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Full text of "Studies of good and evil: a series of essays upon problems of philosophy and of life"



m 

;.,- 




LIBRARY 

THE UNIVERSITY 
OF CALIFORNIA 

SANTA BARBARA 






PRESENTED BY 

MRS. MARIE B. WOLFARD 



STUDIES OF 
GOOD AND EVIL 



A SERIES OF ESSAYS UPON PROBLEMS 
OF PHILOSOPHY AND OF LIFE 



BY 

JOSIAH ROYCE 

PROFESSOR OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 
IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY 




NEW YORK 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
1906 



COPYRIQHT, 1898, 

BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 



LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY 01' CAUFOHMA 
SANTA BAKBAKA 



INTRODUCTION. 



THE essays which constitute the present volume, despite 
the variety of their topics and of the occasions under which 
they were prepared, have an unity which is already indicated 
in the title, but which may well be more explicitly set forth 
in this introduction. 

As a teacher of philosophy, the author of the papers 
here collected has several times given expression, in for- 
mer books, to theories upon fundamental metaphysical 
issues.* These theories belong to a type not unfamiliar 
in the present speculation, namely, to the type of post- 
Kantian idealism. But the philosophical idealist is inter- 
ested not only in stating his fundamental convictions, but 
also in applying them to more concrete problems, especially 
to relatively practical problems. If idealism means any- 
thing, it means a theory of the universe which simply must 
not be divorced from empirical considerations, or from the 
business of life. It is not, as many have falsely supposed, a 
theory of the world founded merely upon a priori specula- 
tion, and developed solely in the closet It is, and in its best 
historical representatives always has been, an effort to inter- 

* Reference may be made to The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (Boa- 
ton, 1885), to The Spirit of Modern Philosophy (BotOon, 1892), and to the 
author's most mature statement of the argument for ideuliam In The Con- 
ception of God (New York, 1897). 

ill 



iv STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

pret the facts of life. The present is hardly the place to 
summarize the grounds upon which an idealistic interpreta- 
tion of the world depends. In a very brief summary, these 
grounds have been indicated in one of the essays of the 
prevent volume, namely, the sixth, entitled The Implica- 
tions of Self-Consciousness. But to many readers funda- 
mental metaphysical arguments are sure to be less enlight- 
ening than studies of more familiar issues in the light of 
philosophical considerations. To such readers, as well as to 
more technical philosophical students, the present essays are 
an appeal. 

I have thus indicated, to readers who may not already 
know, the general philosophical position which these papers 
in common undertake to illustrate. Yet I can not wish to 
leave upon the reader's mind the impression that he is deal- 
ing merely with the predetermined product of the thought 
of a particular school. Idealistic philosophizing is, from the 
nature of the case, subject to wide individual variations. 
Without any effort to make extravagant claims for philo- 
sophical originality, any life-long student of this region of 
inquiry finds it very natural to be aware that in trying to 
contribute to the subject he has not merely been reporting 
the opinions of other people or giving in his adherence to a 
traditional doctrine. I have always insisted that my own 
idealism does not make me in any sense worthy of being 
called a follower, say, of Hegel, although of the importance 
of Hegel's thought I am well aavare, and although, on occa- 
sion, in former publications, I have given expression to the 
obligations which, in common with other students, I feel 
towards Hegel's doctrine. In many respects I must insist 
that I have been quite as strongly influenced by Schopen- 
hauer or by Fichte as by Hegel; nor can any student of 
recent idealism be unaware that his strongest obligations 
are, after all, to the general tendencies of contemporary 
speculation. In any case, if it is not one's duty to be wholly 



INTRODUCTION. v 

original, it is certainly one's natural purpose, and as far as 
possible, one's obligation, to be, in philosophical matters, 
relatively independent, both as regards the manner in which 
one reaches one's conclusions, and as regards the kind of in- 
sight that one seeks to impart to one's readers. In common, 
therefore, with other philosophical students, I am not un- 
willing to have my own opinions judged by and for them- 
selves. Accordingly, I have hoped that a collection of 
papers like the present, containing various, and necessarily 
individual applications of doctrine to special problems, may 
serve to indicate in what sense the philosophical theses 
that I have to maintain possess a genuinely individual 
character. 

I have called these papers Studies of Good and Evil. 
The title is in its nature wide. It commits the essays con- 
tained in this volume merely to one common character. 
They are all, directly or indirectly, contributions to the 
comprehension of the ethical aspects of the universe. The 
papers are of very various relations to technical philosophical 
issues. Four of them are essays in literary and philosoph- 
ical criticism. One is directly concerned with the effect of 
the " Knowledge of Good and Evil " upon the character of the 
individual man. One is a contribution to the metaphysical 
" Problem of Evil " in its most general sense. Five, while 
dealing with metaphysical and psychological problems con- 
nected with the nature and relationships of our human type 
of consciousness, are somewhat more indirect contributions 
to the ethical interpretation of our place in the universe. 
One is an historical study of a concrete conflict between 
good and evil tendencies in early California life. 

In publishing papers most of which are the product of 
accidental calls, and were originally adjusted to various 
occasions, one runs a certain risk of giving the impression 
not merely of miscellaneous contents, but of minor incon- 
sistencies in statement and in the point of view. Yet to 



vi STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

attempt by artificial devices to bring such papers into a 
purely external unity by erasing all signs of the original 
occasions to which they were adapted may in its turn remove 
the very character that I have most desired to preserve in 
the present volume. It is here simply not a philosophical 
system as such, nor even a systematic applied ethics, nor yet 
a rigidly connected series of discourses concerning good and 
evil that I have desired explicitly to present to the reader. 
I have merely wished to show how a certain philosophical 
theory, whose more systematic statement I have in part 
already given elsewhere, may be applied to the study now 
of this and now of that issue relating to good and evil. I 
have deliberately chosen, therefore, in general not to erase 
the marks of the origin of the individual papers. Several 
were lectures, and appear in the text as such. Two or three 
were contributions to periodical literature specially called 
out by particular occasions. All may serve to show a cer- 
tain philosophical doctrine at work, and endeavoring not 
to remain an abstract theory, but to busy itself about the 
issues of life. 

