Studies in the history of ideas

STUDIES IN THE HISTORY
OF IDEAS

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STUDIES IN THE HISTORY
OF IDEAS

EDITED BY

THE DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY
OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

VOL. I

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
1918

All rights reserved

COPYRIGHT, 1918
BY COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS

Printed from type. Published March, 1918

CONTENTS

Page
Appearance and Reality in Greek Philosophy

M. T. Me C lure I

The Meaning of $TSIS in Early Greek Philosophy

Walter Veazie 27

An Impression of Greek Political Philosophy

Wendell T, Bush 43

Francis Bacon and the History of Philosophy

John J. Coss 80

iXThe Motivation of Hobbes's Political Philosophy

John Dewey 88

~The Attempt of Hobbes to Base Ethics on Psychology

Herbert G. Lord 116

Psychology of Ideas in Hobbes Albert G.A.Bolz 127

Truth and Error in Descartes Roberts B. Owen 149

Spinoza's Pantheistic Argument William F. Cooley 171

Berkeley's Realism Frederick J. E. Woodbridge 188

A Note on Dr. Thomas Brown's Contribution to

Esthetics A dam Leroy Jones 216

The Antinomy and its Implications for Logical Theory r

W. P. Montague 223)

Old Problems with New Faces in Recent Logic

H. T. Costello 249

PREFATORY NOTE

THE present volume of studies in the history of philosophy
expresses the desire of those who are or have been identified
with work in philosophy at Columbia to encourage research
and the exercise of historical imagination, and to contribute
something to the work being done in this department of
human interest. The title of the volume represents, how
ever, a larger field of inquiry than the matter here included
would indicate, a field in which others than philosophers
are engaged and in which it appears that ideas have a
history and that their history is influenced by contact with
lines of experience not commonly called philosophical. The
contributors have a sense of their obligation to co-workers
in other branches, and wish to encourage and invite their
collaboration.

The volume, it is hoped, will be accepted as expressing
the wish to cooperate with similar enterprises elsewhere in
the endeavor to increase America's contribution to the
history of culture.

THE EDITORS

APPEARANCE AND REALITY IN
GREEK PHILOSOPHY

Back of philosophical systems lie ultimate intellectual
and emotional interests. Such interests are partly individ
ual and partly collective and social. Ultimate individual
interests are expressive of personality and temperament;
they are much the same from age to age. Thus Professor
James's distinction between the tough-minded and the
tender-minded is as applicable to Heraclitus and Parmenides
as to Hume and Wolff. Social and collective interests, on
the other hand, are expressive of the dominant concerns of
an age, and, unlike temperamental differences, vary greatly
from time to time. The idealism of Berkeley, for example,
is in part a personal reaction consonant with a deep religious
interest, and in part a refutation of scientific materialism
which was an expression of the mechanistic interest of
the age succeeding the foundation of Newtonian physics.

Thus one must approach the philosophy of an age in
terms of its dominant intellectual and emotional interests.
Philosophical differences are largely describable in terms
of different temperamental natures reacting to varying
social conditions. In this respect modern philosophy bears
an interesting contrast to ancient philosophy. Modern
philosophy, one is frequently told, is largely epistemological,
whereas Greek philosophy is largely cosmological. This
distinction between the ancients and the moderns might
be clearly illustrated by reference to the idealism of Berkeley
and to that of Plato. The method of approach in the two
cases, the conceptual scheme in terms of which each sys
tem is worked out, the dominant interests lying back of
each system are so entirely different that any attempt
to pass from the one to the other as types of idealism would

2 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

involve the logical fallacy of accident. Modern philosophy
is interested in the problem of knowledge. The approach
to this problem is in terms of an interesting contrast, a
contrast quite unknown in ancient times. It is the con
trast between consciousness and its object, a distinction
variously expressed in the form of a contrast between the
knower and the known, the subjective and the objective,
mind and matter, man and nature. This contrast is not
made in Greek philosophy. The view of the mind as
something outside of nature and in contrast to it is entirely
unknown. With the Greeks there is a blending of natural
ism and humanism. Their problems are set in terms of
an entirely different contrast. It is the contrast, not be
tween man and nature as in the modern period, nor be
tween the natural and the supernatural as in the medieval
period, but a contrast marking a distinction within the
natural order itself. l It is the contrast between appearance
and reality, between the world of sense experience and the
world discovered by thought.

The word "reality", it should be noted, is a euphemistic
term. Why should we call the sense world, appearance,
and the world discovered by thought, reality? In answer
to this question we may point out the empirical fact that
things get differentiated into those which are important
and those which are unimportant, into those which are
interesting and those which are uninteresting. Such dis
tinctions are symptomatic of interest and expressive of
temperament. Now the distinction between appearance
and reality is just one of these impressive and significant
human distinctions. One, because of an ultimate tempera
mental constitution, becomes interested in one aspect of

1 For the contrast between man and nature in the modern period, and between God
and nature in the medieval period, I am indebted to Professor Woodbridge. He would
also make a contrast in Greek philosophy between nature and art. While admitting
the application of this distinction to Aristotle, I should maintain for Greek philosophy,
as a whole, a wider contrast between reality and appearance.

APPEARANCE AND REALITY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 3

existence to the exclusion of another. The object of his
interest he calls reality; other things which are of secondary
concern are relegated to the domain of appearance. That
is to say, reality, in response to interest and temperament,
is so pre-conceived that it applies to one aspect of the
world and not to another. Ultimate metaphysical dif
ferences are, I think, temperamental. Many things are
said to be logically inconceivable when as a matter of fact
they are temperamentally intolerable. "The history of
philosophy," says Professor James, "is to a great extent
that of a certain clash of human temperaments."2

Turning to Greek philosophy, the specific theme of this
paper, we find three well-defined types of interest which
may be termed the scientific, the mystical, and the human
istic. It is my purpose to show that in response to each
of these interests a distinction is made between appearance
and reality, and to illustrate the form it takes in each case.

With Heraclitus, it should be noted, the distinction be
tween appearance and reality is not made. For him the
world of sense experience, just as it comes, is the immediate,
empirical fact. One thing is just as real as another. So
long as one just describes the flow of sense experience, so
long as one is immersed in the stream and struggle of things,
nothing ulterior is noted. The experience comes as a
whole. On the emotional level it is what it is experienced
as. The immediate does not admit of distinctions. To
introduce distinctions is to depart from the given. Dis
crimination involves evaluation, emphasis, analysis.

I. THE SCIENTIFIC INTEREST

The aim of science is to explain. Scientific explanation
is in the direction of simplification. Analysis thus becomes
characteristic of scientific method and procedure. A thing
is said to be explained when we have pushed analysis as

2 Pragmatism, p. 6.

4 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

far back as it is possible to go. Thus arises the distinction
between the ultimate and the derived, the primary and the
secondary, elements and compounds. In terms of this
distinction the scientist is ready to identify reality with the
ultimate. Reality is for him the not further analyzable;
it is the limit, whether elements, atoms, electrons, or what
not, beyond which analysis can not go.

The greatest of the Milesians was Anaximander, the
greatest because of the abstract thinking involved in the
formulation of the conception of physis as something sep
arate and distinct from any one of the elements. In this
conception there is a foreshadowing of transcendentalism,
perhaps the earliest recognition of a reality beyond the
world of tangible and visible things. "And into that from
which things take their rise they pass away once more."
We have here a contrast between things as they now are
and things as they were in a previous state and as they will
be eventually. Something beyond the immediate world of
sense is noted and it is from that which is beyond that the
world of sense is derived and in terms of which it is explained.
Whatever physis may be, it is something which is "eternal
and ageless," it is something in contrast to the world of
sense, more fundamental than and chronologically prior to
it, and furthermore bears to the world of sense an explan
atory relation. It is in this respect that Anaximander is
representative of the scientific tradition in its earliest for
mulation. Early scientific analysis reveals a contrast be
tween the ultimate and the derived, between a reality
beyond and the world of sense.

Further advance in the direction of scientific interpreta
tion is made by Empedodes 3 and A naxagoras. Anaximander
had derived the world of sense by a process of ' ' separating
out of opposites" which were somehow suspended as in a

1 Empedocles belongs in part to the mystical tradition. Cf. the treatise on Puri
fications which is largely orphic.

APPEARANCE AND REALITY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 5

menstrum. Empedocles and Anaxagoras describe more ac
curately the means of derivation, and in so doing formulate
a mechanical type of explanation. "There is no coming into
being of aught that perishes, nor any end for it in baneful
death; but only mingling and change of what has been
mingled" (Empedocles). "For nothing comes into being
or passes away, but there is mingling and separation of
things that are" (Anaxagoras). Both of these mechanists
emphasize the composite structure of the world of sense and
contrast it with an existence more elemental. The distinc
tion is clearly made between the ultimate and the derived,
between "roots" (Empedocles) and compounds, between
"seeds" (Anaxagoras) and mixture. Of chief concern is the
scientific interest in analysis and explanation, and the iden
tification of reality with the (for them) ultimate and not
further analyzable.

The scientific tradition culminates in the atomism of
Democritus. In both temperament and interest Democritus
is a scientist. His materialism represents a thoroughgoing
mechanical and scientific analysis of physis. The indefinite
"boundless" of Anaximander is reduced to a pluralism of
material atoms geometrically and spatially arranged and
obeying a mechanical type of activity. For the vague con
trast between the "boundless" as the ultimate and the sense
world as the derived, we have the clear-cut conception of a
world of science and a world of sense, of atoms with quanti
tative differences, and compounds with qualitative deter
minations, of primary qualities and secondary qualities.
Atoms are real, compounds are appearance. Atoms are real
because, for physical science, reality is the not further ana
lyzable; compounds are appearance because on the scale of
analysis they are secondary and derived. The recognition
of the fact that qualitative distinctions are not ultimate
metaphysical predicates can have no meaning except in
terms of some preconception of the meaning of reality.

6 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

Both Democritus and Plato hold that secondary qualities are
appearance, but from very different reasons. For Democ
ritus the distinction between primary and secondary quali
ties is made on the basis of the scientific interest in simpli
fication. Logically the ultimate should be the bearer of as
few descriptive predicates as possible. For Plato secondary
qualities are not real because they do not measure up to
certain esthetic requirements. Thus we see the form the
appearance-reality contrast takes in the atomism of Democ
ritus. The contrast, however, is not absolute; it does not
indicate two separate types of existence. We do not have
two worlds. There is only one order of existence within
which one aspect is for science more fundamental, and
becomes, therefore, the object of scientific interest. Reality
is the world of science in terms of which the world of sense
is explained. The qualitative world of sense, as well as the
psychical realm of thoughts and feelings, is, by scientific
analysis, reduced to atoms.

II. THE MYSTICAL INTEREST

It should be obvious that the purpose of this essay is not
to give an exhaustive account of Greek philosophy, but
merely by way of illustration to indicate certain dominant
intellectual and emotional interests and to note the typical
philosophical movements consonant with those interests.
I shall now give four illustrations of the form which the ap
pearance-reality contrast takes in the development of the
mystical tradition. I am not concerned with the historical
origin of mysticism. Suffice it to say that at all times there
are to be found those whose dominant interest centers
around the idea of escape from the world of sense. Wherever
this interest appears some form of mysticism prevails. The
external form which the mystical interest takes may be a
matter of historical connection, but not the more deep-
seated, and I dare say ultimate, emotional temper. Just such

APPEARANCE AND REALITY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 7

a mystical interest is to be found in the orphic movement in
early Greek history.

Orphism is the chief expression of a religious revival which
occurred in Greece in the sixth century B.C. It is not Attic,
but Thracian in origin. Olympian religion did not readily
lend itself to mystical adaptation. Homer is literature,
Hesiod is statistics, but neither is religion. The essence of
religion consists in an inner spiritual attitude toward the
gods. This side of the religious life of the Greeks is con
nected with the worship of Dionysius. The Dionysiac
tradition involves a sin-atonement-salvation scheme. While
the religious myth may have disappeared, the representa
tional scheme of propitiation and salvation persisted. In
orphism it takes somewhat the following form. On the one
side there is the daylight world of familiar things; on the
other side there is the world of darkness, the realm of taboo,
the occult, the uncanny. This idea, that there are operating
in the world occult forces and powers from the mysterious
control of which man must somehow be freed, is deep-seated
in human nature. It gives rise to a contrast between two
realms, the realm of darkness and the daylight world. Fur
thermore, the two worlds are in conflict, the one threatens
and imperils the security of the other. Man's attitude
toward the realm of the occult is one of fear mingled with
worship. The function of religion is to overcome this
hostility; it is to free man from the overshadowing powers
of darkness. Such concepts as release, escape, salvation
are of importance. We have the recognition of two realms
and the effort is made to make them consistent. Ceremony,
initiation, ritual, abstinence, propitiation are but mythical
and mystical means of escape.

Pythagoreanism is orphism reformed.4 The contrast be
tween the realms of the occult and the familiar is still

* Here I follow the interpretation of Pythagoreanism given by Burnet in From
Tliales to Plato, and by Cornford in From Religion to Philosophy. A similar interpretation
was given by Professor Woodbridge previous to the appearance of either of these books.

8 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

preserved; what we have is a more refined and exalted
conception of the means of escape. For the gross orgiastic
revelries. we have the substitution of music and mathematics.
The Pythagoreans were closely allied to the medical schools
of southern Italy. One way of treating certain types of
hysteria was to have the patient listen to music. Mathe
matics was primarily a study intended to purify and uplift
the soul. The later development of Pythagoreanism shows
the tendency to leave out more and more of the orphic
element, the ceremonies and the abstinences, and to en
courage an independent spirit of scientific inquiry.

I mention Parmenides in connection with the mystical
tradition because I think he is largely mystical in tempera
ment and interest. With the mystical temperament there
i& usually associated a transcendental and absolutist in
terest.5 The absolutist has generally, too, a genius for
dialectic, as is seen, for example, in the case of Mr. F. H.
Bradley. All of these interests are to be found in Par
menides. Wherever we find such temperaments we usually
find reality defined as absence of contradiction, consistency,
coherency, conformity to logical requirements. Now,
equipped with such a preconception of the meaning of
reality, the distinction is made between the consistent and
the contradictory. If one have a genius for dialectic the
logically puzzling is appearance, the logically coherent is
reality. Reality is so preconceived that such concepts as
space, time, motion have no meaning when applied to it.
This is just the procedure of Parmenides. While his method
is dialectic, it is not dialectic for the sake of dialectic:
Primarily he is a mystic and his interest is in a world "far
from the pathway of mortals." Consequently we have, on
the one hand, this world, the Way of Opinion, the logically
puzzling, a world of no spiritual value. On the other hand
we have the other world, the Way of Truth, the logically

• Cf. the article. "Alchemy and the Absolute," Mind, Jan., 1913.

APPEARANCE AND REALITY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 9

consistent, a world of great spiritual value. It is the well-
marked contrast between appearance and reality, a contrast
made in response to a temperamental interest and for the
purpose of moral and spiritual uplift.

The mystical tradition culminates with Plato. The doc
trine of "Forms" as expounded in the Phaedo and the figure
of the cave in the Republic are both mystical and orphic.
The Phaedo is Pythagorean. It is dedicated to Echecrates.
The two chief interlocutors, Cebes and Simmias, are Theban
disciples of Philolaus. "Philosophy," says Socrates in the
early part of the dialogue, "is the noblest and best of music."
This at once connects the discussion with the Pythagoreans.
It is in the Phaedo that we have the dualism of body and
soul pushed to an extreme form. Here if anywhere Plato
is an ascetic. This may be due in part to the fact that the
theme of the Phaedo is the immortality of the soul, and it
would be natural with such a theme to find subordinate con
sideration given to the body. "For the body is a source of
endless trouble to us by reason of the mere requirement of
food ; and also is liable to diseases which overtake and im
pede us in the search after truth : and by filling us so full of
loves, and lusts, and fears, and fancies, and idols, and every
sort of folly, prevents our ever having, as people say, so
much as a thought. For whence come wars, and fightings,
and factions? Whence but from the body and the lusts of
the body?" Both here and in the figure of the cave in the
Republic the soul is represented as a prisoner chained and
confined to the body. The question is: How is the mind to
be released from the body? How is escape from the prison
to be effected? It is here that the orphic and Pythagorean
element of Plato asserts itself. The release of the soul from
the chains of the body is effected through purification. Says
Socrates: "And what is purification but the separation of
the soul from the body. . . But in the true exchange there is
a purging away of all these things, and temperance, and

IO STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

justice, and courage, and wisdom herself, are a purgation
of them. And I conceive that the founders of the mysteries
had a real meaning and were not mere triflers when they
intimated in a figure long ago that he who passed unsancti-
fied and uninitiated into the world below will live in a
slough, but that he who arrives there after initiation and
purification will dwell with the gods. For 'many', as they
say in the mysteries, 'are the thyrsus-bearers, but few are
the mystics' — meaning, as I interpret the words, the true
philosophers."

Plato is essentially a moral philosopher. Purity and per
fection are for him concepts of controlling value and impor
tance. It is an ancient Greek idea that existence is moral.
And perfection, according to Plato, is not to be found in the
changing world of sense. The perfect can not change, for
either it must change for better or for worse; if it change for
better, it was not perfect to begin with, and if it change for
worse, it degenerates and is no longer perfect. But for
mysticism the more important concept is that of purity.
Purity is the resultant of a process of purification ; it implies
escape from the senses, release from the body, which in itself
is defiled, gross, and sordid. Thus it comes about that a
contrast arises between perfection and imperfection, be
tween purity and impurity, a contrast which leads to the
formulation of the doctrine of "Forms."

This doctrine may be presented from two points of view.
First, as to mathematical "forms." There is, on the one
hand, such concepts as circularity and equality, perfect
and unchanging patterns or models. There is, on the other
hand, the more or less circular, the more or less equal, sense
approximations, imperfect and changing. Circularity is
one, circles are many. While the subject-matter of mathe
matical "forms" is scientific, the method of treatment is
mystical. In the pure " form " there is no admixture of sense
material. Thus we speak of a substance as chemically pure,

APPEARANCE AND REALITY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 1 1

meaning thereby that it has gone through a process of re
finement. In sugar refining, for example, there is boiling
down to get rid of impurities; what is left over after the
process is the essence, the pure form. In the same way we
might compare the meaning of pure as applied to pure
mathematics or as applied to pure motion, the idea in each
case being complete riddance of sense material. Thus math
ematical "forms" are both perfect and pure, and denote a
type of existence universal and unchanging in its nature and
completely separated from the imperfect and impure world
of sense approximations.

Consideration is given, in the second place, to moral and
esthetic "forms." After the analogy of circularity and the
more or less circular, we have honesty and beauty con
trasted with the more or less honest and the more or less
beautiful. Perfection and imperfection, pattern and copies,
purity and impurity, spirit and flesh represent the scheme
of contrasts. "Forms" are real; consequently, purification
becomes a method of attaining reality. Reality is appear
ance purged of its dross. It is the mind purified and refined,
it is the spirit released from the body, it is pure form freed
from imperfect sense approximations. By the extension of
the concept of "form" to include moral and esthetic exis
tence, Plato in the Phaedo marks an advance over the posi
tion of the Pythagoreans. As they had substituted
mathematics as a more exalted means of purification for the
ceremonies and initiations of orphism, so Plato gives a still
more refined and intellectualized method of escape from the
body chained to its prison of flesh. But even for Plato it
is mysticism still, but mysticism without its magic.

The contrast between the perfect and the imperfect, the
pure and the impure, "forms" and sense approximations, is
also the contrast between reality and appearance. Now
why should I designate the one realm, reality, and the other,
appearance? Obviously for no other reason than that, in

12 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

response to a moral and mystical interest, I have so pre
conceived the meaning of reality that it applies to the one
realm and not to the other. The mystic's primary concern
is with perfection and purity. Neither of these ideals can
be realized in the shifting world of sense. The senses con
tribute nothing to my preferred reality; even more they are
a positive hindrance, they hold the spirit back, and thus
assume the nature of evil. The world of "forms," from the
standpoint of mysticism, represents an ideally constructed
world where the ideals of purity and perfection are realized.
But such a world of reality rests upon a definition, and the
definition is weighted with an overload of mystical feeling.
Once equate reality with perfection, then assume that the
perfect exists, and it follows that such a reality is not to be
found in the changing world of sense.

III. THE HUMANISTIC TRADITION

In the humanistic development I shall select illustrations
from the sophists and from Plato. I do not doubt that there
was a humanistic movement prior to the age of the sophists.
Xenophanes was most certainly a humanist. So, too, the
age of the Seven Wise Men was an age of practical wisdom.
Thales was an economist and a statesman.

Greek science both culminates and terminates with
Democritus. It is Plato and Aristotle, not Democritus, who
dominate the intellectual history of western Europe for some
eighteen or twenty centuries. Democritus must needs await
the age of Galileo and Newton before he comes into his own.
One naturally seeks a cause for the decline of Greek science.
Professor Burnet attributes it to the growing skepticism of
the Eleatics. This was doubtless a very important factor.
To this we would add an additional consideration. The
Greek mind was prevailingly theoretical rather than prac
tical. That is to say, in the language of Professor Wood-
bridge, the Greek was primarily interested in the exercise

APPEARANCE AND REALITY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 13

of the intelligence for its own sake, and not for practical
purposes. In response to this interest science was developed
on its theoretical and logical side. Science at the hands of
Democritus had gone about as far as it could go in the
direction of theory. To use science in the interest of control
or for the purpose of practical utility was foreign to the
Greek view of the function of thought. To make an experi
mental investigation of nature and to use the results of this
investigation for the betterment of mankind was un-Greek.
Thus Bacon, with characteristic disdain for the purely theo
retical achievements of the ancients, writes: "Now, from
the systems of the Greeks and their subordinate divisions
in particular branches of the sciences during so long a
period, scarcely one single experiment can be culled that
has a tendency to elevate or assist mankind, and can be
fairly set down to the speculations and doctrines of their
philosophy." 6 Modern science differs from Greek science
in that the former investigates nature for the purpose of
control, utility, and progress. To theoretical interest it adds
experiment, instruments, and mechanical technique. Man
must "reign" in "the kingdom of nature." Thus, by mak
ing science practical, nature and conduct are closely related.
But this, partly due to the subordination of practical to
theoretical interest and partly due to the lack of mechanical
instruments, Greek science did not do.

According to Democritus the world of science, the atomic
world of reality, was beyond the world of sense. Solid, rigid
and unchanging, it was far removed from the world of prac
tical affairs and could have but little value, other than that
of scientific explanation, for human conduct. Thus among
the Greeks the man of practical interests, who seeks a field
of influence and control in human affairs must needs turn
to the world of sense. The humanistic movement is pri
marily a reaction to Greek science and denotes an interest

* Novum Organum, Book I, Aphorism LXXIII.

14 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

in what lends itself to interference and control. The world
of sense is the domain of human concern because it is modi
fiable and controllable. Nature, or the world of science, as
absolute, solid, and unmodifiable, is contrasted with human
institutions, conventions, laws, customs, and conduct. In
the humanistic tradition the contrast between appearance
and reality takes the form of a contrast between nature and
convention. In the scientific tradition the tendency was to
keep the two realms together, together, that is, so far as
scientific explanation goes. The world of science is the
ultimate in terms of which the world of sense is explained.
There is an all-inclusiveness about atoms which entitles
them to the name of reality. In the mystical tradition there
was a tendency to exalt "forms" and to decry the world of
sense. In the humanistic tradition, at least in its earlier
formulation among the sophists, the tendency is to exalt
convention and to lose interest in nature. Later the claims
of the two are recognized and adjusted by Plato.

I do not find any reason to believe that the portrait of
Protagoras as given by Plato in the dialogue which bears his
name is not a true and faithful picture. We know, too, that
Plato often reveals his deepest meaning in the form of a
myth. In the myth there put into the mouth of Protagoras
one finds a differentia by means of which man is distin
guished from the animals. Commenting on the passage
Professor Burnet says: "Plato represents Protagoras as a
convinced champion of Law against all attempts to return
to nature for guidance. He was a strong believer in organ
ized society, and he held that institutions and conventions
were what raised men above the brutes." 7 The primary
interest of the scientist, as we have seen, is in explanation,
and on the basis of this principle the distinction is made
between the ultimate and the derived. The primary in
terest of the humanist is in control, and on the basis of this

7 Burnet, Creek Philosophy, p. 117.

APPEARANCE AND REALITY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 15

principle things are distinguished as controllable and un
controllable, as modifiable and unmodifiable. Nature is
uncontrollable and, therefore, constitutes a field beyond the
domain of human interest. Action and conduct are con
trollable and are for this reason objects of interest.

On the basis of this contrast of nature and convention
the distinction is made between truth and expediency.
What I immediately perceive through the senses is "true,"
that is to say, it is what it is. There is no appeal beyond the
immediacy of sense perception. If I have jaundice, I see
all things yellow. Just so far as the perception is concerned
it is "true" that I see yellow. I can not change my per
ceptions. They are absolute and unmodifiable. On the
level of immediate sense experience I can not "teach"
myself to perceive in any other way than the way the senses
act by "nature." And as no two people have exactly the
same sense experience, so "truth" is an entirely individual
matter. Argument and dispute are useless. I can not
perceive differently from the way "nature" has made me.
If you want me to see things differently you will have to
make me differently.

But while, if I have jaundice, I see all things yellow, it
does not follow that it would be expedient for me to act
on the basis of this fact. Action and conduct have a deter
minate other than "truth," or what is the same thing, other
than the immediate and unalterable "fact" of sense experi
ence. Cues for action are taken, not from "truth," which
is absolute and individual, but from expediency which is
derived from a common share of acquired experiences.
Over against the unalterable world of nature is the relative
world of customs, institutions, and social sanctions. It is
from this world of human creation that cues for conduct
are taken. Laws, conventions, social distinctions are
secondary and derivative, and are for that reason subject
to change and amenable to control. And that is why vir-

16 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

tue, political wisdom, and social justice are things which
can be "taught."

From Protagoras we turn to Plato. I shall briefly sketch
Plato's political theory, as expounded in the Republic, and
his theory of knowledge, both of which are humanistic
considerations.

The humanistic tradition is set, as we have seen, in terms
of a contrast between nature and convention. The sophists
had exalted convention without reference to nature. But
after all one must come back to fact. The world is not an
altogether jelly-like structure entirely plastic to human con
struction. There is something alien to humanistic creation
which operates as a check; there is a limit, call it "matter,"
"pure experience," "resistance," or what not, but some
thing there is which mind is up against, something to be
reckoned with. If we call this something nature, then to
the Greeks nature was absolute, fixed, and unchanging,
and thus lay beyond the domain of human control. The
sophists, with their interest in the plastic, with their passion
for influence in practical affairs, to a large extent ignored
nature. That is to say, conventions were developing irre
spective of natural control. The inevitable consequence of
such a procedure is some form of opportunism, or an indi
vidualism independent of the constraint of nature.

The political philosophy of Plato represents an attempt
to adjust nature and convention. The two, according to
Plato, are out of harmony. The problem of the Republic is
to adjust them; it is to make social and political distinctions
conform to natural differences.

The teaching of Plato is that men are by nature different.
Social distinctions are based on natural inequalities which
in themselves are absolute and unalterable. Thus, at the
end of the third book of the Republic Plato writes: "Citi
zens, we shall say to them in our tale, you are brothers, yet
God has framed you differently. Some of you have the

APPEARANCE AND REALITY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY I/

power of command, and these he has composed of gold,
wherefore also they have the greatest honor ; others of silver,
to be auxiliaries; others again who are to be husbandmen
and craftsmen he has made of brass and iron." Institu
tions, on the other hand, are objects of secondary creation.
Like the sophists, Plato regards society as of human origin.
He traces with some detail the natural creation of the state.
But the organization of society, the growth of political
authority, the selection of rulers had not developed on a
natural basis. A glance at the state of politics and society
as they existed in the time of Plato reveals a situation of
disorganization and conflict. Internal strife, political mis
rule, social disintegration threatened the stability and safety
of Athenian life. It is in response to this situation that Plato
presents a political theory. It is an attempt to smooth out
the more serious conflicts in social and political life in the
light of the unalterable principles of nature. Though man
can not control nature, it does not follow that nature should
not be a controlling factor in the affairs of men. Plato's
problem as set forth in the Republic is, as we have seen, to
adjust convention to nature, to make, as he says in his
poetical language, "the ways of men agreeable to the ways
of God." In the sixth book of the Republic Socrates is
asked which of the existing forms of government is most
suitable to philosophy. The reply is: "Not any one of
them, I said; and that is the very accusation which I bring
against them: not one of them is worthy of the philosophic
nature and hence that nature is warped and alienated from
them ; as the exotic seed which is sown on a foreign land be
comes denaturalized, and assimilates to the character of the
soil, which gets the better, even so this growth of philosophy,
instead of persisting, receives another character."

I am not concerned with Plato's particular solution of
the problem. No one of his "three waves" of reform may
satisfy us now. What is of importance is the penetrating

18 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

diagnosis which he makes of the conflicting social conditions,
and the clear statement of the problem involved. And
herein, I should like to say, consists the purpose of philos
ophy. It is, as Professor Dewey has pointed out, to locate
the more serious conflicts in life and to bring intelligence
to bear on the adjustment of these conflicts. This high pur
pose is nowhere better illustrated than in the Republic of
Plato. And nowhere in Plato do we find such a synthesis
of the appearance-reality contrast as we find in his political
theory. Existence is withheld from neither of the contrast
ing factors, the claims of each are recognized, and a straight
forward and serious attempt is made to adjust and to recon
cile them.

Opportunism as a political theory, a theory with which
sophism is all too closely affiliated, has as a counterpart in
the realm of knowledge a doctrine of skepticism. At the
hands of Gorgias skepticism was the equivalent of intellec
tual nihilism, a position in logic analogous to the political
anarchy as championed by Thrasymachus in the Republic.
What skepticism as a logical doctrine means is that knowl
edge has no objective and natural basis of validity. It was
wholly subjective, subjective in the sense of being individual
and conversant with particulars, not in the sense of intra-
mental. The Greeks would not have understood what was
meant by subjective in the sense of intra-mental. As in
society convention had developed without respect for na
ture, with a resulting individualism, so in logic a doctrine
of knowledge was built up independent of an objective basis
of control. Leaving out of account all natural checks,
knowledge could possess neither form nor stability. As
a theory of knowledge sophism ended in an extreme indi
vidualism and skepticism, or what is the same thing, reality
exists only in the form of particulars. On this assumption
we might point out that Gorgias was perfectly right in
maintaining the impossibility of knowledge. Tied to par-

APPEARANCE AND REALITY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 19

ticulars I can never know anything. On such an assumption
neither intelligence nor communication is possible.

As Plato combated the opportunism of the sophists in the
domain of politics by reaffirming the checks and constraints
of nature, so he combats their skepticism in logic by estab
lishing a natural basis for the validity of knowledge. Here
again we meet the doctrine of "forms." The purely logical
approach is no longer mystical, having to do with purity and
perfection, but is rational and is concerned with a basis of
induction. "Forms" are the foundations for inference and
generalization, and as such are the indispensable conditions
of knowledge. "Forms" are nature par excellence, they are
reality, they are physis. Reality in the form of particulars
would be a world in which knowledge could never arise.
The fact of intelligence demonstrates the existence of uni-
versals. "Intelligible forms" are the a priori, though purely
objective, conditions of knowledge. Being indispensable for
knowledge they are, therefore, real, and are set up in con
trast to particulars which are for knowledge mere appear
ance. Reality is the logically fundamental. In Plato's
theory of knowledge the contrast between appearance and
reality is very marked. On the one side we have percep
tion, the particular, counting, enumeration, becoming. On
the other side we have thinking, the universal, definition,
induction, being. The world of "forms" is absolute and
unchanging; the world of sense is relative and fleeting.

We have already intimated that the humanistic move
ment is in part a reaction to science and have shown the
form which the reaction took in the domain of practical
affairs. Plato's theory of knowledge is also in part a reaction
to science. This is clearly shown in the interesting passage
in the Phaedo where Socrates gives the account of his early
education. "When I was young, Cebes, I had a prodigious
desire to know that department of philosophy which is
called Natural Science; this appeared to me to have lofty

2O STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

aims, as being the science which has to do with the causes
of things, and which teaches why a thing is so, and is created
and destroyed; ..." A brief account of the position of
science is given, followed by a statement of the grounds on
which Socrates is made to oppose that position. Science,
as we there learn, was entirely mechanical. Socrates objects
on the ground that true explanation can not be had in terms
of mechanism. Explanation involves " final " causes. Thus:
"There is surely a strange confusion of causes and conditions
in all this. It may be said, indeed, that without bones and
muscles and the other parts of the body I can not execute
my purposes. But to say that I do as I do because of them,
and that this is the way in which mind acts, and not from
the choice of the best, is a very careless and idle mode of
speaking." Mind as a principle of explanation is distin
guished from "elements" as teleology from mechanism.
Plato's doctrine of knowledge is the logical counterpart to
the atomism of Democritus. Science and mechanism lead
to atoms; atoms are particulars. Logic and teleology lead
to "forms," and "forms" are universals. Materialism and
idealism are the two most widely divergent metaphysical
theories. They denote different analyses in response to
different interests. Neither as a theory is intelligible apart
from those interests. The indefinite "boundless" of
Anaximander, in response to a purely scientific interest, is
analyzed into a pluralistic world of hard and rigid atoms,
which in themselves constitute the subject-matter of science.
In response to an entirely different interest on the part of
Plato, the homogenous and undifferentiated being of Par-
menides is ordered and organized into a world of intelligible
'forms." The discovery of "matter" with its mechanical
mode of behavior is the achievement of science. The dis
covery of "form" as a basis for teleology and knowledge is
the achievement of logic. Each does justice to one side of
existence, but to one side only, and hence the contrast be-

APPEARANCE AND REALITY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 21

tween reality as a scientific or logical selection and appear
ance as a realm outside the privileged domain.

We noted in the beginning that the distinction between
appearance and reality did not emerge in the description of
the immediate as given by Heraclitus. We should now note
that for Aristotle appearance and reality do not denote a
metaphysical distinction. Once, in response to a moral
interest, as in the case of Plato, you identify reality with the
unchanging, then you must contrast it with the changing.
Aristotle, resembling Heraclitus in his free empirical ap
proach, is more nearly free from initial preconceptions. To
the Greek mind the most impressive fact of observation
was the fact of change. This immediate fact has been noted
and to some extent described by Heraclitus. Subsequent
theories had attempted to explain change and to reconcile
it with special interests. They had ended by identifying
reality with the unchanging, whether the rigid world of
atoms, or the unalterable world of "forms." Neither does
justice to all of the facts; both represent prejudicial selec
tion, a choice of values. For Aristotle, as for Heraclitus, not
being but becoming is the significant fact for consideration.
The most direct metaphysical question is: What sort of
being must being be when being becomes? With such meta
physical concepts as potentiality, continuity, efficiency,
chance, novelty, final causes, etc., no contrast between ap
pearance and reality emerges. Production is characteristic
of all existence. So far as there is a contrast, it is, as Pro
fessor Woodbridge has said, a contrast between the produc
tions of nature and the productions of art.

We may here briefly summarize the results of this paper.
Back of philosophical systems as controlling factors in their
formulation lie, as we have said, ultimate intellectual and
emotional interests. Consonant with those interests typical
philosophical theories have arisen. In Greek philosophy
three well-defined interests are observable, the scientific, the

22 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

mystical, and the humanistic. In response to each of these
interests certain distinctions are made, distinctions which
have meaning and application only in terms of a specific
basis of division.

Heraclitus, happily free from initial preconceptions, is
concerned with a description of the immediate. On the
emotional level one thing has just as much reality as another,
consequently no distinctions are made. The fact of change
is noted, but no attempt is made to explain it. Explanation
is the aim of science. The fact of change constituted the
subject-matter of the first scientific inquiry into the struc
ture of the physical world. The first great achievement of
science was the discovery of the composite structure of phys
ical objects and the explanation of change as the combina
tion and separation of component elements which them
selves do not change. The dominant interest of science is
explanation; its prevailing method is analysis. The pursuit
of this interest and the application of this method lead ulti
mately to the discovery of matter, an existence beyond the
sense world, atomic in structure and elemental in form. As
the limit of scientific analysis Democritus sets up the atom
as real, and presents the changing world of sense as unreal,
unreal because it is capable of further decomposition into
more elemental parts. Mysticism, likewise, withholds real
ity from the world of sense, but for a very different reason.
The mystic cares little for scientific analysis, but is con
cerned much about moral and spiritual values. Purity of
soul and moral perfection are matters of deep concern to
him. If one is resolutely determined on the realization of
an ideal, and that ideal can not be attained in this world, he
creates another world where his ideal can be realized. Once
equate reality with perfection, and then assume that per
fection is static, it follows that such a reality is not to be
found in the domain of sense experience. The initial iden
tification of reality with perfection represents a choice of

APPEARANCE AND REALITY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 23

values and is the result of a temperamental preference.
Finally, humanism adopts as its dominant concern control
in practical affairs. Some things are found to be con
trollable, some to be uncontrollable. Consequently, the
sophists, typical representatives of humanism, seek a field
where intervention and influence are possible. In education,
in ethics, and in politics they leave nature out of account
because nature is rigid and uncontrollable. When, for ex
ample, Protagoras maintains that virtue can be taught,
what he intends, I dare say, is to locate virtue within the
domain of the modifiable, and thus to establish the possi
bility of ethical development. But this modifying tendency
must needs have some regulating and steadying power,
otherwise anarchy and opportunism will prevail. It was the
genius of Plato to point out that the plastic should be
molded in accordance with the form of nature; and this as
much in the theory of knowledge as in the domain of ethics
and politics. Plato's "forms" are principles of regulation
and control.

Thus we have a world of many "realities." There is a
reality for immediate experience, a reality for science, a
reality for moral and mystical uplift, a reality for logic, a
reality, largely to be ignored to be sure, for the man of prac
tical affairs. And they are by no means the same reality.
In one case atoms are real, with materialism as a meta
physical theory; in another case "forms" are real, with
idealism as a theory. Or, again, the world of sense which is
of little value as an object of science is, as a field of practical
influence, of the utmost importance.

Now what shall we say of the foregoing analysis? Is it
possible to fix any single consistent meaning to the word
"reality"? Which of the above realities is really real? Does
the word reality denote just so many ways of looking at the
world, just so many points of view, or is there an absolute
reality? Or, what I think amounts to the same thing, is

24 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

the distinction between appearance and reality an ultimate
metaphysical distinction? And if so what is the basis of
such a distinction? In technical language, it is the issue
between pluralism and monism.

A philosophical theory is an hypothesis devised to explain
a group of facts, facts which just as they stand are incom
plete and which require additional supplementation. In the
foregoing analysis the group of facts in accordance with
which divergent philosophical theories were formulated
represented different subject-matters. They were not the
same facts, and, more obviously, they were not all the facts.
In each case the group of facts was a selection, a choice, a
partial and not a complete inventory. The distinction
between appearance and reality represents, as we have
seen, an assorting of facts on the basis of a selected prin
ciple of division. There was nothing absolute about the
choice of a principle; on the contrary it was quite arbitrary.
Aroused by a passionate interest in one aspect of the world,
or dominated by a controlling preference for a specified
group of facts, one has come to make definite distinctions.
Reality, accordingly, represents a choice of facts or a selec
tion of values. But, one may ask, is it not possible to take
a complete view of all of the facts? Is there not some one
point of view from which one can survey the whole of
existence? May one not have an enlarged interest in total
ity? And if so, may we not formulate a metaphysical
theory which would be all-inclusive? For one-sided pro
jections, partial and incomplete glimpses, may we not sub
stitute an absolute point of view? An affirmative answer to
these questions involves some form of monism or abso
lutism.

Of course in some sense the world is one. It may be just
one mess, but even so it supports a single label of identifica
tion. But such a monism can hardly afford much satis
faction. Or again, if one have a passion for completeness,

APPEARANCE AND REALITY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 25

he may view the world as one. But what is the evidence for
completeness? It is certainly not evidence resting on an
empirical discovery; but rather it is evidence derived from
a moral interest. One feels that completeness is a better
thing than incompleteness, and, in response to this moral
feeling, so pictures the world as if it were complete. If I
assume that reality is complete, then in accordance with
this assumption, I must describe that kind of a world.
Absolutism denotes what the world would be if it were
complete. But surely this is not metaphysical absolutism;
either it is methodological absolutism, or metaphysical van
dalism. Reality in response to an esthetic preference is so
mutilated that it is forced to fit moral demands. So it turns
out that absolutism is just one of the ways of taking the
world. It satisfies a passion for totality, but leaves entirely
out of account an interest in details. It is an ideal construc
tion in terms of a moral interest. The world of the absolute
is not a world we discover; it is a world we create as an ideal
projection of certain deep-seated interests.

There is a further objection to absolutism. The absolu-
tistic thesis is that there is some one point of view from
which all the facts of existence may be surveyed. Such a
point of view is that of the All-Knower. The All-Knower
is the one who, from the standpoint of the whole, sees every
thing all at once. The doctrine of the All-Knower involves,
it seems to me, a paradox. It implies an assumption which,
when formulated, renders the fact of knowledge impossible.
The assumption is that reality is a closed system which
operates according to mechanical laws. The conception of
an infinite intelligence implies a mechanical theory of the
world. Prediction of the future rests on the principle of
causality. Novelty and chance are out of the question.
Nothing really new can come into being. All that is going to
happen is somehow already contained in the premises and
can be logically deduced from them. And it is just as true

26 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

that a mechanical theory of the world implies the kind of
a world in which intelligence can never arise. This was just
Plato's objection to mechanical science. The crux of mech
anism is causality and physical continuity. The central
factor in inference is a "leap," a going beyond the given, a
break in physical continuity. Contingency and trans
cendent implication are the marks of thought. The fact
of thought demands teleology as a predicate of reality, and
teleology implies contingency and chance. The very nature
of thought is such that it precludes the possibility of a total
view of reality. You can conceivably get a reality that is
all-inclusive, but such a reality would not be the kind of
reality where intelligence or knowing is a factor. The
kind of a world where thinking is possible is the kind of a
world where an absolutely complete act of thought is un
attainable. Thus absolutism, as Schopenhauer says of
materialism, "even at its birth has death in its heart." It
stands self-refuted; its basal and necessary assumption is
destructive of its existence. Consequently, we are forced
to abandon monism and to declare in favor of pluralism.

What, then, is reality? The answer to this question will
always depend on the demands we place on the selected
group of facts. All evaluation represents a selection, and
the selection is made with reference to some specific interest.
Reality is a choice of values. That this is so has been abun
dantly illustrated by the brief sketch of the contrast between
appearance and reality in the history of Greek philosophy.

M. T. McCLURE.

THE MEANING OF $T2IS IN EARLY GREEK
PHILOSOPHY

The early Greek philosophers are said to have nearly all
written books Ilepi Screws. We, unfortunately, have little
but the titles to inform us as to what was their object of
investigation, and the meaning of <pvffis in this connection
has been subject to doubt since the time of Plato. An
interpretation which started with Plato comes to us finally
in Burnet as follows:

So far as I know, no historian of Greek philosophy has clearly laid it
down that the word which was used by the early cosmologists to express
this idea of a permanent and primary substance was none other than
<f>v<ris ; and that the title Ilepi <pv<reus, so commonly given to philosophi
cal works in the sixth and fifth centuries B. C., does not mean, 'on the
Nature of Things', — a far later use of the word, — but simply, 'Con
cerning the Primary Substance'. Both Plato and Aristotle use the
term in this sense when they are discussing the earlier philosophy, and
the history of the word shows clearly enough what its earliest meaning
must have been. In Greek philosophical language, Averts always means
that which is primary, fundamental, and persistent, as opposed to that
which is secondary, derivative, and transient; what is 'given', as
opposed to what is made or becomes. It is that which is there to
begin with.1

In his more recent book Burnet explains,

Indeed, if we take a broad view of it, we shall see that it depends on
the extension of the observed identity of ice, water, and steam to earth
and stones on the one hand, and to air and fire on the other. In other
words, it substitutes for the primitive ' four elements ' something which
bears a much closer resemblance to what are now called the three
states of aggregation, the solid, the liquid, and the gaseous. At any
rate, the Milesians believed that what appears in these three forms
was one thing, and this, as I hold, they called <pvais. That meant
originally the particular stuff of which a given thing is made, for instance,
wooden things have one <pv<ns, rocks another, flesh and blood a third.2

1 John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, 1892, p. 10.

8 John Burnet, Greek Philosophy, 1914, p. 26 (my italics).

28 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

The first serious questioning of this view was undertaken
in an address by Professor Woodbridge on "The Dominant
Conception of the Earliest Greek Philosophy." 3 Professor
Woodbridge examined the doctrines of those of the early
Greeks of whom we have a certain fragmentary evidence,
i. e., Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, and Anaxagoras
with an eye to the doctrines which they expressly combated.

When Heraclitus and Parmenides are compared with regard to the
idea they seem to entertain of the dominant conception of their prede
cessors, they show a marked agreement. Diverse as their own positive
speculations may be, they appear in opposition to the same current
opinions. They stand opposed to a naturalistic philosophy which,
basing all explanation on the phenomena of sense, sees these phenomena
in a process of generation and destruction, of birth and death, and
explains this process through the activity of some material element.
According to Parmenides this activity is accounted for by the passion
of love aroused by some divinity. Over against this current conception,
they assert as truths new to the world, the one the guiding principle of
an unseen harmony, veiled from the senses, but revealed to reason as
an intelligent principle, the other the persistence of an indestructible
reality whose absolute nature makes seeming birth and death a real
impossibility for thought.

The later men, i. e., Empedocles and Anaxagoras,
according to Professor Woodbridge, profited from both the
lonians and their critics. With respect to the former the
"change is from a physiological origin of things to an origin
resulting from the mechanical union of natural elements,
brought about by forces acting upon them, a change from
elements possessed somehow with life and power to produce
things, to lifeless elements mechanically mixed." With
the lonians "the process of nature was conceived, it appears,
as a physiological process, a succession of births and deaths,
of absolute beginnings and endings, mediated, it may be
conjectured, by some natural principle." Hepl ^uaews,

' F. J. E. Woodbridge, Philosophical Review, Vol. X, 1901. Somewhat inspired by
Professor Woodbridge's view are two articles by E. C. H. Peithmann in the Archiv fiir
Geschichte der Philosophie. Vol. XV (VIII).

THE MEANING OF *TSIS 29

accordingly, would naturally mean On Origin, On Birth,
On Coming into Being, On Growth. 4>6o-ts "can mean only
'origin', and is a synonym of jkveais, " and Empedocles

accordingly writes, ipvcns ovdwos WTIV airavTuv

dvrjT&v, (Frag. 8).

More recently, Professor J. L. Meyres 4 has expressed
the opinion that in general <pv<ns signifies "the way things
grow. " "In phrases from the Ionian physicists, however, "
he says, "it seems always to be used intransitively and,
also, to be used always in its strict verbal sense [i. e., (pveiv,
to grow]."

The controversial article by Professor Lovejoy, 5 however,
and Professor Burnet's reiterated explanation in his latest
volume indicates that the question is not satisfactorily
settled. As <pv<ns is considered to have been the most
absorbing object of interest among the early Greek phi
losophers, it is a matter of prime importance, not only for
the correct understanding of the lonians, but of their
immediate successors as well, to gain as clear a conception
as possible of what they proposed to discuss when they
wrote Kept $i>crecos.

In order to arrive at this understanding, I propose to
examine certain pre-Platonic literary uses of the word and
the discussions of its early philosophical use as given by
Plato and Aristotle and then apply such conclusions as
may be reached to the instances in the fragments them
selves.

The word <pi><ns does not occur in Hesiod so far as I can
find. Homer uses it once : 6

4 J. L. Meyres, "The Background of Greek Science," University of California
Chronicle, Vol. XVI. This article is noted with approval by Gilbert Murray, The
Stoic Philosophy, 1915, p. 37, Note.

5 A. O. Lovejoy, "The Meaning of'&iKTts in the Greek Physiologers. " Philosophical
Review, Vol. XVIII, 1909. Cf. W. A. Heidel, "Ilept Qvcrtus, a Study in the Concep
tion of Nature among the Presocratics. " American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
Proceedings. Vol. XLV, 1910, p. 77.

6 C. T. Damm, Lexicon, etc., Homericae el Pindaricae, London, 1842.

3O STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

Speaking thus, Hermes offered me the medicinal plant (<papfj.aKov),

Pulling it out of the ground, and explained to me its <pv<rt.j>.

It had black roots and a milk-like flower.

The Gods call it Moly. To dig it up is very difficult

For mortal men, but the gods can do all things.'

(Odyss., X, 1. 302 el seq.)
Pindar employs the word twice : 6

One is the race of gods and men. For we both take our life from one
mother. But very different powers distinguish them. The one is noth
ing, but the brazen, firm abode of heaven abides eternally. Yet in
what do we resemble the immortals, either in mind (v6os) or <pw7is.
(Nemian Odes, VI, 1. 9.)

Indeed he is no Orion (the hunter) in tpvais ; On the contrary rather
despicable to look at, but nevertheless staunch in a fight.

(Isthmian Odes, IV, 1. 83.)

We next turn to a writer of the fifth century, Aris
tophanes, where examples are more numerous. 7
Chorus of Clouds: Oh never-failing Clouds,
Come let us raise up into sight our dewy, bright <pvaiv,
From Father Oceanus's resounding caves (Clouds, 1. 276).

(Here <f>v<n$ almost equals "selves".)

The Clouds are spoken of as assuming various shapes
when they see various kinds of people.

Strepsiades: For what, indeed, do they do, if they see Simon, the
robber of the people?

Socrates: They display his <piiaiv (nature, character) and immediately
become wolves (in shape) (Clouds, 1. 352).

Socrates (examining the man to see what he can do, how good his
memory is, etc.):
Do you then naturally (kv rrj <f>vo-fi) speak readily (Clouds, 1. 486)?

(The Greek Scholia here reads: "Have you readiness in
speaking?")

Strepsiades: If I am careful and learn readily,

Which of your pupils shall I come to resemble?

Socrates: You shall not differ from Chaerephon with respect to ptett.

Strepsiades: Alas, how unfortunate! I shall become half dead (Clouds,

1.503)!

6C. T. Damm, Lexicon, etc., Homericae et Pindaricae, London, 1842.

' H. Dunbar, Concordance to the Comedies and Fragments of Aristophanes, Oxford, 1883.

THE MEANING OF $TSIS 31

Chorus of Clouds: Go rejoicing in this manly spirit! May good fortune
attend the man who, though advanced in years, applies his <pvaw to
the deeds of youth and cultivates wisdom (Clouds, 1. 515).

Chorus of Clouds (speaking of Electra): Note that she is by nature
self-restraining (Clouds, 1. 537).

Father of Phidippides (speaking to Socrates of Phidippides) : Don't pay
attention to him! Teach him! He is naturally (<?wm) quick-witted
(Clouds, 1. 877).

(The Greek Scholia comments: "By t?v/x6<ro<£>os is meant
a man whose wisdom is the result of his own ability and
not of learning from others. ")

The Clouds (addressing Justice, personified, and exhorting him to defend
himself against injustice): But you who crowned our ancestors with
many profitable customs

Give utterance to whatever you like and tell us what your <pvaiv is
(i. e., what you are good for) (Clouds, 1. 960).

Injustice (after speaking of the delights of living a loose 4ife as over
against self-control): But I turn to the necessities of your Screws (and
shows Strepsiades how that he must have this power of sophistry
in order to defend himself when taken to court for committing
adultery, el al.).

But if you will be my companion, he adds, indulge your <pvaiv, leap,
laugh, think nothing shameful (Clouds, Is. 1075 and 1078).

Phidippides: Solon of old time was by nature (<pv<ru) a lover of the
people (Clouds, 1. 1187).

Euelpides (speaking of Athens) : Not hating the city herself,

As though she were not great and well-favored by <pvaei (Birds, 1. 37).

Euelpides (to the Epops) : Because you were once a man ....
Then, exchanging your <pvaLv for that of a bird,
You flew round the earth (Birds, 1. 117).

(The English idiom would be: "Changing yourself into
a bird.")

Epops: Though with respect to their <f\iaa> they are enemies, they
are come with friendly intention (Birds, 1. 371).

Chorus: Come, Ye men, by <pbati living in obscurity, a leaf-like race,

32 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

That, hearing from us correctly about the astral phenomena,

The (pvaiv of the birds, the birth of the gods .... (Birds, Is. 689

and 691).

(Obviously nature.)

Posidon: . . . What are you doing? Are you going to put your coat
on your left shoulder that way?
Are you not going to change it to your right?

What, you blockhead? Are you of the <f>v<nv of Laespodias (Birds,
1. 1569)? (/. e., according to the Scholia, left-handed and diseased in
the feet.)

Chorus of Women: For I (i. e., the chorus), because of my worth, wish
to go to any extreme

With those who have ^pvaiv (probably native ability), charm,
Boldness, wisdom, patriotism
And prudence (Lysistrata, 1. 545).

Chorus of Old Men (to the Women): . . . Since you are by <pwm
flatterers (Lysistrata, 1. 1037).

Mnesilochus: You said that I needed neither to hear nor see.
Euripides: For the <pb<ns of each of these is separate (Thesmophori-
azusae, 1. n).

Euripides goes on to narrate how the eye and ear were
formed originally, so <pv<ns might here mean origin.
Agathon: And Phrynicus. You no doubt have heard of him.
He was beautiful and beautifully dressed.
His dramas were for that reason beautiful,

For it is necessary that one perform in accordance to ones <pvaei. (Thes-
mophoriazusae, 1. 167).
Chorus: Than a woman shameless by <pi><m

Nothing can be worse, except women (in general) (Thesmophoriazusae,
1. 531).

Mnesilochus (to a mother): You are by ipvati fond of progeny (Thes
mophoriazusae, 1. 752).

Euripides (to a Scythian bowman): Alas, what shall I do? To what
words shall I turn?

For his barbarous <pv<ris (nature) would not receive them (Thesmophori
azusae, 1. 1129).
Chorus: . . . But to roll
Onto the soft side
Is the part of a crafty man
And one who is by <f>vaei a Theramenes (Frogs, 1. 540).

THE MEANING OF <J>TSIS 33

Chorus (addressing the Athenian audience): ... Oh you most
wise by tpiiati (Frogs, 1. 700).

Aeacus (speaking of the Athenian populace): He thought their judg
ment on the <pv<reis of poets to be mere nonsense (Frogs, 1. 810).

Chorus: For each of them has seen military service
And has learned the tricks of the trade with a book.
Furthermore'their <pv<reis (natural abilities) were very good
And now these have been sharpened (Frogs, I. 1115).

Euripides: At first Oedipus was a well-favored man.

Aeschylus: No, by Zeus, he was not, but was ill-favored by vvau

(perhaps by birth)

Of whom, before he was born, Apollo said

He should kill his father (Frogs, 1. 1183).

Dionysius: Very good. Palamedes, you most wise <pfou (genius?)
(Frogs, 1. 1451).

Kario: This is a man by <f>v<ret. wretched (or, born to be wretched)
(Plutus, 1. 118).

Kario: Do you think me to be altogether such a man by <pv<ret
And that I never say anything sound (Plutus, 1. 273)?

Chorus: ..... So impudent and knavish you are by <pv<rei
(Plutus, 1. 279).

Hermes: Then Pericles, fearing that he might share your misfortune,
Afraid of your ipiaea (natures) and your stubborn manner (Peace,
1. 607).

Chorus of old men (dressed as wasps) : Spectators, if any of you, seeing
my ipvaw ('make-up'),

Should wonder at seeing me drawn in at the middle like a wasp (Wasps,
. 1071).

Chorus: You are the father of very skillful children.
First ......

And then Ariphrades, extremely cleverlike

Of whom (his father) once affirmed on oath

That he had spontaneously learned from his own clever nature (<ro<pfis

roteii' ets TCI Tropcet' eKaerrore (Wasps, 1. 1282).

Chorus: It is hard to lose the ifvaw which one always has (Wasps,
1. 1458).

