia praeter necessitate, non
sunt multiplicanda : Entities are not to be multiplied without
necessity.

Do we need more than one substance ? Is that substance
matter or mind ? Finally, can we not drop the notion of sub-
stance altogether, in the interest of logical economy ?

Struggling with these questions, philosophers have tried to
express the whole of reality in the language of physics or
psychology. We have had Monism, and Dualism, both of
which result from the subject-predicate form of stating the
problem.

(3) Mechanism. The view that the material world behaves
throughout like a machine has been almost unquestioned,
except in comparatively recent times, in orthodox scientific
circles, and it is still a respectable though less fashionable
theory. By distinguishing between primary and secondary
qualities all phenomena are reduced to moving particles of
matter or even to pulses of energy and so, it is claimed, all
phenomena must obey laws which can be expressed mathe-
matically. If we know what forces are acting on a particle we
can surely predict its movement ; and if so, as Laplace sug-
gested, a mind capable of knowing the disposition of every
particle in the universe would be able to predict all future
events.

On such premises there is no escape from rigid determinism.
Descartes, as usual when in extreme difficulties, used God to

THE RAPE OF REASON 37

save free will, but the problems of determinism, causality, and
absolute space and time were inseparable from his presentation.
The attempt to reduce all material phenomena to a single
system of one ultimate type of substance obeying mathematical
laws of motion set an ideal for science, but only at the cost of
handing over to philosophy the elements that could not be
fitted in.

As Dr. C. D. Broad puts it : " Science has been able to
make the great strides which it has made by deliberately
ignoring one side of reality. ... In philosophy, as in eco-
nomics, facts do not cease to be real by being ignored ; and the
philosopher becomes the residuary legatee of all those aspects
of reality which the physicist (quite rightly for his own purpose)
has decided to leave out of account " (Scientific Thought.)

USEFUL REFERENCES

The Metaphysical Foundations of Science, by E. A. Burtt.
Dialogues Concerning Two Great Systems of the World, by Galileo ;

1632.

Novum Organum, by Francis Bacon ; 1620.
Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes, Intro, by M. Oakeshott ; 1946.
The Philosophical Works of Descartes, trs. by Haldane and Ross,

2vols; 1911-12.
A Discourse on Method, by Descartes ; Everyman edition.

CHAPTER FOUR

Architects of the Universe

IN the seventeenth century physics slipped its moorings from
philosophy before anyone quite realized the significance of
what had happened. Philosophers still went on talking about
physical problems ; and for centuries they went on talking
about psychological and sociological problems. It is only
comparatively recently that psychology and sociology have
become subjects in their own right, unamenable to armchair
methods ; and even now there is no agreed set of concepts.

Experimental philosophy did not perfect its method at a
single stroke. It became aware of what it was doing very
gradually, as it dropped unprofitable methods. The progress
of science has been marked by a slow, self-clarification under
the watchful and often jealous eye of the philosopher. The
latter was finally left as a solitary spectator of the young sciences,
which were boisterously self-confident and somewhat con-
temptuous of their elderly parent.

To the scientist the philosopher has often seemed super-
fluous, because of his inability to contribute any specific
knowledge. But the seventeenth-century Rationalists can
scarcely be accused of undue modesty in their aims. Their
massive systems stand behind us like audacious Towers of
Babel. The metaphysicians themselves appear as architects of
the very universe. They claim to give a ground-plan of the
whole of reality.

We are not called upon to-day to choose between their rival
systems. The value of their mighty efforts is not to be measured
simply as success or failure. No one in the seventeenth cen-
tury any more than in the twentieth or the fiftieth could be
expected to provide a ground-plan of the whole of reality.

38

ARCHITECTS OF THE UNIVERSE 39

But the struggle with these tremendous problems brought new
and extremely useful ideas to light. Trains of thought were
started which can be picked up to-day and enable us to re-state
the fundamental issues more and more clearly.

The Method of Rationalism

What is far more important for us to grasp than the details of
the systems of the great metaphysicians is the procedure that
they were trying out. They were Rationalists in the philoso-
phical sense of the word ; that is to say, they believed that
knowledge could be obtained merely by the act of reasoning,
and that such knowledge was independent of experience. If it
seemed v to be contradicted by the senses, so much the worse for
the senses ; what alone would be fatal to such knowledge would
be a logical contradiction.

To-day this is not only a highly unpopular doctrine, but it
requires a considerable effort to understand all that it implies.
We, for example, regard the scientific account of the universe
as being at the mercy of experience. If fresh observations do
not fit in with a scientific theory, we do not ignore the observa-
tions ; we abandon the theory. For most of us scientific
knowledge is an explanation, or a correlation, of experience,
and we do not think that we can obtain sufficient experience by
sitting in an armchair and reflecting. The early Rationalist,
however, could justify his sedentary habits only by claiming
that there was information ready waiting, so to speak, inside his
head. By looking inside he believed that he could discover the
bricks and the general plan of the universe. He did not create
these bricks and trim them to observed facts ; they were already
in his mind, and the facts were what he trimmed.

The so-called facts were therefore regarded as second-hand
representations of reality rather than slices of reality directly
perceived. Colours, smells, noises were located in the human
body, not in external nature. Descartes agreed with Galileo
on this point ; and Leibniz went much farther, and asserted that
all the appearances of matter even space and time were
delusive. Spinoza declared that we were deceived by the
D

40 ARCHITECTS OF THE UNIVERSE

" imagination," which showed, us things in isolation, and that
the reason corrected this error by showing us things in their
inter-connectedness.

Paradoxical as it sounds, Rationalism of this sort is possible
only if we assume the correctness of basic intuitions. And in
the seventeenth century the most certain of these intuitions
seemed to be the existence of God.

Words change their meanings. To-day we do not associate
Rationalism with a belief that the existence of God is self-
evident. But it was otherwise with Descartes, Spinoza, and
Leibniz. They undoubtedly used the omnipotence of God to
cover up the weaknesses in their systems ; but they were by
no means ashamed of doing so. God seemed much more
certain to them than the reality of the external world.

They felt that to reason at all you must have some fixed
starting-point. You cannot obtain certitude if you start from
an assumption ; and certitude was what they sought the kind
of certainty which mathematics seemed to possess. Their
" proofs " of God's existence amount to demonstrations that
it cannot be denied without contradiction. Descartes, for
example, did not prove the existence of God from the existence
Df the world ; he turned the famous traditional proof upside
down and argued that we were certain that the world existed
because God was incapable of deceiving us. Take away God
and the external world might well be maya.

Leibniz could think of no explanation of the order of nature
apart from God. Hence his doctrine of the Pre-established
Harmony of Monads. For Spinoza, God was practically
another name for the universe, and therefore God's existence
was indubitable. We, as aspects of the world, states of the
single Substance, become conscious of the reason and the
order which we exemplify ; we are aware of the ground of
reason, which is in our own natures, for the existence of which
no reason can be given.

Spinoza (1632-1677) is perhaps the most uncompromising
Rationalist of all the metaphysicians. Unlike Descartes and
Leibniz, he was under no compulsion to adapt his ideas to

ARCHITECTS OF THE UNIVERSE 41

Christian theology. Brought up as a Jew, he inherited an
alien intellectual tradition, and there is some reason to believe
that he was influenced by the Arabic school, especially by
Maimonides (1135-1204),

We are not now concerned with the intricate details of his
system, but with his essential ideas, which opened up a
fascinating new pathway that did not begin to be explored
for a century and a half after his death.

The Monistic Solution

Spinoza shared the Cartesian longing for an account of the
whole structure of reality that was as certain as mathematical
knowledge, but he saw one great weakness in Descartes' argu-
ment. In his anxiety to show that God was the continuous
support of the world of flux, Descartes was driven towards an
atomic view of Time. He felt that if the future of the world
depended solely on its antecedent state, there would be nothing
for God to do, once the world had been created. Every
moment Time seemed to annihilate the world ; therefore,
continuous creative intervention of God alone could guarantee
the conformity of the future to the past.

Descartes was wrestling, of course, with the old problem of
change ; but to Spinoza it was as arbitrary to account for the
order of nature by continuous divine intervention as to assert
that there were two, and only two, utterly distinct substances.
Spinoza argued that without an order of nature there could be
no scientific knowledge; unless the universe was rational it
could not be explored by reason, and he could not accept a
j>erpetual miracle to preserve the appearance of rationality. By
Equating the universe with God he gave a new meaning to laws
of nature. They were not transcendental imposed from out-
side but immanent, or expressions of internal relationships.
Nothing was supernatural ; everything was a system of logical
ground and consequent. The laws of nature must express
the real connections between things that are found within
nature. In a sense, laws are the thoughts of God, and the
universe is the body of God. The test of whether a law is true

42 ARCHITECTS OF THE UNIVERSE

is therefore a rational inquiry as to whether it fits into a har-
monious pattern. Spinoza was the first serious sponsor of the
coherence theory of Truth.

To speak of a " a thing/' according to Spinoza, is to make a
false abstraction. There are no separate " things/' There
are no separate " substances. " A substance, as Descartes says,
" requires nothing but itself in order to exist " ; but for
Spinoza this is tantamount to a definition of God. For what
else but God can require nothing but itself in order to exist ?
God is that, the non-existence of which cannot be conceived.
You cannot think of anything else without immediately realizing
that it is dependent on yet another thing ; God is the whole
series of so-called things, he is Everything the One which we
misperceive as the Many.

Just as there are no independent things, so there are no
independent ideas ; there is, rigorously speaking, only one
Idea. For whatever you think of leads on to something else
with which it is related. Begin with any idea you please, you
will be driven along the dialectiqal path that leads to the One,
the Totality, or as it seemed to later philosophers who adopted
this method of reasoning to the Absolute. What seems to us
independent exists only in an adjectival sense. There is only
one Subject, but an infinity of adjectives.

Descartes' thought and extension are not genuine substances,
according to Spinoza. They are but attributes of the one
Substance. Their particular manifestations are described by
him as modes. The relation between body and mind illustrates
the relationship between thought and extension throughout the
universe. There is no modification of mind without a modi-
fication of the body ; and so the realm of matter is not dead, at
Descartes believed ; it is animated by God.

Nor do thought and extension exhaust the richness of the
single Totality. Those are the only two attributes we are able
to know, but there is an infinity of attributes ; nevertheless,
because they are all predicates of a single subject, there is only
one universe. To take an analogy that could scarcely have
occurred to Spinoza, the reality unperceived by the human

ARCHITECTS OF THE UNIVERSE 43

mind nevertheless exists, like a fourth dimension unperceived
by a three-dimensional being.

The consequences of this view for ethics are startling, and
they were ruthlessly drawn by Spinoza. When we look at the
world as a rational whole, sub specie aeternitatis (under the form
of eternity), we reach a standpoint beyond good and evil.
Effects follow causes according to the unbreakable determinism
of the divine Reason. Our happiness depends on how clearly
we comprehend this necessity ; to fail to understand it is to
think confusedly. Emotional or imaginative thinking is con-
fused (inadequate) ; but rational thinking is clear (adequate).
The highest possible happiness is to attain cosmic conscious-
ness, to y be filled with elevated joy at the sublime spectacle of the
unity of all reality as an expression of immanent law.

This stupendous conception has dazzled men's minds like
the enchantments of Plato. It is worth all the effort required
to rise to it, just as the appreciation of great poetry or great
music is supremely worth while for its own sake.

Spinoza, of course, was execrated in his lifetime. He was
excommunicated by the synagogue and generally condemned as
an Atheist. He seems to have borne the scurrilous abuse poured
upon him with the philosophical calm that he recommended to
others. Few philosophers, it must be confessed, have shown
such persistent nobility of character. Refusing legacies and
pensions, he earned a frugal livelihood as a grinder of lenses,
and all that we know of his life shows him to have been sincere,
indifferent to personal advancement, and scrupulously honest.
He followed the light of reason with a fearlessness that may be
contrasted with the following admission by Descartes no
doubt with one eye upon the Catholic Church : " We ought to
submit to divine authority rather than to our own judgment,
even though the light of reason may seem to suggest with the
utmost clearness and evidence something else." (Principles of
Philosophy, I, 76.)

How much of Spinoza's system can be accepted to-day ?
This is a natural enough question to ask, but the point is really
whether any of the concepts that he clarified (we cannot say

44 ARCHITECTS OF THE UNIVERSE

originated) have stood the test of time. The immanence of
law and the idea of the unity of the universe are still significant ;
though, since we have the choice, most people who use that
concept in science would prefer to speak of Nature rather than
of God, Determinism, cause and effect, and the " substance- f
attribute " mode of formulation in general, have come under*
heavy fire. The whole procedure of Rationalism was soon to
be challenged; but, before considering the attack on his
method, let us glance at the very different results achieved by
Leibniz, following a similar procedure.

The Pluralistic Solution

Leibniz (1646-1716) was a very much less attractive character
than Spinoza, though the charge that he plagiarized some of
Spinoza's ideas, like the even more serious accusation that he
stole Newton's discovery of the Calculus, is undoubtedly base-
less. He, too, was an amateur philosopher ; he was very much
a man of affairs, a courtier and historian as well as a mathe-
matician. His philosophy at first glance seems so outrageous
and perverse that the modern reader would be tempted to dis-
miss it if he did not suddenly notice, beneath the fanciful
language, certain ideas that are surprisingly recognizable in the
writings of some contemporary physicists and philosophers. In
his lifetime Leibniz quarrelled with Newton, and until quite
recently it was assumed that Leibniz was not merely wrong but
guilty of Use-majest. In a sense it now seems that Leibniz was
right and Newton wrong, for the quarrel was largely about
absolute space and absolute time, both of which concepts have
been since abandoned by physics.

Spinoza sacrificed the Many to the One ; Leibniz the One
to the Many. Spinoza gives the impression of ranging through
inter-stellar spaces with a mighty telescope, opening up vistas
of universes beyond all reckoning ; Leibniz gives the impression
of looking through a microscope and discovering universes in
miniature, " infinity in a grain of sand."

Spinoza encourages a false and dangerous feeling that it is
easier to imagine his sort of world than Leibniz's. The truth

ARCHITECTS OF THE UNIVERSE 45

is that neither can be imagined, but Leibniz runs counter to
exceedingly obstinate mental prejudices. In trying to think
with Leibniz we seem to be forced against the grain of language
as indeed we are.

And yet there are a number of common-sense beliefs which
Leibniz defends and which Spinoza rejects. If " things," in
the last analysis, are states of a single substance, how is it that
such adjectives as ourselves can feel like nouns ? For that is
really what it amounts to. What becomes of individuality, per-
sonality, freedom ? If everything is God, are we to say that
God has illusions ?

Spinoza tried hard to forestall such objections ; my point
now is that whether he succeeded or not, his analysis still seems
to run counter to our instinctive beliefs, and Leibniz must not
be condemned because he runs against quite different instinctive
beliefs.

For Leibniz, freedom and individuality were facts. He
could account for them only by returning, with a difference, to
the atomism which Spinoza repudiated. He believed, as a
Rationalist, in innate ideas. That meant that the truth about
the universe, the nature of its bricks, and the secret of their
organization, must be discoverable by looking into his own
mind. The trouble about this procedure, we may well feel, is
that different philosophers find different innate ideas ; but each
of them can retort that the others do not look hard enough, or
fail to interpret properly what they find.

Descartes had seen God, substance, thought, extension, and
self. So, in a sense, had Leibniz, but his interpretation was
vastly different. Spinoza had no theological axe to grind and
was not greatly troubled by freewill. It was otherwise with
Descartes, And Leibniz tried to show what would follow if
God had created a world of free individuals. There could
be no half-way house such as Dualism, in that event ; each
individual, if it were free, if it were exempt not merely from
constraint but from metaphysical necessity, would be a separate
substance.

But it would not be something passive, a mere substratum

46 ARCHITECTS OF THE UNIVERSE

which received various qualities, and which could be stripped
of those qualities and continue to exist. It would be active.
It would have a specific nature and it would express that nature
in its activity. Its striving would make it analogous to force
rather than to inert matter. As an individual it would have a
special kind of unity not the unity of a compound, but the
unity of an organic whole. An atom conceived as a material
particle can be divided and sub-divided ; never mind how many
times you cut it in half, it is still a material particle. But you
cannot divide up an organic unity without annihilating it.

Such a unity, incapable of sub-division, is called a " simple,"
in contrast to a compound. Later on we shall meet with the
different notion of logical simples irreducible ideas, out of
which a picture of the world can be constructed. Leibniz
analysed the universe into simple substances, irreducible
organic wholes, unities of forces analogous to individual minds ;
by his own definition these were separate substances that is
to say, they were strictly independent of each other. Each
existed in its own right ; each was solely concerned with
expressing its own nature. These non-spatial, irreducible
unities he called monads.

The Viewpoint of a Monad

It is a difficult conception. We certainly cannot imagine it.
It is a product of reason. As far as that goes, can we imagine
a mathematical point ? Clearly we cannot, yet we make use of
the idea and soon stop worrying about the difficulty of imagining
it. It can be conceived, though not imagined, and belongs to
the ideal world which reason constructs.

We must not think of a monad as in any way resembling a
material atom. It is outside of space and time. Monads are
not next to each other, in a spatial sense, any more than ideas
are. How can we form any notion of them ? Since each of
us is a monad, however, we merely have to look at ourselves.

I am sitting in a room, and I can look through a window at
people crossing the street. I can look up at the sky and see the
lun. I can think of Shakespeare and Julius Caesar and yestcr-

ARCHITECTS OF THE UNIVERSE 47

day's lunch. Yet all this is in my mind. The sun is in my
mind ; so are other people, so are Shakespeare and Julius
Caesar. I have a twinge of toothache ; but I cannot feel the
toothache of the man crossing the street, and he cannot feel
mine. In other words, I am locked in my private world. I
know only my own experiences. They are orderly and intelli-
gible. They constitute a unity. I cannot receive anyone
else's experiences. I am a monad.

The problem of Solipsism, or how we can know of the exist-
ence of what we do not experience, did not trouble Leibniz ;
he disclosed the problem almost accidentally by describing what
seems at first sight a contradiction in terms, a whole universe of
solipsisms. In the last resort theology could be invoked to
account for the existence of other people, other solipsists. God
could always get him out of his difficulties ; and God was not
conceived as a hypothesis, to explain the origin of the external
universe. God and the experience of self were part of the data.
God was not an assumption, but a " stubborn fact " found by
reason.

Let us pause for a moment and consider where this unusual
way of looking at things takes us. If it be granted that God and
substance are inescapable ideas, then by exploring their meaning
we can deduce a community of simple, indivisible substances,
a society of solipsists. The reader, confronted with this con-
ception for the first time, may reluctantly admit that part of the
universe can be thought of in this curious fashion, but he will
protest that a very big part has been left out. Material objects
have been left out. We seem to be offered a society of minds
without bodies, without animals or vegetables or minerals ;
surely Leibniz cannot mean that lumps of rock, tables, and
chairs are not really composed of material particles, but are
assemblages of minds ?

Yet that is what he does mean. Leibniz is no less ruthless
than Spinoza in carrying his logic to its surprising conclusion.
The paper on which I am writing, the desk on which it rests,
the room in which I sit, are assemblages of minds, according to
Leibniz. Does this mean that the pen with which I write is

48 ARCHITECTS OF THE UNIVERSE

conscious ? No, Leibniz does not mean anything quite as out-
rageous as that. The pen is composed of monads, and monads
are minds, but to be a mind it is not necessary to be conscious.
Does not the modern psychologist talk of unconscious mind ?

Very well, let even this be granted. How caii compounds
of minds yield the experience of solid, coloured, noisy, moving
objects ? Leibniz is not embarrassed by this question, for both
Descartes and Galileo have extracted secondary qualities from
the world disclosed by reason. Once such a step has been
taken it is easy enough to go still farther and assert that all the
appearances of matter are delusive.

In his own words : " I hold space and also time to be some-
thing purely relative. Space is an order of co-existences, as
time is an order of successions. Space denotes in terms of
possibility an order of things which, in so far as they exist to-
gether, exist at the same time, whatever be their several ways of
existing. Whenever we see various things together we are
conscious of this order between things themselves."

The Problem of Knowledge

No sooner do we lose patience with Leibniz, because he
seems to say something utterly fantastic, than we are arrested
by a phrase, a turn of thought of astonishing modernity. We
get a vivid impression of a man with incredibly penetrating in-
sight, struggling with the inevitable limitations and theological
prejudices of his age. He saw quite clearly that it was arbitrary
to divide the universe into Thought and Extension, Primary and
Secondary qualities. Either individuality had to be aban-
doned, and you had to go forward with Spinoza to the one, all-
devouring Reality ; or you had to retain the individuality of
the Many and drop the common-sense notion of matter.
Leibniz makes more explicit the distinction between the two
worlds Common-sense and Reason, Appearance and Reality.
He paves the way for Kant's distinction between noumeria,
or things in themselves, and phenomena, or things as ex-
perienced.

Leibniz opens up the problem of Idealism. He is com-

ARCHITECTS OF THE UNIVERSE 49

monly regarded as a Pluralist (believing in many substances)
in the sense ttiat Spinoza was a Monist (believing in one sub-
stance). We can almost say that Spinoza regarded the whole
universe as a Monad, whereas Leibniz regarded God as the
Supreme Monad (Monas Monadum), and the creator of a
universe of separate monads, quite incapable of acting on each
other, each attending to its own affairs, yet mutually adjusted
like synchronized clocks, at the instant of creation, so that
they could function in compounds (bodies) with the delusive
appearance of physical interaction.

Their synchronization was the most dubious part of his
scheme. By treating knowledge as a representation in the mind,
rather tfran as direct perception of an external world, he set
the stage for a thorough-gping Idealism ; but this very insist-
ence that the monads were blind and could not influence each
other as atoms were supposed to do led to problems that he
could not solve without invoking God. This aspect of the
Monadology has no special significance for us to-day. We may
ask, however, how he supposed that an individual mind could
even formally represent to itself the whole society of monads if,
as he says, " the monads have no windows by means of which
anything can enter in or pass out ? "

Once again there is a refreshing modernity in Leibniz's
solution. The monads do not interact, according to the
strictly physical principle of action and reaction ; but that does
not mean that they cannot communicate. When someone
gives me an idea, it is not as though he gave me a pint of his
blood ; ideas do not literally pass in and out of our minds.

Each monad is a system of force, rather than of matter ; it
is a system of activities. Its freedom is limited only by the
existence of other equally free systems of self-activity. This
mutual limitation is interpreted by the monad as knowledge of
the external world. By reason of its divinely appointed status
in 'the totality of monads each individual monad mirrors the
whole, more or less imperfectly.

Thus, according to the clarity or confusedness of its percep-
tion, each monad has its place in a hierarchy ; there are the

50 ARCHITECTS OF THE UNIVERSE

unconscious perceptions of a stone, rising in stages through the
vegetable and animal orders to the conscious apperceptions of
the rational monad, and the still clearer ideas of angels and
archangels, and so on until we reach God. A stone, or a
human body, forms a compound in the hierarchy under a
dominant monad. Although this part of the theory seems re-
mote enough from modern problems, it is of interest to note
that McDougall has found the conception of a dominant monad
of some value in psychology.

It is impossible in a brief summary to do more than indicate
some of the most interesting features of Leibniz's thought. At
every turn he seems to uncover new and fascinating ideas.

Kant picked up the thread that the mind constructs a formal
pattern of reality and does not give us a picture of things-in-
themselves. The notion of a windowless monad, once the
theological structure is cut away, carries us into the perplexities
of Subjective Idealism. Another most fruitful suggestion was
that a thing is what, it does which leads us towards White-
head's universe of events, instead of passive quality-bearing
substances.

The relational theory of space and time would have made
Leibniz more at ease in the. presence of Einstein than of Newton
(apart from their personal feud) ; and he would not have been
so distressed as Spinoza about the self-sufficient electron.
He would certainly have been at home in the company of
psychologists who speak of " unconscious minds. " He would
have appreciated Wittgenstein's argument for logical simples,
but he would have been greatly shocked by his repudiation of
metaphysics.

That many modern conceptions were latent in Leibniz must
not blind us to the deep cleavage between much of seventeenth-
century and twentieth-century thought. The theological back-
ground has vanished and the scientists have made tremendous
inroads into the happy hunting-ground over which the philoso-
pher once roamed.

We do not read Leibniz or Spinoza nowadays in order to
discover how the universe works. We can, however, read them

ARCHITECTS OF THE UNIVERSE 51

for the peculiar intellectual excitement they give, for an enjoy-
ment which is none the less deep because it may not materially
add to our knowledge. No mere summary of their ideas can
give the intense intellectual satisfaction of following in detail
not the working of the universe, but the process of rare minds
grappling with the profoundest of problems Spinoza, trying
to show how the world must appear to God, and Leibniz (in
Whitehead's apt phrase), trying to show what it feels like to be
an atom.

The first adventure of Rationalism was one of the most
daring assaults of the human mind. It was an attempt to
demonstrate the power of reason by deducing the nature of the
universe from some self-validated concepts believed to be im-
plicit in the mind. We were thought to carry an answer-book
within us, as it were. But suppose that, after all, the answers
were not already buried in the mind ? Suppose we were not
endowed with these basic concepts out of which we could con-
struct a ground plan of the universe with confidence that it was
not a mere work of the imagination ? If the Rationalist pro-
cedure was invalid, how else could we attain the certainty for
which Descartes longed ?

The whole of this method was challenged by John Locke.
He raised the disturbing question of how our ideas the bricks
with which we construct our system of Reality are obtained.
He was led to deny the existence of innate ideas which were
the foundations of deductive Rationalism. The denial led to
the formation of a rival school of thought, Empiricism.

USEFUL REFERENCES

Life and Philosophy of Spinoza, by F. Pollock ; 1880.

A Study of Spinoza's Ethics, by H. H. Joachim ; 1901.

Spinoza's Ethics and De Intellectus Emendatione ; Everyman edition.

Leibniz, by H. Wildon Carr ; 1929.

A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz, by Bertrand

Russell ; 1900.
The Monadology and Other Writings, by Leibniz, trs. by R. Latta ;

CHAPTER FIVE

The Revolt Against Metaphysics

ONE evening in the winter of 1670 half a dozen men sat
together in a room in London discussing various problems of
morality and religion. They could make no progress. " After
we had awhile puzzled ourselves," Locke relates, " without
coming any nearer a resolution of those doubts which per-
plexed us, it came into my thoughts, that we took a wrong
course ; and that, before we set ourselves upon inquiries of that
nature, it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see
what objects our understandings were or were not fitted to deal
with. This I proposed to the company, who all readily assented,
that this should be our first inquiry. "

At the next meeting, Locke says, he produced " some hasty
and undigested thoughts on a subject I had never before con-
sidered." But the matter could not rest there ; Locke was
committed to an inquiry which resulted in the epoch-making
Essay Concerning Human Understanding and laid the foundations
of a new branch of philosophy Epistemology, or the Theory of
Knowledge.

John Locke (1632-1704) was born in Somersetshire, ten
years before Newton and the beginning of the Civil War, and
sixteen years after the death of Shakespeare. The first edition
of the Essay was published in 1690, and the final version (with
important additions) in 1700. It matured slowly during a
period of tumultuous happenings and tremendous intellectual
activity. The world was changing its shape, and Locke him-
self was caught up in the flux of events. After the disgrace of
his patron, Lord Shaftesbury, he took refuge for a while in
Holland under an assumed name.

On the whole, however, he had a comfortable life, and held

5*

THE REVOLT AGAINST METAPHYSICS 53

a number of lucrative public offices. No doubt he found these
more profitable than the practice of medicine, but his training
as a physician left its mark on his speculations. In later years,
freed from financial worries, he could contemplate the intel-
lectual ferment of his day with detachment.

He entered the debate as an amateur, but he brought into it
the eye for practical detail of a doctor and administrator, and
the robust if sometimes complacent common-sense that char-
acterized an age of expanding prosperity. He was sturdily re-
solved to bring philosophy down to earth. " In an age that
produces such masters as the great Huygenius, and the incom-
parable Mr. Newton, with some other of that strain, it is
ambitioji enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clear-
ing ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies
in the way to knowledge ; which certainly had been very much
more advanced in the world, if the endeavours of ingenious and
industrious men had not been much cumbered with the learned
but frivolous use of uncouth, affected, or unintelligible terms
introduced into the sciences, and there made an art of to that
degree, that philosophy, which is nothing but the true know-
ledge of things, was thought unfit or uncapable to be brought
into well-bred company and polite conversation/'

The Problem of Language

What is the " rubbish " to which he contemptuously refers ?
It is partly the remains of Aristotelianism, partly the jargon of
the medieval Schoolmen, and partly certain aspects of the then
fashionable Cartesianism. He does not appear to have been
interested in either Spinoza or Leibniz, and although the latter
sent Locke a very detailed criticism of the Essay, Locke died
before he could reply. We may assume, however, that he
would not have had much patience with the abstruse concep-
tions of the Monadology. He was opposed to the whole pro-
cedure of the metaphysicians. It seemed to him a disease of
language.

Therein lies the novelty of Locke. He challenged the
validity of the prevailing method of philosophy. He saw with

54 THE REVOLT AGAINST METAPHYSICS

extraordinary clearness that many of the traditional problems
were only pseudo-problems. They were arguments about
words. " The greatest part of the questions and controversies
that perplex mankind depend on the doubtful and uncertain
use of words." Again : " There is scarce any sect in philo-
sophy has not a distinct set of terms that others understand not.
But yet this gibberish, which in the weakness of human under-
standing, serves so well to palliate men's ignorance and cover
their errors, comes by familiar use among those of the same
tribe to seem the most important part of language."

The words that instantly arouse his wrath are Substance,
Genera, Species, and Essence. He claims that instead of
studying real facts the metaphysicians studied names and pre-
tended to extract knowledge from empty sounds. Thus they
constructed a world of reason that had no contact with the
world of ordinary experience. Words, according to Locke, are
conventional signs upon which we agree for the purpose of
intercourse. They represent ideas ; but they do not, of
course, resemble ideas. By making marks on paper or uttering
sounds we excite in others the ideas which the words signify for
us.

It would be quite impossible for every specific thing to have
a particular name. The uniqueness of each individual thing
and of each personal experience cannot be directly communi-
cated. Somehow we have to construct an inter-subjective
world for the purpose of discourse. We do so by the device of
inventing general terms. All things that exist are only par-
ticulars ; but by a process of abstraction we can make general
names man, animal, horse, metal, for example. What
distinguishes a particular individual from his neighbour can be
ignored ; the concept is formed, as a labour-saving device, so
that we can distinguish a man from a horse or a piece of iron.

The problem of the existence of Universals, which led to the
controversy between the Realists and Nominalists, is fictitious,
according to Locke. Universals do not exist ; they are lin-
guistic abstractions. Particulars alone exist. " This is that
which in short I would say, viz., that all the great business of

THE REVOLT AGAINST METAPHYSICS 55

genera and species, and their essences, amounts to no more but
this that men making abstract ideas, and settling them in their
minds, with names annexed to them, do thereby enable them-
selves to consider things, and discourse of them, as it were, in
bundles, for the easier and readier improvement and com-
munication of their knowledge ; which would advance but
slowly, were their words and thoughts confined only to par-
ticulars."

The Sources of Knowledge

What exactly are these particulars, that the mind assembles
into bundles or classes, of which words are the signs ? Locke
calls them ideas a term which must be examined carefully.
He does not use it in Plato's sense. " Every man being con-
scious to himself, that he thinks, and that which his mind is
applied about, whilst thinking, being the ideas that are theie,
it is past doubt that men have in their mind several ideas, such
as are those expressed by the words, ' whiteness, hardness,
sweetness, thinking, motion, man, elephant, army, drunken-
ness/ "

These ideas are the objects of the thinking subject. They
are the crude materials of knowledge. Our knowledge is
limited by the number of ideas we possess. They come from
two sources : some are the effects of causes outside the mind,
others are due to observation of the workings of the mind on
what enters from outside. Thus we do not directly perceive
what is outside the mind. Our consciousness does not reflect
the external world like a mirror. Simple ideas are not, in the
main, copies of external things, but signs of them, just as words
do not resemble the ideas to which they refer, but are signs of
them.

As Locke puts it : " Let us then suppose the mind to be, as
we say, white paper, void of characters, without any ideas ;
how comes it to be furnished ? Whence comes it by that vast
store, which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted
on it with an almost endless variety ? Whence has it all the
materials of reason and knowledge ? To this the answer is, in
E

56 THE REVOLT AGAINST METAPHYSICS

one word, From experience : in that all our knowledge is
founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our
observation, employed either about external sensible objects,
or about internal operations of our minds, perceived and re-
flected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understand-
ings with all the materials of thinking. These two are the
fountains of knowledge, from whence all the ideas we have, or
can naturally have, do spring. "

Observation and experience give us our knowledge and set
its boundaries. This is the doctrine of Empiricism, as opposed
to deductive Rationalism. It expresses the spirit of the new
experimental philosophy. " The metaphysicians/' wrote Roger
Cotes in a preface to the second edition of Newton's Principia,
" being entirely employed in giving names to things, and not
in searching into things themselves, we may say that they have
invented a philosophical way of speaking, but not that they
have made known to us true Philosophy."

The barren search for occult qualities and essences seemed to
be at an end. As Newton wrote : " To tell us that every
Species of things is endowed with an occult, specific quality,
by which it acts and produces manifest effects, is to tell us
nothing/'

Primary and Secondary Ideas

Observe and experiment, ran the new order of the day.
Look at the facts, not at the words which merely represent
them. But here was a dilemma, for how can you look at facts
if the objects of knowledge are not things in the external world,
but merely the signs of things ? Having got past one set of
signs (words), it seemed at first as though the philosopher was
halted by a Chinese wall of another set of signs (ideas).

Locke saw this difficulty. He was not a Subjectivist. He
takes it for granted that there is an outside world. The objects
in this real world affect our senses. They have the power (from
which he derives the notion of cause) to give rise to certain
ideas ; they are like a metal seal, and we are the wax.

The pattern is the outcome of that sort of die and our sort

THE REVOLT AGAINST METAPHYSICS 57

of wax. For example, beings differently constituted, with
quite other senses than ours, would get very different ideas of
the real world. But the knowledge we have is not illusory ;
the modification of our field of consciousness is itself a fact of
nature. We are contrived as we are for nature's own purposes.

And some of the ideas imprinted on the mind do correspond
to the characters possessed by external things. To explain this
Locke draws a distinction, between idea and quality. " What-
soever the mind perceives in itself, or is the immediate object
of perception, thought or understanding, that I call * idea ' ;
and the power to produce any idea in our mind, I call * quality '
of the subject wherein the power is."

Locke therefore accepts the distinction made by Galileo and
Descartes between objective and subjective qualities. " Ori-
ginal or Primary Qualities " are said to be what we cannot
think away, what is utterly inseparable from the object, despite
all the changes it undergoes. They amount to a description of
matter. They produce in us such simple ideas as solidity,
extension, figure, motion, and number. Secondary qualities
" are nothing in the objects themselves, but powers to produce
various sensations in us by their primary qualities."

The ideas of primary qualities resemble the external objects.
If our senses were acute enough the secondary qualities of the
bodies we observe would disappear, and we would be able to
contemplate the primary qualities. But Locke, with his dry
common-sense, adds that even if " by the help of such micro-
scopical eyes a man could penetrate farther than ordinary into
the secret composition and radical texture of bodies, he would
not make any great advantage by the change, if such an acute
sight would not serve to conduct him to the market and
exchange."

Nothing was known of biology and evolution in the seven-
teenth century. Locke, however, could have given guarded
assent to the following quotation from a contemporary work of
philosophy, though he would have substituted God for Nature :
" Nature, in determining the character of the animal organism,
of its sense-organs and nervous system generally, has had in

58 THE REVOLT AGAINST METAPHYSICS

view primarily only the self-preservation of the species. Yet in
following this path, she has also made possible the acquiring of
knowledge. In preparing such knowledge as is of aid in
survival allowing no more knowledge than is indispensable
for this purpose she has in man brought into existence, or at
least liberated, a type of sense-experience which, when rein-
forced by instruments of precision, when sifted and tested by
all manner of indirect experimental devices, yields data suffi-
cient for the attaining of scientific insight/' (Prolegomena to
an Idealist Theory of Knowledge, N. Kemp Smith.)

The Boundaries of Knowledge

Locke believed that our knowledge of nature is restricted to
ideas which come from outside through the senses, and to which
we are powerless to add. Leibniz, it will be recalled, took
exactly the opposite view that the monads are windowless,
and all knowledge is an elucidation of what is already implicit
in the mind. For Locke, however, " unconscious perception "
is a contradiction in terms. The mind is active in abstracting
and combining to frame complex ideas, but no ideas are latent
in it.

The raw material of knowledge consists, therefore, in those
simple ideas which are excited by the action of the external
world on the senses, and in those ideas which arise from the
operation of the mind itself on these sensations. The latter is
reflective knowledge, and Locke likens it to " internal sense " ;
it is our experience of thinking and willing. Thus we have :

(A) the powers and qualities that exist in the external world ;

(B) the powers and operations of the mind ; (C) simple ideas of
sensation and reflection ; (D) composite ideas and abstractions
derived from simple ideas by the activity of the mind.