The series begins with a paper entitled The Problem of 
Job. This was originally the result of a call from a minis- 
terial convention. It was later published in The New 
World. It deals in a most general, and I hope not at all an 
evasive way, with the metaphysical and religious " Problem 
of Evil." It presupposes, and does not endeavor either to 
justify or with any elaboration to explain, the idealistic 
theory of the nature of reality. Both my form of this 
theory, and my general application thereof to the problem 
of evil, were first set forth in The Religious Aspect of Phi- 
losophy. In my later work, The Spirit of Modern Philoso- 
phy, published in 1892, the closing chapter is devoted to a 
similar application of idealism to the problem of evil. The 
present discussion does not therefore stand alone. The the- 
ory of evil here in question brings me perhaps into a some- 



INTRODUCTION. vii 

what more intimate relation with characteristic statements 
presented and defended by Hegel, than is the case in some 
of my other philosophical theses. Yet, in the present essay 
on the problem of Job, special attention is given to the psy- 
chological basis upon which every metaphysical generaliza- 
tion concerning the nature and justification of evil may 
be, I think, properly said to be founded. Still, the reader 
who chooses to compare with this paper the papers in the 
former books mentioned, may be able to form a clearer 
judgment both of the meaning, and of the ground of the 
theory here presented than would be possible from this dis- 
cussion alone. 

If the theory of evil here in question is at all well found- 
ed, one of the most convincing practical solutions of the 
problem of evil must be presented wherever we find a good 
man triumphantly struggling with a profound problem of 
evil in his own life. Hence as the second paper of the 
present volume, I have ventured to set a psychological 
study of a personal experience of John Bunyan an experi- 
ence known to us as narrated by himself. This personal 
experience of Bunyan has been, as I think, despite all the 
elaborate biographical study that has been given to the poet's 
career, still too much neglected. In the present analysis, I 
have made use of certain concepts that have now become 
familiar in modern psychiatrical literature. Yet I do not 
believe that a psychological analysis of such experiences as 
these in any wise hinders our interpretation of their ethical 
or, for that matter, of their poetical meaning. Bunyan felt 
himself to be struggling with the " Tempter," with the De- 
mon in personal presence. We have now the power to rec- 
ognize, much more exactly than Bunyan could do, the nerv- 
ous nature of this enemy. Yet in a deeper ethical meaning, 
the " demon's " presence is none the less a geriuine fact when 
you have interpreted the psychological causation of the pro- 
cess in more modern forms. For Bunyan himself, the prob- 



viii STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

lem was indeed one of moral struggle, and when he won, 
and when, as he says, he brought of the " spoils of battle " 
and offered them in the temple of the Lord for the help of 
his suffering brethren, he gave us an instance of a concrete 
solution of the problem of evil whose philosophical signifi- 
cance is not made less by the fact that Bunyan's theology is 
no longer acceptable in Bunyan's form. This paper was 
originally written for the American Psychological Associa- 
tion, and appeared in the Psychological Review. 

The third paper in the volume that on Tennyson and 
Pessimism appeared in a college student's journal, The 
Harvard Monthly. Published as it was a considerable 
number of years ago, this essay is obviously unsatisfactory 
if viewed as a characterization of the genius of Tennyson, 
who is now so much better known to us through his pub- 
lished biography. Yet to my mind as I wrote it the princi- 
pal interest of the paper lay in its theory of the relation be- 
tween good and evil. The poem which forms the text of the 
discussion had in my mind a merely illustrative value. 

The fourth paper of the volume discusses another general 
aspect of the relations between good and evil. Here the 
original occasion of the paper was somewhat polemic. An 
essay by Professor George Simmel of Berlin, published in 
the International Journal of Ethics, provoked some criti- 
cism, and I was asked to take part in the controversy ; but 
the purely objective significance of the issue served in the 
end to keep the merely polemic aspect rather in the back- 
ground. The idealistic theory of the meaning of evil here 
gets again presented, but this time in reference to the deli- 
cate ethical question as to how far " the knowledge of evil " 
contributes to moral perfection. I hope that this paper, 
taken in connection with the foregoing, may serve to give 
the reader a general survey of the principal applications of 
the whole doctrine. 

These more direct studies of good and evil prepare the 



INTRODUCTION. 



IX 



way for a metaphysical issue, namely, that of the ethical 
interpretation of reality, both human and extra-human. 
This book makes of course no effort to contribute more 
than fragments to the stupendous philosophical undertak- 
ing thus suggested. What fragments belong here are easily 
characterized. From our modern point of view, the ethical 
interpretation of the universe is hindered by two especially 
serious difficulties. It is hindered, in the first place, by the 
general presuppositions of modern naturalism. In the sec- 
ond place it is hampered by our incomplete appreciation of 
the meaning and the essential limitations of the human type 
of consciousness. But a study either of naturalism or of the 
nature of human consciousness, must necessarily lead one 
into very theoretical regions, where the ethical problems 
themselves are, for the time being, in the background. Yet, 
since our consciousness is the basis of all the good and evil 
that we human beings know, and since our relations with 
Nature form a most problematic aspect of life, both theo- 
retical and practical, I have supposed that the essays from 
the fifth to the ninth in the present volume might serve to 
contribute in a genuine way to the issues suggested by my 
title. The fifth essay states, in the form of a critical paper 
suggested by a well-known lecture of Huxley, the problem 
with regard to the general relation between natural law and 
the demands of ethics. This paper appeared in the Inter- 
national Journal of Ethics. The sixth essay states the gen- 
eral case for an idealistic interpretation of the universe in 
its relations to self -consciousness. This paper originally 
appeared in the New World. The question what finite con- 
sciousness with all its burdens of good and evil may under 
these circumstances be and mean, is then treated first in 
some psychological particulars in the seventh essay, on the 
Anomalies of Self -Consciousness, and then in connection 
with cosmological problems, in the eighth essay, on the 
Relation between Human Consciousness and Nature. The 



x STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

theory of evolution indicated in the latter part of this essay 
is one to which I am expecting to give a more detailed state- 
ment in forthcoming books. These papers were originally 
printed in the Psychological Review, and in the Philosoph- 
ical Review. 