34 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

Chorus: And knowing from of old that your ^txms (natures or tastes)

are as changeful as the seasons

And that you give up your old poets as you get older (Knights, 1. 518).

The roots of the gethyum, having a tevaiv like garlic (Frag. CXXII,
1. 2. Dind.).

At this point we may make certain general statements.
<£i><ns is used by these authors solely with reference to
living or personified things.

Human beings 33 instances.

Gods i instance.

Animals 2 instances.

Plants 2 instances.

Hearing and Seeing I instance.

Personifications:

Clouds of themselves .... i instance.

Justice as a pleader .... i instance.

Athens i instance.

It can, accordingly, be assumed that <pfons has some
constant association with vitality. It serves as the expres
sion for nature or self in general and as the source or condi
tion of specific native capacities (as, "self-restraining,"
"quick-witted," "readily speaking," etc.).

Before turning to Plato, we may note that the instances
in the older Sophists correspond with this literary use.
Instruction requires both <pvais and practice (Protagoras, Frag. 3).

For the power of the \6yos towards the ordering of the soul and the

rectification by drugs of the <pvcri.s of bodies have the same \6yos (Gorgias,

Frag. 1113).

More are good from practice than ipvais (Critias, Frag. 9).

You (i. e., the creative wOs), the self-born, the one intermixing your

<fvcris in the ethereal vortex (Critias, Frag. 19).

... a daemon

. . . endowed with divine nature (<f>vaiv Qdav) (Critias, Frag. 25).

Prodicus's book, Concerning the <J>i>ats of Man (Prodicus,
Frag. 4) and Critias's book, On the $60-1$ of Love or of the
Virtues (Critias, Frag. 42) are quoted.

THE MEANING OF *TSIS 35

In Book X of the Laws Plato presents a discussion of
with special reference to his naturalistic predecessors.
This piece of controversy is, I think, our earliest and best
source for obtaining an 'understanding of the colonial phi
losophies. The dialogue runs as follows (888E) :

Athenian: Some persons say that all things which were, are, and will
be, exist, some by virtue of their own nature, some by chance and
some by art (TO. ntv <pbcrei, TO. 8e rkxvj), TO. 5e 8ia riixriv) ....
It seems, they say, that the most beautiful and greatest things are
brought to perfection by their own <pi«o-tj and by chance, while the
smaller are produced by art which receives from <PIKHS (the self-pro
ducing) the primary great things and then proceeds to mold and form
the lesser which we call artificial.

Cretan: How is this which you say?

Athenian: I will speak more plainly. They say that fire, water,
earth, and air exist by <puo-ts and by chance, but none of these by art,
while the bodies coming after these, i. e., the earth, sun, moon, and the
stars have come to be entirely through these (elements), being them
selves without souls, each being born along by chance, according to
the character of each, to where they fall together, fitting in some con
genial manner, the hot with the cold, the dry with the moist, the soft
with the hard. Thus all things have necessarily united by chance in
a mixture of opposites. In this way the whole heavens came to be
and everything in them and all plants and animals in turn. Even the
seasons came to be from these conditions and not through intelligence
nor some god, nor art, but, as we have said, by their own <pi><7ts and by
chance. Afterwards, art, generated later from these, itself mortal and
from mortal sources, produced certain amusements little related to
reality, certain semblances akin to those which painting, music, etc.,
produce. The arts which produce any serious work are those which
add their force to <f>v<ns, as, e. g., therapeutics, agriculture, and gym
nastics. Indeed, they say that statesmanship works in part in con
junction with <pwm, but far more with art. Thus all legislation is not
natural (<pvatC), but artificial, of which the principles are not truths
(or, realities).

Cretan: How is this?

Athenian: The gods, good sir, they say are an artificial product and
not a natural growth (oil <£>ixm)> being constituted by certain laws,
different in different places according as different peoples agree to

36 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

legislate. And indeed things beautiful by ipv<ns are one thing and those
by law another. Standards of justice, for example, are not at all by
<pvais, but on the contrary every one continually disputes as to what
they may be and is always changing them. These standards possess
some authority after change, but it comes from art and convention
and not at all from any self-sufficiency (<(>vais). Such opinions pass
among young men as the doctrines of the wise, the wise both among
laymen and poets, who say that is right which forcibly succeeds.
These doctrines bring impiety to the minds of young men inasmuch as
the gods are not thought to be such as the law dictates. Hence sedi
tions come as they strive for the naturally correct mode of life (rbv KO.TO.
<pvaw 6pd6v piov) which is to live as the master of others and not in
servitude to legal authorities.

Cretan: By no means, Stranger, but if there happens to be any
belief at all on this matter, a worthy legislator should not give up, but
should cry out in every way, as they say, and assist the ancient legal
fiction that there are gods and such other matters as you have discussed.
Thus he shall come to the aid of law itself and art, showing that each
is a natural product (^wrei), or the product of something which is not
less than vixris, since it is the product of mind, working according
to correct principles of reason. This you appear to have stated to me
and of this I am now persuaded.

Athenian: But tell me again, Kleinias, for you must be my partner
in this conversation, does not the one who says these things [about the
gods] probably consider fire, water, earth, and air to be the first of
everything? To these he gives the name <pwns, while he considers
that soul comes from these later.

Cretan: Yes, indeed.

Athenian: Then, by Zeus, we have discovered the source of this
unreasonable opinion of these men who to some extent have dealt with
inquiries concerning <f>i)<n.s

Athenian: I will tell then the not entirely ordinary argument which
is as follows. These reasonings which make souls without any divine
element indicate what is really the first cause of generation and decay
as a later production. Wherefore they err in their opinion as to what
are gods.

Cretan: I don't quite see.

THE MEANING OF *TSI2 37

Athenian: They all seem to be ignorant of what the soul is like, of
its power and that it originated among the first bodies before all of
them and is the starter, rather than any of the others, of change and
rearrangement. If this is so and the soul is older than the body, will
not the things akin to the soul come to be before those which pertain
to the body?

Cretan: Necessarily.

Athenian: Then thought, attention, reason, art, and law will be
prior to the hard, soft, heavy, and light. So the greatest and most
primitive accomplishments and activities will arise through art. These
works of art will be first, while the so-called works of nature (TO. St <pv<rei)
and <pv(Tts itself — for the term ipvais is wrongly used in this sense(!) —
will be later and have their beginning in art and reason.

Cretan: How is the term tpvais incorrectly used?

Athenian: Why, they wish to say that <pvcris is the well spring of
primary things (ykvtaiv ri)v irepl TO. irpwra), but if the soul appears
to be first instead of fire or air and to have originated among the very
first things, then, in the truest sense, it may be especially said to be by
(piitris. This is true, if the soul is shown to be before the body, but not
otherwise.

In other words Plato says, if you do not call <pixns what
I say is <pixris, you simply do not know Greek! Obviously
the correct meaning is one which has to do with the prime
producer or production, "the first cause of generation and
decay." In Aristotle we come upon a more refined form
of this dialectical twist as well as a clearer statement of its
correct solution, so we may turn here for our final material.

In Chapter IV of Book A of the Metaphysics, Aristotle
summarizes the meanings of <pvaLs under five heads:

(i) The coming to be of growing things, just as if one should accent
the v. 8 (2) That which is present in any growing thing from which its

8 Burnet's remark (Greek Philosophy, p. 27, Note) is peculiar. "The question
really is," he writes, "whether the original meaning of <f>vcris is 'growth'. Aristotle
(Met. A, 4. 10145, 16) did not think so; for he says that, when it means 'growth', it
is as if one were to pronounce it with a long v. " Apparently it does not mean growth
because when it means growth (1) it has another pronunciation. This is a misquotation
from Aristotle to begin with (see above).

38 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

growing first starts. (3) The source from which the primary motion
is present in each natural object per se. (4) That out of which any
natural object is or comes to be, unorganized and unchanged from its
state of potentiality, e. g., bronze is said to be the tpvais of a statue or
of bronze implements, wood of wooden things, etc. For the first sub-
tance (v\ij) is preserved in the case of each of these. In this way some
say the elements (crrotx«ta) of natural objects are a <pwns, some fire,
others water, others some other such thing, one or all. (5) 4>ti<m is
the essence (ovaia) of natural objects, e. g., those who say ipto-is to be
the primary composition (awQeaiv), as Empedocles.

Finally, however, he concludes:

It can be gathered from what has been said that <£w7is in its primary
and strict sense is the essence (obaia) of those things which have in them
selves per se a source of motion. For matter (v\ti), as receptive of motion
is called <pwris, and genesis and growing are called y;wrts in so much as
they are movements from this. *uo-ts is the source of movement (rj &pxrj
rfjs /aircrews) present in some way, either potentially or actually, in
natural objects.

If we turn to Aristotle's own use of the word, we find
that he never uses it in the fourth sense except when
referring to the early Greeks. His reasoning is clear. <£i>cns
is the essence of those things which have their source of
motion in themselves. However, certain of his predeces
sors called air, earth, fire, etc., <PV<TLS. Now air, earth, etc.,
are matter. Therefore, for them vvcis equals matter, and 9
they were only looking for the material cause of things —
that out of which all things have been made. The logical
conclusion would rather be that they conceived air, earth,
fire, etc., as being those things which have a source of motion
in themselves — i. e., as the sources of generation. Aristotle
tries to squeeze out at the end by a distinction between
potential and actual, a distinction which was peculiar to
his own philosophy.

It now remains to be seen whether this conception of
<pv<ns will fit into the fragments of the early Greek phi-

» Cf. Metaphysics, Book I.

THE MEANING OF *TSI2 39

losophers and give more meaning to the traditional account
of their thought and investigations. I give Burnet's
translation wherever convenient to show that he could
not consistently maintain his position.

Heraclitus: Though this discourse is true evermore, yet men are as
unable to understand it when they hear it for the first time as before
they have heard it at all. For, although all things happen in accordance
with the account I give, men seem as if they had no experience of them,
when they make trial of words and works such as I set forth, dividing
each thing according to its nature (</>i>cm) and explaining how it truly
is. But other men know not what they are doing when you wake them
up, just as they forget what they do when asleep (Frag. I, Burnet, 2).

To think is the greatest virtue, and wisdom lies in speaking the
truth and acting intelligently /card tpvaiv (Frag. 112).

Nature (Averts) loves to hide (Frag. 123, Burnet, 10).

Epicharmus: Eumaeus, wisdom is not only present in the one, but
everything which lives has knowledge. And this is so, for, if you will
observe well, the hens do not bring forth living young, but hatch them
and make them to have life. However, ipvais alone knows how this
wisdom exists, for it has learned this of itself (Frag. 4).

Parmenides: And you shall know the aetherial <f>vais and all signs
in the aether and the brilliant works of the pure lamp of the glowing
sun, and from whence they arose. And you shall learn of the wandering
works of the round faced moon and of her <fii<ns. And you shall know
also from whence the heavens round about grew and how Necessity,
controlling them, bound them to keep within the enclosure of the
stars (Frag. 10).

Note in this fragment the great emphasis on works and
origins. Burnet translates "origin."

For as the mixing (/cpSem) of the wide wandering members (Organe,
Diels) is in each case, so is voos present to men. For the <(>vais (Be-
schaffenheit, Diels) of the members of men, one and all, is identical
with that which thinks. For the more is thought (Frag. 16).

Empedodes: I will tell you another thing: there is no ^beis of any
mortal, nor any end in destructive death, but only a mixing and inter
change of what is mixed. But it is named ^ixris among men (Frag. 8).

Probably referring to the growth of the embryo,
The <f>vais of the members is separate, partly in man's [partly in
woman's] (Frag. 63).

4O STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

For if, supported on thy steadfast mind, thou wilt contemplate
these things with good intent and faultless care, then shalt thou have
all these things in abundance throughout thy life, and thou shalt gain
many others from them. For these things grow of themselves into thy
heart (?7t?os), where is each man's true nature (<pfois) (Frag, no,
Burnet).

Here in Parmenides and Empedocles we have the first
examples of what might be called the technical use of
<pv<ns. In three of the cases it refers to human beings,
Burnet only attempts to translate two of these matter
(Parmenides, 16; Empedocles, 63). <Mo-is is the source of
thinking in man ; the source of his formation in the womb ;
the something which expresses a man's character.

On the other hand, Empedocles says that in a strict sense
it does not pertain to mortals, but to the primary roots of
things of which man is only a set combination. We must
keep all this in mind in reading of the <pu<ns of aetherial
things and of the moon with her wandering works.

The Pythagoreans and the minor philosophers will add
little to our discussion, but I append the fragments, for the
sake of completeness, along with the moral sayings of
Democritus.

Philolaus: The <f>v<ns is constructed in the Kosmos from limitless
and limited, both the whole Kosmos and everything in it (Frag. i).

With ipvffis and apuovia it stands thus: The being of things, which
is eternal, and the <pv<ns afford divine rather than human knowing.
Indeed it is not possible for any existing thing to be known by us unless
there underlies this the being of the things, both limited and unlimited,
of which the Kosmos is constituted (Frag. 6).

For the <f>v<ris of numbers is a bearer of knowledge, a leader and
instructor to every one of all doubtful and unknown things (Frag. 115).

Archytus: It seems to me that the mathematical sciences discern
excellently, and it is not at all strange that they should correctly under
stand, the condition (old kvrC) of particular things. For understand
ing well the <p{>ffi.s of the whole, they ought also to get good insight into
the condition of the particulars severally considered. So they have
given us knowledge of the velocity of the stars and of their rising and
setting and concerning geometry, arithmetic, and spherical geometry,

THE MEANING OF 3>T2IS 4!

and not least of music. For these mathematical subjects appear to us
to be sisters, in as much as they concern themselves with the two pri
mary forms of being (i. e., number and size).

First they recognize that there can not be a sound without one thing
striking against another. A blow, they say, occurs when bodies coming
in opposite directions strike together. . . . But most of these are
not such as can be known to our pfom, partly because of the weakness
of the blow, partly because of the distance from us (Frag. i).

Diogenes of Apollonia: To sum up, it seems to me that all things
are differentiated from the same thing and are the same thing. And
this is easily seen, for if the things now in the universe, earth, water,
air, fire, and any other things which appear to be in the universe, if any
of these were different from any other, i. e., different in its own nature
(TTI ISLai <pvati) and the same being did not change and become
transformed, things would not be able in any way to mix with one
another, nor (do) benefit or harm to one another (Frag. 2).

Democritus: He who would be cheerful should not be employed at
many things, private or public, nor should he do anything above his
power (Swa/jus) and ability (v»wris) to accomplish (Frag. 3).

Homer who was godlike in parts of his nature (YUXHS) made a beauti
ful structure of poetry of all kinds (Frag. 21).

<$wts and education are about the same, for education remodels
the man and in remodeling him gives him another nature (tpwioiroiel)
(Frag. 33).

He called the atoms yixuv. ... for he said they were scattered
all around (Frag. 168).

Chance is lavish, but unreliable; <pwm is sufficient unto itself, and
accordingly with fewer, but more reliable, gifts she wins the greater
part of hope (Frag. 176).

Young men sometimes have understanding and old men do not.
For time does not teach one to be wise, but timely training and tpvaa.
(Frag. 183).

It is naturally (<fvaei) a characteristic of the better man to rule
(Frag. 207).

Whoever has need of a child would seem to me to do best, if he made
an adoption from his friends. For the child will then be such as he
wishes, as he can select such as he wants, one who seems to be well-
disposed and Kara ifvcriv obedient (Frag. 277).

It seems to men to be necessary both from <pv<ris and from ancient
custom to procreate children. This is obviously so with the other
animals, for all beget young Kara tpvaiv and for no advantage, but
when one is born they (the animals) go to great trouble, train it up as

42 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

far as possible, are very anxious over it as long as it is little and are
pained if it suffer any hurt. Such is the <pva^ of all which have a soul.
But among men it has been held as a custom that one should derive
profit from his progeny (Frag. 278).

Some men who are ignorant of the dissolution of mortal nature
(tpbffis) are conscious of their evil doings in life and are distressed with
troubles and fears throughout the space of their life, making fictitious
tales with respect to the time of the end (Frag. 297).

3>uo-is is the inner nature or essence of things, their
potency, that in them which has the power of motion in
itself. A treatise on the <pv<ns of anything is a treatise on
its essence as expressing development. Empedocles and
Parmenides in their investigations were trying to find out
what features of things would account for their present
development or lack of development. With the atomists
there is very little meaning left to <pv<ns outside of mere
being and spatial motion. The atoms and the void are all
that is. The atoms are pforis because they are "scattered
all around."

If, from the foregoing conclusions, we turn back to the
earliest Greek speculation, the Ionian, we will read with no
surprise Aristotle's surmise that the reason Thales names
water as his primary substance was because he noticed
plants required water and that the semen of all animals
was moist. Far from looking for a matter out of which to
construct the various "matters" of our world, the lonians
were looking into the world to find what was the prime
mover, that which in the conglomeration of things caused
them to "get a move on." Thales found it in water;
Anaxamander in the rain of misty iiireipov; Anaximenes in
the cosmic wind; Heraclitus in the fire, "consuming all
things."

Aristotle's acuteness may stand as his own refutation
when he wonders why none of them chose earth, "seeing
it was the most common."

WALTER VEAZIE

AN IMPRESSION OF GREEK POLITICAL
PHILOSOPHY

For many of us to-day the idea of the Greeks renders a
service analogous to that once provided by a religious
person's notion of God. Both conceptions have supported
ideals to which believers were most seriously attached.
This relation of the Greeks to the idealizing imagination
of various times helps to account for the little interest
that wrriters on Greek philosophy have felt in the dark and
tragic side of Greek political experience. Greek philosophy
has been too much allied with Greek art and poetry, and
these, so long esteemed as the complete expressions of
serene and perfect genius, pointed to no background of
disorder. Euripides, who might be cited as an exception,
was, until quite recently, seldom popular. The Greek was
at home in the world, or was supposed to be, and the ideal
of being at home in the world seems once more the essence
of that apery "much labored for by the race of man," as
Aristotle says in his "curious outburst into lyrics."1 Philos
ophy, however, when it is most in earnest, begins not in
vision, but in the search for it. It starts with disintegration
and thrives not so much upon its own success as upon
partial failure in mastering its problems. Sophocles and
Phidias are not good parallels for Attic philosophy. Euripi
des, a better parallel, has been, as I just remarked, disliked
by the orthodox because he was not serene and satisfied.

The political philosopher that warms most seriously to
his business is likely to be impressed by the characteristic
shortcomings of his time. Different times need to be cor
rected in different ways; to write political philosophy in
the form of universal propositions is, as a rule, the most

1 Gilbert Murray, The Rise of the Greek Epic, p. 79.

44 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

convenient and economical way of writing it in the impera
tive mood. To say that the true state, or the state accord
ing to nature, is thus and so, is usually to criticize actual
society by contrasting it with what that society ought to
be transmuted into. "It is on this dictatorial aspect of
science that the political thought of the Greeks chiefly
concentrated itself. The Greeks wrote their political sci
ence in the imperative mood."5

Whenever, then, in the writings of a political philosopher,
we get the note of strong sincerity, it is probable that what
is praised is not what a group possesses, but what it needs,
and we shall be justified in distinguishing between the
writer's ideals and the virtues of the people he writes about.
Thus, to be specific, may it not be that the social and
ethical ideals most insisted upon by Plato and Aristotle
are misleading pictures of the Greek virtues? To quote
from a very fine and noble little book:3 "The very intensity
of the State-life within the TTO\LS led in many cases to
intense bitterness of faction when faction had once broken
out, and to a corresponding weakness in the relations of the
state to other states, or to the less civilized peoples beyond
the Graeco-Italian world. Yet, on the whole, it must be
allowed that the idea of the State, with all its fruitful civi
lizing results, has never been again so fully realized since
the TroXtj was swallowed up in the Roman empire; the
ties that hold a state together have never been seen working
together with such strength and vitality." And again,
"We have in the Republic and Laws of Plato, and in the
Politics of Aristotle, the thoughts of two of the profoundest
of all thinkers on the nature of the state they lived in."
Is this impression based upon Greek history or upon Greek
philosophy? And if we are referred to the funeral oration
of Pericles for an answer, Thucydides frankly tells us that

2 Barker, Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle, p. 10.

1 Warde Fowler, The City State of the Creeks and Romans, pp. 14-15 and 18.

GREEK POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 45

he has put into the mouth of each speaker in his history
not the exact words of his address, but the sentiments
proper to the occasion, expressed as Thucydides thought
the speaker would be likely to express them under the
circumstances.4 And the occasion was one that obliged
Pericles, both humanly and diplomatically, to call for an
elevation of the mind away from what was tragically con
crete to what was imaginative and ideal. Be all that, how
ever, as it may, the ideals of a people are a function of its
experience, and the dramatic experience of the Greeks can
not be left out of account in any attentive reading of their
philosophy. To quote from another writer, one to whom
I shall frequently appeal: "The peculiar and essential value
of Greek civilization lies not so much in the great height
which it ultimately attained, as in the wonderful spiritual
effort by which it reached and sustained that height. The
pre-Hellenic Aegean societies were in some ways highly
developed, in others, a mere welter of savagery. But the
rise of Greece began from something a little worse than the
average level of barbaric Aegean societies. It began .
in the dark age which resulted when even these societies,
such as they were, fell into chaos."5

Dr. Murray contrasts the Greek with the self-confident
and self-righteous Roman who "seems to have all the
faults and virtues of successful men." "The Greek, less
gregarious, less to be relied upon, more swept by impulse;
now dying heroically for lost causes, now at the very edge
of heroism, swept by panic and escaping with disgrace."
And again, "The Romans had an almost steady history of
stern discipline, of conquest and well-earned success. The
Greeks, at the beginning of their history, passed through
the very fires of hell. They began their life as a people,
it would seem, in a world where palaces and temples were

* Thucydides, I, 22.

* Gilbert Murray, Loc. cit., p. 29.

46 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

shattered, armies overthrown, laws and familiar gods
brought to oblivion."6 The epic calamity of the overthrow
of the ancient civilization by the Volkerwanderung from
the North would not be soon forgotten. Whether Hesiod's
description of the fifth race of men refers to this or to
something later, makes no difference here. Probably Dr.
Murray's impression that the lines point to "the homeless,
godless struggle of the last migration" is as good as any one
else's. One feels in them, as he says, "something of the
grit of real life." "Then the Fifth Men — would that I had
never been among them, but either had died before or
been born after! For now is a race of iron. And never by
day shall they have rest from labor and anguish, nor by
night from the spoiler. The gods shall fill them with hard
cares . . . The father no more kind to his children, nor
the children to their father, nor the guest true to the host
that shelters him, nor comrade to comrade: the brother
no more dear to his brother, as in the old days. Parents
shall grow old quickly and be despised, and will turn on
their children with a noise of bitter words. Woe upon
them: and they hear no more the voice of their gods!
They will pay not back to their parents in old age the
guerdon of their feeding in childhood. Their righteousness in
their fists! And a man shall sack his brother's walled city.

"There shall no more joy be taken in the faithful man,
nor the righteous, nor the good: they shall honor rather
the doer of evils and violence . . . There shall be a
spirit of striving among miserable men, a spirit ugly- voiced,
glad of evil, with hateful eyes.

"Then at the last, up to Olympus from the wide-wayed
earth, the beautiful faces hidden in white raiment, away
to the tribe of the immortals, forsaking man, shall depart
aidos and nemesis."7

« Loc. cit.. pp. 113-114.
7 Loc. cit., pp. 102-103.

GREEK POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 47

Here are two words of deep ethical meaning. What is
most characteristic about them is, according to Murray,
that like the sense of honor "they come into operation
only when a man is free: when there is no compulsion."
They have the virtue of spontaneity. The pressure of law,
or public opinion, or settled habit would stifle them.
"When Achilles fought against Eetion's city, 'he sacked
all the happy city of the Cilician men, high-gated Thebe,
and sleV Ee'tion: but he spoiled him not of his armor.
He had aidos in his heart for that; but he burned him
there as he lay in his rich-wrought armor, and heaped a
mound above him. And all around him there grew elm-
trees, planted by the Mountain Spirits, daughters of
Aegis-bearing Zeus.' That is aidos pure and clean, and the
latter lines ring with the peculiar tenderness of it. Achilles
had nothing to gain, nothing to lose. Nobody would have
said a word if he had taken Eetion's richly-wrought armor.
It would have been quite the natural thing to do. But
he happened to feel aidos about it." 8 "Perhaps the main
thing which the philosophers got from aidos was Aristotle's
doctrine of the Mean : the observation that in any emotion
or any movement there is a possible best point, which you
should strive to attain and shrink from passing. An unin
spiring doctrine, it may be, with the emotion all gone from
it. But that was what served Aristotle's purpose best.

"Again, there is an historical reason for the decline in
the importance of aidos. Aidos, like Honor, is essentially
the virtue of a wild and ill-governed society, where there
is not much effective regulation of men's actions by the law.
It is essentially the thing that is left when all other sanctions
fail ; the last of the immortals to leave a distracted world."9

Our esthetic and literary attitude toward poetry and our
professional sentimentalizing of grief prepare us badly to

8 Loc. cit., p. 104.

' Loc. cit., pp. III-H2.

4« STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

feel the sincerity of lamentation in early literature. Yet
no one would look upon the distress and indignation of a
Belgian poet to-day as merely esthetic and literary. Accord
ing to Thucydides, Attica enjoyed more peace than many
other regions, only because her soil was too poor and thin
to be worth taking. Elsewhere, in more favored parts,
invasion and plundering were the rule. "The richest
districts were most constantly changing their inhabitants."
Thucydides's few words suggest the caravan of families,
headed by its defeated men, driven by fate or by gods to
inflict the same disaster upon others that they have suf
fered, and though, as he says presently, a poet may be
expected to exaggerate, the reader of early Greek poetry
has no call to doubt the honesty of all the pessimism he
finds there. For, as William James has well remarked, 10
"the moment the Greeks grew systematically pensive and
thought of ultimates, they became unmitigated pessimists.
The jealousy of the gods, the nemesis that follows too much
happiness, the all-encompassing death, fate's dark opacity,
the ultimate and unintelligible cruelty were the fixed
background of the imagination. The beautiful joyousness
of their polytheism is only a poetic modern fiction." And
"the difference between Greek pessimism and the oriental
and modern variety is that the Greeks had not made the
discovery that the pathetic mood may be idealized and
figure as a higher form of sensibility."

Beauty does, somehow, transform the confusion of
grief into serenity. Those passages of poignant sadness
in Homer have been read by one generation after another,
but the beauty has veiled their sincerity. "The strain
of melancholy running through the Iliad and the Odyssey"
has, however, "often been remarked upon. A note of sad
ness is heard in nearly all of the reflective passages. 'Surely
there is nothing more pitiable than a man among all things

10 The Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 142.

GREEK POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 49

that breathe and creep upon the earth.' 'Of all the creatures
that breathe and creep upon the earth, man is the feeblest
that earth nourishes.' A multitude of passages might be
quoted in illustration of such sentiments as these."11
The same writer continues: "And if we consider the theo
retical side of Homer's religion, we shall find no lack of
reasons for the undercurrent of sadness in his poems.
The existence of physical evil and suffering is accepted by
Homer as a fact from which there is no escape, and ascribed,
as we have already seen, to the immediate agency of the
gods. 'This is the lot the go^ls have spun for miserable
men, that they should live in pain; yet themselves are
sorrowless.' It gives additional bitterness to the cup of
human misery that the sufferer is uniformly represented as
hated by the very gods who are responsible for his calami
ties; nor can he who has incurred the hatred of Heaven
expect the sympathy of man."12 As for these same Olym
pians, Benn felicitously describes their conduct among
themselves as that "of a dissolute and quarrelsome aristoc
racy;"13 and "the experimentum crucis is," Mr. Mahaffy
observes, "the picture of the gods in Olympus. We have
here Zeus, a sort of easy-going, but all-powerful Agamem
non, ruling over a number of turbulent, self-willed lesser
gods, who are perpetually trying to evade and thwart his
commands. At intervals he wakes up and terrifies them
into submission by threats, but it is evident that he can
count on no higher principle. Here, Poseidon, Ares, Aphro
dite, Pallas, all are thoroughly insubordinate, and loyal to
one thing only, that is, their party. Faction, as among the
Greeks of Thucydides, had clearly usurped the place of
principle, and we are actually presented with the strange
picture of a city of gods more immoral, more faithless, and

11 Adam, The Religious Teachers of Greece, p. 62.

12 Loc. cit., p. 63.

13 The Greek Philosophers, p. 7.

50 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

more depraved, than the world of men."14 Mahaffy char
acterizes this aspect of Homeric poetry as "the notorious
levity and recklessness of the Ionic character developed in
Asia Minor."15 But poetry written for the entertainment of
clan chiefs would naturally picture the family of the gods
in colors that the princes on earth would use to idealize
themselves. Butcher's chapter on Greek melancholy may
be cited here. The author accounts in part for the early
manifestation of what is unlike our favorite picture of the
Greeks by "the hard and narrow selfishness of the ruling
class, the fierce bigotry, the wild revenge of political fac
tion, the sudden reversals of fortune and the instability of
human affairs.'.'16 "In a single century, 620 to 520 B. C.,
five great empires — Assyria, Media, Babylonia, Layia,
Egypt — had passed away with every circumstance of dra
matic impressiveness; a still shorter period had witnessed
the rise and fall of the tyrannies in Greece. In an age when
the despot of to-day might to-morrow be an exile, when the
triumph of political party meant frequently not only loss
of power and place, but of home and property, and, it
might be, of life for the vanquished — at such a time the
poet and the historian could draw from a common inspira
tion."17

Greek history began, then, with people driven from
their homes and from the soil that belonged to their gods
and that contained their dead, the soil that was responsive
to the magic their fathers had bequeathed to them, and
upon which life was made orderly by particular taboos and
invocations. To wander away was to lose the refuge of
piety. And although the early inhabitants did not have
to leave Attica because it was so poor a place, nevertheless

14 Social Life in Greece, p. 38.

>5 Compare Murray's comments on The Deceiving of Zeus, in The Rise of the Greek
Epic, chapter X.

18 Some Aspects of Greek Genius, p. 135.
" Loc. cil., p. 155-

GREEK POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 51

so many people came to Attica when driven from their
own territory, that Attica, Thucydides observes, could
not contain them all and had to send out colonies to Ionia.
Nothing better could be devised to disintegrate collective
superstition than this shifting of populations, nothing
better to stimulate intelligence than the frequent conflict
with novelty, nothing better to promote social restlessness
than concentration within areas that before long seemed
too small for all those that wanted to live there. The social
order that finally emerged was of the type that a fighting
group, a group of chiefs and followers would naturally
organize — a military aristocracy with, probably, small
peasant proprietors. Wealth of the nobility was chiefly
in herds. Homer speaks of Argos as abounding in horses,
and the men of Hesiod's "golden age" were great landed
proprietors. "The bounteous earth bore fruit for them
of her own will, in plenty and without stint. And they in
peace and quiet lived on their lands with many good things,
rich in flocks and dear to the blessed gods."18 The meadow
state (Gaustaat) seems to have preceded the city state.
To be shut up in a city where one person tends to become as
good as another is an abomination to the man whose dream
is of horse-breeding and horse-handling. "And she (Thyis,
daughter of Deukalion) conceived and bore to Zeus, the
hurler of the thunderbolt, two sons, even Magnes and
Makedon, rejoicing in horses, who had their dwellings
around Peiria and Olympus;" and "From Hellen, warlike
king, sprang Doros and Zonthos and Aiolos, rejoicing in
horses."19

But Hesiod is the voice of a growing social unhappiness.
Suits must be heard before "bribe-devouring princes," and
these are likened to a hawk, bearing in his talons a nightin
gale to which the hawk speaks as follows: "Wretch!

18 Works and Days, Mair's translation, p. 5.

19 Loc. cit., Frags. 4 and 7.

52 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

wherefore dost thou shriek? Lo! thou art held in the grasp
of a stronger. There shalt thou go, even where I carry
thee, for all thy minstrelsy. And, as I will, I shall make
my meal of thee, or let thee go. A fool is he who would
contend with the stronger. He loseth the victory and
suffreth anguish with his shame." And although justice
is so much better than hubris, nevertheless, "There is the
noise of the haling of justice wheresoever bribe-devouring
men hale her, adjudging dooms with crooked judgments.
And she followeth weeping, clad in mist and fraught with
doom, unto the city and the homes of men who drive her
forth and deal with her crookedly." But where justice is
esteemed, people "flourish with good things continually,
neither go they on ships, but bounteous earth beareth
fruit for them."20 Unfortunately for the old order, men
have already begun to go on ships, even the Boeotians,
"for money is the life of hapless men," and commerce and
money meant the industrial revolution.

The change from barter to the use of money in a form
convenient for accumulation and exchange was for the
small producer, at the beginning, as great a calamity as
was the invention of the steam-engine. "It created an
economic revolution in the Mediterranean communities
comparable to that from which Europe is only just recover
ing (if she is recovering) to-day."21 It was a long time before
there could be a market with its standardized prices.
Those who have money to exchange have all the advantage.
Money is the one thing in universal demand. All products
compete for it. "The queer thing about money," says
Theognis over and over again, "is that you can never have
too much of it. Herein it is different from any of the things
you can buy with it. Food, clothing, houses, above all,
wine — there is a limit to them all. But to money there is

20 Loc. cit., pp. 8-9.

21 Zimmern, The Greek Commonwealth, p. 1 13.

GREEK POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 53

no limit; there is only one thing like it, and that is wis
dom." 22

Money was a. new power, and commerce a way of making
it. It freed men from dependence upon the farming and
herding nobility and sent them moving about the world,
where, however their ventures turned out, they were bound
to win a cosmopolitan mind. The old nobility of birth
gave way to an aristocracy based on private property, a
class more oppressive than the one it had replaced be
cause less restrained by 0e/us and not yet subject to 8li<r].
But it was a step toward democracy, since political posi
tion now came not from Zeus, but from human enterprise.
"But there were two forces that sought to overthrow this
rule — democracy and tyranny. These two were hostile to
each other, but whichever made any progress accomplished
it at the expense of those in possession of political power.
The ancient order yielded ingloriously to Solon and Pesis-
tratos." 23

It yielded, however, slowly, and in all probability its
resistance was accompanied with more violence and
caused more disorganization than we have any record of.
The attempt of Cylon and his followers, so picturesquely
full of primitive and barbaric elements, was, perhaps,
remembered only because the Alkmaeonidae were known
to be "accursed" as late as the fourth century. Thucy-
dides reports that "these accursed persons were banished
by the Athenians, and Cleomenes, the Lacedaemonian
king, again banished them from Athens in a time of civil
strife by the help of the opposite faction, expelling the
living and disinterring the dead." But later, a great deal
later, "the Lacedaemonians desired the Athenians to drive
away this curse, as if the honor of the gods were their
first object, but in reality because they knew that the

™Loc. cit., p. 117.

23 Willamovitz, Aristoteles und Athen, II, p. 52.

54 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

curse attached to Pericles, the son of Xanthippos by his
mother's side, and they thought if he were banished, they
would find the Athenians more manageable."24 As Willam-
owitz observes, "We can not doubt that the seventh cen
tury saw many such incidents, since, in the sixth century,
in spite of the constitution of Solon, the power and greed
of the great families seem not in the least diminished, and
the struggles that bring freedom to Athens continue to
bear the mark of the contests for power by the clans."25
This unsurpassed story of blood and taboo points to a
state of things that Draco's codification of the law was
intended to remedy. Long before, a step toward democracy
had been taken when officials were elected to office for a
term of years instead of holding them for life. Such a
change must have meant friction and perhaps violence.
Now the codification and publication of the law indicates
that something had become unendurable. No one but a
Eupatrid could publish the law, and there is no occasion
for surprise if what we know of Draco's code shows it to
express the Eupatrid point of view. There is no concern
for the materially unfortunate, no economic remedies are
provided. If any concessions are offered, it is to the
new aristocracy of wealth. But here, candidates for the
higher offices must have not only income, but unencum
bered property. Since the worst feature in the situation
that Solon had to remedy was the fact that one whole class
was in many cases in debt to another and the security for
the debt was the borrower himself or the members of his
family, it is clear that the requirement that property be
unencumbered could not fail to concentrate political power
in the hands of the rich. The provision may, of course,
have been intended to keep men out of office who could
be under the pressure of creditors, but the result would

24 Loc. cil., I, pp. 126-127.
15 Loc. cil., II, p. 55.

GREEK POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 55

seem to be that "the old nobility sacrificed its exclusive
privilege of blood only that it might with greater safety
continue to oppress the multitude. Even the right to
bring complaints for injury before the Areopagos — a right
now open to all — could not have availed the client against
his master. To the Thete, therefore, the Draconian meas
ures meant, for the time being, simply this, that one of
his oppressors had taken another into partnership."26
These are the bribe-devouring princes, not limited to
Attica, that Hesiod may be supposed to mean by his
"swift-flying hawk, the long-winged bird," his symbol of
vffpis. And to Athens as well as to any city of Boeotia
could, no doubt, be applied his lines, "The eye of Zeus,
that seeth all things, and remarketh all, beholdeth these
things too, and He will, and He faileth not to notice what
manner of justice this is that our city holdeth. Now may
neither I nor son of mine be just among men. For it is
an ill thing to be just if the unjust shall have the greater
justice. Howbeit these things I deem not that Zeus, the
Hurler of the Thunder, will accomplish."27 Zeus must
have listened to the cry for justice that went up in Attica,
but he waited a generation. At length came Solon,
according to his legend the ideal sage; he was given
authority, it seems, to enact the most drastic reform legis
lation, which means that social conditions were again
unendurable.

To what extent the picture of Solon is drawn by the
idealizing imagination, it is impossible to say. Thucydides
never mentions him, though he is, in our account, a model
of that aristocratic temperance that the Socratic philosophy
summons us to admire. Though probably a Eupatrid
tracing his descent from Codrus, it is not surprising that
Aristotle claims him for his middle class. However, what

28 Bostford, The Athenian Constitution, p. 156.
27 Works and Days, p. 10.

56 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

interests us here is not so much the nobility of the man
as the conditions he was invited to reform.

If we assume that Solon's legislation was intended to
remedy existing evils, we get, quite aside from the most
important of his laws, those connected with the relief
from debt and with the functions of the Areopagos, a cu
rious impression of Athens as a place where manners and
morals were in a rather desperate case. Of course, since
each party hoped for its own advantages, no one was
satisfied. It is not to be wondered at that Solon bought
himself a trading vessel and sought repose away from
Attica.

But sedition was not ended. Only dire peril from with
out could accomplish that. Now comes the tyranny of
Pesistratus, a man of wisdom and moderation, who, prob
ably, more than any other Greek statesman exemplified
Plato's ideal of the reasonable ruler. Pesistratus was,
however, a constitutional ruler. Anticipating Aristotle,
he made law the supreme authority, in this case the law
of Solon. Yet, he was forced by his opponents twice to
leave the city. After ruling wisely and successfully for
nineteen years, Pesistratus died at an advanced age.
Now comes the episode of Harmodias and Aristogiton, the
expulsion of the Pesistratidae by the Lacedaemonians
called in by those same Alkmaeonidae now long in exile
and seeking to return and able to influence the oracle at
Delphi. Party strife continues until in the year 508,
some nineteen years after the death of Pesistratus, one
man having been elected archon, another, Cleisthenes, is
determined he shall not occupy the office. Again the
Spartans are called upon in behalf of the elected candidate.
Cleisthenes flees and seven hundred families charged with
supporting him are exiled. But the oligarchic enterprise
fails, its leaders are forced to withdraw from Attica, and
their adherents are massacred by the Athenians of demo-

GREEK POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 57

cratic sympathies. Thus did the city, when left to its
own devices, practise the moderation enjoined by Solon.
The fragments of Solon are so interesting and refer so
unmistakably to problems similar to those that later
writers sought to assuage with the pharmaka of philosophy,
that a translation of those that are relevant is here
appended.28

My eyes are opened, and sorrow fills my heart to see this most
ancient land of Ionia tottering to its fall (Frag. 3).

Never shall our city perish by the will of Zeus and of the blessed gods
that are deathless, for Pallas Athene, high-hearted guardian, daughter
of a mighty sire, holds over it her hands. But they, dwellers themselves
in the town, seek in their folly to destroy a mighty state, bribed with
money. A wicked mind is that of the people's chiefs; out of this
great arrogance shall come upon them many woes, for they know not
how to check their greed, nor how to let sobriety rule over their feasting.

Trusting in wickedness they increase in wealth.

They rob, respecting neither possessions of the gods nor of the
people, each one wheresoever he may, bent on plunder; nor do they
keep the holy ordinances of Justice, who, though in silence, marks too
what befalls, and what has come to pass, yet shall she in the fullness of
time surely come, exacting atonement. Already has this befallen all
the city, a wound not to be avoided. Speedily it comes to evil slavery
that awakens civil strife from its sleep, her that of many a one destroys
the lovely youth. For soon is our beloved city destroyed by her foes
in conflicts dear to the unrighteous. These are the evils that go to and
fro among the people. Of the poor, many sold into slavery depart
into a foreign land, fettered with shameful bonds. [All unwilling they
endure the loathsome wrongs of servitude.] Thus the trouble of the
people comes to the home of each. No longer do the outer gates bar it out ;
it leaps the lofty wall : surely it finds you, though you flee to the cham
ber's innermost corner. This my heart moves me to proclaim to the
folk of Athens, that lawlessness prepares for the city woes uncountable,
but law-abiding reveals all things in befitting harmony, putting, mean
while, fetters upon the bad. She makes rough places smooth, stops

" The text and the arrangement is that of the convenient collection in Gilliard,
Quelques Riformes de Solon, Lausanne, 1907. (For assistance in the rendering I am
under great obligations to colleagues in the department of Greek.)

58 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

greed, and over arrogance she draws a veil. She withers the growths
of recklessness, makes crooked judgments straight, and softens deeds
of insolence. She ends the bitterness of grievous strife: under her
rule, all human things endure in order and in reasonableness (Frag. 4).

Thus would the people best follow its leaders, were it not too much
relieved nor too hard pressed (Frag. 6).

For surfeit breeds arrogance, when much wealth waits on men
whom reason does not serve. You who have beyond measure seized
on many good things, put measure in your proud minds, subduing the
haughty temper in your hearts; for neither shall we be persuaded nor
shall those things be yours (Frag. 8).

Lines intended to explain and justify the Poet's work in politics

To the people, I have given the power that sufficed for them, not
diminishing their privileges nor increasing them. But to the powerful
and to them that are conspicuous for wealth, I gave counsel to own
nothing stained with dishonor. Holding before each party a mighty
shield, I took my stand, nor did I grant to either a triumph without
justice (Frag. 5).

In great undertakings hard is it to please all (Frag. 7).

If I have respected my country, and have not seized upon tyranny
and unrelenting violence, polluting and disgracing my fame, I do not
regret; for thus I deem I shall most completely win mankind (Frag. 32).

Solon was not born to be a man of wisdom in counsel, for when the
gods sent glorious gifts, of his own will he did not accept them. Encom
passing his prey, amazed he did not haul in the great net, but lost his
courage and his wits. Could I but for a day rule singly over the Atheni
ans, and seize unstinted wealth, I would give my skin for a winesack
and my family for destruction (Frag. 33).

But those that came bent on plunder had high hopes, and each of
them deemed he was about to find great wealth, and thought that I,
though smooth in speech, would show a rough intention. Foolishly,
then, they talked; now wrathfully, with eyes askance, all look at me as
at a dangerous foe. Unjust! For what I promised that have I with the
help of the gods accomplished. And more besides have I not wrought
in vain. Nor does it please me to do aught by force of tyranny, nor am I
glad that the nobles should have but equal portion with the base of
our fatherland's rich soil (Frags. 34 and 35).

GREEK POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 59

Trimetra

For what reason I, when driving the car of state, stopped before the
people had got any of these things, to this the mighty mother of all
Olympian deities would best bear testimony before the court of Time,
black Earth, she that was in bondage and that now is free; many of
her mortgage stones I overthrew that were set up. Many sold into
slavery did I lead back, back to Athens, their divinely-founded father
land, some unjustly and some justly sold. Some, fleeing from necessity
not to be opposed, no longer spoke the Attic tongue, so much had they
wandered; others, at home, enduring dire slavery and trembling at a
despot's ways did I set free. These things, indeed, by force of law I
did, yoking strength with justice, and I wrought as I had promised.
Equal laws I wrote for low and high, building straightforward justice
for every man. Had another held the goad I held, a man of folly,
greedy for gain, he would not have held in check the people. Had I
granted what was pleasing to my opponents, and on the other hand,
what the other party designed against them, the state had been bereaved
of many men. For their sake, facing boldly toward every side, I
whirled as does a wolf among many hounds.

The people, if one must speak frankly, never in their dreams beheld
what now they have. [If I had left them as they were] the noble and
the strong would praise me, making me a friend.

Aristotle introduces the next verse by the words, "If any
one else had held this responsibility."

He would not have controlled the people, nor would he have rested
till he had churned the butter from the milk. But I, as between armies,
set up a limit (Frag. 36).

Lines against the tyranny of Pesistratus

From the clouds is wont to come the storm of snow and hail, and
from the gleaming lightning, the thunder, and from powerful men the
undoing of the state. Into subjection to a tyrant, the people fell
through want of foresight. Not easy is it later to hold in check one
raised too high, but without delay must all things be considered (Frag. 9).

A little time will show my madness to the townsmen, when the truth
shall come into our midst (Frag. 10).

If through your own perversity you have suffered grievous things,
blame not the gods for it, since yourselves have magnified these men by
giving them guards. And for this is evil servitude your portion. Each

6O STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

one of you walks in the fox's track; in all of you is a fool's mind, for you
attend to the tongue and the speech of a wily man, heeding in no wise
the deed that is being wrought (Frag. n).

The sea is stirred by the winds, but if one move it not, it is of all
things most evenly disposed (Frag. 12).

The very interesting Fragment 13 is too long to quote
and not all of it is relevant; the following portion (16-32)
should not be overlooked :

For not long shall the works of hubris prosper among mortals. But
Zeus watches over the issue of all things. As in spring, a whirlwind
from the clouds suddenly scatters them, one that stirs to its depths the
unharvested sea, heaving with many waves, bringing ruin to fair works
over the wheat-bearing earth; and it reaches unto heaven, the lofty
seat of the gods. And straightway the air is clear, and the might of
the sun gleams along the fair and fruitful earth, and not a cloud is to
be seen. Such the vengeance of Zeus,, keen in wrath, but not like a
mortal, mindful of every sin itself. Yet not forever shall he pass un
marked who has an evil mind; surely at last it shall show forth. One
pays speedily, another later, and though they escape and the fate of
the gods catches them not, yet surely shall it come in time; the inno
cent pay the deeds, the children or the family hereafter.

No mortal is happy, all are wretched, as many as the sun looks down
upon (Frag. 14).

Many base men are rich, while good men are poor; but we would
not take their wealth in exchange for virtue, for that is a support for
ever; but human wealth, now one man has and now another (Frag. 15).

Most hard it is to know the unseen measure of wisdom that alone
tests all things (Frag. 16).

A history like this makes political philosophers. It is
often said that political thought begins with the Greeks,
but if one asks when it began, one must seek its origin
in a time long before the day when the philosophical classics
that we possess were written. Political thinking began
with political discontent; with the sense of the injustice
of a class and the dim and hardly articulate consciousness
of a righteous cause. It may have begun even earlier
than that, for it must be present in some measure as soon

GREEK POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 6l

as men seek to have a polis and to manage its affairs. And
if we understand the synoikismos as the coming together
into one group of a number of smaller groups, each with
its own aristocratic authority, tradition, and exclusiveness,
and conceiving itself as having the unity and solidarity of
a natural family, the problem of organizing these rival
units into a coherent group may well have been the first
political problem, with the problem of rich and poor, the
few and the many coming later. Greek political philosophy
was quite naturally speculation on the best way of getting
and maintaining the cooperative group, because such a
group-organization was so necessary and — for such radical
individualists — frequently so impossible. What seems to
us the first political virtue, the capacity for compromise,
the Greeks hardly possessed, and their use of the lot,
that seemed to Socrates such a contemptible evasion of
responsibility, served really, whatever its origin, for the
defense of minorities. "When the balance of power had
swung over, everything went with it, and the change was
thorough and radical." Thus there was little in Greece
of what makes a steady and successful social order, gradual
political development. "She substitutes the law-giver for
the code, and the law-giver was the creature of the revolu
tion."29 Their anxiety about extremely effective individu
als reveals their political instinct for what such individualism
was likely to signify among themselves. Plutarch who, in
spite of his pious credulity, must be accepted as a source
of information, explains that "ostracism was instituted not
so much to punish the offender as to mitigate and purify
the violence of the envious, who delighted to humble emi
nent men, and who, by fixing this disgrace upon them,
might vent some part of their rancor."30 And of Pericles,
while young: "Reflecting, too, that he had a considerable

29 Greenidge, Handbook of Greek Constitutional History, pp. 6 and 139.

30 Life of Themistocles, Dryden-Clough, Vol. I, p. 256.

62 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

estate, and was descended of a noble family, and had
friends of great influence, he was fearful all this might
bring him to be banished as a dangerous person; and for
this reason meddled not at all with state affairs, but in
military service showed himself of a brave, intrepid nature."
And presently: "Cimon also was banished by ostracism,
as a favorer of the Lacedaemonians and hater of the people,
though in wealth and noble birth he was among the first,
and had won several most glorious victories over the bar
barians, and had filled the city with money and spoils of
war, as is recorded in the history of his life. So vast an
authority had Pericles obtained among the people." 31

What prevented compromise, of which Solon and Pesis-
tratus so well understood the necessity, was the passion for
avrapida, the virtue fanatically insisted upon by the Stoics,
who revealed its anti-social implications, but which was
from the beginning the ideal and the superstition of the
Hellenic character. The statement, then, that "thus it
would appear that Greek political thought began with
democracy, and in the attempt of the 'many' to answer
by argument the claims of aristocratic prestige," 32 is
substantially correct. But though Greek political specu
lation began with the problems whose reality was felt
most keenly by the "many," it closed, if we somewhat
arbitrarily close such a history, with the Politics of Aris
totle, with the problems of the "few." Always the message
of philosophy was moderation, always the virtue most
praised because most needed was (rouppoavvrj.

How is it, one may ask, that the political thinkers of a
people whose career had been so full of revolution could
seriously insist upon the immutability of laws, could dream
of finding the best and therefore final form of the state?
I am not looking for the fallacy of any single cause, but if

11 Life of Pericles, Dryden-Clough, Vol. I, pp. 320 and 330.
K Barker, Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle, p. 4.

GREEK POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 63

Greek history shows nearly everywhere, the determination
of one class to write the laws for another, we must conclude
that when either party had once written the laws, its chief
concern would be to make sure of their permanence. To
any law-giver, change meant not progress, but relapse; it
meant the substitution of other laws from the other and
execrable point of view. Solon sought, we are told, to
establish his constitution for a hundred years. It was only
through the wisdom of Pesistratus, the tyrant, that it was
tried at all.

"Plato had no physics," says Santayana, "and Aristotle's
physics was false." It was false because of the teleological
point of view that makes the wisdom of Greek ethics and
politics. The Greeks were political philosophers before
they speculated about physics. Or at least, their experi
ence of political issues was far more abundant and far better
calculated to provide significant categories. It has been
said33 that the category of <pv<ns arose in the course of
physical speculation, and was taken over by political
philosophy. On the other hand, the relation between early
Greek philosophy and legislation was very close, a connec
tion that made it easy to take ethical and legal metaphors
for serious descriptions of nature. Consider for a moment
this statement: "However much attention the physical
philosophers may have paid to political life, their political
theory was but an offshoot of their cosmology, and an
accident of their attempt to find a material substratum out
of which the world of changes was produced."34 Yet,
the same writer continues, "When we attempt to discover
what Athenians were thinking in the later fifth century,
we seem to see men reflecting primarily about politics
and the world of man's conduct and institutions: if they
turn to physics, it is 'by way of illustration', and to get

53 Burnet, International Journal of Ethics, Vol. VII, pp. 328, et seq.
84 Barker, p. 24.

64 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

examples (which they fancy will serve as proofs) for their
political ideas." The parallel between the law of the
world and the law of the state which appears in the declara
tion of Heraclitus "that the Furies would track down the
sun if it left its course finds its counterpart," says Barker,
"in the saying that the people must fight for their law as
much as for their city's walls." Now there can be no
doubt that what Heraclitus really knew about was cities
fighting for their laws, and we may at least ask the ques
tion whether it was not a party rather than a city that was
in the habit of fighting for its laws. The conservatives,
i. e., the aristocratic party, may be more appropriately said
to fight for its laws, embodying the ancient justice of the
city, than the party that seeks to introduce progressive
innovations. The ancient justice of the group is what is
common because bequeathed to all; it has the sanction of
religion; of course its substance is divine. And when a
Eupatrid, holding the office of fiaaiXevs and lamenting, as
he must have done, over the mutations of established
things, says that all must keep to their appointed courses
or suffer some cosmic penalty, is it likely that metaphysical
considerations "led Heraclitus to adopt an aristocratic
temper?"35 Or did an aristocratic temper influence the
metaphysics? I am seeking less to argue the question than
to ask it; but it seems improbable that there can have
been any such abrupt transition from physical to ethical
speculation as the histories of philosophy are accustomed
to describe. Plutarch, in explaining that Themistocles
could not possibly have had for a teacher any one who
was a contemporary of Pericles, continues: "They, there
fore, might rather be credited who report that Themistocles
was an admirer of Mnesiphilus, the Phrearrian, who was
neither rhetorician nor natural philosopher, but a professor

15 Barker, p. 23. Many expressions in the above paragraph are taken from Mr.
Barker's admirable work, to which I cordially acknowledge my obligation.

GREEK POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 65

of that which was then called wisdom, consisting in a sort
of political shrewdness and practical sagacity, which had
begun and continued almost like a sect of philosophy from
Solon; but those who came afterwards and mixed it with
pleadings and legal artifices, and transformed the practical
part of it into a mere art of speaking and an exercise of
words, were generally called sophists. Themistocles
resorted to Mnesiphilus when he had already embarked in
politics."36

The real founder of Athenian democracy, if one may
give so much credit to any one man, was not Solon, but
Cleisthenes.37 Political strife has from now on a different
character. Under the old arrangement of social groups,
the great families fought among themselves for the posses
sion of office. The reform of Cleisthenes consisted chiefly
in such a reorganization and redistribution of social groups
that the aristocratic and exclusive self-consciousness of the
clans gradually disappeared. Even if Athens was not
transformed under Cleisthenes "from the clan state into
the political state," 38 nevertheless the most serious obstacle
to that transformation was removed, and the state assumed
a much more organic character, a construction of inter
related and cooperating parts, one that might be described
by analogies drawn from living nature, and have as its ideal
the healthy state of a natural organism. Only for a little
while, however, was the enthusiasm for sedition abated.
But in that little while, Greece lived her great hour. The
reader of Herodotus shudders, however, to see the Greek
allies escaping treachery to one another by so narrow a
margin. And that so disciplined a soldier as Themistocles
should be carried away by egotism, points to conditions that
we commonly overlook. "And he yet more provoked the

M Plutarch, Themistocles, p. 233.

17 Francotte, "La Polis Grecque," in Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des Allertums.
Band I, Heft 3, p. 4.