It is impossible, as he frankly acknowledges, to construct a
ground-plan of the entire universe out of such elements, or to
produce any scheme that has the certainty of mathematics.
Locke disavows any such ambitions. Having searched for
evidence of innate ideas and found none, he is unable to escape
with Descartes from the confusion and unreliability of the

THE REVOLT AGAINST METAPHYSICS 59

senses into a logical realm where everything is exact and
impeccably demonstrable. He has no window of intuition
through which he can glimpse a deeper reality than that dis-
closed by experience. He has denied the existence of any such
short cut to truth. As he insists : " I must appeal to experience
and observation whether I am in the right ; the best way to
come to truth being to examine things as really they are, and
not to conclude they are as we fancy of ourselves, or have been
taught by others to imagine."

Again, in a passage the modesty of which contrasts (perhaps
ironically) with the grandiose aims of the metaphysicians : "I
pretend not to teach, but to inquire, and therefore cannot but
confess v here again, that external and internal sensation are the
only passages that I can find of knowledge to the understanding.
These alone, as far as I can discover, are the windows by which
light is let into this dark room. For methinks the understand-
ing is not much unlike a closet wholly shut from light, with only
some little openings left to let in external visible resemblances
or ideas of things without ; would the pictures coming into
such a dark room but stay there, and lie so orderly as to be
found upon occasion, it would very much resemble the under-
standing of a man in reference to all objects of sight and the
ideas of them.' *

Where Locke Fails

Lpcke can be read with enjoyment, and his influence is still
strongly felt. The arguments with which he applies his first
principles are so subtle and exhaustive that one rises from the
spell of his lucidity and the vast sweep of his mind with a feeling
that there is little more to be said. Philosophy has been made
to speak the language of everyday life ; and the great systems
of the metaphysicians seem like elaborate earthworks of wasted
ingenuity.

But when we look more closely it becomes evident, un-
happily, that Locke has merely started yet another tunnel, from
another side of the same mountain into which all philosophers
have been burrowing. It is a fresh approach, but it only gives

6o THE REVOLT AGAINST METAPHYSICS

rise to new questions. There are many flaws in Locke's system.
Let us glance at a few of them.

(1) Is it really the case that all our general notions are
derived from simple ideas ? It would obviously be desirable
to reduce them to units if possible. It may be that in making
this attempt Locke was on sound lines, for without mystical
aids it is difficult otherwise to show that the world disclosed by
reason and the world of sense-experience have a common refer-
ence. But parts of Locke's analysis are undoubtedly defective.
His account of space and causation is inadequate ; and although
such ideas as yellow, heat, cold, soft, and hard, can be accepted
as " simple and unmixed," surely we cannot take extension,
solidity, mobility, existence, duration, and motivity as being
" original ideas " on which our knowledge depends. These,
however, are points of detail, and for the moment we must leave
it an open question whether a satisfactory reduction can be
made. More serious is Locke's departure from the empirical
method by admitting that some knowledge is intuitive.

(2) Locke holds that we know self by intuition, God by
demonstration, and all else by sensation. His proof of God's
existence is cosmological ; it is an attempt to demonstrate the
necessity by an appeal to facts, and so he maintains his distance
from the Rationalists who claimed that the existence of God is
a self-evident proposition in the sense that if we can think of
a perfect being he must exist, for existence is a part of perfection.
" For, the having the idea of anything in our mind no more
proves the existence of that thing than the picture of a man
evidences his being in the world, or the visions of a dream make
thereby a true history."

It did not occur to Locke to try to reduce self to a succession
of sensations. Hume and Condillac endeavoured to do so, and,
whether they succeeded or no, they were certainly following
the strict empirical method. Locke departs from its rigour
when he declares : " The knowledge of our own being we have
by intuition."

Admittedly he does not set out to give a theory of the nature
of the mind. His "ideas of reflection" are ideas of the

THE REVOLT AGAINST METAPHYSICS 6l

operations of the mind, not of the mind itself. But it is impor-
tant to note his insistence that, although these operations are
not produced by sensation, they could not occur without it.
If the external world provided no data, the mind would have
nothing to be conscious of a doctrine that would undermine
Locke's religious beliefs.

(3) Just as the mind is the ground of ideas, so material sub-
stance is the ground of the " powers " and " qualities " of
which Locke continually, but rather vaguely, speaks. He
appeals to common-sense. " Whilst I write this, I have, by
the paper affecting my eyes, that idea produced in my mind
which whatever object causes, I call white ; by which I know
that thaj quality or accident (i.e., whose appearance before my
eyes always causes that idea) doth really exist and hath a being
without me."

One cannot, he protests, think of mere qualities existing
together in a bundle. They must have some kind of support.
To the question of the lonians, " What is the world made of ? "
it is impossible to reply that it is made of qualities. And so
" we accustom ourselves to suppose some substratum wherein
qualities do subsist and from which they result ; which there-
fore we call * Substance V The only idea anyone has of sub-
stance is " a supposition of he knows not what support of such
qualities which are capable of producing simple ideas in us."
It is nothing but " the supposed and unknown support of these
qualities we find existing. "

Locke cannot make a complete break with tradition, and it
seems to irritate him. He fights shy of any exact definition of
substance because it would almost certainly land him back in
metaphysics. And so the reality of the external world is left
precariously dependent on an obscure " I know-not- what "
and an almost Johnsonian appeal to common-sense.

(4) Finally, Locke is vulnerable in his account of primary
and secondary qualities. It was proving a great practical con-
venience to the scientist to abstract matter and motion from the
welter of experience, and substitute them for the traditional
categories inherited from Aristotle. But to assert, as Locke

62 THE REVOLT AGAINST METAPHYSICS

did, that an external reality literally possesses these primary
characteristics, that certain of the simple ideas which are the
objects of the mind are true copies of the unknown something
outside the mind, is not consistent with a rigorous empiricism.

The Outcome of Empiricism

The greatness of Locke's contribution was to challenge the
prevailing fashion and to set philosophy on a fresh track.
Bacon and Hobbes were like lone explorers, sighting new terri-
tory, but Locke arrived, and set about the task of surveying it
in a methodical and fairly scientific fashion. The new terri-
tory, in a word, was experience. The work of his immediate
successors was to investigate what happened when the whole of
knowledge was restricted to an interpretation of experience.
Any attempt to get outside the circle of experienced facts came
to be condemned as metaphysics.

The results were somewhat surprising. Locke went to a
great deal of trouble to soothe th^ anxieties of his theological
critics, notably the Bishop of Worcester. They feared that
" the new way of Ideas " would undermine religious orthodoxy.
Locke's own religious beliefs were clear and untroubled ; but
there can be little doubt that the Bishop's fears were
justified.

Paradoxically enough, those who saw in empiricism a firm
support for science were also soon to be disillusioned. It freed
science from the shackles of medievalism, but only at a great
cost. For it robbed it of all hope of obtaining certitude. The
only certain knowledge was contained in our immediate pre-
sentations ; all else was interpretation, and merely probable,
with the exception of mathematics, which was regarded by
Locke (though not by Hume) as ideal.

Neither Locke nor his followers, of course, could foresee the
extent to which science would one day transform the world.
It had altered man's picture of the universe, but it had not yet
made much difference to everyday life. The " microscopical
eye," to which Locke refers, had not yet helped men " to go to
the market or the exchange " in a railway train, a motor car, or

THE REVOLT AGAINST METAPHYSICS 63

aeroplane, or made any great difference to what they found on
arrival.

The rationalist method had made it possible to speak about
the universe as a whole ; that was its chief recommendation.
When it was abandoned, it was possible to speak only of
experiences they constituted the entire universe. The im-
mediate development of empiricism was therefore a purely
subjective philosophy for which an external world was re-
dundant.

What are the limits of the understanding ? asked Locke, at
the outset of his inquiry. His final answer gave cold comfort
to the scientist. " I deny not but a man accustomed to rational
and regular experiments shall be able to see farther into the
nature of bodies, and guess righter at their yet unknown
properties, than one that is a stranger to them ; but yet, as I
have said, this is but judgment and opinion, not knowledge
and certainty. This way of getting and improving our know-
ledge in substances only by experience and history, which is all
that the weakness of our faculties in this state of mediocrity
which we are in in this world can attain to, makes me suspect
that natural philosophy is not capable of being made a science/'

The sceptical outcome was inevitable, for " as God has set
some things in broad daylight ... so, in the greatest part of
our concernment, he has afforded us only the twilight, as I
may so say, of probability." And it was not long before the
broad daylight disappeared.

Berkeley seized on the weakness of Locke's doctrine of sub-
stance. This mysterious something, this " I-know-not-what,"
could have no place in a thorough-going empiricism. We have
no experience of this substratum supposedly outside ourselves.
Why not rest satisfied with the ideas and eliminate the otiose,
metaphysical concept of substance ?

Hume was even more drastic. He applied the same sort of
criticism to both mind and cause. Locke had stated that the
mind's knowledge of itself is intuitive but what has intuition
to do with empiricism ? We are never conscious of the self,
said Hume ; we are conscious only of its presumed states. We

64 THE REVOLT AGAINST METAPHYSICS

know only the elements, as it were, the atoms of sensation which
flicker and vanish. Is not the idea of a self or ego as illegitimate
as substance ?

He went still farther. Locke had tacitly assumed the
existence of causation. But how do we really know that the
sun will rise to-morrow ? Surely all that an empiricist can say
is that it has done so in the past, and so we have formed a habit
of expectation ? What necessary connection is there between
one bit of experience and another, so that we can speak of one
always causing the other ?

This was the catastrophic result of the rejection of meta-
physics. The external world was annihilated ; and with it
both the self and any possibility of knowledge beyond the
presentation of the fleeting instant.

The very structure of reality seemed to collapse, once the
metaphysical props had been taken away. It was Kant who
tried to rescue the English philosophers from the wreck they
had made and he turned for assistance to Leibniz, who had
been forgotten in the commotion.

USEFUL REFERENCES

A History of English Philosophy, by W. R. Sorley ; 1937.

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, by John Locke ; 1690.

New Essays Concerning Human Understanding, by G. W. Leibniz
(first published in 1765), is a criticism of Locke's Essay.
Condillac's Traite des Sensations (1754), and Traiti des Systemes
(1749), show a radical development from Locke.

CHAPTER SIX

The Great Dilemma

IT is possible to imagine a man trying to escape from the
calamities of a world in dissolution by shutting his eyes and
pretending that what is happening is not real. But no such
conditions existed at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
The English Revolution lay well behind ; the ugliness of
industrialism was hidden in the future.

The new experimental philosophy had been astonishingly
successful. Its exponents could look back contemptuously on
the metaphysical quagmires in which bygone philosophers had
floundered. They scoffed at the medieval Schoolmen and
derided Aristotle without realizing, however, that they had
not freed themselves from all his mistakes. Nevertheless, they
had good reason to feel that at last they were on the right track.
The veil of mystery was being stripped from the face of
nature.

There was little mystery in the world of Addison and Steele,
Pope and Defoe ; and there was none in the official religion of
the period. The emphasis was laid on the reasonableness of
Christianity. Locke's essay on this subject appeared in 1695,
and in the following year Toland published Christianity not
Mysterious. Science seemed to supplement, and even con-
firm, a sober, de-symbolized, Protestant theology. " The
eternal silence of these infinite spaces makes me afraid/' Pascal
had cried ; but such foolish fears did not disturb the " polite
society," to which Locke addressed himself. Science had dis-
closed " a mighty maze, but not without a plan," and this
reflection was found so comforting that a bust of Newton was
placed in Trinity College, Cambridge. He had almost become
a saint of the new, intellectually respectable Protestantism.

65

66 THE GREAT DILEMMA

" Nature and Nature's law lay hid in night ;
God said, Let Newton be ! and all was light/'

At first sight, therefore, it seems an odd moment in which to
cast doubts on the reality of the external world. Yet two
philosophers announced, almost simultaneously, their con-
viction that matter did not exist. Leibniz's TModicee appeared
in 1710, the same year that saw the publication of Berkeley's
Principles of Human Knowledge. The Monadologie came out
in 1714, a year after Berkeley's Three Dialogues between Hylas
and Philonous. Leibniz, as we have seen, arrived at his con-
clusion on metaphysical grounds ; Berkeley was driven to his
by trying to iron out the inconsistencies of " the new way of
ideas " ; and so two opposite methods of inquiry, the one
metaphysical, the other empirical, led to a similar verdict that
the material world-is a delusive appearance.

Abstraction and Reality

" I refute it thus ! " exclaimed Dr. Johnson, kicking a large
stone. The plain man may be pardoned for feeling some
impatience with subtle arguments that seem to show that stones
and tables, and the very stars whose movements Newton had
reduced to law, do not really exist. What can this be but
sophistry and a playing with words ? Berkeley had devoted
much of his energy to a project for building a college in Ber-
muda. Admittedly the college never existed, outside Berke-
ley's mind, but did he ever doubt the existence of Bermuda ?
Did he doubt the existence of tar-water, which he seemed to
regard as a sovereign cure for most bodily ailments ?

Clearly he did not. Yet if Dr. Johnson, and other plain
men, had taken the trouble to read Berkeley they would have
seen that Immaterialism did not require any such denial of
the evidence of the senses. Berkeley wrote : " I do not argue
against the existence of any one thing that we can apprehend,
either by sense or reflection. That the things I see with my
eyes and touch with my hands do exist, really exist, I make not
the least question. The only thing whose existence we deny

THE GREAT DILEMMA 67

is that which philosophers call matter or corporeal substance.
And in doing of this, there is no damage done to the rest of
mankind, who, I dare say, will never miss it."

Nothing could be clearer. Stones and tables and stars
" exist," because we experience them. Matter, however, is
just an abstract noun. You may postulate " matter " but
you cannot experience it. In the bad old days philosophers had
supposed that abstract ideas really did exist, just as savages
still believe that names have some mysterious existence and
power of their own. To Berkeley this was sheer superstition.

It is unfortunate that the whole discussion was not kept
within the sphere of logic and language. Both Locke and
Berkeley had seen the enormous importance of investigating
the function of words. They rightly regarded words as signs
but signs of what ? If we know only particulars, how can we
arrive at universals ? And if we cannot speak about universals
we are reduced to baby-talk.

For example, look at something moving ; say, a stone in
flight. It describes a parabola. But another moving object
may describe a circle or an ellipse or go straight up and down.
A single word is required to signify all these happenings. The
word employed is " motion." Without such a word Newton
could not have stated his famous laws.

Words like " motion," " inertia," " man," " universe,"
" triangle," are concepts. They are an essential part of our
intellectual equipment. Unlike percepts, they are not per-
ceived by the senses, but clearly they may apply to things
perceived. Are they constructed out of percepts or are they
a part of what is given in our experience ?

Locke denied that any concepts are given. He rejected the
metaphysical doctrine of innate ideas. He restricted the
objects of knowledge to simple ideas, obtained through the
senses or by reflection on the mind's own operations. So he
had to derive general ideas somehow from simple ideas.

As he puts it, " Since all things that exist are only particulars,
how come we by general terms ? " He answers that " words
become general by being made the signs of general ideas."

68 THE GREAT DILEMMA

And general ideas can be reached by the process of logical
abstraction. So reached, they are by no means fictions.

What Words Stand For

General terms, writes Locke, are used " only to save the
labour of enumerating the several simple ideas which the next
general word or genus stands for." He is unhappy about
" substance/' but it seems indispensable. It seems to him
evident that we must form ideas of material substances, and
that they are " such combinations of simple ideas as are taken
to represent distinct, particular things subsisting by themselves,
in which the supposed or confused idea of substance, such as
it is, is always the first and chief. Thus, if to substance be
joined the simple idea of a certain dull, whitish colour, with
certain degrees of weight, hardness, ductility, and fusibility,
we have the idea of lead ; and a combination of the ideas of a
certain sort of figure, with the powers of motion, thought and
reasoning, joined to substance, make the ordinary idea of a
man. Now of substances also there are two sorts of ideas, one
of single substances, as they exist separately, as of a man or a
sheep ; the other of several of those put together, as an army
of men or flock of sheep ; which collective ideas of several
substances thus put together, are as much each of them one
single idea as that of a man or a unit."

What Berkeley denies is that by blending our ideas we attain
a clear, abstract idea, of which the word " substance " is a
symbol that can be joined to symbols of simple sense percep-
tions. We have " the dull, whitish colour, with certain degrees
of weight, hardness, ductility, and fusibility " but that is all.
Neither Locke nor Berkeley properly distinguished between
the psychological problem of how we in fact form abstractions,
and the purely epistemological problem of their status. But
the discussion was exceedingly important.

If we say that sense qualities belong to or are caused by a
material substance, which somehow exists apart from them, we
go beyond the evidence, according to Berkeley. The word
" lead " stands for just those characteristics, those ideas that

THE GREAT DILEMMA 69

are in the mind. There is no need to join the characteristics
to the term " substance " in order to get " lead." Substance
is not a sign that stands for any idea existing in the mind.
Locke himself is very apologetic about it ; he admits that sub-
stance is " confused/' and well he might. It is confused,
retorts Berkeley, because it is contradictory, and we cannot in
fact form such an idea, although we may make use of such a
word.

But if there is no need to join predicates to a metaphysical
subject, or to assume that sense qualities are qualities of matter,
there is nothing apart from the images in the consciousness.
In short, there is no material universe, external to the mind ;
and Locke shrank from such an apparently outrageous con-
clusion.

The possibility of regarding sense-impressions as occurrences,
and of treating all concepts but a very few indefinable and
primitive notions as logical functions of sense- data had yet to
be explored. It was too early to talk about events and processes
instead of things. Nevertheless, one result of these discussions
was to show the difficulty of regarding the subject-predicate
form as the only type of proposition. The paradoxes that
emerged were mainly due to the lingering prejudice that nouns
were somehow more real than verbs.

Inasmuch as Berkeley demonstrated the superfluity of the
concept of substance, he was in the line of advance though
he would have been perturbed if he could have seen where it
would all end. Obviously a word like " lead " is very different
from a word like " matter," which seems so much more than a
shorthand device for dealing with collections. Berkeley re-
garded matter as a vicious abstraction. We cannot imagine
man existing, over and above particular men, and so we cannot
regard matter as existing over and above sense-data. If Locke
merely wanted a cause of sensations, outside ourselves, Berkeley
was ready for him. God was the author of our ideas, and it
was unnecessary to postulate a world of matter which, in turn,
owed its origin to God.

The justification of Immaterialism is that matter is not an

7O THE GREAT DILEMMA

object of knowledge, but a vicious abstraction. For the
ordinary man nothing is altered. He can sleep soundly at
night, confident that the sun will rise the next morning. He
can leave his house and be assured that it will still be there
when he returns. The warmth of the sun and the furniture
of his home are not abstractions, but real experiences. If the
plain man looks for matter he will not find it ; but he will
certainly find his bedroom slippers if he wants them.

The Ionian Materialists asked what the world was made of ;
but to Berkeley this is the wrong question. The " world " is
not an immediate object of knowledge, but a construction.
What are the objects of knowledge, then ? If words are signs,
what are their referents ? Berkeley's answer is that the
ultimate referents of words are ideas. He limited ideas to
three classes : (i) ideas actually imprinted on the senses ;
(2) ideas derived'from emotions or mental operations ; (3) ideas
formed by memory or imagination.

There is no place in this classification for abstract ideas and
no place for such a concept as Self. The latter inconsistency
is explained as follows : " But besides all that endless variety
of ideas, there is likewise something which knows or perceives
them, and exercises divers operations, as willing, imagining,
remembering about them. This perceiving, active being is
what I call mind, spirit, or myself. By which words I do not
denote any one of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from
them, whereby they are perceived, for the existence of an idea
consists in being perceived/*

The Meaning of Existing

This is the core of Berkeley's teaching, that to say that
something exists is to say it is perceived ; in his well-known
phrase, esse is percipi. There must be minds to perceive, of
course, otherwise the word would be meaningless ; apart from
minds, all that exists is what is perceived. He goes on, chal-
lengingly : " It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing
amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers and in a word
all sensible objects have an existence natural or real, distinct

THE GREAT DILEMMA 71

from their being perceived by the understanding. What is
believed to be distinct from perception is a mere abstraction.

Such an abstraction is matter, or substance. It is Locke's
mysterious " I-know-not-what," a ghostly substratum of which
nothing can be affirmed except that it supports qualities.
" Matter neither acts, nor perceives, nor is perceived : for this
is all that is meant by saying it is an inert, senseless, unknown
substance." It is really bare being and practically amounts (as
Hegel was to say) to nothing. But even if matter existed, we
could not become aware of the fact, for how can dead matter
excite ideas in mind ? (An ingenious inversion of the usual
argument against psycho-physical interaction.) No useful
purpose, is served by such a concept, and we are merely
" amusing ourselves with words/'

As Berkeley writes : " Some truths there are so near and
obvious to the mind that a man need only open his eyes to see
them. Such I take this important one to be, viz., that all the
choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word all those
bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not
any subsistence without a mind, that their esse (being) is to be
perceived or known ; that consequently so long as they are not
actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind or that
of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence
at all, or else subsist in the mind of some eternal spirit : it being
perfectly unintelligible and involving all the absurdity of
abstraction, to attribute to any single part of them an existence
independent of a spirit/'

The Appeal to God

From this position Berkeley never budged. We know ideas,
but we cannot escape outside that circle. Ideas are what
common-sense calls " things." A thing may be compounded
of various sensations touch, smell, taste, hearing, and sight.
Suppose, for example, a blind man knew a cube and a sphere
only by touch, and suppose his sight were restored. Would
he be able to distinguish between the two by sight alone ?
Locke held that extension was a simple idea common to both
F

72 THE GREAT DILEMMA

sight and touch ; Berkeley, of course, denied this. Neverthe-
less, Locke inconsistently held that despite this common factor
it would be impossible to recognize a cube and a sphere by sight,
for the first time ; Berkeley agreed, but he showed that on
Locke's view of extension it ought to be possible.

Berkeley went too far in his objection to abstraction. Also,
it is quite evident that the knowledge he claimed to have of
spirits and God, to say nothing of scientific laws, cannot be
derived from his threefold division of knowledge into sense,
mental operations, and imagination. Although in the Principles
he admits that Spirit, or Self, is not an idea, he does not say
what it is ; but in Hylas he says that we have an intuitive
knowledge of self and an inferential knowledge of God, spirits,
and laws of nature. This sort of knowledge is not through
ideas, and he calls it notion, but he does not develop this line
of thought. It might well have endangered his empiricism.
Similarly, he shied from the possibility that, if existing is being
perceived, then the perceiving mind may not exist when it is
not perceiving.

He was, after all, an Anglican bishop. He could not remain
an orthodox Protestant and hold that all knowledge is restricted
to phenomena. To break out of the solipsistic circle he had to
invoke God. In this way we get a common world and can
distinguish between reality and illusion. " The ideas im-
printed on the senses by the Author of nature are called real
things" in contrast to those excited in the imagination, which
are " images of things." The laws of nature are the orderly
sequences of God's volitions.

After such an exciting start this seems rather a common-
place conclusion. Berkeley could not transcend the limitations
of his age. What is significant for us to-day is the direction
that Berkeley gave to philosophical inquiry by insisting, more
rigorously than Locke, that the raw material of knowledge is
sensible experience.

But if knowledge is restricted to sense-data, if material sub-
stance is dismissed because it lies outside experience, what
justification can be offered for the other abstractions that

THE GREAT DILEMMA 73

science is compelled to use ? Grant that if Immaterialism is
correct the plain man will not notice the difference. His house,
his furniture, and the kettle on the hob seem just as real, whether
they belong to the material world or are just ideas inside his
head. But is it only the arbitrary decree of God that makes the
water in the kettle boil, instead of turn to ice, when it is heated ?
How does the empiricist account for the fact that the assertions
of the scientist go far beyond actual experience ?

We have the curious spectacle of the empiricists philoso-
phizing in their studies, extolling experience but avoiding it,
while the scientists were experimenting and seeking experience
at first hand, although they interpreted it metaphysically. The
practical, scientist was not troubled about whether matter
existed, whether force was a justifiable concept, or whether
there was a universal law of causation. He got results even
with such dubious concepts as phlogiston. He would have
gained nothing by following the empiricists at this stage. In
practice the appeal to religion the reign of law was more
stimulating to science than the appeal to experience, which came
to a cul-de-sac with the scepticism of Hume.

" Strange Monster "

David Hume (1711-1776) is one of the most remarkable
figures in the history of philosophy. No man has ever asked
more searching questions ; he did not even pretend to know the
answers to the most difficult of them, and, ever since, philoso-
phers have been trying to solve the problems that he bequeathed.
According to J. M. Keynes, " Hume's statement of the case
against induction has never been improved upon." Prof. L. S.
Stebbing held that the problem of causality, as formulated by
Hume, has still to be solved. Dr. Carnap acclaims Hume as
the father of Logical Positivism.

Some of the philosophers we have considered have very little
significance for contemporary thinkers. That is emphatically
not the case with Hume, for his stock has never stood higher.

Like Berkeley, he began to think out his philosophy when
very young, and, like Locke also, he was an amateur. At the

74 THE GREAT DILEMMA

age of eighteen, he says, " there seemed to be opened up to me
a new scene of thought, which transported me beyond measure. "
He had finished A Treatise of Human Nature before he was
twenty-six, and he was bitterly disappointed with its reception.
After he had published An Inquiry Concerning Human Under-
standing, in 1758, he looked back on the Treatise as "the
juvenile work which the author never acknowledged. " He had
amended some of his views, and perhaps the frankness of his
personal confession brought a blush. " I am first affrighted and
confounded with that forlorn solitude in which I am placed in
my philosophy, and fancy myself some strange, uncouth
monster, who, not being able to mingle and unite in society,
has been expelled all human commerce, and left utterly aban-
doned and disconsolate." He is appalled at his own conclu-
sions. What he thinks in the privacy of his study seems to
have no application outside.

By Berkeley the two worlds of common-sense and reason
were contrasted as the high road where the illiterate bulk
of mankind walk, and the narrow path trodden by the philoso-
pher in the light of a superior principle. For Hume the con-
trast at times seemed agonizing, and he says that he felt like
throwing his books and papers into the fire. " I dine, I play a
game of backgammon, I converse and am merry with my
friends ; and when, after three or four hours' amusement, I
would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and
strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find it in my heart to
enter into them any further." Elsewhere he remarks that he
" took a particular pleasure in the company of modest women."

The Objects of Knowledge

Hume was no dry-as-dust philosopher. His freshness and
originality, the ruthlessness of his logic, and his utter disregard
of religious tradition, brought empiricism temporarily to a
standstill. The conclusions he reached seemed intolerable,
even to himself, but nobody knew how to refute them.

He accepted Locke's starting-point, that we have no source
of knowledge other than simple ideas, sense-data like colours

THE GREAT DILEMMA 75

and sounds. He accepted Berkeley's criticism of abstract
ideas, but he rejected the exception that Berkeley made in
favour of notions. All concepts must be obtained from sense-
data.

But he improved upon Locke's terminology. Instead of
calling sense-data ideas, he called them impressions. He
reserved the word " idea " for what we ordinarily mean by it
a copy either in memory or imagination. Impressions are
distinguished from ideas by their greater liveliness which
recalls Berkeley's distinction between images of things and
real things, the latter being more vivid and constant.

Impressions arise from unknown causes though, as we shall
see, the wprd " cause " need not be taken too literally. The
point is that all we are acquainted with are impressions. The
mind combines its primary ideas (i.e., copies of impressions) in
three ways : (i) According to resemblance and contrast, which
provides the basis of mathematics ; (2) according to contiguity
in space and time, which gives the basis of descriptive and
experimental science ; (3) according to causal connection, which
gives the basis of what passes beyond mere observation.

Hume believed he had discovered an important law of mental
association. It seemed to him that the natural attraction
of certain ideas for certain others provided an explanation of
the workings of the mind, just as gravitational attraction ex-
plained the behaviour of material particles. Instead of being
dazzled by a multitude of particular ideas, we are naturally
provided with compounds ; for particular ideas swarm together
and form a complex idea, and so the trees no longer prevent us
from seeing the wood.

We need spend no time on Hume's Law of Association.
That is a matter for psychologists, and psychology is no longer
an armchair science. But the importance of the logical relation
between general and particular ideas cannot be too strongly
stressed. If Locke was right, metaphysics is still possible, and
such metaphysical concepts as matter and substance may be
permitted. But if Berkeley and Hume were right, there is no
hope for metaphysics.

76 THE GREAT DILEMMA

What is a Concept ?

Consider, yet again, the concept substance. Both Leibniz
and Spinoza made it the starting-point of vast metaphysical
systems. They analysed the meaning of substance ; they
showed what concepts were implied by the definition, and they
constructed possible universes. But and this is the point of
Hume's criticism unless the complex concept substance can
be shown to contain components that are experiences (impres-
sions), the universes so constructed are like dream castles. To
be actual they must be built up of something actual sense-
impressions. A universe made out of ideas, as it were, may be
self-consistent, may be possible ; but so far from giving us
certain knowledge, as the metaphysicians claim, it does not
even give us probable knowledge. Probability requires a basis
of fact.

This is where the two great schools that we have examined,
the Rationalists and the Empiricists, come to a head-on collision.
The Rationalists held that the truth of a proposition was estab-
lished by showing that it necessarily followed from another pro-
position ; the meaning of a concept was contained in another
concept. Consequently if you started correctly, if you could
discover a sufficiently rich concept, and a sufficiently compre-
hensive proposition, you had a nest of Chinese boxes from
which you could draw out all the other concepts and propositions
that were entailed. The only test you needed to apply was of
coherence. To be landed in a contradiction was a sign of false-
hood. Such, the metaphysicians argued, was the method of
mathematics.

The Empiricists admitted that this seemed to be the deduc-
tive method of mathematics, but they mostly held that mathe-
matics was a closed system ; its propositions were true because
its concepts were analytic nothing was extracted from them
that was not already included in them. The conclusion was
always buried in the premise.

But it was otherwise with questions of fact. A factual
proposition can be upset by the discovery of a new fact. " All

THE GREAT DILEMMA 77

crows are black," becomes false if we can produce a white
crow. We cannot say that a white crow is unthinkable or a
contradiction. The way to test this sort of statement is to see
whether it corresponds to the facts. And how can we ever be
sure in advance that some new fact, like a white crow, will not
turn up to falsify our statement ? We may say that it is un-
likely ; we cannot say that it is impossible.

To sum up, there are " relations between ideas " and
" matters of fact." The former give rise to analytic judgments,
which lead to a contradiction when denied. They merely tell
us what is entailed by an idea ; but unless we hold as some
metaphysicians did that whatever can be thought of exists,
analytic judgments can give us no information about the real
world.

Propositions which assert facts are synthetic. When they
describe an immediate experience, " This is black," they are as
certain as analytic judgments. But when they venture beyond
immediate experiences, when they generalize, as in " All crows
are black," it is possible to deny the proposition without logical
contradiction. The truth or falsehood depends on corre-
spondence with facts.

The Complete Sceptic

Such is Hume's basic position, and unless we grasp how he
reached it, how profoundly it differs from traditional philosophy,
we may be tempted to dismiss his more startling conclusions as
attempts to shock us by splitting hairs. The scepticism for
which he is famous and in his lifetime infamous is merely
the logical result of the view that the objects of knowledge are
sensible impressions, that we are acquainted with nothing else.
If, indeed, all we know are these momentary impressions, how
can we be certain of what happened yesterday or what will
happen to-morrow ? We cannot even be certain of the con-
tinuous existence of so-called material objects.

Descartes had urged that at least he need not doubt the
existence of himself. He took the self as a starting-point be-
cause it seemed absolutely certain ; but Hume would have none

78 THE GREAT DILEMMA

of it. " For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I
call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or
other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or
pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a per-
ception, and never can observe anything but the perception.
When my perceptions are removed for any time, as by sound
sleep, so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said
not to exist. And were all my perceptions removed by death,
and could I neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate,
after the dissolution of my body, I should be entirely anni-
hilated, nor do I conceive what is further requisite to make me
a perfect nonentity. . . . Setting aside some metaphysicians,
I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are
nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions,
which succeed each other with inconceivable rapidity, and are
in perpetual flux and movement. . . . The mind is a kind of
theatre, where several perceptions successively make their
appearance ; pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite
variety of postures and situations. "

In other words, when we introspect we do not come across
states of mind owned by an Ego ; there is no timeless particular
at the centre, but merely a succession of mental events which
has the sort of unity of a swarm of bees. A similar nihilism
was put forward by Hindu philosophers long before it appeared
in the West : " What appears as self is but a bundle of ideas,
emotions, and active tendencies, manifesting at a particular
moment. The next moment they dissolve and new bundles
determined by the preceding ones appear. The present
thought is thus the only thinker. Apart from emotions, ideas,
and active tendencies we cannot discover any separate self or
soul." (Indian Philosophy, Dasgupta.)

Causality and Induction

It was one thing to shock metaphysicians and theologians ;
but Hume also shocked the scientists. For what sort of science
can be made out of bundles of momentary sense-impressions ?
In the eighteenth century it was generally believed that by

THE GREAT DILEMMA 79

inductive reasoning it is possible to obtain universal laws.
Newton had extended the reign of law from solar system to the
entire physical cosmos. His laws of motion applied to all
particles of matter whatsoever. He certainly did not regard
the Law of Gravity as a mere description of observed pheno-
mena ; but if knowledge is confined to the present moment,
not even a descriptive law is possible.

Hume reverses the ancient complaint that our senses deceive
us. We are deceived, he claims, not by our senses but by the
interpretations we put on them. " If we reason a priori"
writes Hume, " anything may appear able to produce anything.
The falling of a pebble may, for aught we know, extinguish the
sun, or the wish of a man may control the planets in their orbits."
And so to find out what in fact produces a particular effect we
must observe what happens. But how can mere observation
tell us that what has happened will always continue to happen ?
Unless we desert empiricism and take to metaphysics, all we
can say is that we expect certain things to happen.

Our belief in the uniformity of nature is, therefore, no more
than a feeling of expectation, based on custom, that the future
will continue to conform to the past. The whole edifice of
science rests on this feeling. We must, of course, trust our feel-
ings in daily life ; for practical affairs it is enough that a thing
should be probable. But believing is not the same as knowing.

" The mind never perceives any real connection among
distinct existences," says Hume. So that when he regards
" existences " objectively he cannot discover any necessary
relation. But without some necessary relation, without causa-
tion, what ground is there for even trying to regard " exist-
ences " as objective ? And if they are not objective how can
we hope to find causes, " since they are not in the mind " ?
Causation alone can lead us to objects " which we do not see or
feel."

He is well aware that to search for causes as the ground of
objectivity is inconsistent with his view " that all our distinct
perceptions are distinct existences," for that must end in Berke-
ley's Idealism. He confesses quite frankly that he cannot

So THE GREAT DILEMMA

render these two principles consistent, " nor is it in my power
to renounce either of them." But, having carefully bandaged
his eyes, it is idle to look for an external world. Having
assumed that every impression is discrete, it is useless to search
for necessary connections.

At times he tries to mitigate his scepticism. " I have never
defended the absurd proposition that a thing could come into
being without cause/' he says in one of his letters ; " all I
maintained was only that our certainty of the falsehood of this
proposition arises neither from intuition nor demonstration,
but from another source." He could not consistently propound
a Law of Association of Ideas, or his ethical theories, or write
history, without employing the idea of causation ; but he was
more consistent than most philosophers, and nowhere does he
appeal to God to extricate him from his difficulties.

Hume was certainly two centuries ahead of his critics. They
little dreamed that the time was coming when it would be
possible to say that " in advanced sciences, such as gravitational
astronomy, the word * cause ' never occurs," or that " the reason
why physics has ceased to look for causes is that, in fact, there
are no such things " (Mysticism and Logic, by Bertrand Russell).
Hume would not have felt such melancholy, or been so
" affrighted and confounded with that forlorn solitude in which
I am placed in my philosophy," if he could have foreseen that
a powerful school would arise on the foundations that he laid
and teach that induction was merely a practical rule of behaviour
without any logical basis, that there was no a priori method of
inferring the unknown from the known, and that the laws of
thought were tautologies.

He realized, far more deeply than any of his contemporaries,
what the break with Rationalism implied. After Hume the
most urgent problem of philosophy was this : If knowledge is
restricted to immediate experience, how can we justify the
world that reason constructs ? The empirical method seemed
to have severed the connection between these two worlds.
How could that connection be restored without a return to
metaphysics ?

THE GREAT DILEMMA 8l

Empiricism, which started with such bland confidence, sud-
denly seemed to end in a barren scepticism which not only
affronted common sense, but made the science of the day seem
impossible. Philosophers have never been very tender with
common sense, but to destroy the basis of science is another
matter. How is science possible if there is no justification for
the belief in causality and induction ? And if mathematics is
dissevered from the real world, how is it that mathematics can
be successfully applied to real problems ?

USEFUL REFERENCES

Berkeley's Jmmaterialism, by A. A. Luce (1946), is a good introduction,
but Berkeley and Hume themselves can be read with enjoyment.
The Principles of Human Knowledge, by George Berkeley ; 1710.
Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, by George Berkeley ;

A Treatise of Human Nature, by David Hume ; 1739.

An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, by David Hume ;

1748.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Kantian Compromise

WHEN we look away from the details of the great struggle be-
tween the Rationalists and the Empiricists we can see that the
fight was not really about the issues that seemed most important
to the contestants. It was not about the reality of the external
world or the soul or God. Whether there were one or two or
an infinite number of substances was a side-issue. Whether to
abandon the whole idea of a material substratum was not the
really fundamental question. Out of all the din and confusion
there emerged a re-statement of that very old riddle What is a
universal ?