The theory of the social basis of self -consciousness, which 
is common to the seventh and to the eighth essays, is a the- 
ory which has many points in common with the views al- 
ready published by Professor Baldwin in his well-known 
works on Mental Development in the Child and in the 
Race. Professor Baldwin, in his own papers on this sub- 
ject, has frequently referred in the kindest way to my own 
work, whether published or unpublished. In return, I can 
only express both my sense of my general agreement, as to 
the social theory of self-consciousness, with Professor Bald- 
win, and my cordial recognition of his priority both in state- 
ment, and in publication, with respect to a number of the 
most important features of this theory. Students of social 
phenomena may find some interest both in the purely psy- 
chological aspects of this theory of finite self-consciousness 
and in my own suggested cosmological extensions of the 
theory. Such students of general idealism as find the theory 
of absolute self-consciousness too abstract and seemingly too 
a priori to win their easy assent, may also be interested in 
seeing by what means at least one student of idealism en- 
deavors to bridge the gulf that at the outset seems to sepa- 
rate any psychological theory of consciousness from any 
idealistic theory of reality. As a fact, I myself can find no 
hostility between the psychological interpretation of con- 
sciousness and the philosophical interpretation of reality in 
terms of consciousness. The differences between the two 
are founded, in part, upon the empirical nature of the psycho- 
logical material as contrasted with the general logical nature 
of the arguments for idealism ; and, in part, upon the differ- 
ence in the point of view between a psychological and a 



INTRODUCTION. x j 

philosophical study. But a difference in point of view cer- 
tainly does mean hostility in doctrine. And every interpre- 
tation of experience involves at once a recognition of the 
facts of experience, and a consideration of their general 
logical meaning. Sooner or later psychology and philoso- 
phy must join hands afresh ; and the more closely, in view 
of the fact that of late, for many minds, they have seemed to 
part company. It belongs to the future to suggest many of 
the ways in which this ultimate reconciliation will take 
place. I think it is the right of any philosophical student 
who feels also, as I do, an interest in empirical psychology, 
to undertake a suggestion, however fragmentary, of the 
union to be brought about, and to base this suggestion even 
upon the facts already accessible. 

The ninth essay, originally contributed to the Harvard 
Monthly, is here given as a supplementary statement con- 
cerning certain general aspects of the nature of human con- 
sciousness. It is intended to bring a little more clearly to 
light a point whose philosophical and psychological signifi- 
cance seem to me to have been overlooked, namely, the 
fact that what gives us the most difficult aspect of the world- 
problem, and what most impresses upon us the tragedy of 
good and evil, as well as what, on the other hand, gives our 
human psychology its specific character, is the purely arbi- 
trary fact of the " Limitation of Span " which characterizes 
the human type of consciousness. My own thesis is that 
the mere removal of this one limitation would in and of 
itself involve a lifting of the veil that is proverbially said to 
" hide " the reality. For reality, according to my idealism, is 
simply the Whole of what one actually means from the finite 
point of view. This " whole of what one means," viewed as 
a concrete whole, viewed as a significant and self-possessed 
unity of conscious life, is, for this idealism, the Real World. 
It is also the Divine Life. Therein the problem of evil is 
seen as solved. The limitations which exclude us, in our 



Xll 



STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 



character as human beings, from the concrete possession of 
this ultimate solution, are not limitations that are to be in- 
terpreted as involving any ultimate separation between us 
and the reality. The " separation " exists in truth only as a 
certain characteristic limitation of conscious span, where- 
by our own finite meaning does not become perfectly clear 
to us, and our own conscious processes are not themselves, 
to their own very depths, presented to our fleeting finite 
moments of consciousness. In order to grasp the nature of 
reality, it would therefore not be necessary to be something 
else than what we are, but only to be the Whole of what we 
now in substance and essence already are. From grasping 
this wholeness of our own meaning we are hindered, at any 
moment, by the mere narrowness of the moment's view of 
its own sense, and not by any gulf which separates us from 
real Things in Themselves. The arguments for such a doc- 
trine need of course their own room. But the application of 
the doctrine both to the theoretical problems of human self- 
consciousness, and to the practical problem of evil, may be 
made clearer by means of the group of essays now in ques- 
tion. 

The book closes with a return to decidedly more special 
issues. Two philosophers are made the topics of a critical 
study and portrayal ; and in both cases the portrayal takes 
up more space than the criticism. I have endeavored to 
make the criticism itself rather immanent than external. 
In addition, one historical incident, in itself extremely in- 
significant, but, in its illustrative character, as interesting as 
many another fragment of human life, is made the topic of 
a discussion whose length has to be frankly explained by 
the persona] and local interests that guided the author in 
preparing this study. But all these three concluding studies 
have in common their obvious relation to good and evil. 
All three of them are instances of the way in which I 
should try to express the idealistic spirit Idealism has 



INTRODUCTION. xiii 

meaning only in case you can judge whatever facts and 
experience you please, or whatever varieties of philosoph- 
ical opinion you may take into account, in the light of 
idealistic insight. Of these three concluding essays the 
first, or, in the order of the papers in this volume, the tenth, 
discusses Meister Eckhart, the German mystic, a figure who 
has been comparatively neglected by those students of phi- 
losophy who have written in English. From a scholarly 
point of view I distinctly feel the limitations of this por- 
trayal. Meister Eckhart has been the topic of some impor- 
tant recent researches, since the discovery of his Latin tracts ; 
and these researches in some respects modify the views of 
his historical position which were formerly maintained. I 
have not been able to take explicit account of these most 
recent investigations. On the other hand, I have endeav- 
ored to limit what I had to say of Eckhart 's historical rela- 
tions to what may be considered, on the whole, fairly sure, 
without entering upon more doubtful considerations. The 
general theoretical interest of a paper of this sort lies in the 
intimate relations which must always exist between philo- 
sophical idealism and traditional mysticism. These intimate 
relations I fully admit. Their practical as well as their the- 
oretical interest I wholly recognize, and yet I am very sure 
that one is unfair to the modern idealist who characterizes 
his doctrine as identical with the mysticism even of an Eck- 
hart. The actual contrast between the idealistic and the 
mystic point of view I have several times discussed, notably 
in the concluding essays of the book called The Spirit of 
Modern Philosophy, and in passing, in some passages in the 
third essay of the present volume. The practical danger 
of seeking one's relation to the absolute in wholly remote 
realms, apart from concrete human experience, is not only 
insisted upon in the earlier papers of the present volume, but 
is also further illustrated by such concrete cases as are dis- 
cussed in the essay that, in this volume, immediately follows 