38 Botsford, Loc. cit, p. 198.

66 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

people by building a temple to Diana with the epithet of
Aristobule or Diana of Best Counsel, intimating thereby
that he had given the best counsel not only to the Atheni
ans, but to all Greece. . . At length the Athenians ban
ished him, making use of the ostracism to humble his emi
nence and authority, as they ordinarily did with all whom
they thought too powerful, or, by their greatness, dis-
proportionable to the equality thought requisite in a popu
lar government."39

"The remark has been made, that, if Aristotle could have
seen through some magic glass the course of human develop
ment and decay for the thousand years following his death,
the disappointment would have broken his heart. A dis
appointment of the same sort, but more sharp and stinging,
inasmuch as men's hopes were both higher and cruder, did,
as a matter of fact, break the hearts of many men two or
three generations earlier."40 That was when Thucydides
recorded his great disillusion. A brief span of years had
seen a high enthusiasm for progress, an enthusiasm based,
no doubt, upon many things. "But for one thing, there was
the extraordinary swiftness of the advances made; and for
another, there was a circumstance that has rarely been
repeated in history — the fact that all the different advances
appeared to help one another . . . And Democracy was
at this time a thing which stirred enthusiasm." A speaker
says in Herodotus (III, 80): "A tyrant disturbs ancient
laws, violates women, kills men without trial. But a people
ruling — first the very name of it is so beautiful, 'Isonomie'
(Equality in law); and secondly, a people does none of
these things."41 As a symbol of that time's first promise,
we might take the picture of the young Sophocles leading
the chorus of boys in the celebration of the victory of
Salamis; and as an expression of it the chorus in the

»• Plutarch, Themislodes, p. 255.

48 Gilbert Murray, Introductory essay to translation of The Bacchae, p. xxi.

«' Loc. cit., XXIII-XXIV.

GREEK POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 67

Antigone: "Much is there marvelous, but naught more
marvelous than man. Over the foaming sea in winter's
wind he goes, moving the waves that roar around. That
greatest of the gods, the everlasting and unwearied earth,
he wears away, wheeling his ploughshare through it year
by year, forcing the mule to trace his furrow."42 Surely a
contrast to Solon's vision of navigation and ploughing. "A
poor man, compelled by works of poverty, thinks he surely
will gain wealth. One strives for one thing, one for another.
One wanders over the sea in ships, longing to bring home a
profit of fish, driven ceaselessly by grievous winds, nor ever
spares his life. Another toils for hire throughout a year,
cleaving the tree-bearing soil, minding the crooked plough
for others." 43

Perhaps the passage so eloquently cited by Dr. Murray
does not testify so unequivocally to the writer's democracy
as we should like to believe. The next speaker in the
conversation replies that he can not agree to the sentiment
just expressed. "For there is nothing so void of under
standing, nothing so full of wantonness as the unwieldy
rabble. . .It rushes wildly into state affairs with all
the fury of a stream swollen in the winter and confuses
everything."44 And there follows a praise of monarchy
which Plato would certainly endorse. Whatever the vision
of democracy that cheered Herodotus in his prime,
"It was some twenty-five years later that an Athenian
statesman of moderate, or rather popular, antecedents,
said in a speech at Sparta:45 'Of course, all sensible
men know what Democracy is, and I better than most,
having suffered, but there is nothing new to be said about
acknowledged insanity.'"46 The affairs of Corcyra, as

42 Palmer's translation, p. 43.

43 Frag. 13, 41-48.

44 Herodotus, III, 81. Rawlinson's translation.
46 Thucydides, VI, 89.

46 Gilbert Murray, loc. cit., p. XXV.

68 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

described by Thucydides (III, 81-84), illustrate the worst
that the second speaker in Herodotus can have imagined.
The description is too powerful and too concentrated to
summarize. For seven days, while the Athenian admiral
with sixty ships remained, come to espouse the popular
party, the members of that party "continued slaughtering
those of their fellow-citizens whom they deemed their
enemies; they professed to punish them for their designs
against the democracy, but in fact some were killed from
motives of personal enmity, and some because money was
owing to them by the hands of their debtors. Every form
of death was to be seen; and everything and more than
everything that commonly happens in revolutions hap
pened then." The end of the story (IV, 46-48) can hardly
be surpassed in horror. "Thus the Corcyreans in the
mountain (oligarchs) were destroyed by the people, and,
at least while the Peloponnesian war lasted, there was an
end of the great sedition. The Athenians then sailed for
Sicily, their original destination, and there fought in con
cert with the allies." The war had been in progress four
years. It continued twenty- three years longer. In this
year Plato was born. And when he was fourteen years old,
came the Athenian disaster at Syracuse, of all Hellenic
actions, "the most glorious to the victors, the most ruinous
to the vanquished ; for they were utterly and at all points
defeated, and their sufferings were prodigious. Fleet and
army perished from the face of the earth; nothing was
saved, and of the many who went forth, few returned
home." 4T Two years later, during the brief experi
ment in oligarchy, and while the city was in a state
of [revolution 4S came a defeat that threatened to shut
the Athenians out of Euboea. "Euboea was all in all
to them now that they were shut out from Attica. The

" Thucydides, Jowett's translation, VII, 87.
« Loc cil., VIII, 95-

GREEK POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 69

Athenians were panic-stricken. Nothing which had hap
pened before, not even the ruin of the Sicilian expedition,
however overwhelming at the time, had so terrified them.
The army at Samos was in insurrection ; they had no ships
in reserve, nor crews to man them; there was revolution
at home — civil war might break out at any moment: and
by this new and terrible misfortune they had lost, not only
their ships, but what was worse, Euboea, on which they
were more dependent for supplies than on Attica itself"
(VIII, 96). But the result was a return to limited democ
racy. "This government, during its earlier days, was the
best which the Athenians ever enjoyed within my memory.
Oligarchy and Democracy were duly attempered. And,
thus, after the miserable state into which she had fallen,
the city was able to raise her head" (VIII, 97).

Thucydides bequeathed his history to mankind as an
eternal possession. Did he know, when he wrote that
announcement, what his book was to contain? In any case,
he knew that a matchless opportunity had come to observe
the behavior of people under conditions that call mightily
for the virtue of moderation, and the guiding power of
reason, an opportunity to watch how political institutions
exhibit their excellences and their defects. It is hard to
cease from quoting him. The feeling of mankind toward
Athens (II, 9), the moral degeneration consequent upon the
plague (II, 53), and the reminder by Pericles, that Athens
had become a tyrant city, must be alluded to. The reader
of Thucydides shares in his author's disillusion.

Xenophon, who continues the story of Hellenic affairs,
reveals a less emancipated mind than Thucydides. His
history, though there is much less temptation to quote from
it, sustains our disillusion. One is tempted to say that his
thinking is a little orthodox and academic. He shared the
political and ethical preconceptions that were current
among experienced and educated men. One of these, "the

7O STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

ethical doctrine which is a leading theme of Herodotus's
histories, concerning {retributive justice "TjSpis — "Arri —
Ne^eais whether in men or states," 49 is of particular interest.
The justice that Solon prophesied was visited upon Athens
for the arrogance and recklessness that Thucydides de
scribes. When the news came of the defeat that lost the
war, "There was mourning and sorrow for those that were
lost, but the lamentation for the dead was merged in even
deeper sorrow for themselves, as they pictured the evils
they were about to surfer, the like of which they had them
selves inflicted upon the men of Melos, who were colonists
of the Lacedaemonians, when they mastered them by siege.
Or, on the men of Histiaea and Torone; on the Aeginetans,
and many another Hellene city." 50 Plato was twenty-three
years old. The second experiment in oligarchy was quite
retribution enough. The tyrant city had its own experience
of tyranny. The parties came finally to an understanding.
"The oath they bound themselves by consisted of a simple
asservation: 'We will remember past offenses no more,'
and to this day the two parties live amicably together as
good citizens, and the democracy is steadfast to its oath."51
Thus did Xenophon conclude the narrative undertaken
by his great predecessor. But he proceeds to describe the
even clearer case of hubris and nemesis provided by the
domination of Sparta. What a calamity this was for
Greece and for Sparta herself is told by Grote in Chapter
72 of his history where he affirms "that the first years
of the Spartan empire, which followed the victory of
Aegispotami, were years of all-pervading tyranny and
multifarious intestine calamity, such as Greece had never
before endured. The hardships of war, severe in many
ways, were now at an end, but they were replaced by a
state of suffering not the less difficult to bear because it

*• Dakyns, The Works of Xenophon, II, p. xxxii.
60 Loc. cit., I, p. 44.
01 Loc. cit., I, p. 75.

GREEK POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 71

was called peace. And what made the suffering yet more
intolerable was that it was a bitter disappointment and a
flagrant violation of promises proclaimed repeatedly and
explicitly by the Lacedaemonians themselves."52 Here is
the impression of Xenophon: "Abundant examples might
be found, alike in Hellenic and in foreign history, to prove
that the Divine powers mark what is done amiss, winking
neither at impiety nor at the commission of unhallowed
acts; but at present I confine myself to the facts before
me. The Lacedaemonians, who had pledged themselves
by oath to leave the states independent, had laid violent
hands on the Acropolis of Thebes, and were eventually
punished by the victims of that iniquity single-handed —
the Lacedaemonians, be it noted, who had never before
been mastered by living man; and not they alone, but
those citizens of Thebes who introduced them into their
Acropolis, and who wished to enslave their city to Lacedae-
mon, that they might play the tyrant themselves — how
fared it with them? A bare score of the fugitives were
sufficient to destroy their government."53

So the opportunity of another tyrant city seemed to
have come. Thebes aspired as a matter of course to the
hegemony of Greece, which meant dominion over tribute-
paying states and control of their foreign policies. Finally,
"where well-nigh the whole of Hellas was met together in
one field, and the combatants stood rank against rank con
fronted, there was no one who doubted that, in the event of
battle the conquerors this day would rule; and that those
who lost would be their subjects."54 The state that aimed
at conquest always came offering liberty, and always ended
by withholding it. No one expected anything else. Given
the opportunity, fySpts seemed inevitable; and then fol
lowed OLTV) and ve/iecrts. Through all this drama the great

"Grote, VII, p. 359.
63 Dakyns, II, p. 119.
"Loc. cit., II, p. 233.

72 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

individual is everywhere in evidence, the individual who,
it is constantly remarked, hardly finds recognition in Greek
political philosophy. The fascination of the seemingly
self-sufficient man for the Greek imagination is clear
enough. One of the theses of Eduard Meyer is that history
develops and releases the individual. The certainty of
pride, recklessness, and retribution on the part of the city
as of the citizen, should the opportunity appear, is, perhaps,
a reason not sufficiently acknowledged for the identification
by the Greeks of ethics and politics.

On the whole, the confusion and disorganization of Greek
political life are not likely to be exaggerated. Our informa
tion comes, for the most part, through writers of excep
tional intelligence, whose sanity and humanity we mis
takenly assume to be representative. We attribute their
partiality for Spartan ways to their political grievances or
party attachments. We forget that the great organ of
equality, the printing-press, did not exist. Democracy
without a printing-press, especially a direct democracy,
speaking for itself and not through appointed representa
tives, was a very different system from anything that we
are used to praise by calling it democracy. The political
philosophy that should be written with a remedial purpose,
as that of Plato and Aristotle clearly was, would naturally
give us an "organic" theory of the state with an emphasis
upon order and conservation, and a radical disparaging of
what we prize as individuality. An examination in detail
of this political philosophy would be superfluous. It is
not its detail, but its general character that is of greatest
interest here. No one would deny, I suppose, that Plato
and Aristotle were writing for and about their own real
world. Plato's vitriolic characterizations of democracy and
his drastic scheme of social reform forbid us to regard his
speculations as academic. As for Aristotle, surprise is
often expressed that when the chapter of the city state was

GREEK POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 73

already closed, he should be unable to imagine social
organization in other and larger forms. Here too, however,
we have an instance of using the indicative mode with the
imperative intention. The old manner of life must be
recovered, because that was evidently the way in which
the Greeks had lived according to nature, their own nature.
"Professional armies had superseded the city militia:
Demosthenes is ceaselessly rebuking the Athenian's want
of patriotism for Athens: civic virtue seemed to be dead.
New life must be poured into the city: a 'revival' must
begin, which should rejuvenate Greece. Athens had her
reformers busy with this task at the time when Aristotle
was writing the Politics; and his rehabilitation of the
theory of the State went side by side with their attempts
at a practical renovation of the old glories of Solon. It
was natural that he should warn the Greeks of his time not
to be carried away by false philosophies, nor to grow slack
in their devotion to the city whereof they were citizens.
That city was indispensable to their independence: it
had grown up around them because it was. Fashionable
philosophies might decry its claims; politics might be unin
teresting and even sordid. None the less, the State, which
had given all, claimed from every man the use of his best
faculties in its cause : it could permit no man to retire into
the solitude of a cynic's tub." 55

Aristotle was, however, not improbably the victim of
his own point of view. Whatever exists in the manner of
nature, finds its form and stops. It can only disintegrate
then, unless it can maintain itself at the point of complete
development. Evidently, Athens had passed beyond the
point of moderate democracy. Somewhere in the past,
perhaps with the constitution of Solon or of Cleisthenes,
Athens had found the "form" of a city and should have
stopped there. In any case, the polis is a natural thing

66 Barker, p. 273.

74 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

with its characteristic perfection, and for any natural thing
the ways of missing perfection are infinite, but there is
only one way of attaining it. Men have lived so long
upon the earth, and most things have been long ago found
out.

Another factor in what seems like radical conservatism is
that very teleology that we so much admire. Socrates
was accustomed to insist that politics was an art, because
affairs could be kept under control only in specific and
technical ways. In proportion as a thing is conceived as
controllable, it is conceived as specific. The aireipov
is what is uncontrollable; it is 7r4pas, then, that must
characterize the natural TroXis, if that particular growth
is one to which man can adapt himself, and which, by the
exercise of wisdom, he can control. The conservatism
latent in the metaphor of a living organism is obvious, but
this was what a long experience of disorder seemed to call
for. The physiological analogy was what the somewhat
indeterminate idea of yvais was able to supply.

And here we have one of the most interesting and slip
pery words in the entire terminology of philosophy. The
important thing about ^uo-is, however, is not where it orig
inated, or what a Greek would have said it really meant,
but how it was used. As is constantly pointed out, it was
very often used in antithesis to j/6/ios, and whatever was
an instance of vo^os was man-made, and the Greeks knew
how transitory man-made things were. The sanction of
vonos might be the gods, or the ancestral tradition, but
<pv<ri.s was the sanction of innovation. There is no need of
denying that <pv(ris may have meant for the lonians some
primary form of matter. If it was taken over from physics
to ethics (which, however, remains to be proved), it was at
least taken over, and if one may apply to it Aristotle's own
doctrine, we may say that it attained its own "form" in
Aristotle's idea of the state as a natural and not an artificial

GREEK POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 75

thing. If the Politics of Aristotle is a praise of
we may find the praise of vonos in the lines of Sophocles
quoted above, in the famous doctrine of Protagoras, and in
the skepticism, so called, of Gorgias. I can do no more
than raise the question whether the "real" meaning of these
terms will not be found to reflect the discussions in which
men were most interested from Hesiod to Aristotle. Only
an expert in moral antiquities could answer the question.
He would probably call our attention to the fact that it
was in the era of Greek colonization that Man of Wisdom
was almost synonymous with law-giver, and that coloniza
tion was a function of social discontent.56

In any account of the influences that were most effective
in forming the moral imagination of the Greeks, an impor
tant place should be given to Greek tragedy, which was a
formative influence because it was an expression of char
acteristic moral sentiment. Thoughtful tragedy shows the
imagination in its most serious mood, preoccupied with the
problems of sin and folly. On this general point, I venture
one more quotation from Dr. Murray: "Most of the
Homeric words of disapproval mean something like 'excess'
or 'going too far', and imply that there are points where
a man should check himself. The wicked are drdo-tfaXot
'outrageous', virtpr)<pavoi, 'overweening', adiKoi, 'away from
Dike', justice or law: most of all wickedness is "T/3pts.
That word is the antithesis of aw<ppoavvr] and of cUSws,
and like its antithesis it defies translation into our forms
of thought. It unites so many ideas which we analyze
and separate: and it has a peculiar emotional thrill in it,
which is lost instantly if we attempt to make careful sci
entific definitions . . . Hubris is the insolence of irrever
ence: the brutality of strength. In one form it is a sin
of the low and weak, irreverence; the absence of Aid6s in
the presence of something higher. But nearly always it

66 Plato, Laws, 736 A.

76 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

is a sin of the strong and proud. It is born of koros, or
satiety — 'of being too well off'; it spurns the weak and
helpless out of its path, 'spurns,' asAeschylus says, 'the great
Altar of Dike' (Ag., 383). And Hubris is the typical sin
condemned of early Greece. Other sins, except some con
nected with definite religious taboos, and derived from
words meaning 'ugly' or 'unfitting', seem nearly all to be
forms or derivations of hubris."57 In Hesiod and in Solon,
the saving virtue is moderation ; in the Laws of Plato and
in the Ethics and Politics of Aristotle, the best conduct and
the best institutions are a mean between two perversions.
Plato's famous symbol for democracy, the mutinous crew,58
was anticipated by Theognis: "Wherefore we are borne on
now, having pulled down our white sails, from the Melian
Sea through murky gloom : But they do not choose to bale
the ship, and the sea surmounts both the vessel's sides,
whereby with great difficulty any one saves himself: yet,
the sailors are slumbering and have made the pilot, good
though he was, cease from his work, the pilot who used to
watch over it understandingly. By force they plunder
property, order is upset, and no longer is there an equal
distribution in common: but the porters bear rule and the
mean are above the noble. I fear lest haply the waves
should engulf the ship."59 And this: "Cyrnus, this state is
still a state indeed: but its people truly are other, who
aforetime knew no rights nor laws, but were wont to wear
out goat-skins about their sides, and to inhabit this city
like stags, without the walls. And now, son of Polypas,
they are noble: but they who were bettermost of yore are
now of low degree: who can endure to look on these
things?"60 And this: "Insolence hath ruined both the
Magnesians and Colophon and Smyrna, Cyrnus, it will

" The Rise of the Greek Epic, pp. 337-338.
" Republic, IV. p. 488.

59 Bank's translation, Bohn Library, p. 255.
50 Loc. cit., p. 220.

GREEK POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 77

certainly ruin us likewise."61 And this: "No one of the
present races of man doth the sun look down upon, being
entirely good and moderate." 62 Euripides makes one of
his characters tell how he would pause at nothing to win
power; then his mother replies, explaining that nature gave
man equality before the law, and measures of weight and
number.

The sightless face of night and the sun's beam
Equally pace along their yearly round
Nor envieth that it must give place.63

This passage and others have persuaded a German philo
logist that Euripides has versified "a political treatise which
he would connect with the period and school of Antiphon.
The motive of this treatise was a parallel between the
order of the State and the order of the World, by which a
State under the sovereignty of law was justified, and
government was proved to rest with a middle class (con
sisting, apparently, of peasant farmers), similar to that
which the revolution of 411 attempted to put into power."64
This effort by Dummler may seem a bit desperate, but the
data for a dramatist were at hand. It was this same effort
to equalize the claims of oligarchy and democracy that had
the approval of Thucydides. "This government, during
its early days, was the best which the Athenians ever
enjoyed within my memory." And what Thucydides
approved is probably what Aristotle recommended as the
best means of preventing what Theognis called "The
people-destroying seditions of the Greeks." 65

To call attention to the wisdom and the permanent value
of the social ethics that have come down to us under the
names of Plato and Aristotle would be quite superfluous.

81 Loc. cit., p. 277.

62 Loc. cit., p. 252.

K The Phoenician Maidens, Way's translation, 543-545.

M Barker, loc. cit., p. 25.

65 Loc. cit., p. 260.

78 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

If the world is about to try more unreservedly the experi
ment of democracy, the nations will surely need this ancient
counsel of moderation. Can we trace this central idea
to any early school? There is probably much justice in
Burnet's conviction of the importance of the Pythagorean
tradition among the influences to which Plato was exposed.
There is a world of suggestion in the verb dp^6fco.

And finally, in this connection, the student of Greek
achievement should bear in mind the theory of Boas,66 that
primitive human stocks do not differ in original endowment,
but that what we call racial superiority is the result of the
discipline exacted by nature and history. The genius of the
city is the collective genius of its members, and the indi
vidual is, of course, trained in the school of responsibility
and need. The authority of Boas here will not be disputed,
though his opinion may be. Yet one who holds to the
orthodox faith that the Greeks were a race somehow mirac
ulously superior has no call to deny that the Greek genius
owed much, no one can say how much, to a history of almost
unremitting struggle to avert calamity.

The reader of this paper, having reached the end, is
no doubt struck chiefly by the wholesale omission of topics
that deserve discussion. One of these is the question:
To what extent is Plato's theory of the ideal state, as he
has sketched it in the Republic, a theory of social reform
and social discipline, and to what extent is it a metaphor
for individual morality? That it functions as a metaphor,
Plato himself assures us. But Aristotle discusses the
Republic, without any apologies, as a contribution to a
theory of society. It may not be amiss to testify that
when we hear the familiar laudation of our heritage from
Greece, we may remember that one of its items of greatest
value is precisely this realization that politics and ethics

" Franz Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man.

GREEK POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 79

are aspects of a single subject-matter, and that sound and
fruitful living begins when that is widely understood.
And I shall indulge in one more quotation from Mr. Bar
ker's excellent book (p. 185): "There is as little 'absolutely
new in the Politics as there is in Magna Carta. Neither is
meant to be new: both are meant to codify previous devel
opment. But Magna Carta remains the great document of
English history; and the Politics remains the great docu
ment of Greek political thought — as Plato remains the great
political thinker of Greece."

WENDELL T. BUSH

FRANCIS BACON AND THE HISTORY OF
PHILOSOPHY

The first history of philosophy written in English which
may lay claim to serious consideration was published in
l655 by Thomas Stanley, who is better known to the
world as a Caroline poet and a classical scholar than as the
author of The History of Philosophy, containing the Lives,
Opinions, Actions, and Discourses of the Philosophers of
every Sect. This work of Stanley is scarcely more than an
attempt to take the third-century literary patch-work of
fact and fable about the Schools, which has come down to
us as the compilation of Diogenes Laertius, amplify it, and
supplement it by a series of translations.1 Even before
Stanley's time, however, there might have been written a
history of philosophy which would not have been mere
repetition of the old, if the brief directions of Francis Bacon
regarding its composition had been seriously followed.

In his review of all the learning of his time and in his plan
for its advancement, Bacon treated nearly every phase of
human endeavor, and almost without exception, he sug
gested methods of procedure which outstripped his own
and the next following century. His ability to get at the
essential in the whole body of the arts and sciences is as
remarkable as Shakespeare's ability to depict the whole of
human nature; and in his writings there appear a catalogue
of the vices of knowledge and a gallery of the virtues of
learning as complete as his contemporary furnished in his
plays for the frailties and perfections of human kind.

1 The main additions are translations of Aristophanes's Clouds, Alicinous's Doctrine
of Plato, Pico della Mirandola's Platonic Discourse, Reuchlin's Explanation of the
Doctrines of Pythagoras, Sextus Empiricus's Pyrrhionian Hypotyposes, and a new
treatment of Eastern philosophy which Stanley calls Chaldaic, Persean, and Sabaean
Philosophy, and which treats in the main of the teachings of Zoroaster.

BACON AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 8l

The writing of history and of one of its special branches
— the history of philosophy — was considered at some
length in Bacon's Advancement of Learning, and in his
Latin translation and expansion of this work, the attention
paid to these subjects was even more marked. In the
former treatise Bacon expresses the wish that, in the inter
est of clarifying the understanding of the views of nature
held in the past, "some collection be made painfully and
understandingly de antiquis philosophiis out of all the pos
sible light that remaineth to us of them." He continues:

But here I must give warning that it be done distinctly and severedly;
the philosophies of every one throughout by themselves, and not by
titles-packed and faggoted up together .as hath been done by Plutarch.
For it is the harmony of a philosophy in itself which giveth it light and
credence; whereas if it be singled out and broken, it will seem more
foreign and dissonant. For as when I read in Tacitus the actions of
Nero or Claudius with circumstances of times, inducements, and occa
sions, I find them not so strange; but when I read them in Suetonius
Tranquillus gathered into titles and bundles and not in order of time,
they seem more monstrous and incredible. So it is of any philosophy
reported entire, and dismembered by articles. Neither do I exclude
opinions of later times to be likewise represented in this calendar of
sects of philosophy, as that of Theophrastus Paracelsus, eloquently
reduced into an harmony by the pen of Severinus the Dane; and that
of Telesius and his scholar Donius, being as a pastoral philosophy, full
of sense, but of no great depth; and that of Fracastorius, who, though
he pretended not to make any new philosophy, yet did use the absolute
ness of his own sense upon the old; and that of Gilbertus, our country
man, who revived with some alterations and demonstrations the opin
ions of Xenophanes.2

It is true that Bacon desired this history primarily as
a record of beliefs regarding nature which were horrible
examples of the result of using a method which was other
than his own ; but the fact remains that he gives us here an
important clue to the method of writing the history of
philosophy: the history of each man's philosophy is to be

2 Advancement of Learning, II, 7:5; cf. De Augmentis, III, 4.

82 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

presented in its entirety, in its temporal development, and in
its relation to its times.

We might give the same advice to those who to-day are
anxious to make the past seem real by telling them to treat
philosophy as something human, natural, as something
really imbedded in an historical context and not to be
understood apart from it. Excellent as this advice is, there
is no denying that the historians of philosophy have seldom
followed it. The question, Why haven't they? throws light
not only upon the history of philosophy, but also upon the
conception of philosophy. In general, those who have not
followed Bacon's advice have considered philosophy to be a
continuous series of approximations of a solution which
must be single and absolute. With such a view, what could
be more appropriate than the presentation of the history of
philosophy under the headings of its most persistent prob
lems? Such a system enables one to see in a kind of kine-
matographic fashion the flicker of opinion, and, if the cata
loguer is at all an historical dramatist, an unfolding of the
dialectic plot which will bring down the curtain with the
destruction of the villain of the opposition and the glory
and renown of the hero of the story. Perhaps there is no
story. Then the tabulation becomes a Laertian attempt to
supply upon any point a variety of information supported
by eminent authorities. From this the inquiring mind
may make its selection for uses, one suspects, rather more
appropriate for pedants or rarefied small talk than for the
appreciation of human nature.

It is just this appreciation of human nature which is in
creased by the treatment of the history of philosophy as a
succession of individual reflections called out and condi
tioned by historical situations. The appreciation is not an
affair of sentimental, static sympathy. It is itself a spur to
reflection, or, at least, it may be. The panorama of man
in time, now searching in nature for the possibilities of

BACON AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 83

human excellence and constructing a scheme for the con
trol of matter by intelligence, now building ideal structures
as walls against which the breakers of adversity hurl them
selves in vain, now spending whole centuries in servitude
upon formulas long outworn, shocks the observer into a
vigil of meditation upon his own generation, its limitations,
its control of him, and its possibilities of control by him.

In the writing of the history of philosophy as a record
of man thinking in his times, we are given further instruc
tion by Bacon in his treatment of a missing branch of
knowledge which he calls Historic, Literarum. Dr. Fliigel
is quite right when he says that what is intended is not a
history of literature.3 Bacon means much more what we
call the history of culture. The description given in De
Augmentis may not be further compressed, and I quote it
in full:

Civil history, in general, may be divided into three particular kinds,
viz., sacred, civil, and literary; the latter appears like the statue of
Polyphemus, without its eye; the part that best shows the life and
spirit of the person. In many particular sciences, indeed, as the law,
mathematics, and rhetoric, there are extant some short memoirs, and
jejune relations of sects, schools, books, authors, and the successions of
this kind of sciences, as well as some trivial accounts of the inventors
of things and arts; but we say, that a just and universal literary history
has not hitherto been published.

The design of this work should be, to relate from the earliest accounts
of time — (i) what particular kinds of learning and arts flourished, in
what ages, and what parts of the world ; (2) their antiquities, progress,
and travels on the globe; (3) their decline, disappearance, and restora
tion. In each art should be observed: (4) its origin and occasion of
invention; (5) the manner and form of its delivery; and (6) the means
of its introduction, exercise, and establishment. Add to these (7) the
most famous sects and controversies of learned men; (8) the calumnies
they suffered, and the praises and honors they received; (9) all along
let the best authors and books be noted; with (10) the schools, suc
cessions, academies, societies, colleges, orders, and whatever regards
the state of learning; but (n) principally, let events be throughout

3 Bacon's Hisloria Literarum, Anglia, Vol. 21, Halle, 1899.

84 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

coupled with their causes (which is the soul, as it were, of civil history),
in relating the nature of countries and people; and (12) their disposition
and indisposition to different kinds of learning; (13) the accidents of
time, whether favorable or destructive to the sciences; (14) the zeal
and mixture of religion; (15) the severity and lenity of laws; (16) the
remarkable patronage, efforts, and endowments of illustrious men, fo."
the promotion of learning and the like. All which we would have
handled, not in the manner of critics, who barely praise and censure;
but historically, or in the way of a naked delivery of facts, with but a
sparing use of private judgment.

For in the manner of writing this history, we particularly advise the
materials of it to be drawn, not only from histories and critical works,
but also that the principal books of every century be regularly consulted
downwards; so far we mean, as that taste may be had, or a judgment
formed, of the subject, style, and method thereof; whence the literary
genius of every age may at pleasure be raised, as it were, from the dead.

The use and end of this work is not to derive honor and pomp to
learning, nor to gratify an eager curiosity and fondness of knowing and
preserving whatever may relate thereto; but chiefly to make learned
men wise, in the prudent and sober exercise and administration of
learning, and by marking out the virtues and vices of intellectual things,
as well as the motions and perturbations of states, to show how the
best regulation and government may be thence derived. . .4

That this advice of i6235 and the spirit which occasioned
it have not long been effective, needs no better proof than
the extreme youth of anything approaching a history of
culture. Bacon was always very proud of his modernity.

The main purpose of these notes has now been accom
plished — the presentation of Bacon's conception of the
history of philosophy and the effects which the serious fol
lowing of his advice might be expected to have. There
remain a few interesting minor points. Bacon's insistence
upon a painstaking use of original documents, his apprecia
tion of the usefulness of biographies and monographs, and
his condemnation of bias in the writing of history, are
visible in many sections of his writings, — less visible, un-

4 De Augmentis, II, 4.

4 In its general trend the description in Advancement of Learning, published in 1605,
is practically the same.

BACON AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 85

fortunately, in his practise than in his theory. In his own
attempts at the writing of history in the History of the Reign
of King Henry VII. (1622), in the fragments of Henry VIII.
(c. 1 622) , and in The Beginnings of the History of Great Britain
(1609), Bacon falls short of the pattern which his writings
on method disclose. It is quite probable that this fact,
had he been aware of it, would have been the cause of
regret, but it is unlikely that he would have prized himself
much less highly because of it. Bacon did not fail to
appreciate his own limitations in the practice of his maxims,
but he did not chide himself over-much for them. In the
preface for De Interpretatione Naturae, dated by Spedding
1603, he writes, "If any one call on me for -works, and that
presently; I tell him frankly, without any imposture at all,
that for me — a man not old, of weak health, my hands full
of civil business, entering without guide or light upon an
argument of all others the most obscure — I hold it enough
to have constructed the machine, though I may not succeed
in setting it on work."

Of the main divisions which Bacon might have followed
in writing the history of philosophy, we have some hint
from the three divisions which he makes for general history.
These are antique, middle, and modern. He writes: "It
has pleased God to ordain and illustrate two exemplar
states of the world for arms, learning, moral virtue, policy,
and laws: the state of Grecia and the state of Rome; the
histories whereof, occupying the middle part of time, have
more ancient to them histories which may, by one common
name, be termed the antiquities of the world; and after
them histories which may be likewise called by the name
of modern history." 6 The antiquities of the world are those
portions of history for which only fragmentary sources
remain. They end where Thucydides takes up the history
of Greece, and Livy that of Rome. The middle part of

8 Advancement of Learning, II, 2:6.

86 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

history, strangely unlike our own middle age, ends with
Justinian, the "ultimus Romanorum." 'Just what Bacon
means to include by "modern" we find difficult to deter
mine. He speaks of his own times as modern, and also,
by a quaint figure, as "the old age of the world." His
references to the history of the modern age are almost all
to periods not more remote from his day than a hundred
years, and there is no reference to a history, say, of the
twelfth century, as a modern history. At first sight, it
seems that we are forced to take our choice of two possi
bilities: Bacon may have considered all history after Jus
tinian the period of the younger (modern) peoples; or he
may have been so little interested in the times before 1500
that he quite left them out of account and made no place
for them in his scheme.7 Interest in the middle ages Bacon
certainly did not have, and it is just possible that he forgot
about them. It is more probable, however, that we need
to revise our alternatives. It seems likely that the occasion
for the treatment of the middle ages did not arise, and that
we, in trying to find Bacon's classification of them, are
looking for an answer to a question which he never asked.

It need hardly be pointed out that Bacon, in his treat
ment of the middle ages, and, for that matter, of the Greek
and Roman thinkers, failed again to follow his own advice.
He did, however, clearly relate his own new method to that
effort we call "modern," that attempt to control nature
in the interest of human welfare.

It would be possible to construct, from references to con
temporaries and early thinkers which appear in his works,
a history of philosophy as Bacon might have written it.
The material for such a reconstruction has been systemati-

7 In speaking of the contents of the history of philosophy. Bacon mentions the
antique philosophy (Greek Colonial philosophy) and the "later" philosophers, and
includes among the latter several of the Renaissance writers. We must not forget, of
course, that Bacon is choosing his content in reference to opinions as to nature, and in
consequence would be apt to omit the medieval philosophers.

BACON AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 87

cally arranged by Dr. Wolff 8 in his exhaustive study of
Bacon's sources. Such an effort is quite aside from our pur
pose, however, which is amply served if the humanness of
the history of philosophy and its meaning for the present
have been even slightly illuminated through this reference
to a humanist of the sixteenth century.

JOHN J. Coss.

8 Emil Wolff, Francis Bacon und seine Qtiellen: Erster Band, Bacon und die grie-
chische Philosophie, Berlin, 1910; Zweiter Band, Griechische Authoren und romische
Dichter, Berlin, 1913.

THE MOTIVATION OF HOBBES'S POLITICAL
PHILOSOPHY

It is the object of this essay to place the political philos
ophy of Hobbes in its own historic context. The history of
thought is peculiarly exposed to an illusion of perspective.
Earlier doctrines are always getting shoved, as it were,
nearer our own day. We are familiar with the intellectual
struggles of our own time and are interested in them. It is
accordingly natural to envisage earlier thought as part of
.the same movement or as its forerunner. We then forget
:that that earlier period had its own specific problems, and
I we proceed to assimilate its discussions to our present
•• interest. Hobbes has been especially subject to this tem-
- .poral displacement^ For over a century the chief question
in social philosophy has centered about the conflict between
individual freedom and public and institutional control.
The central position of the theory of sovereignty in Hobbes's
thought has made it easy to translate his political philosophy
into terms of this debate; the issue which was really acute
in his day — the conflict of church and state — now lacks /
actuality for English and American writers at least.

To prove this statement as to the central issue of Hobbes's
day would require more than the space allotted to this
paper. In general, I can only refer to the voluminous
political discussions of the seventeenth century and to the
overt history of England during the time of the civil wars.
/Specifically, let me note the admirable studies of Mr.
Figgis. *x/ They are enough to relieve my statement from

Vr^- ^

1 The Divine Right of Kings and From Cerson to Grotius.

\

HOBBES'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 89

any charge of exaggeration. Some quotations from Mr.
Figgis will, then, be used to introduce the discussion.
He points out that the controversy regarding the divine
right of kings belongs to a day when politics, by common
consent, was a branch of theology, and goes on to say, "All
men demanded~some form of divine authority for any theory
of government . . . Until the close of the seventeenth
century, the atmosphere of the supporters of popular rights
is as theological as that of the upholders of the Divine Right
of Kings."2 And again, "There is no more universal char
acteristic of the political thought of the seventeenth century
than th^nojiojQ^ojjion-Tesistance^to authority^ 'To bring
the people to obedience' is the object of writers of all
schools. When resistance is preached, it is resistance to
some authority regarded as subordinate. Nor is the re
sistance permitted at the pleasure or judgment of private
individuals. It is allowed only as a form of obedience, as
executing the commands of some superior and ultimate
authority, God, or the Pope, and the Law."3

In other words, everybody worked upon an assumption of
a supreme authority, of law as command by this authority,
and duty as ultimately obedience. Not these conceptions,
but rather the special content given them, mark off Hobbes.
There was, of course, a party which opposed such centraliza
tion as Hobbes argued for,,bu_t the opposition was not in the
the name of the individual, but of something very different,
leJEfonple*-

So far as I can discover, the term people still had its
meaning fixed by the traditional significance of Populus — a
meaning very different from that of plebs or the French
peuple. This notion, as defined, say, by Cicero, was a com-

2 Divine Right of Kings, p. n.

8 Op. cit., p. 221. Technically, discussions centered about the nature of Jus. The
ambiguity of Jus, meaning both command and law on one side, and right, on the other
side, has been frequently noted. At this time, it was not so much ambiguity which
existed as two sides of one notion. Jus is primarily authority, and secondarily authoriza
tion, depending, of course, upon authority.

9O STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

monplace among the "civilians" and those trained in
scholastic philosophy. In Cicero's words, the people is "not
every gathering of men, assembled in any way whatsoever,
but is the multitude associated by a common sense of
justice and by a common interest." It is a universitas, not
a societas, much less a mere aggregate of individuals. And
the appeal of the upholders of popular against royal govern
ment was to the authority of this organized body, of which
the Commons was frequently (but not always) taken to be
the representative. The following words from L^wson,
taken from An Examination of the Political Part of Mr.
Hobbes, his Leviathan (1657) are worth quoting: "The liberty
which the English have challenged and obtained with so
much expense of blood is ... that which is due unto us by
the constitution of the State, Magna Charta, the Laws, and
the Petition of Right. It is but the liberty of subjects, not
sovereigns; when he hath said all he can, we are not willing
to be slaves or subject ourselves to Kings as Absolute
Lords. ... By liberty Aristotle meant such a privilege
as every subject might have in a free state . . . where
it is to be noted that one and the same person who is a
subject, and at the best but a Magistrate, hath a share in
the sovereign power. Yet this he hath not as a single person,
but as one person jointly with the whole body or major part
at least of the people" (pp. 67-68). This correlativity of
three things: the people, a society organized through law>^
and especially through the fundamental law, or constitu
tion, and liberty is in marked opposition to Locke's con
ceptions of a natural right or authority found in the indi
vidual himself^ It is not, I think, paradoxical to say that
Locke derived this conception of a natural right belonging
to the individual as such from Hobbes rather than from

obbes's popular opponents.

It is noteworthy that Cumberland, the chief systematic
opponent of Hobbes on rationalistic grounds, objects to the

HOBBES S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY QI

latter's political philosophy because "Hobbes's principles
overthrow the Foundations of all Government;" — they
would not suffer any man to enter into civil society; they
excite subjects to rebellion. In short, it is Hobbes's psy-

^ "* ^ M"BMM>IM*4MM0<K \

_chological and moral individualism rather than his theory
of sovereignty to which objection is taken. The same is
true of a much less effective writer, Tenison, in his Creed ^
of Mr. Hobbes Examined (1670). He says that since Hobbes
identifies the law of nature with the counsels of self-interest
"the Fundamentals of your Policy are hay and stubble,
and apter to set all things into blaze than to support
government" (p. 156); and again, "Woe to all the Princes
on earth, if this doctrine be true and becometh popular;
if the multitude believe this, the Prince . . . can never
be safe from the spears and barbed irons which their
ambition and presumed interest will provide." Hobbes's
principles, in their appeal to self-interest, are but "seeds
of sedition" (pp. 170—171). That Hobbes himself was
aware that, as matter of fact, a government is not likely to
retain enough strength to secure obedience unless it has
regard to the common weal, will appear in the sequel —
though naturally he never made this moral explicit.

Let us hear from Mr. Figgis again. "It is true that with
the possible exception of Hobbes, all the political theorists
up to the end of the seventeenth century either have religion
as the basis of their system, or regard the defense or su
premacy of some form of faith as their main object."4 Now
Hobbes is precisely the exception which proves the rule.

I He is theological in motive and context in the sense that he
is deliberately anti-theological. Along with his exclusive
self-interest doctrine, it was his theory of a secular basis for
sovereignty, not the doctrine of a supreme authority, which
brought him into disrepute.6 His familiar title was atheist,

'4O£. cit., p. 219.

5 See, for example, the quotations from royalist writers, Falkner and Filmer, in
Figgis, Op. cit., pp. 388-389.

92 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

so that even the royalists who might be supposed, on purely
political grounds to welcome his support, found it necessary
to disclaim him. Compare the following from a contem
porary letter: "All honest men who are lovers of monarchy,
are very glad that the King hath at last banisht his court
that father of atheists Mr. Hobbes, who it is said hath
rendered all the queen's court, and very many of the Duke
of York's family, atheists."6 In the apologetic dedication of
his Seven Philosophical Problems to the King after the
Restoration in 1662, Hobbes in defending himself against
this charge says of his Leviathan, "There is nothing in it
against episcopacy. I can not therefore imagine what
reason any episcopal man can have to speak of me, as I hear
some of them do, as of an atheist or man of no religion,
unless it be for making the authority of the church depend
wholly upon the regal power." In the words which I have
italicized H«bbes flaunts his ground of offense.

II

Postponing, for the moment, the important point in
Hobbes, his attempt to. secularize, morals and politics, I
take up his own sayings regarding the immediate occasion of
his political writings. Croom Robertson and Toennies have
made it clear that the first of his writings 7 dates from 1640
and is substantially what we have in his Human Nature and
De Corpore Politico. In his Considerations upon the Repu
tation of T. Hobbes (1662) Hobbes says this little treatise
"did set forth and demonstrate that the said power and
rights were inseparably annexed to the sovereignty," and
that the treatise was so much talked of, although it was not
printed, that if the King had not dissolved Parliament, it

« Quoted by Toennies in Archivfuer Geschichte der Philosophic, 1890, p. 223.
i Now published (from mss.) by Toennies under the title of The Elements of Law
Natural and Politic, London, 1889.

HOBBES S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 93

would have brought him into danger of his life.8 There is
here, indeed, no reference to just what the points were in the
quarrel about the regal power, but his Behemoth or the Long
Parliament leaves no doubt. There he says that the Parlia
ment of 1640 "desired the whole and absolute sovereignty.
. For this was the design of the Presbyterian minis
ters, who taking themselves to be, by divine right, the only
lawful governors of the Church, endeavored to bring the
same form of government into the civil state. And as the
spiritual laws were to be made by their synods, so the civil
laws should be made by the House of Commons."9 And at
the beginning of this work, in stating the causes of the cor
ruption of the people which made the civil wars possible, he
puts first the Presbyterians, second the Papists, and third
the Independents.10

In the Considerations already referred to he says he
"wrote and published his book De Give, to the end that all
nations which should hear what you and your Con-Coven-
tanters were doing in England, might detest you." Not
less significant is his letter, from Paris, in 1641 to the Earl
of Devonshire. He says, "I am of the opinion that ministers
ought to minister rather than govern; at least, that all
Church government depends on the state, and authority of
the kingdom, without which there can be no unity in the
church. Your lordship may think this but a Fancy of
Philosophy, but I am sure that Experience teacheth thus
much, that the dispute for (the word is variously read
preference and precedence) between the spiritual and civil
power, has of late more than any other thing in the world
been the cause of civil war."11 Of the Leviathan, he says:
"The cause of my writing that book was the consideration
of what the ministers before, and in the beginning of the

8 Molesworth, Works, E. IV, p. 414.

• I quote from Toennies's edition, p. 75. See also pp. 63, 57, 49, 95, 172, etc.

10 Ibid., pp. 2-3.

11 Quoted by Toennies, in Archiv, Vol. 17, p. 302. See also Works IV, p. 407.

94 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

civil war, by their preaching and writing did contribute
thereunto."12 And it may be worth noting that consider
ably over one-half of the Leviathan is explicitly devoted to
the bearing of religious and scriptural matters upon poli
tics as they touch upon the relation of church and the civil
power.

In his controversy with "the egregious professors of the
mathematics in the University of Oxford" he remarks of
the De Give: "You know that the doctrine therein taught
is generally received by all but the clergy, who think their
interest concerned in being made subordinate to the civil
power."13 Again he expresses his surprise that some even
of the episcopal clergy have attacked him, and thinks it can
be explained only as a "relic still remaining of popish am
bition, lurking in that seditious division and distinction
between the power spiritual and civil."14 Most significant
of all, perhaps, are his remarks in the Preface of the
Philosophical Rudiments, where after saying that he does
not "dispute the position of divines, except in those points
which strip subjects of their obedience, and shake the foun
dations of civil government," he goes on to say, "These
things I found most bitterly excepted against: That I made
the civil powers too large, but this by ecclesiastical persons.
That I had utterly taken away liberty of conscience, but
this by sectaries. That I had set the princes above the laws,
but this by lawyers."15 In no enumeration of the criticisms
brought against his teachings does he mention the principle
of absolute sovereignty, nor does he set his doctrine of
sovereignty in antithesis to any doctrine except that of
divided sovereignty — divided, that is, between the spiritual
and temporal power. Locke's doctrine of a sovereignty
limited by prior natural rights of those who were its subjects

"Vol. VII, p. 335.

'» Molesworth, Vol. E. VII, p. 333.

" Ibid., Vol. IV, p. 429.

16 Ibid., Vol. II, pp. xxii-xxiii.

HOBBES'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 95

had neither provocation nor justification till after the revo
lution of 1688 called for some theoretical explanation.

One can hardly, of course, accept Hobbes as an unbiased
witness to the way in which his doctrine was received. But
Eachard's Mr. Hobbes's State of Nature Considered (1696)
(a genuinely witty work) gives corroborative evidence that
it was not the doctrine of sovereignty which aroused dis
sent, for he repeatedly states that that was old matter
dressed in new form. "Your book called Dominion chiefly
consists of such things as have been said these thousands of
years." And again, "it might easily be shown how all the
rest (so much as is true) is the very same with the old plain
Dunstable stuff which commonly occurs in those who
treated of Policy and Morality." Aside from the aspersion
on human nature contained in Hobbes's doctrine of self-
interest, what Eachard objects to is Hobbes's "affected
garbs of speech, starched mathematical method, counterfeit
appearances of novelty and singularity."16 How habitually
the ideas of the evils of divided sovereignty were in Hobbes's
mind appears from a note in the Rudiments: "There are
certain doctrines wherewith subjects being tainted, they
verily believe that obedience may be refused to the city,
and that by right they may, nay, ought, to oppose and fight
against chief princes and dignitaries. Such are those
which, whether directly and openly, or more obscurely and
by consequence, require obedience to be given to others
besides them to whom the supreme authority is com
mitted. I deny not that, but this reflects on that power
which many, living under other government, ascribe to the
chief head of the Church of Rome, and also on that which
elsewhere, out of that Church, bishops require in theirs to

14 Harrington, on the contrary, who was a genuinely democratic writer with an
interest which was modern, economic, and secular, in differing radically from Hobbes as
to respective merits of royal and popular government, says, "in most other things I
believe Mr. Hobbes is, and in future ages will be, accounted the best writer in this day
in the world."

96 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

be given to them; and last of all, on that liberty which the
lower sort of citizens, under pretence of religion, do chal
lenge to themselves. For what civil war was there ever in
the Christian world, which did not either grow from, or was
nourished by this root?"17

As an argumentum ad hominem in his own time, it is impos
sible to overestimate the force of his argument. All Pro
testants united in declaiming against the claim of the
Roman Church to interfere in matters temporal. Yet
some of the episcopalian bishops declared that in matters
of religious actions, such as rites, appointments, prefer
ments, the Church represented God, not man, and had a
superior right to obedience. The Presbyterians in general
were committed to a dual theory of authority and obedience.
Yet all of these ecclesiastical institutions united in repri
manding the fifth monarchy men, Anabaptists, Levelers,
etc., who claimed that their personal conscience as enlight
ened by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit was the
ultimate source of knowledge of divine law, and hence the
rule for obedience. Luther, Calvin, English bishop, and
Scotch presbyter alike attacked this doctrine as anarchic
and immoral. Hobbes, in effect, points out that all churches
are in the same anarchic class, for they all appeal to some
thing other than publicly instituted and proclaimed law.

In connection with the sectaries, it is interesting to note
that they expressly cried out for "natural rights derived
from Adam and right reason." According to this view,
"all men are by nature the sons of Adam, and from him
have derived a natural propriety (property), right, and free
dom. . . . By natural birth all men are equally free and
alike born to like propriety, liberty, and freedom; and as we
are delivered of God by the hand of nature into this world,
every one with a natural innate freedom and propriety,
even so we are to live, every one equally and alike, to enjoy

17 Vol. II, p. 79, note.

HOBBES S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 97

his birthright and privilege."18 That this anarchic doctrine
of the Levelers was wrought by Locke into a stable founda
tion for a reasonably conservative Whig doctrine, testifies
to his altered background and outlook. There is no evi
dence that Hobbes was influenced by the doctrine, but
it is more than a coincidence that he makes a precisely
similar notion of natural rights the origin of the war of all
upon all, and the basis of demand for absolute sovereignty.
If he had this notion in mind in his picture of the state of
nature, it adds a piquant irony to his sketch, as well as to his
repeated assertions that there was no difference of principle
between the sectaries' appeal to the court of private judg
ment and the doctrines of Papist, Presbyterian, and of such
Episcopalians as did not recognize that the authority of
the Established Church was by grace of the political sover
eign and not by divine right.

Lawson was one of the better tempered and more moder
ate opponents of royal sovereignty, an episcopalian rector
with obvious sympathies with Cromwell. He admits as a
"certain truth" that sovereignty is above all civil law, but
asserts the supreme legislator "is subject to the superior will
of God" — which, of course, was Hobbes's own doctrine. "All
the sovereignty's power of making laws, judgments, etc.,
are from God. . . . Men may give their consent that
such a man or such a company of men shall reign, but the
power is from God, not them." From this doctrine, it is
not a long step to his statement that the true believer in
God "may, must within himself, even of laws, so far as they
are a rule, and bind him, enquire, examine, and determine
whether they are good or evil. Otherwise, he can perform
only a blind obedience even to the best ; and if he conform
unto the unjust, he in obeying man disobeys God, which no
good man will do. Romans, xii, 14-15." Subsequently

18 Quoted from Ritchie, Natural Rights, p. 9. He quotes from the preface of Firth to
the Clarke Papers.

98 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

he adds, "Nor does this doctrine anyways prejudice the
civil power, nor encourage any man to disobedience and
violation of the civil laws, if they be just and good as they
ought to be; and the subject hath not only liberty, but a
command to examine the laws of his sovereign, and judge
within himself and for himself, whether they be not con
trary to the laws of God."19 Yet Lawson joins in the
common animadversions upon the leveling sectaries.
Moreover, Lawson deplores the disorder and divisions of
the time. "Our form of government is confounded by the
different opinions of common lawyers, civilians, and divines
who agree neither with one another, nor amongst them
selves." Nor can the history of England be appealed to
as an umpire — as many were doing, for as Lawson, clearer-
headed than most, perceived, it shows "only as matter of
fact how sometimes the King, Counties, and Barons, some
times the Commons were predominant and ascendant."
And he concludes, "yet for all this, a free parliament of
just, wise, and good men might rectify all this, and unite the
supreme power so miserably divided to the hazard of the
state."20 In a situation where a writer sees that the great
need is for a unified authority or sovereignty, and yet
argues in support of that very principle of private judging of
laws which had been a large factor in bringing about the
situation he deplores, Hobbes's case almost states itself.

Ill

A few words are now to be said about another motif in
Hobbes's ardent assertion of a unified sovereignty. The
part of his doctrine which was not directed against the claim
of the Churches to obedience was aimed at the claim of the

18 Op. cit., pp. 96, 123, 127. When one considers the prevalence of this idea of the
duty of private judgment, one is almost inclined to align Hobbes's criticism of it with
that passed by August Comte upon Protestantism.

* Ibid., pp. 133-134. Italics mine.

HOBBES S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 99

authority of Law set up by the lawyers. To go fully into
this matter would require a summary of certain phases of
parliamentary history in England, beginning in the time of
Elizabeth and becoming highly acute in the reign of James.
On the one side were the lawyers and judges, and on the
other were the claims of the legislature representing statute
law, and of the Chancellor representing equity. The king
then largely dominated parliament, and this made the
party of the judges against parliament essentially the
popular party of later controversy. In the earlier words of
Aristotle, and the later words of the Constitution of Massa
chusetts, they proclaimed a government "which was a
government of laws, not of men."21

Consider, for example, such a statement as this of John
Milton, arguing against Salmasius: "Power was therefore
given to a king by the people, that he might see by the
authority committed to him that nothing be done against
law, and that he keep our laws and not impose upon us
his own. Therefore, there is no regal power but in the courts
of the kingdom and by them." And Harrington's con
stant contention is that only a commonwealth is a govern
ment of laws, since law must proceed from will, and will be
moved by interest; and only in a commonwealth is the
whole will and the whole interest expressed. In a monarchy
or oligarchy, the laws are made in the interest of a few, so
that what exists is a government of men. Harrington,
however, is an innovator in connecting law with legislation
rather than with the courts. "Your lawyers, advising you
to fit your governments to their laws, are no more to be
regarded than your tailor if he should desire you to fit your

11 As Hobbes saw, this doctrine is either a negation of sovereignty or works out prac
tically (as it has done so largely in this country) in placing the judges in the seat of
sovereignty — a "government of lawyers, not of men," to paraphrase the old saying.
Locke comes close to this legal position, and historically is half way between Hobbes's
location of sovereignty and Rousseau's ascription of sovereignty to the legislative body
alone.

IOO STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

body to his doublet" — another point of sympathy between
him and Hobbes.

It was lawyer's law then which was usually meant — the
law of courts, not of legislation. As Figgis says, speaking of
the reliance of the popular party upon government by law,
"Nor is it of statute law that men are thinking; but of the
common law . . . which possesses that mysterious
sanctity of prescription which no legislator can bestow.
The common law is pictured invested with a halo of
dignity, peculiar to the embodiment of deepest principles
and to the highest expression of human reason and of the
law of nature implanted by God in the heart of man. As
yet men are not clear that an Act of Parliament can do
more than declare the common law."22 It is with this
doctrine in mind that Hobbes is so insistent that the
sovereign is absolved from all law save the moral law —
which, as we shall see later, is for him the law of an en
lightened hedonism. But Hobbes is not just begging
the question. Bacon before him had pointed out many of
the defects of common law and the need of codification and
systematized revision. The demand for legislative activity
was constantly increasing; the Long Parliament in effect
restated the common law. Courts of equity had been
obliged to assume an extensive activity, and it is not un
important that the Chancellor's court was essentially a
royal court and followed the law "of reason," the law "of
nature," the law of conscience and of God. Hobbes's
essential rationalism was shocked at calling anything law
which expressed, as did the common law, merely custom
and precedent.23

Hobbes does away at one sweep with any alleged dis
tinction between written and unwritten law. All law is
written, for written means published. And as published, it

22 Figgis, Op. cit,, p. 229. See his note for references in support of the text.
» See Vol. Ill, p. 91.

HOBBES'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY IOI

proceeds only from him (or them) who has authority —
power to require obedience. And that, of course, is the
sovereign. "Custom of itself maketh no laws. Neverthe
less, when a sentence has once been given, by them that
judge by their natural reason, ... it may attain to the
vigor of a law . . . because the sovereign power is
supposed tacitly to have approved such sentence for
right. ... In like manner those laws that go under the
title of responsa prudentum, the opinions of lawyers, are not,
therefore, laws because responsa prudentum, but because
they are admitted by the sovereign."24

But Hobbes is most explicit in a work, too infrequently
made use of by historians of philosophy, entitled A Dia
logue between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common
Law of England?5 This dialogue opens with an attempt to
prove that it is the king's reason which is the soul even of
the common law. He quotes Coke's saying (and it is to be
recalled that Coke had been on the lawyers' side against
King James) that law is reason, although an artificial
reason, got by long study and observation; such a per
fection of reason, however, that "if all the reason that is
dispersed into so many several heads were united into one,
yet could he not make such a law as the law of England is,
because by many successions of ages it hath been fined and
refined by an infinite number of grave and learned men*"
As against this view, Hobbes inserts his usual caveat; it
was not the succession of lawyers or judges that made the
law, but the succession of kings who created the judges and
who enforced the decisions. "The king's reason, when it is
publicly upon advice and deliberation declared, is that
anima legis, and that summa ratio, and that equity . . .
which is all that is the law of England." And even more
emphatically: "There is not amongst men a universal

** Works, Vol. E. IV, p. 227. See also VI, pp. 194-195.
» Molesworth, Vol. E. VI.

IO2 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

reason agreed upon in any nation, besides the reason of him
that hath the sovereign power. Yet though his reason be
but the reason of one man, yet it is set up to supply the
place of that universal reason which is expounded to us by
our Saviour in the Gospel; and consequently our King is to
us the legislator both of statute law and of common law."26
Later he suggests that common law and its lawyers are the
chief source of excessive litigation "on account of the
variety and repugnancy of judgments of common law," and
because "lawyers seek not for their judgments in their own
breasts, but in the precedents of former judgments," and
also in the liberty they have to scan verbal technicalities.27
Still later his aversion to reference to mere custom and
precedent becomes more marked, and he even goes so far
as to say that all courts are courts of equity in principle if
not in name28 — than which it would be hard to find a doc
trine more obnoxious to lawyers: — all of which throws
light upon the opening sentence of his book, that the study
of law is less rational than the study of mathematics, and
possibly suggests a slight irony in his reference to the reason
of kings as the source of the supreme rationality of common
law claimed for it by such a writer as Coke.