This may seem a dull business compared with the achieve-
ments that the philosophers claimed. Berkeley had " anni-
hilated all that's made to a green thought in a green shade."
Hume had destroyed the mind itself and blown up the founda-
tions on which science rested. Such desperate deeds make
good reading, but the solid gains that accrued from all this
intense intellectual activity were less sensational. Perhaps the
most important advance was the emergence of the problem of
universals in a new dress. The question became, What relation
does a concept bear to a percept ?

If we can answer that question satisfactorily much else falls
into place. We shall then know whether we are justified in
talking about an external world, about causes, substance, matter,
and mind. For on the correct solution of this problem depends
the possibility of any real knowledge. And whether we can
solve it or not, at least we are not wasting our time on irrele-
vancies.

82

THE KANTIAN COMPROMISE 83

The Failure of Rationalism

Kant believed that he had solved it. Before examining the
answer he proposed, let us take a brief, backward glance at
some of the earlier attempts. We shall then notice that the
first formulations of the problem were more concerned with
the reality of universals than with the manner in which they
were connected with percepts. The fact that relations were
also universals was usually ignored. Before Leibniz no one
gave much serious consideration to the possibility that space
might be a relation. It evidently required a great effort to
distinguish between abstracta such as numbers and existents,
such as taJbles and chairs ; between sensuous concepts and
non-sensuous concepts.

Plato held that concepts were real. They existed inde-
pendently of objects. Knowledge derived from the senses was
vague and confused ; we were watching the play of shadows cast
on a wall by unseen actors. Reason, however, gave us a back-
stage view.

Aristotle rejected the independent reality of concepts ; but
he thought that they were genuine ingredients of reality. They
were not mere names. It would seem that by logical abstrac-
tion we can ignore what is accidental in a thing and discover its
inmost essence. But peel off all qualities and you come to
bare, undifferentiated being. By adding qualities you can
arrive at any particular object. It might seem to follow that
new knowledge about the real world can be obtained by
reasoning.

Descartes held that concepts are innate. They are given to
us, as part of the materials of knowledge. A valid concept can
be recognized when it is a " clear and distinct " idea. Without
such concepts matter, motion, cause, etc. how is it possible
to frame scientific laws ? And what can we mean by know-
ledge, urged Spinoza, if reason cannot discover real connec-
tions ?

Such, in brief, was the rationalist approach. There are
many variations, but there is general agreement that the mind

84 THE KANTIAN COMPROMISE

does not manufacture concepts out of sense- data. We have to
apply concepts to percepts in order to obtain knowledge.
Rationalists held that it would be truer to say that a material
object is a bundle of concepts than that a concept is a bundle
of sense-data. The strongest argument in the Rationalist
armoury was that to deny the reality of concepts is to deny the
very possibility of knowledge.

Historically, however, the development of Rationalism came
perilously close to denying the possibility of knowledge. The
paradox, as I have already tried to show, arose out of a logic
that required every proposition to have a metaphysical subject.
This leads to the conclusion that there can be only one subject,
strictly speaking the Cosmos, the Absolute, or God. And
that being the case, finite minds merely have a knowledge of
certain aspects of the universe, so fragmentary that it is not far
removed from illusion. By contrasting mere appearance with
an ungraspable total reality, this type of metaphysics fell far
short of its early promise. It ended on a note of scepticism
which could be relieved only by mystical aids.

The Failure of Empiricism

The scepticism of the empiricists, however, could obtain no
such relief. It entailed the following doctrines : (i) That con-
cepts are mainly symbols which combine a cluster of percepts ;
(2) that the sole objects of knowledge are percepts ; (3) that there
are no necessary relations between percepts.

At first sight this looks as though the empiricist has swept
away a lot of useless metaphysical lumber and got down to hard
facts. But will it work ? Locke tried to make it work, at the
cost of consistency, by retaining tjie metaphysical idea of sub-
stance. Berkeley had to introduce a sort of concept which he
called " notion," but never properly explained. Hume resorted
to no such doubtful expedients, but even he could not make the
scheme work.

He showed that some concepts could be derived from per-
cepts sensuous concepts such as horse, mountain, etc. He
tried, with much less success, to construct space and time in

THE KANTIAN COMPROMISE 85

this way. He failed with non-sensuous concepts and jettisoned
them. But what he did not notice was that even his apparent
success with sensuous concepts made use of an idea that cannot
be obtained direct from observation.

A horse and a mountain are general terms ; but if they are
obtained by noting resemblances between particular horses and
mountains, why is it that some similarities are selected and
others rejected ? How is it possible to order particulars accord-
ing to a principle of similarity, unless that principle is known in
advance ? How can you arrange a Bridge hand if you do not
know the rules of Bridge ?

This is a very subtle point, and Hume might protest that the
mind does no arranging it is purely passive, and the particular
impressions 'arrange themselves mechanically into complexes
according to the Law of Association. But if knowledge is con-
fined to an immediate presentation, how can you avoid what has
been called " the solipsism of the present moment " ? What
right have you to trust memory and frame a law ?

Standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before
us, we can see to-day how some of the difficulties with which
the empiricists grappled might have been avoided. A neo-
Kantian, Cassirer, writes : " Memory traces, arising equally
with present images, are not recognised as similar elements.
The foundation of all abstraction is an act of identification. A
function is ascribed to thought : viz., to relate a present to a
past content and comprehend the two as in some respect
identical. This synthesis possesses no immediate sensible
correlate in the content compared. The psychology of abstrac-
tion must first postulate that perceptions can be ordered for
logical consideration into * series of similars/ The transition
from member to member presupposes a principle according to
which it takes place and the form of dependence between each
member and the succeeding one is determined. Thus the
construction of concepts is connected with the formation of a
series."

Similarity does not appear as an element in sensation, side
by side with colours and sounds, pressure and touch. Before

86 THE KANTIAN COMPROMISE

we can make use of similarity we must first gain a point of view
from which things can be compared, and this is not given in
immediate experience. We need not construct concepts solely
according to similarity ; we could have a series exposing differ-
ences, ordered according to equality or inequality, number and
magnitude, causal dependence, etc.

Again, as Prof. C. I. Lewis has pointed out in Mind and the
World Order, the empirical object denoted by a concept is never
what is momentarily given, but is some temporarily extended
pattern of actual and possible experiences. We see tables and
chairs, not patches of colour. " In experience the mind is con-
fronted with the chaos of the given. In the interests of adaptation
and control it seeks to discover within or impose upon this chaos
some kind of stable order, through which distinguishable items
may become the signs of future possibilities." These ordered
patterns are concepts, and must be determined in advance of
the experience to which they apply. Until the criteria of inter-
pretation are fixed, no experiences can be the sign of anything.

These modern authors show, in different degrees, the in-
fluence of Kant. The passages I have cited help to show the
nature of the problem which the empiricists brought to light
and which Kant tried to solve.

The Age of Professors

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was born in Koenigsberg, and
his father was a saddler of Scottish descent. There is very
little to say about his life, for he seldom left his native city and
never the province. He led a quiet, studious, strictly methodi-
cal existence. He did not marry and no scandals attach to
him. He was the type of unworldly scholar to which popular
imagination seems to expect philosophers to conform. With
the appearance of Kant the amateurs retire from the scene for a
time and the professionals take charge.

Bacon was a lawyer, Hobbes a secretary and tutor, Spinoza
an optician, Leibniz a librarian and diplomat, Locke a doctor
and Government official, Berkeley a bishop, Hume a librarian
and historian. These men were not academic recluses. If

THE KANTIAN COMPROMISE 87

their speculations were unlikely to meet with the approval of
the authorities, they could refrain from publishing books with-
out endangering their livelihood.

They were not expected to produce monumental treatises.
They had a breadth of culture that made them sensitive to
literary style. They are nearly all readable and quotable.

When philosophy fell into the hands of German professors,
however, it became unreadable and almost unintelligible. It
developed a new jargon, even more complicated, and far more
uncouth, than the technicalities of the classical and medieval
schools. Kant is not so bad in this respect as his successors,
notably Hegel. And he certainly put up a strong resistance to
the pressure^ to please the authorities.

His earlier writings were mainly about physical problems.
He read the English empiricists and was deeply perturbed by
Hume's scepticism. Then he was influenced in the direction
of Rationalism by Leibniz's Nouveaux Essais, published in
1765. He wavered between Empiricism and Rationalism, and
his final position, stated in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) is
a compromise. The Critique of Practical Reason appeared in
1788, and the Critique of Judgment in 1790.

Kant was keenly conscious that Hume had precipitated a
crisis in philosophy. He declared that Hume had awakened
him from his dogmatic slumbers and he saw that the war
between the Rationalists and the Empiricists had ended in stale-
mate. No further progress could be made until a more satis-
factory account was given of those concepts that appear to be
independent of experience. They must either be dropped,
and all hope of real knowledge abandoned, or else they must be
justified.

Before examining in detail Kant's theory, let us look at the
terminology he employs. It is difficult, and he does not always
use words consistently. Moreover, he derives some of the
terms from a psychology now happily obsolete. He divides
the mind into two parts : the lower is the sensuous part ; the
higher, the understanding. The senses are acted on by some
outside stimulus. As a result there appear in the consciousness
G

88 THE KANTIAN COMPROMISE

certain representations. These are connected, like beads on a
string. The higher part of the mind has a double task. It
pronounces judgments and makes inferences.

For convenience we will restrict the term " understanding "
to what Kant calls " the faculty of judging/' We will use
" reason " to mean " the faculty of inference/' The power to
make judgments requires the power to create concepts. So
does the power to make inferences. But Kant draws an im-
portant distinction between two sorts of concepts. Those
which are used in judging by the understanding are pure con-
cepts. They could also be called connective concepts, because
they are used to connect.

The concepts of the faculty of inference are called by Kant
the Ideas of Reason. They do not link up representations so
that the mind gets a unified pattern out of the brute facts of the
given. They are largely used to state problems, and they are
non-empirical. The meaning of this will become plainer as
we proceed.

Now we come to another basic but most unfortunately
chosen term " intuition." Our ordinary associations with
this word must be put out of mind. By intuition (Anschauung
literally, " view ") Kant means a sort of knowledge we get
on direct acquaintance. It is a sort of perception, though not
with the naked eye.

Suppose we are in a dark, curtained room and can see nothing.
The curtains are flung back and we get a view of the landscape
outside. But the window-panes are made of a peculiar glass.
It distorts the landscape, but it is unbreakable glass and the
room is locked, so that we can never go outside and measure
the distortion. This must not be confused with illusion ; we
may be deceived, but we are not deluded, as a lunatic would be
if there was no landscape but only a brick wall outside.

The intuitions (views) of the senses have a real content.
They give us the objects which form the raw material of know-
ledge. It would be a great mistake to suppose that it even
occurred to Kant to doubt the reality of an external landscape.
But he insisted that we see it through windows the windows

THE KANTIAN COMPROMISE 89

of the mind. A better analogy would be those lenses which are
sometimes fitted to the eyeballs to take the place of spectacles
but we must regard it as being impossible to remove them.

Without these lenses we should not get the sort of distortion
that we do. We should not see things spread out in space.
Both space and time are forms of intuition : space the form of a
kind of outer sense, which makes it possible for objects to seem
external to us ; time of a kind of inner sense, which gives us
the order of succession. They are logically prior to percepts.
They are the conditions under which we experience. They are
not abstracted from experience and they are not " generic "
terms. To emphasize this, Kant does not call them concepts,
but forms.

No knowledge can be obtained by merely staring at a land-
scape. To know you must think you must pass judgment.
Intuitions are particulars (like simple ideas) ; to connect them
so that we can pass judgment, we form concepts. The pro-
cedure is as follows : raw sensations are ordered in space and
time by the mind ; they become particular intuitions, but they
still lack the connections which give us a unified knowledge.
A synthesizing activity is needed, so that we can think as well
as merely perceive. And this calls for more than empirical
concepts more than generic terms, such as horse and man.
We cannot think without pure non-sensuous concepts. To
these Kant gives the name categories.

The Meaning of the "A Priori "

Kant supplies a formidable array of technical terms, but we
need not bother about all of them. In the previous chapter I
illustrated the difference between analytic and synthetic con-
cepts. The latter are used when we express facts of experience.
But are not mathematical propositions also facts ?

To show how universally true propositions are possible
about experience, Kant must show how we can make state-
ments about f^cts that are not analytic the predicate of which
is not hidden in the subject. Such propositions must be inde-
pendent of experience, but must nevertheless refer to experience.

9O THE KANTIAN COMPROMISE

Kant calls them a priori synthetic judgments, and he^gives as an
example 5+7 = 12. We know that that will always be true ;
whereas " all crows are black " is an a posteriori judgment and
can be upset by the discovery of a white crow.

If synthetic a priori judgments are justifiable, the connection
between the world of ideas and the world of fact severed by
Hume can be restored.

Kant's solution is a masterpiece of compromise. He dis-
misses, as an over-simplification, the view that all concepts are
derived from sense-experience. The categories are not mere
names for bundles of percepts ; they are too abstract for that.
Neither are they obtained by logical abstraction. The cate-
gories are the common language of mankind, the way we must
talk when we pass judgments, the way we simply cannot help
thinking. There is no choice about it.

What is given to us in sensation is automatically made into
a spatial object by the mind. It starts as a particular. But to
think about these particulars is to unify them, to judge them.
And the mind is so constituted that certain words must be used.
Different human languages may employ different signs, but
they have the same meanings. The structure of thought is
the same for all men. The categories exhibit the structure of
thought. If there are angels, they may think about the world
in wholly different terms ; if so, we could not hold intelligible
conversation with an angel.

The structure of thought is logically prior to experience.
Two common misunderstandings of Kant may arise at this
point. There is the crude objection that the psychology of
children shows that a knowledge of space and time is acquired
by degrees. This does not upset Kant's theory. He would
reply that what is learned is about ourselves, not about things
outside us. That is what the difference between logical and
psychological priority amounts to.

The second mistake that can easily be made is to regard
space and time themselves as categories. This is to ignore
Kant's faculty-psychology. Space is at a lower level than non-
sensuous concepts. It is the form that determines how sensa-

THE KANTIAN COMPROMISE 91

tions become objects. Extension is the form of sensation a
blank cheque to be filled in with colours, sounds, tastes, and
smells. Extension is the pre-requisite of an object. It need
not be red or smell like a rose. It could be of some other colour
and smell like an onion. But however it smells it must be
spatial. Empirical or sensuous concepts, such as red and scent,
are not universal and necessary. Space is different ; it is the
cheque to be filled in, the prior form which the mind provides,
and without which percepts could not arise. The same holds
good of time.

This is Kant's solution, in a nutshell. The mind is neither
passive, as the empiricists taught, nor endowed with innate
ideas that enable it to discover the nature of a reality beyond
the senses. The mind is active and it creates its own world.
Space, time, and the categories of the mind are pure forms, prior
to experience and contributed by the mind itself. Given an
external stimulus, these pure forms fashion for us the pheno-
menal world. They do not fashion it out of nothing, but in
the nature of things our knowledge is limited to what can be
expressed in the basic, conceptual language. It is, however,
genuine knowledge about phenomena.

Kant claimed that he had made objects conform to the mind,
whereas previous philosophers had made mind conform to
objects. He likened this achievement to that of Copernicus.
It seemed to him that it made all other philosophers look like
flat-earthers. He believed that he had settled the great con-
troversy between empiricists and Rationalists. Both schools
were wrong. The mind was active, and the conditions of
experience set a limit to knowledge without making knowledge
impossible.

Categories of the Understanding

The theory of categories is perhaps the most difficult and
most easily misunderstood part of Kant's philosophy. Let us
look at it more closely.

The categories make thinking, as distinct from sensing,
possible. How can we discover what these categories are ?

92 THE KANTIAN COMPROMISE

How many pure concepts are essential to enable us to pass
judgments ? When we think of the bewilderingly large number
of words we use it seems almost impossible to select just those
basic ideas that are indispensable to thought and common to
all mankind. Kant's solution is ingenious, though it places
great trust in traditional logic. He derives the categories from
the traditional forms of judgment.

The four classes of judgment involve twelve basic ideas which
are the presuppositions of thought. Such schematization is out
of fashion to-day ; and it was not long after Kant that the whole
procedure was seen to contain a contradition fatal to one of his
main doctrines. But let us first look at the list of judgments
land categories. The types of judgment are as follows :

Quantitative. Universal, Particular, Singular.

Qualitative. Affirmative, Negative, Infinite.

Relational. Categorical, Hypothetical, Disjunctive.

Modal. Problematic, Assertoric, Apodeictic.

The corresponding categories are as follows :

Quantitative. Totality, Plurality, Unity.

Qualitative. Reality, Negation, Limitation.

Relational. Substance and Accident, Cause and Effect,

. Reciprocity.

Modal. Possibility and Impossibility, Existence and

Non-Existence, Necessity and Contingency.

If I say " A rose is red," I mean that a spatio-temporal object
exists and has the empirical quality of redness. There is an
ambiguity about " is," but for the moment we will ignore it.
Clearly the above proposition would be unintelligible if it did
not refer to a percept and an empirical concept and presuppose
the more abstract idea of reality or existence. Now, Kant's
point is that percepts would be unintelligible without categories.

The categories (if they are necessary and a priori) must be
derived from purely formal propositions. " A rose is red "
has the logical form " S is P." Another form would be " Some
S is P." Let us consider what ideas are involved in the latter.

THE KANTIAN COMPROMISE 93

To begin with it refers to " some S," and so it is neither universal
nor singular. There remains only the concept particular out
of the three quantitative types of judgment. And since there
is more than one S, but not " all S," we must take from the
above table the category of plurality. Various types of pro-
positions have the various concepts embedded in them.

The result is a sort of Realism within an Idealism. The
categories make real knowledge possible ; but they do not apply
to whatever lies beyond the ideal constructions of the mind.
Kant calls what lies beyond, " things-in-themselves," in con-
trast to things as they appear to us : Noumena as opposed to
Phenomena.

Kant often fails to make his meaning plain. Different
sections of the Critique of Pure Reason were composed at
different times, and some of the statements clash. But he
seems to distinguish between phenomena and our mind-
pictures of phenomena. Knowledge of phenomena must not
be confined to bare perception. The fact that the earth goes
round the sun is a part of our genuine knowledge of phenomena ;
but in our mind-pictures it is the sun and not the earth that
moves.

Obviously Kant is saying something that it is not easy to
express in words. He is trying to demonstrate that there is an
element of construction and interpretation in all our knowledge.
Bare, unrelated sense-impressions are not the field of conscious-
ness they could not be known. But neither can we know what
causes them.

The Unknowable

The concept " reality " is listed (see above) as one of the
categories of thought. All those twelve categories are forms
which we impress on what ? On things-in-themselves ? Are
the latter not real, then ? Consult the list again. Cause and
effect are due to the spectacles through which we must look.
We are constitutionally compelled to order phenomena causally.
But does not Kant regard noumena as though they were causes
of phenomena ? Does he not, as Whitehead complains,

94 THE KANTIAN COMPROMISE

" bifurcate nature into real and apparent," so that the familiar
world is merely the outcome for us of an inscrutable world
which we can never truly know ? Existence is another cate-
gory then cannot we say the noumena exist ? In short, what
can we possibly assert of things-in-themselves if we do not
employ any of the twelve categories ?

It may be objected " Of course you cannot assert anything
without using those pure concepts." That is what Kant means
by calling them a priori. You cannot speak about " the
unknowable." The empiricist would reply that the unknow-
able now begins to resemble the God of certain mystics, of
which nothing can be asserted. It is not real ; it does not exist.
It is not cause or substance. It is neither quantity, quality, nor
relation. To speak of it as the ground, and of appearance as the
consequent, may indicate what Kant had in mind, but is not
permissible. We cannot validly speak of the unknowable ; and
so it is for Kant to show how we can even name it.

There are few open defenders of the unknowable to-day.
The concept appears self-contradictory and offends the instinct
of logical economy. No doubt our knowledge of appearances
is a sort of knowledge ; but we are forever left in ignorance of
the reality assumed to lie beyond appearances. The question
naturally occurs to the modern reader : Does not science offer
a glimpse of this reality ? Modern physics, for example, dis-
penses with some, at least, of the categories. It can manage at
a pinch without causation and substance. Instead of space and
time, Relativity employs intervals. The categories may be
necessities at a certain level of thinking ; but all of them are not
essential in the most advanced field of science.

This sort of difficulty did not exist for Leibniz, whose view
that the material world was an ideal representation certainly
influenced Kant. Leibniz could allow for different levels of
apperception ; and in any case he held that space and time were
relational, though relations were unreal.

Kant cut off any retreat into metaphysics by denying we
could have positive knowledge of noumena by an intellectual
equivalent of sensuous perception. If intuition could reveal

THE KANTIAN COMPROMISE 95

the inner nature of reality, he would have been spared a contra-
diction but what would have become of his rejection of
metaphysics ? All he could do was to say that we can think of
the unknowable as a limit. But Hegel objected that to be aware
of a limit it is necessary to know what lies beyond it. If, in-
deed, there is an absolute limit to knowledge, how can we be-
come aware of the fact ? How can we know that we have
reached the last wall unless we can look over the top ?

The Ideas of Reason

By inclination Kant was a metaphysician. But his analysis
of mind committed him to denying that new existents could be
discovered solely by connecting categories. What, then, of
God, the soul, the freedom of the will, all of which have a
prominent place in his system ?

He faces this frankly. We cannot prove the existence of
God, the immortality of the soul, or the freedom of the will.
We could attempt to do so only by abandoning the empirical
foundation in favour of deductive rationalism. The modern
Positivist would call these things pseudo-concepts. Kant re-
gards them as ideas of the reasoning faculty. There is, how-
ever, no intuitive perception, no direct acquaintance possible for
reason. It uses its ideas to state problems or construct hypo-
theses. Its ideas do not have an ontological object. They are
not windows that open on reality.

When we overlook this we are guilty of an abuse of language.
If we forget our limitations and behave like the metaphysicians
we end up with antinomies propositions of which the opposite
is neither more nor less acceptable.

For example, there are excellent logical proofs that the world
began in time and is limited in space. But there are equally
good logical reasons for asserting that the world never had a
beginning and that space is infinite.

We can " prove,'! on paper, that God exists and that the soul
is immortal. We can also " prove," on paper, that God does
not exist and that the soul is not immortal. Eminent philoso-
phers have advanced all these " proofs." They are all right

g6 THE KANTIAN COMPROMISE

and they are all wrong. To put forward such proofs is to use
logic in an invalid way. The propositions are formally correct
but existentially empty. It is all a game with words.

Kant unquestionably smashed to pieces all the classical
proofs of the existence of God. Since his day no reputable
philosopher outside the Catholic Church has dared to revive
them. We cannot possibly demonstrate God's existence from
the fact that we can think of his existence, Kant says ; and he
reaffirms Aristotle's view that existence is not a predicate.
We do not enrich a concept by adding being. A hundred
real dollars do not contain a penny more than a hundred
conceived dollars. All existential propositions are synthetic.
We should express this differently nowadays, but it seems clear
enough that the confusion is partly due to the grammatical
ambiguity of the verb to-be.

It is a pity that Kant did not fully exploit this doctrine.
However, his attack on speculative theology caused considerable
dismay at first. Would it result in Atheism ? The dialectical
performance was watched by a breathless audience, as though
he were a conjurer, sawing through the lady in the box. But
there need have been no anxiety. Just as the conjurer takes
the curtain with the lady completely restored, so Kant gives
back with his left hand all that his right hand has taken away.

" I was obliged to destroy knowledge in order to make room
for faith," he confesses. We cannot prove by logic the existence
of God, the freedom of the will, or the immortality of the soul.
But when we turn from Pure Reason to Practical Reason it
happily becomes clear that we must assume these things.
Philosophy does not merely answer the question, What do we
know ? It must answer the more practical questions, What
ought we to do ? What may we hope ?

" After we have satisfied ourselves of the vanity of all the
ambitious attempts of reason to fly beyond the bound of experi-
ence, enough remains of practical value to content us. It is
true that no one may boast that he knows that God and a future
life exist ; for if he possesses such knowledge hfe is just the
man for whom I have long been seeking. All knowledge

THE KANTIAN COMPROMISE 97

(touching an object of mere reason) can be communicated, and
therefore I might hope to see my own knowledge increased to
this prodigious extent by his instruction. No, our conviction
in these matters is not logical, but moral certainty ; and, inas-
much as it rests upon subjective grounds (of moral disposition),
I must not even say it is morally certain that there is a God,
and so on, but / am morally certain, and so on. That is to say,
the belief in a God and in another world is so interwoven with
my moral nature that the former can no more vanish than the
latter can ever be torn from me."

The conviction that there is a moral law justifies us in assum-
ing the existence of God. Philosophers may doubt the reality
of matter and question physical laws, but to doubt that right is
right and wrong is wrong seemed to Kant quite intolerable.

Reason must supply a meaning to the word ought ; and such
a meaning shows that the moral law must be formal i.e., not
a recommendation to practise specific virtues and apply in
all circumstances. The general form of the law is a command :
" Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time
will that it should become a universal law."

There is a Calvinistic flavour about all this and also a hint of
the Prussian barrack square. Kant held that if society were
on the point of dissolution, the last act of the Government must
be to see that all condemned felons are hanged. It follows that
if the Gestapo come after your mother you must not tell a lie
even to save her from being tortured in a concentration camp.

The Consequences of Kant

Summing up Kant's contribution, Professor A. C. Ewing
writes : " That all propositions are partly a priori and partly
empirical, that the mind exercises a far greater organizing
function even in sense-perception than had been realized
hitherto so that perception is impossible without conception
and we are acquainted with nothing which is merely given
without interpretation, that the unity of the self is not that of
an unchanging, simple substance but is to be found in the
functional unity of experience, that the knowing self and its

98 THE KANTIAN COMPROMISE

objects are correlative so that there can be no self without
objects and no objects without an experiencing self, that physi-
cal objects are best regarded as systems of sense-data unified by
general laws common to all human experience, are doctrines
which, whether right or wrong, clearly emerge . . . and have
exercised a great influence ever since. " (Section on Kantian-
ism in Twentieth-Century Philosophy.)

The chief stumbling-block to Kant's successors was the
thing-in-itself. It was obviously unsatisfactory. Fichte re-
jected it, and so did Hegel, but not because it was " meta-
physical/ 1 It seemed to Hegel that the empiricists had had
their innings, but they had failed to explain how genuine
knowledge was possible how concepts could disclose necessary
and universal relations. He concluded that philosophy had
taken the wrong road and that a return to metaphysics was the
only solution.

Hegel accepted part of Kant's analysis of concepts. He
regarded their division into sensuous and non-sensuous, and
the use of a priori categories, as a considerable advance on the
Platonic theory of Ideas, in which no classification was at-
tempted. But he would not admit that there was any limit to
knowledge.

He took one of the most fiercely debated steps in the history
of philosophy. He dropped the thing-in-itself and phenomena,
but he retained the categories. They were not subjective forms
of experience, as Kant had taught ; they were as objective as
Plato believed his Ideas to be.

And so began the " unearthly ballet of bloodless categories,"
against which Bradley inveighed. A new horizon was instantly
disclosed. Whether it gives us mirage or reality is still dis-
puted. It certainly provides the excitement of a wholly fresh
perspective. How to make it intelligible I do not know.
HegeFs own writings seem to me almost completely incompre-
hensible, and I must state frankly that I have leaned heavily on
his interpreters always bearing in mind his own complaint
that only one man had understood him and that even he had
got most of it wrong.

THE KANTIAN COMPROMISE 99

USEFUL REFERENCES

Kant, by A. D. Lindsay ; 1934.

A Commentary to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, by Norman Kemp

Smith ; 1923.

Kant's Metaphysic of Experience, by H. J. Paton ; 1936.
A Study of Kant, by James Ward ; 1902.
The Critique of Pure Reason, by Immanuel Kant ; 1781-87.
The Critique of Practical Reason, by Immanuel Kant ; 1788.
The Critique of Judgment, by Immanuel Kant ; 1789-93.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Return to Metaphysics

THIS book is designed for the reader with little or no knowledge
of philosophy. I am afraid that he will now find the going
pretty heavy. As I have already stressed, we are no longer
dealing with the speculations of shrewd men-of-the-world who
wrote for a cultivated but non-specialist public. We have
reached an awkward period when professors wrote for other
professors.

It would be idle to' pretend that philosophy is an easy subject.
We may be quite sure that any system of philosophy that calls
for no effort to understand it is false. The entire framework
of humaa speculation is not likely to be simpler to grasp than its
parts. Modern physical theories are not easy, and they deal
only with one aspect of the problem that confronts the
philosopher.

In a sense it is a sign of progress when a subject becomes
difficult. Thus it is easier to read a text-book of psychology
than of physics, not because the problems of psychology are
simpler on the contrary but because we do not know so
many answers.

Looking back from the point where Hegel took over from
Kant, Ffchte, and Schelling, we can see that in the seventeenth
century there was an interruption in the main stream of inquiry.
Before Locke, philosophers were concerned to find an explana-
tion of the universe. Suddenly the whole of their procedure
was challenged. Suppose there were limits to what the human
mind could know ? Suppose the quest for an explanation was
destined to founder on the rocks of human fallibility ?

A new school arose emphasizing the limitations of the mind.
The faith of the traditional philosophers in logic as an instru-

100

THE RETURN TO METAPHYSICS IOI

ment for discovering new truths was shaken. Nor could
intuition come to the rescue ; that road was also blocked.
Experience was the corner-stone of the new school. What lay
outside possible experience was regarded as an unknown, and
even unknowable, territory that the philosopher must not try
to penetrate.

Accordingly it was held that metaphysics was a waste of time,
a mere fiddling with words. It followed that to look for a
general explanation to ask why grass was green, or why the
earth went round the sun was futile. You could hold that
grass was green because God made it so, but why he should
not make white grass was an inscrutable mystery. The scien-
tists could .answer how, but when the philosopher was asked
why he must remain dumb.

What Constitutes an Explanation

Hegel (1770-1831) was profoundly dissatisfied with this
situation. He was prepared to admit that the interruption of
metaphysical inquiry had cleared the air, but he sought some
escape from the sceptical impasse to which even Kant had been
driven.

There must surely be some explanation of the universe or
of the ordering of experience which passes for knowledge. It
is all very well to say that it is impossible to predict the future,
but we do so in fact with success. It is all very well to con-
clude from Hume that there is no reason why water in a kettle
should not freeze ; in fact, if the kettle is put on a fire the water
boils. So, obviously there are laws of nature. Obviously we
are not faced by pure chaos. And if Kant's unknowable thing-
in-itself is a contradiction in terms, if we cannot sensibly assert
that reality is unknowable, the Maginot line is pierced there
are not limits to knowledge and all reality is knowable. Even
the explanation can be known.

But what is meant by an explanation ? According to Hegel
it is something seen to follow of necessity from something else,
just as the conclusion of a syllogism follows from the premises.
This is not the same relation as cause and effect. Hume is

102 THE RETURN TO METAPHYSICS

right on that point. The boiling of water does not follow
from the application of heat as a logical conclusion follows
from a premise. Nor will it help if we trace back the chain
of causes to a First Cause. We shall then have to explain the
First Cause.

The search for an explanation must not come to rest on any-
thing arbitrary 7 . What is required is not a cause, but the reason
for a cause a reason of which the world is a consequent. If
we could indeed find such a reason, everything that happens
would be a consequence of it and would be deducible from it.
We should not have to bother about observing and experiment-
ing we could sit down and deduce the nature of the world.

Mere empirical facts tell us little. We can see that oil burns
and ice melts, but we can make no deductions from such bare
isolated facts. If the whole universe is nothing but an aggre-
gate of isolated facts individual atoms, simple ideas, sense-
impressions, call them what you will the empiricists are per-
fectly correct, and no reason can be discovered for the order of
Nature. We must then take refuge in a vague feeling that some
beliefs are more probable than others ; or, like Hume, we must
abandon the quest as hopeless, dismiss philosophy as an esoteric
pastime, and turn with relief to backgammon.

But if, on the other hand, the universe is not a mere aggregate,
but an organic whole, every part of it will send out some thread
of connection with every other part. This means a return to
Spinoza's vision of a single reality, every individual aspect of
which is what it is because of the character of the whole. Such
a reality is rational, because reason can discover universal laws
which express the character of the parts and therefore yield
genuine knowledge as opposed to " the twilight of probability."

Spinoza held that the universe was one substance which he
called God with an infinite number of attributes. He held
that we knew only two of these attributes, thought and extension
beyond these stretch an infinite unknowable. Hegel accepted
Spinoza's Monism, but he rejected the limit placed on what
could be known. If reason can find an explanation there is no
such limit.

THE RETURN TO METAPHYSICS 103

Reality is Thought, Not Matter

What, then, is the solution ? The first step is to assume that
the total reality is one ; but Hegel believed that " substance "
was not primitive enough to be taken as the starting-point of
deduction. The " stuff " of the world is not matter and mind,
still less matter alone. The world-stuff is entirely mental as
mental (or spiritual) as Berkeley believed. It consists of
thought and nothing but thought.

So far Hegel makes no startling innovation. He seems, on
the face of it, to offer a solution rather like Berkeley's Im-
materialism. He rejects not only the logically indefensible
substratum *hat worried Locke, but the thing-in-itself which
was the unsatisfactory feature of Kant's scheme. But it would
be a bad blunder to suppose that by " thought " Hegel meant
anything resembling the " ideas " of the English empiricists.
By thought he meant what Plato called " ideas " and Aristotle
" universals." From Plato he took the suggestion that the
thoughts of which the world is made are objective, and not, as
Kant taught, subjective. And so, the world, according to
Hegel, (and not merely our private worlds,) is quite literally
composed of concepts. Apart from concepts there is nothing.

But he departed from Plato and supported Kant in distin-
guishing two kinds of concepts, sensuous and non-sensuous.
The reason of the world, according to Hegel, lies in the nature
of pure concepts. From these concepts (which are like Kant's
twelve categories but more numerous) he claimed to be able to
deduce every feature of the world, even the course of its history
and the development of social institutions. Such a claim sounds
fantastic, but we must remember this : if the trick can be done,
Hegel has succeeded in discovering the explanation that philo-
sophers before him had sought as ardently as the alchemists
searched for the secret of making gold. For if reality
does consist of concepts, and of nothing else, the world must
flow from their nature as necessarily as a conclusion from
premises. Indeed, there is no longer logic on one side, shut
off by an impenetrable wall from fact. There is no longer the

104 THE RETURN TO METAPHYSICS

old baffling contradiction between the world of reason and the
world of everyday appearances. Fact and logic are identical
if this is the case ; if " things " are congeries of thoughts,
" things " are related in exactly the same way as logical terms.
Indeed, Nature is composed of the same " material " as logic.

" I refute it thus ! " Dr. Johnson might say, once again
kicking a stone. But, once more, what does he refute ? The
qualities of hardness, greyness, coldness, etc., are not denied.
These, however, are not " simple ideas. " They are not par-
ticulars. They are universals. A stone is merely a bundle of
universals, according to Hegel. Unified as a bundle it is an
individual thing. To say that it " exists " is to assert its
individuality its lack of universality.

This will be intelligible to those who have followed me in
earlier chapters. It amounts to saying that we know nothing
of an object apart from the concepts that constitute it. Indeed,
there is nothing more to know.

Such concepts are sensuous, it may be objected. What of
Hegel's claim to deduce the stone from non-sensuous cate-
gories ? Grant that hardness and greyness the whole set of
appearances of the stone are universals and truly exist in a
certain combination, how can such definite characteristics be
deduced from non-sensuous concepts, such as totality, plurality,
singularity, etc. ? How can Hegel possibly maintain that such
abstractions as these exist objectively ?

The answer to the last question is that Hegel does not hold
that universals exist. Well, then, it will be instantly retorted,
if they do not exist how can they form the ground of the world,
the reason from which nature flows as a consequent ? The
reply that Hegel gives has seemed to many of his critics mere
word-spinning. His answer is that pure concepts do not exist,
but they are real ; whereas individual objects exist but are not
real. Sensuous concepts, being universals, are real, but they
exist only as collections they occupy a no-man's land some-
times called " subsistence,"

THE RETURN TO METAPHYSICS 105

The Universal Philosophy

" This sickening humbug ! " exclaimed Schopenhauer. He
went on to describe Hegel as a " spiritless and tasteless charlatan
.... We see with what tricks he was able to hold the learned
world of Germany for thirty years." That Schopenhauer was
personally jealous of Hegel's success can hardly be doubted ;
but it is easy enough to see why Hegel should be regarded as a
sophist. I do not think, however, that this harsh judgment
can be accepted. I personally believe that Hegel failed in his
central purpose ; but it was something worth attempting. His
failure Was a bigger achievement than most people's successes,
despite its extravagances and occasional absurdities.

Hegel tried to find a way out of the sceptical impasse. He
tried to show what the world must be like if it was susceptible
of a rational explanation. If his solution had a paradoxical air,
that was certainly nothing new. He made a heroic endeavour
to abolish all arbitrary assumptions and justify the method of
deductive metaphysics. His aim was to formulate a universal
philosophy that embraced all the progress which he believed
had been made by his predecessors.

As William Wallace puts it : " What Hegel proposes to give
is no novel or special doctrine, but the universal philosophy
which has passed on from age to age, here narrowed and there
widened, but still essentially the same. It is conscious of its
continuity and proud of its identity with the teachings of Plato
and Aristotle."

Viewed in the light of such an endeavour, his solution was
not so outrageous as so many people have found it. Let us
look more carefully at the apparent word-play, remembering
the trouble that earlier philosophers had had with such ideas
as " change " and " existence."