x iv STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

the paper upon Meister Eckhart. And once more, the theo- 
retical solution of the problem is to be sought, as I take it, 
in considerations bearing upon the form of human con- 
sciousness. That in some respects our own consciousness 
would have to be transformed before its relations to reality 
became directly clear, is of course precisely the idealistic 
thesis. On the other hand, this transformation must not 
mean, as the mystics desired it to mean, an ignoring of what 
there is positive, rational, significant, about the human type 
of consciousness itself ; just as the practical solution of the 
struggle with evil can not lie in such a virtue as that which 
Eckhart made central, namely, the virtue which he called 
" Departedness " of soul Abgescheidenheit. The whole dis- 
cussion of the concrete problem of evil, as given in the ear- 
lier essays of the present volume, ought to make clear to any 
fair-minded reader the genuine contrast between the central 
insights of idealism and the characteristic assertions of the 
mystic. On the other hand, it is unquestionable that the 
mystic and the idealist have much in common, namely, 
precisely what the idealist would call the truth of the mys- 
tical doctrine ; and there can be no doubt of the enormous 
historical importance of mysticism in keeping alive the 
sense of the intimacy of our human relation to the divine 
Reality. Nor can any portrayal of mysticism be fair which 
is not intimate and sympathetic. Nor yet can any criticism 
of mysticism be fair which goes far beyond the immanent 
criticism that mysticism, once fully portrayed, passes upon 
itself. I have endeavored to let Meister Eckhart, as prac- 
tical adviser of his disciples and hearers, himself state the 
case of the good and evil of the present life, and I feel that 
hardly a word need be added to transform this practical out- 
come of his own doctrine into that willingness to accept 
finitude even while seeing in finite life an infinite meaning 
a willingness which is to my mind the very essence of the 
idealistic spirit 



INTRODUCTION. 



XV 



Immediately after this characterization of the mediaeval 
mystic, I have permitted my study of California local his- 
tory to follow as the eleventh paper. I can conceive of no 
better way to express the intimate relation of every frag- 
ment with the whole, in the universe as idealism conceives 
it, than just some such way as this ; and if any reader, after 
fairly reading the papers of the present volume, wonders 
why this particular constellation of papers was chosen, I fear 
that I shall have written for him quite in vain. 

A series of philosophical essays may well close with the 
characterization of a philosopher, and I offer as my twelfth 
paper, although not without some hesitation, my contribu- 
tion to the estimate of a recent French philosopher, J. M. 
Guyau. Here again the subject of the essay has been too 
infrequently presented to English readers. Here again one 
has a doctrine affiliated with modern idealism, yet by no 
means identical with such idealism, as I myself should en- 
deavor to represent, and here again one has a distinctly ethi- 
cal philosophy, with whose discussion these studies of the 
problem of good and evil may well close. The similarity 
between the "sociological" theory of the finite world in 
Guyau's latest book, and my own variety of this same 
theory, as stated in the eighth essay of the present volume, 
is plain, and is one reason the more for printing this final 
paper. 

A few further notes concerning the origin and special 
occasions of the various papers of this volume will be found 
in connection with each. The papers on Meister Eckhart 
and on Guyau appear here for the first time in print. The 
account of the Squatter Riot of 1850 in Sacramento was pub- 
lished in the Overland Monthly, in 1885. 



CONTENTS. 



FAB 

I. THE PROBLEM OF JOB 1 

II. THE CASE OF JOHN BUNYAN 29 

III. TENNYSON AND PESSIMISM 76 

IV. THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL .... 89 

V. NATURAL LAW, ETHICS, AND EVOLUTION .... 125 

VI. THE IMPLICATIONS OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS . . . 140 

VII. SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE ANOMALIES OF SELF-CON- 
SCIOUSNESS 169 

VIII. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND NATURE. 198 

IX. ORIGINALITY AND CONSCIOUSNESS 249 

X. MEISTER ECKHART 261 

XL AN EPISODE OF EARLY CALIFORNIA LIFE : THE SQUATTER 

RIOT OF 1850 IN SACRAMENTO 298 

XII. JEAN MARIE QUTAU 349 

xvii 



STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 



i. 

THE PROBLEM OF JOB. 

IN speaking of the problem of Job, the present writer 
comes to the subject as a layman in theology, and as one 
ignorant of Hebrew scholarship. In referring to the origi- 
nal core of the Book of Job he follows, in a general way, 
the advice of Professor C. H. Toy ; and concerning the text 
of the poem he is guided by the translation of Dr. Gilbert 
What this paper has to attempt is neither criticism of the 
book, nor philological exposition of its obscurities, but a 
brief study of the central problem of the poem from the 
point of view of a student of philosophy. 

The problem of our book is the personal problem of its 
hero, Job himself. Discarding, for the first, as of possibly 
separate authorship, the Prologue, the Epilogue and the 
addresses of Elihu and of the Lord, one may as well come 
at once to the point of view of Job, as expressed in his 
speeches to his friends. Here is stated the problem of which 
none of the later additions in our poem offer any intelligible 
solution. In the exposition of this problem the original 
author develops all his poetical skill, and records thoughts 
that can never grow old. This is the portion of our book 
which is most frequently quoted, and which best expresses 
the genuine experience of suffering humanity. Here, then, 
tin- philosophical as well as the human interest of our poem 
centres. 

1 



STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 



Job's world, as he sees it, is organized in a fashion ex- 
tremely familiar to us all. The main ideas of this cosmol- 
ogy are easy to be reviewed. The very simplicity of the 
scheme of the universe here involved serves to bring into 
clearer view the mystery and horror of the problem that 
besets Job himself. The world, for Job, is the work of a 
being who, in the very nature of the case, ought to be intel- 
ligible (since he is wise), and friendly to the righteous, since, 
according to tradition, and by virtue of his divine wisdom 
itself, this God must know the value of a righteous man. 
But here is the mystery this God, as his works get known 
through our human experiences of evil, appears to us not 
friendly, but hopelessly foreign and hostile in his plans and 
his doings. The more, too, we study his ways with man, the 
less intelligible seems his nature. Tradition has dwelt upon 
his righteousness, has called him merciful, has magnified his 
love towards his servants, has described his justice in bring- 
ing to naught the wicked. One has learned to trust all these 
things, to conceive God in these terms, and to expect all this 
righteous government from him. Moreover, tradition joins 
with the pious observation of nature in assuring us of the 
omnipotence of God. Job himself pathetically insists that he 
never doubts, for an instant, God's power to do whatever 
in heaven or earth he may please to do. Nothing hinders 
God. No blind faith thwarts him. Sheol is naked before 
him. The abyss has no covering. The earth hangs over 
chaos because he orders it to do so. His power shatters the 
monsters and pierces the dragons. He can, then, do with 
evil precisely what he does with Rahab or with the shades, 
with the clouds or with the light or with the sea, namely, 
exactly what he chooses. Moreover, since he knows every- 
thing, and since the actual value of a righteous man is, for 
Job, an unquestionable and objective fact, God cannot fail 



THE PROBLEM OF JOB. 3 

to know this real worth of righteousness in his servants, 
as well as the real hatefulness and mischief of the wicked. 
God knows worth, and cannot be blind to it, since it is as 
real a fact as heaven and earth themselves. 