IV

When I first became aware of these specific empirical
sources for Hobbes's political philosophy, I was inclined to
suppose that he had made the latter a necessary part of a
deductive system from that inordinate love of formal
system to which philosophers are given. And the closing
words of the Leviathan seem to bear out the impression,

M Vol. VI, pp. 14 and 22. In the Leviathan (Vol. Ill, p. 256), he criticizes this defi
nition of Coke's on the ground that long study only increases error unless the founda
tions are true and agreed upon.

27 Ibid, p. 45.

* Ibid., p. 63.

HOBBES S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY IO3

when, as if in a relieved tone, he says that having brought to
an end his discourse on Civil and Ecclesiastical Govern
ment "occasioned by the disorders of the present time,"
he is now free to "return to my interrupted speculation of
bodies natural." Croom Robertson, no mean judge where
Hobbes is in question, says "the whole of his political doc
trine . . . has little appearance of having been thought
out from the fundamental principles of his philosophy.
Though connected with an express doctrine of human na
ture, it doubtless had its main lines fixed when he was still
an observer of men and nature, and not yet a mechanical
philosopher. In other words, his political theory is explica
ble mainly from his personal disposition, timorous and
worldly, out of sympathy with all the aspirations of his
time."29

Further study led me, however, to a different position, to
the position that Hobbes was satisfied that (even if his
ideas had arisen in his own experience) he had given them a
strict scientific or rational form. And while this point is
of no great importance as merely an item in Hobbes's
biography, it is, I think, of fundamental importance in the
theme that Hobbes's great work was in freeing, once for
all, morals and politics from subservience to divinity and
making them a branch of natural science. So I offer no
apology for setting forth the evidence that Hobbes himself
believed in the scientific status of his politics.

As a point of departure, take the following passage from
the preface to his Rudiments (the original De Give). "I was
studying philosophy for my mind's sake and I had gathered
together its first elements in all kinds, and having digested
them into three sections by degrees, I had thought to have
written them, so as in the first I would have treated of
body . . . ; in the second of man . . . . ; in the
third of civil government and the duties of subjects. .

29 Hobbes, London, 1886, p. 57.

IO4 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

It so happened in the interim, that my country, some few
years before the civil war did rage, was boiling hot with
questions regarding the rights of dominion and the obedi
ence due from subjects; and was the cause which, all those
other matters deferred, ripened and plucked from me this
third part."30 And in a letter written in 1646 to Mersenne,
speaking of his delay in completing his first part, namely,
that on Body, he says that laziness is in part the cause, but
chiefly because he has not yet been able to satisfy himself
in the parts relating to the senses, and adds, "for that which
I hope I have done in moral doctrine, that I am anxious to
do in First Philosophy and in Physics."31

More specifically we have the claims he puts forth for his
De Give (claims which he continued to put forth even after
he was aware that they exposed him to the accusation of
actuation by egregious vanity) , that it was the first treatise
to put morals and politics on a scientific basis. Molesworth
quotes from an unpublished manuscript on Optics the
following concluding paragraph. "If it be found to be true
doctrine, I shall deserve the reputation of having been the
first to lay the grounds of two sciences: this of Optiques,
the most curious, and the other of natural justice, which I
have done in my books De Cive, the most profitable of all
other." In the epistle dedicatory to his Elements of Philoso
phy, in which he executed his plan to give a systematic
treatment of his entire philosophy, he says that geometrical
science dates from antiquity; natural philosophy from
Galileo, while "civil philosophy is much younger, being no
older (I say it provoked, and that my detractors may know
how little they have wrought upon me) than my own book
De Cive."32

30 Vol. II, pp. xix-xx. See also xxii, in which he says that there is only one point not
demonstrated in the whole book — namely, the superior commodiousness of monarchy ; for,
as we must remember, Hobbes always means mathematical method by demonstration.

31 Archiv., Op. cit., p. 69.
«Vol. I, p. ix.

HOBBES S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY IO5

The matter becomes one of more than biographical im
portance when we recall Hobbes's conception of science or
demonstrative knowledge and the importance attached by
him to science. Science is reasoning from cause to effect,
and hence universal and certain, while empirical knowl
edge, or prudence, reasons from effect to cause, and is but
probable and hypothetical. The end or object of science
is power, control, for if we know the generation or cause of
things, we have it in our power to determine them. The
question of the scientific character of morals and politics
is, then, a question of the possibility of enduring social
security and safety — "peace." Unless men attained to
first principles from which any one could proceed, as by
mathematical reasoning, to determinate conclusions, poli
tics would remain still a matter of opinion, uncertainty,
controversy, in short, of war. It is in this light that we
have to understand his assertion that geometry, physics,
and morals form one science, as the "British, the Atlantic,
and the Indian seas ... do altogether make up the
ocean."33 Strictly speaking, moreover, natural philosophy
can not be a science, for in it we must, perforce, reason from
effects to causes, and thus arrive only at what "may be."
"The science of every subject is derived from a precognition
of the causes, generation, and construction of the same; and
consequently where the causes are known, there is place for
demonstration. . . . Geometry, therefore, is demonstrable,
for the lines and figures from which we reason are drawn
and described by ourselves; and civil philosophy is demon
strable, because we make the commonwealth ourselves."34

Moreover, the situation of the times made Hobbes's
belief, whether it were rightly grounded or not, of more than

"Vol. II., p. iv.

" VII, p. 184. I think that there is more than a shadowy reminiscence of Hobbes in
Locke's contention that morals and mathematics are the two demonstrative subjects.
What we "make ourselves" and general notions which, being the "workmanship of the
understanding," are their own archetypes, are not, after all, far apart.

106 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

academic import. We have already seen the extent to
which private and variable opinion was to him the source of
the ills from which the state suffered. Scientific demonstra
tion is the sole alternative to the continuation of the
troubled regime of opinion. Hobbes is in the somewhat
paradoxical opinion of holding that while all order proceeds
from the unquestioned authority of the sovereign, the
permanent and settled institution of sovereignty itself de
pends upon a recognition of the scientific truths of morals
and politics as set forth by him. While his controversies
with Wallis and Ward doubtless gave asperity to his at
tacks on the universities, there is no questioning the fact
that they were sincerely actuated by the belief that the
doctrines of morals and politics therein taught were largely
responsible for the evils of the time. They are to England
as the Wooden Horse to Troy; the core of rebellions; the
source of opinions contrary to the peace of mankind; the
shops and opera tories of the clergy; the fountains of civil
and moral doctrine.35 Hobbes was equally sincere in be
lieving that the new science of morals and politics ought to
be taught in the universities, and that such inculcation was
a precondition of lasting social security.36 If this nation was
"very lately an anarchy and a dissolute multitude of men,
doing every one what his own reason or imprinted light
suggested,"37 a considerable part of the remedy is to be found
in the control, in the future, of instruction by the
civil authority. "Because opinions, which are gotten
by education and in length of time are made habitual, can
not be taken away by force and upon the sudden; they
must, therefore, be taken away also by time and educa
tion." And then he goes on, as usual, to charge the uni
versities with' having been the corrupters of opinion, and to

35 VI, p. 213; VI, p. 236; III, p. 330; VII, p. 345; III, p. 713. See also IV., p. 204.
M III, p. 713 for his suggestion to Cromwell to have his doctrines taught in the uni
versities; see VII, pp. 343-352 for a defence of the proposal.
» IV, p. 287.

HOBBES'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY IO7

add that if the true doctrine of a body politic and of law were
taught to young men "whose minds are as white paper,"
they would teach it to the people even more sedulously
than false doctrine is now taught.38 It is in this context,
then, that we have to take Hobbes's famous contention
that the practical utility of moral science is to be found
more in what men have suffered from its absence than in
what they have gained by its presence, and his contention
that he is the first in morals to "reduce the doctrine to the
rules and infallibility of reason."39

V

Such are some of the grounds for thinking that the final
importance of Hobbes's political philosophy is found in its
attempt to make the subject secular and scientific. Not
merely in external matters was he motivated by the con
flict of civil and ecclesiastic power, but even more in in
tellectual aim and method. We fail to get the full force
of Hobbes's conception of sovereignty until we see that to
Hobbes the logical alternative is setting up the private opin
ions of individuals and groups of individuals as the rule of
public acts — a method whose logical inconsistency has
division and war for its practical counterpart.

There exists, indeed, a paradox in Hobbes. On one hand,
we have the doctrine of the sovereign's arbitrary institution
of duties, and rights and wrong. On the other, we have his
doctrine of the strictly scientific character of morals and
politics. In view of the seeming contradiction it is little
wonder that his opponents — notably Cudworth and his
school — passed over the latter strain and assumed that the
whole content of Hobbes consisted in an assertion of the

MVol. IV., p. 219.

39 In his dedication to the Earl of Newcastle, dated in 1640, where men's agreement
in mathematics, due to dependence on reason, is contrasted with their controversies and
contradictions in policy and justice, due to their following passion.

108 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

purely arbitrary character of all moral distinctions. Never
theless Cudworth's view is thoroughly one-sided. Cum
berland, not Cudworth, was Hobbes's most intelligent op
ponent, and in his De Legibus Naturae we find an attempt
to meet Hobbes on his own ground in a way which reveals
the positive influence of Hobbes's conception of morals as
a branch of natural science. In speaking of the natural light
and innate ideas of the Platonizers, he remarks scornfully,
"I have not been so happy as to learn the laws of nature in
so short a way." He argues for an order of logical prece
dence in moral laws from the analogy of the laws of motion
in natural science. He expressly points out that other
writers, in reasoning from approved sentiments and the
common consent of mankind (e. g., Grotius and his fol
lowers), had reasoned from effects to causes only, and in
his search for laws of nature commits himself to the essen
tially Hobbesian conception that they are "the foundations
of all moral and civil knowledge" in such a way as to compel
the use of a deductive method. He differs radically as to
substance of the fundamental axioms, but agrees as to
the form of morals as a science. He "abstains" from theo
logical matters, because he will prove the laws of nature
only from reason and experience. He believes that "the
foundations of piety and moral philosophy are not shaken,
but strengthened by Mathematics and the Natural Philoso
phy" that depends thereon. In making benevolence, or
regard for the happiness of all, his fundamental principle,
instead of egoistic regard for private happiness, the influ
ence of Hobbes may be seen in the fact that he, too, starts
from Power, but argues that the effective power of man in
willing his own happiness is limited to willing it along with
the happiness of others. And since Hobbes had held that the
desire for purely personal good contradicts itself when acted
upon, the transformation upon the basis of Power of Hobbes's
axiom of self-love into one of benevolence was not difficult.

HOBBES'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY IOQ

VI

I do not mean, however, that Hobbes is free from the
paradox mentioned. On the contrary, his position is pre
cisely the paradox of attempting to derive by mathematical
reasoning the authority of the sovereign to settle arbitrarily
all matters of right and wrong, justice and injury, from
rational, universal axioms regarding the nature of good and
evil. His method of dealing with the paradox takes us to the
meaning given by him to natural law, and to his conception
of the aim and purpose, or "offices" of sovereignty. Both
sides of the matter are worth attention because they reveal
a thoroughgoing utilitarianism.

The mistake of so many of Hobbes's critics in thinking
that he identified morals with the commands of the sov
ereign because he identified justice and injustice, right and
wrong, with the latter, arises from overlooking the funda
mental distinctions which Hobbes draws between good and
right, and between intention and act — or forum internum
and forum externum. Good is simply, to Hobbes, that which
pleaseth a man; that which is agreeable to him — which, in
turn, means "whatsoever is the object of any man's appe
tite or desire." It follows, of course, that since men differ
in constitution and circumstance from one another, con
flict or the state of war ensues ; from difference of constitu
tion, because what one man calls good another man finds
evil; from circumstance, because when two men find the
same object good it ofttimes can not be shared or mutually
possessed. But besides the good of passion or desire of
appetite, which is immediately determined by the momen
tary desire, whatever that may be, there is the good of reason,
or rational good. To Hobbes, of course, the rational good
does not differ from the sensible good in kind or quality;
it is as much the pleasing as is the good of appetite. But it
differs in being the object of a survey which includes time,
instead of being a momentary estimate. For since finding

IIO STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

good in present appetite brings a man into conflict with
others, it puts his life and possessions in jeopardy; in seek
ing present pleasure he exposes himself to future evils
"which by strict consequence do adhere to the present
good," or even to destruction of life. Hence, when a man
is in a "quiet mind" he sees the good of present passion to
be evil, and is capable of perceiving that his true good lies
in a condition of concord or agreement with others — in
peace which preserves his body and institutes secure
property. "They, therefore, who could not agree concern
ing a present, do agree concerning a future good; which
indeed is a work of reason ; for things present are obvious to
the sense, things to come to our reason only."40

Moral laws,41 laws of nature, are then equivalent to the
counsels or precepts of prudence, that is to say, of judgment
as to the proper means for attaining the end of a future en
during happiness. The rules of good and evil are the pro
cedures which any man, not perturbed by immediate pas
sion, would perceive to be conducive to his future happi
ness. Let it be remembered that according to Hobbes all
reason (in matters natural as well as moral) is simply a se
quence of thoughts directed toward an end which regulates
the sequence. Hobbes, then, really believes in laws (or at
least counsels) of morality which in their origin are wholly
independent of the commands of the sovereign. He
ascribes to these all the eulogistic predicates which were
scholastically current regarding the laws of nature: they
are eternal, immutable, divine, etc. Right reason is the
"act of reasoning, that is, the true and peculiar ratiocina-

w Vol. II, pp. 44, 47-48. Compare with this the following from the Leviathan: "For
all men are by nature provided with notable multiplying glasses, that is, their passions
and self-love, through which, every little payment appeareth a great grievance; but are
destitute of those prospective glasses, namely, moral and civil science, to see afar off
the miseries that hang over them, and can not without such payments be avoided."
Vol. Ill, p. 170.

41 They are called laws only metaphorically, since only a command is a law. But in
the sense in which the faculty of reason is a gift of God, and God may be said to com
mand us to act rationally, they are true laws or commands.

HOBBES S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY III

tion of every man concerning those actions of his which may
redound to the damage or benefit of his neighbors. .
I call it true, that is, concluding from true principles rightly
framed, because that the whole breach of the laws of nature
consists in the false reasoning, or rather folly of those
men who see not those duties they are necessarily to per
form towards others in order to their own conservation."42

It is not easy to estimate just how sincerely meant were
all of Hobbes's professions of piety. I think it may safely
be assumed, however, that whether or no he believed in a
theological God, he did believe that reasoning was divine,
and that there is a sincere piety toward reason in his re
garding rational precepts as divine; and that accordingly
he believed in some genuine sense that God was reason.
There is something besides accommodation in the following
language: "Finally, there is no law of natural reason that
can be against the law divine : for God Almighty hath given
reason to man to be a light unto him. And I hope it is no
impiety to think that God Almighty will require a strict
account thereof at the day of judgment, as of the instruc
tions which we were to follow in our peregrinations here,
notwithstanding the opposition and affronts of super-
naturalists nowadays to rational and moral conversa
tion."43

One of the necessary conclusions of such ratiocination on
future well-being and conservation is the conclusion that
it is not safe for any individual to act upon the moral law —
which in effect is not to do anything to another which one

42 Vol. II, p. 16, note. In his own day, Hobbes had logically the benefit of the fact
that "self-preservation" was laid down by practically all writers as the first article of
the law of nature. Moral laws are "eternal" to Hobbes in exactly the same way as are
geometrical propositions. They flow from original definitions whose subjects include
their predicates in such a way that the latter can not be denied without falling, at some
point, into formal self-contradiction. The absolute "obligation" which the subject is
under not to withdraw from the compact by which he entered the State is the obligation
not to contradict his own premises.

"Vol. IV, p. 116.

112 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

would not have him do unto us — until he has some guarantee
that others will do likewise. A person so acting renders
himself exposed to evil from others. Hence suspicion and
mistrust, even on the part of one disposed to regard the hap
piness of others, are inevitable where there is no power or
authority which can threaten the evilly minded with such
future pains as to give assurance as to their conduct. Hence,
it is one of the laws of sound reasoning to enter into a civil
state, or to institute a sovereign authority with power to
threaten evil doers with evils in return, to such extent as to
influence their conduct.44

Hence it follows in Hobbes, quite as much as with any
j of the upholders of the popular theory, that the end or
purpose of the state is the "common good." He but insists
upon the correlativity of this good with implicit obedience
to the commands of a protecting power. To set up any
private judgment about the acts by which the common good
is to be attained is to weaken the protective power, and
thereby to introduce insecurity, mutual fear and discord —
all negations to the attaining of that happiness for whose
sake the state was instituted. No matter how arbitrary the
sovereign's acts, the state is at least better than the anarchy
where private judgments as to good (that is to say, immediate
appetite and passion) reign.

But there are other checks. The sovereign is himself
under the law of nature: that is to say, he is subject to the
"sanctions" of utility. As a reasoning creature, he will
perceive that his interests as sovereign coincide with the
prosperity of the subjects. "The profit of the sovereign
and the subject goeth always together."45 Hobbes uniformly
lays down certain precepts which bind the sovereign's

44 Hobbes never attributes physical omnipotence to the sovereign, but only a power
to threaten and to enforce threats which arouses enough fear to influence men's outer
conduct. His whole position very closely resembles that of Kant regarding the relation
of the moral and the legal, much as the two differ in their conception of the moral.

« Vol. IV, p. 164.

HOBBES S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 113

conscience. In his Leviathan he develops at length the
"Offices of the sovereign." They include equality of taxes,
public charity, prevention of idleness, sumptuary laws,
equality of justice to all, and the care of instruction. In
his earliest writing he mentions all these, and also lays
emphasis upon the duty of the civil authority to foster
husbandry, fishing, navigation, and the mechanical arts.46
In his discussion of the need that the state take charge of
education, he clearly recognizes the limitations placed
upon power to control action through positive commands
appealing to fear. Allegiance to the state is not a matter of
positive command, but of moral obligation. "A civil law that
shall forbid rebellion (and such is all resistance to the essen
tial rights of the sovereignty) is not, as a civil law, any
obligation but by virtue only of the law of nature that
forbiddeth the violation of faith." Hence, its ground has
to be diligently and truly taught; it can not "be maintained
by any civil law, or terror of legal punishment."47

Moreover, there are natural, or utilitarian, checks to the
exercise of the power of sovereignty. In the first place, it
can not affect, and (except through education) is not in-'
tended to affect inner inclinations or desires, but only acts —
which are external. There is always a distinction between
the just man and a just act; the former is one who means to
obey the law or to act justly to others, even if by infirmity
of power or by reason of circumstance he fail to do so. Even
more significant is the check upon despotic action on the
part of sovereignty in the mere fact that all acts can not be
commanded. "It is necessary that there be infinite cases

« Leviathan, Part II, Ch. 30. Vol. Ill, Ch. XIII. "Concerning the Duties of them
that Rule." See also Vol. IV, De Corpore Politico, Ch. IX, which sets out from the prop
osition, "This is the general law for sovereigns, that they procure, to the uttermost of
their endeavour, the good of the people."

47 Vol. Ill, pp. 323-324. It is in the same vein when Hobbes says that rebellion is
not an offence against the civil law, but against the moral or natural law, for they
violate the obligation to obedience which is before all civil law — since the institution of
civil law depends upon it (Vol. II, p. 200).

114 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

which are neither commanded nor prohibited, but every
man may either do or not do them as he lists himself. . . .
As water, inclosed on all hands with banks, stands still and
corrupts; having no bounds it spreads too largely, and the
more passages it finds the more freely it takes its current;
so subjects, if they might do nothing without the commands
of the law, would grow dull and unwieldy; if all, they
would be dispersed ; and the more that is left undetermined
by the laws, the more liberty they enjoy. Both extremes are
faulty; for laws were not invented to take away, but to
direct men's actions; even as nature ordained the banks not
to stay, but to guide the course of the stream."48 The
sovereign who attempts too much dictation will provoke
rebellion.

This summary account should make it clear that Hobbes
deduces the need, the purpose, and the limits of sovereign
power from his rationalistic, or utilitarian, premises. Un
doubtedly a certain arbitrariness of action on the part of the
sovereign is made possible. It is part of the price paid, the
cost assumed, in behalf of an infinitely greater return of
good. Right and wrong are nothing but what the sovereign
commands, but these commands are the means indispensa
ble to procuring good, and hence have a moral or rational
sanction and object. To use Hobbes's own words: "In
sum all actions and habits are to be esteemed good or evil
by their causes and usefulness in reference to the common
wealth."49 No franker or more thoroughgoing social utilitari
anism could be found.

When we seek for Hobbes's natural historical associates,
we should turn not to the upholders of political abso
lutism for its own sake, but to Jeremy Bentham. They are
one in opposition to private opinion, intuition, and ipse
dixitism as sources of the rules of moral action; they are

"Vol. II, p. 178. Compare the Leviathan, Vol. Ill, p. 335.

« 'Vol. VI. p. 220.

HOBBES S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 115

one in desire to place morals and politics upon a scientific
basis; they are one in emphasis upon control of present
and private good by reference to future and general good,
good being understood by both as pleasure. Their unlike-
nesses flow from the divergent historic settings in which
their ideas were generated. To Hobbes the foe was eccle
siastic interests, the source of divided allegiance and of the
assumption of a right of private judgment over against a
public law of right and wrong. His remedy was a centralized
administrative state. Bentham found the foe in vested
economic interests which set private or class happiness above
the general good, and which manipulated the machinery of
the state in behalf of private advantage. His remedy was a
democratizing of government to be obtained by a mass
participation in it of individuals, accompanied by a widen
ing of personal initiative in the choice and pursuit of happi
ness to the maximum possible limit. To both, however,
moral science was one with political science, and was not a
theoretical luxury, but a social necessity. It was the com
mon fate of both to suffer from a false psychology, from an
inadequate conception of human nature. But both are
protagonists of a science of a human nature operating
through an art of social control in behalf of a common good.
Progress beyond them comes not from a hostile attitude to
these conceptions, but from an improved knowledge of
human nature.

JOHN DEWEY.

THE ATTEMPT OF HOBBES TO BASE ETHICS ON
PSYCHOLOGY 1

In this paper there are not considered, first, the failure of
Hobbes, the mechanical philosopher, to make the transition
from moving matter to sensation, without setting up the
crudest epiphenomenalism ; secondly, his failure to make
plain the transition from sensation to the superior form of
reasoning exhibited in his ethical thinking; thirdly, his
virtual elimination of any effective intelligence in his radical
theory of will as nothing other than mechanical action.

This paper would approach the study of Hobbes, not so
much in criticism of his errors, nor exposure of his incom
pleteness, as in approval of what he did achieve of positive
value. Errors and deficiencies will thus fall into their
proper places in the estimation of his ethical treatise. It
will be sufficient later, on this background of appreciation,
to indicate these, both what they are and how they arose.

Beyond the acknowledged fact that he is the proper
founder of empirical psychology, it should be recognized that
in his endeavor to base ethics and politics solidly on a
thorough understanding of human nature, he was wholly
right. In doing this he originated social psychology, which
is now seen to be that without which the attempted science
of sociology can not exist. So it is that the first part of his
Leviathan is an attempt at such an analysis of man's mind
and behavior as shall furnish the foundation for the second
part, the ethics of political society. The implication of such
an undertaking is that there will in this way emerge, not
merely that sort of descriptive science later to be named
sociology, but in distinction from this a science properly

1 All references in this paper are to The Leviathan. The pages are those in Vol. Ill
of the Molesworth edition of the English Works.

HOBBES S ETHICS AND PSYCHOLOGY IIJ

called ethics. An analysis of human nature rigorously
carried through will disclose its reality. That his analysis
was crude, showing inevitable mistakes, is to be expected
in a new form of psychical investigation.

Again, that after all Hobbes was not aware that he was
not living up to his own theory is not to be wondered at.
It is not his psychological analysis that ultimately controls
his thought in his discussion of the commonwealth. It is,
on the one hand, his inherited stock of notions current in his
day; on the other, his own mechanical philosophy that he
uses. These get colored to a certain extent by his views of
the motive forces in human nature brought over from the
psychological part. But they are not derived from that part
in any clear and satisfactory way. This is also to a certain
extent to be expected in thought not yet able to free itself
from the past, in the very forms and terms of which past
it must proceed. The merit is that the thing was undertaken
at all. The way was opened by the genius of this original
thinker for future investigators to carry fonvard a work so
nobly begun.

Not till quite recently has that work been taken up in the
spirit of Hobbes. It has been necessary, perhaps, that the
so-called new psychology should get lost in its absorbed
interest in analyzing out the beggarly elements of conscious
activity, should, in its laboratories, seem to be unaware,
for the most part, that a man's life consisteth not in sensa
tion, perception, memory, etc., but most of all in complex
responses to social situations, in which these elements play
necessary parts, to be sure, but only much as the letters of
the alphabet play their part in the paragraphs of a treatise.
More pressing than the difficult problems of perception, are
the much more difficult problems of man's creation of social
situations and how it comes about that he is able to react to
them. This requires profound investigation into the origin
and nature of psychic structures that adapt themselves to

Il8 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

and modify, even create, the social situations to which they
in turn adapt themselves. Not long since a prominent
psychologist in one of our greatest universities passed the
matter on to the poets and novelists, as something outside
the domain of psychology proper. But just here is the
very inner sanctuary of psychology; all else is but vestibule
to this main affair.

Social psychology already is giving evidence that it is, in
its various forms, that in which research will in future be
active. And foremost of these forms in importance and in
exciting interest will be psychological ethics. In this the
work of Hobbes will come to its fruition, disproving, it may
be surmised, his mechanical philosophy, while it justifies his
endeavor to base the science of ethics on an analysis of
human nature.

Having given him credit for his exceedingly valuable con
tribution, it will be worth while to indicate the source of his
errors and the character of those errors.

In the first place, though he was the founder of both
empirical and social psychology, he did not seem to be
aware of the nature of that which he had discovered, nor,
consequently, of the method by which the new research
must be prosecuted. He was essentially a deductive
thinker, while the new form of psychology was necessarily
inductive. So it happened that instead of discovering in
an inductive investigation of human nature principles for
the study of human society, he really reversed that order.
He brought from his reflection on political society current
presuppositions that determined what he should find in
human nature. Thus it comes about that in his psycholog
ical analysis he finds what corroborates his political as
sumptions. His vision is distorted from the start. The
extraordinary open-mindedness of a Charles Darwin or a
William James, patiently waiting on the revelation of fact,
was far in the future.

HOBBES'S ETHICS AND PSYCHOLOGY 119

In the second place, the seemingly natural attitude of
intellectualizing all human impulses was very much in
evidence. The catalogue he gives in Chapter VI of The
Leviathan of human impulses or passions, as he names
them, shows no consciousness of the difference between
primary innate and derivative acquired impulses. "Fear is
aversion with opinion of hurt,"2 not an instinct, but an
intellectualized impulse. "Both to love and to fear is to
value." Pity "ariseth from the imagination that the like
calamity may befall himself."3 Mothers, forsooth, pity
their helpless suffering babes from imagination that they
may be in like calamity! One need not wonder how the
"old hard-hearted fellow," as Francis Place called him,
could so distort obvious fact. The answer is in part that the
hard-hearted mind is too little emotional to be aware that
the normal mind is fundamentally more emotional than
intellectual, and in part that this kind of mind over-empha
sizes logic to a certain obtuseness to fact.

So much for the defects and consequent errors of his
method. It may now be asked what in his analysis of mind
he found that bore on the problems of ethics and politics.
The essence of his discovery is in the oft-quoted sentence
from Chapter XI of the Leviathan: "I put for a general
inclination of all mankind a perpetual and restless desire for
power after power that ceaseth only in death." Desire of {
power is then the first and most fundamental conation in1
man's life, and innumerable other impulses are made by
him to be but forms or modifications of this one underlying,
all comprehending push. From this basal urgency arises
the inevitable logical consequent, "War of every man against
every man." "In such condition there is no place" for the
various arts of civilization; "and which is worst of all

' Ch. VI, p. 43.
»Ch. VI, p. 47-

I2O STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of
man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."4

As a necessary correlative to this desire of power in order
that there may arise social order, Hobbes finds fear, for
without fear power would be ineffective. It might be
hinted in passing that this is a necessity of his logic rather
than of his open-minded observation. Given these two
impulses, power is able to overawe and establish order.
He adds a third impulse through sense, perhaps, of the in
adequacy of these two by themselves: "And reason suggest-
eth convenient articles of peace upon which men may be
drawn together."5 In this condition of established order
men's desire of power, their fundamental conation, can most
surely be satisfied. Thus ethics becomes the convenient ad
justment of contending oppositions. To borrow some
phrases from Carlyle, righteousness becomes "anarchy plus
a constable" and "friendship armed neutrality." Thus the
push to power is at once the ultimate source from which
both war and social order spring. And the rules of that
order, established in the interest of the widest satisfaction
of the desire for power, are the civil and moral laws.

Such, in brief, I take it, is the result of his psychological
investigation, and the ethical consequent in logic of his
discovery. Now is human nature what he seemed to find it?
The answer to this question requires an understanding of
what Hobbes means by power, fear, and the function of
reason. It requires also a corrected analysis of human
nature.

The power for which man has this fundamental desire
"is not always that a man hopes for a more intensive de
light than he has already attained to, or that he can not be
content with a moderate power, but because he can not
assure the power and means to live well, which he hath at

«Ch. XIII. p. 113.
*Ch. XIII, p. 116.

HOBBES S ETHICS AND PSYCHOLOGY 121

present, without the acquisition of more." Again we have,
"The object of man's desire is . . .to assure forever the
way of his future desire."6 Again we find, "The power of a
man, to take it universally, is his present means to obtain
some future apparent good."7 The possession of the means
to assured future satisfaction of desire becomes the essence
of desire. So not only natural endowment, but whatever
becomes a means to such assured possession, is an element of
power; not only acquired skills, but reputation, honor of
men, friends, knowledge, anything that helps is such an
element. Desire to possess the means that assure future
satisfactions of desire is then power in Hobbes's conception
of power. It is, however, a conception not consistently
held to.

This really puts the cart before the horse. It puts the
means of life before the end of life. It is sense of life before
the means that contributes to that sense of life men desire.

' 'Tis life where of my nerves are scant,
More life and fuller that I want."

This sense of life takes innumerable forms. It may be the
sense of power as such, in manifold forms, as ability to think,
to feel, to do; it may be domination of one's will or per
sonality over others, or over nature, over one's own im
pulses — the will to power in science, art, morals, in trade,
finance, domestic, international; or it may be ecclesiastic
politics, in greed of gain, or beneficent service of humanity,
in mere destruction with Genghis Kahn, or construction
with a Washington, in building a material empire with a
Napoleon, or a society of justice with Plato, of love with
Jesus.

Common to all forms of life is a push to acts that tend
toward continuance and growth. For humanity this is

«Ch. XI, p. 85.
'Ch. X, p. 74-

122 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

impulse toward self-preservation, whether in the individual
or the race, and toward expansion, or self-realization,
whether in the individual or the race. Here is resistance to
destruction, and resistance to restraint. Here is outreach-
ing for means to expand life, for "commodious living"8
in manifold forms. The self asserted against impairment,
the self asserted in development, varies in essence greatly
from man to man. It may be a social as well as an egoistic
self. It may save all that is worth while to itself by loss of
life, as nurse in the sick-room, as soldier on the battle-field,
or martyr to principle on the scaffold. It may realize, ex
pand itself more in absorption into social service, than in
seeking individualistic destruction by domination over
others. It may sense its own expansion and elevation in
devotion as well as in rule. True, there is "desire of power
after power that ceaseth only in death." But the forms of
power are many. Hobbes makes the logical mistake of
identifying all varieties of power with, to him, its most
obvious forms. It is a defect of observation as well. He
must have read history badly, and looked on the events of
his own day with dull eyes.

A like error is made by Hobbes in his treatment of fear.
He defines fear as "aversion with the opinion of hurt."9
This shows again his fixed habit of intellectualizing purely
instinctive impulses. To define fear as aversion to hurt is,
with him, to identify fear with aversion, and extend its
meaning in the same manner that the meaning of power is
extended to the utter confusion of thought. Fear as such
is a clearly marked emotional and motor reaction to a
certain definite type of situation, comparable to other re
actions, named anger, parental and sexual love. Men have
aversions to balked impulses of every kind. In every-day
speech we may well enough speak of fears when we mean

«Ch. XIII. p. 116.
•Ch. VI, p. 43.

HOBBES S ETHICS AND PSYCHOLOGY 123

merely checked impulses, whether they be appetites, in
stincts, or those acquired, and often very elaborate com
plex dispositions called by Shand and McDougall, senti
ments.

But beyond this in his definition and discussion of fear,
there is no recognition of the various forms of hurt which
the human being may experience. They are as many as the
forms of the self which resist impairment and push to ex
pansion. A man may have such an aversion to what he
calls the loss of his soul, or his honor, merely, as in the duel,
that it may go beyond any control by fear, may even lose
in exalted moments all fear properly so called. A man may
have such an aversion to the extinction of his life because of
its worth to others that he will fight to save it, and fear as
such may cooperate with his rational impulse. A mother's
aversion to injury to her babe, a lover's aversion to the loss
of his true love or to injury to her fair name, that of a
patriot to impairment of his country's honor or power, or to
his country's disregard of the claims of justice, may drive
to risk of life, to sacrifice of fortune or fame. The element
of instinctive fear, fear properly so called, may in all such
cases cooperate, or may even have to be overcome, but these
aversions are not in themselves fears. They are aversions to
balked different native or acquired dispositions. And such
balked dispositions may cause more pain than any amount of
instinctive fear, and the impulse to the satisfaction of these
dispositions may override fear.

Social organization in fact rests on, springs out of, a com
plex of many more and other impulses than that desire of
power after power and that fear, on which Hobbes conceived
society and government to rest. Fear does not play, as
Wallis in his Great Society has pointed out, any such part
as Hobbes believes. Such statements in The Leviathan as
follow are in the very teeth of facts obvious to the open-
minded: "Men have no pleasure, but on the contrary a

124 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

great deal of grief, in keeping company where there is no
power to overawe them all,"10 and again, "No man obeys
them who they think have no power to help or hurt
them."11 So far is this from being true, men are far more
content in the satisfied innate impulse to follow the born
leader, than in any perfect order established in fear. Hobbes
seemed utterly unaware of this native impulse that must
have been in evidence in his day as everywhere and in all
times. Surely the loyalty to Charles I rested on something
other than fear of hurt, or hope of gain through his authority
established. From the happy loyalty of boys to the gang
leader, up through that to the adored party chief, and to the
military captain for whom soldiers seem gladly to battle
and die, to the followers of the founders of religion, you find
a better basis for enduring organization and government
loyally served and obeyed, than from all the fears in the
universe. Men's loyalties are not based on fear, though
fear may be a cooperating element; nor again on desire of
power, in Hobbes's sense of the word, though that may also
cooperate. Primary impulses of gregariousness, 'of affec
tions, whether of sex, parenthood, comradeship, friendship,
or the joy of subordination to the leader — all these, and
other more obscure impulses, make toward socialization in a
much more vital, and far less mechanical way than ap
peared to Hobbes. But that it springs out of human
nature, and that its origin and true nature are to be sought
in human nature, as he asserted and endeavored to show,
remain true. So while we may agree that the real springs
of human conduct were after all largely unknown to him, we
must acknowledge that with him began in the modern world
that form of ethical research which will lead to solid results.
In his statement that "Reason suggesteth convenient
articles of peace upon which men may be drawn together,"12

10 Ch. XIII, p. 112.

11 Ch. X, p. 76.

12 Ch. XIII, p. 116.

HOBBES S ETHICS AND PSYCHOLOGY 125

he has recorded an observed functioning of mind, which in
truth goes far beyond the limits within which he confines it.
There is as certainly a push, an impulse of human nature to
its rational coordination, as there is in it an impulse to
power in Hobbes's sense. And this impulse to rationality
is not as he conceived it, the mere instrument of the push to
power, discovering and defining means, in which "Spirit
works lest arms and legs want play."

It is as certainly impulse toward the discovery and
definition of the nature of ends in order to choice, as it is
toward the discovery of means and their use. Human
nature moves toward very varied forms of expansion, of
realization. It moves as well toward the defining and
valuing of those forms. The "convenient articles of peace"
suggested are as certainly concerned with harmony of inner
impulses as toward the checks on social assertion of power.
As reason proceeds with ever clearer definition of innate and
acquired impulses, and valuation of each for fullest satis
faction of the conation to expansion, the push to power may
be found to hold a far different position than what it holds in
Hobbes's system.

In his view what actually takes place is the organization
of the powers of the many against the aggressions of the
powers of the few. So the end of government is, as he states
it, safety,13 the protection of each against aggressive power
of any. It is organized power in the interest of the greatest
possible satisfaction of the desire for power of each, which is
the fundamental desire of man.

If the fundamental impulse of human nature in its de
velopment be found to be not for power, as such, which is
only one of many forms, but for development, realization in
its most extended sense, then the end of government is not
safety, a balance of powers protecting each. It becomes
something far more rational. Its end is such an organiza-

i»Ch. XXX, p. 322.

126 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

tion of varied human impulses as shall further the develop
ment of personality. The ideal will not then be peace
through a mechanical balance of powers, but a society of
personalities in which each individual unfolds his person
ality in such a manner that in this very act he helps others
to unfold theirs. In such an organized society safety will be
involved; the future will be secure; the impulse to power in
its due place and proportion will be satisfied. This estab
lished, all other things will be added to as involved in it.
Hobbes's "desire of commodious living" will be satisfied as
it can be in no other way.

If, then, we undertake the study of human nature as
disclosed in history and in profound analysis of the develop
ing individual, will not this be that which will be revealed
to us as the psychological basis on which the state must
rest? This discovery, though different from what Hobbes
found, will be made, nevertheless, through research in the
direction and the manner for which his name largely
stands.

HERBERT G. LORD.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF IDEAS IN HOBBES

The general revolt against scholasticism assumed too
many forms to enable one to summarize it in a phrase. In
some quarter or other reactions against every element of
the doctrine of the school occurred. The movement towards
the inductive and experimental investigation of nature, of
which Francis Bacon was the protagonist, was by no means
limited to him. Moreover, this movement can not be taken
as signalizing the whole meaning of the revolt. The rebel
lion had its religious, moral, metaphysical, artistic, and
political, as well as "scientific," moments. Only as a very
general transformation of view-point, of desire, purpose, and
insight, can the new currents of thought be called one.

Thomas Hobbes affords an interesting example of par
ticipation in a common dissatisfaction and repudiation of
the scholastic standpoint with striking divergences from
the philosophical endeavors of other prophets of the new
era. Hobbes's intimacy with Bacon suggests the picture
of a relation of master and follower between them, but such
a picture is assuredly misleading. Toennies 1 and Robert
son 2 both object to such a depiction of the relationship of
the two men. The true intellectual progenitor of Hobbes
is Galileo. Galileo had destroyed the medieval concept of
purpose as a category applicable to nature. The conception
of nature as a system of mechanical forces measurable in
terms of mathematics took captive the imagination of
Hobbes, and was at least instrumental in the clarification of
his thought, if it did not determine its course. Toennies 3
declares that the epistemological question of the time was

1 "Anmerkungen iiber die Philosophic cles Hobbes," Vierteljahrsschrift fur wissen-
schaftliche Philosophic, Vol. 3, 1879, pp. 450-460.

2 "Hobbes," Black-wood's Philosophical Classics.
* Ibid, p. 461.

128 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

whether knowledge attaining the level of the certainty of
mathematics, of geometrical demonstration from axioms
and definitions, was possible, and how it was possible. When
Hobbes, relatively late in life, made the acquaintance of
Euclid, it was this problem that was formulated in his mind.
It was the natural consequence of Galileo's work. Galileo
regarded mathematics as the indispensable prelude to
philosophical study 4 and Hobbes shared the opinion. The
former, according to Toennies, really inaugurated the age
of mathematical deduction. Such deduction was to become
Hobbes's ideal of method. Bacon can hardly be said to
have grasped this epistemological problem ; and the correl
ative ideal of method was not a part of his thought. In the
light of this, therefore, Bacon can not be regarded as the
immediate forerunner of Hobbes. Seth remarks that
Hobbes's quarrel with scholasticism "concerns the subject-
matter, not the method, of that philosophy. He does not
join in Bacon's protest against the scholastic habit of
anticipating nature, of deducing facts from theories; he has
no thought of substituting a scientific induction for the
deductive rationalism of scholastic philosophy. So far as
the question of method is concerned, he is the opponent
rather of Bacon than of the schoolmen; for him, science, as
such, is rationalistic or deductive, not empirical and in
ductive. Rational insight, not empirical knowledge, is his
scientific ideal." 5

It was, then, the teleological character of the old physics
that was a chief point of reaction for Hobbes. The mechan
istic character of the new physics implied a difference in
procedure. In place of the older process. of the classification
of qualities, the study of nature in terms of quantity was
inaugurated. This change in the character of physics
literally meant the application of mathematics to nature.

4 Cf. Toennies, ibid, p. 456

6 English Philosophers and Schools of Philosophy, p. 58.

PSYCHOLOGY OF IDEAS IN HOBBES I2Q

So that the new epistemological problem, the new concep
tion of nature, and the geometric ideal of method are ele
ments of one movement.6

A detailed account of the sources and of the arising and
maturing of Hobbes's thought is out of place here. His
attitude toward the doctrine of the plurality of substances
and the cognitive correspondence of idea and object are our
first concern.

When nature is conceived as a vast mechanical system,
nature is but one substance. But, unlike Descartes, Hobbes
does not rule the "mind" out of nature and devise a second
substance in which the mental life may be conceived as
taking place. Human nature is a part of nature; it is a
product of the same forces; it is regulated by the same laws
as nature itself. The reduction of qualities to quantities
applies in the sphere of the psychological since that is but
an integral part of the whole physical system. Hobbes
speaks, to be sure, of the "two principal parts of man,"
body and mind. But no duality of substance is intended.
Mind is defined only by an enumeration of "mental" facul
ties. There is but one substance, body. "The word body,
in the most general acceptation, signifieth that which filleth,
or occupieth some certain room, or imagined place; and
dependeth not on imagination, but is a real part of the
universe. For the universe, being the aggregate of bodies,
there is no real part thereof that is not also body." 7 Spirit,
according to Hobbes, originally meant air, or breath, and
comes to mean incorporeality from having originally indi
cated subtle body. "Matter is the same with body; but ,
never without respect to a body which is made thereof.
Form is the aggregate of all accidents together .
spirit is this fluid, transparent, invisible body." 8 The

« Cf. Toennies, ibid.

7 Works of Hobbes, Molesworth edition, 1839, Vol. 3, Leviathan, pt. 3, ch. 34; all
references are to this edition.

8 A nswer to Bishop Bramhall, Vol. 4, p. 309.

I3O STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

notion of an incorporeal substance is a contradiction in
terms, a vain idea induced by apparitions, hallucinations,
and dreams. It is a sort of mental hob-goblin. Hobbes uses
the terms "ghost" and "incorporeal substance" in juxta
position, and is serious in so doing.9 From Hobbes's objec
tions to Descartes it appears that he was either unable to
understand Descartes's notion of the immateriality of
thought or, what is more probable, perversely refused to
comprehend it. In this Gassendi resembled Hobbes. The
notion of immateriality, at least in the sense of the imma
teriality or ideality of form, was a commonplace to those
imbued with the scholasticism of the traditional education
of that age. Descartes's soul substance represents not so
much an innovation and a novel distinction, as a renovation
of a time-honored conception, coupled with a more explicit
comprehension of the implications following the deduction of
a plurality of substances to two. To Hobbes and Gassendi,
archheretics of the age, Descartes appeared to be the victim of
a great superstition, as bad as that of belief in occult powers.
On the one hand, in their eyes, he was proclaiming allegiance
to the new science of nature; on the other, he was asserting
the validity of a nonsensical notion that was one of the
rankest growths of scholasticism.

The animus of Hobbes's strictures on the notion of incor
poreal substance was derived not so much from a devotion
to a monism of substance as from a conviction of the worth-
lessness of the concept of substance as such. He does, of
course, speak of body substance, but concerning this single
substance he really has little to say. At bottom, he is of the
opinion that any and every notion of substance is vain,
empty, and unfruitful. Its serviceableness, in so far as it
has any, is in its use as a limiting idea. The phenomena of
nature, and these include the phenomena of human nature,
are motions. The science of nature is essentially the science

• De Corpore. Vol. i, pt. 4. ch. 25, p. 399.

PSYCHOLOGY OF IDEAS IN HOBBES 13!

of dynamics or mechanics — a mathematical quantitative
investigation of the sequence of physical events. The new
conception of nature serves, for Hobbes, all the purposes
formerly served by the concept of substance. The thought
of nature as a dynamical system is so fundamental with
Hobbes that he seems well-nigh to confound pure mathe
matics with its applied forms. The true relationship be
tween mathematics and physical science is obscured in his
thinking through the discovery that nature possesses a sort
of mathematical structure. And it is this vision that fructi
fies his thought, rather than the notion of the oneness of
substance. As has been indicated, he desired to give
knowledge of nature the certainty of geometry. The prac
tical identification of geometry and mechanics raises the
laws of motion to the rank of geometrical axioms and
definitions, and mechanics, as the science of all nature,
thereby attains, in his mind, a position comparable to the
deductive, demonstrative certainty of geometry.10 Motion
thus becomes the chief category of his thought while the
concept of substance lapses from mind. For once science
as the study of motion is launched, the notion of body
retreats from sight; and one could properly say that the
notion of substance takes the form of the conception of
nature as a uniform, mechanical system. This opinion is
corroborated by the fact that Hobbes seems at little pains
to determine the nature of substance. Having served its
purpose as a counterblast to pluralisms and dualisms of
substances, it becomes a shadowy sort of metaphysical
background for science. Owing to this fact, Hobbes's
philosophy is sometimes called phenomenalistic. \Space and
time are phantasms. Accidents do not "inhere" in bodies,
but are our ways of conceiving body. All accidents can be
thought away from body, save magnitude. The accidents

10 Cf. Toennies, ibid. Vol. 4, 1880, p. 69; Philosophical Elements, sect. 2; De Homine,
ch. 10, 5.

132 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

of body are phenomena of motion, and science is knowledge
of these accidents. Thus natural philosophy deals with a
world of motions and accidents, the relation of which to
substance remains unsettled; and it so remains, probably,
because Hobbes thought of the problem of this relation as
vain and fruitless. Had he not regarded the notion of sub
stance as empty, he must have raised questions concerning
the relation of motion to substance. But in the main,
questions of that type are left to one side.

It is noteworthy that Hobbes's psychology is developed
largely in the interest of physics. Of the psychology of
sensation and perception, at least, this is true. As all
psychological process is really motion, psychology is a
branch of physics. A brief survey of his psychology will
indicate this.

The subject of sense is the sentient itself. And it is of
prime importance to observe that this "subject of sense" is
neither consciousness, nor soul, nor mind, but, in Hobbes's
own phrase, "some living creature." Sense is motion in the
sentient. All qualities "called sensible, are in the object,
that causeth them, but so many several motions of the
matter, by which it presseth our organs diversely." u These
motions are propagated on into the organism. But this
motion meets an "outward" motion, and this clash of
motions is sense. "Sense is a phantasm made by the reac
tion and endeavor outwards in the organ of sense caused
by an endeavor inwards from the object, remaining for
some time more or less." 12 "Neither in us that are pressed,
are they (qualities) anything else, but divers motions; for
motion produceth nothing but motion."13 In Chapter 25
of the Concerning Body, we learn that qualities are not acci
dents of the object, for light and color, for example, are
merely phantasms of the sentient.

11 Vol. 3, I, p. 2.

"Concerning Body, Vol. I, pt. 4, ch. 25, p. 301.

"Vol. 3, ch. i, p. 2.

PSYCHOLOGY OF IDEAS IN HOBBES 133

How thoroughly the psychology of sensation and per
ception is regarded by Hobbes as an integral part of physics
is indicated by the fact that Hobbes raises the question
whether there is not sensation in all bodies.14 For reaction,
as well as action, characterizes all bodies, and sensation is
a phenomenon of a type describable in such categories.
He falls back on the fact that the human body retains the
prior motion as a dampened but persistent organic rever
beration; and in this resides the possibility of memory.
Or, to speak more accurately, memory, in Hobbes's sense
of the term, is an essential part of sense. He does not seem,
however, to offer an explanation of how the motions from
sense persisting in subliminal form come to attain, when we
remember, a state of excitement approximating that of the
original experience. "For by sense, we commonly under
stand the judgment we make of objects by their phan
tasms; namely, by comparing and distinguishing those
phantasms; which we could never do, if that motion in the
organ, by which the phantasm is made, did not remain there
for some time, and make the same phantasm return.
Wherefore sense . . . hath necessarily some memory
adhering to it." I5 Hence the "nature of sense can not be
placed in reaction only," 16 but an organic continuance of
the motion, or reverberation, must be added to the action-
reaction scheme. Yet it is to be noted that this does not
remove sense psychology from physics, for the persistent
motion is just motion in a given body. Rather it means
that the physics of sense deals with an added factor.

\Since all ideas are originally from sense, they are also
motions in the sentient. Hobbes is loose in his use of terms,
and he maintains with consistency no distinctions between
images, representations, ideas, and conceptions. They are
all really images. All psychological facts are motions or

14 Concerning Body, Vol. I, p. 393.
is Ibid.
16 Ibid.

134 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

clashes of motions. Sense processes differ from ideas and
images only in that the latter are revived motions or motions
continuing, to a greater or less degree, after the removal of
the extra-organic object or stimulus. All mental proc
esses are at bottom of two kinds, either sensations (percep
tions) or images.\\ The general name for both kinds is
"phantasm." "The imagery and representations of the
qualities of the thing without, is that we call our conception,
imagination, ideas, notice, or knowledge of them; and the
faculty or power by which we are capable of such knowl
edge, is that I here call cognitive power, or conceptive, the
power of knowing or conceiving." 17 Imagination is denned
as "conception remaining, and little by little decaying from
and after the act of sense." 18 The representative image is
a state of sense overpowered by another and later sense
experience. Productive imagination is the composition of
motions in the brain.

The phantasm is called the "act of sense." "From this
reaction by the motions in the sentient phantasm or idea
hath its being." Hobbes says with reference to phantasm as
the act of sense, that "the being a doing is the same as the
being done";19 he adds that "a phantasm being made, per
ception is made together with it." This seems to mean that
the motion process, or the clash of motions, is itself the
idea or perception, the phantasm.

-Hobbes distinguishes, or seems to distinguish between the
cognitive or conceptive faculty and the imaginative or
motive faculty. "For the understanding of what I mean
by the power cognitive, we must remember and acknowledge
that there be in our minds continually certain images or
conceptions of the things without us, . . . the absence
or destruction of things once imagined doth not cause the
absence or destruction of the imagination itself. This imagery

17 Human Nature, Vol. 4, ch. I.

"Ibid, ch. 3, i.

11 Vol. i. pt. 4, 25, p. 392.

PSYCHOLOGY OF IDEAS IN HOBBES 135

and representations of the qualities of the thing without, is
that we call our conception, imagination, ideas, notice, or
knowledge of them ; and the faculty or power by which we
are capable of such knowledge, is that I here call cognitive
power, or conceptive, the power of knowing or conceiving." 20
But then Hobbes proceeds to^ equate obscure conception
and phantasy or imagination, 21 so that the distinction be
tween the two faculties is left inexact. Certainly no dis
tinction between image and conception appears from these
citations. But while Hobbes, as a matter of terminology, does
not distinguish between image and conception as existences,
he has a certain distinction in use and meaning that can
be most easily denoted by these terms. To make this clear
it will be necessary to turn briefly to his idea of knowledge.
Hobbes has in mind a knowledge system comparable to
geometry in method and certainty. This universal system,
which represents the ideal of knowledge, is contrasted with
the particularity of sense experience. The opposition be
tween the universal principle in which alone consists true
knowledge and the empirical manifold does not lead in the
case of Hobbes to an attempt to derive knowledge from
sense experience. His problem is not stated in the form:
How can we obtain from sense experience the organized
body of universal principles? Rather the contrast between
principle and particular sense experiences develops into
an antithesis that runs through his theory of knowledge.
The experiences of sense are, in conformity with Hobbes's
mechanistic view of nature, effects. They are not differen
tiated from other effects in nature, because they involve no
unique principle. The fact that sense effects happen to
concern a sentient being does not signify that they are of
an order essentially different from other sorts of effects, for
the sentient being is an integral part of the mechanical
system. Now true knowledge is knowledge of causes, and

20 Human Nature, Vol. 4, p. 2-3.

21 Cf. ibid, p. 9.

136 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

causes in Hobbes's system of knowledge are to correspond
to the first principles of mathematics. Therefore the prob
lem of the relation of universal principles and sense experi
ence is formulated in terms of cause and effect. In conse
quence, there arises an antithesis between knowledge from
causes to effects and knowledge from effects to causes.

Geometry, the model that Hobbes seeks to follow, begins
with axioms and definitions and proceeds deductively to
the exposition of consequences. But why is geometry
demonstrable? Because the power to construct the object

, of thought is in the demonstrator.22 But with respect to
knowledge of fact, sense experience can not give us general
notions, universal principles, definitions, and axioms. We
do not know the construction of things. \ Science, imitating
geometry, proceeds deductively from causes, which are the
axioms and first principles of science, to effects. Sense
experience is an effect, and, therefore, can not in any direct
fashion supply the starting-point for scientific knowledge.
From sense effects, or from effects generally, we can demon
strate, not the real causes, but only possible causes, of the
effects. So the antithesis takes the following form : on the
one hand is scientific knowledge — the only real knowledge
— proceeding from causes to effects and revealing necessi
ties of connection; on the other hand, we have knowledge
of possible causes of real effects, and this is mere knowledge
of probability, knowledge of experience, unscientific
knowledge.

Hobbes does not give a satisfactory account of how we
are to obtain the first notions of science. If, however, he
does not solve this difficulty, two things aid him in glossing
it over and, perhaps, convincing him that he has solved it.
First of all, there is that identification of mathematics and
mechanics already referred to. By analytic procedure the
primitive notions (axioms and definitions of physical

« Cf. Six Lessons to the Professor of Mathematics. Vol. 7, p. W </• Toennies. op. cit..
Vol. 4-

PSYCHOLOGY OF IDEAS IN HOBBES 137

science) are to be secured, and then, proceeding synthet
ically, the effects are to be demonstrated from their causes or
first principles. The body of definitions, or primitive truths,
thus obtained by analysis would form First Philosophy.