It seemed evident to Parmenides, for example, that change
was a contradiction in terms for what is, is ; and what is not,
is not. As Zeno had pointed out, at any given instant a moving
arrow is stationary. What is the alternative to saying that our
senses deceive us, that the everyday world is a kind of illusion,

106 THE RETURN TO METAPHYSICS

that reason must build up a world of its own in defiance of
the senses ? We cannot trust mere appearance ; so we must
either give up the search for connections between things-in-
themselves or be content with phenomenal knowledge.

This inevitably raised the question of what we mean when
we say that something " exists/' Do appearances exist or
should we restrict the word to the reality behind them ? Do
numbers, infinitesimals, minus quantities exist ? If a physical
object turns out to be a collection of universals, how can we
deny that the universals we thus experience exist and yet affirm
that some material substratum, which nobody can experience,
really and truly exists ?

Much of the confusion, of course, is due to the fact that the
verb to-be can be employed in many different senses. Hegel
broke with the sort of logic which deduces one proposition
from another. He tried to deduce one term from another.
But to express this he had to use propositions, and so he ap-
peared, like Spinoza, to treat every assertion as attributing in
the last resort a characteristic to one truly existing subject the
whole Cosmos. He was then faced with the problem of how a
bit of the cosmos (Hegel himself) could regard the sole subject
(which was not himself) as an object. How much simpler is
the task of the solipsist, who can regard himself as the sole
subject !

The Real is the Rational

Before we become entangled in this problem let us consider
the new terms Hegel required to express the situation that there
are, so to speak, two worlds, appearance and reality. The
world of tables and books, people and stars, is said to exist.
But the world of the mathematician and the logician, of num-
bers, symbols, abstract ideas, plainly does not exist in the same
sense. Yet it is not mere nothing indeed, such concepts as
zero and infinity apply to the existing world and are used by
engineers for very practical purposes. So these concepts have
being, but they do not have existence. They are real how else
could they be applied to the everyday world ? It follows that

THE RETURN TO METAPHYSICS 107

being and reality are words which do not mean the same as
existence.

When we say something is real we can mean only that it is
universal. A sensuous concept, redness, is universal ; it is
not any particular red object ; it is what all red objects have in
common. The still more abstract concept, colour (abstracted
from all specific shades) is what all red, blue, yellow objects
have in common. The even more abstract and non-sensuous
concept, being, mere " isness," is also universal. It is real,
though it is not dependent on any particular state of affairs.
But the particular stone that Dr. Johnson kicked is neither
universal nor independent of other things. And since to be
universal is ,what Hegel means by being real, a particular stone
is not real. Like the rest of the coloured, changing world, it is
not real, in a metaphysical sense, but it certainly exists.

When universals come together and form an individual object,
that process is the birth of an existent. Of course, universals
must not be imagined as rushing from the abysses of space and
settling down to form a stone. If it is asked, where are univer-
sals ? the reply must be nowhere and nowhen. They do
not exist, but they are real logical elements. They are not the
basic material out of which the world is fashioned. They are
prior to particular things, but this is a purely logical priority,
not a priority in time. Otherwise they would be causes of
particular things instead of their reason.

A dim perception of Hegel's meaning will perhaps begin to
dawn on those readers who have had the patience to persevere.
Universals are thoughts. A material object is a pattern of
thoughts. The whole universe is an organized procession of
thoughts, like the content of consciousness. The movement
follows a law and has a direction. And so the universe of
concepts, as it externalizes itself, has a meaning and a purpose.
It is not blind matter but spirit (thought).

Such a law, if it can be found, will be the ultimate reason ;
once it is understood, it will exhibit the necessity for every type
of change. It will be the law governing change itself the
same law governing the passage from seed to flower, acorn to

IO8 THE RETURN TO METAPHYSICS

oak, nebula to solar system, primitive savagery to civilization,
mental conflict to its resolution, logical premise to its con-
clusion. This law will show how one category can be deduced
from another, how the universe is a genus which contains
within itself differentiae and species that can be discovered,
once you have the clue. And Hegel believed he had found the
clue, the master-secret the Dialectic, as he calls it.

Subject and Object

For the moment let us postpone consideration of this dialecti-
cal law, which claims to show the manner in which the universe
of thought develops. The development which appears to us
as the phenomenal world, the evolution of nature and the course
of human history, is not the whole story. We cannot compre-
hend, in its full richness, the whole story so long as we merely
look at it from the outside. We can see only the surface-play,
only aspects of the total reality. And when we are restricted
to a partial view we inevitably encounter contradictions. They
are resolved as we widen our outlook, though still new contra-
dictions arise. Everything in the universe is related to every-
thing else and is, in a sense, determined by everything else.
Thus the constitution of the whole enters into every part.

A piece of a jig-saw puzzle owes its shape to the way it has
been cut ; it may be said to owe its shape to the way the parts into
which it must be fitted have been cut, if the whole thing was
cut from a single sheet of paper. This analogy must not be
pressed too far, because the universe is infinitely complex, and
a jig-saw is not a coherent and necessary system. But obviously
Hegel was faced by the difficulty inherent in Spinoza's universe :
how can you really know anything without knowing everything ?
Hegel reversed Spinoza's dictum that all determination is
negation ; for Hegel all negation is determination.

This sounds, admittedly, like more word-play. What he
means is that when we say that something is not we discover
something else that is. To negate is to posit. And the pro-
gress of the dialectic which we shall soon consider would
not be possible unless by negating, or denying, one concept we

THE RETURN TO METAPHYSICS IOQ

arrived at another. Thus Hegel continually speaks of " the
portentous power of the negative.'*

The idea of bare being gives us the idea of nothing. Being,
without any sort of determination, is the same as nothing as
Berkeley had protested about bare matter. Being and nothing
are opposites, and yet they are identical. This opposition and
unity gives rise to the idea of becoming. And so we get a third
concept.

We start with the idea of bare, qualityless being ; we see that
it involves the notion of not-being (nothing) ; and when we
consider how the one concept seems to pass into the other we
find ourselves led irresistibly to reconcile the contradiction in a
fresh concept, becoming.

Parmenides had looked at these concepts in isolation. He
saw the contradiction between being and not-being, which
appeared when he analysed becoming, but the rules of formal
logic drove him back like a tabu. The really objectionable
contradiction is between propositions, not terms.

Hegel boldly challenged the rules. They were merely
formal, he said, and plainly they could not be applied to a
world that really changes. A non-propositional logic was
therefore demanded if change was to be taken seriously and
it could apply only if its elements were the very stuff of experi-
ence, or of reality to choose a more objective term. The
categories do, indeed, participate in a cosmic ballet, and the
new logic shows the musical score.

The Unity of Opposites

There are three important features in this novel conception :
(a) the subject-object relation ; (b) logical abstraction ; and
(c) the identity of opposites. It is easier to ridicule these
novelties than to understand what Hegel was trying to say. He
was, of course, trying to express something almost impossible
to convey by ordinary speech. The " learned gibberish " for
which he is so often condemned is the result of a giant intellect
struggling with the limitations of language in an agonizing
attempt to communicate his vision.

108 THE RETURN TO METAPHYSICS

oak, nebula to solar system, primitive savagery to civilization,
mental conflict to its resolution, logical premise to its con-
clusion. This law will show how one category can be deduced
from another, how the universe is a genus which contains
within itself differentiae and species that can be discovered,
once you have the clue. And Hegel believed he had found the
clue, the master-secret the Dialectic, as he calls it.

Subject and Object

For the moment let us postpone consideration of this dialecti-
cal law, which claims to show the manner in which the universe
of thought develops. The development which appears to us
as the phenomenal world, the evolution of nature and the course
of human history, is not the whole story. We cannot compre-
hend, in its full richness, the whole story so long as we merely
look at it from the outside. We can see only the surface-play,
only aspects of the total reality. And when we are restricted
to a partial view we inevitably encounter contradictions. They
are resolved as we widen our outlook, though still new contra-
dictions arise. Everything in the universe is related to every-
thing else and is, in a sense, determined by everything else.
Thus the constitution of the whole enters into every part.

A piece of a jig-saw puzzle owes its shape to the way it has
been cut ; it may be said to owe its shape to the way the parts into
which it must be fitted have been cut, if the whole thing was
cut from a single sheet of paper. This analogy must not be
pressed too far, because the universe is infinitely complex, and
a jig-saw is not a coherent and necessary system. But obviously
Hegel was faced by the difficulty inherent in Spinoza's universe :
how can you really know anything without knowing everything ?
Hegel reversed Spinoza's dictum that all determination is
negation ; for Hegel all negation is determination.

This sounds, admittedly, like more word-play. What he
means is that when we say that something is not we discover
something else that is. To negate is to posit. And the pro-
gress of the dialectic which we shall soon consider would
not be possible unless by negating, or denying, one concept we

I08 THE RETURN TO METAPHYSICS

oak, nebula to solar system, primitive savagery to civilization,
mental conflict to its resolution, logical premise to its con-
clusion. This law will show how one category can be deduced
from another, how the universe is a genus which contains
within itself differentiae and species that can be discovered,
once you have the clue. And Hegel believed he had found the
clue, the master-secret the Dialectic, as he calls it.

Subject and Object

For the moment let us postpone consideration of this dialecti-
cal law, which claims to show the manner in which the universe
of thought develops. The development which appears to us
as the phenomenal world, the evolution of nature and the course
of human history, is not the whole story. We cannot compre-
hend, in its full richness, the whole story so long as we merely
look at it from the outside. We can see only the surface-play,
only aspects of the total reality. And when we are restricted
to a partial view we inevitably encounter contradictions. They
are resolved as we widen our outlook, though still new contra-
dictions arise. Everything in the universe is related to every-
thing else and is, in a sense, determined by everything else.
Thus the constitution of the whole enters into every part.

A piece of a jig-saw puzzle owes its shape to the way it has
been cut ; it may be said to owe its shape to the way the parts into
which it must be fitted have been cut, if the whole thing was
cut from a single sheet of paper. This analogy must not be
pressed too far, because the universe is infinitely complex, and
a jig-saw is not a coherent and necessary system. But obviously
Hegel was faced by the difficulty inherent in Spinoza's universe :
how can you really know anything without knowing everything ?
Hegel reversed Spinoza's dictum that all determination is
negation ; for Hegel all negation is determination.

This sounds, admittedly, like more word-play. What he
means is that when we say that something is not we discover
something else that is. To negate is to posit. And the pro-
gress of the dialectic which we shall soon consider would
not be possible unless by negating, or denying, one concept we

THE RETURN TO METAPHYSICS log

arrived at another. Thus Hegel continually speaks of " the
portentous power of the negative. "

The idea of bare being gives us the idea of nothing. Being,
without any sort of determination, is the same as nothing as
Berkeley had protested about bare matter. Being and nothing
are opposites, and yet they are identical. This opposition and
unity gives rise to the idea of becoming. And so we get a third
concept.

We start with the idea of bare, qualityless being ; we see that
it involves the notion of not-being (nothing) ; and when we
consider how the one concept seems to pass into the other we
find ourselves led irresistibly to reconcile the contradiction in a
fresh concept, becoming.

Parmenides had looked at these concepts in isolation. He
saw the contradiction between being and not-being, which
appeared when he analysed becoming, but the rules of formal
logic drove him back like a tabu. The really objectionable
contradiction is between propositions, not terms.

Hegel boldly challenged the rules. They were merely
formal, he said, and plainly they could not be applied to a
world that really changes. A non-propositional logic was
therefore demanded if change was to be taken seriously and
it could apply only if its elements were the very stuff of experi-
ence, or of reality to choose a more objective term. The
categories do, indeed, participate in a cosmic ballet, and the
new logic shows the musical score.

The Unity of Opposites

There are three important features in this novel conception :
(a) the subject-object relation ; (b) logical abstraction ; and
(c) the identity of opposites. It is easier to ridicule these
novelties than to understand what Hegel was trying to say. He
was, of course, trying to express something almost impossible
to convey by ordinary speech. The " learned gibberish " for
which he is so often condemned is the result of a giant intellect
struggling with the limitations of language in an agonizing
attempt to communicate his vision.

THE RETURN TO METAPHYSICS IOQ

arrived at another. Thus Hegel continually speaks of " the
portentous power of the negative."

The idea of bare being gives us the idea of nothing. Being,
without any sort of determination, is the same as nothing as
Berkeley had protested about bare matter. Being and nothing
are opposites, and yet they are identical. This opposition and
unity gives rise to the idea of becoming. And so we get a third
concept.

We start with the idea of bare, qualityless being ; we see that
it involves the notion of not-being (nothing) ; and when we
consider how the one concept seems to pass into the other we
find ourselves led irresistibly to reconcile the contradiction in a
fresh concept^ becoming.

Parmenides had looked at these concepts in isolation. He
saw the contradiction between being and not-being, which
appeared when he analysed becoming, but the rules of formal
logic drove him back like a tabu. The really objectionable
contradiction is between propositions, not terms.

Hegel boldly challenged the rules. They were merely
formal, he said, and plainly they could not be applied to a
world that really changes. A non-propositional logic was
therefore demanded if change was to be taken seriously and
it could apply only if its elements were the very stuff of experi-
ence, or of reality to choose a more objective term. The
categories do, indeed, participate in a cosmic ballet, and the
new logic shows the musical score.

The Unity of Opposites

There are three important features in this novel conception :
(a) the subject-object relation ; (b) logical abstraction ; and
(c) the identity of opposites. It is easier to ridicule these
novelties than to understand what Hegel was trying to say. He
was, of course, trying to express something almost impossible
to convey by ordinary speech. The " learned gibberish " for
which he is so often condemned is the result of a giant intellect
struggling with the limitations of language in an agonizing
attempt to communicate his vision.

110 THE RETURN TO METAPHYSICS

The essence of Idealism is that being always entails being for
consciousness. Without a subject that knows there can be no
object that is known. If there are no contents within conscious-
ness, if there is a blank, how can we speak of a conscious subject ?
It would not be conscious of anything ; indeed, it would not be
anything.

Similarly, if there is no subject, how can there be an object ?
A Materialist might argue that material objects existed before
conscious subjects ; but, for reasons already mentioned, Hegel
held that the stuff of reality was not material substance, but
thought. It follows that if the whole universe is like the
content of consciousness, subject and object involve one
another.

My thoughts are always inside the circle of my consciousness ;
hence, as we saw, Leibniz held that monads must be windowless
and constitute a universe of solipsists. But Hegel does not
talk about, my thoughts or your thoughts ; his Idealism is
objective and he talks about thought. When he says that a
thing (object) is distinct from thought, all he means is that
the content of consciousness is extruded or externalized and
then viewed as if it were separate from the knower, though it is
still knowable. Looked at from one angle, the thing is an
object ; looked at from inside, as it were, a thing (as an element
of consciousness) is the subject.

How else could the world be the thought of God, and yet
God be the thought of individual creatures ? But Hegel calls
the one completely real subject the Absolute, and it would be
a mistake to regard this as synonymous with a personal Deity.
The Absolute is the sum-total of all the categories. It is the
whole dialectical series ; it is not something outside, to which
the categories apply as defining characteristics. To suppose
this is to misunderstand the fundamental principle which
Hegel calls the identity of knowing and being.

In order to grasp how subject and object can be identical
and yet distinct, how various categories involve one another and
so give rise to the dialectical series, it is of assistance to know
what is meant by logical division and abstraction. Return

THE RETURN TO METAPHYSICS III

for a moment to Aristotle, who propounded the useful scheme
of classification by genus, species, and differentiae.

In regard to the use of this scheme for arriving at definitions
there are various difficulties which need not concern us now.
It is clearly possible to obtain more, and more, and more abstract
terms by ignoring individual differences. Thus, if we start
with the motley crowd in the street, we can ignore the proper
names and divide them into Englishmen and foreigners. Then,
by ignoring still more differences, we can arrive at the concept
man for they are all human beings. By continuing the pro-
cess, we can say they are animals, and still more abstractly that
they are lumps of matter.

Now the various sciences halt at one or another of these levels
of abstraction the anthropologist at man, the biologist at
animal, and the physicist at matter. It is a convenient and
necessary methodological procedure. The metaphysician, how-
ever, deals with a still more rarefied abstraction. He is not
concerned with matter, still less with individual men ; he is
concerned with being ; and according to Hegel, this term is
even more abstract than existence. Universals have being, but
they do not exist.

The universals obtained by the old method are isolated
aspects of the totality of things. You can climb up the ladder,
from individual men to the matter of the physicist ; but if you
start at the top, you cannot climb down and deduce individual
men. It is only as you go up that you find the rungs that you
must use. In other words, it would seem that you cannot
deduce the more concrete from the less.

This, however, is precisely what Hegel appears to do. He
starts from the top of the ladder, with the most abstract con-
cept, being ; and step by step he deduces more concrete con-
cepts. Being is the genus ; not-being is the differentia ;
becoming is the species. On whether this process is legiti-
mate or not depends the whole stupendous system of the
Dialectic.

The traditional method of arriving at a definition may be
illustrated by what is called in logical text-books Arbor For-

112 THE RETURN TO METAPHYSICS

phyriana. The following diagram may be regarded as a
definition of Man.

Substantia
Corporea Incorporea

Corpus
Animatum Inanimatum

\

Vivens
Sensibile Insensibile

Animal
Rationale Irrationale

Animal Rationale
Mortale Immortale

\

Homo
Socrates, Plato, etc.

This sort of thing is known as logical division. It is akin to
classification. It is supposed to show the essence of a concept.
I have deliberately chosen an example of the type of division
called dichotomy because it proceeds, as Hegel does, by negat-
ing. Thus the genus substance is divided into corporeal and
not-corporeal. This procedure would not help Hegel, how-
ever. He must negate the term without destroying it,
apparently breaking the rule ex nihilo nihil fit. Hegel pulls a
rabbit out of the hat and indignantly denies that it was ever up
his sleeve. Is it a real rabbit, or only the thought of a rabbit ?
But, then, he frankly declares that everything is thought. If
that be admitted it is not so easy to see where the deception
lies. " Is the North pole a real pole ? " asked the school-

THE RETURN TO METAPHYSICS 113

master. " Could you hang a hat on it ? " To which the
schoolboy replied : "It is an imaginary pole and so it would
have to be an imaginary hat."

The Dialectic

Hegel will not allow that his categories are imaginary or that
abstractions are empty. They are concrete universals, by
which is meant that genus does not exclude differentia, but
contains it. Being does not exclude not-being in the formal
sense that A excludes not-A, according to the principle of
contradiction. The genus (being) is indeterminate, and so the
passage to species (becoming) is possible only if some deter-
mination can Jbe added. This feat is performed by the second
term of the triad, which is always a negative. The negation of
a concept therefore lies hidden in it ; when it is drawn out we
get a determinate third term. The main-spring of the dialecti-
cal process is " the portentous power of the negative."

A few examples may make this difficult conception clearer.
Being is negated by not-being, and the contradiction is recon-
ciled in becoming. Then becoming collapses, but this does
not mean a return to pure indeterminate being. We get, in-
stead, the idea of determinate being, abstract quality, from
which we derive limit, then the infinite, then the one and the
many, and so on almost in the manner of the House that Jack
Built.

The Absolute Idea is equivalent to all reality. It contains
the triad : (a) the Idea in itself or Logical idea ; (6) the Idea
outside itself, or Nature ; (c) the Idea for itself, or Spirit.
These are further subdivided : (a) Being, Essence, Notion ;
(b) Mechanics, Physics, Organics ; (c) Subjective Spirit,
Objective Spirit, Absolute Spirit. And these, again, contain
innumerable sub-categories.

It is impossible to wander through the maze of details. I
have done my best to avoid technical terms, jtut a few must be
noted. Hegel's logic employs the triadic form that we have
already seen with few exceptions. The first term is the
thesis ; its negation is the antithesis ; and the negation of the

114 THE RETURN TO METAPHYSICS

negation in the third term is the synthesis. The synthesis
shows the unity of opposites ; but it is a new affirmation, and
so this in turn is shown to be self-contradictory. The process
continues until we find all contradictions reconciled in the
Absolute Idea.

Hegel distinguishes between understanding (Ver stand) and
Reason (Vernunfi). To understanding, opposites appear as
mutually exclusive ; but to Reason, difference and identity are
not incompatible. " Logical doctrine has three sides : (a) the
Abstract side, or that of the understanding ; (b) the Dialectical,
or that of negative reason ; (c) the Speculative, or that of
positive reason/'

" Immediate " is a puzzling term. The thesis is regarded as
being characterized by " immediacy " ; and the antithesis by
" mediation." What is immediate is simple and self-identical ;
what is mediate shows differences, distinctions.

Another term is " moment," virtually a factor. Thus thesis
and antithesis are moments of synthesis. The double function
of the synthesis to abolish and yet preserve, to unify opposites
without destroying their difference, is called sublating, from the
German aufheben.

Finally the idea of one concept being contained in another, so
that it can be deduced from it dialectically, is expressed by
saying that it is implicit, or " in itself " (an stch). A flower in
this sense is implicit in a seed. As Aristotle might have said,
the seed contains the flower potentially. Becoming is implicit
in being. That is why it can be deduced from it. Every
earlier term in the dialectic contains the later terms implicitly.
And the later terms contain the earlier ones explicitly, for
nothing is lost in the progress from category to category, and
there is a steady gain in concreteness until we reach the Absolute
Idea, in which all contradictions are resolved and all things are
contained.

The Purpose of the Universe

Hegel's Logic ends with the Absolute Idea. Its categories
are pure concepts, and the attempt to deduce sensuous concepts

THE RETURN TO METAPHYSICS 115

has yet to be made. Hegel seems just a little disdainful of
mere Nature. He became very angry when a correspondent
wrote and asked him if he could deduce the pen with which he
was writing.

There is no general agreement among Hegel's followers on
this point. But it seems to me to be crucial. If the universe
is regarded as a series of thoughts which involve each other, the
sensuous concepts of nature can also be deduced including the
pen of Hegel's correspondent, a certain Dr. Krug.

The transition from the categories to Nature, from the inner
viewpoint to the outer, is the weakest part of Hegel's scheme.
It obliged him to lay down the law about physics, chemistry,
astronomy, and biology. After such a grandiose start, such
audacious claims, we are entitled to expect a new light to be
thrown on science. But Hegel perpetrated such sad nonsense
that even the faithful blush.

Dr. W. T. Stace writes : " It is not necessary for the student
to enter elaborately into the detailed deductions of the philo-
sophy of nature. It is almost universally admitted, even by
the most ardent Hegelians, that this branch of the system,
depending as it does upon physical science for its data, is now
out-of-date owing to the strides which physical science has
made since Hegel's day. Nor will anyone now dispute that,
even in his own time, this philosophy of Nature was, as regards
the details of its deductions, mostly a failure." (The Philosophy
of Hegel)

Hegel was not content to deduce Nature. He applied the
dialectic to history, to social institutions, to the development of
religion, morals, and art. All religion leads up, by an in-
exorable dialectical process, to Christianity, which is the ab-
solute religion, (Islam is conveniently omitted from the
scheme.) In like manner, the evolution of the State leads up
to the Prussian monarchy, a deduction which was very popular
with the Government of the day and which provided the Ger-
mans with a heady wine in the century of expansion that
followed.

The final realization of the Absolute Idea, however, is in

Il6 THE RETURN TO METAPHYSICS

philosophy and philosophy comes to a stop with the revela-
tion made by Hegel. This is the final, absolute knowledge,
the end towards which the rest of Nature, even the stellar
galaxies, has moved in slow, inevitable procession. The
universe has a purpose. Its purpose is the establishment of
Prussian hegemony and the flowering of Hegelian philosophy.
That little man, with the furrowed brow and bright blue eyes,
mumbling incomprehensibly in a crowded lecture room,
represents the supreme self-expression of the Absolute a claim
beside which the most extravagant assertion of Papal Infallibility
seems modest indeed.

He enjoyed immense popularity, and he died on November
1 4th, 1831, a victim of the cholera epidemic or, as the Greeks
might have said, of hubris.

USEFUL REFERENCES

The Secret of Hegel, by J. H. Stirling ; 1865.

The Philosophy of Hegel, by W. T. Stace.

What is Living and What is Dead of the Philosophy of Hegel, by

B. Croce ; Eng. trs., 1914.
The Logic of Hegel, by W. Wallace.
Studies in Hegelian Dialectic, by J. McTaggart ; 1896.
The Phenomenology of Mind, trs. by J. B. Baillie ; 1910.
The History of Philosophy, trs. by E. S. Haldane ; 1892.
The Philosophy of Fine Art, trs. by F. P. B. Osmaston ; 1920.

CHAPTER NINE

The Aftermath of Hegel

THE influence of Hegel was widespread and profound. The
fortunes of the metaphysicians were at a low ebb when Hegel
came to their rescue. Suddenly it looked as though the glories
of speculative philosophy were about to be restored and that
the tottering empire had been saved from the scientific bar-
barian. The dream of the deductive Rationalists seemed
about to be realized. " Everything that is real is rational, and
everything that is rational is real."

Hegel had surveyed the whole history of philosophy from a
fresh point of view. Instead of regarding his predecessors as
opponents to be refuted, he searched painstakingly for what
seemed of value in their contributions. He believed that every
important philosopher had said something that was true, the
truest thing that could have been said at the time ; the falsity
lay in the incompleteness of the vision.

Plato had spoken truly about one aspect of reality, Aristotle
about another ; and those who followed Descartes, Leibniz,
Spinoza, and Kant had also seen truly within the limits of
their perspectives. Even the empiricists had made valuable
contributions. As Hegel expressed it : " The philosophy latest
in time is the result of all preceding philosophies and must
therefore include them in itself. "

The Realization of the Idea

Consider, for example, the development of ideas as described
in the earlier sections of this book. We have seen how the
questions asked by one philosopher led to new questions, and
so on in an apparently endless series. Heraclitus raised the
problem of Change. Parmenides raised the question of Per-

117

Il8 THE AFTERMATH OF HEGEL

manence. This gave rise to the problems of Reality and
Appearance, the One and the Many, the Universal and the
Particular.

If the whole discussion could have taken place between men
sitting in the same room it would be evident that every fresh
contribution was countered by a denial, which led to a new
formulation. Indeed, more than that, every line of thought
led to its opposite.

The Materialism of the lonians led to the Objective Idealism
of the Eleatics. The Rationalism of Descartes gave rise to the
Empiricism of Locke. Descartes started from an Idealist
premise. He claimed that what we were most certain of was a
spiritual fact the reality of the thinking self. Yet Descartes
was the father of mechanical Materialism.

Spinoza started out to justify a rational system of knowledge.
Unless everything in the universe was interconnected, how
could real knowledge be possible ? Yet he fathered a school
of thought, culminating in Bradley, which was driven to
the conclusion that because of this inter-connection genuine
knowledge was impossible and science was incurably
false.

Again, the sober common-sense of Locke, seeking to anchor
beliefs firmly to experience, led straight to the Immaterialism
of Berkeley ; and the line of thought opened up by the latter,
a vision of the world as a series of volitions in the mind of God,
a universe of spirits, led to the denial by Hume of any spiritual
reality a scepticism which extended equally to matter and
causation. In the end, however, Empiricism performed yet
another somersault, and offered a justification of scientific
knowledge ; still more astonishing, the Idealism of Hegel gave
rise to Materialism in some of his followers.

Perhaps I should not say " in the end," because there is no
finality in these developments. Whatever view we hold of
Hegel we certainly cannot believe that the Absolute Idea
attained perfect self-realization between 1800 and 1830. But
there is some plausibility in Hegel's doctrine that philosophy
has developed by discovering the contradictory nature of its

THE AFTERMATH OF HEGEL IIQ

theses that, to express it simply but inaccurately, things turn
into their opposites.

Nor is this apparent process confined to philosophy and
argument. Something of the sort seems to happen in history.
Situations arise that are self-defeating. After the Puritanism
of the Commonwealth there was the Restoration. As has long
been observed, there is " the swing of the pendulum." Never-
theless, you never quite get back to the earlier state. No man
crosses the same river twice.

Hegel's explanation was audacious. The Absolute Idea is
seen unfolding in history, in philosophy, and in the mind of the
individual man. Always it follows the same law of develop-
ment. It develops like an argument which is what one would
expect if the universe consists of logical categories. A state-
ment is made, or a situation arises ; but the statement, or the
situation, is self- contradictory ; at a certain point the contra-
diction becomes intolerable, and it bursts, giving rise to a new
affirmation, a new situation. The process is then repeated.

But, to some extent, Hegel proves too much. For once it is
granted that Hegel himself is not the incarnation of the Absolute
Idea, Hegel's philosophy must be itself the victim of the
Dialectic. It must contain inner contradictions and lead on to
its opposite. Oddly enough it does.

Right-wing and Left-wing Hegelianism

There are 'two very different lines of development possible,
and as in fact they led to opposite political trends it is con-
venient to speak of Right-wing and Left-wing Hegelianism.
The Right-wing in Germany were delighted with the news that
the rise of Prussia was the manner in which the Absolute
realized itself. Most of Hegel's followers in this country also
took comfort in the conservative aspect of his philosophy.
" Whatever is, is right." So meddlesome people who sought to
reform society were blasphemers against the Absolute. " The
State is the divine idea as it exists on earth. . . . The State is
the march of God through the world."

By assuming that the dialectical series had reached its final

120 THE AFTERMATH OF HEGEL

term, or by ignoring the Dialectic altogether (like Bradley)
Hegelianism could be turned into a mystical justification for
preserving the status quo. Thus, in The Secret of Hegel
(1865), J. H. Stirling wrote : " Is it not indeed to Hegel, and
especially his philosophy of ethics and politics, that Prussia
owes that mighty life and organization she is now rapidly
developing ? Is it not indeed the grim Hegel that is the centre
of that organization which, maturing counsel in an invisible
brain, strikes, lightning-like, with a hand that is weighted from
the mass ? But as regards the value of this organization, it will
be more palpable to many, should I say, that while in con-
stitutional England, Preference holders and Debenture holders
are ruined by the prevailing commercial immorality, the
ordinary holders of Stock in Prussian Railways can depend on
a safe average of 8-33 per cent. This, surely, is saying some-
thing for Hegel at fast."

No doubt it is. Left-wing Hegelians, however, drew a
different conclusion. For them the secret of Hegel was not
the Absolute Idea, but the Dialectic, with its revolutionary
implications. It would be wrong, I think, to call these implica-
tions " evolutionary." If the Absolute is retained, it is obvious,
as Bradley pointed out, that perpetual progress is impossible.
The Absolute may realize itself, and so give the appearance of
change, but as it is perfect it cannot improve itself. What is
even more to the point, the transition from antithesis to synthesis
is a leap. It is a sudden transformation. There is nothing
about it of " the inevitability of gradualness."

The Left-wing Hegelians felt that the Dialectic justified pro-
gress by revolution. They found the Absolute as embarrassing
as the Right-wing groups found the Dialectic, and so they left
it out. They dismissed the Idealism and substituted Material-
ism. As Marx expressed it : "in Hegel's writing Dialectics
stands on its head ; one must turn it the right way up again."

This may seem somewhat cavalier treatment of a complex
philosophical system. Like all systems of deductive rational-
ism, Hegelianism had a dangerous weakness ; it rested like a
pyramid on its point. It was not broad-based, like empirical

THE AFTERMATH OF HEGEL 121

philosophies, which can endure a very great deal of alteration.
A mistake in the first step of a deductive system brings the whole
edifice tumbling down.

Dialectical Materialism

Marx, however, believed that the metaphysical basis could
be destroyed without injury to the essential structure, which he
took to be the Dialectic. Instead of Spirit he wrote Matter.
This offshoot of Hegelian philosophy is known as Dialectical
Materialism. It is of some practical importance to try to
understand it because it is usually regarded as the official
philosophy of the Soviet Union and of Communist Parties
throughout the world.

Dialectical Materialism is the name given to the philosophical
scheme first sketched by Marx and Engels, then developed by
Lenin and his successors. It is not the outcome of one man's
thinking ; it denotes a school of philosophy rather than the
finished scheme of a single thinker. Moreover, it lays no claim
to finality.

Consequently there is no text-book to which one can appeal
for an authoritative statement on all the problems under
discussion. Marx's views are scattered through writings on
economics and sociology. There is, of course, Engels' Dialer
tics of Nature, but a great part of this book is concerned with
nineteenth-century science and is correspondingly dated.
Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism is a polemic against
a number of writers, many of whom have been forgotten, but
Maurice Cornforth's Science versus Idealism brings it up to
date by applying the same method of criticism to Bertrand
Russell and the Logical Positivists.

Various books have been published in this country dealing
with special aspects. Professor J. B. S. Haldane has shown the
application of Marxism to biology, Professor H. Levy to physics
and mathematics, Professor G. Thomson and Professor B.
Farrington to ancient history, and Christopher Caudwell
(among others) to literature and art. The very distinguished
group of scientists and writers who have been wholly or partly

122 THE AFTERMATH OF HEGEL

converted to Marxism is sufficient proof that it is a living
philosophy. It is all the more regrettable that no reliable and
comprehensive text-book exists for the English reader, and that
in so many discussions the same quotations are regurgitated ad
nauseam.

It is, of course, possible to hold, without being a Dialectical
Materialist, that Marx said many wise and important things
about economics and sociology. One need not be a Communist
to believe that he was substantially right when he argued that
Capitalism was essentially unstable. But it was a remarkable
achievement to have demonstrated this at a time when it looked
to most people as though Capitalism would last for ever.

Again, it showed astonishing insight to perceive that an
ideology could be regarded as a function of the social structure.
It was a most fruitful hypothesis, and it threw a new light on
the re-discovery of the past that gained such pace in the latter
half of the nineteenth century. Its importance to the theory of
religious origins was missed by the majority of Marx's Rationalist
contemporaries.

One can accept a great deal of what Marx had to say about
the actual world, however, without accepting the scheme that
he took over from Hegel. He elected to express himself in
the terminology I have tried to explain in the previous chapter.
The shadow of Hegel fell just as heavily on Engels and Lenin.

Indeed, I doubt if the ordinary reader who has never studied
Hegel would find their pronouncements intelligible. It is all
there the Union and interpenetration of Opposites, the tran-
sition from Quantity into Quality, the negation of Negations,
Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis, and even Moments. But it is
there with a difference the self-realizing Idea has become
self-moving Matter.

Dialectical Materialists complain of misrepresentation when
they are charged with being metaphysical. They seem to
assume that this is equivalent to the charge of Idealism. It is
important to remember that practically all other philosophers
are classified by them as either " Idealist " or " Mechanist,"
and, although they repudiate metaphysics as casting a slur on

THE AFTERMATH OF HEGEL 123

their strictly scientific outlook, they are equally antagonistic to
empiricism.

The claim is sometimes made that the Dialectic is not to be
regarded as a priori truth, but merely as a hypothesis that can
be used as an instrument for exploring the world. The
empirical demand for a practical test is freely accepted and
no instance has been found, it is said, of the Dialectic being
wrong. If, however, every problem is formulated in Hegelian
terms, this is not surprising.

The Meaning of Matter

It seems to most people that Dialectical Materialists are just
as confident as the seventeenth-century Rationalists that they
have found a ground plan of the universe. They hold a form
of monistic Materialism ; hence their high regard for Spinoza.
They certainly show no enthusiasm for the anti-metaphysical
philosophers who attacked the whole procedure of deductive
Rationalism.

The universe is said to form a single system. That is the
first assumption. This system is composed of a single stuff,
and the stuff is matter. Whatever exists is matter ; and matter
is endowed with the primary quality of self-locomotion. How,
then, do other qualities arise ? They arise because this self-
movement of matter brings about combinations in such a way
that at certain critical points changes of quantity result in
changes of quality.

Hegel, it will be recalled, did not begin with matter, or even
with substance or even with quality. He was searching for an
explanation. He felt that it was impossible to give a reason
why things are as they are, if you start with something arbitrary,
such as God or matter. For Hegel the dialectical process flows
like an argument from the most abstract to the concrete. That
was why he felt obliged to hold that material things were
thoughts.

The Dialectical Materialist takes the opposite view.
Thoughts are material things. The dialectical process is a
material process. It is logical ; but logical facts are, in a sense,

124 THE AFTERMATH OF HEGEL

physical facts. The matter in the brain, which produces
arguments and what are called ideas, is fundamentally the same
stuff as that of which the earth and the stars are composed.
This self-moving matter is the logical subject of every pro-
position, and it weaves the patterns of biological evolution and
human history. All exhibit the fundamental law of the Dialectic.

According to Engels, " Matter moves in an eternal cycle,
completing its trajectory in a period so vast that in comparison
with it our earthly year is as nothing ; in a cycle in which the
period of highest development, namely the period of organic
life with its crowning achievement self-consciousness is a
space just as comparatively minute in the history of life and of
self-consciousness ; in a cycle in which every particular form
of the existence of matter be it the sun or the nebula, a par-
ticular animal or animal-species, a chemical combination or
decomposition is equally in transition ; in a cycle in which
nothing is eternal, except eternally moving matter and the laws
of its movement and change. But however often and pitilessly
this cycle may be accomplished in time and space, however
many countless suns and earths may arise and fall, however
long it may be necessary to wait until in some solar system, on
some planet, appear conditions suitable for organic life, however
many countless beings may fall and rise before, out of their
midst, develop animals with a thinking brain that finds an
environment that permits them to live, be it even only for a
short period, we are, nevertheless, assured that matter in all
its changes remains eternally one and the same, that not one of
its attributes may perish, and that the same iron necessity which
compels the destruction of the highest earthly bloom of matter
the thinking spirit also necessitates its rebirth at some other
place, at some other time." (Dialectics of Nature.)