Yet despite all these unquestioned facts, this God. who 
can do just what he chooses, " deprives of right " the right- 
eous man, in Job's own case, and "vexes his soul." 
becomes towards him as a " tyrant," " persecutes " him " with 
strong hand," u dissolves " him " into storm," makes him a 
" byword " for outcasts, " casts " him " into the mire," ren- 
ders him " a brother to jackals,' 1 deprives him of the poor 
joy of his " one day as a hireling," of the little delight that 
might come to him as a man before he descends hopelessly 
to the dark world of the shades, " watches over " him by 
day to oppress, by night to " terrify " him ** with dreams and 
with visions " in brief, acts as his enemy, " tears " him " in 
anger," " gnashes upon " him " with his teeth." All these 
are the expressions of Job himself. On the other hand, as. 
with equal wonder and horror the righteous Job reports, 
God on occasion does just the reverse of all this to the no- 
toriously and deliberately wicked, who " grow old," " wax 
mighty in power," "see their offspring established," and 
their homes "secure from fear." If one turns from this 
view of God's especially unjust dealings with righteous and 
with wicked individuals to a general survey of his provi- 
dential government of the world, one sees vast processes 
going on, as ingenious as they are merciless, as full of hints 
of a majestic wisdom as they are of indifference to every indi- 
vidual right 

A mountain that falleth U battered. 

And a rock is removed from it* place ; 

The waters do wear away stooea, 

It* flood* aweep the earth V dart away ; 

And the hope of frmil nun thou deatroyert. 

Thoa *uhdu't him for aye, aad he goea ; 

Marring hi face thou rejected him. 



4 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

Here is a mere outline of the divine government as Job 
sees it. To express himself thus is for Job no momentary 
outburst of passion. Long days and nights he has brooded 
over these bitter facts of experience, before he has spoken at 
all. Unweariedly, in presence of his friends' objections, he 
reiterates his charges. He has the right of the sufferer to 
speak, and he uses it He reports the facts that he sees. Of 
the paradox involved in all this he can make nothing. 
What is clear to him, however, is that this paradox is a 
matter for reasoning, not for blind authority. God ought 
to meet him face to face, and have the matter out in plain 
words. Job fears not to face his judge, or to demand his 
answer from God. God knows that Job has done nothing 
to deserve this fury. The question at issue between maker 
and creature is therefore one that demands a direct state- 
ment and a clear decision. " Why, since you can do pre- 
cisely as you choose, and since you know, as all-knower, the 
value of a righteous servant, do you choose, as enemy, to 
persecute the righteous with this fury and persistence of 
hate ? " Here is the problem. 

The human interest of the issue thus so clearly stated by 
Job lies, of course, in the universality of just such experi- 
ences of undeserved ill here upon earth. What Job saw of 
evil we can see ourselves to-day whenever we choose. Wit- 
ness Armenia. Witness the tornadoes and the earthquakes. 
Less interesting to us is the thesis mentioned by Job's friends, 
in the antiquated form in which they state it, although to 
be sure, a similar thesis, in altered forms, is prevalent among 
us still. And of dramatic significance only is the earnest- 
ness with which Job defends his own personal righteousness. 
So naive a self-assurance as is his is not in accordance with 
our modern conscience, and it is seldom indeed that our day 
would see any man sincerely using this phraseology of Job 
regarding his own consciousness of rectitude. But what is 
to-day as fresh and real to us as it was to our poet is the fact 



THE PROBLEM OF JOB. 5 

that all about us, say in every child born with an unearned 
heredity of misery, or in every pang of the oppressed, or in 
every arbitrary coming of ill fortune, some form of inno- 
cence is beset with an evil that the sufferer has not deserved. 
Job wins dramatic sympathy as an extreme, but for the pur- 
pose all the more typical, case of this universal experience 
of unearned ill fortune. In every such case we therefore 
still have the interest that Job had in demanding the solu- 
tion of this central problem of evil. Herein, I need not say, 
lies the permanent significance of the problem of Job, a 
problem that wholly outlasts any ancient Jewish contro- 
versy as to the question whether the divine justice always 
does or does not act as Job's friends, in their devotion to 
tradition, declare that it acts. Here, then, is the point 
where our poem touches a question, not merely of an older 
religion, but of philosophy, and of all time. 

H. 

The general problem of evil has received, as is well 
known, a great deal of attention from the philosophers. 
Few of them, at least in European thought, have been as 
fearless in stating the issue as was the original author of 
Job. The solutions offered have, however, been very nu- 
merous. For our purposes they may be reduced to a few. 

First, then, one may escape Job's paradox by declining 
altogether to view the world in teleological terms. Evils, 
such as death, disease, tempests, enemies, fires, are not, so 
one may declare, the works of God or of Satan, but are nat- 
ural phenomena. Natural, too, are the phenomena of our 
desires, of our pains, sorrows and failures. No divine pur- 
pose rules or overrules any of these things. That happens 
to us, at any time, which must happen, in view of our nat- 
ural limitations and of our ignorance. The way to better 
things is to understand nature better than we now do. For 
this view a view often maintained in our day there is no 



6 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

problem of evil, in Job's sense, at all. Evil there indeed is, 
but the only rational problems are those of natural laws. I 
need not here further consider this method, not of solving 
but of abolishing the problem before us, since my intent is, 
in this paper, to suggest the possibility of some genuinely 
teleological answer to Job's question. I mention this first 
view only to recognize, historically, its existence. 