The second recourse afforded Hobbes is language, an
instrument that makes possible the transcendence of the
limitations of experience. Reasoning is computation,
addition and subtraction; and judgment is the uniting of
two names by the copula "is." The universal name is a
counter or symbol, and truth is consistency in the use of
terms. The universal name does not represent any par
ticular existing object, nor any particular image. It may
indicate indifferently any individual object of a class, or an
image of any individual object of a class. In short, it is a
matter of no importance what image is attached to the
name. The essential thing is that the signification of the
name be clearly determined upon and that it be accepted.

Now to return to the distinction of image and conception.
The image, particularly in so far as Hobbes uses conception
as terminologically equivalent to image, is itself an exis
tence, a motion in the sentient, a physical effect. Experience
is "store of phantasms," and phantasms are, as existents,
effects, the source of problems. The image is literally like
the images in a mirror. The shilling, observed through a
glass of a certain figure, is seen as twenty shillings. The
shilling is a body — the images given by the glass are, in
Hobbes's own terms, fancies, idols, mere nothings, echoes.23
The proposition that "there is nothing without us (really)
which we call an image or colour" is proved by pointing out
that "the image of anything by reflection in a glass of water
or the like, is not anything in or behind the glass, or in or
under the water." 24

Conceptions, in so far as they are composed of images,
are like all other images. But conception as a name stand-

23 Decameron Physiologicum, Vol. 7, pp. 78-79. •

24 Human Nature, Vol. 4, pp. 4-5.

138 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

ing for a class of objects (or class of images) and accom
panied by an image of a particular object of the class, means
the term of discourse. What we should ordinarily intend
by "conception" or "general idea" signifies for Hobbes sym
bolic word counters with meanings determined and agreed
upon, which form the terms in the process of reasoning.
Image and conception as psychological existents are one
and the same. But with reference to knowledge, concep
tion is the universal name standing for a group of particular
empirical facts (images or sense perceptions), and knowledge
based upon such terms is universal, scientific knowledge;
while knowledge based upon particular images, or trains of
images, is unscientific and not of universal validity. This
is clarified by a reference to Hobbes's Objections to Descartes.
The latter has said that he does not understand by the
imagination what the wax is, but conceives it by the mind
alone. A distinction between image as physiological process
and idea as an immaterial spiritual entity is thus implied.
Hobbes objects to this as follows: "There is a great differ
ence between imagining, i. e., having some idea, and con
ceiving with the mind, i. e., inferring, as the result of a train
of reasoning, that something is, or exists. . . . But
what shall we now say, if reasoning chance to be nothing
more than the uniting and stringing together of names or
designations by the word is? It will be a consequence of
this that reason gives us no conclusion about the nature
of things, but only about the terms that designate them,
whether, indeed, or not there is a convention (arbitrarily
made about their meanings) according to which we join
these names together. If this be so, as is possible, reasoning
\vill depend on names, names on the imagination, and
imagination ... on the motion of the corporeal organs.
Thus mind will be nothing but the motions in certain parts
of an organic body." 25 "It is evident that essence in so

25 Philosophical Works of Descartes, Ross and Haldane, Vol. 2, p. 65.

PSYCHOLOGY OF IDEAS IN HOBBES 139

far as it is distinguished from existence is nothing else than
a union of names by means of the verb is." 26

In short, in terms of psychology, there is no distinction
between conception and image. Words, one would suppose,
are also images. But with reference to knowledge, concep
tion as universal names signifying a class of objects or an
abstract principle is in sharpest contrast to the particular
image. While for Descartes the image is what Hobbes
would have it be, namely, motion (or some purely physical
change) in the sentient organism, the idea or conception is
an entity in an immaterial soul substance.

Mention has been made of what has been called Hobbes's
"phenomenalism." In connection with the meaning of this
term as applied to Hobbes certain questions concerning
qualities arise. First of all, what is the "object" of percep
tion? It is not any sense quality, or a combination of them,
and merely that. The object of sight, he says, is neither
light nor color (which are phantasms in the sentient), but
the object that is light or colored.27 "The whole appearance
of figure, and light and color is by the Greeks commonly
called eidos . . . and by the Latins, species or imago;
all which names signify no more but appearances." 28 Now
subtracting from the "object" these secondary qualities,
what remains? Motion, and in some obscure sense, body,
substance. Consider briefly in connection with this certain
aspects of Hobbes's account of qualities.

The causes of sensible qualities, he says, can not be known
until we know the causes of sense.29 Sensible qualities from
the side of the object are "so many several motions, pressing
our organs diversely;"30 from the side of the perceiving
subject, they are again "nothing but divers motions." 31

™ Ibid, p. 77.
» Vol. I, p. 404.

18 Ibid, pp. 404-405.

19 Vol. i, p. 72.
"Vol. 3. p. 2.
» Ibid.

I4O STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

. Qualities are apparitions of the motions produced
by the object on the brain; but the apparitions or images
are also said to be "nothing really, but motion in some
internal substance of the head." 32 Four propositions are
advanced33 that should be considered here: "That the
subject wherein color and image are inherent, is not the
object or thing seen. That there is nothing without us
(really) which we call an image or color. That the said
image or color is but an apparition unto us of the motion,
agitation, or alteration, which the object worketh in the
brain, or spirits . . . that as in vision, so also in con
ceptions that arise from the other senses the subject of their
inherence is not the object, but the sentient" ^

It would appear, therefore, that the "object" reduces to
motions of body. Secondary qualities at least depend on
the organism and are in the organism. Hobbes's position
is, then, in general, that of modern physics. For the
physicist the given color is just so many vibrations per
second in the medium, that is, a certain kind of motion.
For Hobbes as physicist, the subject-matter of investiga
tion is the various kinds of motion. :• Body is distinguished
from its "appearances." Body as a principle beyond ap
pearances affords a problem for metaphysics rather than
for physics. Appearances as phenomena of motion form
the subject-matter of physics. Body as substance ranks as
a sort of general postulate of physical science. This seems
to be, in a general way, the drift of Hobbes's meaning.

To return for a moment to the psychology of perception.
It is to be noted that while the cause of perception is the
motion which is propagated through the medium into the
organ of sense and then on into the brain, this motion is not
in and by itself the sensation quality or the perception.
The perception (sensation) arises only when the inward
motion clashes with the outward motion or "endeavor."

™Human Nature, Vol. 4, ch. 7, p. r; cf. ch. 8, I, and ch. 10, i.
83 Human Nature, Vol. 4, p. 4.

PSYCHOLOGY OF IDEAS IN HOBBES 141

The "apparition" or phantasm is then not the incoming
motion itself. But then we may ask: Is the phantasm the
clash of the motions? Is the psychological process just this
reaction upon another motion, a sort of compound motion
resulting from the combination of the inward and outward
motions, or is it the way in which the total motion process
appears to the percipient? There seem to be two possible
interpretations of Hobbes's thought: either the clash of
the "endeavor inwards" and the "endeavor outwards" is
in itself the apparition or quality; or the qualities depend
on, but are something more than, the motion reaction in
nervous substance on the inward-going motion which is a
continuation of the motion originating in some extra-
organic source. The "clash" is either the apparition or
sense quality itself, or that which appears in sense perception
as the quality.

\ Hobbes's own statements afford no ground for doubting
that for him the clash of motions is itself the quality, ap
parition, or phantasm. Or in terms characteristic of his
age, they are simply movements of the animal spirits,
vibrations in the nerves; the only qualification is that they
are compound movements or vibrations. The idea may be
untenable, the theory superficial and neglectful of real diffi
culties, but it is Hobbes's answer.

We may ourselves introduce the question of conscious
ness, in order thereby to indicate the unsatisfactory char
acter of this psychology. But then we are injecting into
the exposition of his thought an order of questions of which
he was not cognizant or, being aware of them, simply
neglected. Having denied the existence of incorporeal sub
stance, he could not and would not regard the apparition or
conception or image as a soul state, a spiritual event, in an
immaterial soul, and corresponding to, rather than being,
a physical motion. It is the result of an inadequate histori
cal perspective to raise the question of the relation of the

142 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

"clash" of motions to "consciousness" or to make the imme
diate object of sense a "state of consciousness" in the
ordinary sense of the term (see below).

The source of misunderstanding is the question of what
is meant by the "object," and to this we must return.
What the object is, does not hinge upon any question of a
relation to consciousness, but upon the relation of the
question of psychology to the question of physics. In
terms of Hobbes's physics, which we must remember is
essentially mechanics, the "object" is a set of "divers
motions," connected in a manner not wholly explained with
substantial body. The accidents of body, for Hobbes the
physicist, are those divers motions. All accidents can be
generated or destroyed, save those of magnitude and
extension; body can never be generated or destroyed.
Bodies are things and are not generated, accidents (save
magnitude and extension) are generated and are not
things. These statements define the subject-matter of
physical science.

But the "object" as that which the sentient has, or as the
content of the sentient's experience, is not precisely the
same as the "object" existing outside the sentient. It is
not these "divers motions" constituting the extra-organic
object, but the immediate object of sense, and this is a
phantasm, apparition, or combination of phantasms. Now
the explanation of the psychological process and fact is cast
in terms of physics. The external cause of the phantasm is
motion in the extra-organic object. In fact, it would be
accurate to say that the cause is that set of motions which is
the extra-organic object. The phantasm itself, as a matter
of existence, is motion ; but not the motion propagated into
the organism without alteration. On the contrary, it is
rather the product of the combination or interaction of two
motions or two sets of motions. That which forms the
content of the sentient's perception is, therefore, a complex

PSYCHOLOGY OF IDEAS IN HOBBES 143

of sense qualities ; and it is the joint product of the extra-
organic object and the equally physical living organism.
The psychological fact is thus not the "divers motions" of
the external object, but another set of "divers motions" dif
fering from the former in two ways: first, in that the latter
are motions in the sentient organism, and secondly, in that
they are the results of the former set of motions acting upon,
and being reacted upon by, the percipient organism. In
other terms, the psychological content is the immediate
data of sense ; for physics it is the motion accidents of body.
A remark of Hobbes 34 may elucidate the point. The sun,
he says, seems to the eye no bigger than a dish : but "there is
behind it somewhere something else, I suppose a real sun,
which creates these fancies, by working, one way or other,
upon my eye, and other organs of my senses, to cause that
diversity of fancy." The "real sun" indicates the external
object stimulus; the "diversity of fancy," the sun-having-
the-size-of-a-dish, is the content of the perception.

We are simply endeavoring here to render clear the dif
ference between the phantasm and its extra-organic corres
pondent as Hobbes himself saw it. Both phantasm and
extra-organic object are physical effects — neither is "men
tal." But the phantasm is not an exact replica of the
"object," for they are two "sets of divers motions," and
that set which is phantasm differs from the correlated set
which is the outside "object" by the extent to which
motions native to the sentient fuse with the motions pro
pagated from the external object into the sentient. This
is consequently no denial of a correspondence, nor, for that
matter, of some degree of similarity, between phantasm and
outside object; that which is denied is the exact and com
plete similarity of phantasm and the object without the
sentient. In brief, the fact that motions from without
enter a living organism makes a difference to those motions.

34 Decameron Physiologicum, Vol. 7, pp. 80-81.

144 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

In the light of this, the assertion that Hobbes's doctrine
has nothing to do with "mental states" seems justified.
Phantasms are neither "mental," "spiritual," "psychical,"
nor are they "states of consciousness." Such terms with
their customary modern connotations are totally inappli
cable to a psychology of the type of Hobbes's. Seth35
affords a curious instance of this misapplication. "The
immediate objects of the senses are, Hobbes finds, mere
'phantasms' or 'appearances' — as we should say, states of
consciousness, having no existence outside the mind itself
. the object of sense perception is purely subjective,
and totally unlike the real object, which is the cause of the
sense appearance." But one is forced to protest that by
"appearances," Hobbes does not mean what "state of con
sciousness, having no existence outside the mind" means
for us. "Appearances" for Hobbes are related to the real
thing as the image in the mirror to the object mirrored;
they do not imply an order of existences of a nature radi
cally different from the objects of which they are the ap
pearances. They are existences, effects, of precisely the
same nature as the "real thing. n

The image is thus related to the object as effect to cause,
as an echo to the sounding body, or as a reflection in a
mirror to the source from which ether vibrations spring.
Now the question may here be raised: Are not images,
these echoes and reflections, equivalent to states of con
sciousness? The answer must obviously depend upon what
is the precise meaning here ascribed to "states of conscious
ness." If we define the phrase as denoting simply what we
are aware of in the operations of sense, and mean literally
that, with no implied reservations and considerations con
cerning the status of things "in consciousness," or "depen
dent for their existence or for their being experienced on
consciousness," or "having their existence only in the mind"

85 English Philosophers and Schools of Philosophy, pp. 61-62.

PSYCHOLOGY OF IDEAS IN HOBBES 145

— in short, if the phrase be emptied of all so-called sub
ject! vistic implications, Hobbes's phantasms are states of
consciousness. But it is essential that all these qualifica
tions be made. It is easy to imagine that, were Hobbes
asked what we are aware of in perception, he would regard
the question as rather stupid, since every man possessing
vision saw colors, and having ears heard sounds — in other
words, was aware of images, echoes, reflections, phantasms.
If states of consciousness are simply what we are aware of,
Hobbes would regard it as trifling to ask if what we are
aware of are states of consciousness. On the other hand,
had Hobbes been asked if phantasms were "subjective,"
if they were dependent for their existence on consciousness,
or the soul, or the mind ; or had he been asked if the nature
of phantasms was altered by the fact that some conscious
ness was aware of them, he would have been sorely puzzled
to discover what the question was about. He would prob
ably have looked upon it as on a par with asking if the
image in the mirror were altered by the mirroring. Not to
labor the point further, we may conclude that such ques
tions almost unavoidably inject into Hobbes's doctrine
elements not merely foreign to it, but beyond the ken of its
author. The questions as to the adequateness to-day of
Hobbes's psychology of perception, of the relation of that
psychology to present-day positions, and of whether we
should hold that Hobbes's phantasm is all that "state of
consciousness" should signify, are very different from the
question of what Hobbes did mean to say.

If by "mind," in the statement quoted, Seth intends the
subject of sense in Hobbes's meaning of the term, then it is
true that appearances have no existence outside the mind
itself — but then they are not "states of consciousness."
For the subject of sense Hobbes does not call mind or soul
or consciousness, but "some living creature" — and this is a
significant fact. Hobbes's phantasms are what he calls

146 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

them, store of experience. The manifold of experience is
this store of phantasms. It is for Hobbes what the sequence
of states of consciousness is for the modern subjectivist.
Hobbes's manifold of experience are states of a living
creature, phenomena of motion, but the series of states of
consciousness, as the phrase is generally used in later sub-
jectivistic thought, implies a group of conceptions and dis
tinctions which simply did not exist for Hobbes. It is even
unfair to Hobbes to say that his store of phantasms is
identical with the sequence of physiological processes or
neuroses which in most modern psychology is regarded as
paralleling a very dissimilar sequence of psychical states.
It is unfair because it tends to represent Hobbes as reacting
against a distinction in orders of existence and as erasing
the whole world of the "psychical" in order to maintain the
sufficiency of the world of the "physical." The point on
which too much insistence can hardly be laid, however, is
that such a picture of Hobbes is unhistorical, not founded
on Hobbes's own words, and that, therefore, the questions
that we have been considering are irrelevant.

The trouble, to repeat, is that subjectivity and objec
tivity, consciousness, mental states, psychical existences,
and the like elements of later psychological and epistemo-
logical instruments of terminology are completely beyond
the sphere of Hobbes's thought. The appearances and the
real objects can not be subsumed under these categories.
They belong to the one order of existents. The unlikeness
of one to the other is simply the unlikeness of one motion
to another, of object to reflected image, and not the unlike
ness of a "subjective conscious state" to an "objective real
object."

When we inquire concerning Hobbes's position with
reference to the cognitive correspondence of idea and thing,
we are in danger of forcing his thought into channels foreign
to it, if we seek to compel an answer. The danger lies in

PSYCHOLOGY OF IDEAS IN HOBBES 147

assuming that the cognitive correspondence of idea and
thing is at the same time a psychophysical correlation of
idea as psychical state with a physiological state (and since
the latter is the effect of an extra-organic physical cause,
the correlation extends to that of psychical state and physi
cal object). It is this confusion which is at the bottom of
Seth's misinterpretation considered above. In forcing this
meaning upon Hobbes, we should be introducing surrep
titiously that very dualism of substances which he has ex
plicitly repudiated.

y . In terms of Hobbes's psychology, there is no such thing as
correlation of psychical idea with object, since there is noth
ing that is psychical or spiritual or "mental" in this sense of
the term. From the psychological standpoint, the only cor
respondence that exists is that of effects to causes. But from
the standpoint of knowledge, this relation of cause and
effect is the basis of a cognitive correspondence. The experi
ence of the effects affords the opportunity for knowledge of
the causes. Therefore, in raising the question of the cog
nitive correspondence of idea and thing, we are inquiring
how Hobbes uses the physical effects in the sentient, that is,
the phantasms, in order to arrive at a knowledge of objects,
that is, of causes.

Now the mere possession of images is not, according to
Hobbes, in itself knowledge. Image-phantasms are more
accurately regarded as the occasions and opportunities for
cognition than actual cases of knowing. Images afford a
certain guidance to the sentient organism in its activities,
but are not in themselves knowledge. As physical effects
in the all-embracing system of nature, phantasms and
images are part of the subject-matter of inquiry rather
than the knowing itself. Real knowledge depends on the
consistent use of the terms of discourse, and ratiocination is
computation involving such consistent manipulation of
terms. But the terms must be connected up with objects

148 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

(which are really causes in the dynamic system of nature)
in a scheme of definite correspondence. This is secured
through the instrumentality of the image-phantasms.

Now the image-phantasms which make up experience
are as varied as their outside causes. The possession of
certain phantasms leads to the adoption of a name as a sign
of the causes of the phantasm-effects. Thus, as in the illus
tration cited above, the term "sun" will signify the extra-
organic cause of the intra-organic state or phantasm, "sun-
being-the-size-of-a-dish," and of experiences of a similar
nature. The "real sun, which creates these fancies" is the
cognitive correlate of the term "sun" which is adopted in
order to connect the "diversity of fancy" or phantasms
with the "real sun." Through the use of names as signs
associated with a given group or kind of phantasms, we are
able to discriminate and distinguish the external causes.
Thus the cognitive function of phantasms resides not so
much in the images themselves (for the image in and by
itself is not knowing) as in their capacity to be indices of
the extra-organic causes, and in fixation of this causal
reference by means of names. The names once fixed,
agreed upon, and their reference maintained, ratiocination,
or computation by means of names, furnishes knowledge.

It is clear, therefore, that the doctrine of cognitive cor
respondence in Hobbes is far from possessing any implica
tions of psychophysical dualism. \ The correspondence, to
repeat, is based on the relation of cause and effect. And
both cause and effect are of the same order of existence,
physical changes in a mechanical system. The similarity of
idea (phantasm) and object is a similarity of cause and effect
and a completed science of nature would contain an exhaus
tive account of "psychological" process.

ALBERT G. A. BALZ

TRUTH AND ERROR IN DESCARTES

The principles of Descartes's theory of knowledge may
be understood from either of two points of view. On the
one hand, it becomes quite clear that most of the doctrines
are the natural results of the previously formulated physi
cal and physiological theories. That is, the epistemology
may be regarded as a logical restatement of the content of
the accomplished scientific formulations. On the other
hand, it is possible to look upon it as originating in the at
tempt to bring these scientific achievements within the
scope of a set of preexisting postulates concerning the rela
tion of thought and reality. In this case, the task is to dis
cover what are the fundamental presuppositions underlying
the account of knowledge, what difficulties are the results of
these, and what actual aspects of thinking Descartes is refer
ring to in his statements.

The latter is the angle from which this paper will approach
the problem. Historical relationships both to those who
came before and to those who followed after will be ne
glected, although the temptation is great to show that much
of Spinoza's work rested on latent Cartesian presupposi
tions. For the present, however, the internal structure of
the Cartesian system will be our sole concern. And as a
starting-point, we shall use the Rules for the Direction of
Mind, for this is the earliest of the philosophical treatises
and contains in an implicit way the tenets which bring about
the difficulties which most of the later writings were at
tempting to solve.

The basic principle in the Cartesian system is the theory
of the nature of truth. Reality has a determinate, unchang
ing structure, and the task of thought is to find it. It makes
little difference whether we look upon the activity of thought

I5O STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

as in some way directed to setting up a mental copy, idea,
or judgment of the objective world, or as immediately
grasping the content of the same. In either case reality is
there, once and for all, and knowledge must in some way
attain it. Truth, then, is the relation which arises when
thought has actually got hold of the nature of this static
universe. Whether this condition be described as copying
or intuiting, the definition of the truth relation is in essence
the same, standing in contrast to any account which would
regard it as consisting in the realization of certain antici
pated experiences, or any form of control.

We appeal to the writings to show that our account of the
matter is correct, and we find that we are chiefly embar
rassed by the quantity of evidence. In the Rules, the phrase
constantly used in describing knowledge is the intuiting or
beholding of simple natures or essences, which are of course
the truths of mathematics. The background for this must
be sought in the Aristotelian tradition. A more specifically
copy theory is indicated in the later works. In the Discourse
we read, "But I have also observed certain laws which God
has so established in Nature, and of which he has imprinted
such ideas on our minds, that, after having reflected suffi
ciently," etc. In the Meditations (III) we find, "Now as to
what concerns ideas, if we consider them only in themselves,
and do not relate them to anything else beyond themselves, they
can not properly speaking be false." "These two ideas can
not, indeed, both resemble the same sun, and reason makes
me believe that the one which seems to have originated
directly from the sun itself, is the one which is most dis
similar to it." The doctrine of the objective reality of ideas
is exactly in line with this whole view. The objective reality '
is just the idea's function as representing a reality beyond
itself, or as Descartes puts it, "Hence the idea of the sun
will be the sun itself, existing in the mind, not indeed for
mally, as it exists in the sky, but objectively, i. e., in the

TRUTH AND ERROR IN DESCARTES 151

way in which objects are wont to exist in the mind." It
should be noted that there are two kinds of reality cited,
the world of perception, i. e., of existences, and the world of
essences or eternal and immutable natures. But in any
case, the truth relation is the same.

So far, we have established that the Cartesian view of the
nature or definition of truth is that it is a grasping of the
character of a completely determined reality, either through
copying or intuiting. We come now to the next point in the
Rules, the criterion of truth, the self-evidence or clearness -
and distinctness of a proposition. The definition of truth
and the criterion of truth in the Cartesian system should not
be confused. The former is concerned with what it means
to say that a proposition is true, the latter with how it is !
known to be so in any particular case. And the self-evidence
of ideas does not as such make them valid, as is proved by
Descartes's statements in the Meditations that he might pos
sibly be deceived in those matters of which he was most
certain. The same thing comes out in his replies to Gas-
sendi, who attacks this point. If self-evidence as such
constituted truth, such errors would, of course, be im
possible. It is then merely the mark by which propositions,
true in virtue of their mirroring of reality, can be known to
be such. This applies directly, of course, only to the simple
propositions or natures from which all others are deduced,
the truth of the latter being guaranteed by that of the
former. This situation contributes much to the problems
of the later works. To understand this, we must first com
prehend clearly the meaning of the terms employed. The
simplicity which is spoken of here is plainly simplicity from
the view-point of knowledge, not of psychological analysis.
There are, then, certain truths which make the further
acquisitions of truth a possibility. To modern logic this
can mean only one thing, the successful hypothesis. This is
simple, because it brings the big, varied, uncoordinated

152 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

mass of perceptual data into an ordered whole. The mind
instead of being confronted with a lot of apparently unre
lated facts, comes to see them as parts of one system, to sub
stitute a unifying meaning for a chaotic manyness of experi
ence. In this sense, we can speak of simplicity for knowledge
or for logic. Those which are absolutely simple would then
from this view-point be those hypotheses which are com
prehensive enough or which are formulated with regard to
a sufficiently wide field of data, to enable the problems to be
attacked successfully. Such absolute simplicity is, of course,
relative. Again, the successful hypothesis is clear in the
sense that it works, that we see at present no reason to
doubt its validity. In these terms, then, we can compre
hend Descartes's description of his simple natures which
are, of course, those laws of motion and propositions of
mathematics which he had found to be highly adequate
means of attacking the intricacies of optics, astronomy,
the phenomena of storms, etc.

But this is not what Descartes says in his own analysis.
For him to be simple for knowledge, means to be a proposi
tion from which others may be deduced, but which itself
does not follow from any other universal truth. And to be
clear means to be self-evident, not in the sense of being at
present unquestioned, but permanently unquestionable.
The adoption of this criterion is necessitated by the theory
of truth and the later metaphysical doctrines are to be
regarded as an attempt to validate this course. To be true
means to copy reality (if we may use the word copy as a
convenient term to describe the general position already
discussed). Therefore, if an hypothesis is true, it can not
be altered, and conversely, any hypothesis which is sub
sequently altered or abandoned, never was true. Whatever
is true, must be once and for all established. Any criterion
of truth then must be such as to guarantee this unchanging
character, for a criterion which would leave open the possi-

TRUTH AND ERROR IN DESCARTES 153

bility that what is now validated by its authority should by
the same authority be subject to later revision or rejection
would be incompatible with the implications of the definition
of the truth.

Prepositions can not, therefore, be regarded as established
by virtue of the fact that they work, that they agree with
experience or experimental observation. For experience is,
at least potentially, a changing quantity. The last bit of it
is never all in, and what this last bit may do to the best
hypotheses, can never be known. Descartes lived in an age
when the constantly increasing wealth of experimental ob
servations must have made him keenly conscious of the
fact that these often call for revision and he has left us more
than one passage referring to this. For instance, in the
Rules we find, "This achieved, he can boldly assert that he
has discovered the real nature of the magnet in so far as
human intelligence and the given experimental observations
can supply him with knowledge." But truth demands un
changing propositions. These we get in a deductive system.
But a deductive system always goes back to certain primary
truths. If then, science is to be possible from the Cartesian
point of view, we must have a criterion which will abso
lutely guarantee certain fundamental propositions, proposi
tions that we know will stay put in a way which no suc
cess in dealing with the immediate can ever indicate to
us. Secondly, these truths must be capable of explaining
all the problems of science, of dealing with all experience as
it comes in. Two reasons can be given for this. On the one
hand, Descartes had been eminently successful in dealing
with nature in terms of matter and motion, and this fact
had to be accounted for in his logical theory. On the other
hand, if we are to have any scientific certainty, it must be
because we apply to the explanation of phenomena the
immutable principles, i. e., that we deduce the latter from
the former. We must guarantee that the world is of such a

154 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

kind that the principles of mathematics and the laws of
motion can deal with it, that its essence is such that a
mechanistic conception can grapple with it. Thirdly, since
only a few principles can ever be directly established by
deduction from the primary truths, we must have a criterion
which will establish not only the latter, but all supplement
ary hypotheses which are found to be necessary in the work
of explaining the given. Not specific laws, but a general
infallible criterion of truth must be established. In other
words, we finally reach a stage where the change in hypoth
eses which seems to be admitted as fact in the above quota
tion, becomes impossible under the consequences of the
view of truth adopted.

But here another question arises. Suppose we find such
a guarantee of the validity of hypotheses. How then can we
ever err, since the characteristics according to which truth
is to be known, must be such that they have always been
more or less unconsciously applied? Or how can it be that
men whose theories fulfilled the requirements of validity
were mistaken? And behold we have the whole problem of
error on our hands as the direct result of our having tried
to grapple with the problem of truth on the basis of a copy
view of its nature.

This is where the matter rests at the end of the Rules.
Not, of course, that these difficulties are explicitly recog
nized, but they are implicit in the fundamental positions, and
the subsequent works are engaged in answering just the
questions which arise in consequence of these formulations.
In fact, Descartes feels this keenly, as he says in the Discourse
that he must turn to philosophy to aid him in solving his
difficulties. This is what so often happens. Philosophy
becomes a method of establishing truths which by a tour de
force will help one out of the dilemma of a fallacious logic.

Philosophy then is the remedy for the difficulties of the
copy theory of knowledge, of truths eternal and immutable,

TRUTH AND ERROR IN DESCARTES 155

which scorn the status of postulates or working hypotheses,
rendered true by their successful control of experience. And
the first thing philosophy finds on its hands is doubt. This
doubt is no make-believe. What guarantee is there that
even the most self-evident judgment actually copies reality?
None whatsoever — unless, we can get a God to assure us
that it does. But in so doing we must start from a brute
fact, namely, that of my own existence. Our whole rational
istic system of immutable truths starts from a particular
and contingent fact. And from this we proceed by the use /
of the clear and distinct principle of causation to establish
the existence of God who is to vouch for the truth of such
clear and distinct principles. This is a perfect circle. It is
generally contended that God for Descartes is an ontological
principle, a device for establishing the existence of an exter
nal physical world. But really the hypothesis is epistemo —
logical, as he himself recognizes when he says, "but I also
remark that the certainty of all other things depends on it
(i. e., existence of God) so absolutely, that without this
knowledge it is impossible ever to know anything perfectly."
Again, "And so I very clearly recognize that the certainty
of truth of all knowledge depends alone on the knowledge of
the true God."

This established, Descartes has a free hand for assuming
the truth of all things which are clear and distinct. These
may be divided into two classes, those which possess this
quality in their own right, such as the principles of mathe
matics and logic, and those which are deduced from the
nature of God, such as the laws of motion. All of these
comprise the so-called 'causes'. They are truths of reason
and do not depend on experience in any way for their validity.
But this does not mean that mathematics is innate in the
sense that Locke took it to mean when he speaks of babes
and madmen. Nor did Descartes imply that contemplation
of God's essence suggested to him the laws of motion. All

156 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

knowledge arises in the presence of experience, but the
validity of some of it is guaranteed as no experience could
guarantee it. We quote, "Thus in teaching a child the ele
ments of geometry, we shall certainly not make him under
stand the general truth that when equals are taken from
equals the remainders are equal, or that the whole is greater
than the parts ; unless by showing him examples in particular
cases." "Hence, when first in infancy we see a triangular
figure depicted on paper, this figure can not show us how a
real triangle ought to be conceived, in the way in which
geometricians consider it, because the true triangle is con
tained in this figure just as the statue of Mercury is con
tained in a rough block of wood. But because we already
possess within us the idea of a true triangle, and it can be
more easily conceived by our mind than the more complex
figure of the triangle drawn on paper, we, therefore, when we
see that composite figure, apprehend not it itself, but rather
the authentic triangle." Again, "Finally when I say that
an idea is innate in us — I do not mean that it is always pres
ent to us. This would make no idea innate. I mean merely
that we possess the faculty of summoning up this idea." In
a discussion of that most innate of all innate ideas, the con
cept of God, the following statement appears, "The error of
this assertion we shall the more readily realize if we reflect
that anything can be said to be the outcome of another,
either because this other is its proximate and primary cause,
without which it could not exist, or only because it is a re
mote and accidental cause which certainly gives the prim
ary cause occasion to produce its effect at one time rather
than at another. There is no doubt that tradition or ob
servation (i. e., experience) is a remote cause, inviting us to
bethink ourselves of the idea which we may have of God,
and to present it vividly to our thought."

Thus we see that Descartes does not mean that ideas are
innate in the sense that they do not arise in experience.

TRUTH AND ERROR IN DESCARTES 157

He himself knew clearly that his laws of motion had been
formulated as a result of his physical experiments. But the
ideas are innate or are independent of experience, in the
sense that the mind itself is the active agent in formulating
such propositions under certain conditions (in the way which
the empiricist forgot) and that they must inevitably be true,
either because they are clear and distinct or because they
follow from others which possess these properties. "By
innate ideas I never understood anything other than that
which he himself — affirms — to be true, viz., that 'there is
innate in us by nature a potentiality by which we know
God'. " In other words the Cartesian innate ideas are simi
lar to Kant's a priori knowledge in the sense that they are
the concepts that our mind forms in the presence of the
world of experience and that they are true independently of
any guarantee furnished by experience. And the adopting
of such a view is more or less inevitable on the basis of the
copy theory of truth. For the latter renders it inconceivable
that these ideas should be regarded as postulates or working
hypotheses, the truth of which is based on their conse
quences for practice.

There is, however, one great point of difference between
the eternal truths of mathematics and logic, and the so-
called laws of nature, i. e., the laws of motion. Although
experience suggests the former, they are completely inde
pendent of it from the standpoint of validity. But not so
the principles of physics just mentioned. There always re
mains a certain aspect of contingency, a certain amount of
givenness which can never be absorbed by the reason. For
motion is among the data of sense. That it exists is a mere
psychological fact. Descartes recognizes this implicitly, in
that he constantly enumerates it along with the things per
ceived by sense. "And in regard to the ideas of corporeal
objects — magnitude or extension in length, breadth or depth
I do so perceive; also figure, which results from a termina-

158 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

tion of this extension, the situation which bodies of different
figures preserve in relation to one another; and motion or
change of situation; to which we add substance, duration,
and number. As to other things such as light, color, etc."
"For inasmuch as we perceive, or rather are stimulated by
sense to apprehend clearly and distinctly a matter which is
extended in length, breadth, and depth, the various parts of
which have various figures, motions, etc" "Nothing is
known of external effects by senses but their figure, exten
sion, and motion." Waiving for a moment the question of
what the clearness and distinctness mentioned stand for,
we can see that for Descartes, that the world has extension
and motion in it is a mere brute fact which no rationalistic
formulation can get around. But what is true of them can
be shown to be necessary. Nor is this a trifling truism, for a
thoroughly consistent rationalism should have shown not
only that, God being as He is, the quantity of motion is con
stant, but also that motion itself is necessarily a constituent
of the world, or changing from the ontological to the epis-
temological view-point, the idea of God should rigorously
imply the idea of motion, which it does not.

This leads naturally to the question of the status of sense
knowledge in Descartes. We have seen how, in the effort to
get truth, he was driven to get some guarantee beyond
experience for the hypotheses which he had successfully
employed. What is then the position of sense perception,
or the perception of concrete facts in his system? It is well
known that there are many attacks on the reliability of
sense in his writings. When we try to get at the meaning of
these, we find the following. The contradictory and irra
tional character of perceptual experience has made a great
impression on Descartes. Moreover, the conflict between
the world as it is for common sense and the world as it is
for science has been borne in on him. On the other hand, he
knows perfectly well that knowledge without experimental

TRUTH AND ERROR IN DESCARTES 159

data is impossible. He can not found any scientific truths
except the laws of motion on the essence of God, and is being
constantly driven to new hypotheses in his effort to explain
phenomena, which hypotheses are true just in so far as they
accomplish this, as he himself admits. Sense is necessary,
but misleading. But it is misleading only in so far as the
diverse observations are not interpreted in terms of generally
successful hypotheses, in so far as meanings are based on
isolated data and not on a varied fund of perceptions. Wit
ness the case of size of distant objects. What a later age
would have spoken of as the necessary presence of unifying
principles in all knowledge, is what Descartes is driving at,
or perhaps one had better say, the necessary presence of his
own useful laws of motion and principles of mathematics.
For it is chiefly against the interpretations acquired in early
life or from ignorant masters that he declaims. But astro
nomical, i. e., mathematical reasoning, gives us the true idea
of the sun. It is then against unreflective and inadequately
reflective experience that Descartes is manoeuvering. The
value of observation as such is not only not denied, but
expressly maintained. The same thing comes out in the
discussion of the perception of wax in Meditation II. The
wax is perceived not by 'an act of vision nor of touch, etc.',
but by 'an intuition of the mind'. The next paragraph, how
ever, makes it clear that this does not mean that Des
cartes is denying the value of the sense data, but that the
evaluating of the different factors, the judgment that
the persistence of a certain aspect of extension is sufficient
to constitute it the same object, this is a matter of
mental activity, and is carried out as the result of previ
ous formulations as to the nature of identity. We perceive
by a mental intuition, because the present data are in
terpreted in view of general principles which have stood
the test. Descartes would have said that the principles
were clear and distinct.

I6O STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

This view of the status both of the principles and of
sense knowledge fits in with what Descartes says in explana
tion of his method of deducing effects from causes. This is
not, of course, a method of discovery in the sense of arriving
at new truths by developing the implications of those estab
lished without appeal to experience. That would certainly
be the ideal, we see from the statement in the Principles,
"Perspicuum est optimam philosophandi viam nos sequn-
turos, si, ex ipsius Dei cognitione, rerum ab eo creatarum
explicationem inducere conemus, ut ita scientiam perfectis-
simam quae est effectam per causas acquiremus." But
this is quite impossible. Therefore we always appeal to
experience for a description of the principal phenomena,
"of which I am seeking the causes, not in order by this to
acquire evidence which serves to prove what I have to say
hereafter; for I intend to explain the effects by their causes,
and not the causes by their effects; but in order to choose,
among the great number of effects which could be deduced
from the same cause, those we should principally attempt to
deduce." In other words, we experiment to see how to inter
pret nature according to Cartesian principles, and both the
principles and sense are necessary.

We are now in a position to understand Descartes's state
ments concerning the essence of matter and his argument for
the existence of an external world. Driven by his conception
of truth, the philosopher has finally succeeded in establish
ing the validity of mathematics and mechanics, without rest
ing them on the nature of experience. But this only shifts
the point of the dilemma. If these are true, what guarantee
have we that all the problems of the physical sciences can
be solved in their terms? For the assumption that such is
the case is omnipresent. In the Rules we read, "Conse
quently when, in conformity with the previous rule, we have
freed this problem from any reference to a particular sub
ject, we shall discover that all we have to deal with consists

TRUTH AND ERROR IN DESCARTES l6l

of magnitudes in general." In the Discourse the following
passage indicates the same thought: "After that I considered
what were the primary and most ordinary effects which
might be deduced from these causes, and it seems to me that
in this way I discovered, etc. ... In subsequently pass
ing over in my mind all the objects which have ever been
presented to my senses, I can truly venture to say that I
have not there observed anything which I could not easily
explain by the principles which I had discovered." Even
when supplementary hypotheses are needed they must be
of such a kind as to facilitate the application of these prin
ciples to the phenomena of experience. This Descartes says
in the Principles, "And certainly if the principles (i.e., sup
plementary hypotheses) which I employ are based in the evi
dence of mathematics , and if what I deduce from them accords
exactly with all experiences. . . ." But what surety is there
that such a method of procedure will be universally success
ful? And it must be; otherwise, since truth is permanent, we
will have no unalterable bed-rock from which to proceed,
as these are the only propositions absolutely established.

The difficulty would be completely solved, if it could be
shown that the essence of our world of sense phenomena
consists in just those aspects with which mathematics and
mechanics can deal. The real basis for the distinction be-/
tween mind and matter lies in the fact that those phases of
experience which we speak of as the world of sense objects
have been successfully attacked in those terms, while think
ing, etc., seem quite unsusceptible of any such analysis. But
sense shows many things besides extension and motion.
Ergo, to be sure that this whole realm of experience can be
dealt with by Cartesian hypotheses, it is necessary to show
that it is ultimately statable in terms of extension and
motion. The latter then become clear, while sounds, colors,
etc., are confused. When we inquire what this clearness and
distinctness mean, we find the following statement in the

l62 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

Principles: "Yet if he investigates what is represented to
him by this sensation of color or pain appearing as they do
to exist in a colored body or suffering part, he will find that
he is really ignorant of it." Principle LXIX, "That we
know magnitude, figure, etc., quite differently from colour
and pain, etc. This will be more especially evident if we
consider, etc." From this the difference between the clear
ness and distinctness of extension and motion and the ob
scurity of other sense data, consists in the fact that we know
propositions about geometry and motion, not about color.
As Descartes says, "And now that I know Him, I have the
means of acquiring a perfect knowledge of an infinitude of
things, not only of those which relate to God Himself, and
other intellectual matters, but also of those which pertain to
corporeal nature in so far as it is the object of pure mathe
matics." Let us put it this way. If the essence of things is
extension, and motion a mode of it, Descartes can be sure
that his method of work will always be successful. And
since the only truths which can be regarded as established
are those utilized in this method, we must either be certain
that they will be applicable, or fall back on hypotheses
grounded merely on experience, and face the consequent
difficulties. As a matter of fact the only assurance possible
for this whole point of view that our knowledge about any
thing is valid lies in the fact that that knowledge is statable
in terms of the fixed principles, even supplementary hypoth
eses being regarded as established in so far as they facilitate
such a statement, as we saw above. The use of clarity and
distinctness to establish the desired status is a mere tour de
force, for it comes to saying, that since, if the world is exten
sion and motion it can be known, it must therefore be exten
sion and motion, which is all right for a pragmatist, but
unwarranted for an absolutist.

If Descartes had conceived of his fundamental principles
as methods of dealing with experience, and not as copies of

TRUTH AND ERROR IN DESCARTES 163

reality, he would never have been forced to his metaphysical
dualism and the representative theory of perception. But
if things are to be known in terms of extension and motion,
they must be extension and motion. For what they are
known as, duplicates what they are. But the sensory flux „
obviously contains many items which are not either of these
factors. For immediate experience colors, sounds, etc., bear
no resemblance to the objects of pure mathematics. Ergo,
their real nature must be behind what they are for experi
ence, beyond what they are for sense. Apart from their
status from the point of view of the percipient individual,
there is what they are in themselves. The dualism of the
subjective and objective aspects of experience breaks out.
What the object is for knowledge becomes an entity, op-.
posed to the entity which falsifies this character through
perceptions. And behold we have two substances, mind
and matter. When we regard the principles in terms of
which we know, not as copies of reality, but as working
tools, or means to knowledge, this whole antithesis between
real and apparent dies out, for it is simply meaningless. But
once start from the former view-point, and it is inevitable.

The logic which brings metaphysical dualism, brings as its
accompaniment representative perception. Instead of see
ing in sense experience the material by which we check up
our theoretical formulations, in other words, the foundations
and termini of thinking, Descartes is forced to consider it
as itself cognitive, as a means of becoming aware of some
thing lying behind it. If light is ultimately matter in mo
tion, our visual sensations are representation in our sensibil
ity of the true reality. As has been pointed out in the pre
vious paragraph, this is the result of the definition of truth
adopted. Sensations even become true or false, as in the
Meditation III, in so far as what they represent is something
or a mere privation of something. Of course when attacked,
Descartes says they are true or false only in so far as they

164 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

furnish misleading evidence for judgment, but he is con
stantly falling back again to his former view.

Thus far we have seen how Descartes, starting from the
copy theory of truth, is driven to the hypothesis of God to
guarantee the essences of mathematics, and the laws of
motion, which are laws of nature, or of the existing world.
These entail the Cartesian doctrine of the res extensa and of
representative perception. But it is quite obvious to Des
cartes himself that these principles are not sufficient in
themselves to know the concrete world of experience. An
endless number of supplementary hypotheses is necessary.
The best illustrations of their history are found in the
Dioptrique, the Meteors, and the Principles. In the Diop-
trigue we read, "Et ie croy qu'il suffirra que ie me serve de
deus ou trois comparaisons qui aydent a la concevoir en la
fac.on qui me semble Ie plus commode, pour expliquer toutes
celles de ses proprietes que 1'experience nous fait connoitre,
pour deduire en suites toutes les autres qui ne peuvent pas si
aysement 6tre remarquees, imitant en ceci les astronomes
qui, bien que leurs suppositions soyent presque toutes
fausses ou uncertaines toutefois, a cause qu'elles se rappor-
tent a diverses observations qu'ils ont faites, ne laissent pas
d'en tirer plusieurs consequences tresvrayesettresassurees".
At first, then, these hypotheses are merely convenient as
modes of conceiving things. Descartes says exactly what
modern logicians say concerning their r&le in the total
knowledge activity; they synthesize existing data and lead
to the discovery of new. But they can not establish their
truth, for to be true is to copy the world, and how do we
know they so copy it. But before the end of the essay,
these convenient ways of conceiving the matter have come
to be truths. "Mais afin que vous ne pouissiez aucunement
douter que la vision se face ainsi que ie 1'ai explique, ie vous
veux faire encore icy considerer les raisons pour quoi il
arrive quelque fois qu'elle nous trompe."

TRUTH AND ERROR IN DESCARTES 165

Here the truth of the doctrines in question is to be tested
by the fact that they can explain the experiential fact of
error, a purely pragmatic test. But as we saw earlier, such
an assurance on the basis of ability to deal with experience
will not do. There is only one alternative. Even these
hypotheses which can not be deduced from God must be
clear and distinct, and, ergo, guaranteed by God. As we
said earlier, the at present unquestioned, must become the
permanently unquestionable. And this on all scientific
questions. Thus in the Principles, Descartes speaks at first
of suppositions. But shortly we get the following passage,
part of which was quoted earlier, "And certainly, if the prin
ciples of which I make use are very self-evident, if the con
sequences which I develop from them are based on the evi
dence of mathematics, and if what I deduce from them ac
cords exactly with all experience, it appears to me that it
would be an injustice to God to consider that the causes of
the effects in nature, and which we have thus found, are
false; for that would be to wish to make him to blame for
having created us so imperfect, that we were subject to
error, even when we use well the reason he has given us."
The matter ends with a more or less direct assertion that
these principles are true, for Descartes speaks of them as
"les vrayes caiises."

Descartes has now established truth with a vengeance.
Anything that seems certain is true. Of course, he is con
stantly repudiating this position, but he can never get
around it. Error should be ultimately impossible, provided
we never go beyond what is clearly perceived. As a matter
of fact, Descartes is convinced that this is so. It is the very
keynote of his whole emphasis on method that by this means
error shall be obliterated. In Rule III we read, "Moreover,
by a method I mean certain and simple rules, such that if a
man observes them accurately, he shall never assume what is
false as true," etc. Also Principle VI of Part I of the Prin-

166 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

ciples reads, "But meanwhile whoever turns out to have
created us, and even if he should prove to be all-powerful
and deceitful, we still experience a freedom through which we
may abstain from accepting as true and indisputable those
things of which we have not certain knowledge, and thus
obviate our ever being deceived." What this finally comes
to, as we saw, is that the knowledge of God assures us that
all successful hypotheses are valid. But error is a fact.
There remains but one way out. The intellect never errs.
Whatever falsehood there is, is due to the will which goes
beyond what is clear and distinct. For if the intellect once
failed to differentiate truth from falsehood, there is no surety
that it will ever be able to do so. No, intellect as intellect
is infallible. As the mere capacity of recognizing the validity
of propositions it must be infallible. It may not know
whether a judgment is reliable, but it can never be mistaken
about those which it sees to be so. It can never assent to
falsehood, for this would be to admit that falsehood can be
clear and distinct and throw us back into chaos. The im
mediate certainty that a thing must be, being our only as
surance that it is, must be beyond suspicion. In Descartes's
own words, "I, who by falsity understand only the privation
of truth, am convinced that it is an absolute contradiction
that the understanding should apprehend the false under
the guise of the truth." The solicitude shown by Descartes
in the Meditation IV, in his effort to exonerate God from any
complicity in our mistakes, is due to the fact that to question
God's goodness is to question the rock on which is built all
our certainty that our judgments ever copy the world. It
would be to relapse into the trouble from which the whole
philosophy is an attempt to rescue us. But the will may
assert things, regardless of whether we know them to be true
or not, it may affirm where there is no intellectual assent.
There are two great difficulties in this effort of Descartes
to rescue himself from the contradiction between the doc-

TRUTH AND ERROR IN DESCARTES 167

trine of the infallibility of man entailed by his philosophy
and the existence of error. The first is the obvious fact that
men have thought they perceived things with the greatest
clearness and these have later been shown to be incorrect.
Or, in other words, the/nost adequate hypotheses have been
superseded. Gassendi calls attention to this fact in his set
of objections, and demands a rule for distinguishing the
truly self-evident from the apparently certain. For reply
to which Descartes can only say that "it can never be proved
they clearly and distinctly perceive what they pertinaciously
affirm," referring to those who erroneously deem themselves
to possess correct ideas about reality. Yet he himself later
states that "it could easily be proved that you sometimes
are wrong about those matters which you accept as certain."
And in the Meditation IV he says he himself held certain
things clear which he later gave up. In other words, the
copy theory necessitates a criterion of truth other than
fulfilment in experience, and then the presence of error shat
ters this test itself by showing that it has factually failed.
And the upshot of it seems to be that that is true which is
truly clear and distinct, which is tautology and surrender.

But even if this trouble did not exist, there would still
be a dilemma to face. Error is a matter of the will. Im
mediately the question arises, what is the relation between (&)
the will and the intelligence. The trouble seems to be this:
If the will is in no sense dependent on the intellect, what we
have is complete chaos. There would never be any reason
to hope that what we affirm or deny is right or wrong except
by mere chance. For the only method by which we can-
hope to guide the blindness of conation is by thought. And
if the former does not submit to such guidance, rational
judgment on any subject is impossible, the correcting of
error by better control, more information, pro founder anal
ysis, etc., is unintelligible. For this reason Descartes is
driven to assume the dependence of will on the understand-

168 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

ing. Otherwise clearness of conception would not entail
correctness of judgment. "For in order that I should be
free it is not necessary that I should be indifferent as to the
choice of one or the other of two contraries, but, contrari
wise, the more I lean to the one — whether I recognize clearly
that the reasons of the good and true are to be found in it,
or whether God so disposes my inward thought — the more
freely do I choose and embrace it. And undoubtedly both
divine grace and natural knowledge, far from diminishing
my liberty, rather increase it and strengthen it. Hence this
indifference which I feel, when I am not swayed to one side
rather than to the other by lack of reason, is the lowest
grade of liberty, and rather evinces a lack or negation of
knowledge than a perfection of will; for if I always recog
nized clearly what was true and good, I should never have
trouble in deliberating as to what good choice I should make,
and then I should be entirely free without ever being in
different."

But to admit this, is once again to fall into the dilemma
as to how error is possible. For if the will can not help
judging in accordance with the dictates of reason, the only
place where error could arise would be where no intellectual
conviction was present, unless the last quotation is mere
tautology. But we can only err when we believe something
false to be true. We quote Descartes, "When on the con
trary the error consists in the very fact that it is not recog
nized by us as an error." In other words the absence of
clear and distinct cognition would be equivalent to the
absence of belief in the truth of the proposition, since if we
believed it it would appear certain to us, and this would
make error impossible. For to recognize the dubious char
acter of a judgment, is to avoid a mistake. In other words,
we sum up the whole situation as follows. The understand
ing can not err, since this would permanently remove our
guarantee of truth. But if mistakes are due to the will

TRUTH AND ERROR IN DESCARTES 169

either we have a completely and permanently irrational con
ditional of human judgment entailed, or we attempt to
remedy this by making the will dependent on the reason,
which once more makes error impossible. Driven by the
copy theory of truth, we must guarantee the validity of some
things. But this guarantee turns about and guarantees the
validity of all. To prove the truth of anything, we are
driven to prove the truth of everything.

The matter of error can also be treated from the view-point
of the scholastic phase of the Cartesian philosophy which
we have more or less neglected in favor of that aspect which
rests on his actual methodology of science. For there is a
peculiar dualism in the term idea everywhere in Descartes. -
At one moment it means that act of mind by which we
grasp the essences of the scholastics. Thus the idea of the
triangle in Meditation V is the idea of an eternal nature.
Again take the statement of Principle XIV, Part I, "That
the existence of God may be rightly demonstrated from the
fact that the necessity of his existence is comprehended in
the conception which we have of him." Or best of all, "For
the idea represents the essence of the thing, and if something
is added to it or subtracted from it, it is forthwith the idea of
something else . . . But after the idea of the true God
is once conceived, the new perfections can be detected in it
which had not previously been noticed ; this does not cause
any increase in that idea, but merely renders it more distinct
and explicit, because they must all have been contained in
the very same idea, since it is assumed to be true." : In other
words our ideas are ideas of eternal verities as Gassendi calls
them, and hence can not be false. Error in the intellect is
impossible. This is undoubtedly the background of much
of Descartes's insistence that clear and distinct ideas, i. e.,
knowledge of essences can not be false. But the next
moment the ideas are the ideas of individual knowers in

i Obj. V Replies.

I7O STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

their attempt to comprehend reality. This is necessary, for
from such a view-point error is intelligible. It is no longer
the soul comprehending the eternal ideas of Plato, but the
struggling and finite searcher after information about the
world that we are dealing with. The ideas are particular
events in a particular knowledge situation, and as such may
or may not be mistaken. Thus my idea of the sun derived
from sense is false, etc. But if idea is to be taken in this
sense, what certainty is there that any are true? And if
their truth is in some cases self-evident, how is error possible
since the absence of the self-evidence should be noted by the
mind, since it is a mental fact?

We will summarize this analysis of the Cartesian episte-
mology briefly. The problems and results of Descartes's
work may be regarded as being a direct development of his
theory of truth. To be true means to grasp the content of
a static and determinate reality. This calls for a criterion
of truth other than compatibility with experience, for the
latter might change, while truth can not. We thus arrive
at the doctrine of clear and distinct ideas. In order to
validate such ideas, the hypothesis of a God is invoked.
After having established in this manner a number of funda
mental truths, Descartes shows that these will be adequate
to deal with all experience, by making extension the essence
of things. The establishing of supplementary hypotheses to
enable the fundamental principles to account for the given
necessitates extending the criterion of truth to them also.
As a result, whatever appears true at any time, now becomes
permanently unquestionable. The difficulty involved for
error in such a view is met by attributing the latter to the
will, not the intellect, an attempted solution which is un
successful.

ROBERTS B. OWEN

SPINOZA'S PANTHEISTIC ARGUMENT

Spinoza's argument for the existence of God may be
conveniently divided into five steps or stages:

i. The first is essentially ontological, though Spinoza
does not repeat the ontological argument formally in either
its Anselmic or its Cartesian form. It is more or less im
plicit, however, in several passages — as in Proposition VII,
where it is claimed that "existence belongs to the nature of
substance." Substance is defined objectively as "that which
is in itself," and subjectively as "that of which a conception
can be formed independently of any other conception"
(Definition III). As such "substance can not be produced
by anything external to itself" (Proposition VI cor.). "It
must, therefore, be its own cause — that is, its essence neces
sarily involves existence, or existence belongs to its nature"
(Proposition VII).

The reader of this passage doubtless has the idea of an
absolute or self-existent somewhat. For this somewhat, our
author, by rigorous specialization, provides the technical
name 'substance'. From this idea he is expected to infer
the actuality, or existence in re, of the alleged absolute; for,
not being contingent, "its essence necessarily involves
existence." In other words, why should it not be, since it
depends upon nothing but itself? What is there to prevent?

The modern tough-minded retort, of course, is that the
burden of proof is on the author. The real question is, What
is there to warrant belief in this substance? Spinoza's
answer virtually is, that it is the presence in the mind of a
clear and distinct idea of substance that warrants and re
quires the belief. "For a person to say," he urges, "that he
has a clear and distinct — that is, a true — idea of a substance,
but that he is not sure whether such substance exists, would

172 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

be the same as if he said that he had a true idea, but was not
sure whether or no it was false" (Proposition VIII, n. 2).

Manifestly for Spinoza the positive ground of belief in
substance is the clear and distinct idea of it present in the
mind, the self-existence and independence in the content
of the idea being the negative warrant therefor. There is a
difficulty, however, for the modern reader in getting the true
force of this statement, for Hume and the modern psycholo
gists have subtly transformed the meaning of 'idea' for us.
To-day it is subjective, and stands for a specific mental
process. For Spinoza it was necessarily objective. An idea
was the representative (as copy or otherwise) in the indi
vidual's field of intellectual vision of the independent reality
to which it referred. His clear and distinct, or 'adequate',
idea must, therefore, be construed in logical terms only, not
in psychological. It appears to be an idea which is object
ively complete, coherent, self-consistent, and causally inde
pendent. Such ideas he holds to be self-validating. The
mind inspects them and finds them worthy of approval, so
to speak, because of their structure.