Engels is trespassing on the territory of the physicist. This
world may pass away, but matter will remain, and may give
rise by " iron necessity " to fresh worlds and new forms of life.
How far this conflicts with the prediction of the running- down
of the universe which some scientists make I am not competent
to judge.

THE AFTERMATH OF HEGEL 125

The Emergence of the New

Matter, on this view, although a substance, is not a mere
support of qualities. Nor, we are warned, must the " iron
necessity " be confused with teleology or purpose. Neverthe-
less, configurations of self-moving matter can be relied upon to
develop dialectically from Capitalism to Communism on this
planet, and there may be reason to hope that life will arise else-
where after the end of our own world.

We must not regard matter as static stuff, but as moving sub-
stance. " The object is a moving substance/' Engels writes.
" It is possible to know the different forms and aspects of the
substance itself through movement ; only in movement are
the properties of a body revealed ; there can be nothing to say
of a body that is not found in movement. It follows that out
of the forms of movement flow the properties of the moving
bodies."

This entails the notion of process. Engels speaks of " the
great basic thought that the world is not to be comprehended
as a complex of ready-made things, but as a complex of processes,
in which the things apparently stable, no less than their mind-
images in our heads, the concepts, go through an uninterrupted
change of coming into being and passing away, in which, in
spite of all temporary retrogression, a progressive development
asserts itself in the end."

So the universe is a complex of material processes at various
integrative levels, the laws of which show a direction of move-
ment. Mechanism is rejected, but the Victorian belief in
progress is retained. Progress is guaranteed by the iron law
of the Dialectic. Lenin writes : " Two fundamental (or is it
the two possible ? or is it the two historically observed ?) con-
ceptions of development (evolution) are : development as
decrease and increase, as repetition ; and development as a
unity of opposites (the division of the one into mutually exclu-
sive opposites and their reciprocal correlation). The first con-
ception is dead, poor, and dry ; the second is vital. It is only
this second conception which offers the key to understanding

126 THE AFTERMATH OF HEGEL

the ' self-movement ' of everything in existence ; it alone
offers the key to understanding * leaps/ to the ' interruption of
gradual succession/ to the * transformation into the opposite, '
to the destruction of the old and the appearance of the new."

There are several formulations of the three basic laws of
Dialectic. These laws are as follows :

(1) The Unity of Opposites, sometimes called the
Identity of Opposites, the Identity of Contradictories, the
mutual penetration of Opposites.

(2) The Negation of Negations or the Transformation of
Opposites.

(3) The Transition of Quantity to Quality.

According to Hegel, " Identity is the definition only of a
simple, immediate, dead being, but contradiction is the root of
all movement and vitality, and only in so far as a thing has in
itself contradiction does it move, does it possess an impulse and
activity. Contradiction is not simply the negation of normality
but is the principle of every self-movement, of that which
indeed is nothing else than the expression of contradictions."

The motive-power of the self-movement of matter which
results in the emergence of novelty is, therefore, the contra-
diction to be found within given processes. Engels maintains
that contradiction is objectively present in Nature and is " an
actual force as well." (Anti-Duehring.)

" The existence of two mutually contradictory aspects, their
conflict and their flowing together into a new category," wrote
Marx, " comprises the essence of the dialectical movement."
The opposites do not remain at separate poles ; rather, as Hegel
taught, not-being passes back into being and gives rise to
becoming. Or as Engels says, u . . . to hold that basis and
consequence, cause and action, identity and difference, being
and essence, are unalterable opposites, will not bear criticism.
Analysis shows the presence of one pole in latent form within
the other, that at the determined point one pole goes over into
the other and that all logic is developed only from the moving
of these two opposites in one another's direction."

THE AFTERMATH OF HEGEL 127

The negation of the thesis is itself negated, yielding the
synthesis. According to Lenin : " Dialectical ' moment ' re-
quires an indication of ' unity ' ; i.e., of the connection of the
negative with the positive, requires the finding of this positive
in the negative. From affirmation to negation from negation
to a * unity ' with the affirmation ; without this, dialectic
becomes a barren negation, a word-play or scepsis."

The Law of Contradiction

The process is illustrated both by Hegel and Engels by the
example of a seed. Engels writes : " In dialectic to negate
does not mean simply to say ' no/ or to declare a thing to be
non-existent or to destroy it at will. ... I must produce the
first negation in such a way that there should be or should
become possible a second negation. But how do I attain this ?
According to the special nature of each particular case. If I
ground up a grain of barley, or crushed an insect, then, though
I should have accomplished the first act of negation, I should
have made the second impossible. For every category of
objects there is thus a special mode of negation peculiar to it,
and only from this is development to be obtained."

It is important to note that in this passage Engels admits
quite frankly that not all movement is dialectical. " I must
produce the first negation in such a way that there should be or
should become possible a second negation." That the process
is made to work is one of the commonest criticisms, and has been
applied to a further example which Engels gives. " The same
is true in mathematics. Let us take any algebraic magnitude
whatever, say, a. If we negate it, we have a (minus a).
If we negate this negation, by multiplying a with a, we
have + a 2 , i.e., the original positive magnitude, but at a higher
level, namely, the second power." (Antt-Duehring.)

But, as Professor Sidney Hook objects, this works only with
the aid of deliberate assistance. For the negation of minus a
can be written - ( 0), which is not a 2 but a, and so we
are back where we started from. With. regard to the barley
seed, Professor Hook remarks : " Here, as elsewhere, Engels

128 THE AFTERMATH OF HEGEL

relapses into the Aristotelian doctrine of essential natures a
conception which is incompatible with the dictum he accepts
from Hegel, that the nature of a thing is equivalent to the sum
total of all of its appearances and is not a structure existing
behind, separate from, or in opposition to them. If anything
can be * negated ' undialectically this is just as much a part of
its nature, and may be just as important for purposes of scien-
tific inquiry and human welfare, as the fact that it can be
' negated ' dialectically." (Polemic, No. VI.)

Can the process be expressed in other than Hegelian terms ?
An attempt is made by Professor H. Levy in A Philosophy for a
Modern Man. He writes : " Consider a given state or situa-
tion S, in which there resides a, certain quality Q which is under-
going intensification. S has an internal structure or com-
position, of such a. nature that the intensification of Q arouses
in it or intensifies in it a structural quality q. The quality q
is recognized by the fact that its intensification is inimical to
the continued existence of the given state S. Accordingly at a
critical stage of q, the state S is transformed by it into a new
qualitative state T. The transformation is made manifest by
the fact that what was given for the state S no longer has re-
levance. The immediate cause of this intensification of q to
its critical value is Q ; the immediate cause of the transforma-
tion is q. A change-over brought into being by an internally
aroused agency such as q is referred to as a dialectical change.
. . . The actual quantitative point of q at which dialectical
change occurs is referred to by Dialectical Materialists as the
point at which * Quantity passes into Quality ' or more shortly
as the dialectical point. A statistical isolate involving the co-
existence of Q and q prior to the dialectical change is considered
as possessing a contradiction. The quality q is said to negate the
state S, and reaches its climax when it is itself transformed in
the new situation and plays a new role therein."

Knowledge and Truth

Dialectical Materialism has not developed a detailed Theory
of Knowledge. At first sight it may be mistaken for a form of

THE AFTERMATH OF HEGEL I2Q

simple Realism. Thus Lenin defines matter as " the objective
reality of the external world which exists independently of
consciousness and is reflected in consciousness. " But it would
be an error to suppose that this means that the individual brain
passively reflects the outer world like a mirror, in a mechanical
way.

The word " reflection " must not be taken too literally.
Knowledge is not contemplative, but active and emerges from
social practice. Theory and practice, disjoined by the con-
templative idealist, must be united. As Lenin says : " At first
impressions, as in a flash, then something is distinguished,
then ideas of quality are developed (leading to a definition of
a thing or (phenomenon) and subsequently ideas of quantity.
Then study and reflection direct the thought to questions of
identity and difference basis essence. All these ' moments '
or steps of knowledge are directed from the subject to the object,
verify themselves by practice and proceed through this verifica-
tion to truth/ 1

To obtain truth we must take into account all the aspects of
a situation in their mutual relationships. " The aggregate of
all the aspects of a phenomenon, their actuality, and their
mutual dependence that is the source of truth/' says Lenin.
But in practice we cannot discover all the aspects and relations,
so our picture of reality is always incomplete, though it approxi-
mates more and more to completeness as knowledge is extended.

" So this dialectical philosophy dissolves all conceptions of
final, absolute truth, and of a final, absolute state of humanity
corresponding to it. For it nothing is final, absolute, sacred.
It reveals the transitory character of everything and in every-
thing ; nothing can endure before it except the uninterrupted
process of becoming and of passing away, of endless ascendancy
from the lower to the higher." (Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach.)

Note " the endless ascendancy from lower to higher" The
powerful psychological appeal of these logical abstractions is
due to the promise the dialectic seems to give that there must
be an end to human frustration and exploitation. In Marx's
famous words : " Capitalist monpoly becomes a fetter upon the

130 THE AFTERMATH OF HEGEL

method of production which has flourished with it and under it.
The centralization of the means of production and the socializa-
tion of labour reach a point where they prove incompatible with
their capitalist husk. This bursts asunder. The expropriators
are expropriated."

This is not, however, a fatalistic doctrine. It would be use-
less to sit down and wait for the transformation to take place.
Individual men must work and fight to bring the change about ;
but, regarded on the group level (and laws are statistical, or
about groups, not about individuals), final success may be con-
fidently predicted. " With the inexorability of a law of nature,
capitalist production begets its own negation. It is the
negation of a negation. This second negation does not re-
establish private property, but it does re-establish individual
property upon the basis of the acquisitions of the capitalist
era ; i.e., on co-operation and the common ownership of land
and of the means of production (which the labour itself pro-
duces)."

Science and Ideology

It is impossible to deal with all the aspects of Dialectical
Materialism, but some mention must be made of a difficulty
that many people feel. A theory of knowledge which makes
experience depend on social practice and which regards the
concepts used as social products has to justify its own claim to
be valid knowledge. In other words, if Marxism is " true "
indeed if any scientific theory is to be regarded as even approxi-
mately " true " it cannot be merely the reflection of a transi-
tory state of affairs.

We owe to Marx and Engels a view of ideology that is widely
accepted to-day and would be defended by many who are not
" Marxists " if science were excluded from ideology. Indeed,
when some Catholic apologists argue that the causes of the
Reformation were more economic than theological, they echo
Marx. When Egyptologists, like Breasted, argue that ancient
monotheism was a reflection of ancient imperialism, they con-
firm one part of the Marxian thesis.

THE AFTERMATH OF HEGEL 13!

It would be tedious to multiply instances. We are familiar
nowadays with the psychological term " rationalization," an
early example of which was the fox's declaration that the grapes
he could not reach were sour. An ideology can be regarded as
a collective rationalization. Although Engels sometimes writes
as though this sort of wishful thinking is to be contrasted with
the reality-thinking of science, the modern Dialectical
Materialist inserts science within the superstructure.

According to Engels : " Ideology is a process which, of
course, is carried on with the consciousness of so-called thinkers,
but with a false consciousness. The real driving force which
moves it remains unconscious, otherwise it would not be an
ideological process. It imaginatively creates for itself false or
apparent driving forces." From this it would appear that since
Marxism claims to be a science it must be exempt from the self-
deception that it exposes. And it would seem that the theories
of such exact sciences as physics and chemistry must also be
exempt.

Here, however, we come to the parting of the ways between
the tradition of experimental philosophy and the tradition of
speculative philosophy. Those who believe that ideology is a
mass-rationalization of motives, but regard this proposition as
an hypothesis verified by history, are following the traditional
scientific method. They feel that they must not cast doubts on
the conceptual instrument they use to test the hypothesis. For
them the problem does not belong to philosophy but to empirical
science.

But the modern Dialectical Materialist objects to this pro-
cedure. He is scornful of those who accept some parts of
Marxism and reject others. He regards even science itself as
an ideology, and for several reasons. In the first place, if the
concepts used by science are social products, they must be
modified by their social environment. In a Capitalist society
they will be contaminated by the false thinking that Capitalism
generates. In a Socialist society they will be less contaminated,
and in a Communist society there will be an even purer approxi-
mation to truth. Thus bourgeois science cannot compete with

132 THE AFTERMATH OF HEGEL

Marxiaii science, for the Dialectic opens the only door to an
undistorted knowledge.

Again, there is the purely metaphysical argument that,
despite its contradictions, all reality is one and indivisible.
The universe forms one system. All propositions can be
reduced to one form the attribution of a property to a subject.
The universal subject is Matter, and it realizes itself in the
manner revealed by the Dialectic, pretty much as Hegel believed
the Absolute Idea to realize itself but so conceived it leads far
beyond the Prussian Monarchy to Communism. The real is
the rational, and so there is a gradual approximation towards
rationality which means that even Dialectical Materialism itself
progresses and becomes more completely true.

The attitude of modern Dialectical Materialists towards
science is lucidly stated by Christopher Caudwell in The Crisis
in Physics. He affirms unambiguously that scientific theories
are part of an ideology. " The categories of science, or
* things seen,' always reflect in a class society the particular
conditions of functioning of the working class. . . . The cate-
gories of mind of philosophy, art, and mystical religion
always reflect in a class society the particular conditions of
functioning of the ruling class as felt by them."

Man " interpenetrates " actively with nature, and as a
scientist he gives information to society. His language is
therefore socially conditioned. " When the bourgeois considers
matter as the object of cognition he is unable to conceive of it
except under the categories of mechanism. " These are said to
be atomism, strict causality, absolute time and space.

And so, according to Caudwell, " the philosophy of physics
is the philosophy of all bourgeois in relation to matter. It is
mechanical Materialism. The philosophy of all bourgeois
philosophers in relation to matter is the same ; but for various
historical reasons bourgeois philosophers ceased to be interested
in matter and developed another part of bourgeois philosophy,
that concerned with mind or subjective reality."

We learn that even the monadology of Leibniz " is simply
dogmatic materialism under another name " and that " the

THE AFTERMATH OF HEGEL 133

* theological ' God of the seventeenth-century thinkers is really
matter." Again : " The mentalism and tendency towards anti-
scientific scholasticism of modern physicists is not a result of
their researches, for it denies the method by which they were
achieved. . . . The crisis in physics is a part of the final crisis
in bourgeois economy, which gives rise to revolution and the
creation of a new economy."

USEFUL REFERENCES

Appearance and Reality, by F. H. Bradley ; 1893.

Towards an Understanding of Karl Marx, by S. Hook ; 1933.

From Hegel to Marx, by S. Hook ; 1938.

Aspects of Dialectical Materialism, by Hyman Levy, and others.

Dialectics, by T. A. Jackson ; 1936.

Marxist Philosophy and the Sciences, by J. B. S. Haldane ; 1938.

The Crisis in Physics, by Christopher Caudwell.

Illusion and Reality, by Christopher Caudwell.

Science versus Idealism, by Maurice Cornforth ; 1946.

Soviet Philosophy, by John Somerville ; 1946.

A Handbook of Marxism, Ed. by Emile Burns ; 1936.

Ludwig Feuerbach, by F. Engels, Eng. ed. ; 1934.

Anti Duehring, by F. Engels, Eng. ed. ; 1935.

Dialectics of Nature, by F. Engels, Eng. ed., with Intro, by J. B. S.

Haldane; 1941.

Empirio-Criticism, by Lenin, Eng. ed. ; 1928.
A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, prepared by the Leningrad

Institute of Philosophy under the direction of M. Shirokov;

1937-

CHAPTER TEN

The Universe of Science

THE tremendous uprush of philosophical activity that cul-
minated in Kant and Hegel made very little impression on the
experimental philosopher. He had been told that he was
merely dealing with appearances, that matter did not exist,
that to search for causes was vain, that such concepts as absolute
space and time, forces, and infinitesimals were self-contra-
dictory and absurd. Arguments that he certainly could not
refute were -advanced to prove that what he was doing was im-
possible and that the whole venture was doomed to failure.
He went on doing the impossible with almost uninterrupted
success.

It was not, of course, the sort of success at which speculative
philosophers had aimed. Theoretically it was inferior and
partial. It did not reveal the ground-plan of the universe, but
it showed that bits of the universe at least were orderly, and the
sort of laws discovered enabled predictions to be made.

Instead of explaining knowledge, science added to knowledge ;
and instead of analysing change, science effected real and even
spectacular changes. This was an intolerable situation, a
logical scandal that the critics could not ignore, and so philo-
sophy had somehow to account for it. Dialectical Materialism
was but one of a number of attempts by philosophy to come to
terms with science.

To-day we can see rather more plainly that the business of
the philosopher is not to tell the scientist what to do, but to
make clear what he is doing. The concepts that the scientist
uses and the way he uses them form an intellectual instrument
more powerful judged by results than anything man has
ever devised, and the philosopher can be well employed in

THE UNIVERSE OF SCIENCE 135

sharpening and refining this tool in a creative partnership with
those who use it.

The question that arises, therefore, is, What is this instru-
ment ? What are the rules, and can the existing method be
improved on ? The Hegelian Dialectic also claimed to be a
new method of discovering truth. What other methods are there ?

In the nineteenth century the Dialectic was used by Marx
to advance economics and social science ; but it was not
employed by anyone in the physical or biological sciences.
The instrument used by the majority of scientists was something
very different, and it led in an almost unbroken line from
Galileo, Kepler, and Newton to Dalton, Faraday, Darwin, and
thence to Freud, Einstein, Bohr, and the contemporary invasion
of science into every department of knowledge.

The Worship of Reason

The first philosophers to recognize that science must be
taken very seriously indeed were the Encyclopedists. They
derived much of their inspiration from England, but they drew
conclusions from the writings of Locke and Newton that would
have shocked both those Anglican churchmen.

They were, of course, very largely concerned with social
implications. They were kindling a fire that was to bring the
feudal fabric of French society crashing in red ruin. For the
Encylopedists the great instrument for solving problems was
Reason though the actual solution, as far as social problems
were concerned, was achieved (as previously in England) by
force.

Matthew Arnold complained : " The mania for giving an
immediate political application to these fine ideas of the reason
was fatal. Ideas cannot be too much prized in and for them-
selves, cannot be too much lived with ; but to transfer them
abruptly into the world of politics and practice, violently to
revolutionize the world at their bidding that is quite another
thing."

To practice what you preach is always, no doubt " quite
another thing." However, we are not concerned with social

136 THE UNIVERSE OF SCIENCE

philosophy. In the more abstract fields it can hardly be denied
that the men of the Enlightenment were second-rate. They
were mostly mechanical Materialists and they combined this
with Atheism or Deism, always with lucidity and sometimes
in the case of Rousseau and Voltaire with literary genius.

Voltaire (1694-1778) struck the anti-metaphysical note, which
was to culminate in Comte's Positivism, by declaring that
metaphysics had not advanced since the time of the Druids.
" If God did not exist it would be necessary to invent him," he
also said though we must not forget the rest of the sentence,
" but all Nature cries out to us that he exists."

Condillac (1750-1780) developed Locke's Sensationalism.
All thought can be reduced to sensation, on his view, and it is
still possible to read his presentation of empiricism with profit.
La Mettrie (1709-1751) also held that all ideas come from the
senses. In Man a Machine he developed an uncompromising
Materialism. He said that a State composed of Atheists would
be the happiest of all States, for Materialism freed man from a
sense of guilt and responsibility, and the fear of future suffering.

In 1770 d'Holbach brought out his famous System of
Nature, which expanded the same theme. Matter and motion
are eternal and Nature is a self-moving whole, an endless chain
of causes and effects. Man is purely physical and thought is
a function of the brain. Man is the passive instrument of
necessity, a cog in the eternally-moving, cosmic machine.
When he dies he can be likened to a clock broken into a thou-
sand pieces. " O Nature, sovereign of all beings, and ye her
daughters, Virtue, Reason, and Truth, be forever our only
divinities ! " he exclaimed, rhapsodically.

Church and State united to stamp out these dangerous
doctrines. The works of Voltaire were burned. People found
in possession of blasphemous literature were branded and sent
to the galleys. One victim of the purge of 1765 was condemned
to have his hand cut off, his tongue torn out, his head cut off
and his body burned. We cannot, therefore, be surprised that
a note of passion entered the forbidden devotion to the new
goddess of Reason.

THE UNIVERSE OF SCIENCE 137

Reason and Hypothesis

But what is meant by Reason ? As a mere antithesis to
Faith the concept may serve in the rough and tumble of practical
affairs, but obviously a much more precisely defined method is
needed by the scientist if he is to make any progress in adding
to our knowledge. The scientific results, out of which the
Encyclopedists so enthusiastically constructed a philosophy,
were not obtained merely by being rational. Aristotle was
rational, but his philosophy was used as a brake on the develop-
ment of science. Spinoza was rational, but in what sense can
he be said to have contributed to positive knowledge ?

vThe French Materialists tried to run before they could walk.
Nobody in the eighteenth century had any right to lay down
the law about the inmost nature of the entire universe, or about
the human mind. We have only to think of the investigations
that still lay ahead to realize how superficial any " System of
Nature " must have been.

The point is worth emphasizing because there are still people
who believe that the task of philosophy is to weave scientific
knowledge into a pattern, patch up the holes with guesses and
present the result as a finished picture of reality. To some, the
mechanical Materialism of La Mettrie and d'Holbach still
appears as a real alternative to a religious cosmogony. At least
this sort of Materialism can be easily understood.

The metaphysicians sought certainty but unhappily they
failed to convince anyone that they had found it. The scien-
tists, on the other hand, must not seek that sort of knowledge.
To say in advance of investigation that everything that exists is
matter and obeys mechanical laws is not the sort of statement
that a scientist (loyal to his principles) wishes to make. He
must not adopt a " take it or leave it " attitude. What he can
say, of course, is that if the cosmos is a material machine then
certain consequences will follow. But he will add Let us put
the question to a test.

This is a very different way of approaching a problem. In
the first place certain facts are selected. The scientist does not

138 THE UNIVERSE OF SCIENCE

deal with every fact. He makes a selection. From the outset
he deals only with an aspect of the totality of facts.

He selects moving objects or animate objects or human
societies, according to where his interest lies. Then he sets up
an hypothesis as a guide to the experiments he proposes to
carry out. He observes in order to establish a correlation
between things he sees. He invents postulates new abstract
terms that may or may not be found valuable. He does not
regard a single unfavourable observation as necessarily a sign
that the hypothesis is untenable. He allows for experimental
error.

If the final result is the verification of the hypothesis, what
he has supposed might be the case has turned out to be indeed
the case. The two different weights dropped from the tower
of Pisa land at the same time. The observed movements of
the planets-are found to be in accordance with the, prediction.
But if there is a discrepancy the scientist concludes that either
the hypothesis is wrong or there is an undetected factor respon-
sible. He may assume, in order to make the hypothesis work,
that an unobserved planet exists.

Obviously this is a very simplified account of the procedure.
For, once an organized system of ^verified hypotheses is set up,
they are themselves treated as facts, and deductions are made
from them. Broadly speaking, this is what experimental
philosophy amounts to.

A problem is selected ; a hypothesis is set up ; the hypothesis
is developed deductively, and repeated observations are made
to test it. The upshot is that a selection of facts is shown to
be connected with other facts in a manner that no one would
have noticed from cursory inspection. New knowledge, there-
fore, results. At the conclusion of the experiments it can be
said that we may confidently expect to find the property X
wherever we find th property Y.

Such knowledge, of course, is not certain, in the metaphysical
sense. There is always a risk of a more delicate instrument
being devised which will show that some previous observations
were inaccurate. When that happens a new hypothesis may

THE UNIVERSE OF SCIENCE 139

have to be set up and the process gone through all over
again.

Nor is the procedure itself completely free from assumptions.
In order to make a beginning it is necessary to assume that the
facts under observation belong to a system which is intelligible.
Assumptions may have to be made regarding causation and
induction. It is not, however, necessary that the facts in the
universe should be interconnected in the manner in which
Spinoza and Hegel believed them to be. Scientific laws can
be framed without assuming that the universe forms a perfectly
coherent system in which every fact is dependent on every other
fact ; all that is necessary is that it should be a deterministic
system one in which every constituent is determined by some
other constituents.

A great deal of the confusion about the method of science
has been caused by the reluctance to admit : (i) that assump-
tions cannot be altogether dispensed with ; (2) that the know-
ledge obtained falls short of certitude ; (3) that hypothesis is an
important element in the method pursued.

Newton's Four Rules

"Hypotheses non fingo" said Newton. " I make no hypo-
theses." But in the sense in which I have used the word it
seems evident that he did not dispense with hypotheses. So
much misunderstanding has arisen out of Newton's account of
scientific procedure that it is worth while to quote his own
words in the Principia : " But hitherto I have not been able to
discover the cause of those properties of gravity from pheno-
mena, and I frame no hypotheses ; for whatever is not deduced
from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis ; and hypo-
theses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult
qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philo-
sophy. In this philosophy particular propositions are inferred
from the phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by
induction. Thus it was that the impenetrability, the mobility,
and the impulsive force of bodies, and the laws of motion and
gravitation, were discovered. And to us it is enough that

140 THE UNIVERSE OF SCIENCE

gravity does really exist, and act according to laws which we
have explained, and abundantly serves to account for all the
motions of the celestial bodies, and of our sea."

That he is affirming the empirical nature of science is at least
a possible interpretation. He detested the associations of the
word " hypothesis " and protested strongly that an hypothesis
was never a demonstration. He believed as Mill did that
truths could be discovered by the use of induction, and this
raises a highly controversial issue. But at least Newton had a
very clear idea of what he meant by " reason " as an instrument
of discovery.

He laid down the following rules of scientific reasoning. For
him they constituted the new intellectual tool of experimental,
as opposed to speculative, philosophy.

" Rule I. We are to admit no more causes of natural things
than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appear-
ances. To this purpose the philosophers say that Nature does
nothing in vain, and more is in vain when less will serve ; for
Nature is pleased with simplicity, and affects not the pomp of
superfluous causes.

" Rule IL Therefore to the same natural effects we must as
far as possible assign the same causes.

" Rule III. The qualities of bodies, which admit neither
intension nor remission of degrees, and which are bound to
belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are
to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.

" Rule IV. In experimental philosophy we are to look upon
propositions collected by general induction from phenomena
as very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypothesis
that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur
by which they may either be made more accurate or liable to
exception. "

How Admirably lucid all this seems in contrast to the misty
profundities of Hegel and how much more fruitful it proved
to be ! Newton, it is true, set himself a more limited problem,
but it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the whole of scientific
achievement in the ensuing centuries was built on the founda-

THE UNIVERSE OF SCIENCE 141

tions he so carefully laid. For the scientist as for Locke
reason and experience werQ the supreme arbiters.

Can Induction be Justified ?

The progress of science and the failure of metaphysics
naturally gave rise to a demand for a still more precise definition
of method. It became apparent that the experimentalists were
working on profitable lines, but why they should obtain such
good results was something of a puzzle. It was extremely
difficult to find a theoretical justification for the procedure they
followed so successfully. The practical man may feel that all
that matters is the result, but philosophers take a long view and
they hinted darkly that some day the logical sins being com-
mitted would be found out in practice.

The philosophers were right in this respect. In its early
days science worked with a set of very dubious philosophical
concepts. It clung as far as possible to the common-sense
view of the world. As Russell has put it : " The development
of science out of common sense has not been by way of a radi-
cally new start at any moment, but rather by way of successive
approximations. That is to say, where some difficulty has
arisen which current common sense could not solve, a modi-
fication has been made at some point, while the rest of the
common-sense view of the world has been retained. Subse-
quently, using this modification, another modification has been
introduced elsewhere, and so on. Thus science has been an
historical growth, and has assumed at each moment a more or
less vague background of theory derived from common sense."
(Analysis of Matter , p. 133.)

What was wrong with the common-sense view which scientific
procedure presupposed ? What, it may be asked, is wrong with
Newton's rules of reasoning ? The main trouble can be
indicated very briefly the use of inductive logic and the
assumption of a universal law of cause and effect. The two
things really go together. It is the problem of arguing from
past to future generalizations.

142 THE UNIVERSE OF SCIENCE

Newton's law of gravitation is an example of induction.
From a limited number of observations and obviously every-
thing in the cosmos cannot be observed a generalization is
made about all moving bodies. The force of gravity is said to
be the cause of the way they move. A cause (as we have seen)
was rejected by Hegel as a satisfactory explanation. He
rejected it because he believed that an explanation should
proceed deductively, not inductively.

This may be further illustrated by the proofs of the existence
of God at which we have already glanced. The ontological
proof deduces the existence of God from the concept of a per-
fect Being ; the argument is that the idea of perfection contains
existence. But the proof that because the world is orderly
there must be a source of order, or because there is design there
must be a Designer, can proceed inductively, like the search for
a First Cause. Hence many philosophers who have believed
in the law of universal causation have been Deists.

In traditional logic, however, the argument by induction errs
by taking an illicit leap from the particular to the general.
The abstract form of the argument is as follows : " All observed
A's are B's. Therefore all A's (including those unobserved)
are B's." This will not do. All observed crows are black ;
but we cannot rule out the possibility of a white crow, unless
we say that being a crow implies being black, in which case we
are merely making a definition.

Is there any way of defending the inductive procedure ? I
think it would be widely acknowledged to-day that there is no
way if we require that it should lead to universal and certain
knowledge. One contemporary solution is to re-state the
argument in terms of probability. " All observed A's are B's,
therefore it improbable that all A's are B's."

This is good enough for the scientist ; it is more or less what
Locke had said, and why he took a restrained view of the
prospects of scientific knowledge. He did not realize nor did
any of the pioneers of the empirical method that probability,
rightly understood, is a very real kind of knowledge. But it is
a different kind of knowledge from what the metaphysicians so

THE UNIVERSE OF SCIENCE 143

desperately and so vainly sought. And there are many un-
solved problems about the meaning of probability.

The Philosophy of Mill

An attempt was made by John Stuart Mill to show that
empiricism could compete with metaphysics in giving certitude.
Mill was a brilliant thinker, and, although many of his con-
clusions cannot be accepted to-day, he made an important
contribution to the clarification of scientific methodology. I
propose to deal only with this aspect of his work.

Following Comte, he rejected metaphysics outright. Comte
supplied the name " Positivism " to the movement which had
really begun with the English empiricists. Comte himself was
a somewhat preposterous figure, and the extraordinary esteem
in which he was held by so many nineteenth-century worthies
in this country can be accounted for only by their unworldly
simplicity and Victorian earnestness. I shall, however, use the
term Positivism as a synonym for scientific empiricism.

Mill not merely repudiated deductive rationalism, but also
the Kantian compromise. He held that there were no a priori
truths. All knowledge was obtained from experience. We
know that twice two are four because we have observed that
this is the case. The laws of logic and the law of universal
causation are likewise derived from experience. As for the
material world, Mill coined the famous phrase that " Matter is
a permanent possibility of sensation. "

There is "no principle, which, antecedently to any verifica-
tion by experience, we are compelled by the constitution of our
thinking faculty to assume as true." So much for innate ideas
and Kant's categories. How, then, do we discover true
principles ?

By denying the right to use any principles not derived from
experience Mill set himself a hard problem ; and by refusing
to admit the necessity to make any assumptions, he rendered
the task of demonstrating the basis of science well-nigh im-
possible. There is no doubt that he was wrong in believing
that all general truths are arrived at inductively from experience.

144 THE UNIVERSE OF SCIENCE

Russell has since shown that in the proposition "2 + 2 = 4"
we are merely expressing the meaning of four, as we express
the meaning of a yard by saying it equals three feet. But Mill
was right in perceiving that science rests upon induction. He
goes on to argue, however, that induction is derived from
causation, and that causation is vouched for by experience.

He defines induction as " the process by which we conclude
that what is true of certain individuals of a class is true, in
similar circumstances at all times. "

He admits that induction is not primary, that it involves an
assumption. " We must first observe that there is a principle
implicit in the very statement of what induction is ; an assump-
tion with regard to the course of Nature and the order of the
universe ; namely, that there are such things in nature as
parallel cases ; that what happens once will, under a sufficient
degree of 'similarity of circumstances, happen again, and not
only again, but as often as the same circumstances recur."

But, he insists, uniformities are actually found in Nature.
There are uniformities of co-existence (" All crows are black ")
and uniformities of succession. The latter give us the idea of
causation, and induction depends on this idea. " The Law of
Causation, the recognition of which is the main pillar of in-
ductive science, is but the familiar truth that invariability of
succession is found by observation to obtain between every
fact in Nature and some other fact that has preceded it." He
amplifies this : " Invariable sequence is not synonymous with
causation, unless the sequence, besides being invariable, is
unconditional. There are sequences as uniform in past
experience as any others whatever, which we do not regard as
cases of causation, but as conjunctions in some sort accidental.
Such, to an accurate thinker, is that of day and night."

Causes can be observed in operation. To set up a law of
cause and effect is merely to generalize from what we see. The
chief task of the scientist, according to Mill, is to search for
causes. When a cause has been found the occurrence in-
vestigated has been " explained." Generalizing from a set of
observations the result of a number of experiments is the

THE UNIVERSE OF SCIENCE 145

sort of inductive reasoning that enables us to state a law which
is basically of the form that certain effects will always follow
from certain causes.

The final set of observations, exemplifying this law, is arrived
at by experiment, for which Mill lays down four canons. These
amount to saying that we must vary the factors, one at a time,
so that by a process of elimination we arrive at the required
result. That the discovered cause should always operate does
not seem to him a great difficulty. He scarcely seems to grasp
Hume's real problem. For Hume did not deny that observa-
tions suggest causal uniformities. Hume asked what the con-
nection was between one fact and another which could compel
invariable sequence ? Mill seems satisfied to say that we can
see that this is so and because it is so now, it must be so
always and everywhere.

Consequently he held that induction is " the operation of
discovering and proving general principles." The results of
induction are scientific propositions characterized by univer-
sality and certainty.

He is not always either clear or consistent. But there is no
doubt that he helped to formulate the creed of many working
scientists. They would agree that, if science is to continue, it
must make use of inductive reasoning. If induction is possible,
there must be a law of cause and effect. If there is a law of
cause and effect, it will be evident from observation. We do,
in fact, observe cause and effect ; therefore induction is
legitimate ; therefore science is possible.

The Development of Positivism

Mill's philosophy has an air of glorified common sense. It
seems a mere quibble to doubt that there are necessary uni-
formities in Nature, or that the search for causes is legitimate,
or that generalizations from a large number of observed facts
are permissible. But when Mill triumphantly produces
Newton's theory of gravitation as an example of induction
providing a law which is both universal and certain, the
" quibble " is seen to have some basis. Since Mill's day

146 THE UNIVERSE OF SCIENCE

Newton has been partly supplanted by Einstein, and it would
be rash to suppose that Einstein has said the last word.

The truth seems to be that the empirical scientist cannot
entirely dispense with assumptions. Induction does not yield
metaphysical certainty. Still less can it be maintained that
the truths of mathematics are learned from experience.

An attempt, later in the century, to evade the difficulty by
regarding scientific laws as mere descriptions of phenomena
abbreviations of what is observed was prompted by Kirch-
hoff's definition of Mechanics as " the science of motion ; we
define as its objects the complete description in the simplest
possible manner of such motions as occur in Nature."

This is a highly sophisticated variety of Positivism, developed
by Avenarius, Mach, Ostwald, and Karl Pearson. It is the
" empirio-criticism " castigated by Lenin. It is a vigorous
reminder that ultimately the data of the scientists is the world
of sensible appearance, and that unobservable entities
atoms, for example must be capable of being re-translated into
elements of ordinary experience. Science, particularly physics,
was becoming so abstract that there was a danger of its abstrac-
tions being hypostasized as " things-in- themselves/' of cutting
adrift " the world of reason " from " the world of common
sense."

We shall return to this later. Mill in his way, Mach and
Pearson in their way, sought to keep the feet of the scientist
on empirical ground. We can still maintain that, whatever else
may be said of science, its main concern is with experience, its
duty (as Berkeley stressed) is to think concretely, its safeguard
is experiment, and its enemy metaphysics.

To avoid metaphysics, to remain true to its empirical origin,
science has had to sacrifice certitude to probability, for it is only
in terms of probability that inductive reasoning can be rendered
valid. And probability, according to J. M. Keynes, requires
that two assumptions should be made about the nature of the
universe. We must assume (i) " that the objects in the field,
over which our generalizations extend, do not have an infinite
number of independent qualities ; that, in other words, their

THE UNIVERSE OF SCIENCE 147

characteristics, however numerous", cohere together in groups
of invariable connexion, which are finite in number/* This is
the Principle of Limited Independent Variety. In addition,
we must assume (2) that " the system of the material universe
must consist ... of bodies which we may term (without any
implication as to their size being conveyed thereby) legal atoms,
such that each of them exercises its own separate, independent,
and invariable effect, a change of total state being compounded
of a number of separate changes each of which is solely due to a
separate portion of the preceding state/' Keynes calls this the
Principle of Atomic Uniformity.

In other words, we must suppose, though we cannot prove,
that what we investigate belongs to a system of a certain sort.
The rich variety of objects presented in experience must be
reducible to manageable proportions. The actual number of
units may be infinite, but their qualities must not be infinite,
or we can never hope to make reliable laws. In practice this
sort of reduction is found to be quite possible, and the more
science develops, the more probable such initial assumptions
seem to be.

Hume's question has not been satisfactorily answered. But
it is much clearer to-day than ever before what science is doing
and what kind of knowledge it offers us. There are differences
of opinion about the meaning of such terms as " law " and
" probability/ 1 but the controversies to which they have given
rise have greatly enriched our understanding.