In the second place, one may deal with our problem by 
attempting any one, or a number, of those familiar and 
popular compromises between the belief in a world of nat- 
ural law and the belief in a teleological order, which are 
all, as compromises, reducible to the assertion that the pres- 
ence of evil in the creation is a relatively insignificant, and 
an inevitable, incident of a plan that produces sentient crea- 
tures subject to law. Writers who expound such compro- 
mises have to point out that, since a burnt child dreads the 
fire, pain is, on the whole, useful as a warning. Evil is a 
transient discipline, whereby finite creatures learn their place 
in the system of things. Again, a sentient world cannot get 
on without some experience of suffering, since sentience 
means tenderness. Take away pain (so one still again often 
insists), take away pain, and we should not learn our share 
of natural truth. Pain is the pedagogue to teach us natural 
science. The contagious diseases, for instance, are useful in 
so far as they lead us in the end to study Bacteriology, and 
thus to get an insight into the life of certain beautiful crea- 
tures of God whose presence in the world we should other- 
wise blindly overlook ! Moreover (to pass to still another 
variation of this sort of explanation), created beings obvi- 
ously grow from less to more. First the lower, then the 
higher. Otherwise there could be no Evolution. And were 
there no evolution, how much of edifying natural science 
we should miss ! But if one is evolved, if one grows from 
less to more, there must be something to mark the stages of 
growth. Now evil is useful to mark the lower stages of 



THE PROBLEM OF JOB. 7 

evolution. If you are to be, first an infant, then a man, or 
first a savage, then a civilized being, there must be evils 
attendant upon the earlier stages of your life evils that 
make growth welcome and conscious. Thus, were there no 
colic and croup, were there no tumbles and crying-spells in 
infancy, there would be no sufficient incentives to loving 
parents to hasten the growing robustness of their children, 
and no motives to impel the children to long to grow big ! 
Just so, cannibalism is valuable as a mark of a lower grade 
of evolution. Had there been no cannibalism we should 
realize less joyously than we do what a respectable thing it 
is to -have become civilized ! In brief, evil is, as it were, the 
dirt of the natural order, whose value is that, when you 
wash it off, you thereby learn the charm of the bath of 
evolution. 

The foregoing are mere hints of familiar methods of 
playing about the edges of our problem, as children play 
barefoot in the shallowest reaches of the foam of the sea. 
In our poem, as Professor Toy expounds it, the speeches as- 
cribed to Elihu contain the most hints of some such way of 
defining evil, as a merely transient incident of the disci- 
pline of the individual. With many writers explanations 
of this sort fill much space. They are even not without 
their proper place in popular discussion. But they have no 
interest for whoever has once come into the presence of 
Job's problem as it is in itself. A moment's thought re- 
minds us of their superficiality. Pain is useful as a warn- 
ing of danger. If we did not suffer, we should burn our 
hands off. Yes, but this explanation of one evil presup- 
poses another, and a still unexplained and greater evil, 
namely, the existence of the danger of which we need to be 
thus warned. No doubt it is well that the past sufferings of 
the Armenians should teach the survivors, say the defense- 
less women and children, to have a wholesome fear in future 
of Turks. Does that explain, however, the need for the exist- 



8 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

ence, or for the murderous doings of the Turks ? If I can 
only reach a given goal by passing over a given road, say 
of evolution, it may be well for me to consent to the toil- 
some journey. Does that explain why I was created so far 
from my goal ? Discipline, toil, penalty, surgery, are all 
explicable as means to ends, if only it be presupposed that 
there exists, and that there is quite otherwise explicable, the 
necessity for the situations which involve such fearful ex- 
penses. One justifies the surgery, but not the disease ; the 
toil, but not the existence of the need for the toil ; the pen- 
alty, but not the situation which has made the penalty neces- 
sary, when one points out that evil is in so many cases 
medicinal or disciplinary or prophylactic an incident of 
imperfect stages of evolution, or the price of a distant good 
attained through misery. All such explanations, I insist, 
trade upon borrowed capital. But God, by hypothesis, is 
no borrower. He produces his own capital of ends and 
means. Every evil is explained on the foregoing plan only 
by presupposing at least an equal, and often a greater and a 
preexistent evil, namely, the very state of things which ren- 
ders the first evil the only physically possible way of reach- 
ing a given goal. But what Job wants his judge to explain 
is not that evil A is a physical means of warding off some 
other greater evil JB, in this cruel world where the waters 
wear away even the stones, and where hopes of man are so 
much frailer than the stones ; but why a God who can do 
whatever he wishes chooses situations where such a heaped- 
up mass of evil means become what we should call physical 
necessities to the ends now physically possible. 

No real explanation of the presence of evil can succeed 
which declares evil to be a merely physical necessity for 
one who desires, in this present world, to reach a given goal. 
Job's business is not with physical accidents, but with the 
God who chose to make this present nature ; and an answer 
to Job must show that evil is not a physical but a logical 



THE PROBLEM OP JOB. 9 

necessity something whose non-existence would simply con- 
tradict the very essence, the very perfection of God's own 
nature and power. This talk of medicinal and disciplinary 
evil, perfectly fair when applied to our poor fate-bound 
human surgeons, judges, jailors, or teachers, becomes cru- 
elly, even cynically trivial w,hen applied to explain the 
ways of a God who is to choose, not only the physical means 
to an end, but the very Physis itself in which path and goal 
are to exist together. I confess, as a layman, that whenever, 
at a funeral, in the company of mourners who are immedi- 
ately facing Job's own personal problem, and who are some- 
times, to say the least, wide enough awake to desire not to 
be stayed with relative comforts, but to ask that terrible and 
uttermost question of God himself, and to require the direct 
answer that whenever, I say, in such company I have to 
listen to these half-way answers, to these superficial plashes 
in the wavelets at the water's edge of sorrow, while the 
black, unfathomed ocean of finite evil spreads out before 
our wide-opened eyes well, at such times this trivial speech 
about useful burns and salutary medicines makes me, and I 
fancy others, simply and wearily heartsick. Some words 
are due to children at school, to peevish patients in the sick- 
room who need a little temporary quieting. But quite other 
speech is due to men and women when they are wakened to 
the higher reason of Job by the fierce anguish of our mortal 
life's ultimate facts. They deserve either our simple silence, 
or, if we are ready to speak, the speech of people who our- 
selves inquire as Job inquired. 

in. 