Of course, this conceptualist reasoning has lost its power
for the modern mind. We have now no such confidence in
the sovereign powers of reason, even on the critical side.
But is there not a modern analogue of it in good standing
which we can readily imagine Spinoza falling in with, had
he but come to the view-point of the subjective idea? The
much greater value which he accords to ideas that are
'adequate' at least suggests that he would have recognized
the legitimacy of the subjective factor of intellectual need ;
and with that included his thought is susceptible of restate
ment in terms still valid. It is commonly maintained in
opposition to the ontological argument that we can not
pass from an idea to existence in re; but the statement seems
over sweeping. Anselm and Descartes have ground for their
claim that much depends upon the nature of the idea. How

SPINOZA S PANTHEISTIC ARGUMENT 173

many reflective men are destitute of belief in any kind of
absolute whatever? I apprehend they are few. And the
belief, when it exists, upon what is it based? Is it not posi
tively on the appeal of the idea itself, the satisfaction that it
gives to a need of the mind, and negatively on the content of
that idea as involving absence of prevention? Why should
one not believe in an absolute when there is nothing in its
content to forbid, and when by means of it he can organize
his experience more satisfactorily? It is much the same sort
of logical process that, from Parmenides down, has con
vinced thinkers of the conservation of matter. Doubtless
one can escape Spinoza's conclusion by taking to agnosti
cism; but that looks like an emotional reaction pure and
simple. Again, it may be possible to think of an infinite •
regress without any substantial basis; but, if so, the idea
evidently suffers greatly when compared as to clearness and
distinctness with the concept of substance.

It may be said that to believe in a certain evidently
possible existence upon the ground of its meeting a need
of the mind is not the same as arguing to objective reality
from a mere idea. Because the fool in the Bible had the
idea of some sort of God is no logical confession on his part
of that God's existence. I quite agree. Anselm, in his
orthodox use of a Biblical text as a starting-point, seriously
handicaps his argument. But there appears to be no ground
for charging Spinoza with that sophistic, four-termed process
of reasoning, often as it has characterized other ontological
disputants. For him the intuition of substance is far from
being a mere idea. Such an idea would to him be 'inade
quate' — the product of passive-experience. On the con
trary, the insight of substance is the result of the mind's ..
activity, not passivity. It is 'adequate'. The concept of the
absolute, in its most general form, is not an inference from
any single experience, nor from any group of experiences, nor
yet from any limited set of relations. It is the creation of

174 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

active reflection; and it owes its existence in conceptu, and
its standing as probable existence in re, to the fact that it
alone is adequate to the need of the mind as it seeks to organ
ize all of its experience. For myself, I am quite disposed to
follow Spinoza in this first step of his pantheistic argument.

2. I find myself a laggard, however, when he takes his
second step, which appears in the theorem (Proposition V),
that "there can not exist in the universe two or more sub
stances having the same nature or attribute."

Are the terms 'nature' and 'attribute' in this statement
equivalents or quasi-disjunctives? From the 'proof it
is plain that we are to regard them, at least objectively, as
equivalents; for our assent is looked for on the simple
ground, that, since substances are distinguished purely by
their attributes, and not as with empirical modes, by differ
ences in space and time, "it will be granted that there can
not be more than one with an identical attribute." As
suredly it will be granted if 'attribute' is synonymous with
'nature' — that is, the sum of the essential properties — but
not otherwise ; nor can we see how Spinoza could expect us
to 'grant' it on any other basis.

Yet attribute can not be altogether identical with nature,
or there would be no sufficient excuse for its use. One dis
tinction may confidently be found for it on the subjective
side — to indicate the right source of real knowledge of sub
stance, which is through intellectual intuition. In Definition
IV we are told, "By attribute I mean that which the intellect
perceives as constituting the essence of substance." It is
reasonable to think that the emphasis in this statement is
on the word 'intellect'. An attribute, he will have us be
lieve, is a discovery of the 'active' reason, an 'adequate'
idea, whereas a mere property appears through the windows
of sense, and is 'inadequate'. This subjective justifica
tion of the term is supported, also, by the change in form of
statement which occurs in this definition. In the first three

SPINOZA S PANTHEISTIC ARGUMENT 175

definitions the author expresses himself first in objective
terms, and then independently in subjective, or epistemo-
logical terms; in the definition of attribute only the sub
jective form is used.

May we then infer that an attribute for Spinoza is really .
an aspect of substance — the way substance appears to
intellectual intuition when looking, say, in a certain direc
tion ? That construction accords well with most, though not
all, of our author's uses of the term, provided the aspect is
considered as objectively true and not in any sense mere *
appearance. The phrase in the definition, "constituting the
essence of substance," clearly requires this full objective *
validity. It does not require, however, that the intellect's .
perception of the essence should be exhaustive. This brings
us to the real issue at this stage : Does Spinoza think of the
whole essence as represented by an attribute, or only so much
of it as the intellect is able to perceive from a given point of /
view? The proposition now under review (Proposition V)
requires us to adopt the former alternative, because, as we
have seen, it involves (objectively) the identification of
nature and attribute. Without that identification the
'proof is no proof, nor even an attempt at a proof.1 On
the other hand, the second explanation above evidently
gives most meaning to the subjective distinction between
essence and attribute, and is, indeed, apparently necessitated
by Spinoza's more frequent use of the word and by his gen
eral metaphysical position. Proposition X, with its 'note',
may be taken as an example. There the distinctness of the *

1 It may be objected that this judgment is too summary, since Spinoza might properly
claim that a common attribute establishes a relation between any two alleged substances,
and a relation involves some sort of dependence. But does it necessarily? That appears
to depend upon the character of the relation. No doubt the statement is true of causal
relations, but how is it with spatial ones, and with relations of similarity, as in the pos
session of a common characteristic? I quite fail to see that any dependence of one upon
the other is even suggested by the fact that both matter and ether are extended. I con
cede that one may be a mode of the other, or that both may be modes of a third sub
stance; but something more than their common spatiality is necessary to establish that
interdependence.

176 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

attributes is dwelt upon, and — as a part of some very in
conclusive reasoning, be it added — it is claimed that "it is
the nature of substance that each of its attributes is con
ceived through itself, inasmuch as all the attributes it has
have always existed simultaneously in it, and none could be
produced by any other; but each expresses the reality or
being of substance" — evidently not the whole of that being,
however, or how could those attributes be distinct, simul
taneous, and eternal? And what need would there be for
more than one of them? Evidently for Spinoza there is
(generally) a difference, and a difference in content, between
the essence and the intellect's perception of it; and, if the
perception is true, what can that difference be but the partial
nature of the 'expression' contained in the attribute? The
same idea of a partial and distinct disclosure of the essence
by each of the attributes underlies the ensuing statement
that in the case of every entity "its reality or being is in
proportion to the number of its attributes," etc. ; that is, the
more attributes, the more being. Indeed, how could
Spinoza regard his (Cartesian) 'extension' as a full expres
sion of substance? Could anything be farther from his
view of substance as boundlessly varied and fertile?

There is evidently an ambiguity in our author's use of
the word attribute, a word so important to his metaphysical
scheme. It is identical with 'nature' when he is trying to
identify seemingly different things. Attribute must repre
sent the whole nature then, for it would involve a manifest
• undistributed middle to infer identity of substance from a
partial identity of nature. As well might a physicist con
clude that all extended things — matter, electricity, ether,
space, etc., are one because they all have the common prop
erty of extension. On the other hand, when the philosopher
is confronted by such clear and distinct intellectual intui
tions as consciousness and extended existence, he is obliged
to recognize that in the attributes only characteristic parts

SPINOZA S PANTHEISTIC ARGUMENT 177

of the essence of substance are expressed. Therewith, how
ever, an attribute becomes only a special kind of property
(or group of properties), one, that is, the cognitive vehicle
of which is intellectual, and not sensory, intuition. His
need of the word appears to lie in the stubborn fact that for
a Cartesian both extension and consciousness are perceived
by the intellect as realities, and realities so disparate as to
frustrate all attempts to reduce them to a common de
nominator. Yet Spinoza has no mind to let them remain
independent realities. He sets himself to force them to
gether by a priori argument, and the ambiguous term
attribute is his logical forceps for the operation. We have,
seen how at need it is made synonymous with nature; when,
however, he wishes to exclude all substances but one from
existence the term evidently stands for but a part or aspect
of the nature. In Proposition XIV we find him arguing that
"if any substance besides God were granted, it would have
to be explained by some attribute of God [he could not claim
this of the whole nature], and thus two substances with the
same attribute would exist, which (by Proposition V) is
absurd," etc. The final upshot is plain : if only one substance
exists, then consciousness and extension must both inhere
in it, and must somehow express the same essence. What
now logic hath thus joined together, let not common sense
put asunder!

The second step of the argument is thus an inconclusive
attempt to limit conceivable absolutes to a single one in the
field of each attribute. As yet the argument appears not to
exclude Cartesian dualism, nor even pluralism.

3. The third step is the theorem that "substance is
necessarily infinite" (Proposition VIII); and the demon--
stration is most suggestive. It is indirect, resting upon
Spinoza's definition of finite, according to which a thing is
finite "when it can be limited by another thing of the same
nature." Evidently this is impossible in the case of sub-

178 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

stance; for the only possible limiting object being of the
same nature would, as we have seen, be merely more of
itself. Spinoza concludes that, therefore, "it does not exist
as finite," but must exist "as infinite." Surely there is an

» illicit major in this reasoning. Let it be granted, as he will
have it, that whatever "can be limited by another thing of
the same nature" is finite, and that substance can not be

• so limited (a negative minor!); it does not follow that sub
stance is not finite. Perchance some other sort of finites
are not so limited, and these others may be the very finite
substances which the author is trying to exclude.

A more interesting and significant thing about the argu
ment, however, is the vast metaphysical assumption that
if a substance is not limited by an agent beyond itself, it
must needs be infinite, finiteness being something imposed

. upon existence from without by a confining object. In de
fault of such restraint, any object will become infinite;

. that is, all things have the potency of infinity! In support
of this view Spinoza appeals to ordinary reflective thought.
"A body," he explains in Definition II, "is called finite,
because we always conceive another greater boXly." Do
we, indeed? I apprehend that that statement gauges in
no small degree his relative nearness to the Middle Ages
and the successors of Plotinus. Yet he had good precedent
for his thought. Descartes seriously assures us that it was
evident to him, that if he "had existed alone" he could of
himself have "become infinite, eternal, immutable, omni
scient, all-powerful," etc. But how, pray? is our natural,
modern inquiry. By endless finite effort? Assuredly not;
Descartes was a mathematician. Evidently it was to be
looked for because of the infinite expansibility of existence
as such when not externally shut in.

Nothing, perhaps, shows better how deeply seated this
Neo-Platonic idea had become than the fact that even the

• revolutionary Kant employed it in his first antinomy of

SPINOZA S PANTHEISTIC ARGUMENT 179

pure reason, maintaining that to reason the physical world
must be infinite, for if finite it would be limited only by
empty space, which is nothing; "and, therefore, the world
. . . is infinite in extension;" that is, from one of reason's
points of view.

Kant's (and Fichte's) conception of 'freedom' as onward-
flowing spontaneity suggests, though more guardedly, the
same emanational idea. It may even be urged that the
present-day physicist's thought of matter as essentially im
pulsive, and so inherently causative in a forceful sense,
smacks of that idea. In this case, however, there is a differ
ence, and an important one; for the physicist balances his
affirmation of inherent potency with a strong assertion of
determinate character. There are no boundless potencies
for him, save in a rhetorical sense, for every existence has
its limitations provided from within by its own perfectly
definite constitution. This conception of inner control^
Spinoza appears to have lacked. Hard as is his deter-*
minism, it is rationalistic, not empirical; metaphysical
rather than scientific. It arises from the requirements of
his world-view rather than from the demand of the facts
critically ascertained. His interest is not in getting knowl
edge of definite activities and amounts of potency, whereby
to explain and predict and perhaps control the course of
events, but in establishing the blindness of nature's impulses •
and processes, probably through reaction from his hereditary
theism and free responsibility.

The change in attitude of the modern deterministic man
of science, apart from his difference in interest, is no doubt
largely due to Newton's discovery of universal gravitation;
with the stress it seemed to lay upon internal control. Be
fore that achievement the notion of external control was,
no doubt, most plausible, if not inevitable.

One wonders also whether Spinoza's doctrine of potential
infinity within the finite was not much buttressed by the

ISO STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

logical parallelism of reason and nature which he inherited
from scholasticism — from Descartes, also, in the form of
the objective validity of clear and distinct insights — and
which evidently underlies his psychophysical parallelism.
The roots of this long prevalent postulate are to be found
apparently in the Greek exaggeration of sensory errors and
preference for the reflective approach to reality, and in
medieval conceptualism in which real being was again put
nearer to reason than to sense. According to the resulting
parallelism mental processes that are logically sound always
have objective physical and metaphysical processes corre
spondent to them. Spinoza's statement of it is as follows:
"That which is contained in the intellect in representation
must necessarily be granted in nature" (Proposition 30).
Now, thought does seem to have a kind of boundless expan
sibility, or potential infinity, when the field is clear; that is,
when opposing thoughts are absent. Bruno, we recall,
exulted in his ever-expanding, space-conquering power of
conception ; and even Hume is impressed by it. Why should
not objective existence expand as readily?

It need hardly be said that we can not keep pace with
Spinoza in his third step, with its affirmation that "sub
stance is necessarily infinite."

4. We reach Spinoza's fourth argumentative stage in
Proposition XI, which declares that "God, or substance,
consisting of infinite attributes, of which each expresses
eternal and infinite essentiality, necessarily exists." This
theorem is generally construed to mean that the absolute
has an infinite number of attributes, that is, is infinite in
cross-section. Spinoza does not say that, however; the
word number is lacking. May not 'infinite attributes'
refer, not to their number, but to the extent of each in its
own field, that is, as 'infinite after its kind' ? So construed,
Spinoza might be regarded as positing only the two attri
butes known to reason.

SPINOZA'S PANTHEISTIC ARGUMENT l8l

There are serious objections to this view. In the theorem
he provides, separately and fully, in the ensuing clause for
the infinity of each attribute after its kind, a clause which
becomes mere tautology on the suggested rendering. In his
definition of God, also, he lays stress upon God's absolute*
infinity, and adds, "not infinite after its kind: for of a thing
infinite only after its kind infinite attributes may be denied"
(Definition VI). In this explanation it is hard to doubt that
by 'infinite attributes' and 'absolutely infinite' our author
means an infinite number of attributes. In no other sense
can infinity be 'denied' of a thing infinite after its kind.
Furthermore, in Proposition IX the word number actually
occurs, and the philosopher's real meaning is plain: "The
more reality or being a thing has," he maintains, "the
greater the number of its attributes." It would seem to
follow inevitably that in a being 'absolutely infinite' (God),
one containing "in its essence whatever expresses reality,"
the number of the attributes must be infinite.2

That there are, then, an infinite number of facets to the
all-potent absolute is the chief additional thought at this
fourth stage. Substance now, through the disclosed richness
of its essence, becomes God. Now, this God, we are assured,
"necessarily exists." If Spinoza had been asked whether,
the necessity was an objective one or a rational necessity on
our part — that is, of affirming the divine existence — he
would doubtless have answered that it was both. His paral
lelism of reason and nature would make that view inevitable.

Once more the proof of the theorem carries us back into
an almost forgotten field of thought. "Of everything what
soever,' runs the argument, "a cause or reason must be as
signed, either for its existence or for its non-existence." "A
thing necessarily exists," he adds a little later, "if no cause
or reason be granted which prevents its existence." But
what reason can be given for the non-existence of a substance

*Cf.. also. Propositions X, n, and XVI.

182 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

with infinite attributes? Is it an external reason? Then the
opposing agency must either be, or come from, "another
substance of another nature" — in which case it could not
affect the substance in question at all — or it must come from
a substance of the same nature. In the latter event it would
only be the same substance in another guise, and so not an
opposition to it, but an example of it! Is there then some
internal reason why the substance in question (God) can
not and does not exist? That would require conflict, that
is, unreason and imperfection, in the nature of that which
by definition is "absolutely infinite and supremely perfect;"
which is a contradiction, and manifestly absurd. Hence, no
cause or reason can be "assigned which would annul" [!] the
existence of such substance: therefore, it necessarily exists.
A new word appears at this fourth stage, the word 'per
fect'. What does Spinoza mean by 'supremely perfect'?
What use for such a phrase has a thinker who denies all
emotional processes and all moral qualities to God, and who
seems himself to have had but little esthetic appreciation?
It is significant that substance is conceived by him as per
fect only after he has predicated of it infinity of being in
extent and content — absolute fullness. Perfection appears
to be for him a quantitative, not a qualitative matter.
Thus, what we have presented for our acceptance is the
Ens Realissimum of the scholastics, though now supported
by a more rigorous a priori demonstration than was ever
attempted before. And yet not precisely the Ens Realis
simum either; for in that interesting scholastic creation the
Neo-Platonic 'iv KCU irav is reenforced with a kind of sublima
tion of the God of the New Testament. It is assumed that,
of course, the God of religion coincides with the One, or
Source Absolute, of philosophy. The logic of Spinoza,
however, has no place for this assumption. All religious
connotations are stripped from the term God, and only the
ev /ecu TTO.V remains, though now showing its tremendous fea-

SPINOZA'S PANTHEISTIC ARGUMENT 183

tures through the mists of thought with a clearness that
Plotinus never dreamed of. For both philosophers, how
ever, all existence is good ; it only needs to become quanti
tatively infinite to be perfect, perfection being simply full
ness. Apparently, neither of them could conceive of any
thing more.

Now, as the Neo-Platonic conception of God is the domi- «
nant one in medieval philosophy, we do not appreciate the
force of the ontological argument for able minds in that age
— Anselm's, for example — until we allow for this quantita
tive notion of perfection. To 'tough-minded' moderns it is
apt to be a mystery how philosophers could ever be so sure
of the existence of perfection somewhere when experience so
generally swears against the creed. The concept evidently
belongs to the field of faith, not of reason, so long as quali
tative perfection is thought of. It is otherwise when per
fection is construed as fullness. Then there are empirical
analogies, or at least suggestions — in the sunshine and its
unfailing source, to fall back upon Plotinus; in the air, also
(and sky?), to instance the more naive thought of Anaxi-
menes, etc. That is, quantitative perfection, though a lower ,
conception, is intellectually an easier one than qualitative
perfection.

Of course, there is no real cogency, no mental coercion,
in this notion. It is a 'mere' idea, not an 'adequate' idea.
Only of space and time do we feel a need to predicate end
lessness. Anselm's most 'perfect' Being we do not need
to think of at all. No doubt he is occasionally found 'in
the understanding' of philosophers, but he is there as guest,
not as permanent and inexpugnable tenant.

The assertion that for "everything whatsoever a cause or
reason must be assigned for its existence, or for its non-
existence" recalls for us the brave old days of militant
reason, when, picketing as it were the highways of possi
bility, she demanded with a sovereign air the credentials of

184 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

every passer, be it man or star or the universe itself. By
what right do you exist? is the challenge Spinoza will put
to "everything whatsoever"! We may admire his courage;
but we can not, I think, concur when he maintains that a
reason "must be assigned for [an object's] existence." Our
need at that point is by no means such a crying one. As
Martineau remarks, "It is not existence, as such, that de
mands a cause, but the coming into existence. . . . Caus
ality is a law for phenomena, and not for entity."3

The curious claim that a reason must likewise be given
for non-existence, that is, that the burden of proof or dis
proof is on the challenger, appears to be another case of the
logical parallelism of thought and reality mentioned above,
reenforced, it is to be suspected, by the common tendency to
assume that every term in use has some objective existence
corresponding to it. If clear and distinct ideas are indeed
self-validating, it would seem that in their presence at least
— Spinoza would say in the presence of his concept of God,
for example — the burden of proof is on the challenger ; that
is, he must show by some reason, internal or external, that,
when fully conceived, the ideas in question are not really
clear and distinct intuitions after all.

Spinoza's conclusion that, though we know but two of the
divine attributes, their number is really infinite, seems to
be expansiveness run riot, the proof in the last analysis being
that there is nothing to prevent ! The modern reader finds
it hard to take the claim seriously, and is apt to account it a
scarcely seriously intended case of experience scorning,
free-flying speculation. But that is far from its originator's
feeling about it. He is very much in earnest, for it is a need
ful structural factor in the edifice of his pantheism. It sup
ports his fifth and crowning principle, which is, that —

5. "Besides God no substance can be granted or con
ceived" (Proposition XIV). God is the only substance in

' Types of Ethical Theory, I. p. 302.

SPINOZA'S PANTHEISTIC ARGUMENT 185

existence. This time we can not criticize the logic. If
substances with an identical attribute are necessarily them
selves identical, and if God possesses an infinite number of
attributes, then assuredly any reputed other substance will
have some attribute in common with God, and so will neces
sarily merely be God in another form or aspect. In step four
God, through the infinite number of his attributes, is made
to preempt the whole field of possible being, and vain in
deed must be the attempt of any subsequent substantial
pretender to jump his claim.

It remains to ask, in the light of what has been said, what
Spinoza meant in the first stage — by describing substance
as "its own cause."4 In an earlier work,5 as quoted by
Martineau, he had condemned the notion of causa sui, on
the ground that it required one to think regarding a thing,
"that before it existed, it produced its existence, which is
absurdity itself and impossible" — surely a very sensible
criticism. How is it then that he afterward puts this con
ception at the very forefront of his ethics?6 Evidently it
has come to have new connotations for him. Apparently
as the emanational world concept became dominant with
him, questions of absolute origination ceased to have mean
ing. For him there were no longer any literally new things «
— only transformations of eternal things. But that trans
formation process is forever going on, and the many, the
innumerable many, are always appearing in the One.
Whence came the world of to-day? has no meaning, if ab
solute origination is meant. The question is childish; the
world is eternal. But whence came the world of to-day in so
far as it differs from the world of yesterday, and how do the
multitude of determinate forms, the natura naturata, come
out of the living oneness — these are questions of interest
because of meaning. The answer is, that the world of to-day

4C/. Proposition VII.
5Z?e Deo, etc., II, p. 17.
6 Cf. Definition I.

186 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

is due to, or caused by, the world of yesterday, which in its
essence — the natura naturans — does not change, but is eter
nal. Thus it is that God is perpetually causa sui — at once
the eternal ev /cat. irav to reason and the cosmic Proteus to
sense.

To summarize: The leading metaphysical conception
running through the argument appears to be that of an in
finite potency in all existence which is constantly pressing
toward some form of actuality, but is more or less restrained,
and always determined, by the external actualities also in
the field. Of this principle the notion of one only substance
in the universe, that is, of the essential homogeneity of exist
ence, is a true corollary, since restraint can be exercised
only by something of a common nature with the object
restrained. From this principle, also, may almost be de
duced the conclusion that the empirical forms of existence
will show a vast multiplicity; for every kind of thing will
inevitably come into being unless prevented by types of
greater potency. The most serious criticism is that the
principle is assumed without necessity. It is neither de
manded inductively for the organization of experience, nor
—judging from the number of thinkers who have conceived
the world without it — is it justified by the Cartesian test
itself: it is not a coercive insight of the mind. On the other
hand, the number of first-class minds who have found in it
the clue to the world riddle shows its real importance as a
metaphysical hypothesis.

To inquire into all the motives of Spinoza in this remark
able theory is too large a theme for a closing remark; but
perhaps it is possible to suggest in part why the quantita
tive view of perfection appealed to our philosopher and to so
many of his scholastic predecessors. Apparently it was be
cause it met their craving for homogeneity, or structural
simplicity, in the world ground. Through it the universe
was easier to conceive — a prime consideration with many

SPINOZA'S PANTHEISTIC ARGUMENT 187

minds. Then the quantitative emphasis seemed to guar
antee the permanence of the world-order. Nothing external
could be thought of as ever rising to overthrow it; for what
is there beyond the all? Nor was dissolution to be feared
from internal causes, for existence on this view is of one
nature throughout, and all fundamental distinctions are
purely quantitative; and, be the riot of change what it
may, the universe abides forever essentially the same.

No doubt these are legitimate ends of metaphysical effort
and construction; but they seem to be considerably lower
in dignity than the possible values disclosed through a
view of the world based upon qualitative appreciation.

WILLIAM FORBES COOLEY

BERKELEY'S REALISM

The purpose of this paper is to set forth Berkeley's real
ism as the controlling motive in his philosophy. His resolu
tion to "side in all things with the mob" (I, 7),1 expressed
in the opening notes of the Commonplace Book, has been
too much neglected by historians through a traditional habit
of reading Berkeley's writings in the light of Locke's Essay
Concerning Human Understanding and in the light of Berke
ley's theological bias. His relation to Locke is important
and I shall deal with it later. His theological bias is pro
nounced. While it is idle to speculate as to what his
philosophy would have been if he had not had a consuming
desire to confound atheists and to make men conscious of
the immediate and beneficent presence of God, it is clear
that this desire made the acceptance of many propositions
easy to him and also guided him often in the choice and
rejection of arguments. Berkeley is not, however, the only
philosopher who has made God a first principle in meta
physics. Least of all was he idiosyncratic in this respect
among his contemporaries and immediate predecessors.
Both Locke and Newton, as well as the leading philosophical
minds of the day, held that ultimately God is the author of
all being. Berkeley like Spinoza might have taken this
principle seriously in philosophy without the prejudices of
a bishop to assist him. To make these prejudices a peculiar
motive in his thinking appears to me, therefore, to indicate
a lack of historical perspective. It seems far more consonant
with the intellectual atmosphere of his day to recognize that
God as a philosophical principle was one of the data of
speculation which, largely because it was such, Berkeley

"The references, unless otherwise indicated, are to A. C. Eraser, The Works of George
Berkeley, 4 vols., Oxford, 1901, and are made by volume and page.

BERKELEY'S REALISM 189

would not suffer to be removed from the place of first
importance. Perhaps a bishop might be more sensitive
than ordinary men to the difficulties lurking in the joint
recognition of God as the creator and conserver of nature,
on the one hand, and of nature as something absolute and
mathematical, on the other, but since many bishops, fully
as devout as Berkeley, were not so sensitive, it does not
seem likely that theological bias affords any significant
clue to the interpretation of his philosophy.

His realism, however, does appear to afford just such a
clue. It furnished him with the weapons to destroy, as he
thought, the mathematical conception of nature with its
obnoxious consequences and to enforce the spiritualistic
conception with its intimate deity. It made the principle
esse est percipi self-evident to him and a natural consequence
of the reality of sensible objects. It explains more satis
factorily than any other factor in his philosophy his use of
the term "idea." In short, I take it to be the leading motive
which, operating upon the systems of nature with which he
was familiar, forced them into his own individual philosophy.
By this I do not mean that his philosophy was the natural
consequence of his realism, as if he started with a realistic
metaphysics and then deduced from it the implication of a
spiritual world. I mean rather that, convinced as he was
that nature is something which we immediately perceive,
he used this conviction to force what for him was the para
mount issue in philosophy, namely, the independent exist
ence of a material world in space.

In developing this view of him, I shall not consider specifi
cally his nominalism, his polemic against abstract ideas, or
his remarks on the abuse of words. These are all of im
portance in a comprehensive exposition of his philosophy.
They do not appear, however, to be of first importance in its
motivation. They are introduced, as the introduction to the
Principles of Human Knowledge shows, to explain why men

STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

have not seen the truth as Berkeley sees it. By the abuse of
words, by the doctrine that we have abstract ideas of exten
sion and color as such, and by the belief in real "essence"
or "substance," men "have raised a dust and then complain
we can not see." Only when this dust is blown away are
we ready for philosophy. The chief obstacles to clear think
ing, as Berkeley conceives them, hardly constitute the posi
tive motives of his own thought.

Berkeley's relation to Locke affords a convenient point of
departure for the present study because of the close associa
tion of these two names in subsequent philosophy. This
association has become so habitual that Berkeley is often
considered to be a disciple of Locke and to have found in the
Essay both the motive and the method of his own philos
ophizing.2 Such an opinion needs examination. Berkeley's
open opposition to the Essay, his criticism of its fundamental
position regarding the reality of human knowledge,3 and
the fact that Locke's general philosophical position is wholly
incompatible with Berkeley's, would indicate that the for
mer's influence was primarily negative. And such seems to
me to be the fact. Locke appears in Berkeley's writings not
as a teacher or leader, but as a misguided, though brilliant,
exponent of a false philosophy. Nor does it appear that it
was Locke alone or Locke especially that put Berkeley ' 'into
position for reflection." Newton was fully as responsible,
but the truth appears to be that it was no single thinker, but
rather the mathematical interpretation of nature which

2For example, Fraser, in his Life and Letters of Berkeley, Oxford, 1871, states, in
commenting on the Commonplace Book: "Locke was the prevailing external influence in
putting him, as it were, into position for reflection, and (that) he proceeded in his in
tellectual work on the basis of postulates which he partly borrowed from Locke, and
partly assumed in antagonism to him. In his early philosophy he was Locke's successor,
somewhat as Fichte was the successor of Kant. In criticising the Essay on Human
Understanding, he makes Locke more consistent with himself, and occupies a position
which is partly the immediate consequence of the one his predecessor had taken." This
estimate of Locke's influence needs, as I hope to show, considerable modification.

'Early in the Commonplace Book we find the memorandum: "Nicely to discuss
Lib. 4 c. 4. Locke" (I. 24). The reference is to the chapter on the reality of knowledge.

BERKELEY S REALISM IQI

Newton had systematized and to which Locke had given
such important support in the Essay Concerning Human
Understanding. This is a matter of so much importance that
it merits examination with some detail.

Berkeley's personal estimate of Locke was high, but quali
fied. He speaks of him in the first edition of the New Theory
of Vision as a "deservedly admired author" and as a man of
"a clear understanding" (I, 188, 189). In the first edition of
the Principles, Locke appears as "a late excellent and de
servedly esteemed philosopher" and "a learned author"
(I, 243). In the Miscellanea Mathematica, he is sapientissi-
mus vir and vir omni laude major (IV, 55, 61). Whether
Berkeley on reflection thought such praise too high and so
altered some of these expressions later we can only guess,
but in the last edition of the New Theory of Vision Locke
is "the author" simply and is no longer credited with the
possession of "a clear understanding," while in the later
editions of the Principles the words "excellent and" are
omitted.4 In the Commonplace Book, however, the state
ments are significant. The first reference there to Locke
takes notice of his wisdom, in contrast to Newton's, in leav
ing motion undefined (I, 12). He is praised for his contempt
of the Schoolmen (I, 18) and for differing in certain points
from the Cartesians (I, 51). In a note on abstraction he is
described as being "as clear a writer as I have met with," to
which is added this comment: "Such was the candour of this
great man that I perswade myself, were he alive, he would

'Personally, I am inclined to believe that these changes are significant. See also
the New Theory of Vision (I, 191): "(The excellent) Mr. Locke;" and a Defence of Free-
thinking in Mathematics (III, 92): "You give me to understand that this account of a
general triangle was a trap which Mr. Locke set to catch fools. Who is caught therein
let the reader judge." Berkeley did not always observe his "N. B. To rein in ye
satyrical nature" (I, 32). See also his "We Irishmen" (I, 91-92). In this connection,
and generally, it is worth keeping in mind Berkeley's comment on himself: "He that
would bring another over to his opinion, must seem to harmonize with him at first, and
humour him in his own way of talking. From my childhood I had an unaccountable
turn of thought that way" (I, 92). See also (II, 396): "It is to be noted that, in con
sidering the Theory of Vision, I observed a certain known method, wherein, from false
and popular suppositions, men do often arrive at truth."

192 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

not be offended that I differ from him : seeing that in so doing
I follow his advice, viz., to use my own judgement, see with
my own eyes, & not with another's" (I, 39). But approval
and praise are qualified. For instance, just preceding the
passage last quoted we read: To bring the "killing blow at
the last, e. g., in the matter of abstraction to bring Locke's
general triangle in the last." Again: "Locke's great over
sight seems to be that he did not begin with his third book ;
at least that he had not some thought of it at first. Cer
tainly the 2d & 4th books don't agree wth wl he says in ye
3d" (I, 42). This seems clearly to imply that if Locke had
so begun he would not have been led astray by words.
Berkeley compares himself with Locke as follows: "Gyant
who shakes the mountain that's on him must be acknowl
edged. Or rather thus : I am no more to be reckon'd stronger
than Locke than a pigmy should be reckon'd stronger than
a gyant, because he could throw off the molehill wch lay
upon him, and the gyant could only shake or shove the
mountain that oppressed him. This in the Preface" (I, 37).
With this should be read the following: "Wonderful in
Locke that he could, wn advanced in years, see at all thro'
a mist; it had been so long a gathering, & was consequently
thick. This more to be admired than y1 he did not see
farther" (I, 26). Nearly all the remaining references to
Locke in the Commonplace Book — there are at least seventy
which are explicit — are either colorless by themselves or
express objections to his views.

From the foregoing it is evident that Berkeley personally
regarded Locke as an able thinker, who, however, was not
able enough to see through the mist that had become thick.
Nowhere in the Commonplace Book, except in one reference,
"All knowledge onely about ideas. Locke B. 4. c. I" (I, 21),
and in similar statements where Locke is not mentioned,
is there any significant indication of a fundamental agree
ment between the two philosophers. This impression is

BERKELEY S REALISM IQ3

strengthened by all the writings Berkeley himself published.
Although in the Commonplace Book, Locke is the author
cited by far most frequently, in these other writings this is
not the case.5 And it is noticeable that he is cited almost
invariably to be criticized or rejected.6 The apparently
crucial reference to 'ideas' will be considered later, but it
may be confidently asserted that Locke does not appear in
Berkeley's own admissions as a peculiar or guiding influence.
Whatever his influence was must be inferred by the reader of
Berkeley, for it can not be found in any significant form by
direct acknowledgment.

This conclusion assumes a more positive aspect when we
consider the general setting in which references to Locke
are made. The important fact to note here is that this set
ting is the mathematical science of nature as illustrated by
Newton's Principia and not the science of mind as illus
trated by Locke's Essay. We have become so accustomed
to reading the Theory of Vision as a psychological inquiry
into the perception of space, and the Principles of Human
Knowledge as a work on epistemology, that the fact noted
has become obscured. I do not imply that they should not

5 Newton, for instance, is equally prominent. See the index to Berkeley's works.
It should be noted that Fraser has, through his notes, produced the appearance of more
frequent citation than is warranted. Many of his inferred references to Locke contain
nothing really significant. This is less true of the references to Newton.
•>, 6 In the New Theory of Vision his admiration of sight is quoted (I, 191), but elsewhere
he is condemned for his doctrine of abstraction (I, 189) and criticized for his solution of
Molyneux's problem (I, 193). In the latter connection this passage in the Commonplace
Book is interesting: visible distance may be demonstrated heterogeneous from tangible
distance "from Molyneux's problem, w0*1 otherwise is falsely solv'd by Locke and him"
(I, 61). In the Principles he is again condemned for 'abstraction' (I, 243. See also
III, 91-93). In Berkeley's criticism of the distinction between primary and secondary
qualities (I, 262, 384-401), Locke is not mentioned, but is doubtless in mind. Yet this
distinction was not peculiar to Locke, as is clear from Descartes, Hobbes, Malebranche,
Newton, and others. Locke is praised for his approval of mathematics and for counsels
which if intelligently followed would rid the science of some obscurities (III, 410, in
previously unpublished essay on Infinity, and IV, 53, 61). His doctrine of time is criti
cized in a letter to President Johnson (II, 19, and see implied references in this con
nection, I, 58, 59, 311-312, 319). In Alciphron Locke's definition of knowledge is given
without quotation marks: "Knowledge is the perception of the connexion or disagree
ment between ideas" (II, 320).

194 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

be so read, but rather that, when so read, they should be
read in their context. Berkeley's initial interest was in
mathematics. In 1709, two years before the publication of
•the Theory of Vision, his Arithmetica and Miscellanea Math-
ematica were published, although written in 1705. De Motu
was published in 1721, The Analyst: or, A Discourse ad
dressed to an Infidel Mathematician, in 1734, and A Defence
of Free-thinking in Mathematics, in 1735. In the Common
place Book references to mathematics occur on almost every
page.7 Indeed, we can not read that interesting document
without the feeling that Berkeley is preparing for a vigorous
assault on the mathematical interpretation of nature. The
New Theory of Vision he regarded as a work on optics and
its criticisms are aimed almost exclusively at mathematical
writers on the subject.8 The Principles, especially in the
discussion of "natural philosophy" (I, 3136°.), again shows
how much mathematics was in his mind. It is apparent,
furthermore, that he regarded a revised mathematics as an

7 The references are so numerous that it is unnecessary to detail them. He mentions
the leading mathematical writers of the day: Newton, Pardico, Halley, Cheyne, Bar
row, Wallis, Descartes, Keill, and others.

8 The references to Locke I have noted above. The criticisms of Barrow (I, 135-145),
of Molyneux (I, 145), of Wallis (I, 164), and of Descartes and Gassendi in the
appendix (I, 207-210) are to be noted. His theory of vision is evidently a 'new'
theory because it is not mathematical. I shall speak of it more fully later. Here, how
ever, I quote his own statement from the Theory of Vision Vindicated and Explained
(11.396):

In the contrivance of Vision, as that of other things, the wisdom of Providence seem-
eth to have consulted the operation rather than the theory of man; to the former things
are admirably fitted, but, by that very means, the latter is often perplexed. For, as
useful as these immediate suggestions and constant connexions are to direct our actions;
so is our distinguishing between things confounded, and as it were blended together, no
less necessary to the speculation and knowledge of truth.

The knowledge of these connexions, relations, and differences of things visible and
tangible, their nature, force, and significancy hath not been duly considered by former
writers on Optics, and seems to have been the great desideratum in that science, which
for want thereof was confused and imperfect. A Treatise, therefore, of this philosophical
kind, for the understanding of Vision, is at least as necessary as the physical considera
tion of the eye, nerve, coats, humours, refractions, bodily nature, and motion of light;
or as the geometrical application of lines and angles for praxis or theory, in dioptric
glasses and mirrors, for computing and reducing to some rule and measure our j udgments
so far as they are proportional to the objects of geometry. In these three lights Vision
should be considered, in order to a complete Theory of Optics.

BERKELEY S REALISM IQ5

important undertaking and one which would strengthen his
own philosophy.9

This interest in mathematics was not, however, if I may
speak a little paradoxically, the interest of a mathematician.
Although Berkeley's strictly mathematical criticisms were
often acute and penetrating, he made no significant contri
bution to the subject. He did not, and evidently could not,
reform the science in the direction of his criticisms. There is
much to substantiate the charge that he was not "mathe
matically minded," for although he distinguishes between
mathematics as a method and as a science of nature, his
criticism of the calculus shows that his grasp of the method
was not profound. It is as an opponent of the mathematics
of his day that his interest is exhibited. Now it is in the
setting defined by this opposition that the references to
Locke are generally made. His doctrines lent support to the
mathematicians and had, therefore, to be exposed and con
demned. Their strongholds were the distinction between
primary and secondary qualities, matter with its abstract
geometrical properties, and "real" points, lines, surfaces,
solids, curves, and angles existing absolutely in an absolute
space. Locke was their ally, but he ought not to have
been. If they had taken seriously his remarks on infinity
or if he, seeing a little way through the mist, had only seen
further and applied rigorously his own admirable comments
on the pit-falls of the understanding and the abuse of words,
the result would have been a clearer and more consistent
philosophy.10 Thus it appears that Berkeley himself re
garded Locke not as a peculiar or noteworthy influence on
his own thinking, but rather as one of a group of thinkers —
Newton, Descartes, Barrow, Raphson, and others — who

•Note among other references in the Commonplace Book, "Barrow owns the downfall
of geometry. However I'll endeavour to rescue it — so far as it is useful, or real, or imag
inable, or intelligible. But for the nothings, I'll leave them to their admirers" (I, go).
But see especially the attempts in De Molu and Siris.

10 All this I believe to be amply substantiated by the references already cited. It is be
sides the mass impression, so to speak, I get from examining Berkeley's relation to Locke.

STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

shared in common the mathematical conception of nature.
It was that conception and not any one of its supporters
which stimulated him to set forth his own philosophy.

Nor can I find any significant influence of Locke in deter
mining the general type or method of Berkeley's philosoph
ical writings. Here again the traditional association of the
Irishman with the Englishman has tended to emphasize
similarities which they share with other writers. Descartes,
Hobbes, Spinoza, Malebranche — with all of whom Berkeley
appears to have been acquainted — write from the point of
view of human nature or the human understanding. This
was a fashion set by Descartes and Hobbes and not without
support in Francis Bacon. It is true that, like Locke, Berke
ley examines our ideas and sets forth what we in the course
of our experience perceive by our senses, but neither of them
was novel in that, for they were evidently not the first psy
chologists. The significant fact is, however, that Berkeley
does not do this in Locke's manner nor with Locke's pre
suppositions about experience. Had he done so his own
philosophy would have been ruined, for the presupposition
of an originally empty mind furnished with ideas through
experience of an independent external world of mathe
matical objects in an independent space would have involved
the surrender of Berkeley's contentions. Even with regard
to this presupposition it is worth remarking that Locke is
distinguished not for originating it, but for his way of stat
ing it and the thoroughness with which he used it. The
only significant passages I recall where Berkeley is like
Locke in tjiis method of approach are in the first dialogue
between Hylas and Philonous. Here, by an argument
somewhat in the manner of Locke, Hylas is forced to admit
that his ideas are only in his mind and have no external
existence.11 But the opening passages of the second dialogue

11 The instance of pain on which some emphasis is laid is, of course, not peculiar to
Locke. And note in this connection the Commonplace Book (I, n) : "I may say the pain
is in my finger, etc., according to my doctrine."

BERKELEY'S REALISM 197

bring the whole physiological and material approach to an
analysis of ideas into confusion.12 This examination of
Berkeley's relation to Locke will have served part of its
purpose if it has established the conclusion that Berkeley
was in no significant sense the disciple of Locke and that he
regarded Locke principally as one of a group of thinkers to
whose principles he was opposed. I quote in final confirma
tion of it Berkeley's own words in the Defense of Free-

12 The passage is so significant that I quote it at some length (I, 420-422) :

Hyl. I own there is a great deal in what you say. Nor can any one be more entirely
satisfied of the truth of those odd consequences, so long as I have in view the reasonings
that lead to them. But, when these are out of my thoughts, there seems, on the other
hand, something so satisfactory, so natural and intelligible, in the modern way of explain
ing things that, I profess, I know not how to reject it.

Phil. I know not what way you mean.

Hyl. I mean the way of accounting for our sensations or ideas.

Phil. How is that?

Hyl. It is supposed the soul makes her residence in some part of the brain, from
which the nerves take their rise, and are thence extended to all parts of the body; and
that outward objects, by the different impressions they make on the organs of sense,
communicate certain vibrative motions to the nerves; and these being filled with spirits
propagate them to the brain or seat of the soul, which, according to the various impres
sions or traces thereby made in the brain, is variously affected with ideas.

Phil. And call you this an explication of the manner whereby we are affected with ideas?

Hyl. Why not, Philonous? Have you anything to object against it?

Phil. I would first know whether I rightly understand your hypothesis. You make
certain traces in the brain to be the causes or occasions of our ideas. Pray tell me
whether by the brain you mean any sensible thing.

Hyl. What else think you I could mean?

Phil. Sensible things are all immediately perceivable, and those things which are
immediately perceivable are ideas; and these exist only in the mind. Thus much you
have, if I mistake not, long since agreed to.

Hyl. I do not deny it.

Phil. The brain therefore you speak of, being a sensible thing, exists only in the
mind. Now, I would fain know whether you think it reasonable to suppose that one
idea or thing existing in the mind occasions all other ideas. And, if you think so, pray
how do you account for the origin of that primary idea or brain itself?

Hyl. I do not explain the origin of our ideas by that brain which is perceivable to
sense — this being itself only a combination of sensible ideas — but by another which I
imagine.

Phil. But are not things imagined as truly in the mind as things perceived?

Hyl. I must confess they are.

Phil. It comes, therefore, to the same thing; and you have been all this while ac
counting for ideas by certain motions or impressions of the brain; that is, by some altera
tions in an idea, whether sensible or imaginable it matters not.

Hyl. I begin to suspect my hypothesis.

And I refer again to Berkeley's comment on his own habit of starting from false premises.
See above, p. 169, n. 4.

IQ8 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

thinking in Mathematics (III, 93) : "This doctrine of abstract
general ideas seemed to me a capital error, productive of
numberless difficulties and disputes, that runs not only
throughout Mr. Locke's book, but through most parts of
learning. Consequently, my animadversions thereupon
were not an effect of being inclined to carp or cavil at a single
passage, as you would wrongfully insinuate, but proceeded
from a love of truth, and a desire to banish, so far as in me
lay, false principles and wrong ways of thinking, without
respect of persons. And, indeed, though you and other
party-men are violently attached to your respective Masters,
yet I, who profess myself only attached to truth, see no
reason why I may not as freely animadvert on Mr. Locke
or Sir Isaac Newton, as they would on Aristotle or Des
Cartes. Certainly the more extensive the influence of any
error, and the greater the authority which supports it, the
more it deserves to be considered and detected by sincere
inquirers after knowledge."

The examination of Berkeley's relation to Locke has had
an additional purpose — namely, to point out that Berkeley
was stimulated to philosophical reflection by the mathe
matical conception of nature. This conception he attacked,
confident that it was founded on principles that could not
stand the light of criticism. His reason for attacking it was
his conviction that it either made God unnecessary or iden
tified Him with matter and space. His religious disposition
revolted from this consequence, but, as I have suggested
above, it does not seem reasonable to conclude that this
consequence was evident to him because he had a religious
disposition. Many equally religious men did not draw it,
but went happily to church in a material world. He has left
us in no doubt that for him it was a philosophical conse
quence. In the Principles (I, 323) he writes:

What is here laid down seems to put an end to all those disputes and
difficulties that have sprung up amongst the learned concerning the

BERKELEY'S REALISM 199

nature of pure space. But the chief advantage arising from it is that
we are freed from that dangerous dilemma, to which several who have
employed their thoughts on that subject imagine themselves reduced,
viz., of thinking either that Real Space is God, or else that there is some
thing beside God which is eternal, uncreated, infinite, indivisible, im
mutable. Both which may justly be thought pernicious and absurd
notions. It is certain that not a few divines, as well as philosophers of
great note, have, from the difficulty they found in conceiving either
limits or annihilation of space, concluded it must be divine. And some
of late have set themselves particularly to shew that the incommunicable
attributes of God agree to it. Which doctrine, how unworthy soever it
may seem of the Divine Nature, yet I must confess I do not see how we
can get clear of it, so long as we adhere to the received opinions.

These words express the fundamental reason why he at
tacked Locke and Newton and the supporters generally of
the mathematical conception of nature.13

This attack was motived, as it seems to me, by pre
suppositions borrowed, not from Locke's psychology, but
from the naive realism of the common man. Berkeley often
makes this realism difficult for the common man to recognize
because, first, of his denial of the existence of objects in
space, and, secondly, because of his doctrine that esse is
percipi. I shall consider both of these matters presently.
Here I may repeat a remark made in the beginning of this
paper. Berkeley reinforces his doctrine by an appeal to
nominalism and by a polemic against abstract general ideas

13 The paragraph quoted is, as the reader of Berkeley is aware, not an isolated instance.
As the Commonplace Book is not generally read, I note only the principal passages from
it bearing "on the point to show how early it forced itself upon his mind. "Matter once
allow'd, I defy any man to prove that God is not Matter" (I, 32). "Candidly to take
notice that Locke holds some dangerous opinions; such as the infinity and eternity of
Space and the possibility of Matter's thinking" (I, 39). "Hobbes&_Spinoza make God
extended. Locke also seems to do the same" (I, 52). "The great danger of making ex
tension exist without the mind is, that if it does it must be acknowledg'd infinite, im
mutable, eternal, etc.; — wch will be to make either God extended (wch I think danger
ous), or an eternal immutable, infinite, increate Being beside God" (I, 81). "Locke,
More, Raphson, etc., seem to make God extended. 'Tis nevertheless of great use to
religion to take extension out of our idea of God, & put a power in its place. It seems
dangerous to suppose extension, wch is manifestly inert, in God" (I, 82). The references
to Newton in the Principles should be noted in this connection (I, 318-323). See also
the sections on mathematics (I, 324-332).

2OO STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

in order to show why men have missed the truth. But the
common man is a pronounced realist. While he confidently
believes that he perceives real things precisely as they exist,
he no less confidently believes that these real things exist
in a real space and that so existing they are quite independ
ent of the fact that he perceives them. Because of his own
nominalism Berkeley was forced to convince the common
man — and the learned too — that the latter's realism was not
reflective. It, no less than the truth, was obscured by the
mist and veil of words.14 When once this veil was torn
away, the realism of the common man remained with its
basal assumption of the immediate perception of reality
unaffected. Consequently, when I say that Berkeley's
attack was motived by the presuppositions of this realism,
I do not imply that he left this realism unaffected.

The New Theory of Vision makes it evident that in
Berkeley's mind the stronghold of the mathematicians was
optics and the doctrine of space which that science implied.
His basal objection to them is expressed by saying that they
have the "humour of making one see by geometry" (I, 152).
This attempt of theirs implies that we perceive the distance,
magnitude, and situation of objects by means of factors
which are not themselves perceived at all. He insists, on
the contrary, that how we perceive can be explained only in
terms of what we perceive. Any hypothesis involving fac
tors which from the nature of the case are unperceived and
unperceivable must be rejected.15 His own positive con
clusion is expressed in the oft quoted passage (I, 199):

Upon the whole, I think we may fairly conclude that the proper objects
of Vision constitute the Universal Language of Nature; whereby we are
instructed how to regulate our actions, in order to attain those things
that are necessary to the preservation and well-being of our bodies, as

14 "The chief thing I do or pretend to do is onely to remove the mist or veil of words.
This has occasion'd ignorance & confusion. This has ruined the schoolmen and mathe
maticians, lawyers and divines," Commonplace Book (I, 33). It will be remembered that
for Hylas, too, the mist was pretty thick.

16 See especially sees. 10-14 (I, 130-131).

BERKELEY S REALISM 2OI

also to avoid whatever may be hurtful and destructive of them. It is by
their information that we are principally guided in all the transactions
and concerns of life. And the manner wherein they signify and mark out
unto us the objects which are at a distance is the same with that of lan
guages and signs of human appointment ; which do not suggest the things
signified by any likeness or identity of nature, but only by an habitual
connexion that experience has made us to observe between them.

Thus it is that we see, not by geometry, but by experience.
Locke could say something very similar to this in his short
chapter on perception when he cites Molyneux's problem to
show how "the ideas we receive by sensation are often, in
grown people, altered by the judgment without our taking
note of it."16 From this chapter Berkeley quotes, and his
comment is noteworthy (I, 194):

It is a mistake to think the same thing affects both sight and touch.
If the same angle or square which is the object of touch be also the object
of vision, what should hinder the blind man, at first sight, from knowing
it? For, though the manner wherein it affects the sight be different from
that wherein it affected his touch, yet, there being, beside this manner or
circumstance, which is new and unknown, the angle or figure, which is
old and known, he cannot choose but discern it.

In other words Berkeley finds in the illustration of
Molyneux no confirmation of the doctrine that the same
mathematical object affects different senses giving us, thus,
different ideas of the same thing. He finds, rather, confirma
tion of his own conclusion that the proper objects of vision
constitute the universal language of nature. We should
read his whole theory of vision and particularly his emphatic
insistence that visible extension is different from tangible
extension in the light of this conclusion and not in the light
of the associationist psychology.17 That is, our ideas of

^Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, A. C. Eraser, Oxford, 1894, Vol. I,
p. 185.

"It may be, as it repeatedly has been, read in that light and may afford excellent
material for the associationist. Yet the essay itself makes it perfectly clear that the
explanation Berkeley gives of our habit of saying that we see and feel the same thing is
the explanation of a nominalist and not of an associationist. See especially I, 196, sees.
139-140.

2O2 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

visible and tangible extension are not associated or com
bined by experience into an idea of extension itself. They
do not unite to give us the idea of an object which they
represent. Berkeley's doctrine is radically different. Visi
ble and tangible extension are precisely what we see and
feel directly and immediately. He calls them 'ideas', but
they are not 'ideas of anything. They are real components
of nature and not components of the mind. They enter into
the composition and framework of nature and not into the
composition and framework of the mind. They are things
we immediately perceive and these things are held together
not in some embracing space, but in a system of mutual
representation and symbolism. They are not held together
in the mind by psychological laws of association, but they
are perceived by the mind and the way they are connected
is learned by the mind through experience of their actual
symbolism.

Thus it appears to me that Berkeley's theory of vision
is in its presuppositions the realism of the common man re
fined by the nominalism of the philosopher. In it we have,
not a theory of sense-perception, but a theory of what we
perceive.18 And what we perceive is not ideas which some
how know or represent the system of nature, for what we
perceive is itself the system of nature. Furthermore this
system is not to be described in terms of mathematics, but
in terms of meaning and living. In other words optics
teaches that the system of nature is not a system of math-

18 See the emphatic statement on this point in the Theory of Vision Vindicated and
Explained (II, 388):

"As in this inquiry we are concerned with what objects we perceive, or our own ideas,
so, upon them our reasonings must proceed. To treat of things utterly unknown, as
if we knew them, and so lay our beginning in obscurity, would not surely seem the proper-
est means for the discovering of truth. Hence it follows, that it would be wrong if one
about to treat of the nature of Vision, should, instead of attending to visible ideas, define
the object of sight to be that obscure Cause, that invisible Power or Agent, which pro
duced visible ideas in our minds. Certainly such Cause or Power does not seem to be
the object either of the sense or the science of Vision, inasmuch as what we know thereby
we know only of the effects." Compare sees. 36, 37, and 43 of this work for Berkeley's
conception of the full scope of optical inquiry.

BERKELEY S REALISM • 2O3

ematical objects in space, but a system of real colors, etc.,
no less coherent and unified than a supposed system of
objects in space could be. This system we perceive. We do
not create it or impose it upon the crude elements of experi
ence. It is created independent of us, but by perceiving it
we are able to live in it.19 The common man loses the space
of the mathematicians and his own reajistic conception of
it, but he keeps intact the immediate reality of the sensible
world.20

It is needless, I think, to review the other writings of
Berkeley to show how fundamental and controlling this
presupposition of the realism of the mob is. His realism is
universally acknowledged. But, because it has so often
been regarded as an idiosyncrasy in a man who under the
influence of Locke would have been a skeptic or a sub-
jectivist if he had not been a bishop, I have thought it
worth while to indicate how this realism is the presupposi
tion of his thinking. From its vantage ground and not from
that of Locke's Essay, as it seems to me, he makes his attack

19 Compare (II, 174): This Optic Language hath a necessary connexion with knowl
edge, wisdom, and goodness. It is equivalent to a constant creation, betokening an im
mediate act of power and providence. It can not be accounted for by mechanical prin
ciples, by atoms, attractions, or effluvia. The instantaneous production and reproduc
tion of so many signs, combined, dissolved, transposed, diversified, and adapted to such
an endless variety of purposes, ever shifting with the occasions and suited to them, being
utterly inexplicable and unaccountable by the laws of motion, by chance, by fate, or the
like blind principles, doth set forth and testify the immediate operation of a spirit or
thinking being; and not merely of a spirit, which every motion or gravitation may pos
sibly infer, but of one wise, good, and provident Spirit, which directs and rules and
governs the world. Some philosophers, being convinced of the wisdom and power of
the Creator, from the make and contrivance of organised bodies and orderly system of
the world, did nevertheless imagine that he left this system with all its parts and con
tents well adjusted and put in motion, as an artist leaves a clock, to go thenceforward
of itself for a certain period. But this Visual Language proves, not a Creator merely,
but a provident Governor, actually and intimately present, and attentive to all our
interests and motions, who watches over our conduct, and takes care of our minutest
actions and designs throughout the whole course of our lives, informing, admonishing,
and directing incessantly, in a most evident and sensible manner. This is truly wonder
ful. Compare also (I, 471).

10 See Commonplace Book (I, 91). "The philosophers lose their abstract or unper-
ceived Matter. The mathematicians lose their insensible sensations. The profane
[lose] their extended Deity. Pray wl do the rest of mankind lose? As for bodies, etc.,
we have them still."