What has vanished is the picture of the universe as a vast piece
of clockwork, operating under an iron law of cause and effect,
composed of material atoms to whose changing positions in
absolute space and time every statement can be reduced. Nor
is the universe now regarded as a mysterious, unknowable
" something " lying beyond the range of our understanding.
It is very close to us indeed ; the physical " universe " is largely
a system of relations of our own devising, an interpretation of
experiences which cross the threshold of consciousness un-
invited. As Einstein says : " The object of all science, whether
natural science or psychology, is to co-ordinate our experiences

148 THE UNIVERSE OF SCIENCE

and to bring them into a logical system." How far this
involves complete subjectivism is one of the most difficult
problems of contemporary philosophy.

USEFUL REFERENCES

A Century for Freedom, by Kenneth Urwin.

An Introduction to Modern Logic, by L. S. Stebbing ; 1933.

The Philosophy of Auguste Comte, by Levy-Bruhl ; 1903.

Positive Philosophy, by Auguste Comte, 5 vols. ; 1830-42.

A System of Logic, by John Stuart Mill ; 1843.

Auguste Comte and Positivism, by John Stuart Mill ; 1865.

A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century, by J. T.

Merz ; 1896-1912.

Contributions to the Analysis of Sensations, by Ernst Mach ; 1897.
Scientific Thought, by C. D. Broad ; 1923.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Problem of Change

THE Hegelian Dialectic was an attempt to solve the problem of
change. It was encumbered by the doctrine of the Absolute,
which is timeless. Why the Absolute should generate the
time-process or the illusion of it is not made clear. Dia-
lectical Materialists dropped the Absolute, but they retained the
notion of substance. To the question, " What changes ? "
they replied, matter changes. There is nothing outside which
makes it change. The motive-force is internal. It must not
be sought in isolated particles, but in the grouping of these
particles. Contradictions develop within these groupings, and
at a certain point a new quality appears.

On the whole, a simpler view was held by the majority of
scientists. Consider, for example, the changes that can happen
to water. Suppose it starts as ice ; heat is applied and it
melts ; more heat is applied and it becomes steam. We say
that ice changes into water, and water changes into steam.

Now water can be analysed into oxygen and hydrogen.
These can be lumped together as matter. The change of
matter from one form (liquid) to another form (gas) is held to
be due to the movement of material particles. (" Heat is a
mode of motion/') These particles move about, and to
describe this we require the dimensions of space. The process
of passing from solid to liquid to gas may be expressed by saying
that the water was solid, is liquid, and will be gas, if the heat is
maintained. In other words, the change takes time, and time
involves the ideas of past, present, and future.

And so the doctrine gained ground that change could be
accounted for by the concepts of matter, motion, space, and
time. The whole universe consisted of material particles in

149

150 THE PROBLEM OF CHANGE

motion, and their positions in space and time could (in theory)
be predicted. A human being also consisted of material
particles, and in theory you could predict his behaviour. You
could not merely predict eclipses, but cast the world's horo-
scope.

Qualities need not be considered. They are merely the way
mind reacts during this mechanical process. The colours we
see, the sounds we hear, the scents we smell, are mental aspects
of changing matter. The sole reality in nature is the material
particle. To this attractively simple and once plausible theory
Whitehead protests: "the entity, bared of all characteristics
except those of space and time, has acquired physical status
as the ultimate texture of Nature ; so that the course of
Nature is conceived as being merely the fortunes of matter
through space and time."

And this recalls Berkeley's objection that " matter," so far
from being the concrete object given in experience, is merely a
logical abstraction. " Thus Nature gets the credit which should
in truth be reserved for ourselves," Whitehead continues,
ironically : " the rose for its scent ; the nightingale for his
song ; and the sun for his radiance. The poets are entirely
mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves, and
should turn them into odes of self-congratulation on the excel-
lency of the human mind. Nature is a dull affair, soundless,
scentless, colourless ; merely the hurrying of material, end-
lessly, meaninglessly." (Science and the Modern World.)

Such indeed was the view of the French Materialists. To
make it more palatable, it was sometimes attached to Deism.
In addition to the machine, there was God. Herbert Spencer
(1820-1903) compromised with Agnosticism. He held that
the sphere of religion was the unknowable ; the sphere of
science was the knowable. And all we can know are the laws
governing the hurrying to and fro of material particles in the
abysses of space.

The philosopher's task, according to Spencer, is to co-ordi-
nate scientific knowledge and discover (by abstraction) the
general principle from which all movement can be deduced :

THE PROBLEM OF CHANGE 151

" to interpret the phenomena of life, mind and society in terms
of matter, motion and force."

Darwin published the Origin of Species in 1859, and Spencer's
First Principles came out in 1862. Evolution seemed to fit
beautifully into Spencer's scheme. He argued that all pheno-
mena are subject to " an integration of matter and concomitant
dissipation of motion ; during which the matter passes from an
indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent
heterogeneity ; and during which the retained motion under-
goes a parallel transformation."

Thus the master-principle is " the persistence of force " ;
and Spencer seems to have thought that this meant the per-
sistence of progress, for the evolving forms pass from lower to
higher. But he also envisaged " alternate eras of evolution and
dissolution."

The Revolt Against Mechanism

Spencer has had little influence on contemporary philosophy.
The immense superstructure that he erected rested on mecha-
nistic foundations. They were undermined in his own life-
time as much by scientists as by philosophers. He never
seriously touched the central problem of change: how can
something genuinely new appear ? The Dialectical Materialists
saw more clearly what the problem entailed. At rock-bottom
it was as Parmenides himself perceived a problem of logic.
It was a problem that may be forever insoluble if rendered in
terms of substance and accidents.

Obviously, for this purpose it is not very important what
you call the stuff of which the world is composed. If it is an
independent substance, whether you call it materia prima, or
matter, or energy, or hydrogen, or electricity, or even mind, is
beside the point. Such a single substance, which merely
moves, cannot undergo changes, other than those of position,
that yield totally new qualities. Either you must juggle in
some way with the concepts of quality and quantity, in Hegelian
fashion, or transfer the problem to the observing mind.

Bergson tried a wholly different approach. He did not start

152 THE PROBLEM OF CHANGE

with matter and try to explain change ; he started with change
and tried to explain matter. He concluded that matter is a
mistake. The intellect gives a false picture. In order to
analyse what is actually in continuous flux we petrify it in
thought we treat time as space. We cannot, of course, help
doing this when we think scientifically. Science relies on the
intellect and freezes or " spatializes " the process it examines.
For example, you cannot dissect a living brain ; for you kill
it in the very act of cutting it up. And you " kill," or rather
falsely arrest and spatialize, the ceaseless becoming.

When we ask " What changes ? " we usually think of a
number of states rapidly succeeding each other, like a cinemato-
graph, giving the illusion of continuous movement. We think
of motion, perhaps, as made up of " immobilizes" or static
pictures. , Hence, says Bergson, we mistake the fictions of
analysis for reality, which is pure becoming. We are thus
unable to solve the problem of Zeno's arrow, which moves,
although at any instant it is stationary.

It is curious to see Zeno's conundrum cropping up again on
the threshold of the twentieth century, in the guise of a cine-
matograph. Russell has answered it as follows : " A cinemato-
graph in which there are an infinite number of pictures, and in
which there is never a next picture because an infinite number
come between any two, will perfectly represent continuous
motion. Wherein, then, lies the force of Zeno's argument ? "
(History of Western Philosophy.)

Bergson was rash enough to dogmatize about mathematics,
and Russell has dealt with him perhaps too severely. It
follows from Bergson's argument that science has taken the
wrong road. Knowledge of reality is not given by the spatial-
izing, falsifying intellect, but by intuition, which is a higher
development, in man, of animal instinct. In this way we
learn that the past still exists, that the process of becoming
adds to it like the rings of a tree, and that this process is not
the mechanical evolution of Spencer, but is creative evolu-
tion. It is no dreary passage of matter from homogeneity
to heterogeneity, but the expression of the flan vital, the

THE PROBLEM OF CHANGE 153

creative Life-Force (which Bernard Shaw substituted for
God).

The reaction against mechanism led Bergson to a decidedly
mystical outlook as hostile to science, in its different way, as
Bradley 's Appearance and Reality (1893). Evolution made no
great impression on Bradley. He held firmly to what William
James called "the block universe." For Bradley, scientific
knowledge is partial knowledge. To know anything truly you
must know everything. There is not much point in talking
of evolution or progress if all things that exist the physical
universe, the entire animal kingdom and the human race are
but adjectives of the Supreme Noun.

Bradley is a curious example of a philosopher whose great
influence on his contemporaries stimulated them on the whole
to form quite other conclusions than his own. He left many
admirers, but no disciples. The tide in the nineties was
running too strongly with the scientific philosophers. Never-
theless another attempt was soon to be made to express the
fact of evolutionary change in non-mechanistic terms.

Emergent Evolution

Lloyd Morgan and Samuel Alexander have enriched our
vocabulary by adding the term " emergent." Evolution, on
their view, is not mechanical. If it is construed in terms of
matter and force you should be able to predict (theoretically)
the whole course of it. Consequently nothing really new
would ever appear. But the essence of the changing world in
which we live is the emergence of genuine novelty. To dismiss
this novelty as mind- dependent and secondary is an evasion.

Mechanism fails, therefore, to account for so-called secondary
qualities. It may be convenient, but it is no solution, to
attribute them to the mind. You still have to explain mind
and its contents. You may know all about the molecules that
make up ammonia, and all about the molecules that make up
the mucous membrane, but from such data alone you could not
predict the precise smell of ammonia. Again, nothing that is
known about oxygen and hydrogen separately would lead us to

154 THE PROBLEM OF CHANGE

predict that in combination they would yield all the qualities
that we know water to possess.

This situation is not due (as the mechanist might protest) to
ignorance. It is due to the fact that the properties of a whole
cannot be deduced merely from the constituents into which a
whole is analysed. The quality of a tune is something more
than the mere sum of its parts. This " something more " is
the emergence of the genuinely new. This sort of quality is
called an emergent quality.

In Space, Time, and Deity, Alexander advances a cosmo-
logical theory that is materialistic without being mechanistic.
In the beginning was Space-Time, the most abstract entity
conceivable. Its only empirical quality at this stage is motion.
It is somewhat like the self-moving matter of the Dialectical
Materialist, but it is not yet complex enough to be physical
matter. In the course of its self-development Space-Time
acquires the emergent quality of materiality ; then it acquires
the emergent quality of Life, then of Mind, and next . . . the
new quality, towards which the world is straining, the shadow
of things to come which already touches us, is Deity. This the
theory of the unborn God who did not make the world but who
emerges from it. The physical world is (or rather, will be)
God's body.

It may be wondered how, if the whole point about emergent
qualities is that they are unpredictable, we can nevertheless
predict that the next quality will be Deity. Of more import-
ance is the logical issue that emergent evolution raises. Berg-
son's objection to analysis was confused by mysticism, but this
is very different. It is a materialistic challenge to much of
scientific method.

To what extent must we falsify the changing world when we
analyse it ? Our answer to this question will place us into one
or other of the two great camps into which philosophy was
dividing at the beginning of this century. The cleavage is
more fundamental than the traditional distinctions between
Materialism and Idealism. What the World is made of and
the place of mind in it are questions which must be answered

THE PROBLEM OF CHANGE 155

after we have decided on our logical procedure. The issue is
not between material atomism and some spiritual theory of
reality, but between logical atomism and what may be called
organic theories.

Spinoza, Hegel, and Bradley illustrate the organic point of
view. So, in not quite such a thorough-going fashion, do the
theories of Dialectical Materialism, Creative Evolution, and
Emergent Evolution. Locke regarded a general term (a whole)
as a convenient way of naming a bundle of particulars. He was
therefore an atomist. Such a way of looking at " wholes " is
condemned by the organic philosophers. They complain that
it leads us to regard the world as a machine ; and the atomists
retort that if we abandon the cinematographic view we are
driven towards mysticism, for intellectual analysis then becomes
impossible and we fall back on intuition and bad mathematics.

The complex currents of thought which reformulated the
struggle between rationalists and empiricists as a choice between
organism and atomism, under the pressure of rapidly changing
scientific conceptions, found their expression in two philoso-
phers who started as collaborators and then sharply deviated.
Whitehead and Russell were joint authors of Principia Mathe-
matica (1910-1912), but, although they accepted revolutionary
changes in our ideas of logic, they applied the new logic very
differently. Russell became a logical atomist and Whitehead
elaborated a system which he called " the philosophy of
organism."

The Philosophy of Organism

The time has gone when philosophers could construct
systems in rivalry to science. Nowadays the most interesting
contributions to philosophy are made by scientists and mathe-
maticians. The modern philosopher has not merely to know
something about evolution ; he has to take into account the
consequences of the far more difficult theories of Relativity and
Quanta. He may even be required to express an opinion on
pure mathematics. Almost impossible demands are made
upon him.

156 THE PROBLEM OF CHANGE

Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1948) possessed these quali-
fications. He was a brilliant mathematician and a classical
scholar. He knew exactly what the new physics was about and
he had studied traditional philosophy long and deeply. He was
jiot the sort of man to be bamboozled or to rush in with some
hastily constructed, home-made theory of his own. Indeed, he
did not publish his first purely philosophical book, Science and
the Modern World, until he was 63. His chief work, Process
and Reality, was brought out at the age of 68, and it was
evidently the fruit of lifelong meditation and profound learning.
No one could doubt that a major philosopher had appeared in
our midst.

I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that to-day we must
choose between the type of philosophy represented by White-
head and the type represented by Russell. Whitehead has
advanced a defence of metaphysics and a criticism of Positivism
that are unlikely to be improved upon. He represents a com-
promise between metaphysics and empiricism. One of his
most solid achievements has been to devise a technique for
expressing the relationships of such metaphysical conceptions
as points and instants in terms of sense-data, thus realizing the
empirical ideal. This technique is called " the method of
extensive abstraction.

To give a concise summary of Whitehead's philosophy is
impossible. The subject-matter is unusually difficult, but
although Whitehead can write prose of great beauty and
find a phrase that breaks as a sudden illumination in the
darkest places, he can also write with an almost Hegelian
obscurity. Moreover, he has invented a special terminology
of his own, and to make things harder he applies such words as
" feeling," " satisfaction/* " aim," and " society," to inanimate
Nature in a way which is consistent enough with his principles,
but very confusing to those labouring to understand him. He
enjoins us to seek simplicity yet mistrust it ; but it must be
confessed that in his writings the mistrust is more evident than
the search.

For Whitehead, speculative philosophy (metaphysics) is an

THE PROBLEM OF CHANGE 157

endeavour to provide a set of ideas in terms of which everything
we experience can be interpreted. "... I mean that every-
thing of which we are conscious, as enjoyed, perceived, willed,
or thought, shall have the character of a particular instance in
the general scheme." The purely scientific scheme, he argues,
leaves some elements out. A mechanical view of the universe
is a result of treating the abstractions of physical science as
though they were concrete elements of experience. This is
" the fallacy of misplaced concreteness."

Unlike the traditional metaphysician, he does not claim that
his own scheme is final. On the contrary, it is a tentative and
imperfect attempt to devise a language with which we can
correlate all our experiences.

But experience must not be conceived subjectively. White-
head is a Realist. He will not allow that even secondary
qualities are contributed by mind. We experience a world of
colours, scents and sounds. In the Concept of Nature he
writes : " Nature is what we observe through the senses."
He repudiates " Nature bifurcated into causal Nature and
apparent Nature." He will not accept the Kantian compromise
" that our perceptual experience does tell us of a common
objective world, but that things perceived are merely the
outcome for us of this world and are not in themselves ele-
ments in the common world itself." (Science and the Modern
World.)

The world we experience at any given moment is seen in
" the mode of presentational immediacy." Subjectivist philo-
sophers, imagining that all knowledge comes in this manner,
naturally regard the external world, succession in time, and
causation, as inferences. They try to justify these inferences.
They fail because they disregard the other mode of experience
which Whitehead calls " causal efficacy." Our body takes
notice of " causal efficacy " whatever our brain may do. We
see a flying bomb falling and we take cover we don't stop to
reason about it. Lower animals act purely on " causal effi-
cacy." For man, knowledge results from the interplay be-
tween presentational immediacy and causal efficacy. This

158 THE PROBLEM OF CHANGE

mixed mode of perception is called " symbolic reference." It
involves interpretation.

There can be no mistakes about what is immediately pre-
sented. What is experienced is a fact. But you can make
mistakes when you try to interpret the fact. Hume's subjectiv-
ism and the Kantian "bifurcation of Nature" arise from the
false supposition that causal efficacy has to be inferred from
presentational immediacy. The truth, according to White-
head, is the exact contrary. " The notion of causation arose
because mankind lives amid experiences in the mode of causal
efficacy."

Generally speaking, says Whitehead, we shall find that
adjectival words express information derived from the mode of
immediacy, while the substantives convey our dim percepts in
the mode of causal efficacy. We see a patch of grey ; but when
we interpret it as a stone, we feel, with Locke, that there must
be some substance supporting the quality, and that " power is
a great part of our complex ideas of substances."

A Universe of Events

I have already traced the uneasy history of the concept of
" substance." Many philosophers have been dissatisfied with
it, but every attempt to do without it led to wildly improbable
conclusions. Whitehead shows us how to dispense with it and
yet retain an external world with causes and effects. He is able
to do this because physics has shown the notion of a substratum
to be superfluous. The Theory of Relativity substitutes events
for material particles ; and Whitehead (although he has a
different theory of Time from Einstein's) takes events as the
bricks of his universe.

This is a difficult idea. It is best not to try to imagine it.
" The notion of empty space, the mere vehicle of spatial inter-
connections, has been eliminated from recent science. The
whole universe is a field of force, or in other words a field of
incessant activity " (Modes of Thought). The units of this
field are occurrences, not solid particles to which something
occurs. There is no mysterious underlying substance called

THE PROBLEM OF CHANGE 159

" matter," corresponding to that presupposed by the grammati-
cal subject of everyday sentences. There are just happenings
and the relations between these happenings.

The life of the earth is a happening ; so is the life of an
individual, say, Julius Caesar ; so is a moment in Julius Caesar's
life ; " and so is the most, trivial puff of existence in far-off
empty space." Consequently real things are not bits of matter,
but activities or " actual occasions." A string of occasions is
what we ordinarily call a physical object. A stone, for example,
is a strand of history a route of occasions set in the infinitely
complex pattern of routes which make up the universe.

Events in a field of activity spread their influence far and
wide, like a stone thrown into a pool and causing ripples.
There is no difference, from this point of view, whether you
throw a stone on a piece of hard ground or into a pool ; there
are ripples in both cases. Every event is related to every other
event ; they reflect each other, like the monads of Leibniz, and
they modify each other. They enter into the composition of
each other. A thing is what it is and where it is because of all
the other things in the field of activity. A thing is wherever its
influence is felt, and so " in a certain sense, everything is every-
where at all times."

This rather dark saying is merely a forceful way of denying
what Whitehead calls " simple location," or " the simple-
minded theory that an object is at one place at any definite time
and is in no sense anywhere else." The truth is that " each
object is in some sense ingredient throughout Nature." To
ascribe simple location to an entity is to assume that " it can be
said to be here, in space, or there in time, or here in space-time,
in a perfectly definite sense, which does not require for its
explanation any reference to other regions of space-time."
(Science and The Modern World.)

" The volumes of space," he continues, " have no inde-
pendent existence. They are only entities within a totality ;
you cannot extract them from their environment." And else-
where : " any factor by virtue of its status as a limitation within
the totality, necessarily refers to factors within the totality other

l6o THE PROBLEM OF CHANGE

than itself." Indeed, " nothing in Nature could be what it is
except as an ingredient in Nature as it is." So every bit of
reality is inextricably entangled by internal relations with the
rest.

How, then, is knowledge possible ? It is possible because
actual happenings achieve an individuality. " The physical
field is luckily atomic," Whitehead writes. Otherwise " every
statement would require a detailed expression of all the facts
in nature." This breakdown of the essentiality of relatedness
is too complex a question to be discussed now. Unlike the
classical advocates of the " block universe," Whitehead starts
with concrete facts, with the events we experience in all their
diversity and individuality, and then searches for the general
characters of which they are instances ; he does not deduce, in
Hegelian style, the concrete from the abstract. There are
stubborn, individual facts, coming into existence and passing
out of it ; but they are nevertheless involved during their
passage in a web of relatedness.

The Mystery of Time

If there were no coherence, no order of Nature, science would
be impossible. As an historical fact, Whitehead points out,
science developed because of the Greek conviction that Fate
imposed such an order. The spatio-temporal order of New-
tonian physics, however, must be replaced by a relational theory
of space and time. Events are " the relata of the fundamental,
homogeneous relation of extension " from which space and time
are both derived. They are constructed from the overlapping
of durations.

The measurable time of physics must not be confused with
" the passage of Nature," or duration. The process of becom-
ing, whereby one event is succeeded by another, which it modi-
fies, shows " the continuous inheritance of a certain identity of
character transmitted throughout an historical route of events."

The influence of Bergson may be detected in Whitehead's
distinction between " duration " and the measurable time of
physics. And, perhaps, the influence of Alexander may be

THE PROBLEM OF CHANGE l6l

seen in the following passage from Religion in the Making :
" The universe is passing with a slowness, inconceivable in our
measures of time, to new creative conditions, amid which the
physical world as we at present know it, will be represented by
a ripple barely to be distinguished from non-entity. The
present type of order in the world has arisen from an un-
imaginable past and it will find its grave in an unimaginable
future. There remains the inexhaustible realm of abstract
forms, and creativity, with its shifting character ever determined
afresh by its own creatures, and God, upon whose wisdom all
forms of order depend/'

This is typical of those imaginative flights with which White-
head rewards the reader, somewhat exhausted by the aridity of
long, abstract speculation. But the intellectual excitement of
such passages must not be allowed to conceal their essential
difficulty. On the face of it, Whitehead is suggesting a cosmic
evolution not unlike Alexander's theory of the gradual self-
enrichment of Space-Time by the emergence of new empirical
qualities.

But surely, we are tempted to protest, this is inconsistent
with the relative theory of time. If the total assemblage of
events, which is the universe at any moment, is advancing
towards greater complexity, achieving a more intense in-
dividuality, surely the whole bundle of local times adds up to
something very like absolute time. One answer and I am
not at all sure that it is the right one would be that White-
head's objection to absolute time is only an objection to New-
tonian time, with its assumption of bits of matter. In other
words a distinction is made between cosmic, psychological, and
physical time.

Cosmic time is the passage of durations, and a duration is a
cross-section of Nature limited by simultaneity. Durations are
what we experience, mathematical time is what we construct.
We do not experience the " instants " required for a mathe-
matical series. " The passage of Nature has no narrow ledge
of definite instantaneous present within which to operate. Its
operative presence must be sought throughout the whole, in the

l62 THE PROBLEM OF CHANGE

remotest past as well as in the narrowest breadth of any present
duration. Perhaps also in the unrealised future. Perhaps
also in the future which might be, as well as the actual future
which will be."

Time measurements are obtained from the fundamental
relation of durations of extending over each other. We can
construct in this way an indefinite number of time-systems,
any one of which can be used in a description of physical events.
What Whitehead believes he has accomplished is to dethrone
" the trinity of materialism : (i) the temporal series of exten-
sionless instants ; (2) the aggregate of material entities ;
(3) space which is the outcome of relations of matter/'

The Return to Plato

The mere philosopher would be well advised to leave this
sort of thing to the mathematical physicist, and it is at least
certain that in any such dispute Whitehead is well able to hold
his own. But a good deal more is involved in his picturesque
account of the evolution of the universe than a theory of time.
The Platonic character of the language will be noticed. And
for this Whitehead makes no apology.

He claims that certain Platonic concepts need very little
adaptation to provide the general ideas for which he is searching
in order to interpret all that we experience. The whole of it,
be it noted " all the choir of heaven and the furniture of
earth." Hence the religious colouring.

The concepts he takes from Plato are, the Ideas (Forms), the
Physical Elements, the Psyche, the Eros, the Harmony, the
Mathematical Relations, the Receptacle. He says, " These
notions are as important for us now as they were then at the
dawn of the modern world, when civilizations of the old type
were dying." Again : " I have directed attention to Plato's
doctrine of the Receptacle because, at the present moment,
physical science is nearer to it than at any other period
since Plato's death. The space-time of modern mathemati-
cal physics, conceived in abstraction from the particular
mathematical formulae which applies to the happenings in

THE PROBLEM OF CHANGE 163

it, is almost exactly Plato's Receptacle." (Adventures of
Ideas.)

It seems to amount to something like this. Instead of bits
of matter, the universe is made up of happenings. They are
" actual occasions " of experience. You and I perceive them ;
that in itself constitutes an event. They perceive us. What
we perceive is, to us, an object, in itself a subject.

Perception does not necessarily entail consciousness. It will
be recalled that Leibniz used the word in this somewhat con-
fusing fashion. For Whitehead, every actual entity, be it an
electron or a philosopher, has a mental and a physical pole.
The mental pole of an electron, however, is negligible except
as an illustration of the fact that there are no clear-cut distinc-
tions between dead and living matter. Consciousness and life
depend, not so much on the microscopic actual entity as on the
macroscopic organization of entities.

We do not encounter isolated actual entities. They all be-
long to some background, which modifies them. It is therefore
possible that an electron in the social organization of the human
brain is in some ways different from an electron in a crystal
just as a citizen of Russia is different from a citizen of the United
States or from Robinson Crusoe. There are societies of
electrons within a molecule, societies of molecules within a blood
corpuscle, societies of blood corpuscles within a human body,
societies of bodies, planets and so on. The whole universe is
a society of societies of societies, etc.

The fact that laws are social accounts for the statistical laws
of science. They express relationships between groups. The
fact that the universe is evolving, and that laws express the
characteristics of levels of organization, implies that no laws
can be immutable. As the cosmos slowly passes from one
" epoch " to another, some laws will cease to apply, others will
have to be discovered. Thus laws are not to be thought of as
imposed from above, by a transcendental law-giver ; nor are
they mere descriptions of observed behaviour. They are
" immanent " expressing the real connectedness, and so the
nature, of happenings.

164 THE PROBLEM OF CHANGE

But to return to the microscopic point of view, the string of
actual occasions which constitute, let us say, a molecule.
Whitehead usually restricts the word " event " to the whole
string, and refers to the atomic unit as the actual occasion.
Each occasion can be analysed into universals (which White-
head calls Eternal Objects) and into what is particular and
unique for the occasion. Its uniqueness is to grasp other com-
ponents of the universe into a unity. When that unity is
achieved, the occasion attains " satisfaction/' It is self-
completed. It perishes. But not without transmitting some-
thing of itself to the next occasion thus the future conforms
to the past.

Consequently there are " routes of occasions." A molecule
is just such a route like a cinematograph reel. The difference
between the pictures on the reel, the succession of occasions,
constitutes the change or movement of the molecule. There is
no material substance which changes and yet remains the same
that ancient paradox of philosophy. There is only a succession
of occasions, which perish as soon as they complete themselves
and are " objectified " in other occasions by entering into their
composition as an object enters a subject.

The Demiurge

We can see, I think, how this applies to our conscious
experience. The originality of Whitehead's view is that the
same sort of language is used of what we ordinarily call material
objects. He calls this process of completion, or satisfaction,
which is the " aim " of all things, " concrescence." It is a
manifestation of the creative advance of the universe of what
he calls " creativity." We require an ordering principle to
account for the fact that out of an infinite variety of possible
worlds, the actual type of order of this world arises. The
principle of concretion is God.

Whitehead's conception of God is as unusual as nearly every-
thing else in his philosophy, and it is a little surprising that it
should have been given such a welcome in theological circles.
God, says Whitehead, is neither omnipotent nor ominiscient.

THE PROBLEM OF CHANGE 165

He is " not the author of the play." He is " not to be treated
as an exception to all metaphysical principles, invoked to save
their collapse. He is their chief exemplification." Neverthe-
less " He is the principle of concretion the principle whereby
there is initiated a definite outcome from a situation otherwise
riddled with ambiguity." This is the primordial nature of
God, " the unlimited conceptual realization of the absolute
wealth of potentiality."

Thus viewed He is " deficiently actual." But " the conse-
quent nature of God is conscious ; and it is the realization of
the actual world in the unity of his nature, and through the
transformation of his wisdom." On the other hand, " He does
not create the world, He saves it : or more accurately, He is the
poet of the world, with tender patience leading it by his vision
of truth, beauty, and goodness." (Process and Reality.)

Whitehead adds a list of antitheses which does little to
illuminate the obscurity of these pronouncements. " It is as
true to say that God is permanent and the World fluent, as to
say that the World is permanent and God fluent. . . . It is as
true to say that God transcends the World, as that the World
transcends God. It is as true to say that God creates the
World, as that the World creates God."

For my part, I must frankly confess that I am unable to
understand this language. But there are times when White-
head seems to give us a glimpse of a profound wisdom which
makes all the effort to follow his difficult reasoning of slight
account. Thus, he speaks of " the final end " of creation and
the problem of evil as follows : " This end is existence in the
perfect unity of adjustment as means, and in the perfect multi-
plicity of the attainment of individual types of self-existence.
The function of being a means is not disjoined from the func-
tion of being an end. The sense of worth beyond itself is
immediately enjoyed as an overpowering element in the in-
dividual self-attainment. It is in this way that the immediacy
of sorrow and pain is transformed into an element of triumph."
(Process and Reality.)

Whitehead has made out the best case that can be presented

l66 THE PROBLEM OF CHANGE

at the present time for a compromise with metaphysics. But to
his occasional appeals to intuition and his initial assumption
that the universe forms a necessary, coherent system, the
empiricist will doubtless turn a deaf ear. The detailed informa-
tion supplied about the primordial and consequent natures of
God must elicit the pertinent question : " How do you know
all this ? How can you know it ? "

Whitehead begins very persuasively by saying that he is
merely trying to frame the general ideas in terms of which we
can interpret what we experience. * But it must be admitted
that in the ardour of the quest he moves a very long way from
the data of experience.

USEFUL REFERENCES

First Principles, by Herbert Spencer ; 1862.

Time and Freewill, by Henri Bergson ; 1888.

Matter and Memory, by Henri Bergson ; 1896.

Creative Evolution, by Henri Bergson ; 1907.

Space, Time, and Deity, by S. Alexander ; 1920.

Whitehead's Philosophy of Organism, by Dorothy Emmett ; 1932.

The Concept of Nature, by A. N. Whitehead ; 1920.

Science and the Modern World, by A. N. Whitehead ; 1926.

Religion in the Making, by A. N. Whitehead ; 1927.

Process and Reality, by A. N. Whitehead ; 1929.

Adventures of Ideas, by A. N. Whitehead ; 1933.

The Revolt Against Dualism, by A. O. Lovejoy ; 1930.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The New Logic

THERE are at least two ways of looking at a metaphysical system.
It can be regarded as a bold, imaginative picture of a possible
state of affairs " a likely story," as Plato said. We can take
flight with the philosopher and try to capture a god-like view
sub specie aeternitatis. Alternatively, we can, so to speak,
X-ray the picture. We can analyse it and try to discover why
it has its specific pattern.

This must not be confused with analysing the philosopher.
You may conclude that he painted a gloomy picture because he
suffered from dyspepsia. You may decide that he is an Idealist
because he is a psychological introvert, or because he wants to
escape from human society, or because he hates his wife. This
sort of analysis may have its uses, but it is not logical analysis.

Logical analysis is concerned with the form in which a
philosophy is stated. It is therefore concerned with statements,
sentences, propositions. " Traditional elementary logic, taught
in youth, is an almost fatal barrier to clear thinking in later
years, unless much time is spent in acquiring a new technique,"
writes Bertrand Russell. Before examining Russell's philoso-
phy it is worth while trying to see what he means, because he so
often inveighs against " traditional logic," and I think many
readers must be puzzled. Surely, some may think, logic deals
with the laws of thought, and these are beyond argument.

Logic deals with more than the laws of thought. It deals
with forms of expression and the rules which enable us to sub-
stitute one symbol for another. Some words refer to these
symbols, others refer to the rules of manipulation, still others to
the facts which sentences express. There can be no argument
about primitive facts. They are just there, and we must take
M 167

l68 THE NEW LOGIC

them or leave them. But there can be a lot of argument about
the interpretation of these facts.

What is a fact ? If I see a grey patch, that is a fact it is
beyond argument. If I say that the grey patch is a lump of
lead I express myself in the form of a proposition. To em-
phasize the difference I call the phrase by which I draw attention
to a particular grey patch demonstrative, and the phrase which
ascribes characteristics descriptive.

A description itself need not predicate a property of an in-
dividual subject, as the older logicians thought. Whatever else
Russell has done he has cleared up the muddle that arises from
the doctrine that every proposition has the same form a sub-
ject and a predicate. We will consider this in more detail
presently, and meanwhile let us glance briefly at a few examples.

" The husband of Xantippe is mortal " tells us that Socrates
is mortal, because we know that the description fits. But the
description does not stand for an individual in the direct
manner of a name, and so it is not really of the subject-predicate
form. It really conceals the assertion we have to make that an
individual exists. When we assert that, we can apply a descrip-
tion to him. Obviously there might be no such person. A
great deal of ink has been wasted on describing the appearance
of non-existent individuals and supposing that whatever could
be talked about, or thought of, must exist.

Confusion has also been caused by general propositions such
as " All men are mortal." These, also, are not of the subject-
predicate form. " All men >J does not denote an individual
subject. If it did, a class would be a real entity. We should
have to speculate on the substantiality of a class if we treated
" all men " in the same way as the individual name, " Socrates."
It stands for a collection of individuals ; and it is the case that
every one of these individuals is mortal if the generalization is
true.

At the base of all knowledge are the individual facts of which
we are aware. We know them, as Whitehead says, in the mode
of presentational immediacy. But knowledge would remain
slight if it were restricted to direct awareness. I am not

THE NEW LOGIC 169

acquainted with the Pope ; my knowledge of him is descriptive.
I do not need to see the Pope, however, in order to know the
characteristics of being a bishop, and I do not need to have
visited Rome in order to know some characteristics of the city
of Rome. And so I can make up a proposition in which the
word " Pope " stands for the Bishop of Rome, and I can assert
(which may or may not be true) that this description applies to
an actually existing man.

As Russell puts it : " I shall say an object is * known by
description ' when we know that it is * the so and so,' i.e., when
we know that there is one object and no more having a certain
property ; and it will generally be implied that we do not have
knowledge of the same object by acquaintance/'

The New Technique

Logic does not reveal new facts. Hegel thought it did ; and
so did the learned professors of Padua at whom Galileo laughed
so heartily. A proper appreciation of logic enables us to sort
out facts and it clarifies what we mean by knowledge. Thus a
confused view of what we are doing when we classify and con-
nect facts may lead to a vast metaphysical superstructure which
rests on a false conception of logic. That is what Russell
means by saying that Aristotelian logic was responsible for bad
metaphysics.

Locke, for example, gave a description of a lump of lead it
had a certain colour, shape, and ductility. Under the influence
of tradition he supposed that it was necessary to postulate a
material substratum, a mysterious " I know not what " to be
the support of those qualities.

When we use the subject-predicate form of sentence (" Lead
is grey "), we are all apt to think that there must be something
permanent, something which persists through all changes, to
which such qualities as greyness can be attached. Thus the
Catholic Church teaches that, in transubstantiation, the colour
and shape of the consecrated wafer remain, but the substance is
changed the process is in reverse.

The view that there is no underlying substance cannot be

170 THE NEW LOGIC

easily expressed in everyday speech or in the logical forms
which take our usual syntax for granted. That is partly why
the Einstein theory is so hard to describe in ordinary language.
Instead of talking about material particles (substances) it talks
about events. And Whitehead has shown, with wonderful
ingenuity, how we can regard a material object as a string of
events.

Russell agrees with him, in the main, though there are im-
portant differences about the implications. Russell will have
nothing to do with Whitehead's mysticism. Also, he dis-
agrees with Whitehead's theory that the " aspects " of a thing
which make it " ingredient " throughout the universe really
constitute one entity. In short, Russell sets his face against
the organic view, which regards every event as being necessarily
related to every other event. He remains a stubborn atomist.

We have no reason, he says, for believing that everything is
related to everything else. We must proceed piecemeal.
With the aid of certain postulates we can frame laws that seem
to apply to the limited region of the universe which we can
observe. But we have no right to say, in advance, that every-
thing is subject to law. We must tackle one problem at a time.
Some philosophical problems, formerly regarded as insoluble,
can now be solved by means of the new logical technique.

He holds that Zeno's problem has been solved. Objective
Idealism of the Platonic and Hegelian sort collapses when taken
out of its old, logical framework. Such problems as whether
universals exist, whether the existence of God and the soul can
be proved, whether infinitesimals, mathematical points, in-
stants, and numbers exist, can also be solved by this method.
It can be shown that, apart from the set of individuals and the
defining property which determines them as a class, there is not
another individual which is the class.

Before dealing with Russell's general conclusion let us look
a little more closely at what he calls " the powerful logical
technique of modern analytical empiricism." He writes :
"It is thus able, in regard to certain problems, to achieve
definite answers, which have the quality of science rather than

THE NEW LOGIC IJl

of philosophy. It has the advantage, as compared with the
philosophies of the system-builders, of being able to tackle its
problems one at a time, instead of having to invent at one
stroke a block theory of the whole universe. Its methods, in
this respect, resemble those of science. I have no doubt that,
in so far as philosophical knowledge is possible, it is by such
methods that it must be sought ; I have also no doubt that, by
these methods, many ancient problems are completely soluble."
(History of Western Philosophy.)