A third method of dealing with our problem is in essence 
identical with the course which, in a very antiquated form, 
the friends of Job adopt This method takes its best known 
expression in the doctrine that the presence of evil in the 
world is explained by the fact that the value of free will in 



10 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

moral agents logically involves, and so explains and justifies, 
the divine permission of the evil deeds of those finite beings 
who freely choose to sin, as well as the inevitable fruits of 
the sins. God creates agents with free will. He does so be- 
cause the existence of such agents has of itself an infinite 
worth. Were there no free agents, the highest good could 
not be. But such agents, because they are free, can offend. 
The divine justice of necessity pursues such offenses with 
attendant evils. These evils, the result of sin, must, logi- 
cally speaking, be permitted to exist, if God once creates the 
agents who have free will, and himself remains, as he must 
logically do, a just God. How much ill thus results depends 
upon the choice of the free agents, not upon God, who wills 
to have only good chosen, but of necessity must leave his 
free creatures to their own devices, so far as concerns their 
power to sin. 

This view has the advantage of undertaking to regard 
evil as a logically necessary part of a perfect moral order, 
and not as a mere incident of an imperfectly adjusted phys- 
ical mechanism. So dignified a doctrine, by virtue of its 
long history and its high theological reputation, needs here 
no extended exposition. I assume it as familiar, and pass at 
once to its difficulties. It has its share of truth. There is, I 
doubt not, moral free will in the universe. But the presence 
of evil in the world simply cannot be explained by free will 
alone. This is easy to show. One who maintains this view 
asserts, in substance, " All real evils are the results of the 
acts of free and finite moral agents." These agents may be 
angels or men. If there is evil in the city, the Lord has not 
done it, except in so far as his justice has acted in readjust- 
ing wrongs already done. Such ill is due to the deeds 
of his creatures. But hereupon one asks at once, in pres- 
ence of any ill, "Who did this?" Job's friends answer: 
"The sufferer himself; his deed wrought his own undo- 
ing. God punishes only the sinner. Every one suffers 



THE PROBLEM OP JOB. 11 

for his own wrongdoing. Your ill is the result of your 
crime." 

But Job, and all his defenders of innocence, must at once 
reply : " Empirically speaking, this is obviously, in our visi- 
ble world, simply not true. The sufferer may suffer inno- 
cently. The ill is often undeserved. The fathers sin ; the 
child, diseased from birth, degraded, or a born wretch, may 
pay the penalty. The Turk or the active rebel sins. Ar- 
menia's helpless women and babes cry in vain unto God 
for help." 

Hereupon the reply comes, although not indeed from 
Job's friends : " Alas ! it is so. Sin means suffering ; but 
the innocent may suffer for the guilty. This, to be sure, is 
God's way. One cannot help it. It is so." But therewith 
the whole effort to explain evil as a logically necessary re- 
sult of free will and of divine justice alone is simply aban- 
doned. The unearned ills are not justly due to the free will 
that indeed partly caused them, but to God who declines to 
protect the innocent God owes the Turk and the rebel 
their due. He also owes to his innocent creatures, the babes 
and the women, his shelter. He owes to the sinning father 
his penalty, but to the son, born in our visible world a lost 
soul from the womb, God owes the shelter of his almighty 
wing, and no penalty. Thus Job's cry is once more in place. 
The ways of God are not thus justified. 

But the partisan of free will as the true explanation of 
ill may reiterate his view in a new form. He may insist 
.that we see but a fragment Perhaps the soul born here as 
if lost, or the wretch doomed to pangs now unearned, sinned 
of old, in some previous state of existence. Perhaps Karma 
is to blame. You expiate to-day the sins of your own former 
xi>tencea Thus the Hindoos varied the theme of our fa- 
miliar doctrine. This is what Hindoo friends might have 
said to Job. Well, admit even that, if you like ; and what 
follows ? Admit that here or in former ages the free 



12 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

deed of every present sufferer earned as its penalty every ill, 
physical or moral, that appears as besetting just this sufferer 
to-day. Admit that, and what logically follows ? It fol- 
lows, so I must insist, that the moral world itself, which this 
free-will theory of the source of evil, thus abstractly stated, 
was to save, is destroyed in its very heart and centre. 

For consider. A suffers ill. B sees A suffering. Can 
B, the onlooker, help his suffering neighbor, A ? Can he 
comfort him in any time way ? No, a miserable comforter 
must B prove, like Job's friends, so long as B, believing in 
our present hypothesis clings strictly to the logic of this 
abstract free-will explanation of the origin of evil. To A he 
says : " Well, you suffer for your own ill-doing. I therefore 
simply cannot relieve you. This is God's world of justice. 
If I tried to hinder God's justice from working in your case, 
I should at best only postpone your evil day. It would 
come, for God is just. You are hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, 
in prison. What can I do about it ? All this is your own 
deed come back to you. God himself, although justly pun- 
ishing, is not the author of this evil. You are the sole origi- 
nator of the ill." "Ah !" so A may cry out, "but can you 
not give me light, insight, instruction, sympathy ? Can you 
not at least teach me to become good ? " " No," B must re- 
ply, if he is a logical believer in the sole efficacy of the 
private free will of each finite agent as the one source, un- 
der the divine justice, of that agent's ill : " No, if you de- 
served light or any other comfort, God, being just, would 
enlighten you himself, even if I absolutely refused. But if 
you do not deserve light, I should preach to you in vain, for 
God's justice would harden your heart against any such 
good fortune as I could offer you from without, even if I 
spoke with the tongues of men and of angels. Your free 
will is yours. No deed of mine could give you a good free 
will, for what I gave you from without would not be your 
free will at all. Nor can any one but you cause your free 



THE PROBLEM OP JOB. 13 

will to be this or that. A great gulf is fixed between us. 
You and I, as sovereign free agents, live in God's holy world 
in sin-tight compartments and in evil-tight compartments 
too. I cannot hurt you, nor you me. You are damned for 
your own sins, while all that I can do is to look out for my 
own salvation." This, I say, is the logically inevitable re- 
sult of asserting that every ill, physical or moral, that can 
happen to any agent, is solely the result of that agent's own 
free will acting under the government of the divine justice. 
The only possible consequence would indeed be that we 
live, every soul of us, in separate, as, it were absolutely fire- 
proof, free-will compartments, so that real cooperation as to 
good and ill is excluded. What more cynical denial of the 
reality of any sort of moral world could be imagined than 
is involved in this horrible thesis, which no sane partisan of 
the abstract and traditional free-will explanation of the 
source of evil will to-day maintain, precisely because no 
such partisan really knows or can know what his doctrine 
logically means, while still continuing to maintain it Yet 
whenever one asserts with pious obscurity, that " No harm 
can come to the righteous," one in fact implies, with logical 
necessity, just this cynical consequence. 