204 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

upon the metaphysics of Newton and his associates and
followers. They had contended that the perceived world
is not the system of nature. Through their hypothesis of
matter with mathematical properties existing in space they
forced men to conclude that the whole sensible world was a
system of phantasms in the mind, unreal except in so far as
matter operating through the senses on the brain of man
produced there somehow a system of ideas. To Berkeley
all this was both impious and unintelligible. He met it, not
simply by decrying its impiety, but by bringing to bear upon
it the naive realism of the common man refined by the tenets
of nominalism. The perceived world is the system of
nature — and from that affirmation he drew what he thought
it implied in the confident belief that the mathematicians
would henceforth be silenced.

While it seems needless to give further illustration of this
view,21 I will not refrain from quoting at length an interest
ing passage from the Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous
(I, 422-424). The last sentence of the quotation is worth
special attention.

Phil. Look! are not the fields covered with a delightful verdure? Is
there not something in the woods and groves, in the rivers and clear
springs, that soothes, that delights, that transports the soul? At the
prospect of the wide' and deep ocean, or some huge mountain whose top
is lost in the clouds, or of an old gloomy forest, are not our minds filled
with a pleasing horror? Even in rocks and deserts is there not an agree
able wildness? How sincere a pleasure is it to behold the natural beauties
of the earth! To preserve and renew our relish for them, is not the veil
of night alternately drawn over her face, and doth she not change her
dress with the seasons? How aptly are the elements disposed! What
variety and use [in the meanest productions of nature!] What delicacy,
what beauty, what contrivance, in animal and vegetable bodies! How
exquisitely are all things suited, as well to their particular ends, as to

21 Yet the Commonplace Book ought to be consulted. "I am farthest from scepticism
of any man. I know with an intuitive knowledge the existence of other things as well
as my own soul. This is wt Locke nor scarce any other thinking philosopher will pretend
to" (I, 26). This is but one illustration. Compare I, 56, 57. 63, 65, 71, 80-84, 88. For
typical illustrations of the many elsewhere, see I, 463, 471; II, 389.

BERKELEY S REALISM 2O5

constitute opposite parts of the whole! And, while they mutually aid
and support, do they not also set off and illustrate each other? Raise
now your thoughts from this ball of earth to all those glorious luminaries
that adorn the high arch of heaven. The motion and situation of the
planets, are they not admirable for use and order? Were those (miscalled
erratic) globes once known to stray, in their repeated journeys through
the pathless void? Do they not measure areas round the sun ever pro
portioned to the times? So fixed, so immutable are the laws by which
the unseen Author of nature actuates the universe. How vivid and radi
ant is the lustre of the fixed stars! How magnificent and rich that
negligent profusion with which they appear to be scattered throughout
the whole azure vault ! Yet, if you take the telescope, it brings into your
sight a new host of stars that escape the naked eye. Here they seem con
tiguous and minute, but to a nearer view immense orbs of light at various
distances, far sunk in the abyss of space. Now you must call imagina
tion to your aid. The feeble narrow sense cannot descry innumerable
worlds revolving round the central fires; and in those worlds the energy
of an all-perfect Mind displayed in endless forms. But, neither sense nor
imagination are big enough to comprehend the boundless extent, with
all its glittering furniture. Though the labouring mind exert and strain
each power to its utmost reach, there still stands out ungrasped a sur
plusage immeasurable. Yet all the vast bodies that compose this mighty
frame, how distant and remote soever, are by some secret mechanism,
some Divine art and force, linked in a mutual dependence and intercourse
with each other; even with this earth, which was almost slipt from my
thoughts and lost in the crowd of worlds. Is not the whole system im
mense, beautiful, glorious beyond expression and beyond thought ! What
treatment, then, do those philosophers deserve, who would deprive these
noble and delightful scenes of all reality? How should those Principles be
entertained that lead us to think all the visible beauty of the creation a
false imaginary glare? To be plain, can you expect this Scepticism of
yours will not be thought extravagantly absurd by all men of sense?

Hyl. Other men may think as they please; but for your part you
have nothing to reproach me with. My comfort is, you are as much a
sceptic as I am.

Phil. There, Hylas, I must beg leave to differ from you.

Hyl. What! Have you all along agreed to the premises, and do you
now deny the conclusion, and leave me to maintain those paradoxes by
myself which you led me into? This surely is not fair.

Phil. I deny that I agreed with you in those notions that led to
Scepticism. You indeed said the reality of sensible things consisted in an
absolute existence out of the minds of spirits, or distinct from their being

206 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

perceived. And pursuant to this notion of reality, you are obliged to
deny sensible things any real existence: that is, according to your own
definition, you profess yourself a sceptic. But I neither said nor thought
the reality of sensible things was to be defined after that manner. To
me it is evident, for the reasons you allow of, that sensible things cannot
exist otherwise than in a mind or spirit. Whence I conclude, not that
they have no real existence, but that, seeing they depend not on my
thought, and have an existence distinct from being perceived by me,
there must be some other Mind wherein they exist. As sure, therefore, as the
sensible world really exists, so sure is there an infinite omnipresent Spirit
who contains and supports it.

As I indicated above Berkeley altered naive realism not
only by his denial of space, but also by his doctrine that
esse is percipi. These two alterations are intimately con
nected. The things we immediately perceive do not exist
in space; they do exist in the mind. Perforce they exist in
something.22 The destruction of space demanded a sub
stitute for the thing destroyed. Mind was the obvious
substitute, for it was common knowledge that, empirically
considered, there were only two orders of existence, existence
in space and existence in the mind. Nor did existence in
the mind present a serious difficulty to any philosopher who
was not a materialist. For the mind was not spatial and
to exist in it did not mean to be in something extended, but
to be 'presented to', to be 'comprehended', to be 'per
ceived'. For nai've realism, nature when perceived was
in the mind, and the difficulty felt by the materialists and
men like Locke and Newton arose from the fact that with
them what we perceive is mediated by the body and exists

22 1 think historians have not sufficiently remarked that through the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries ultimate conceptions had no other language but that of Scholasti
cism. The axiom which Spinoza placed first of all his axioms, Omnia quae sunt vel in se
vel in olio sunt, was as fundamental and evident a truth as philosophers generally could
admit. Not its truth, but its meaning was disputed. Things existed in space, attributes
in substance, ideas in the mind, individuals in species, species in genera, genera in a
summum genus, everything in God. This was no less true of Newton and Locke than of
Berkeley, Spinoza, and the Schoolmen. Only the meaning of in was in dispute. (I
can't help remarking how naturally and without intention I have by "in dispute" illus
trated the axiom.) But whatever that preposition meant, "existence" always meant
"existence in."

BERKELEY S REALISM 207

in it before there is any perception. Yet even with them
to be in the mind meant to be perceived.23 In view of these
considerations and of Berkeley's nominalistic reconstruction
of naive realism the doctrine that esse is percipi had the axi
omatic appearance which Berkeley repeatedly claimed for it.
Nowhere, that I recall, does he attempt to prove this
fundamental principle of his philosophy. It is always
'evident'. The opposite of it is always 'unintelligible'
or 'repugnant'. An intuitive knowledge of it may be
obtained "by any one that shall attend to what is meant
by the term exist when applied to sensible things" (I, 258).
Now propositions are "self-evident," even to philosophers,
only in their context and looked at against the background
from which they are projected. For my part the only
context and background I can find that served this purpose

23 1 think it is needless to support these general considerations by detailed references
to the writings of the time. That philosophy operated with the fundamental distinction
between res extensa and res cogitata or cogitans is too evident. But the following from
Berkeley himself may be instanced (I, 470): "When I speak of objects existing in the
mind, or imprinted on the senses, I would not be understood in the gross literal sense;
as when bodies are said to exist in a place, or a seal to make an impression upon wax.
My meaning is only that the mind comprehends or perceives them; and that it is af
fected from without, or by some being distinct from itself." Compare also: "By [mindl
I do not denote any one of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein
they exist, or, which is the same thing, whereby they are perceived" (I, 258). The con
ception of the mind as a structure of mental elements (consciousness) had as yet little
or no currency. Yet it should be remembered that Berkeley himself comes very near to
this conception in some of the notes in the Commonplace Book: "The very existence of
ideas constitutes the soul." "Consciousness, [as Eraser remarks, 'a term rarely used by
Berkeley or his contemporaries'] perception, existence of ideas, seem to be all one."
"Mind is a congeries of perceptions. Take away perceptions and you take away the
mind. Put the perceptions and you put the mind" (I, 27). But note the next: "Say
you, the mind is not the perception, not that thing which perceives. I answer, you are
abused by the words 'that a thing." These are vague and empty words with us" (I, 28).
In another connection (I, 130 n.) Fraser aptly remarks: "Mark here and elsewhere, the
ambiguity of the term perception, which now signifies the act of being conscious of
sensuous phenomena, and again the act of inferring phenomena of which we are at the
time insentient; while it is also applied to the object perceived instead of to the percipient
act; and sometimes to imagination, and the higher acts of intelligence." In other words,
with Berkeley, the term had not yet been differentiated into its later meanings. I can
find no evidence that with him even a "congeries of perceptions" means a "congeries of

things perceived. Tis most sure & certain that our ideas are distinct from the mind."

"The Spirit, the Mind, is neither a volition nor an idea" (Commonplace Book, I, 54-55).
This 'ambiguity' in Berkeley has been no small factor in fitting him into later associa-
tionist psychology.

2O8 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

was the context and background of naive realism. The
mob must agree with him when once it is nominalistically
enlightened, and even the materialists can not escape, for
with them the existence of what we perceive consists in
its being perceived. In the context and with the background
of an enlightened realism he thought he had discovered the
meaning of 'to exist'. That discovery constituted in his
judgment his contribution to philosophy. Like many
another ardent soul he thought he had found the one single
and self-evident principle in the light of which all the
obscurities of existence could be made clear.24

24 See Commonplace Book (I, 17). " "Tis on the discovering of the nature and mean
ing and import of Existence that I chiefly insist. This puts a wide difference betwixt
the sceptics, etc., & me. This I think wholly new. I am sure this is new to me."

Berkeley's doctrine of the spiritual universe I shall not dwell upon as it is not very
relevant to the present study. It is sufficient to remark that he provides for the per
manency and constancy of nature by the Scholastic doctrine of conservation. The most
suggestive and illuminating passage which I have found on this point is contained in a
letter to President Johnson, of King's College, New York. I quote it here, remarking
that it should be read in connection with the latter part of Siris, certain passages of
which I shall refer to later. The extract from the letter follows (Life and Letters of
Berkeley, A. C. Fraser, p. 180): "Those who have all along contended for a material
world have yet acknowledged that natura naturans (to use the language of the school
men) is God; and that the divine conservation of things is equipollent to, and, in fact,
the same thing with a continued repeated creation: in a word, that conservation and
creation differ only in the terminus a quo. These are the common opinions of the school
men; and Durandus, who held the world to be a machine like a clock, made and jwt in
motion by God, but afterwards continuing to go of itself, was therein particular, and
had few followers. The very poets teach a doctrine not unlike the schools — Mens agitat
molem. (Virgil's Aeneid VI.) The Stoics and Platonists are everywhere full of the same
notion. I am not therefore singular in this point itself, so much as in my way of proving
it. Further, it seems to me that the power and wisdom of God are as worthily set
forth by supposing him to act immediately as an omnipresent infinitely active spirit,
as by supposing him to act by the mediation of subordinate causes, in preserving and
governing the natural world. A clock may indeed go independent of its maker or
artificer, inasmuch as the gravitation of its pendulum proceeds from another cause,
and that the artificer is not the adequate cause of the clock; so that the analogy would
not be just to suppose a clock is in respect of its artist what the world is in respect of its
Creator. For aught I can see, it is no disparagement to the perfections of God to say
that all things necessarily depend on him as their Conservator as well as Creator, and
that all nature would shrink to nothing, if not upheld and preserved in being by the
same force that first created it. This I am sure is agreeable to Holy Scripture, as well
as to the writings of the most esteemed philosophers; and if it is to be considered that
men make use of tools and machines to supply defect of power in themselves, we shall
think it no honour to the divinity to attribute such things to him." See also, I, 282,
Sec. 46; and II, 174.

BERKELEY S REALISM 2O9

As I have said above, Berkeley does not prove his prin
ciple. It is woven into his philosophy in such a way as to
appear to be both its central theme and the epitome of any
acknowledged reality of the perceived world. Nowhere,
perhaps, is this more clearly exhibited than in the Dialogues
between Hylas and Philonous. His argument can be reduced
to the following three propositions which seem to contain all
that constituted Berkeley's 'singularity': (i) materialism,
or the mathematical conception of nature makes the per
ceived world unreal ; (2) but the perceived world is the only
real world; (3) it is inconceivable that the perceived world
should exist otherwise than as a perceived world. All the
difficulties which arise in connection with this argument —
naturally I do not refer to difficulties touching its sound
ness, but only those touching an historical comprehension
of it — are due to Berkeley's use of the term 'idea' and the
tendency to construe its use in terms of Locke's Essay and
subsequent psychology. Both philosophers affirm that
'ideas' are the only immediate objects of the mind. Locke
says that he uses the term 'idea' "to express whatever is
meant by phantasm, notion, species, or whatever it is which
the mind can be employed about in thinking"2*' "By idea,"
says Berkeley, "I mean any sensible or imaginable thing"
(I, 47). Although they both speak thus about ideas in the
same way and assign to them the same position as the only
immediate objects of the mind, it seems impossible to con
clude that they were speaking about the same thing. They
used the same term, but what that term identified as the
immediate object of the mind was not the same. With
Locke ideas are not the things which make up the system
of nature; with Berkeley they are. With Locke they are
what we have come to call subjective and psychological;
with Berkeley they are not. With Locke they are mental
counterparts of impressions on the brain; with Berkeley

25 Essay, Introduction, Sec. 8.

2IO STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

they are not. With Locke they are the means of knowing,
representing what is known by them; with Berkeley they
are the materials of knowledge and in no sense representa
tions of something known by their means. In short, judged
by any standard of comparison which touches the nature of
ideas and gives them their peculiar character and properties,
there is discoverable no likeness between the two philos
ophers. This is such an evident fact that I can not dismiss
it on the supposition that Berkeley simply used Locke as a
scaffolding to erect his own philosophy and then incon
siderately cut the scaffolding away. Some other explana
tion is needed and the obvious explanation, as I shall more
fully indicate later, is that philosophy had sanctioned
such diversity of usage. Since the time of Plato 'ideas'
was a well-authenticated term to denote the objects of
knowledge, and men had abundantly discussed the locus
of their existence. In fact, in the general use of the term,
Berkeley appears to have been far more orthodox than
Locke.

Yet Berkeley was conscious that the term was one to
occasion difficulty. As early as the Commonplace Book he
observes (I, 50): "I hope to call a thing idea makes it not
less real. Truly I should perhaps have stuck 'to the word
thing, and not mentioned the word idea, were it not for a
reason, and I think a good one too, which I shall give in the
Second Book."26 This second book, unfortunately, was not
published. If it was written the manuscript is lost. How
ever we are not left without some indication of the reason.
In the Dialogue between Hylas and Philonous (1, 453) he says :
"I own the word idea, not being commonly used for thing,
sounds something out of the way. My reason for using it
was, because a necessary relation to the mind is understood
to be implied by the term ; and it is now commonly used by
philosophers to denote the immediate objects of the under-

-6See other indications, I, 39. 57. 89; also Principles, I, 307.

BERKELEY S REALISM 211

standing."27 In particular it was so used by the materialists.
This was undoubtedly a source of considerable satisfaction
to Berkeley, for it enabled him to confront them with the
dilemma, either our ideas are the real things or 'real things
are wholly inaccessible to the understanding.28 Yet if the
term is an occasion of too much difficulty he will not dispute
over a name only. "Moses mentions the sun, moon, and
stars, earth and sea, plants and animals. That all these do
really exist, and were in the beginning created by God, I
make no question. If by ideas you mean fictions and fancies
of the mind, then these are no ideas. If by ideas you mean
immediate objects of the understanding, or sensible things,
which cannot exist unperceived, or out of a mind, then these
things are ideas. But whether you do or do not call them
ideas, it matters little. The difference is only about a name.
And, whether that name be retained or rejected, the sense,
the truth, and reality of things continue the same. In
common talk, the objects of our senses are not termed
ideas, but things. Call them so still: provided you do not

"Note Commonplace Book (I, 38): "Excuse to be made in the Introduction for using
the word idea, viz., because it has obtain'd. But a caution must be added."

28 See Commonplace Book (I, 63) : "Allowing there be extended, solid, etc., substances
without the mind, 'tis impossible the mind should know or perceive them; the mind,
even according to the materialists, perceiving onely the impressions made upon its
brain, or rather the ideas attending these impressions." See also the Principles (I, 266) :

But, though it were possible that solid, figured, moveable substances may exist
without the mind, corresponding to the ideas we have of bodies, yet how is it possible
for us to know this? Either we must know it by Sense or by Reason. As for our senses,
by them we have the knowledge only of our sensations, ideas, or those things that are
immediately perceived by sense, call them what you will: but they do not inform us that
things exist without the mind, or unperceived, like to those which are perceived. This
the materialists themselves acknowledge. — It remains therefore that if we have any
knowledge at all of external things, it must be by reason inferring their existence from
what is immediately perceived by sense. But (I do not see) what reason can induce us
to believe the existence of bodies without the mind, from what we perceive, since the
very patrons of Matter themselves do not pretend there is any necessary connexion
betwixt them and our ideas? I say it is granted on all hands (and what happens in
dreams, frenzies, and the like, puts it beyond dispute) that it is possible we might be
affected with all the ideas we have now, though no bodies existed without resembling
them. Hence it is evident the supposition of external bodies is not necessary for the pro
ducing our ideas; since it is granted they are produced sometimes, and might possibly be
produced always, in the same order we see them in at present, without their concurrence.

212 STUDI1-.S IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

attribute to them any absolute external existence, and I shall
never quarrel with you for a word" (I, 471).

From such passages it seems to me clear that Berkeley
was not simply taking advantage of an ambiguity in the
term to force an argument upon his opponents. The total
impression of his writings is that of candor and sincerity.
Ideas are the only objects of the mind, whatever ideas are.
To Locke this was 'evident', but he does not make it clear
whether it was evident only on Newtonian principles. But
the passages quoted clearly show that Berkeley was im
pressed with the fact that even with Locke and the math
ematical philosophy as a background the immediate objects
of the mind can not exist apart from the mind. Conse
quently the only consideration of importance was what
these objects are and what they constitute. To call them
'ideas' involved no advantage unless there wras a clear un
derstanding as to what ideas are. And, as I have already
shown, when we ask this crucial question, we can not affirm
that the 'ideas' of Berkeley and those of Locke have any
thing else in common besides being the immediate objects
of the mind. They have this uncompromising difference —
with Berkeley they constitute the system of nature, while
with Locke they do not.

Locke and the materialists were not, however, the only
philosophers who held that the immediate objects of the
mind do not exist apart from it. Nor was Berkeley the only
philosopher who held that these objects constitute the sys
tem of nature. He wrote Siris not only to make the public
acquainted with the virtues of tar-water, but also to show
how consonant writh his own philosophy was the best, as he
judged it, in the history of thought. He gives the following
brief statement of his own position (III, 264): "Now, al
though such phantoms as corporeal forces, absolute motions,
and real spaces do pass in physics for causes and principles
(sees. 220, 249, 250) yet are they in truth but hypotheses;

BERKELEY S REALISM 213

nor can they be the objects of real science. They pass never
theless in physics, conversant about things of Sense, and
confined to experiments and mechanics. But when we enter
the province of the philosophia prima, we discover another
order of beings — Mind and its acts; permanent being; not
dependent on corporeal things; nor resulting, nor connected,
nor contained, but containing, connecting, enlivening the
whole frame; and ijnparting those motions, forms, qualities,
and that order and symmetry, to all those transient phe
nomena, which we term the Course of Nature." This is
shortly followed by a series of comments on ancient philos
ophy. I quote the following sections as particularly illus
trative (III, 273-275):

And albeit Aristotle considered the soul in its original state as a blank
paper, yet he held it to be the proper place of forms — rr/v ^ux^" flvat rbirov
tlbuv (sect. 269). Which doctrine, first maintained by others, he admits,
under this restriction, that it is not to be understood of the whole soul,
but only of the ^0177-1/07; as is to be seen in his third book De Anima.
Whence, according to Themistius in his commentary on that treatise,
it may be inferred that all beings are in the soul. For, saith he, the forms
are the beings. By the form every thing is what it is. And he adds, it is
the soul that imparteth forms to matter ; -ri\v v\tjv nop<j>&aa. 7roi/dX<us /J.op(f>als
Therefore they are first in the soul. He farther adds that the mind is all
things, taking the forms of all things it becomes all things by intellect
and sense. Alexander Aphrodisaeus saith as much, affirming the mind to
be all things, Kara, re TO voelv KCU TO aiadavtaOai. And this in fact is
Aristotle's own doctrine, in his third book De Anima, where he also
asserts, with Plato, that actual knowledge and the thing known are all
one. To 5' O.VTO IGTIV 17 /car' evepyeiav kirLurrujLi] TCJJ Trpdy/zaTt. Whence it
follows, that the things are where the knowledge is, that is to say, in the
mind. Or, as it is otherwise expressed, that the soul is all things. More
might be said to explain Aristotle's notion, but it would lead too far.

As to an absolute actual existence of sensible or corporeal things (sect.
264, 292, 294), it doth not seem to have been admitted either by Plato
or Aristotle. In the Theaetetus we are told that if any one saith a thing
is, or is made, he must withal say, for what, or of what, or in respect of
what, it is, or is made; for, that any thing should exist in itself or abso
lutely is absurd. Agreeably to which doctrine it is also farther affirmed
by Plato, that it is impossible a thing should be sweet and sweet to no-

214 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

body. It must, nevertheless, be owned with regard to Aristotle, that
even in his Metaphysics there are some expressions which seem to favour
the absolute existence of corporeal things. For instance, in the eleventh
book, speaking of corporeal sensible things, what wonder, saith he, if
they never appear to us the same, no more than to sick men ; since we are
always changing and never remain the same ourselves? And again, he
saith, sensible things, although they receive no change in themselves,
do nevertheless in sick persons produce different sensations and not the
same. These passages would seem to imply a distinct and absolute
existence of the objects of sense.

But it must be observed, that Aristotle distinguisheth a twofold exist
ence — potential and actual. It will not therefore follow that, according
to Aristotle, because a thing is, it must actually exist. This is evident
from the eighth book of his Metaphysics, where he animadverts on the
Megaric philosophers, as not admitting a possible existence distinct from
the actual: from whence, saith he, it must follow, that there is nothing
cold, or hot, or sweet, or any sensible thing at all, where there is no
perception. He adds that, in consequence of that Megaric doctrine, we
can have no sense but while we actually exert it : we are blind when we do
not see, and therefore both blind and deaf several times in a day.29

Siris is taken by Fraser to represent Berkeley's philosophy
in its later development (III, 117). It is certainly a later
expression of it and a fuller exposition of it on the spiritual
side. But I do not find that the position taken in the earlier
writings is modified in any significant way. What we find is
his own philosophy reflected against the philosophy of the
past. In the earlier writings he has his contemporaries in
mind and to them he is opposed. The Siris exhibits the men
with whom he was sympathetic. It is this antagonism and
this sympathy which should be joined together in any at
tempt to estimate him in the light of his own contemporary
interests.30 From this point of view his philosophy appears
as simple and clear as he contended. Its fundamental thesis
seems to be the following. Both materialists and spiritual-

28 Compare also Sees. 251, 252, 266, 269. It is to be observed that he now uses the
term 'thing' and sometimes 'forms', but in view of what has already been said above,
I do not find the change significant.

10 The subsequent fate of his philosophy is quite a different matter. In this study
I have tried to recover the contemporaneous setting of his own thinking.

BERKELEY'S REALISM 215

ists agree in claiming that the immediate objects of the mind
do not and can not exist apart from it; both agree that these
objects are 'ideas'; but the materialists claim that these
objects do not constitute the system of nature, while the
spiritualists claim that they do; by refining the naive realism
of the common man, the opposition between materialists
and spiritualists is reduced to an absurdity. In his own
words taken from the Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous

(1,484):

I do not pretend to be a setter-up of new notions. My endeavours
tend only to unite, and place in a clearer light, that truth which was
before shared between the vulgar and the philosophers: the former being
of opinion, that those things they immediately perceive are the real things;
and the latter, that the things immediately perceived are ideas, which exist
only in the mind. Which two notions put together, do, in effect, consti
tute the substance of what I advance.

FREDERICK J. E. WOODB RIDGE

A NOTE ON DR. THOMAS BROWN'S
CONTRIBUTION TO ESTHETICS

Dr. Thomas Brown (1778-1820) was in the lines of de
velopment of both the Scottish philosophy and the associa
tion psychology. As became the successor of Dugald
Stewart, he gave his adherence to the philosophy of com
mon sense, but this did not prevent his assigning to associa
tion the principal constructive role in mental life. His total
contribution to philosophy was not of overwhelming
importance, though Spencer and the Mills thought highly
of him. A longer life might have enabled him to make his
contribution more noteworthy. His philosophical works
were two, The Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect
and his more extensive Lectures on the Philosophy of the
Human Mind, published posthumously. It is perhaps not
surprising that Brown's work is now so little known. He
belonged to a philosophical school no longer in much esteem,
and the psychological doctrines which he espoused have like
wise been superseded. His own work is not without value,
his style is not wholly lacking in charm, and his lectures are
lucid and orderly; but there is much repetition, minor
points are often over-elaborated, and the numerous poetical
quotations have little attraction for the present-day reader
of philosophy, who looks less for literary elegance than for
clearness, accuracy, and fresh points of view.

The only part of Brown's work to which special attention
will be called in this paper is that which has to do with
esthetics. Even in this field he has received scant attention
from the historians. In esthetics he was of the lineage of
Kames, Knight, Stewart, Alison, and Jeffrey. These men,
and their contemporaries in esthetics as in other fields, were

BROWN'S CONTRIBUTION TO ESTHETICS 217

for the most part attempting to see the facts. Theirs were
no theories spun from their own imaginations or adopted as
corollaries to some previously accepted metaphysical sys
tem. Actual esthetic experience furnished their data. They
viewed the data, to be sure, through the media of their own
philosophies, but on the whole it must be said that their con
clusions were not vitiated by the attempt to force the facts
into a rigid system. That their conclusions did not carry
farther is due rather to the fact that they arrived at no
great outstanding generalizations, than to their failure to
analyze the data with a fair measure of correctness as far
as they went.

The most striking point about Brown's esthetic theory is
the completeness with which he anticipates, on certain es
sential points, the theory of one of our best-known con
temporaries, Professor Santayana.

The term esthetic has been used to designate a variety
of problems and a number of different ways of dealing with
them. Attention may be focused upon art and the ques
tions it raises, or upon beauty and whatever is most closely
akin to beauty, such as sublimity, for example.

The approach in either case may be from the standpoint
of metaphysics, or of concrete objects, or of esthetic experi
ence either with or without consideration of the conditions
of this experience in the field of physiology or of sociology.
Brown's contribution is in the field of psychological esthet
ics. He considers the esthetic experience as the fundamental
fact. Not art, but beauty, is his central problem, and for
him beauty is not an eternal principle, nor a category, nor
a quality of things:

Beauty is not any thing that exists in objects independently of the
mind which perceives them, and permanent, therefore, as the objects in
which it is falsely supposed to exist. It is an emotion of the mind, vary
ing, therefore, like all other emotions, with the varying tendencies of
the mind, in different circumstances. We have not to inquire into the
nature of any fixed essence which can be called the beautiful — r<J

2l8 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

but into the nature of transient feelings, excited by objects which may
agree in no respect but as they excite emotions in some degree similar.
What we term the emotion of beauty is not one feeling of the mind, but
many feelings that have a certain similarity, as greenness, redness, blue-
ness, are all designated by the general name colour. There is not one
beauty, more than there is one colour or one form. But there are various
beauties — that is to say, various pleasing emotions, that have a certain
resemblance, in consequence of which we class them together. The
beautiful exists no more in objects, than species or genera exist in indi
viduals. It is, in truth, a species or genus — a mere general term, expres
sive of similarity in various pleasing feelings.

In short, Brown's method is the method of psychological
analysis. His contribution is to be found principally in
Chapters LIII-LIX of his Lectures on the Philosophy of the
Human Mind.

In his psychology, 'state' or 'affection' is the general
term for mental phenomena, 'affection' being favored as
better suited to express the "momentary feelings of the
mind when considered as effects." Of these affections some,
viz., sensations, have external causes, while others have in
ternal causes. The latter are either intellectual states such
as judgment, memory, imagination, and comparison, or the
emotions, which include "all or nearly all the mental states
which have been classed by others under the head of active
powers.'1 These last are immediate, involving no notion of
time, such as admiration ; or retrospective, having a reference
to the past, as remorse; or prospective, as hope. Immediate
emotions are either moral or non-moral. Beauty belongs to
the latter class along with cheerfulness, melancholy, and
wonder.

It is neither a sensation nor a judgment, though in some respects it
will be found to be closely akin to sensations. . . .

It is not a sense of beauty, . . . a sense which like our other senses
must force upon the mind constantly or almost constantly a particular
feeling when a particular object is present. The feeling of beauty
. . . is not a sensation, but an emotion, a feeling subsequent to the
perception or conception of the object termed beautiful.

BROWN'S CONTRIBUTION TO ESTHETICS 2IQ

This emotion of beauty has two essential characteristics.
First of all it is pleasurable — in this all writers concur; and
second, it is an emotion which we transfer and "embody in
the object which excites it, whatever that object may have
been, combining it at least partially with our very concep
tion of the object as beautiful — much in the same way as
we invest external forms with the colors which exist as feel
ings in our own minds or in vague conception. These two
circumstances are the only circumstances that are essential
to this emotion in all its varieties and in whatever way the
emotion itself may be produced."

This "diffusion of feeling and combination of it with our
notion of the cause of the feeling ... is only an instance
of a very general law of our mental constitution. It is indeed
only an instance of that general tendency to condensation
of feelings which gives the principal value to every object
that is familiar to us. . . . The friend whom we have
long loved is at each single moment what he has been to us
in many successive years. Without recalling to us the par
ticular events of these years he recalls to us their delight;
or rather the very notion which we form of him contains in
itself this diffused pleasure. ... A beautiful object as felt
by us . . . is . . .an object in which we have diffused
the delightful feeling of our own mind."

On all these points Brown is in substantial agreement with
Santayana. Both employ the psychological method. Al
though he calls his book the Sense of Beauty, Santayana as
serts that "beauty is an emotion, an affection of our voli
tional and appreciative nature" (p. 49). Santayana's
definition of beauty is stated in terms practically identical
with those used by Brown. "Beauty is pleasure regarded
as a quality of a thing;" its differentia is its objectification.
"Emotions are essentially capable of objectification as well
as impressions of sense." The views of the two men could
not well be more similar. It is interesting to note that the

220 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

doctrine which they announce is anticipated in part at
least in a passage in Kames's Elements of Criticism in which
he speaks of beauty as a secondary quality. The independ
ent formulation of this theory by three writers each about a
century later than his predecessor is hardly less striking than
the independent formulation of the Lange-James theory of
emotion by James and Lange and the statement of a view
similar in essential particulars by the Australian Sutherland.

Kames did nothing to develop or complete the theory of
beauty as a secondary quality, but Brown, as we have seen,
makes it fundamental in his whole esthetic theory. He very
naturally seeks to explain why it is that one object excites
the emotion in question while another does not, and why a
given object does not excite it in all observers nor always in
a given observer. Association is of course the principle of
explanation. Do objects "primarily and absolutely have a
power of producing this emotion," or may this emotion not
wholly depend on those contingent circumstances which
are capable of modifying it to so great an extent? He is not
disposed to be dogmatic on this point, but he believes that
probabilities point to the existence of certain intrinsic ele
ments of beauty, independent of accidental associations of
every sort. He finds, for example, in the pleasure of the
child in bright colors and in the presence of simple mathe
matical relations among the sounds contained in the music
of the most varied peoples, some evidence for the view, but
owing to the fact that we can not analyze our experience
sufficiently to enable us to exclude the effect of accidental
associations, no final conclusion is possible. The burden of
proof is, he holds, upon those who deny the existence of
original beauty.

The influence of circumstances upon the perception of
beauty may be likened to the influence of prejudice upon
the perception of truth — truth "which is only a general name
for a feeling" common to many propositions.

BROWN'S CONTRIBUTION TO ESTHETICS 221

"The mind is formed to feel truth and to feel beauty; but
it is formed also to be affected by circumstances the influence
of which may in any particular case be inconsistent with
either of those feelings." Thus an obvious unfitness for its
purpose may overcome the pleasure which might otherwise
come from a given form.

This line of argument finds at least an analogy in Santa-
yana's discussion of the question "Are all things beautiful?"
or "Are all things equally beautiful?" and in his conclusion
that both the degrees of beauty and its essence depend upon
our nature. "Real and objective beauty in contrast to a
vagary of individuals means only an affinity to a more prev
alent and lasting susceptibility, a response to a more gen
eral and fundamental demand." What Brown meant by
original beauty does exist for Santayana and it exists by
virtue of the fact that certain things do appeal to a general
and fundamental demand, that is, by virtue of the fact that
the mind is formed to feel beauty in certain circumstances.

What Brown speaks of as "condensation of regard" is
much more clearly shown in Santayana's discussion of the
beauty of expression. A memento is valued for its associa
tions and so long as memento and association are held dis
tinct the object is not esthetic. "But a little dimming of
our memory will often make it so. Let the images of the
past fade, let them remain simply as a halo and suggestion
of happiness hanging about a scene, then this scene, how
ever empty and uninteresting in itself, will have a deep and
intimate charm. . . . We shall not confess so readily
that we value the place for its associations, we shall rather
say: I am fond of this landscape; it has for me an ineffable
attraction. The treasures of the memory have been melted
and dissolved and are now gilding the object that supplants
them."

On numerous other minor points agreements more or less
close are to be found as might be supposed in view of the

222 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

central thesis which is common to both. That two thinkers
whose world views are so widely different and whose philo
sophical ancestry is so very diverse are in agreement upon a
capital point in esthetics — a point so justly made — is at
least worthy of passing notice.

There are numerous passages throughout Brown's work
like the statement regarding truth quoted above which sug
gest the possibility of a philosophical progress which he did
not live to realize. His esthetic theory at least is coherent
and, in the main, sound.

ADAM LEROY JONES

THE ANTINOMY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS
FOR LOGICAL THEORY

INTRODUCTORY

I. The Plurality of Logics as the Source of Antinomies. —
Our ideas and beliefs can be traced to one or more of the
following origins: (i) Testimony of others; (2) Instinctive
feeling or 'intuition'; (3) Abstract reasoning from universal
principles; (4) Sensory experience; (5) Practical activity
and successful consequences.

Each of these sources may be, and actually has been,
accepted as a primary criterion for determining philosophic
truth; and thus to the five sources of belief there correspond
the following five types of logical theory: (i) Authoritarian
ism; (2) Mysticism; (3) Rationalism; (4) Empiricism; (5)
Pragmatism.

Each of these types of logical theories has a type of belief
for the evaluation of which it appears to be especially suited.
For example, the following beliefs: (i) That Napoleon
existed; (2) That certain acquaintances would be congenial
as friends; (3) That a billion and seven is not divisible by
two ; (4) That grass is green ; (5) That it pays to advertise —
would correspond in the order of their listing to the five
criteria.

In addition to these special types of belief there is a large
class of judgments which lend themselves with almost equal
ease to evaluation by all of the five criteria. For example,
the belief that eight and four make twelve is supported by
the authority of others, by its congruity with our feelings,
by deductive reasoning, by empirical observation, and by
the successful consequences which usually result from action
based on that assumption. By far the greater number of

224 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

our beliefs are of this second class; and even those which are
primarily suggested and primarily tested by but one of the
five logical grounds are usually felt to be at least potentially
capable of being confirmed by some or all of the other
criteria. Despite this general trust in the inter-confirm
atory character of the five principles of logical evaluation,
there does remain a class of beliefs which appears to be
definitely established by some of the criteria and as definitely
refuted by others. To this class of beliefs or judgments
belong what are called 'antinomies', and it is with the
antinomy and its logical implications that we are to be
concerned in this paper.

2 . The Major and Minor A ntinomies. In general an antin
omy may be said to arise whenever there is a conflict of
logical criteria in regard to one and the same judgment.
The following are examples :

(1) Our mystical intuition tells us that heavenly bodies
must move in heavenly curves. The circle is the heavenly
or perfect curve; therefore, the planets must move in cir
cular orbits. Perception and calculation, however, prove
that their orbits are elliptical. The conflict here is between
intuition on the one side and sense and reason on the other.

(2) Othello's instinctive feeling tells him that Desdemona
is true. But this lover's intuition conflicts with the testi
mony of lago whose authority he accepts.

(3) Many physicists find what they regard as contra
dictory attributes of the hypothetical ether, which from the
standpoint of reason should disprove its existence; yet be
cause of the useful consequences which proceed from the
assumption, they accept its reality on pragmatic grounds.

These are all examples of what may be called 'minor
antinomies'. The conflicting situations which they illus
trate are not such as to array reason against sense; and it
is only to conflicts of this latter kind that the name of 'major
antinomies' is fully applicable. For the logics of rationalism

THE ANTINOMY AND LOGICAL THEORY 225

and empiricism are almost universally recognized as superior
in importance to those of authority, intuition, and practical
success. The authoritarians, for example, can usually be
forced to admit that those whose testimony should be ac
cepted by us did not themselves derive their information
from the testimony of others (which would involve an end
less regress), but from direct revelations of their superior
sense or reason. The mystics, too, are apt to restrict the
exclusive use of their criterion of intuition to a rather special
class of cases in which reason and direct experience are either
silent or ambiguous; and when, as in the question of the
inhabitability of the antipodes, our intui/ ive certainty that
men could not walk head-downward on the underside of the
earth comes into conflict with our explicit sensory observa
tions of people in China, we swallow our intuitional repug
nance and bow to the evidence of fact. As for the prag-
matists, it is pretty certain that most of them would resent
being classed as opponents of experimental evidence, and
would claim on the contrary that their criterion of successful
practical consequences was no more than an important ex
tension and adaptation of the logic of empiricism to the
needs of an evolving world.

It is on these grounds that we regard the antinomic con
flicts of sense and reason as incomparably more serious in
their import for logic than the clashings of the minor criteria
of truth. The major antinomy is, moreover, of infrequent
occurrence. In all ordinary matters direct perception and
intellectual deduction go hand in hand and give to one
another loyal and continuous corroboration ; and in the rare
cases of explicit conflict between them we experience the
helpless distress which is felt by an affectionate child in the
presence of a quarrel between his parents. It is only the
apathetic and soggy-minded who can view with indifference
or boredom the spectacle of a first-class antinomy in action.
The person really interested in philosophy will find the situa-

226 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

tion intolerable and will be unable to attain peace of mind
until he has dealt with it in one way or another. In dealing
with a major antinomy, in which an immovable body of
sensory evidence appears to be contradicted by the irre
sistible force of clear reasoning, there are three general
attitudes or methods of a somewhat extreme character and
three specific theories having the character of compromise,
which logically may be, and which historically have been,
employed by philosophers. I shall treat them in order and
under the following captions: I, The Method of Skepticism ;
II, The Method of Ultra-rationalism; III, The Method of
Ultra-empiricism; IV, The Relational Theory; V, The
Punctiform Theory; VI, The Double Aspect Theory.

I

THE METHOD OF SKEPTICISM

It may be held that the antinomic conflict is irreconcilable
and that the nature of reality is thereby proved unknow
able. Skepticism (which is a type of logical theory in the
same sense in which anarchism is a type of political theory
and atheism a kind of theology) is thus established ; for any
problem in which the two primary criteria of truth are re
garded as ultimately refuting one another would be essen
tially insoluble.

This attitude was probably taken by Gorgias in dealing
with the antinomies of Zeno; and in modern times it has
been explicitly defended by Sir William Hamilton and Mr.
Herbert Spencer in regard to such supposedly antinomic
questions as the finitude or infinitude of the world.

The general arguments for and against the skeptical posi
tion make a long story into which we can not now enter.
The dialectical argument from antinomies is only one of
several ways in which the discrediting of human knowledge
has been attempted. We are the more justified here in

THE ANTINOMY AND LOGICAL THEORY 22"J

passing over it with scant treatment in that what it offers
is not so much a solution of the antinomy, but rather a denial
of all solutions. Its purely negative doctrine could be
established only by the successful refutation of the entire
group of positive types of logic. And if accepted it would
get us nowhere. Moreover, even though the skeptic suc
ceeded in demonstrating a complete 'ignoramus' in regard
to the antinomies, it would be difficult to see how he would
be justified in deriving from it the arrogant pessimism of
'ignorabimus' .

II

THE METHOD OF ULTRA-RATIONALISM

It may be held that when confronted by the antinomic
situation in which reason and sense appear to conflict, sense
must be discarded. For a world of non-sense is preferable
to a world of unreason.

Now reason, when forced to triumph in the face of all
sense, assumes many of the ear-marks of intuition, and the
rationalist, in divorcing himself permanently from em
piricism, becomes something very like a mystic. It was
this ultra-rationalist attitude that Zeno took toward his
own puzzles in which the unreasonableness of motion was
supposed to have been demonstrated. Not only motion it
self, but the whole world of sense (because it is hopelessly
tainted with motion) he condemned as unreal ; and the way
was thus cleared for accepting the mystic world of Parmen-
ides, in which was contained nothing but pure and change
less being. There have been many since Zeno who have
followed him in taking the ultra-rationalist method of solv
ing antinomies. Kant relegates space and time to the realm
of the subjective on the ground that they contain antino
mies. Mr. F. H. Bradley deals likewise and for like reasons,
not only with space, time, and motion, but with qualities and

228 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

relations and all of the other characters of our finite experi
ence. The ancient Hindoos and the contemporary Christian
Scientists, actuated doubtless by a vaguer and more religious
form of the same logic, condemn evil and with it the whole
world of matter as unreal. The main difference between
Zeno and his various followers is linguistic. For Zeno, the
world of sense-experience is 'non-being'; for Kant, 'sub
jective'; for Mr. Bradley 'appearance'; for the Buddhists,
'maya' or illusion; for the Eddyites, 'error of mortal mind'.

Now those of us who are at all empirically minded and
who retain allegiance to sense will, of course, reject this
ultra-rationalist solution of the antinomies as false. But
the Zenonian attitude has been charged with a more deadly
defect than falsity, namely, futility — and it is that charge
especially which I wish to consider.

Suppose we admit, for the sake of argument, that the
claim of unreality for the sensory world is true, what use
can we make of such a truth? Does it allay the hunger for
peace between the reasonable and the sensible to be told
that the latter is illusory?

We will let Zeno convince us that in order for Achilles to
catch a tortoise he would have to complete an infinite series
of steps in a finite time and that it is difficult to understand
how this is possible in a world of 'being'. But is it much
easier to understand how it is possible in a world of 'non-
being'? The difficulties charged against tortoise-catching
are not based on an analysis of 'being', but on an analysis
of space and time, and why these difficulties should vanish
when the hunting ground is shifted to the realm of 'non-
being' is not very clear. Of this at least we may be sure
that no tortoise that ever crawled, not even the tortoise of
Elea, would regard himself as any safer when assured by
Zeno that he and the place in which Achilles was to catch
him had been changed from being to non-being. If the
mighty shift in metaphysical status was felt at all by a

THE ANTINOMY AND LOGICAL THEORY 22Q

tortoise it would be felt so gently as to seem almost verbal.

So also with Kant — we allow him to convince us of the
difficulty of understanding how the divisibility of space is
to be reconciled to the demand for indivisible elements of
matter. But it does not become any easier to meet the diffi
culty if the space is made subjective and not objective, for
the difficulty, such as it was, arose from the nature of space,
not from the nature of 'objective'. The same comfortless
conclusion comes to us from Mr. Bradley. The qualities
and relations revealed in our experience can not, so he tells
us, be reconciled with reason, for if a relation is to relate
it must make a difference to its terms, i. e., make them other
than the terms which we apprehended as related. It is too
bad that there is this difficulty (if it is a difficulty). But
how does it help it to deny that the world of sense is 'real'
and to assign it a status of 'appearance'? The twin con
cepts of reality and appearance may be valid and fruitful
or they may not. Whether good or bad they are not in
question. The answer involved in the quality-relation situa
tion did not depend on the nature of 'reality' or the nature
of 'appearance', but simply on the nature of qualities and
relations. Are the contradictions or the tragedies of our
experience mitigated by assuming or even proving that be
yond our experience there is another experience in which
they do not occur? The intellectual and moral evils in our
world of appearance are one thing. Why then should we
suddenly change the subject (unless of course it proves
embarrassing) and begin talking about an absolute reality?

And, finally, as to the Buddhists, Christian Scientists,
and such, they tell us that 'evil is good in disguise', or out
and out 'illusion' or 'error of mortal mind'. So be it, but
what of it? Why the disguise? Why the illusion or error?
An evil disguise is as evil as anything else. An agonizing
toothache may be assigned an illusory status, but between
having a vivid hallucination of a toothache and having a

230 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

'real' toothache it would be hard to choose. In every case
in which we seek to cure an intellectual discord such as an
antinomy or a moral discord such as a sin or pain by chang
ing the metaphysical status of the experience in which it
occurs from real to unreal, we are committing the fallacy
of irrelevant conclusion. For it is the actual nature of
the experience and not the metaphysical status of 'sub
jective' or 'objective' with which we should concern
ourselves.

In the foregoing discussion, I have tried to show that
the Zenonian or ultra-rationalist method of dealing with
antinomies applies not merely to intellectual, but to moral
discords as well, and that the method is as futile and irrele
vant in the one sphere as in the other. I should like in con
clusion to this section to make a further application of the
reasons already advanced and at the same time to remove a
possible misapprehension based on the erroneous supposi
tion that I would bar altogether the use of trans-empirical
concepts.

'Transcendental' is for the sophisticated philosopher the
equivalent of 'supernatural' for the plain man. Simple
folk invent or discover paradises to help explain the puzzles
and the miseries of earthly life, and gods to help explain the
mystery and the cruelty of natural forces. For exactly the
same reasons the intellectual gentility invent or discover
'realms' of pure being and of eternal ideas, and trans
cendental egos and absolutes. Simple or gentle — from the
crudest supernatural paradise to the most subtle trans
cendental absolute there is the same twofold motive at
work — a dissatisfaction both intellectual and moral with the
world of actual experience. And for gentle and simple alike
the same danger attends the procedure — the danger, namely,
that the trans-empirical which should at most and in either
of its two forms, be used as a causally explanatory supple
ment to the world of experience, will be misused as a sub-

THE ANTINOMY AND LOGICAL THEORY 23!

stitute for that world. The result of such misuse has ever
been a sinister passivism in ethics and religion and a futile
irrelevancy in logic and metaphysics.

Zeno's solution of his antinomies is not to be condemned
because he believed with Parmenides in a sphere of pure and
changeless being — for aught we know there may exist not
only an Eleatic, but also a Bradleyan absolute, or even sev
eral of each. The real error of the method lay in supposing
that the internal harmonies of any such innocently hypo
thetical worlds could of themselves furnish relevant answers
to the antinomies of the world in which we live.

Ill

THE METHOD OF ULTRA-EMPIRICISM

It may be held that when confronted by the antinomic
situation in which reason and sense appear to conflict, reason
must be discarded ; for a world of unreason is preferable to a
world of nonsense. And just as rationalism, when pushed to
the extreme of opposing (and not merely subordinating) the
evidence of sense and the facts of experience, became some
thing very like mysticism, so empiricism, when pushed to the
extreme of opposing (and not merely subordinating) the
evidence of reason and the laws of logic, becomes something
very like pragmatism. The two forms of what may be called
'intellectualism' are (i) rationalism, in which sense is re
garded as secondary to reason, but in ultimate harmony with
it, and (2) empiricism, in which reason is regarded as second
ary to sense, but in ultimate harmony with it. If these defi
nitions are accepted, both mysticism and pragmatism can be
classed as the equal and opposite forms of 'anti-intellec-
tualism'. In matters of this sort analytic definitions may
give the impression of dialectical quibbling or question-
begging; illustrations are better. Hence, as examples of
what I mean by the ultra-empirical attitude, I cite the fol
lowing instances:

232 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

(i) There is John Stuart Mill's admission of the possi
bility that on some remote planet the laws of arithmetic
might be such as to permit of two and two making five.
(2) There is Henri Bergson's doctrine that reason is an in
strument evolved by the life force for the purpose of con
trolling the relatively inanimate and static aspect of nature;
that in so far as it is used for this purpose it is admirable,
but that when we attempt by its means to express the nature
of life itself, or even of the dynamic side of 'dead' matter, it
proves inadequate. Motion can be experienced, but it defies
and transcends logical analysis and the fact that it does so
is proof of its ultimate and irreducible reality. (3) There is
William James's contention that some sort of fusion or
identity between consciousnesses, though opposed to the
laws of ordinary logic, must none the less be accepted as real.1

The ultra-empirical method of dealing with antinomies
has developed partly as a natural reaction to the barren
ness and artificialities of ultra-rationalism as exemplified
in some forms of modern idealism, and partly as a not un
natural attempt to apply to logic itself the evolutionary
theories which have so completely transformed the sciences
of biology, psychology, and sociology.

The argument seems to run somewhat as follows: the
structures and functions of our bodies have developed into

1The following passages from The Pluralistic Universe are admirably illustrative of

I the way in which an antinomy is dealt with by this ultra-empirical or anti-intellectual-
istic form of pragmatism — "That secret of a continuous life which the universe knows by
heart and acts on every instant can not be a contradiction incarnate. If logic says it is
one, so much the worse for logic. Logic, being the lesser thing, the static incomplete
abstraction, must succumb to reality not reality to logic" (p. 207). "What must we
do in this tragic predicament? For my own part I have finally found myself compelled
to give up the logic, fairly, squarely, and irrevocably. It has an imperishable use in
human life, but that use is not to make us theoretically acquainted with the essence of
reality — just what it is I can perhaps suggest to you a little later. Reality, life, experi
ence, concreteness, immediacy, use what word you will, exceeds our logic, overflows
and surrounds it" (p. 212). "If I had not read Bergson I should probably still be black
ening endless pages of paper privately in the hope of making ends meet that were never
meant to meet and trying to discover some mode of conceiving the behaviour of reality
which should leave no discrepancy between it and the accepted laws of the logic of
identity" (pp. 214-213).

THE ANTINOMY AND LOGICAL THEORY 233

what they are because of their utility in the struggle for
existence; and the same is true of our minds. Memory and
imagination and the power to form concepts and combine
them have evolved to their present form because they are
useful adaptations to environment and answer to the needs
of life. The rules according to which we reason are con
ditioned by the ends which we pursue and by the material
means upon which the attainment of those ends depends.
As life and its environment are in a process of change the
rules by which the intellect must proceed will change also
and the supposedly abstract and eternal laws of logic must
share the same fate as the unchanging species and genera
of pre-evolutionary days.

This argument from biology is strengthened by what we
now know of the development of sociology and ethics. From
the vantage ground of the present, the historian looking out
over the past discovers a bewildering variety of moral codes
and of political and economic institutions. He sees how
those forms of social organization arose and developed in
response to the needs of some particular community at some
particular time and place. He sees further that when the
interests of that community or the demands of its environ
ment had so changed as to make desirable a new code, the
cry for a change was answered by the claim that the code of
the fathers was sacrosanct, ordained of God, transcenden-
tally valid, eternally and universally applicable. Con
fronted as he is by this same spectacle recurring time after
time and under circumstances the most varied, can we -*
blame the social historian for smiling cynically at all claims I 1,5
for the changeless validity of anything, even of logic itself?
'Sacred', 'eternal', 'universal' — are they aught but the gaudy
trappings which senile inertia and wolfish privilege have
ever donned when threatened by revolutionary progress?

The biological and social-historical arguments for the 1
ultra-empirical attitude toward logic are rounded out byj

234 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

the contribution of modern psychological analysis. No
longer are we permitted to conceive of a faculty of pure in
tellect, functioning abstractly and actuated by the imper-
sonal and luminous love of truth. Our concepts, judgments,
and syllogisms are framed and uttered in response to con-
crete needs, and change with their change. Personal mo
tives, temperamental preferences, can always be found as
the real empirical causes of logical processes. To separate
logic from psychology and ascribe to it a changeless validity
that would exempt it from the universal flux and make it an
\L end in itself, would be as absurd as to consider the laws of
I agriculture apart from the crops to be produced.

In concluding our dialectical defense of the neo-Protago-
rean doctrine it must be remembered that no dialectical
defense can possibly do it justice. The strength of the posi
tion is derived from the mass of concrete facts which have
generated it. And ultra-empiricists are perhaps justified
in viewing distrustfully even the most friendly attempts to
try and label the wealth of evidence which they have ac
cumulated. The massiveness of the three lines of argument
is such as to make it difficult to feel anything but pity for
the old-fashioned pedant who would pick some pet aspect
of experience, such as logic, and try to preserve it alone
from the onrushing, all-engulfing flood of evolutionary
change.

Despite the seeming hopelessness of any attempt to with
stand the arguments for ultra-empiricism, such attempts
have been made, and the oldest of them is perhaps the most
instructive. When Heraclitus proclaimed his doctrine of
universal flux, he made no exception of any single thing in
the world; everything changed. Heraclitus did not, to be
sure, conceive of this omnivorous change as uniformly pro
gressive or upward in direction, as do our Darwinian logi
cians of the present day, but he sang the primacy of motion
over rest, of energy over substance, of the dynamic over the

THE ANTINOMY AND LOGICAL THEORY 235

static, of the functional over the structural, at least as
earnestly and emphatically as any of his modern successors.
But the first and greatest of dynamists did not hesitate to
set a certain kind of limit to his universal flux, -rravra frtl.
All things change, but the laws according to which all things
changed were themselves changeless. They were changeless
because they were the measure and condition of the change
in things. Their changelessness was required as the pre
supposition of the changing things. Without their change
lessness the change in things would not only lack measure,
it would lack any sort of meaning; it would vanish into noth
ingness. Let me exhibit the position of the founder of
dynamism in its relation to that of the evolutionary logicians
in the form of an allegory.

A race is taking place. The horses run faster and faster.
The excitement grows, becomes frenzied. The contagion of
motion sweeps all before it. Men on foot join in the race;
they are followed by dogs and birds and everything that can
fly or crawl or swim ; the spectators too are running and even
the judges have left their stand and are racing with the
others. The purpose of the race has been forgotten, but the
joy in motion for its own sake is universal. The Master of
the Race whose urgings all have now obeyed observes the
spectacle and his brow clouds slightly. He is evidently still
unsatisfied. At last he arises, his face alight with a final
vision, the vision of the super-race. He cries in thunderous
tones, "I have bidden all to run, yet is there one who dis
obeys. How dares the course on which ye run remain at
rest and spoil my race? Let the race-track race with the racers!
Then indeed will motion reign supreme." And as the poor
race-track tries to obey and with dull amaze and infinite
giddiness seeks for feet or wings with which to get into the
running, something snaps and the mad scene vanishes into
the limbo of the utterly meaningless. What was to have
become a super-race has become nothing at all.

236 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

The master of the race represents our Darwinian logicians
who would bring Heraclitus up to date and make dynamism
universally consistent by relegating all logic, their own in
cluded, to the status of a concrete being. The thing can not
be done. The race-track itself can not run with the runners
and no more can the laws by which evolutionary change is
to be defined and determined, themselves change or evolve.

Many who failed to see the concrete flux of Heraclitus
have seen in one form or another his fluxless Logos. Par-
menides saw only its shadow, the mere generic character of
abstract being and permanence, projected into the abyss as
a dark and homogeneous sphere. For the gorgeous mind of
Plato the Logos was reflected above the sky as a rainbow of
moral beauties and creative mystic powers. To Aquinas
and Leibniz it seemed as the omnipresent intellect of an
eternal God. By the transcendental Germans, it was taken
for the presupposition of the sensible world, which it was,
and then mistaken for the grandiose structure of their egos,
which it certainly was not. The realistic or anti-Darwinian
logicians of to-day perceive it less picturesquely, and more,
perhaps, as Heraclitus himself. To them it is an objective
and self-subsistent loom of invariant law, on which the
ever-changing fabrics of evolving nature are perpetually
woven.