He claims that much worthless philosophizing about the
infinite has been exposed by Cantor's definition of an infinite
collection as one which has parts containing as many terms as
the whole collection contains ; that Kant's theory that arith-
metical propositions are " synthetic," and Mill's that they are
empirical, are both refuted by the Principia Mathematica (in
which Whitehead collaborated) ; and that Bergson's theories of
time and becoming and number are vitiated by a false concep-
tion of continuity, and ignorance of Frege's definition of number
(made in 1884).

Russell differs to some extent from Whitehead's theory of
how points and instants can be obtained from empirical facts,
but all this is in the spirit of the new " analytical empiricism."
We need not concern ourselves deeply with this highly technical
controversy, but it is as well to see what it is about. In brief,
mathematical points and instants are not found in Nature. We
always find a point with some magnitude, an instant with some
duration. So it has long been a puzzle to the empiricist how
such conceptions could apply to the real world.

If mathematics forms a world of its own, well and good ;
but there is applied mathematics, as well as pure mathematics,
and " points " and " instants " are used in calculations that
enable bridges and aeroplanes to be constructed. Whitehead
solves this by the Principle of Extensive Abstraction, which
Professor C. D. Broad has described as " the prolegomena to
every future philosophy of Nature." The solution is curious
in that points are endowed with structure.

Picture a nest of boxes, each containing a smaller box. This

172 THE NEW LOGIC

forms an enclosure series which converges to a limit. But a
point is not defined, as might be supposed, as the limit ; a
point is the whole set of volumes. Briefly a point is a series of
volumes that would commonly be said to converge to a point ;
and at first sight this might seem to justify Jowett's criticism
of Logic in general that it is neither a science nor an art, but
a dodge.

I mention this because it seems a good example of the kind
of special problems that are being solved by modern philoso-
phers, as opposed to the construction of systems. The above
is primarily a mathematical problem, but it has philosophical
implications. Whitehead and Russell have tried to show that
mathematics develops from logic ; and it is scarcely possible
to-day to say where logic ends and philosophy begins.

The Theory of Descriptions

One of Russell's most important contributions to logical
theory is the discovery of propositional functions. It is not
much use complaining about the traditional logic if a new
instrument cannot be put in its place. A propositional function
is claimed to be just such an instrument.

A propositional function differs from a proposition rather
as a blank cheque differs from a completed cheque. " Socrates
is human " is a proposition ; " x is human " is a propositional
function. We cannot say that " x is human " is either true or
false ; that is how it resembles a blank cheque waiting to be
filled in by some word that stands for a fact, unless the cheque
is to be dishonoured. Metaphysicians are apt to overdraw their
account at the bank.

Now take the statement " Man exists." We may be easily
misled by the form of this statement to suppose that over and
above Jones and Smith and Brown there exists the class to
which they belong, the universal Man. But from Russell's
point of view the above proposition is not about " Man " or
about " existence," but about a description, " human," which
is applied to individuals.

" Man exists " must mean, if it is to be intelligible, that the

THE NEW LOGIC 173

property of being human is a description that can be applied
to at least one existent. It is a poor way of saying that an
object exists which has the property of being human. To say
" The Pope likes pineapples " is to say that being the Pope,
and liking pineapples, can be treated as a joint assertion which
is sometimes true. In other words, if x has any property, x
must exist. Or in another way, existence should be asserted
only of descriptions.

Russell takes the statement " Scott was the author of Waver-
ley" The statement, rightly analysed, means : " One and
only one man wrote Waver ley, and that man was Scott/' Or
more formally, " There is an entity c such that the statement
' x wrote Waverley ' is true if x is c, and false otherwise ;
moreover c is Scott."

To say " Scott exists " is really bad syntax. What we assert
is that there is an entity, , which satisfies the prepositional
function " x wrote Waverley." As Kant had long ago pointed
out, existence is not a predicate. Russell is therefore carrying
out most rigorously the line of criticism which Kant applied to
the classical proofs of God's existence.

Finally, the old puzzle about whether " round squares " and
" golden mountains " were endowed with subsistence by being
discussed disappears. " The golden mountain does not
exist " means : " There is no entity c such that * x is golden
and mountainous ' is true when x is c, but not otherwise."

So many of our beliefs involve asserting the existence of
something that it is essential to see what we mean by making
such an assertion. To assert existence is to assert that a certain
description or property belongs to something. There is, how-
ever, no such property as " being real " or " being thought of."

The Causal Chain

I have spent some time on these points, which at first sight
appear to be splitting hairs, because they illustrate how logical
analysis goes to work. Much more is involved than re-stating
obvious truths in a roundabout fashion. The theory has since
been advanced, for example, that scientific laws may be con-

174 THE NEW LOGIC

sidered as prepositional functions and that the problem of
induction can be solved by regarding it as the process of for-
mulating singular propositions from propositional functions and
verifying them. I will deal with this later.

We can form a pretty shrewd idea, however, of where such
logical analysis is going to lead. It leads us, in the first place,
back to Hume, with his faulty psychology left out. It leads us
to his distinction between " matters of fact " and " relations
between ideas/'

Matters of fact can be expressed by elementary propositions.
Some of these take the traditional subject-predicate form,
" Socrates is mortal/' or " S is P." Others take the relational
form, " Caesar loves Brutus/' symbolized as "a R b" or
A propositional function is usually symbolized

Now it is generally held that a proposition must be either
true or false. We can deny S is P by writing " It is not true
that S is P."

This can be expressed symbolically by treating the form
" not-P " as a function of the elementary proposition from
which it is constructed a truth-function. For not-P is false
when P is true, and true when P is false.

Symbols standing for " not, and, either or, not both, implies,"
are called logical constants. By manipulating them it can be
shown how easy it is to be deceived into thinking we are saying
something new, whereas we are saying the same thing in dif-
ferent ways. In other words, the distinction between matters
of fact and ideas, or mere symbols, is shown by these tech-
nical devices, and the so-called laws of logic turn out to
be tautologies, according to Wittgenstein.

Generalizations, such as " All men are mortal," can be
reduced to elementary propositions, and their truth depends on
the truth of those elementary propositions on whether or no
the instances enumerated are factual. Russell adheres to the
correspondence theory of truth. In the last analysis Hume's
matters of fact, the impressions from unknown causes, the
patch of grey we see, are practically what Russell means by

THE NEW LOGIC 175

perceptions. They are sense-data. One aim of analysis is to
discover whether concepts can be shown to be logical functions
of sense- data.

Let us start, then, with individual percepts. From percepts
we can construct complicated, enduring objects. The objects
of everyday experience chairs, tables, etc. are logical con-
structions. This may seem surprising, but Russell takes the
example of a wall-paper. It goes on fading, changing. It is
not possible, in the strict sense, to have knowledge of it by
acquaintance. Consequently it does not stand for particular
constituents of a proposition in the way that a demonstrative
symbol (such as " This ") stands for its referent. The word
" wail-paper " is said to be an " incomplete symbol " that is
to say, a symbol with no meaning in isolation from a context.

" When we throw over substance/' says Russell in Analysis
of Matter y " we preserve the causal chain, substituting the unity
of a causal process for material identity. Thus the persistence
of substance is replaced by the persistence of causal laws, which
is, in fact, the criterion by which the supposed material identity
was recognized. We thus preserve everything that there was
reason to suppose true, and reject only a piece of unfruitful
metaphysics/'

Russell's theory of causation is difficult. He seems to regard
it as invariable sequence a view which is open to several
objections. He has also declared that the term " cause " is not
needed in advanced science. He rejects the idea of compulsive
causes but retains the sequential chain.

The details of his theory must be sought in his more serious
works. " The aim of physics, consciously or unconsciously,
has always been to discover what we may call the causal skeleton
of the world. It is perhaps surprising that there should be
such a skeleton, but physics seems to prove that there is, par-
ticularly when taken in conjunction with the evidence that
percepts are determined by the physical character of their
stimuli. . . . We know of no laws as to when a quantum
transaction will take place, or a radio-active atom will break
down. We know fairly well what will happen if anything

176 THE NEW LOGIC

happens, and we know statistical averages, which suffice to
determine macroscopic phenomena. . . . Perhaps the electron
jumps when it likes ; perhaps the minute phenomena in the
brain, which make all the difference to mental phenomena,
belong to the region where physical laws no longer determine
definitely what must happen. This, of course, is merely a
speculative possibility ; but it interposes a veto upon material-
istic dogmatism."

This passage shows the difference between Realism and the
subjective theories which are now fashionable. Russell holds
that there is no half-way house between Solipsism and Realism.
The belief in an external world is necessary, he argues, for
science, but it rests on a belief in causation and induction.
He agrees that this foundation has not been justified in theory,
but he points to its merits in practice.

" We cannot escape from the solipsist position without
bringing in induction and causality, which are still subject to
the doubts resulting from Hume's sceptical criticism. Since,
however, all science rests upon induction and causality, it seems
justifiable, at least pragmatically, to assume that, when properly
employed, they can give at least a probability." (Analysis of
Matter.)

Neutral Monism

At times Russell's epistemological views recall Berkeley's.
Thus he regards the everyday world as a construction from
percepts. He sometimes writes perhaps because he enjoys
the flavour of paradox as though a construction is equivalent
to a logical fiction, but he clearly regards the external world as
a necessary inference. The originality of Russell's view is that
he regards percepts and physical events as substantially the
same. He is as opposed as Whitehead to the Cartesian dualism
of mind and matter.

Like Hume, he denies that there is a substantial ego. He
carries his war against metaphysical substance to the uttermost
extreme. There is no " I," which owns mental states ; there
are just the states, the events we call percepts. Thus (an echo

THE NEW LOGIC 177

from Leibniz, with a big difference) the whole of the perceived
universe is inside our heads, quite literally inside our skulls.
All we are acquainted with are percepts. And percepts are
mental events. A physical object can be analysed into a string
of events ; and even a mind is no more than a bundle of
events. To sum up :

" What has been thought of as a particle will have to be
thought of as a series of events. The series of events that
replaces the particle has certain important physical properties,
and therefore demands our attention ; but it has no more sub-
stantiality than any other series of events that we might arbi-
trarily single out. Thus * matter ' is not a part of the ultimate
material of the world, but merely a convenient way of collecting
events into bundles. . . . While physics has been making
matter less material, psychology has been making mind less
mental. . . . The distinction of matter and mind came into
philosophy from religion, although, for a long time, it seemed
to have valid grounds. I think that both matter and mind are
merely convenient ways of grouping events. Some single
events, I should admit, belong only to material groups, but
others belong to both kinds of groups, and are therefore at
once mental and material." (History of Western Philo-
sophy.)

Russell calls his theory Neutral Monism, which is perhaps
not an altogether happy name because it suggests a doctrine of
substance that he has spent much time in undermining. It
would be equally misleading to call it either Idealism or
Materialism. Professor Broad has criticized the theory that
mind consists of percepts on the ground that feelings are not
percepts, and that Russell makes much of feelings. But
however much or little may survive of Neutral Monism, there
can be np doubt that Russell has carried out a great part of his
avowed programme " to eliminate Pythagoreanism from the
principles of mathematics, and to combine empiricism with an
interest in the deductive parts of human knowledge."

Ij8 THE NEW LOGIC

Logical Positivism

The influence of Russell has been enormous, and a more
radical turn was given to analytical empiricism by his pupil,
Ludwig Wittgenstein, a young architect who became successor
to G. E. Moore at Cambridge. For a time Wittgenstein was a
member of a group that was formed in Vienna to discuss the
sort of problems raised by Frege, Hilbert, Mach, Peano, and
Russell. This was known as the Vienna Circle, and started in
1923 under Moritz Schlick. Few of the members were
professional philosophers.

Schlick was a physicist, Hahn a mathematician, Otto Neurath
a sociologist, Philip Frank a physicist. One of the most in-
fluential members of the group was Carnap, though the
movement received its strongest impetus from an astonishing
book published by Wittgenstein in 1922, Tractatus Logico-
Philosophicus.

The Vienna Circle called themselves, at first, Logical
Positivists. They deviated from the Cambridge analysts.
Neurath and Carnap propounded the thesis of Radical Physical-
ism. This has received many modifications, and after the war
central Europe having proved unfavourable to philosophic
meditation the group came to life again, with renewed vigour,
in the United States, where Logical Positivism was re-named
Logical Empiricism.

Logical Positivism won the wrong sort of notoriety by
appearing to dismiss the objections of its opponents, the
systems of all metaphysicians from Plato onwards, the objects
of religious belief and any idea of right and wrong, as " non-
sense. " It was certainly good clean fun, and young iconoclasts
made the most of it. Logical Positivism became fashionable
among people quite incapable of understanding that " non-
sense " was a technical term. It would have been less mis-
leading to have described some of the propositions objected to
as " non-significant," or " without sense-content." Inevitably
the Logical Positivists had soon to distinguish between nonsense
and " important " nonsense, between what is unsinnig (sense-

THE NEW LOGIC 179

less) and what is useful but without sense (sinnlos), such as
tautologies and contradictions.

Broadly speaking, Logical Positivism illustrates the transition
from the sort of question raised by Locke How much do we
know ? to the question, What do we mean ? The ancients
asked what the world was made of; the moderns ask what
language is made of, or, more accurately, What are the con-
stituents of propositions ? The early empiricists made a good
beginning when they said that words were signs ; but when
you analyse a sentence it becomes evident that some of the
words it contains are not signs standing for sense-data.
Language is not, on the face of it, a set of hieroglyphics,
however it might have begun. Some account must therefore
be given of those signs which do not simply represent experi-
ences.

Most Logical Positivists dislike the term " experience." It
has psychological associations. They prefer the more neutral
word " facts." On the relation between facts and the verbal
signs which stand for them the movement split.

Wittgenstein held that sentences are pictures of facts. We
cannot express" the relation between what is symbolized and
the symbol, because to do so would violate this definition of a
sentence, but we can see it. By using a different notation we
can see that II + II = IIII.

All sensible propositions can be reduced to elementary
propositions, just as you reduce a compound like water to
hydrogen and oxygen, then to molecules, atoms, and finally to
electrons and protons. These elementary propositions repre-
sent ultimately simple facts, atomic facts as it were. Thus the
universe is a totality of atomic facts ; it is not, as organic
theories claim, a whole of internally related events.

And so, to test the truth of a proposition, you must sec
whether its constituents (which can be obtained by analysing
it) correspond to atomic facts, or what used to be called particu-
lars. All verification consists in doing this. It consists in
setting the linguistic atoms, if you like, beside the atoms of
experience, the atomic facts. On the other hand, the procedure

l8o THE NEW LOGIC

of philosophies of organism must be to seek, with Spinoza,
coherence rather than correspondence.

For Wittgenstein the meaning of a proposition consists in
the method of its verification. Propositions that seem to have
a meaning and yet which cannot conceivably be verified are
tautologies. They are more or less elaborate ways of saying
the same thing in other words. All the laws of logic, all so-
called necessary truths, are tautologies.

The laws of logic are not derived from experience, as empiri-
cists like Mill believed. They are not synthetic but analytic,
in the Kantian sense. They are rules of symbolism, not features
of the universe. It follows that every attempt to deduce
facts from logical principles, from supposed necessary truths,
is tautologous. Mathematical deduction is also tautologous.
If we were, sufficiently intelligent we would be able to see that
the whole of mathematics follows from certain principles.

Metaphysics, therefore, is to be rejected. It is really a sort
of playing with words. It gives us no information whatever.
It pretends to give inform_ation, and so it consists largely of
pseudo-sentences i.e., sentences without genuine significance,
because they are intrinsically incapable of verification.

Wittgenstein claims to have given a rigorous proof that what-
ever can be established by purely logical methods can tell us
nothing about empirical facts ; and because of its sweeping
consequences this is perhaps the most important part of his
philosophy. The gist of the argument is that the only way in
which logic applies to the world is that it shows how different
modes of expression may convey the same sense. Logic
provides the rules for translating one proposition into another.

Consider, for example, some typical metaphysical state-
ments : " To be is to be perceived/' " The real is the rational
and the rational the real," " Pure Being and Pure Nothing are
the same." Now either these statements are just repeating an
assertion in different words or they are telling us something
new. If they provide a basis for deduction, then something is
being deduced from a complex concept which must in any
case entail all the simple concepts of which it is composed.

THE NEW LOGIC l8l

" How do you know what you are telling me ? " is a reason-
able question to put to any philosopher. The empiricist replies
that in the last resort he can indicate how complex propositions
can be reduced to elementary ones, and that these can be shown
to correspond to facts of experience. That is the only sort of
information he can give. It is, of course, merely scientific
information. It does not profess to take us behind the scenes
of reality.

The metaphysician, on the other hand, is not satisfied with
empirical concepts. He claims to have a superior method of
discovering truth either by pure intuition or by deduction
fron\ propositions that are absolutely certain. To which the
empiricist answers : " Any such information must be expressed
in language. It is therefore open to the objection that any
sentences that can be devised are either tautologies, or else
verifiable, or else meaningless/'

As Carnap puts it : " Metaphysicians cannot avoid making
their propositions non-verifiable, because if they made them
verifiable, the decision about the truth or falsehood of their
doctrines would depend upon experience and therefore belong
to the region of empirical science. This consequence they wish
to avoid, because they pretend to teach knowledge which is of
a higher level than that of empirical science. Thus they are
compelled to cut all connection between their propositions and
experience ; and precisely by this procedure they deprive them
of any sense. " (Philosophy and Logical Syntax.}

The practical rule, " If this statement is significant it can be
tested," has led some Logical Empiricists to find affinities with
American Pragmatists and Instrumentalists. As long ago as
1878 Charles Peirce said that the meaning of a statement was
the practical effects it might have. If a change of words makes
no practical difference, the change tells us nothing.

As William James put it, " theories thus become instruments,
not answers to enigmas." According to Dewey and Bridgman
scientific laws should be regarded as intellectual instruments
which we use in our active exploration of the world. To say
that Newton's law of gravitation is true is to say that it can be

l82 THE NEW LOGIC

applied successfully ; so long as that could be done, it was
true. There is no inconsistency in saying that Newton's law
was true and that Einstein's law is at present true.

The Positivist account looks more like Pragmatism than it
really is. It is designed to preserve the concept of " truth "
and yet at the same time to overcome the difficulties about
induction which Hume raised and Mill failed to solve. The
thesis is that laws are not " true " when practically useful, as
Pragmatists avow, but useful in so far as they yield true pro-
positions. Laws are models prepositional functions from
which directives can be formed.

The old problem of arguing from the particular to the general
does not arise. According to Schlick : " The relations between
reality and ourselves frequently stand in sentences which have
the grammatical form of assertions but whose essential sense
consists in the fact that they are directions for possible acts."

The Principle of Verifiability has been toned down since it
was first enunciated. It is plain that complete verifiability is
seldom possible. And the more we move away from the
metaphysical idea of certainty, the more necessary it becomes to
discover what we mean by probability. This, however, is a
problem that is far from being solved.

Wittgenstein so restricted the meaning of significance that
he had to admit that his own thesis was " nonsense.' * He
claimed that " the result of philosophy is not a number of
* philosophical propositions ' but to make propositions clear."
Accordingly, he had to confess : " My propositions are eluci-
datory in this way : he who understands me finally recognizes
them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on
them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder
after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these
propositions ; then he sees the world rightly. Whereof one
cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

Another apparently self-strangulating course was taken by
those who wished to forbid all reference to the factual world
and confine the discussion within the sphere of language. The
safest procedure was felt to be to confine the problem to that of

THE NEW LOGIC 183

transforming one set of expressions into another. But this
was not a very bracing atmosphere for the scientific investigator.

The most recent trend has been an endeavour to show that
all sciences are united by a common language. Just as chem-
istry is being reduced to physics, so, it is argued, it may be
possible to effect a complete reduction of the laws of the
various sciences to a unitary set of basic laws. " Reduction,"
of this sort, remarks Feigl, is to be contrasted with the " seduc-
tion " of metaphysics.

Thus, quite apart from vitalistic and spiritualistic theories,
there is an important distinction between reductive Materialism
on the one hand, and emergent Materialism on the other. As
Russell has tried to show, reductive Materialism is not rendered
invalid by the rejection of mechanism. But although it can be
made compatible with the new physics, its psychological
affinities with Behaviourism make it seem to many rather less
respectable.

Like Hume and Russell, Logical Positivists must regard the
substantial " I " as a pseudo-concept, because a pure ego has
no empirical qualities. We cannot describe the experience of
ourselves as the subject ; when we try to do so we are confronted
with an object. There is obviously a vicious regress. But if
we substitute physical terms for the subjective terms of psycho-
logy we can scarcely avoid Behaviourism. This would not
dismay Russell ; but Dr. Broad, for example, who is no enemy
of empiricism, classes Behaviourism among " theories so silly
that only very learned men would have thought of them."

The point is this. Suppose I say I am thirsty. To reduce
that to an empirical, non-metaphysical statement I merely assert
" Now, thirst." The " I " is dropped out. It is regarded as
a mere grammatical convenience. But how, on this basis, is it
possible for me to tell someone else, or for him to tell me, that
I am, or he is, thirsty ? All that can be done, according to
Carnap, is to describe behaviour because if we restrict our-
selves to the physical language we cannot talk about private
feelings. The solution advanced is to regard what a man says,
or the state of his body (if it can be examined) as equivalent

N

184 THE NEW LOGIC

(translatable into) the usual sentence about his subjective
feelings.

The actual subjective feeling of Smith, for example, when he
is thirsty, is known only to himself. It cannot be communi-
cated. All we can communicate is the fact that Smith says he
is thirsty or says that he is angry ; and this means that he is in a
certain bodily, and so verifiable condition.

Once again, the argument has an appearance of triviality.
Yet, if it is sound, it has the most revolutionary consequences.
For it not merely disposes of the soul, it wipes out the mind
and what we ordinarily call the self.

This is more than the familiar reduction of mind to physical
brain, as the following illustration will show : The ordinary
view of language as a set of signs requires (a) what is signified,
(b) the sign, and (c) the interpreter of the sign, as signifying.
Some Logical Positivists accept (a) and (i), some eliminate (a)
and all reject (c).

Protesting against over-emphasis on the purely reductive
aspect of analysis, Prof. C. I. Lewis writes : " The analysis
of any immediately presented X must always interpret this X
in terms of constant relations to other things to Y and Z.
Such end-terms of analysis Y and Z will not in general be
temporal or spatial constituents of X but may be anything
which is in constant correlation with it. It is as if one should
deny the existence of colours because for purposes of exact
investigation the colours must be defined as frequencies of
vibratory motion." (Mind and the World Order.)

The Logical Positivist would probably answer that a sentence
containing the word "colour** and a sentence containing the
phrase " frequencies of vibratory motion," are different ways of
saying the same thing. To say that a man's brain is in a certain
state and to say that he is thinking is to make statements that
can be substituted for one another without remainder. Such
statements are " equipollent." The term " synonymous " must
be kept for tautologies.

But by this time the reader will have become hardened to the
startling claims that philosophers make. Now change is abol-

THE NEW LOGIC 185

ishcd, now permanence ; now mind, now matter. This or
that familiar interpretation has gone, and finally there is no
one left to interpret anything. Looking back on all the various
things that have made their positively last appearance and
turned up for a repeat performance in some other guise can we
be confident that even the metaphysician has left the stage for
ever ? If he does dare to reappear I think he will have to show
some quite new tricks.

USEFUL REFERENCES

Our Knowledge of the External World, by Bertrand Russell ; 1914.

Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell ; 1919.

The Analysis of Mind , by Bertrand Russell ; 1921.

The Analysis of Matter, by Bertrand Russell ; 1927.

Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, by Bertrand Russell ; 1940.

The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, Library of Living Philosophers,

V; 1946.

Philosophical Studies, by G. E. Moore ; 1922.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, by Ludwig Wittgenstein ; 1922.
Pragmatism, by William James ; 1907.
The Philosophy of "As If," by H. Vaihinger, Eng. trs. ; 1924.
Logic, The Theory of Inquiry, by John Dewey ; 1938.
An Examination of Logical Positivism, by J. R. Weinberg ; 1936.
Philosophy and Logical Syntax, by Rudolf Carnap ; 1935.
The Logical Syntax of Language, by Rudolf Carnap ; 1937.
The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge, by A. J. Ayer ; 1940.
The Logic of Modern Physics, by P. W. Bridgman; 1928.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Debate Continues

BEFORE trying to sum up, I propose to mention two other recent
contributions that bring into sharp focus the sort of questions
to which answers are still being sought. The development of
physics has led some physicists to adopt what is sometimes
called Subjective Idealism.

Bertrand Russell has pointed out the difficulty of resting in a
half-way house. We must either go the whole hog, he^argues,
and end up as Solipsists, or we must assume the validity of our
inferences about unperceived events and accept the reality of
the world and of our neighbours.

But who could possibly deny that other people exist ? What
man outside a lunatic asylum could declare that nothing exists
but himself ? For that is what the Solipsist seems to say.

Russell makes the sound point that our evidence for the
existence of other people is the same as our evidence for the
external world. If you do not believe that tables and chairs are
real, you cannot believe that the objects that use them and make
funny noises with their mouths are real.

On the other hand, Russell admits that Solipsism cannot be
disproved. So here is a logical scandal. Solipsism seems
laughable, absurd, outrageous but no one can disprove it. A
sufficiently bold thinker was therefore sure to come along and
make things exceedingly awkward for those philosophers who
felt that at last they were sorting things out very nicely.

A Modern Solipsist

In his 1936 Lowell Lectures, Through Science to Philosophy,
Professor H. Dingle writes as follows : " The judgment which
is usually passed on Solipsism is that it is logically irrefutable

THE DEBATE CONTINUES 187

but intrinsically absurd, and may therefore be ignored. But if
absurdity is logically irrefutable, what becomes of philosophy ?
. . . Moreover, to say that Solipsism is logically irrefutable is to
express the fact far too mildly. It is not merely logically irre-
futable ; it is obviously true. . . . Anything that is not in my
consciousness cannot be conceived by me, and can have no part
(not should have no part, but can have no part) in my
philosophy."

The reader who has followed me thus far through the twisting
maze will not, I hope, be dazed by this apparent defiance of
common sense. He will be prepared for an ingenious discus-
sion about the meaning of the words " reality," " external/'
" consciousness," " my."

He will remember that Dr. Johnson was wrong when he
kicked a stone to disprove Immaterialism. He will not, there-
fore, suppose that the fact that he is arguing with a Solipsist
disproves Solipsism. He will recall, too, that Leibniz and
Descartes accepted the solipsistic starting-point, and got them-
selves out of their difficulties by metaphysical arguments.

In the past, whenever a philosopher got into serious trouble,
he could always extricate himself by the appeal to God. It is
significant of a great change that the contemporary philosopher
appears to pull himself out of the quicksands by his own braces.

In an earlier book, Science and Human Experience, Professor
Dingle defined science as " the rational correlation of experi-
ences common to all normal people." He has since found it
necessary to amend this definition because " normal people '*
are a part of his experience. To get down to fundamentals they
must not be taken for granted.

After quoting definitions of science by Einstein and others,
which treat it as the rational correlation of experiences, Dingle
says that this " specifies a process occurring in our conscious-
ness ; that is, in fact, in the consciousness of the scientist, the
thinker in the last resort, in my consciousness, for it is only
my consciousness that I am directly aware of and that can
possibly be for me the scene of a mental operation. I have not
reached rock-bottom until I have come down to the solipsistic

l88 THE DEBATE CONTINUES

level. Of course, I must not remain there. Normal people
are part of my experience, and I must see that they, as well as
the rest of what I find it convenient to call ' the external world/
receive their due in the building which is to be erected. 1 '

Dingle takes, as the primary elements of consciousness,
experience and reason. What we ordinarily call the external
world is a rational correlation of our sensations, emotions, etc.
These are experiences, and their correlation into bits of matter,
people, and so on is the world of reason. What you and I
would regard as " Professor Dingle " is not given to us in
experience but constructed rationally out of the experiences
which we call seeing him, hearing him. So, to Dingle, is the
person he speaks of as " myself/' but a distinction must be
drawn between " myself" and the subjective " I," which can
also be referred to as reason. " When I speak of ' I and my
consciousness/ then it is to be understood that * I ' represents
the thinker, * my consciousness J the aggregate of things of
which thought is possible."

We cannot ever reach the thinker, in this sense. As soon as
we talk about him (or he talks about himself) the thinker is
objectified and becomes an object to a remoter thinker. To try
and catch the latter is as impossible as catching your shadow.
This is not the thinker which the psychologist studies. The
psychologist studies part of the aggregate of things in the field
of consciousness.

Dingle expresses this as lucidly as anyone can. " My sub-
jective ' I/ ever at the present and continuously experiencing,
has its experience automatically petrified and projected as
memory into the field of consciousness by the unceasing action
of time. In that field, through the agency of its timeless faculty
of reason, it can work its will on memory, which it either
apprehends as discrete atoms or breaks up into such atoms as
the first stage in the formation of a completely rationalised
system. The subsequent stages constitute the progress of
philosophy, including that of science."

THE DEBATE CONTINUES 189

The Atoms of Logic

It should be explained that the atoms referred to are units of
experience and not physical atoms. Reason forms four
classes of concepts in its activity of correlating and subsuming
atomic experiences. The latter are grouped into logical mole-
cules, which in the scientific world are groups of similar ex-
periences, and in the ordinary world of common sense, physical
objects. The atomic experience which is a blue patch is
grouped by the physicist into the molecule of colour. To estab-
lish connections between the atoms in the molecules themselves,
reason invents postulates. Light is such a postulate so are
space, time, mass, and force. In addition to molecules and
postulates, reason employs hypotheses and laws of Nature.

A certain class of hypothesis is a pseudo-atom or pseudo-
molecule, which may be transformed into an actual atom of
experience. " A familiar example of a pseudo-molecule was
the planet Neptune, which, before its discovery, was com-
pounded of a colour, a mass, a shape, and so on, none of which
had been actually experienced. It was created by reason to
serve as an intermediary in connecting the two molecules
known as the planet Uranus and the sun. . . . Neptune was
accordingly ' created ' by reason as a pseudo-molecule, and
subsequent observation converted it into an actual one."

It is clear that this kind of approach is a development of the
atomism implicit in Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Atomic
experiences are a modern formulation of " ideas." Out of
them we form physical objects.

Take, for example, two common-sense physical objects, a
billiard ball and a piece of sugar. " The first is a spatio-
temporal association of a red colour, round shape, hard feeling,
horizontal movement and such things ; and the second is a
similar but differently located association of a white colour, hard
feeling, cubical outline, sweet taste and so on." But these
associations are not of much use to the scientist. He makes a
different set of associations.

" I put the horizontal movement of the disintegrated billiard

190 THE DEBATE CONTINUES

ball with the perpetual rest of the disintegrated piece of sugar,
and form a general concept called ' motion ' which includes
them as examples. Similarly, I take the red colour of the one
and the white colour of the other, and make them into a mole-
cule covered by the concept * light/ " By elaborating this
process we get sound, magnetism, electricity, and the laws of
these fields. " We form laws of motion but no laws of sugar.
One of the most fruitful causes of misunderstanding of science
is failure to recognize this fact, which is obvious when it is once
mentioned. When a new phenomenon appears say a new
kind of beetle it is immediately dissected into qualities which
are distributed among the various sciences. The character-
istics of its nervous system are alloted to biology ; mechanics
takes charge of its locomotion ; optics looks after the iridescence
of its outer covering and so on." *

Dingle, therefore, takes his stand with the Logical Empiri-
cists against organic theories. Where he mainly seems to
differ from them is in regard to the subjective " I ". " The
Logical Positivists' proscription of everything that is not
verifiable," he writes, " is an unsuccessful attempt to express
the truth that what is subjective cannot at the time be objective
without becoming nonsense. . . . But the Logical Positivist
fails to observe, first, that the subjective element is as necessary
to consciousness as the objective ; and secondly, that while
subjective (metaphysical) entities, such as the self, cannot as
subjective entities be discussed, we can, by our faculty of being
able to travel along an infinitely regressive consciousness,
objectify them and make them objects of contemplation by a
remote subjective self."

For the Logical Positivist any proposition in which " I "
occurs is, strictly speaking, nonsense. We make use of such
propositions for convenience, just -as we talk of sunrise and
sunset. Indeed, the more ruthless Positivists eliminate both
" I " and the external world and are left merely with sentences.
Wittgenstein takes refuge in a form of linguistic solipsism.

He agrees that other people are configurations of the facts of
" my experience," but he insists that strictly speaking I must

THE DEBATE CONTINUES IQI

not talk of my experience. " The thinking, presenting subject ;
there is no such thing. If I wrote a book * The World as I
Found It ' I should have to report therein on my body and say
which members obey my will and which do not, etc. This then
would be a method of isolating the subject or, rather, of showing
that in an important sense there is no subject : that is to say, of
it alone in this book, mention could not be made. The subject
does not belong to the world but is a limit of the world. Here
we see that Solipsism strictly carried out coincides with pure
Realism, the * I ' in Solipsism shrinks to an extensionless point
and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it."

This amounts to saying that what Solipsism means cannot be
expressed in language.

Experience and Knowledge

An alternative view suggested by Professor C. I. Lewis in
Mind and the World Order, a most important book, seeks to
avoid Solipsism. Whereas Dingle follows Berkeley in affirming
that we have introspective knowledge of self (though we cannot
communicate it), Lewis follows Hume. He takes a pragmatic
view of knowledge, but he, too, stresses that the concepts we
employ are not fixed categories, but creations of reason.

He starts with the empiricist's dictum that the proper subject-
matter of philosophy is experience. " Everyone can be his own
philosopher because we interpret what we already know."
What do we already know and what do we mean by inter-
pretation ?

Raw experience is " the given." But we cannot dignify
awareness with the name of knowledge until we have sorted out
this raw material into some kind of order. We cannot classify
and arrange until we have invented some scheme of classifica-
tion. To do this we must invent abstract terms (concepts),
and, because we must possess them before we can apply them,
they are a priori. But, unlike the Kantian a priori, they are not
fixed ; they are more like definitions.

For example, we have an experience which could be described
as seeing a pool fringed by palms in the middle of a desert.

IQ2 THE DEBATE CONTINUES

Is it real or mirage ? That is simply a question of classification.
We invent the term " reality " and define it in such a way that
what does not fit is " mirage."

Such concepts are not eternal categories. They are made by
mind and can be changed by mind. Indeed some do change
and some are dropped altogether. New concepts may have
to be invented to account for new experiences. To classify
experiences of hypnotism, etc., we now find the concept of
the Unconscious useful. Every enlargement of experience
demands new concepts.

We play a sort of game of " animal, vegetable, or mineral "
with what is given in experience. What is orderly we call
" real," so there is simply no sense in demanding that the real
should be orderly. The category " unreal " is a temporary
pigeon-hole for otherwise unclassified experiences. *

" Things exist for our apprehension as certain sequences of
possible experiences, of which given presentations are probable
indices." For knowledge to be possible, therefore, the possi-
bilities of further experience should not be unlimited. " Know-
ledge " is not just bare, immediate awareness ; it is the result
of applying a conceptual scheme to the objects of which we are
aware.

We devise this scheme in advance of knowledge. We decide
whether to play " animal, vegetable, or mineral " or some other
game. We classify some facts as " physical," others as
" mental," but what we do is in no way final. Such judgments
are probable only. Laws are empirical generalizations from
certain recurrent correlations of experience which are usually
classified as " things." Every sequence of experience must
show statistical stabilities of some sort and enable us to give
probable predictions.

We interpret our experience in the interests of action. " If
I do this then so and so will probably happen." We set up
hypotheses and test them. We cannot obtain complete veri-
fiability, but it is sufficient for practical purposes to know that
the roof will not fall on our heads.

Because we are active beings, the world is bigger than

THE DEBATE CONTINUES 193

experience ; but knowledge is not merely a relation of the
individual mind to an external object such that the existence of
other minds is irrelevant. The categories we devise as guides
to action are partly social products. " Our common under-
standing and our common world may be in part created in
response to our need to act together and to comprehend one
another."

Has Philosophy Progressed

It is not my task, fortunately, to decide among the various
theories that I have described. If the reader feels that at this
stage* I ought to produce some final scheme that will clear up
the perplexities I have dealt with, I fear that he will be dis-
appointed. But I have not concealed my view that the meta-
physical method was a mistake, and so I can at least express the
opinion that all systems constructed on the basis of deductive
Rationalism must be rejected. The more fruitful line seems to
me to have been the empirical tradition derived from Locke.

If that is correct we can narrow down the philosophies which
need claim our present attention very considerably. We can
rule out the system-builders though that does not mean that
everything they said can be ignored. I shall have done my task
badly if I have left the impression that we have little to learn
from those massive intellects who tried to see the universe
clearly and to see it whole. They swept away vast jungles of
misunderstanding. No one can read Leibniz and Spinoza and
Kant, to name but three, without finding an illumination on the
present-day formulation of the perennial problems of man and
the cosmos. Although they attempted the impossible, they
achieved much that was permanently valuable.

My contention has been that, despite appearances to the
contrary; philosophy has made progress, albeit of an unusual
kind. Its most solid progress has not been in answering
questions, but in propounding better questions. If it is asked
whether philosophy has made any discoveries, I think we may
reply that it has discovered what it is doing.