To the Darwinian logicians we may cheerfully grant that
apes have evolved into men. We refuse, however, to grant
that therefore the meaning of an ape has evolved into the
meaning of a man. We admit likewise that not only our
motor and sensory organs, but also our higher functions of
imagination and intellect have developed by natural selec
tion on account of their utility for adaptation, but we refuse
to admit that this in anyway implies that the more recondite
facts and laws which these newly evolved powers reveal to
us, have themselves undergone any corresponding evolu
tion. The laws of space and number and of matter and

THE ANTINOMY AND LOGICAL THEORY 237

energy have not changed from the times of Euclid and
Pythagoras and Archimedes; the laws of gasoline engines
were just the same in the days of the ancient Athenians as
now. We know them and they did not. Not physics, but
man's knowledge of physics has changed. We may reply
in the same vein to the anti-intellectualist who bases his
arguments for a changing and psychologistic logic upon the
recognition of the concrete and personal motives which actu
ate men when they claim to be reasoning from a pure love of
truth. We might even admit that no discovery even in
logic or mathematics had ever been made except to satisfy
some human interest of the person making it. If, for exam
ple, Pythagoras discovered the Pythagorean theorem, the
cause of his intellectual process may have been (i) A senti
mental desire to please his disciples, or (2) an economic de
sire to receive pay, or (3) a theological desire to glorify the
gods. It is conceivable that sentimentalists, economists,
and theologians might be interested in learning which, if
any, of these personal motives functioned psychologically
in the concrete situation in which such a law of logic or
mathematics was discovered. It is not conceivable, however,
that any mathematician or logician should regard such
psychological or historical information as of the slightest
relevancy to the Pythagorean theorem itself.

The ultra-empiricist who would solve an antinomy by dis
carding logic on the ground that its laws are the mere instru
ment of the life force is guilty of a fallacy of irrelevancy in
which the changeless laws discovered by men are confused
with the changing processes by which they are discovered.
Now it was also a fallacy of irrelevancy which we charged
against the ultra-rationalist and I should like to conclude
this part of the discussion by a comparison of the two op
posite positions.

The Zenonian and ultra-rationalist way of dealing with
an antinomic conflict of reason and sense was to relegate the

238 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

world of sense to a status of non-being or appearance, and
to put in its place a new world of pure reason from which all
change and inconsistency were barred. And we pointed out
that however beautiful these abstract and harmonious ab
solutes might be, their beauties were none the less irrelevant
to the world of experience which remained with all its con
tradictions and evils just where it was before; no matter
how often you called it abusive names such as 'non-being'
or 'mere appearance'. And on the ethical and social side
we noted the harm which these ultra-rationalist philosophers
worked when they selected some particular favorite human
institution which had outlived its usefulness, and, by giving
it the status of god-given or transcendental law, succeeded
in fastening it on later generations. In short, the main fault
with ultra-rationalism is that it irrelevantly ascribes the
unchanging character of abstract law to the changing
character of concrete things, or rather to the changing
character of the particular concrete things and customs
which happen to be preferred, condemning the rest to the
status of unreality or of evil, according as they are logical
or ethical.

The Bergsonian or ultra-empiricist way of dealing with
the antinomic conflict of sense and reason was to relegate
logic to the status of a relative and changing thing, and the
irrelevancy in the process consisted in mistaking changeless
laws for the things and processes through which men dis
cover them.

In short, when dealing with a conflict of sense and reason
the ultra-rationalist identifies things with laws, while the
ultra-empiricist identifies laws with things. The first course
is the way of non-sense; the second the way of unreason.
If you follow the ultra-rationalist, you are in danger of
promoting a fallible opinion or custom to the status of
an unchangeable verity and thereby impeding progress.
If you follow the ultra-empiricist, you are in danger of

THE ANTINOMY AND LOGICAL THEORY 239

degrading objective truth to the status of shifting hu
man opinion, and thereby rendering progress blind and
meaningless.

In playing chess one does not make the ultra-rationalist
mistake of regarding the changelessness of the rules as an
obstacle to the succession of moves ; nor does one make the
ultra-empiricist mistake of changing or discarding the rules
when confronted with a puzzling situation. The confusion
of the things that change with the laws that do not is the great
mother of all confusions, and its two opposite forms are
equally bad.

We have now completed our account of the extreme
methods of dealing with antinomies. The first of these
methods, and the one most briefly treated, was that of the
skeptic. This doctrine was treated briefly, because, as was
stated, its negative attitude toward the antinomy hardly
entitles it to rank as a solution. The two remaining methods
of procedure were more carefully examined, and we are now
free to leave the intransigeant parties by whom sense and
reason are in turn sacrificed, and attend to the theories of
those who believe that antinomies can be solved by an
honorable compromise.

Most, if not all, of the great antinomies of history
appear to turn on a situation in which the finite as given
in perception clashes with the infinite as demanded by
conception. This is certainly the case with the four fam
ous puzzles about motion which were formulated by Zeno,
the Eleatic. These puzzles are not only of great intrinsic
and historical interest, but they are typical of the antinomy
at its best or worst; and from them we select as a
basis for our discussion of the three compromise theories
the one which is, perhaps, the clearest and most pictur
esque. It is known as "The Arrow," and may be stated
as follows:

240 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

A flying arrow, as typical of all moving bodies, appears to
our senses to go from one place to another. Yet reason
proves this to be impossible, and all motion together with
the world that contains it, to be unreal; for at any one
instant the arrow can occupy but one position (obviously
a body can not be in two places at once), hence at
each and every instant of the entire time of its apparent
flight the arrow will be busy occupying positions, and there
•will be no time left in which it could move FROM one position
TO another.

The puzzle reveals clearly the two opposite characters
that any continuum such as motion must possess. The one
character is perceptual, empirical; the other, conceptual
and rational. In the first character the continuum appears
as a finite, fluid, unity of dynamic relations; in its second
character it appears as an infinite granular plurality of
static points or terms. The three compromise theories all
agree in the belief that these opposing characters can be
reconciled, but they differ in that they respectively select
the first, or the second, or both, as of fundamental reality.
The third theory in which the two characters are regarded
as equal and ultimate can be named the 'empirico-
rational', or better, the 'double aspect' theory. The first
and second theories might be called, respectively: (i) the
moderate empirical and the moderate rational, or (2) the
finitist and the infinitist, or (3) after Kant, the thetic and
the antithetic, or (4) the fluid and the granular, or (5) after
Bergson, the slide and the cinema, or (6) the dynamic and
the static, or (7) the relational and the punctiform. While
feeling free to use these names interchangeably, we shall
adopt the last pair as, on the whole, best suited to our
purpose. We have dwelt on the possibilities of termin
ology in order that by iteration of the opposition in its
several phases we might make the understanding of the
question at issue less cold and abstract and more warmly

THE ANTINOMY AND LOGICAL THEORY 241

anschaulich. And with this preamble on the relations of
the theories to one another, we may now proceed to the
discussion of the theories themselves, considered separately
and in order.

IV

THE RELATIONAL THEORY

The supporters of the relational solution of the puzzle
argue that Zeno's division of time and space into duration-
less instants and extensionless points is unjustifiable. Dura
tion and extension are fundamental and irreducible; in
stants and points are only artificial constructs which we make
for certain purposes; they can not be regarded as objective
constituents of the continua to which we apply them any
more than shadows can be regarded as constituents of the
bodies that cast them. The boundary or intersection of
two lines is in no sense a part of the lines, and points and
instants are at best nothing more than cuts or boundaries.
Hence, Zeno commits a fallacy of logical analysis when he
infers that because a moving body traverses a great space
in a great time and a small space in a small time that, there
fore, it "occupies" a series of spaceless points in a series of
timeless instants. If points and instants are only subjective
constructs of ours with no objective existence, Zeno's mov
ing arrow can never get stuck in them, and we shall never
have to ask as to whether it moves from one point to the next.

This solution is nearer to the ultra-empiricism of Bergson
than to the ultra-rationalism of Zeno, because it preserves
the reality of motion, as testified to in perception. But it
differs from the ultra-empirical position, in that it claims to
reconcile the fact of motion with the laws of logic. The
paradox is removed, not by abandoning logic, but by sub
stituting good logic for bad. The strong feature of the re
lational theory is, in our opinion, its recognition that space
and time contain relational constituents which can not be

242 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

resolved into points and instants. The weak part of the
theory consists in its assertion that space and time are ex
clusively relational and that the points and instants are not
genuine constituents of their continua. We can certainly
find points without limit on a line, and we could not find
them unless they were there to be found. And with
instants it is the same. These punctiform elements of
time and space are as undeniably given in perception as
are the relations of succession and linearity which unite
them.

The upholders of the relational theory are much given
to the use of the word 'abstraction' as a term of abuse. An
abstraction is a feature of a situation which is distinguish
able, but not separable, from other features. Color, for
example, is clearly distinguishable from extension, but we
can not conceive it as separate or apart from it. In this
same sense, a point is an abstraction, because we can not
separate it from other points and from lines. But why
should an abstraction be regarded as 'unreal', or 'sub
jective', or 'constructed by the mind'? Features of a
situation would not be distinguishable unless they were
there to be distinguished; and the fact that a thing like a
point is only real in situ does not prove it unreal. There is
no obvious reason why an indissoluble relationship should
be prejudicial or derogatory to a thing's objectivity. The
relationists seem to feel that for an element to be real in
itself it must be real all by itself.

Then, too, there is an incongruity in the way in which the
real relational elements of continua are made by this the
ory to combine with their 'abstract' or 'subjective' terms.
How, for an example, could an unreal point serve as the
middle of a real line? How can the space filled by the earth
be real and the axis and central point be unreal? Terms
and relations are correlative and they must be either real
together or unreal together.

THE ANTINOMY AND LOGICAL THEORY 243

But before criticizing this theory further, let us turn to
its rival, the punctiform theory, where also we shall dis
cover both a merit and a defect.

V

THE PUNCTIFORM THEORY 2

Motion is nothing but the occupancy by a body of a
continuous series of spatial points in a continuous series of
temporal instants. At the initial instant of its motion, a
body occupies its initial position ; at each succeeding instant
it occupies a succeeding position; and this joint occupancy
of a one-to-one series of points and instants is all that
motion consists in. Thus Zeno's question as to when does
an arrow move from one position to the next position on its
path, is seen to owe its difficulty to a false assumption as to
the nature of motion. The arrow never does move from one
position to the next. It is at one position at one instant and
it is at the 'next' position at the 'next' instant, and that is all
there is to its motion. This view puts exclusive emphasis
on the 'at-at' character of motion just as the preceeding
view emphasized the 'from-to' character. And as that
theory resembles Bergson's solution, so this theory re
sembles that of Zeno; for it admits the illusoriness of one
aspect of perceived motion. We certainly do perceive
motion as being from one place to another, but this aspect of
'from-to' is treated by Russell as an illusion. The appar
ently unitary motion is, in reality, an 'at-at' succession of
occupied positions, and nature plays on our senses the same
trick that is played by the cinema, the only difference being
that in the cinematograph the successive photographs are

zThis theory, as I understand it, was developed first by the German mathematician
Weierstrass and then independently by Mr. Bertrand Russell. It is fully expounded
by the latter in his references to Zeno, both in his Principles of Mathematics and in
his Scientific Method in Philosophy. I trust that in my brief sketch, I have made no
serious misrepresentation.

244 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

separated from one another by small but finite intervals of
time and distance; while in nature's 'movie' the successive
pictures form the same perfect continuum as the points of
a line. To the punctiform theory there are two objections
which must now be considered.

First, it may be charged that the solution is paradoxical
because it resolves moving into a series of restings. But to
this it is answered that the occupancy of one point for one
instant is not true rest. Rest is the occupancy of one point
for more than one instant. In short, the conception pro
vides a certain basis, whether adequate or not, for the differ
entiation of rest and motion.

Second, it may be urged that the cinema theory, although
it does not make motion into rest, does reduce it to a series
of occurrences whose multiplex character provides no
ground for the unity of motion and for the identity of the
moving body. If a body merely occupies or occurs at a
given instant in a given position and is then annihilated, a
new body just like the old being created in the next (?) posi
tion, what is there to justify our calling the second body iden
tical with the first? This creation and annihilation is exactly
what happens in a moving picture. To this objection, it
could, I suppose, be answered that the unity and identity of
motion was done full justice to by permitting no gaps to
separate the successive occupancies, so that an exact de
scription of all that is real in movement is furnished by the
one-to-one correlation of a mathematically continuous series
of points and instants effected by the moving body. Yet,
this seems to me as though we were bidden to imagine neck
lace of beads without any underlying connecting thread on
which the beads are strung, and told that if the beads are only
sufficiently numerous to form a mathematical continuum,
we shall have no need for a thread to hold them together.

What I have called the 'double-aspect' theory appears
to me to combine the strong points of the relational and

THE ANTINOMY AND LOGICAL THEORY 245

punctiform solutions of the Zenonian puzzle and to omit the
points in which they are weak.

VI

THE DOUBLE-ASPECT THEORY

Every continuum, such as space, or time, or motion is
composed of two kinds of elements — the punctiform and
the relational. A spatial line truly contains an actual in
finity of points, but by themselves these points could never
compose the line. They can compose it only when they
are ordered or united by a certain type of relation. That is
to say, all points in the series, if they are to constitute a
line, must stand to one another in the relation of 'beside-
ness' or 'to-the-right-and-left-of. Without this relation they
might just as well constitute a two-dimensional patch or a
three-dimensional lump. Without the points the line could
not exist; without the relations between the points, they
could never constitute a line. Neither the relational nor
the terminal elements can be reduced to the other, though
there is a certain reciprocity between them, such that we
can not only regard the relational elements as relating the
points, but we can equally well treat the relational elements
as terms and regard the points as merely the relations
(boundaries) between them. The points could not exist
apart from such relations as 'to-the-right-of or 'in-front-
of,' any more than these relations could exist without the
points which they related. If one should still ask for the
absolute elements which simply in and of themselves, with
out anything further, compose a line, we should have to
answer that each such element would be a thing of double
aspect — not a point, but a 'point-to-the-right-of. It is
important to realize that the situation is in no way changed
by considering the points as constituting a mathematically
continuous series, such that there would be no point on
the line not included in it. No matter how densely or con-

246 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

tinuously the points arc conceived as being packed together,
there would still be the relational elements between them
which could never be squeezed out.3

Now, as it is with space, so it is with time. Instants are
temporal points, and like those of space, they are perfectly
objective and real — not created, but actually discovered or
waiting to be discovered. .But they are not the whole of
time. In and of themselves they would be powerless to
constitute the temporal continuum. Just as the points of
space must be related by being beside one another, so the
instants of time must be before and after one another. Re
lations of succession are as truly elements as the instants
themselves. And the succession of instants is not itself an
instant any more than the relation of besideness between
points is itself a point. In short, time consists of instants
succeeding one another, just as space consists of points be
side one another. Now, motion is a secondary continuum,
constituted by the combination or correlation of the two
primary continua of space and of time. The punctiform
theory is correct in holding that a moving body is a body
that occupies a continuous series of spatial points in a con
tinuous series of temporal instants, but it is incorrect in
holding that that is the whole story. A moving body, be
sides involving a series of point-instant correlations, in
volves equally a series of beside-succession correlations.
The first correlations exhibit motion as a series of occu
pancies of a continuum of points through a continuum of
instants. The second correlation exhibits motion as a
series not of occupancies but of slips, (or from-to relations
of transition), which together constitute an uninterrupted

8 One further reason for assuming that these relational elements can never be 'squeezed
out' by the continuum of points is the following: The mathematicians are insistent in
warning us that there are never any next points, either in the continuum or anywhere else.
Any pair of points not next one another constitutes the terms of a line or distance.
Therefore the non-nextness that holds of every point-pair on the continuum implies that
everywhere on that continuum there are distance-relations which are as numerous and
as omnipresent as the points themselves.

THE ANTINOMY AND LOGICAL THEORY 247

and unitary slide. The one aspect is as real and as essential
as the other, and the whole analysis of motion exhibits it
as a continuous series of occupancies in the from-to relation.

We are now in a position to give an answer to Zeno's
puzzling question, which will satisfy, it seems to me, the
claims of conceptual analysis, and also of perceptual ex
perience.

Question: "If a body at each instant of the time of its
motion is in one and only one position in space, when can it
move from one position to another?"

Answer: "The body can move from one position to an
other when one instant succeeds to another."

Should someone object that the times when instants suc
ceed one another must be instants and that, therefore, at
such times the body would have to be busy, holding down
its positions rather than moving from one position to an
other, I could only reply, in view of the analysis already
given, that the time when one instant succeeds another is a
perfectly real time, though it is not itself any instant, just
as the 'space where' one point is beside another is a per
fectly real space, though it is not itself any point. No more
is a relation between two brothers itself a brother (not even
an infinitesimally small brother), though it is as real a con
stituent of the brotherhood as are the brothers related.
Common sense recognizes that time is made up both of
instants that succeed one another and of the succeeding of
those instants, and consequently, it finds no difficulty in
admitting that, though a moving body is at each instant in
some one place, it is also throughout the whole time chang
ing from one place to another. Our solution claims to have
justified this common-sense view of motion from the stand
point of logical analysis.

To sum up our account of the six ways of solving the
antinomy: The first way, that of the skeptic, would have
us accept the unknowable as our only solvent. The second

248 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

way, the ultra-rationalism of Kant and Zeno, would have us
abandon the testimony of experience and treat motion, and
the whole sensible world, as unreal, because it appears to
conflict with logic. The third solution, the ultra-empiricism
of Bergson and James, would have us abandon the validity
of logic because of its conflict with the reality of experience.
The fourth solution, which we named the 'relational'
theory, would have us deny the conceptual validity of
points and instants on the ground that they are not per
ceived apart from the relations of besideness and succession.
The fifth solution, the 'punctiform' or 'cinema' theory of
Mr. Russell, would have us deny the perceptual reality of
the from-to aspect of motion, and would bid us conceive of
it as only a series of occupancies of points of space in instants
of time. In our sixth solution, by showing that logical an
alysis not only permits, but demands that the punctiform
elements of the continua of space and time be supplemented
by the irreducible relational constituents of 'besideness'
and 'succession', we have avoided the paradox of regarding
the motions of nature as the illusions of a cosmic cinema,
and yet have retained the invaluable conception of motion
as a one-one correlation of spatial and temporal elements.
In conclusion, should the reader feel equally dissatisfied
with the punctiform and the relational theories, and at the
same time regard my 'double-aspect' compromise as merely
a verbal and question-begging reconciliation of irreconcil
able characters, let him still not feel compelled to revert to
one of the three extreme methods of solving the antinomy,
which were examined in the early part of our paper. Let
him rather seek for himself some as yet undiscovered solu
tion; for such solution there somewhere surely is; and the
hope of finding it should not be abandoned until time ends.
A world in which so many things are known through both
reason and sense can not itself be either unknowable, unrea
sonable, or nonsensical.

W. P. MONTAGUE

OLD PROBLEMS WITH NEW FACES
IN RECENT LOGIC

Superficially considered, the history of logic has been a
series of revivals of the spirit of Aristotle, each revival
struggling against a steady pressure towards an abstract
verbalism that had invariably taken renewed possession
of logic in the intervals. Bacon, for instance, was nearer to
Aristotle than he was to the thing he criticized and called
Aristotle. But there have been, also, deeper tendencies at
work in the history of logic, tendencies less apparent. Of
these, the tendencies to which we shall especially here refer
we shall call, for want of better names and hence with
the proviso that they be understood only in the sense later
to be defined, the biological and the mechanist. And it is
peculiarly desirable, just now, that the scope of these two
tendencies be clearly revealed, because in recent discussions
representatives of the biological tendency have repeatedly
identified the opposing tendency with that abstract ver
balism above mentioned, to the complete confusion of the
issue.

As the biological logician sees it, logic is a set of devices
to aid one in thinking, and thinking is a way of getting
along in the world. There are no fixed forms nor classes;
there are only lines of division made by us, as being con
venient for the moment, and giving place to others when
other purposes arise. Forms are but the instruments of
present or the vestiges of past behavior; the living process
itself overflows every mold and category. These logicians
proclaim their logic to be a new logic, though they some
times trace their lineage back as far as Darwin. It is an
honor Darwin scarce deserves; instead, this doctrine is but
the development of something that was inherent in Aristotle.

25O STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

Aristotle was, of course, not an evolutionist, since he was
a believer in fixed species. But this has been insisted upon
until we have forgotten that Aristotle was something more.
Aristotle was a biologist by training and temperament. He
was much less mechanistically minded than, for instance,
Darwin. Aristotle comes nearer to using such categories as
purpose and instrument than does Darwin. What we have
called the biological point of view must not be directly
identified with the evolutionary. Greek thought was more
biologically centered than is ours. Indeed, in Aristotle's
day, what we have called the mechanist tendency was
scarcely born. Even in Democritus only one phase of it
is present; another more important phase, the notion of
scientific law, only glimmers for a moment in Archimedes
or in Heraclitus. The mechanist tendency deserves the
adjective 'new', for it belongs to modern rather than to
Greek science, excepting possibly Greek astronomy.

Aristotle's logical treatises proper were not a complete
formulation of the methods of science. It is a common
place that they were instruments for a particular purpose,
\namely, to direct discussions; they told you how to con
vince the other fellow. They were forensic handbooks.
They assume that there are points on which disputants can
agree, certain axiomatic truths. And they tell how, moving
out from such starting-points, one can 'mediate' convic
tion, carry it over from these axioms to other truths less
obvious. Their aim is not discovery, but persuasion.

Many questions of a later day probably scarcely troubled
Aristotle. That there were axioms seemed to him axiomatic.
His aim was social conveyance of certitude rather than a
search for hidden truth. If he told the form which an
ideal science should take, it was not so much the investi
gator's ideal, as it was the ideal of a completed science, set
out in a form clear and fit for use in the expository text
book. If he raised questions as to difficulties of language,

PROBLEMS IN RECENT LOGIC 251

they were specific difficulties, verbal fallacies, rather
than the great general question whether language ever can
describe things as they are. And so he adopted the
subject-predicate form just as he found it in current speech;
and seemed to recognize in the first-figure syllogism, not
merely a type of inference, but a correspondence with the
causal structure of things. Though not averse to mention
ing tricks of dispute, his aim was a formulation of methods
of serious discussion. Hence it was, incidentally, not with
out its connections with what he took to be the nature of
things. But, after all, his aim was practical. And we, to
whom so much that he did has become a matter of course,
can scarcely appreciate the ability with which that aim
was carried out. He had no predecessor. Two thousand
years of successors added scarcely anything. Like Euclid's
geometry, it was one of the great achievements of the
human mind.

But apart from the special contents of the logical treat
ises themselves, there was in Aristotle, and in much of Greek
science, a special way of considering the world, which was
bound to influence logic. It was the teleological way, and
it drew its examples from living things, and from the work
of the artisan and builder. It was not modern teleology,
with its ideals and consciously planned purposes. It was
simply postulating in things themselves a blind effort to be
normal. The effort never quite succeeded; it was met by
a resistance of the material employed. Yet it was the
nature of all things to seek their own natures. Generation
after generation, the trees of the forest grew as if guided by
a conscious plan, though of such consciousness there was
none; they were seeking by their own nature to realize the
perfect tree, where to be perfect was simply to be what for
them it was normal to be. Laws of nature would have
meant for the Greeks simply norms towards which nature
approximated, but to which nature never attained. It was

252 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

a very physical way of looking at things, born of a direct
contact with the stubbornness of physical matter, and the
imperfect achievements of man's technology, supplemented
by observation of striving living things, as blighted by dis
ease and torn by the storm.

Contrast this with modern science. To the Greek, math
ematics was, for the most part, a science of the ideal, a calm
world apart. But from the very beginning of modern sci
ence, the mechanics of Galileo linked mathematics, in all
its rigor, directly with the physical world. The laws of
physics were to be conceived exact and never broken; the
results could be actually verified and measured with un
limited accuracy. This is not a view suggested by direct
inspection of nature; it starts in abstractions, and amid
mathematical deductions. Such was the new mechanist
standpoint. But the astonishing thing was that this
mechanist view, when tried out empirically on nature,
actually succeeded. The investigator found, beneath the
surface show of approximate uniformities and flowing out
lines, a rigidity of laws, such that, the more carefully they
were verified by trial, the more rigorous they revealed them
selves. Nor did this result fail us in biology, as has some
times been too hastily asserted, save in the sense that in
quiries were there more difficult and slow. Measurements
were everywhere multiplied and instruments of precision
made more delicate ; and with every advance, the laws were
found to hold. Or if a law seemed to break down, there
arose at once another, and even finer and stricter law, to
explain the discrepancy. Hence there came strength to this
conception of nature as subject to absolutely rigorous and
mathematically definable laws, the mechanist conception of
nature. It succeeded. But its foundation was in the ut
most abstractions of mathematics, and not in that concrete
world where the Greek watched and pondered on the labors
of the potter and the smith.

PROBLEMS IN RECENT LOGIC 253

Let us now consider the influence of these views of nature
upon the history of logic. Aristotle was considered by the
medieval nominalists as their spiritual parent. Outwardly
this was a mistake, for Aristotle was not a nominalist. But
Aristotle, or rather Greek science and philosophy in general,
was responsible for nominalism. Not, indeed, Greek math
ematics, with its eternal verities, that led one away from
the world. It must be remembered, however, that though
we now praise Greek mathematics and scorn Greek physics
and biology, the average Greek more likely thought the
latter more truly an account of nature than anything in his
mathematics. It was the biological teleological standpoint,
as above explained, dominating Greek science, which was
responsible for nominalism. This was because, once one
moved, however little, from the position of Plato, for whom
the norms were more real than those things which, for a
moment, vainly strove towards them, one was moving in
the direction of considering the norms as merely ideal,
merely limits never realized. Carry this out with any reso
luteness, and nominalism must result. For what we then
have is a world of ill-defined individuals with only approxi
mate resemblances; outlines are more or less indefinite;
language, aside possibly from mere proper names, will not
stand for anything actually realized, since words indicate
concepts, standards, and these are mere ideal limits, never
more than roughly exemplified in the half-differentiated
vagueness of the given world. What things have in common
is thus scarcely more than a name; uniqueness is every
where, particularity is the only real.

But if we should then begin to inquire what is the use of
language with its meanings at all, if it stands for nothing
real, but only for a vanishing limit of the real, we should
probably have only one sort of answer available. That
answer would be that it was convenient to group things in
classes under common names, even though they were really

254 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

severally unique. It saved fatigue; it was economical; in
short, it was biologically useful. And the same arguments
would hold as to the reason for logical forms and all stand
ards whatsoever, including the notion of a separate thing.
They fit the world only as the curved rocker of the rocking-
chair fits the floor. What could be granted as given was a
continuum, with emphases perhaps, a primordial 'mush'.
We have standardized this general world for the same
reason that we standardize hats and shoes — because it
saves trouble. Thus it is that nominalism and biological,
instrumental, pragmatic logic are fundamentally akin.

That the logicians of this school occupy a defensible po
sition, we shall not deny. But it is not altogether satisfying.
Perhaps the trouble is that a strict nominalism is nowadays
scarcely ever defended in detail. It is rather assumed as
evident, as it is, for instance, in Mr. F. C. S. Schiller's work,
entitled Formal Logic. Some critic or other has cruelly
called that work a "sympathetic appreciation of all known
forms of fallacy," but really Mr. Schiller is quite rigorously
drawing out the formally valid consequences of nominalism.
But the main thesis is never defended, which is unfortunate.
A good modern defense of nominalism, or of that form of
nominalism which says that what words mean is completely
created in creating the words, would be welcome, but we
do not find it anywhere. The chief semblance of an argu
ment ordinarily urged is an appeal to a certain principle,
called 'Occam's razor', or the 'principle of parsimony'.
This is unsatisfying as a proof. Not only is there no very
good reason to believe that this principle is valid, but it can
be interpreted as favorable, now to the nominalist and now
to the anti-nominalist, somewhat at will. Let us call the
anti-nominalist a 'realist', in the old sense of the term,
though not here implying any special beliefs as to a Pla
tonic world apart, but only a belief in common threads of
identity running through things. Let us now consider a

PROBLEMS IN RECENT LOGIC 255

case. The realist says, "Here are four red cherries; they
have an element in common — their color." The nominalist
replies, "No, by the principle of parsimony let us eliminate
this element in common, and have simply the four cherries,
all similar to one another. This similarity is an ultimate
datum, not reducible to a partial identity." Whether he
considers the cherries as distinct entities, or as mere em
phases in a continuum, is indifferent to the point we wish
now to make, which is as follows, for let us now note that
the nominalist will not have one identical similarity re
peated in the several cases, else we relapse into realism.
The similarity of the first and second cherry will be one
similarity, and of the first and third another. Thus we shall
have six similarities. But these six similarities will not have
an element in common. No, they will be merely similar.
So there are fifteen similarities among similarities. And
these fifteen similarities will be merely similar — but enough
to show whither the principle of parsimony might lead the
nominalist. There seems no escape, except to say that
these similarities are not objective realities, but are crea
tions of the mind. The mind creates only as many as it
sees fit. But, after all, the mind feels itself bound to say
the similarity of cherries in color is not that of the cherry
and the plum. Perhaps the things are wholly mental, but
this is pure idealism. A drift of nominalist arguments
towards idealism can, indeed, be observed. But if this
mode of escape is not accepted, one must grant in things a
basis for our predication of similarity. Yet what that basis
can be, is puzzling. If it be something they have in com
mon, we return to realism; if only a similarity, the whole
difficulty recurs; if neither, it seems a mystery how it can
be a basis for similarity at all. We shall not urge that this
argument is conclusive. We shall merely venture to say
this: that the principle of parsimony really proves nothing,
and is never appealed to, as a metaphysical principle, ex-

256 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

cept as the ostensible reason for some foregone conclusion,
a conclusion really founded on totally different grounds.
For scarcely ever do we have parsimony in one direction
which is not counterbalanced by superfluity in another.
So some better defense of nominalism is needed, and not yet
forthcoming.

Again let us consider the realist-nominalist issue, but
now from a totally different standpoint. If one is a mech
anist, in the sense above explained, he believes there are
laws of nature which hold absolutely. But such laws, be
they of mechanics or of thermodynamics or of any such
science, are abstract and only conceptually expressible.
Indeed, the fact referred to by any universal proposition
contains something which is only conceptually expressible,
for there is an element in it which is essentially negative,
and this element can not really be reached, as Aristotle long
ago pointed out, by any enumeration of individuals, how
ever complete, since it says, "There are no more," and no
present individual will tell you that. If there is any way of
arriving at the truth of universal propositions, other than
merely postulating them true and blindly hoping for the
best, it must, therefore, be through the nature of the
concepts they contain, and of the actual existence of uni
versal elements of which these concepts are the thought.
But the mechanist does suppose he arrives at actual
laws of nature, absolutely rigorous, universal, and objective,
and yet abstract. His standpoint is, therefore, fundament
ally one with that of the anti-nominalist realist, though
with more emphasis on abstract invariant characters among
relations, and less on the sharing of identical qualities
among things, than characterized the older realism.

If now we ask ourselves which of the two has apparently
been more pragmatically successful, the pragmatic nominal
ist or the mechanist realist theory, we shall have to answer
in favor of the latter. And the reason is this: If we think

PROBLEMS IN RECENT LOGIC 257

of nature as only approaching towards precision, we shall
rest satisfied with rough measurements. We could not
reasonably even postulate precision, and we should be per
plexed if it appeared. We might believe in the experimental
method, as we all do; but we should be leaving out the fac
tor which could do most towards making that method a
success. Not so, if we think, on the contrary, of the world
of nature as subject to rigorous laws, such laws as, for
instance, that of the conservation of energy, laws holding
everywhere with strictest exactitude. For now a discrep
ancy in measurements will not be attributed to the crudity
of nature, but to our own ignorance of the specific real law
or laws. Methodologically, it is this belief that the natural
world does actually illustrate a rigor which makes the most
mathematically precise laws the most adequately true,
which has, as a matter of fact, won many of the greatest
triumphs of modern science. It has led to the revision of
old laws and the discovery of new; it has brought planets
and chemical elements within our ken. And it is highly
improbable that this methodological success could have
come about without its having some metaphysical basis in
the nature of things. A mere methodological postulate that
one should seek for exact laws may lead one to seek for
them, but it will not account for one's finding them. And
so pragmatically this in some sense anti-pragmatic theory
has won a success which its pragmatist competitor can not
rival.

To obviate a possible misunderstanding, let us go upon
what might seem a digression. In talking of the mechanist
point of view, we have been using the term with a difference
of meaning from what current usage refers to as the mechan
ical view of nature. This is because the latter is not one
thesis, but several. The mechanical view of nature is taken
to mean, first, that physical nature is subject to precise
laws. This we accept. And, secondly, it says that modern

258 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

mechanics, physics, chemistry, have formulated some ex
amples of such laws. We do not deny it. But, thirdly,
it is maintained, and this is the most emphasized thesis of
the ordinary mechanical view, that, subject, of course, to
future internal revisions within these sciences themselves,
mechanics, physics, and chemistry give us all the laws there
are, the complete set of laws to which not merely the
inorganic physical world, but living organisms as well, are
subject. This third thesis we do not include in our use of
the expression "mechanist point of view." It may be true,
but we deny it is a necessary corollary of the first two
points.

The distinction just made merits further comment, so
frequently is it overlooked. Able scientists and philosophers
have again and again argued from evidence which indicates
that the laws of physics and chemistry hold strictly of living
bodies to the conclusion that these laws are sufficient to
account for all the behavior of living things. Yet this is
obviously arguing beside the point. For instance, they
argue that the law of the conservation of energy prevents,
as they say, any other influence than that dealt with in
physical science from affecting vital phenomena. Yet it is
a mere matter of logical analysis to reach the counter-
conclusion, that the law of conservation predetermines only
so much about natural phenomena as can be deduced from it;
and you can not deduce even the second law of thermo
dynamics, let alone all physical and vital occurrences, from
the conservation law. The point which we are making,
namely, that showing a law holds rigorously is a totally
different thing, and requires different evidence, from prov
ing that the law is a complete and sufficient account, is one
of such importance that we may be pardoned for giving
also a mathematical example. If we have a set of numbers
divided into groups of, for instance, three — the groups, 013,-
124, 235, 346, 450, 561, 602, let us say — we might state a

PROBLEMS IN RECENT LOGIC 259

set of postulates such that only that set of numbers would
fulfil the requirements, or such that any set of entities ful
filling the postulates would in no wise differ in mathematical
structure from this set of numbers. Our set of postulates
would then be closed; any other postulate not introducing
a new concept would either be deducible from or contradict
the original postulates. But now let us consider these same
groups of three, but put in an order, the smallest number
between the other two, or the largest between. To specify
this order would require more postulates. Yet all the
original postulates would still be fulfilled. There are the
same groups of three, only there is more to be said about
them. And so, also, to go outside the pure mathematical
realm, if we suppose the numbers stamped on disks, large
or small or variously colored. More postulates would again
be needed to specify the total result, though the original
postulates are still satisfied by one aspect of this totality.
So a system of postulates, or a system of laws, can be, in
one sense, closed and complete, and yet in another sense,
there be always the possibility of adding new postulates.
Just so it is with the physical and chemical laws of nature.
It may be that they hold rigorously of living beings; but
of itself that does not exclude the possibility that there may
be other laws also which living things obey. Hence, to say
that there is some complete set of laws holding rigorously
of living things and completely determining their behavior,
is one thesis. To add, also, that the laws of physics and
chemistry are laws which hold rigorously of living beings,
is another thesis. But both together are not equivalent to
the thesis generally called mechanism, namely, that the
laws of physics and chemistry are not merely included
among the complete set, but constitute the entirety of that
set. So we maintain that no one is called upon to grant
this third thesis merely because he grants the first. Nor is
there any logical reason why the complete set of laws in

26O STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

one field should not be only part of the complete set in
another. So we would again call attention to the fact that
the mechanist point of view, as we contrast it with the
biological point of view, while intended to include the first
thesis, does not necessarily demand the third.

So far, we have considered the nominalist biological at
titude and the contrasted realist mechanist interpretation
of the world, and we have traced a kinship between Aris
totle's scientific position and the modern sort of biological
logic. But whether the mechanist interpretation has given
birth to any logic of its own, we have not yet inquired. Such
a logic would naturally be mathematical in essence. Also,
since rigid forms are supposed actually illustrated in things,
this logic would be a metaphysical theory about the most
general structure of things, rather than a set of rules for the
functioning of instrumental thought. But this is almost a
definition of that logic variously called symbolic logic, or
mathematical logic, or the logic of order, or structural
logic, or relational logic. Those who have developed that
logic have, from Boole to Peano, shown themselves not
fully conscious of the larger bearings of their task. This
was natural, and was owing to the array of purely technical
problems which immediately demanded attention. That
logic even yet is nowhere near a finished product, though
its achievements in analysis of the foundations of math
ematics have been remarkable. Nevertheless, let us try to
evaluate it, even though, in this, prophecy may be needed
to supplement history.

Philosophers are apt to pass judgment on it from observ
ing some of its representatives. It is, therefore, accused of
responsibility for so-called 'logical atomism' in philosophy,
that theory which says the world in space and time is a
collection of timeless qualities thrown together in various
kaleidoscopic combinations. But surely this is not a new
philosophy; even Anaxagoras held something like it. And

PROBLEMS IN RECENT LOGIC 26l

a logic which was anti-nominalist and relational we should
expect to be, for that very reason, all the more anti-
atomistic. And as a matter of fact, to take one example,
this logic has tended to thrust into the background those
categories of thing and quality made so prominent in Aris
totelian subject-predicate logic. Yet those 'simples' which
we hear about from believers in logical atomism are merely
the old discrete thing-units in smaller edition; the tiny
colored spot is not really simple, but has its attributes of
extension, brightness, and the like. These 'simples' of
logical atomism are not new products of a new logic;
they are vestiges of an old. One can believe in relational
logic and nevertheless refrain from believing the world is
made of 'simples'. Or, to take another example, we find
logical atomism making a time-order out of timeless en
tities. And despite some disclaimers, there has been a tend
ency therewith to disparage the temporal. But surely the
time-relations constitute time itself, and if one thinks of
them as lacking in actuality and 'body', mere threads on
which more solid atomic pearls are strung, that is his fault,
and not the necessary fault of a truly relational logic. A
parallel error in understanding that logic itself is the
curious prejudice that the marks on paper are the sym
bols of symbolic logic, which are then manipulated by
various rules for putting them together. And we are
told that if this game is to be worth while, these marks
ought to stand for something. Whereas, as a matter of
fact, the rules of manipulation and the ways in which the
supposed symbols are put together, are themselves
the symbols. It is these relational entities which ought
to stand for something; whether anything else does, is no
great matter. In short, a relational logic must maintain
that relations are real and relations relate, and one can get
an accentuation of atomism out of it only by perverting
its obvious intent.

262 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

It has been believed by some that the work of Frege shows
that the ultimate outcome of this mathematical logic will
be atomistic and nominalistic. For has not Frege shown us
a way to eliminate 'metaphysical lumber', in the shape of
realistic entities such as numbers? It is true he has; but
notice what he has substituted. The old 'Platonic idea'
notion of the number two could not even reveal why two
plus two should equal four; since if there be only one such
number and it be added to itself, it is not thereby increased.
Add to one cat the same identical cat over again, and you
do not get two cats. So Frege set out to construct numbers
that would have the necessary properties. But he made
them out of entities still more abstract. And in doing it
he introduced something more, namely, a unique combina
tion of these entities. So the number two has not been ex
plained away, but instead of an atom it has become a rela
tional complex, and a unique complex, so that its individ
uality still survives. Frege then shows that if the elements
have certain properties, then this complex has certain prop
erties. This is spoken of as deducing the properties of
number from the theorems of pure logic. But Frege did not
deduce numbers; he constructed them and then deduced
some properties. The word 'constructed' does not here re
fer to some mental element introduced by Frege, but simply
indicates that he had to find a combination possessed of dis
tinctive features not present in the isolated components. So
Frege's result is not nominalistic and still less is it atomistic,
but is the calling to our attention of new relational com
plexes, abstract, yet unique.

But there is a serious limitation to mathematical logic as
actually developed, which limitation has given some ap
parent standing to logical atomism. The logic has been
worked out with more of an immediate interest in its appli
cation than of emphasis on its own merits as a science of
ultimate forms; and just this instrumental side has led to

263

an atomistic result. Frequently only the barest outline
necessary for deduction is considered, and other phases
have not merely been abstracted from, but even denied.
"Smith hates Jones," we find quoted as an example of a
simple relation, though surely this is made up of ten thou
sand thoughts and a thousand acts. For the relations which
may be observed, which are, as it were, broad and many-
qualitied bands, we find substituted tenuous threads; or
even single qualities common to many relations, like transi
tivity, are considered to the exclusion of the relations them
selves. There is no harm in this, if we remember what we
are doing, that we are considering only abstracted aspects,
not even though the relations are ignored altogether and
we consider only the couples and groups of things related.
But when we find this suddenly asserted to be a complete
account, that this logic as thus developed contains all of
system there is in any system, that chemistry is merely this
logic with oxygen and hydrogen replacing the x and y, then
we need not be surprised if a false atomism results.

A typical case of such forgetting that an abstraction has
been made is the treatment of implication. The definition
of implication currently used, "either the first proposition is
false or the second true," makes of implication not a rela
tion, but a sort of general and abstract quality which mem
bers of a certain group of relations holding between com
plexes possess. Whether relations between complexes differ
fundamentally from relations between things we need not
here discuss. But it is from some specific relation of this
sort that we do, in concrete inferences, arrive at the above-
mentioned implication quality by a prior inference, or ab
straction, and only subsequently are we able to use the
quality in making the deduction we want. More precisely,
this sort of implication is one aspect of a relation which
might exist between two propositions when the facts they
stood for were related by some more specific relation. But

264 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

the quality in question is unfortunately denned so wide that
it could cover cases where the facts were not related at all.
If a deduction is based on such an implication, which is so
abstract in form that any two true propositions imply one
another — and this is the result of the current theory — then
we ought to be able to infer any true proposition from any
other. But this is not because they are connected and rel
evant; no, it is just because there is no connection needed
whatever, and therefore any true premise will do. Yet
surely we do appeal to relevance in any concrete problem,
we do go back from this sort of implication to what it is
based on. This implication is not "all of system there is in
any system." And no wonder that, starting from such
presuppositions, namely, that this is a complete account of
all that is system in the world, the theory has failed lament
ably to explain induction, while philosophically it has ended
in atomism.

Perhaps it will be said that our criticism here confuses
what these logicians call 'material' and 'formal' implica
tions. No, their 'formal' implication is precisely as atom
istic as their 'material' implication. Perhaps we can illus
trate the situation in this way. Let us consider a world
made up of various properties (qualities and relations)
attached to various things. And let us suppose these
properties distributed at random. It is extremely improb
able that in such random distribution it should come about
that a property A was found always along with a property
B. It might, nevertheless, occasionally happen. But in the
actual world as we find it, this happening is, as a matter of
fact, so frequent that it seems incredible the correlation
should be due to chance and not to some deeper kinship.
In the mere process, however, of deducing that A will be
found along with B in a particular case, all that is needful
to know is that A always accompanies B — and this is essen
tially what a so-called 'formal implication' tells you — but

PROBLEMS IN RECENT LOGIC 265

it is not necessary to discriminate whether this is an empiri
cal chance coincidence or whether there is a deeper reason.
Mere chance collocation would be quite sufficient for making
a deduction, granted that we know the truth of the uni
versal proposition, and deduction always takes the premises
as given. How we could establish such a universal propo
sition does not concern it. Thus the mere deductive in
strument has seemed to require nothing more intimate in
relational structure than would be found even in kaleido
scopic chance combinations of atomistic properties. And
thus he who thinks that an account of its use as a de
ductive instrument is all of logic there need be, and that all
that is valid in induction is deductive, may very naturally
come to rest with a conclusion in harmony with atomism.
So emphasis on 'formal' implication brings us once more
to the same consequences of current theories.

But it seems at least reasonable to maintain that there is
more of system in the world than atomism allows us to
admit; that there are systems and systems, and systems
superposed on other systems. For instance, physics may
be a system built upon a mathematical system, so that what
is true in mathematics is true in physics, but still there is
something more in physics than in mathematics, a more not
merely in entities introduced, but a relational and system
atic more. The laws of what we may then call a 'lower
science' will then probably be rigorously valid and neces
sary for, but not sufficient completely to determine, the
systematic structure of a 'higher science'. And such a
theory preserves for us all the precision of the 'exact' sci
ences unsuperseded by, or in, any higher science. Though in
the higher a lower science; may appear as an 'abstract part',
this does not bar the lower from being self-subsistent else
where. A similar point we have discussed previously, rel
ative to the laws of physics and biology. Relational logic
would then appear as the 'lowest' of such sciences. Some

266 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

such general theory would seem more plausible than 'logical
atomism' has as yet shown itself to be.

Certain idealistic logicians also talk of systems, but with
a difference. They revive the Greek concept of perfection,
and their interpretation of whole and part makes all parts
abstract and relative differentiations from out the under
lying total. Hence there is a denial of any sharp lines,
which shows a kinship with the previously discussed bio
logical attitude in logic; and hence also a denial that a
'lower' system can ever be self-subsistent, from which
necessarily follows the truth of absolute idealism. That
these theses are inconsistent with any known sort of re
lational logic, and clearly belong to the biological tendency,
could probably be shown. We shall not, however, consider
those points further here, but shall return, for a last word,
to the instrumental logicians.

That the instrumental logic has given us some able state
ments of how thought actually goes to work on a problem,
must surely be granted; but that, therefore, its nominal-
istic bias is thereby proved sound, can not be granted so
easily. Nor have such logicians established their right
calmly to identify universal forms with signs and symbols,
and thus reduce them, along with the symbols, to factors
in, or vestiges of, our activities. Why does thought come
out right about things, if they themselves have no structure?
Mr. F. H. Bradley, in his Principles of Logic has tried out a
semi-nominalist view: it might, perhaps, be called 'con-
ceptualism', since it identifies universals with 'ideas', that
is, with specifications somehow imposed by thinking upon
a given continuum, which only more or less tolerates them.
But the hopelessly skeptical result of thus even partly sep
arating so-called 'ideal' content and real being, is a warn
ing that that road is one where dangers lurk. One can
scarce put aside a suspicion that some of our pragmatic
nominalists escape similar skepticism largely by refusing to

PROBLEMS IN RECENT LOGIC 267

think issues out; a refusal which they sometimes call
euphemistically a 'keeping to the concrete case.' To say
simply that thought of a certain sort succeeds, is not enough.
As Husserl has said, "The philosopher is not satisfied with
success, he wants to know why he succeeds." Whether a
relational logic, a logic of things and not of thoughts, can
incidentally throw light on why thought succeeds, remains
to be seen. But, meanwhile, let us be patient with rela
tional logic, for, though unfinished, it is in progress. And
let us not condemn it on the ground that some of its present
votaries cherish also, in addition, some idiosyncrasies of
opinion that may seem to us perversities or creeds outworn.

H. T. COSTELLO
END

INDEX

Aeschylus, 76

Alison, 216

American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, 29

Anaxagoras, 4, 5, 28

Anaximander, 4; his foreshadow
ing of Transcendentalism, 4;
his formulation of physis, 4, 5;
his 'boundless', 5, 20; 42

Ancximenes, 42, 183

An.«>lm, 172, 173, 183

An,iphon, 77

Aquinas, 236

Archimedes, 237, 250

Areopago.,, 55, 56

Aristogiton, 56

Aristophanes, 30; "Clouds," 30, 31 ;
"Birds," 31, 32; "Frogs," 32, 33;
"Lysistrata," 32; "Thesmopho-
riazusae," 32 ; "Peace," "Plutus,"
"Wasps," 33; "Knights," 34

Aristotle, 2, 12, 21, 27, 29, 35;
"Metaphysics," 37; 38, 42, 43,
44; "Politics," 44, 62, 76; doc
trine of the Mean, 47, 56, 59;
63, 66, 72, 73, 74, 75; "Ethics,"
76; 77, 78, 90, 99, 198, 249, 250,
251, 253

Bacon, Francis, 13; "and the His
tory of Philosophy," 80-87;
"Advancement of Learning,"
81; "De Augmentis" 83; "His-
toria Literarum," 83; "Begin
nings of the History of Great
Britain," 85; "De Interpreta
tions Naturae," 85; 100, 127,
128, 196, 248

Barker, 44, 64, 78

Barrow, 195

Benn, 49

Bentham, Jeremy, 114, 115

Bergson, Henri, 232, 240, 241, 243,

248

Berkeley, George, idealism of, i;
"Realism of," 188-215; "Com
monplace Book," 188, 191, 192,
r93, J94, 2I°; "New Theory of
Vision," 191, 193, 194, 200;
"The Analyst," "Arithmetica"
"Miscellanea Mathematical
"De Motu" "A Defense of Free-
Thinking in Mathematics,"
194; "Principles of Human
Knowledge," 189, 191, 193,
194, 198; "Dialogue between
Hylus and Philonous," 196,
204, 209, 210, 215; "Siris," 212,
214

Boole, 260

Bradley, F. H., 8, 227, 228, 229;
"Principles of Logic," 266

Brown, Dr. Thomas, "Esthetics
of," 216-222; "Inquiry into the
Relation of Cause and Effect,"
216; "Lectures on the Philos
ophy of the Human Mind,"
216, 218

Bruno, 180

Buddhists, 228, 229

Burnet, John, 12, 14, 27, 29, 37;
"Fragments," 39, 40, 78

Butcher, 50

Calvin, 96
Carlyle, 120

270

INDEX

Cartesians, 191

Christian Scientists, 228, 229

Cicero, 89, 90

Cimon, 62

Cleisthenes, 56, 65, 73

Cleomenes, 53

Codrus, 55

Coke, 101, 102

Critias, 34, 35

Cromwell, 97

Cudworth, 107, 1 08

Cumberland, 90; "De Legibus

Naturae" 108
Cylon, 53

Damm, C. T., 29, 30
Darwin, Charles, 118, 248, 250
Democritus, 5, 6, 12, 13, 20, 22,

250; "Fragments," 40, 41, 42
Dewey, John, 18
Diels, "Bescha/enheit," "Organe"

39

Draco, 54
Diimmler, 77
Dunbar, H., 30

Eachard, "Mr. Hobbes's State of

Nature Considered," 95
Echecrates, 9
Eddyites, 228
Eleatics, 12

Empedocles, 4, 5, 28, 29, 39, 40, 42
Euclid, 128, 237
Eupatrid, 54, 55, 57, 64
Euripides, 43, 77

Fichte, 179

Figgis, 88, 89, 91, 100

Fliigel, 83

Fraser, 214

Frege, 262

Galileo, 12, 127, 128, 252
Gassendi, 130, 151, 167
Gorgias, 18, 34, 75, 226
Grote, 70
Grotius, 108

Hamilton, Sir William, 226

Harmodias, 56

Harrington, 99

Hegel, 78

Heidel, W. A., 29

Heraclitus, I, 3, 21, 22, 28, 42,

64, 234, 236, 250
Herodotus, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70
Hesiod, 7, 29, 46; "Golden Age,"

51; 55, 75, 76

Hindoos, 228

Hobbes, Thomas, 88-115; "Levi
athan," 90, 92, 93, 94, 102, 113,
1 1 6, 119, 123; "Seven Philoso
phical Problems," "Human Na
ture," "De Corpore Politico,"
"Considerations upon the Repu
tation of T. Hobbes," 92; "Be-
homoth or the Song Parlia
ment," 93; "De Give," 93, 94,
103, 104; "Philosophical Rudi
ments," 94; "A Dialogue be
tween a Philosopher and a
Student of the Common Law
of England," 101; "Elements
of Philosophy," 104; 127, 128;
"Objections to Descartes," 138

Homer, 7, 29, 49, 51

Hume, i, 172, 180

Husserl, 267

James, William, I, 3, 48, 49, 118;

Lange-James theory, 220; 232,

248
Jeffrey, 216

INDEX

271

Kames, 216; "Elements of Criti
cism," 220

Kant, 157, 178, 179, 227, 228, 229,
240, 247

Knight, 216

Laertius, Diogenes, 80

Lange, 220; Lange-James theory,
220

Lawson, on Hobbes's "Leviathan,"
90; 97, 98

Leibnitz, 236

Levelers, 96, 97

Livy, 85

Locke, 90, 94, 97; "Essay Con
cerning Human Understand
ing," 188, 190, 191, 203, 209;
192, 193, 195, 196, 197, 198,

199, 200, 203, 206, 210, 212

Lovejoy, A. O., 29
Luther, 96

Mahaffy, 49, 50
Martineau, 184, 185
Mersenne, 104
Meyer, Eduard, 72
Meyers, J. L., 29
Mill, John Stuart, 232
Milton, John, 99
Mnesiphilus, 64, 65
Molesworth, 104
Molyneux, 201

Murray, Gilbert, "The Rise of the
Greek Epic," 43, 45, 46, 47;

67, 75
McDougall, 123

Newton, 12, 179, 188, 190; "Prin-
cipia," 193; 195, 198, 199, 204,
206

Parmenides, 8, 20, 28, 39, 40, 42
Peano, 260

Peithmann, E. C. H., 28

Pericles, 44, 45, 54, 61, 62, 64, 69

Pesistratus, 53, 56, 59, 61, 63

Phidias, 43

Philolaus, 9

Pindar, 30

Plato, i, 6, 9; "Republic," 9, 16,
17, 1 8, 44, 78; "Phaedo," 9, 10,
11,12, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21,
23, 26, 27, 29, 34; "Laws of,"
35, 44, 76; 37, 56, 67, 68, 70,
72, 76, 77, 78, 170, 210, 236,
253

Plotinus, 178, 183

Plutarch, 61, 64

Prodicus, 34

Protogoras, 14, 16, 23, 34, 75

Pythagoras, 237

Pythagoreanism, orphism re
formed, 7, 8; "Phaedo" is, 9

Pythagoreans, closely allied to
medical schools of Southern
Italy, 8; 9, II, 40

Raphson, 195

Robertson, Groom, 92, 103, 127

Russell, Bertrand, 243, 248

Salmasius, 99

Santayana, 63, 217, 219; "The

Sense of Beauty," 219, 221
Schiller, F. C. S., "Formal Logic,"

254

Scholastics, the, 182
Schoolmen, the, 191
Schopenhauer, 26
Seth, 144, 145
Shand, 123

Socrates, 9, 17, 19, 20, 61, 74
Solon, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 62,

63, 65, 67, 70, 73, 76
Sophists, 12, 14, 16, 17, 23, 34

272

INDEX

Sophocles, 43, 66, 75; "Antigone,"
67

Spedding, 85

Spencer, Herbert, 149, 171, 187,
188, 196, 216, 226

Spinoza, his Pantheistic Argu
ment, 171-187; 188

Stanley, Thomas, 80

Stewart, Dugal, 216

Sutherland, 220

Tenison, 91

Thales, economist and statesman,

12

Themistocles, 64, 65, 66
Theognis, 52, 76, 77

Thrasymachus, 18

Thucydides, 44, 45, 48, 49, 51, 53,

55, 66, 68, 69, 70, 77
Toennies, 92, 127, 128

Wallas, "Great Society," 123
Wallis, 106
Ward, 1 06
Willamowitz, 54
Wolff, Emil, 1 8, 87
Woodbridge, 12, 21, 28

Xanthippos, 54
Xenophanes, 12
Xenophon, 69, 70, 71

Zeno, 226, 227, 228, 231, 239, 241,
243, 247

' »-«•' JL

B Columbia University. Dept,

21 of Philosophy
07 Studies in the history

v.l of ideas

J

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