Let us glance back briefly at our starting-point. The

194 THE DEBATE CONTINUES

lonians began it all by asking, What is the world made of?
By their discovery of reason they implied that there was an
order, not visible to the naked eye, behind the haphazard
occurrences of everyday life. The first inquirers, therefore,
were led on to ask what was implied by an order of nature.
Philosophy had emerged from a religious background, and
some doctrines seemed as certain as the facts of ordinary
observation. The natural answer was that an order of nature
implied an ordering Mind God.

If nature is orderly, and God made it so, we can apply reason
to the concept of God. It used to be thought that we could
discover something about the nature of God as well as about
the nature of Nature by reasoning. I have shown where this
led.

For two thousand years the double inquiry went <Jn. The
majority of philosophers, until the seventeenth century, seemed
to find speculations about God even more fascinating than
speculations about nature. The pre-eminence of theology was
not seriously threatened in the period between the collapse of
Alexandrian science and the Renaissance.

The attempt to answer the questions of the lonians gave rise
to a variety of theories that may be classed under two headings,
(a) Materialism, (b) Idealism. As far as possible I have avoided
this sort of classification because I do not think it is very help-
ful. The most fundamental difference between philosophers
is in their method of approach. Yet Materialism and Idealism
may agree about method but differ in the solutions put forward.
There are, for example, metaphysical Materialists and empirical
Idealists.

The Materialists said that the world was made of atoms.
Everything that happened could be described in terms of matter
in motion. To maintain this it had to be supposed that the
world disclosed by the senses was somehow delusive. The
reality was the atoms that could not be seen, not the objects
that people saw.

Materialism of this sort was just as much an affront to
common sense as Berkeley's Immaterialism. Secondary quali-

THE DEBATE CONTINUES IQ5

ties were given a place in mind and mind became a dumping
ground for whatever spoilt the neatness of the picture.

It was partly to meet this situation that new kinds of
Materialism were formulated. Both Emergent and Dialectical
Materialism claimed to answer a difficulty about secondary
qualities, which was seen to be also involved with the deeper
problems of change. It seemed hardly possible to believe that
the only sort of change that occurred was change of position by
atoms as alike as two peas.

Mechanical Materialism was a bold simplification. Logically
it rested on a dubious, metaphysical view of substance. Its
decline, however, was due to the fact that philosophers were
driven out of the foothold on physical science that they struggled
hard to keep.

Mechanism was compatible, oddly enough, with Deism, but
not with the new physics. Emergent Materialism is clearly
incompatible with Deism, while Dialectical Materialism is
aggressively Atheistic.

The Shifting of the Problem

It will be noticed, however, that none of these theories
manages to banish what may be called the mysteriousness or,
better still, the awkwardness of the universe. The Mechanist
transfers it from matter to God, if he is a Deist, or to mind if
he is not. The Emergent Materialist transfers it to an unborn
God. The Dialectical Materialist transfers it to eternally self-
moving matter. An alternative to solutions of this sort is
Idealism.

By Idealism I mean all theories that regard matter as deriva-
tive. It is impossible to use these terms with complete con-
sistency. A Mechanical Materialist who is also a Deist is an
Idealist if he regards the material world as a creation of God,
provided he regards God as pure Mind. But there is a practical
convenience in classifying the various philosophical answers on
this basis.

Clearly there have been many philosophers who regarded

196 THE DEBATE CONTINUES

material objects as in some sense thoughts either as complexes
of universals or thoughts in the mind of God or thoughts in
the mind of man. But we cannot examine the rival merits of
Idealism and Materialism for long without realizing that the
old question, " What is the world made of ? " is not funda-
mental. We are obliged to ask ourselves, " How can we find
out what the world is made of ? " and finally, " What do we
mean by ' finding out ' ? "

When we examine the manner in which we can conduct the
inquiry we find that there are at least two obvious methods.
We can consider the ideas in our heads and ask what they imply,
what we can deduce from them ; or we can observe what
happens and generalize. We could deduce a lot of information
from our ideas if we could be sure that these ideas were true.
Metaphysical inquiry demands a belief that we can have a direct
intuition into the nature of reality.

No one, of course, would be so foolish as to deny that such a
thing is possible. Some mathematical and scientific discoveries
have come in a flash of intuition. But scientific intuitions have
always been tested afterwards. They are accepted because they
have survived repeated experiments, not because they were first
thought of on top of a bus.

If our concepts give us a direct insight into reality as Hegel
believed it is evident that the metaphysician has a different
kind of knowledge from the scientist. He does not merely
know certain abstract features of the universe. He knows it
from the inside, as he knows his own toothache. Pragmatists
and empiricists make no such claims.

Pragmatists regard scientific knowledge as little more than
a set of rules for our guidance when we have to act. The rules
are the best available, but from time to time they may have
to be seriously modified. Once we leave the private data of
immediate experience we say good-bye to certainty and enter
what Locke called " the twilight of probability."

The sharpest distinction between the metaphysical and the
empirical method is seen in the treatment of concepts. For
Hegel a material object say, a sparrow was merely a complex

THE DEBATE CONTINUES 197

of abstract ideas. To analyse it is to show that it consists of
universals.

For an empiricist, universals are symbolical devices for
grouping particulars. The sparrow can be analysed into sense-
data ; bundles of sense-data can be re-grouped and handed over
to various departments for study the colour and weight to the
physicist, other groupings to the chemist, still others to the
biologist. The empiricist invents new concepts ; he invents
Mass and Inertia, for example. But although the task may be
difficult, such concepts can be broken down again finally into
sensible constituents, or shown to be functions of them.

From this point of view we can see that a stage is reached
when the problem of the philosopher is not about the world,
but about experience. Immediate awareness is contrasted with
an orderly system of interpretations. The " world," as the
object of anything worthy of the name of knowledge, is a
rational construction. We devise a conceptual scheme, we keep
on improving it, and we sort out our experiences and connect
them to form a system within this scheme of concepts.

Something like this is so widely admitted nowadays that I
think we may almost regard it as a piece of territory conquered
by the philosopher. Even Whitehead, who cannot be regarded
as a pure empiricist, describes his aim as the search for a set
of ideas in terms of which everything we experience can be
interpreted. The other philosophers whom we have con-
sidered Russell, the Logical Positivists, Dingle, and Lewis
also have a similar aim, though they might word it differently.
It seems evident that they are all engaged in trying to devise a
conceptual scheme, and that they regard themselves as a good
deal freer than most of their predecessors to invent concepts.

This freedom is the note of contemporary thought. When
the results are described as tentative or probable, or as working
hypotheses, the emphasis is laid on our ignorance ; but from
another point of view it draws attention to the important
discovery that a priori truths are either about symbolism or
are definitive.

As definitions, a priori concepts are devised with the object

198 THE DEBATE CONTINUES

of constructing an orderly universe out of primitive experience.
That, too, seems to be widely admitted. There are, of course,
disagreements about details. If primitive experience is de-
scribed as non-inferential knowledge, the construction may be
regarded as inferred knowledge, and we are faced with the
problem of the validity of inference, when it does more than
generalize instances. In what sense, we then ask, are our
constructions true ?

Russell frankly assumes the validity of induction and the
existence of causal laws. He writes : " In such cases, I shall
allow myself to accept what seems necessary on pragmatic
grounds, being content, as science is, if the results obtained are
often verifiably true and never verifiably false. But wherever
a principle is accepted on such grounds as these, the fact should
be noted, and we should realize that there remains an mtellec-
tual problem, whether soluble or not." (Analysis of Matter.)

Lewis also accepts the pragmatic view, but Wittgenstein and
Dingle boldly attempt to tackle the intellectual problem which,
as Russell says, still remains. Wittgenstein tries to dispense
altogether with unobserved entities. All agree that the con-
structions made as a result of ordering experience according to a
scheme of concepts are dependent on primitive facts that the
entities of the world of reason must somehow be related to
entities of the world of sense.

Whether concepts are best regarded as functions of sense-
data or as abstractions that can be translated into protocol
statements of the type " Red, now,' 1 is perhaps a question of
taste. Similarly, the argument about Solipsism seems to me,
at least, largely verbal. If the " I " cannot be described we
cannot make valid propositions in which it occurs. We cannot
discuss it. The sort of Solipsism which includes the world in
" myself " and common sense rightly laughs at, is jnanifest
nonsense ; the sort of Solipsism which tries to put the world
inside brackets labelled " I " is inescapable, but the brackets
represent the limit of what can be said. We must take care
not to embarrass ourselves with an unknowable Ding an sick
outside them.

THE DEBATE CONTINUES 199

However, all this is, in a sense, a family quarrel and should
not be allowed to obscure the broad agreement and the solid
results achieved by empiricism. It accounts more satis-
factorily than any other school of philosophy for what science
is doing, and if it leads us into difficult and technical and even
astonishing discussions, that is because science becomes
increasingly difficult, technical, and astonishing.

Philosophy and Life

In treating that aspect of philosophy which is an adventure
of ideas, and in suggesting that it can be studied because of the
simple pleasure it gives, I am very far from regarding it as an
escape from life, an activity to be confined in Flaubert's Ivory
Tower. But I certainly hold that it is a delightful pursuit, and
I think that that is the psychological reason why individuals
take so much trouble to study both science and philosophy.
" The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do
so," wrote Henri Poincare. " He studies it because he takes
pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful."

Can we say of a piece of reasoning that it is beautiful ? I
think the elegance and simplicity of a logical demonstration can
unquestionably give some people an aesthetic satisfaction akin
to that derived from a work of art. The Greeks understood
this, which is perhaps why they described philosophers as lovers
of wisdom and truth.

Love is a strong word, but not, I think, too strong for a
passion which scorns the harlotry of fantasy and demands that
those dedicated to an austere beauty should be faithful even
unto death. The love of truth which must not be confused
with love of certainty has seldom made much appeal to re-
ligious minds. Without it, however, philosophy would have
foundered in sterile scholasticism, and there would have been
no science.

Science, with the transforming material power it gives us, is
among the practical consequences of philosophy. There are
other consequences with which I have no space to deal. And in
the sphere of morals and religion it undoubtedly makes a

200 THE DEBATE CONTINUES

great difference whether our approach is metaphysical or
empirical.

William James praises the philosopher who " turns away from
abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad
a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems and pre-
tended absolutes and origins. He turns towards concretencss
and adequacy, towards facts, towards action and towards
power. That means the empiricist temper regnant and the
rationalist temper sincerely given up. It means the open air
and possibilities of nature, as against dogma, artificiality, and
pretence of final truth." (Pragmatism, 1907.)

The empiricist is no doctrinaire who seeks to compel men to
comply with his views. Unlike the metaphysician, he does not
claim to possess knowledge that is certain and unshakable, and
so he is a little less likely to persecute those who disagree with
him. In their armchairs, metaphysicians do not seem able to
do much harm, but when they inspire political action the result
is invariably some form of despotism. If philosophers ever
become kings it is to be hoped that they will be empiricists.

The intolerance of most religions is due to their arrogant
claim of possessing certainty ; but it is not quite true to say
that all religious teachers have been metaphysical in the bad
sense.

It is said that some students once approached Buddha and
complained that they were bewildered by the variety of doctrines
taught by philosophers and did not know what to believe or
how to act. In his reputed reply Buddha expressed what seems
to me to be the essence of the empiricist attitude in words that
could scarcely be bettered. He said : " Believe nothing on the
faith of traditions, even though they have been held in honour
for many generations, and in divers places. Do not believe
a thing because many speak of it. Do not believe on the faith
of the sages of the past. Do not believe what you have
imagined, persuading yourself that a god inspires you. Believe
nothing on the sole authority of your masters or priests. After
examination, believe what you yourself have tested and found
to be reasonable, and conform your conduct thereto."

THE DEBATE CONTINUES 2OI

USEFUL REFERENCES

Contemporary British Philosophy, Ed. by J. H. Muirhead, two vols. ;

1924-25.

Through Science to Philosophy, by H. Dingle ; 1936.
Mind and the World Order, by C. I. Lewis ; 1929.
An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, by C. I. Lewis ; 1946.
The Logic of Modern Physics, by P. W. Bridgman ; 1928.
Critical Thinking : An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method,

by Max Black ; 1946.

Glossary of Terms

[These definitions are intended as aids to understanding and are not to be
taken as precise.]

ABSTRACTA are general or universal terms such as Beauty, Truth,

Number, Equality.
ABSTRACTION is the logical process of isolating an aspect from

the total object.
ANALYTIC describes a judgment in which the subject contains

the predicate.
A PRIORI is a judgment independent of sense-impressions ;

non-empirical and universal.
A POSTERIORI refers to the sort of knowledge acquired by

experience.
ATOMISM is the logical doctrine that there are certain basic,

simple propositions from which other propositions are

constructed. It is denied that all the facts in the universe

are necessarily connected.
ATTRIBUTE is that which expresses the nature of a substance.

In logic it is that which is predicated of the subject of a

proposition.

CARTESIAN. The philosophy of Descartes.
CATEGORIES are the inescapable forms in which knowledge is

presented. For Aristotle they were ultimate modes of

being viz., substance, quantity, quality, relation, place,

time, position, etc. For Kant they were part of the

apparatus of knowledge.

CONCEPT is a general or abstract term. Conception is know-
ledge of universals or abstrapta, in contrast to perception

as awareness of particulars.
CONNOTATION is the set of characteristics that belong to an

object.
COHERENCE is a characteristic of a system in which every fact

is related to every other fact.

202

GLOSSARY OF TERMS 203

CORRESPONDENCE THEORY OF TRUTH asserts that the truth of
propositions depends on a one-one correspondence be-
tween the terms and facts.

COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT is a proof of the existence of a First
Cause from series of causes ; or sometimes of Necessary
Being from Contingent Being.

DATUM is what is immediately given to the mind, the raw
material of sense-impressions yet to be interpreted.

DEDUCTION is a type of inference from the general to the
particular. The conclusion necessarily follows from the
premises.

DENOTATION is the object to which a word applies.

DETERMINISM is the theory that everything that exists conforms
to law.

DIALECTIC originally meant the process of argument by question
and answer. For Hegel it became the law of the develop-
ment of thought whereby the contradictions of thesis and
antithesis are resolved in synthesis.

EMPIRICAL is what is derived from experience.

EPISTEMOLOGY is the theory of knowledge.

ESSENCE is the nature of a thing, that which makes it unique.

EXTENSION is physical space in contrast to the abstract space of
mathematics. In logic the extension of an object is what-
ever it includes.

FORM has a variety of meanings. Traditionally, substantial
form is what differentiates a thing from any other and
determines its species or class ; as opposed to accidental
form. In modern logic, formal is that which is indepen-
dent of meaning, such as a symbol.

IDEALISM is, broadly speaking, any philosophy opposed to
Materialism. Metaphysical Idealism asserts that reality is
mental or spiritual ; epistemological Idealism regards
ideas (the content of experience) as the data of know-
ledge.

IDEOLOGY is nowadays usually taken to mean the socially con-
ditioned (and therefore impermanent), categories of
thought.

204 GLOSSARY OF TERMS

IMMEDIATE is by direct awareness ; interpretations and scientific
constructions are mediate.

INDUCTION is the process of generalizing from a set of observa-
tions.

INFERENCE is the process of passing from one or more pro-
positions believed to be true to another proposition which
seems to be implied.

INNATE IDEAS are those concepts believed to be inborn. Their
existence was affirmed by Descartes and denied by
Locke.

LOGISTICS is modern symbolic logic.

MECHANISM is the theory that all phenomena can be reduced to
the laws of matter in motion.

METAPHYSICS is traditionally the science of Being or Qatology.
Metaphysical knowledge is obtained by deduction from
axioms and claims to be universal and certain in contrast
to empirical knowledge, which claims only to be probable.

MODES are classes or categories in addition to True and False :
viz., potential, actual, possible, necessary. For Spinoza a
mode is " that which exists in, and is conceived through,
something other than itself. " Thus motion and rest arc
modes of Extension, which is an attribute of Divine
Substance.

MONAD is an irreducible unit, the metaphysical counterpart of
the scientific atom.

MONISM is the theory that there is but one fundamental sub-
stance.

NECESSARY is opposed to contingent, or what might have been
otherwise, and it is applied to propositions whose truth can
be certified on a priori or logical grounds.

NOMINALISM is the doctrine that universals are mere names ;
the opposite view that they really exist was held by Plato
and known in the Middle Ages as Realism,

NOUMENON is a Kantian term for the unknowable world of
reality held to lie behind appearances, or phenomena.

OBJECTIVE refers to whatever exists independently of the
knowing mind.

GLOSSARY OF TERMS 205

ONTOLOGICAL is sometimes used to distinguish the inde-
pendently real from the subjective or epistemological
object.

PANTHEISM is the theory that nothing truly exists except
God.

PARTICULAR is individual as opposed to universal ; or, in logic,
a member of a class.

PERCEPTS are sometimes called particulars. They are sense-
objects such as tables and chairs, trees and moun-
tains.

PHENOMENA are appearances, in contrast to things-in-themselves,
, or noumena.

PLURALISM is the theory that reality is composed of many
irreducible substances.

POSITIVISM is the theory that knowledge describes phenomena
and that metaphysics is largely meaningless.

PRAGMATISM is the theory that the meaning and truth of a pro-
position depend on its consequences. If two propositions
yield the same consequences they have the same meaning.
Beliefs are for the purposes of action, and if that is success-
ful the beliefs are " true."

PREDICATE is what asserts a quality of a subject. Thus, in
" Socrates is mortal," Socrates is the subject and mortal
the predicate.

PROPOSITION is a sentence which express a truth or false-
hood.

RATIONALISM is the philosophical theory that the criterion of
truth is intellectual, and not sensory ; the chief exponents
were Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza. Opposed to it arc
Empiricism and Positivism, with which, curiously enough,
modern Rationalism has come to be associated. The word
has. changed its original meaning.

REALISM to-day means the theory that we have direct knowledge
of an external world.

REPRESENTATIONALISM is the theory that the mind knows the
external world through the mediation of ideas which
represent objects.

206 GLOSSARY OF TERMS

SEMANTICS is the study of the relation of signs to the objects to
which they are applicable.

SENSA are isolated sense-qualities.

SENSATIONALISM is the theory that knowledge is ultimately
derived from sensations.

SOLIPSISM is an epistemological theory which takes the experi-
encing Self as the starting-point for all knowledge and
regards the external world as a rational construction by the
Self from the raw material of its experience.

SPECIES is a class included in a wider class, the genus.

SUBJECTIVE IDEALISM is less radical than Solipsism, though the
latter may be included under this heading.

SUBSTANCE was identical with essence in Greek philosophy,
though the Scholastics drew a distinction. Substance has
been regarded as that which exists in itself and inde-
pendently of another being ; the substratum supporting
qualities ; the ultimate subject of predication.

SYNTHETIC is a type of judgment in which the predicate is not
contained in the subject in opposition to analytic.

TELEOLOGICAL means purposive. The belief in final causes is
teleological.

TRANSCENDENT is the opposite of immanent. It is what is
beyond possible experience. Transcendental philosophy is
a name for Kantianism.

Table of Dates

B.C.

Thales, c. 624-546.
Anaximander, c. 610-546.
Anaximenes, c. 585-528.
Pythagoras, c. 571-497.
Heraclitus, c. 504-501.
Parmenides, c. 501-492.
Zeno of Elea, c. 464.
Anaxagoras, c. 500-428.
Empedocles, c. 484-424.
Democritus, c. 460-371.
Socrates, 469-399.
Plato, 427-348.
Aristotle, 384-322.
Epicurus, 341-270.
Zeno of Citium, 336-264.

A.D.

Plotinus, 205-220.
Augustine, 354-430.
Aboard, 1079-1142.
Maimonides, 1135-1204.
Aquinas, 1225-1274.
William of Occam, died 1349.
Bruno, 1548-1600.
Galileo, 1564-1642.
Hobbes, 1588-1679.
Locke, 1632-1714.
Spinoza, 1632-1677.

Newton, 1642-1727.
Leibniz, 1646-1716.
Berkeley, 1685-1753.
Voltaire, 1694-1778.
Lamettrie, 1709-1751.
Hume, 1711-1776.
Condillac, 1715-1780.
d'Holbach, 1723-1789.
Kant, 1724-1804.
Fichte, 1762-1814.
Hegel, 1770-1831.
Schopenhauer, 1788-1860.
Comte, 1798-1857.
J. S. Mill, 1806-1873.
Marx, 1818-1883.
Engels, 1820-1895.
Herbert Spencer, 1820-1903.
T. H. Huxley, 1825-1895.
Avenarius, 1843-1896.
C. S. Peirce, 1839-1914.
William James, 1842-1910.
F. H. Bradley, 1846-1924.
Henri Bergson, 1859-1941.
S. Alexander, 1859-1938.
John Dewey, 1859-
A. N. Whitehead, 1861-1948.
Lenin, 1870-1924.
Bertrand Russell, 1872-
C. I. Lewis, 1883-
R. Carnap, 1891-

207

INDEX

ABLARD, 27

Absolute, the, 42, 84, no, 116, 149

Idea, the, 114, 118, 119
Abstraction, 68, 85, no, in, 150,

156

Addison, 65
Agnosticism, 150
Alexander, Samuel, 161, 162
Analysis, logical, 167, 184
Analysis of Matter, The (Russell),

141, 176, 198

Analytic judgment, 76, 77
Anaxagoras, 20
Anaximander, 13, 14
Antithesis, 113, 122
Appearance and Reality (Bradley),

'53.

Apperception, 94
A priori, 80, 89, 98, 123, 143, 191,

W.

A posteriori, 90

Aristotle, 3, 6, 21, 23, 61, 65, 114
Aristotelian logic, 23, 24, 83, in,

169

Association of ideas, 75, 80, 85
Atomic theory, ancient, 19, 21

modern, 163, 175, 176
Atheism, 43, 96, 136, 195
Avenarius, 146

BABYLONIA, i, 13

Bacon, Francis, 31, 62, 86

Bacon, Roger, 27

Beauty, 21, 199

Becoming, 109, 113, 114, 152

Behaviourism, 34, 183

Bergson, 15, 151, 160, 171

Berkeley, 4, 5,6, 118, 146
and Hegel, 71, 103
and Hume, 74, 75, 82
theory of knowledge, 66-72

Bohr, 135

Bradley, 98, 120, 153

Bridgman, 181

Broad, C. D., 37, 171, 183

Bruno, 28

Buddha, 20*

CANTOR, 171

Carnap, R., 73, 178, 181, 183
Cassirer, 85

Categories, 89, 91, 92, 98, 192, 193
Caudwell, C., 121
Causation, 23, 73, 93, 142, 144
Hegel on, 102, 142
Hume on, 64, 73, 79
Russell on, 80, 175, 198
Whitehead on, 157, 158
Change, problem of, 14-16, 117,

149166

Bergson on, 152
dialectical, 107, 125, 128, 151
as illusion, 18, 105
Chaos, 20, 86
Christianity Not Mysterious (Toland)

65

Comte, 136
Concepts, 10, 45, 51, 67, 82, 84,

175, 196
connective, 88

reality of, 76, 83, 84, 95, 103, 107
scientific, 190, 191, 192, 197
sensuous and non-sensuous, 83,

89, 98, 103, 104

Concept of Nature (Whitehead), 157
Condillac, 60, 136
Contradiction, 40, 76, 77, 114, 126,

127, 174

Cotes, Roger, 56
Crisis in Physics, The (Caudwell),

132

Critique of Judgment (Kant), 87
Critique of Practical Reason (Kant),

87
Critique of Pure Reason (Kant), 87,

93

DALTON, 135
Darwin, 135, 151
Definition, in, 112, ifi
Defoe, 65

Deism, 136, 142, 150, 195
Democritus, 19, 22, 30
Descartes, 5, 28, 29, nS
and cogito, 4, 33

20*

2IO

INDEX

Descartes and God, 40, 41, 43
and innate ideas, 35, 83
and method, 32, 35, 187
and substance, 33, 34, 36, 42

Determinism, 36, 43, 139, 150

Dewey, J., 181

d'Holbach, 136

Dialectic, 113, 114, 119, 123, 128,

135

Dialectics of Nature (Engels), 121
Dingle, H., 186-191, 197, 198
Diogenes, 31
Driesch, 24
Dualism, 33, 36, 45
Duration, 160-162

EDDINGTON, 8

Efficient Cause, 23

Einstein, 50, 135, 146, 147, 158, 170,
182, 187

Egypt, i, 13

Elan vital, 152

Eleatics, 18

Empedocles, 14

Empiricism, 18, 64, 143, 200
methods of, 84, 142, 156
and logic, 143, 171, 178, 180
" and Rationalism, 56, 76

Encyclopedists, 135, 136, 137

Engels, 121, 122, 124, 126, 127, 130,

t, - I31
Epicureans, 27

Essay Concerning Human Under-
standing, An (Locke), 52, 53

Event, 25, 158, 159, 160, 164, 170,
177

Evolution, 13, 18, 125, 151, 152, 153,
161

Ewing, A. C., 97

Existence, 9, 94, 96, 104, 106, 107,
1 68, 173

Experience, 9, 10, 72, 73, 98, 188,
189, 191, 197

Extension, 42, 71, 91

FARRINGTON, B., 121

Feigl, 183

Fichte, 135

Final cause, 23

First cause, 23, 102, 141

First Principles (Spencer), 151

Forms, 22, 23

Forms of intuition, 89

Formal cause, 23

Formal logic, 24
Frank, Philip, 178
Freewill, 37, 45, 96
Frege, 171, 178
Freud, 135

From Religion to Philosophy (Corn-
ford), 7

GALILEO, 4, 27, 135, 169

and Copernicus, 29, 32

and experiments, 30

and Hobbes, 3 1
Genus, 54, 108, in, 112, 113
Given, the, 10, 86, 97, 191
God, 150, 195

existence of, 28, 35, 40, 60, 95, 96,
136, 142

finite, 154, 164, 165, 195

mind of, 14, 20, 194

as substance, 42, 45 *

as Supreme Monad, 49

HAHN, 178

Haldane, J. B. S., 121

Hegel, 5, 15, 100-116, 169

and Berkeley, 103

and dialectic, 108, 109, 113, 133,
127

and history, 119, 132

and Kant, 98, 101

and the limit to Knowledge, 95

and Materialism, 118
Hegelians, 119, 120
Heraclitus, 2, 4, 14, 15, 16, 22, 31,

117

Hesiod, 13, 20
Hilbert, 178
History of Western Philosophy

(Russell), 152, 171
Hobbes, 27, 31, 32, 62, 86
Homer, 13
Hook, Sidney, 127
Hume, 5, 6, 60, 84, 85, 92, 176

and causation, 64, 73, 79

and impressions, 75, 80, 174

and induction, 78, 79, 147, i8a

and logical analysis, 174-

and the self, 63, 78
Hypothesis, 123, 137, 138, 139, 140,
192

IDEALISM, 21, 49, 194, 195
objective, no, 118, 122, 170
subjective, 4, 20, 50, 63, 187

INDEX

211

Ideology, no, 118, 122, 170

Immaterialism, 69, 187, 194

Immediate, 114

Immortality, 95, 96

Indeterminate, the, 14

Indian Philosophy (Dasgupta), 78

Induction, 78, 79, 80, 81, 140-145,

176, 182

Innate Ideas, 34, 45, 51, 58, 67
Inquiry Concerning Human Under-

standing (Hume), 74
Instrumentalism, 181
Intuition, 40, 60, 72, 80, 88, 196
lonians, 1-3, n, 16, 61, 70, u8,

194

JAMES, WILLIAM, 153, 181, 200
Johnson, Dr., 61, 66, 104, 107, 187
Jowett, Dr., 173
Judgment, types of, 92

KANT, 5, 6, 64, 82-99

and God, 96, 173

and Hegel, 95, 98

and Hume, 87

and Leibniz, 48, 50, 94
Kepler, 4, 135
Keynes, J. M., 73, 146, 14?
Kirchhoff, 146

LA METTRIE, 136

Language, 10, 11, 53, 54, 69, 90,

T i I5 V 79
Laplace, 36

Laws of logic, 174, 180

of Nature, 41, 72, 163, 170, 175,

181, 182, 183, 190, 192
Leibniz, 4, 28, 35, 39, 66, 86, 132,
187

and epistemology, 48, 49

and God, 47, 50

and Newton, 44, 50

and monads, 40, 46-49, 159

and substance, 46, 76
Lenin, 4, 121, 125, 127, 129, 146
Leucippus, 19
Levy, Hyman, 121
Lewis, C. I., 184, 191, 192, 193, 198
Locke, 4, 5, 6, 28, 51, 52, 65, 118,
141

and Berkeley, 63, 68, 69, 72

and general ideas, 54, 67, 68, 84

and Leibniz, 53

and Newton, 53

Locke and probability, 62, 63
and qualities, 57, 61, 62
and simple ideas, 58, 60, 61
and substance, 61, 158, 169
Logical atomism, 46, 50, 155, 170,

179, 189
constants, 174

Positivism, 5, 73, 121, 178, 182-
184, 197

MACH, 146, 178

Maimonides, 41

Mana, 14

Marx, 120, 121, 122, 126, 129, 130,

151

Mass, 30

Material cause, 23
Materialism, 13, 19, 20, 21

Dialectical, 5, 18, 121-133, 149,

151

Emergent, 183, 195
Mechanical, 31, 32, 36, 118, 112,
132, 136, 137, H7, 150, 153,
162, 194, 195
Materialism and Empirio-Criticism

(Lenin), 121

Matter, 22, 23, 32, 36, 61
and Berkeley, 71, 150
and Engels, 124, 125
and Mill, 143
and Russell, 177
Mathematics, 7, 32, 44, 62, 90,

152, 171, 172
and empiricism, 75, 76, 8x, 144,

146

and logic, 127, 155, 179, 180
and mysticism, 17, 177
McDougall, W., 50
Meaning, 180, 196
Metaphysics, 52, 64, 80, 98, 141,

146, 156, 166

method of, 7, 39, 56, 180, 181, 196
systems of, 18, 38-64, 100-133
Mechanics, 146
Mill, J. S., 140, 143-146, 182
Middle Ages, 3, 24
Mind, 9, 20

and body, 34, 42, 176, 177, 184
Mind and the World Order (Lewis),

86, 184, 191
Mode, 42, 92

Modes of Thought (Whitehead), 158
Monad, 40, 46-50, 159
Monadology, 53, 66, 132

212 INDEX

Monism, 36, 37, 41, 49, 102, 123

Moore, G. E., 178

Moral Law, 97

Morgan, Lloyd, 153

Motion, 25, 79, 146, 151, 152, 190

Mysticism and Logic (Russell), 80

NEURATH, O., 178

Newton, 4, 30, 44, 50, 56, 65, 67,

79> I39> r 4o> 146, 181
Nominalism, 10, 30, 54
Noumena, 93, 94, 98
Number, 17, 20, 45, 50, 71, 125,

159, 170, 171

OCCAM, 36

Order of Nature, 40, 41, 102, 194

Organism, 46, 155
Origin of Species (D\

>arwin), 151

PARMENIDES, 18, 19, 20, 105, 109,

"7

Pascal, 65
Peano, 178
Pearson, Karl, 146
Peirce, Charles, 181
Percepts, 67, 79, 82, 84, 86, 89, 175,

177

Persia, 13, 1 6

Phenomena, 48, 93, 98, 106, 146
Philosophy, 2, 105, 117, 182
experimental, 4, 30, 35, 38, 138
progress of, 5, 7, 100, 193
speculative, 4, 157
Philosophy of Hegel, The (Stace), 115
Philosophy and Logical Syntax

(Carnap), 181
Philosophy for a Modern Man, A

(Levy), 128
Philosophy and the Physicists (Steb-

bing), 8
Plato, 3, 5, 6, 24, 105, 162

theory of ideas, 20, 21, 31, 83, 98,

103

Pluralism, 49
Poincare*, H., 199
Pope, Alexander, 65, 66
Positivism, 136, 143, 146, 156, 171
Potential, 24, 114
Pragmatism, 181, 182, 196, 200
Principia (Newton), 56
Principles of Human Knowledge
(Berkeley), 66, 7 a

Principia Mathematica (Russell and

Whitehead), 155, 171
Process, 16, 25, 125, 159, 160
Process and Reality (Whitehead), 10,

23, 156, 165

Probability, 62, 63, 142, 143, 182
Progress, 120, 125, 151, 153
Prolegomena to an Idealist Theory of
Knowledge (N. Kemp Smith),

5?
Propositions, 24, 69, 106, 109, 167,

168, 171, 180

elementary, 179, 181

factual, 77, 89, 96

formal, 93, 96, 168
Prepositional functions, 172, 174
Pythagoras, 17-20, 27, 177

QUALITY, 22, 57, 61, 109, 125, 140,

146 *

emergent, 153, 154, 161
empirical, 29, 92, 154, 161
occult, 56
primary and secondary, 30, 36, 48,

576i, 157

and quantity, 122, 126, 128, 151
Quantum theory, 8, 155

RADICAL physicalism, 178
Rationalism (see also Metaphysics) :
deductive, 7, 18, 35, 39, 51, 56,

8395, "7, H3, 193
Greek, 28
modern (see also Empiricism), 40,

122

Reality, 10, 21, 39, 72, 77, 93, 103,

104, 117, 152, 193
Realism, 19, 129, 176, 191
Reason, 3, 14, 15, 40
and commonsense, 28, 29, 48, 74,

141, 146
and Hegel, 114
and Kant, 95
and science, 137, 189
worship of, 135, 136
Relations, 94, 160, 162, 170, 174
Relativity, Theory of, 6, 94, 158
Religion, 6, 13, 73, 96, 115, 132,

137, 150, i <> I, 200
Religion in the Making (Whitehead),

161
Russell, Bertrand, 9, 141, 144, 167-

178, 197
and Berkeley, 4, 176

INDEX

Russell and Bergson, 152, 171

and Causation, 80, 175, 198

and Hume, 174, 176

and Kant, 171

and Logical Positivism, 121, 178

and Solipsism, 187

and Theory of Descriptions, 168,

172
Rousseau, 136

Sceptical Essays (Russell), 9

Schelling, 100

Schlick, M., 178, 182

Scholasticism, 3, 30, 53, 65, 199

Schopenhauer, 105

Science, 13, 30, 134, 135, 141, 181,

199
and philosophy, 2, 31, 56, 64, 81,

132, 134, 183
and method of, 31, 38, 39, 137,

138, 139, 140, 187-190
Science and Human Experience

(Dingle), 187
Science and the Modern World

(Whitehead), 156, 157, 159
Scientific Thought (Broad), 37
Science versus Idealism (Cornforth),

121
Secret of Hegel, The (J. H. Stirling),

120

Self and Berkeley, 70, 72

and Descartes, 34, 77

and Dingle, 188

and Hume, 63, 64, 78

and Indian philosophy, 33, 78

and Kant, 98

and Locke, 66

and Logical Positivism, 183

and Russell, 176, 177

and Wittgenstein, 191
Sensation, 58, 60, 85, 91
Sense-data, 69, 75, 197
Shaw, G. B., 153
Similarity, 85
Socrates, 27
Solipsism, 47, 72, 85, 106, 176, 187,

1*1, 198
Soul, 33

Soviet Union, 5, 121
Space, 25, 44, 48, 50, 91, 94, 158,

1 60

Space-time, 154, 159, 161, 162
Spac t Time and Dtity (Alexander),
154

Spencer, Herbert, 150, 151, 152
Spinoza, 27, 28, 35, 39, 118, 137

and ethics, 43

and God, 40, 41, 42

and Leibniz, 44, 45, 48
Stebbing, L. Susan, 8, 73
Steele, 65
Sublation, 114
Subject and object, 106, 108, 109,

no
Substance, 45, 63, 68, 76, 84

and accidents, 24, 61, 151

and attributes, 22, 33, 36, 44, 102

and causation, 158, 175

and God, 40, 42

and lonians, 14, 15, 16

and Monads, 46

self-moving, 123, 125, 126
Substratum, 24, 61, 71, 106, 158,

169

Synthetic judgments, 77, 90, 171
Synthesis, 114, 122

TAUTOLOGY, 174, 180
Teleology, 125
Thales, 6, 15
Theodicee (Leibniz), 66
Thesis, 114
Things and events, 159

and ideas, 71,75, 104, 123

and process, 16, 25, 125

as states of substance, 42, 45

in themselves, 48, 50, 94, 103,

146
Time, 6, 91, 149

absolute, 44

atomic, 41, 160

as relation, 25, 48, 50, 94, 161
Toland, 65
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

(Wittgenstein), 178
Treatise of Human Nature, A

(Hume), 74
Truth, 25, 59, 7*. *43, 198, 199

and coherence, 42

and correspondence, 77

and logic, 76, 101, 174, 179, 182,
197

and Marxism, 123, 128-131

and mathematics, 90, 144

UNIFORMITY of nature, 79, 102, 144
Unity of opposites, 16, 109, 114

214

INDEX

Universal Philosophy, 105, 117
Universals, 21, 22, 30, 54, 55, 67, 82,

103, 104, 107
Unknowable, the, 93, 94, 98, 101,

150

VERIFICATION, 138, 179, 181, 182,

198

Vienna Circle, 178
Vitalism, 24
Voltaire, 136

Whitehead, A. N., 9, 150, 156-166,
197

and Bergson, 160

and Extensive Abstraction, 171, 172

and God, 164, 165, 166

and Leibniz, 51, 159

and perception, 157, 163, 168

and simple location, 159
Wittgenstein, 50, 174, 178, 190, 198
Worcester, Bishop of, 62
Words, 54, 55, 67, 70

WALLACE, WILLIAM, 105

ZENO, 6, 105, 152