IV. 

There remains a fourth doctrine as to our problem. 
This doctrine is in essence the thesis of philosophical ideal- 
ism, a thesis which I myself feel bound to maintain, and, so 
far as space here permits, to explain. The theoretical basis 
of this view, the philosophical reasons for the notion of the 
divine nature which it implies, I cannot here explain. 
That is another argument But I desire to indicate how the 
view in question deals with Job's problem. 

This view first frankly admits that Job's problem is, 
upon Job's presuppositions, simply and absolutely insolu- 
ble. Grant Job's own presupposition that God is a being 



14 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

other than this world, that he is its external creator and 
ruler, and then ail solutions fail. God is then either cruel 
or helpless, as regards all real finite ill of the sort that Job 
endures. Job, moreover, is right in demanding a reasona- 
ble answer to his question. The only possible answer is, 
however, one that undertakes to develop what I hold to be 
the immortal soul of the doctrine of the divine atonement. 
The answer to Job is : God is not in ultimate essence an- 
other being than yourself. He is the Absolute Being. You 
truly are one with God, part of his life. He is the very soul 
of your soul. And so, here is the first truth : When you 
suffer, your sufferings are God" 8 sufferings, not his exter- 
nal work, not his external penalty, not the fruit of his neg- 
lect, but identically his own personal woe. In you God 
himself suffers, precisely as you do, and has all your con- 
cern in overcoming this grief. 

The true question then is : Why does God thus suffer ? 
The sole possible, necessary, and sufficient answer is, Be- 
cause without suffering, without ill, without woe, evil, trag- 
edy, God's life could not be perfected. This grief is not a 
physical means to an external end. It is a logically neces- 
sary and eternal constituent of the divine life. It is logically 
necessary that the Captain of your salvation should be per- 
fect through suffering. No outer nature compels him. He 
chooses this because he chooses his own perfect selfhood. 
He is perfect. His world is the best possible world. Yet 
all its finite regions know not only of joy but of defeat and 
sorrow, for thus alone, in the completeness of his eternity, 
can God in his wholeness be triumphantly perfect. 

This, I say, is my thesis. In the absolute oneness of God 
with the sufferer, in the concept of the suffering and there- 
fore triumphant God, lies the logical solution of the problem 
of evil. The doctrine of philosophical idealism is, as regards 
its purely theoretical aspects, a fairly familiar metaphysical 
theory at the present time. One may, then, presuppose here 



THE PROBLEM OF JOB. 15 

as known the fact that, for reasons which I have not now to 
expound, the idealist maintains that there is in the universe 
but one perfectly real being, namely, the Absolute, that the 
Absolute is self-conscious, and that his world is essentially 
in its wholeness the fulfillment in actu of an all-perfect 
ideal. We ourselves exist as fragments of the absolute life, 
or better, as partial functions in the unity of the absolute 
and conscious process of the world. On the other hand, our 
existence and our individuality are not illusory, but are 
what they are in an organic unity with the whole life 
of the Absolute Being. This doctrine once presupposed, 
our present task is to inquire what case idealism can 
make for the thesis just indicated as its answer to Job's 
problem. 

In endeavoring to grapple witli the theoretical problem 
of the place of evil in a world that, on the whole, is to be 
conceived, not only as good, but as perfect, there is happily 
one essentially decisive consideration concerning good and 
evil which falls directly within the scope of our own human 
experience, and which concerns matters at once familiar 
and momentous as well as too much neglected in philoso- 
phy. When we use such words as good, evil, perfect, we 
easily deceive ourselves by the merely abstract meanings 
wliich we associate with each of the terms taken apart from 
the other. We forget the experiences from which the words 
have been abstracted. To these experiences we must return 
whenever we want really to comprehend the words. If we 
take the mere words, in their abstraction, it is easy to say, 
for instance, that if life has any evil in it at all, it must 
needs not be so perfect as life would be were there no evil 
in it whatever. Just so, speaking abstractly, it is easy to 
say that, in estimating life, one has to set the good over 
against the evil, and to compare their respective sums. It 
is easy to declare that, since we hate evil, wherever and just 
so far as we recognize it, our sole human interest in the 
3 



16 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

world must be furthered by the removal of evil from the 
world. And thus viewing the case, one readily comes to 
say that if God views as not only good but perfect a world 
in which we find so much evil, the divine point of view 
must be very foreign to ours, so that Job's rebellious pes- 
simism seems well in order, and Prometheus appears to 
defy the world-ruler in a genuinely humane spirit. Shocked, 
however, by the apparent impiety of this result, some teach- 
ers, considering divine matters, still misled by the same 
one-sided use of words, have opposed one falsely abstract 
view by another, and have strangely asserted that the solu- 
tion must be in proclaiming that since God's world, the real 
world, in order to be perfect, must be without evil, what we 
men call evil must be a mere illusion a mirage of the 
human point of view a dark vision which God, who sees 
all truth, sees not at all. To God, so this view asserts, the 
eternal world in its wholeness is not only perfect, but has 
merely the perfection of an utterly transparent crystal, un- 
stained by any color of ill. Only mortal error imagines 
that there is any evil. There is no evil but only good in the 
real world, and that is why God finds the world perfect, 
whatever mortals dream. 

Now neither of these abstract views is my view. I con- 
sider them both the result of a thoughtless trust in abstract 
words. I regard evil as a distinctly real fact, a fact just as 
real as the most helpless and hopeless sufferer finds it to be 
when he is in pain. Furthermore, I hold that God's point 
of view is not foreign to ours. I hold that God willingly, 
freely, and consciously suffers in us when we suffer, and 
that our grief is his. And despite all this I maintain that 
the world from God's point of view fulfills the divine ideal 
and is perfect And I hold that when we abandon the one- 
sided abstract ideas which the words good, evil, and perfect 
suggest, and when we go back to the concrete experiences 
upon which these very words are founded, we can see, even 



THE PROBLEM OF JOB. 17 

within the limits of our own experience, facts which make 
these very paradoxes perfectly intelligible, and even com- 
monplace. 

As for that essentially pernicious view, nowadays some- 
what current amongst a certain class of gentle but inconse- 
quent people the view that all evil is merely an illusion 
and that there is no such thing in God's world I can say of 
it only in passing that it is often advanced as an idealistic 
view, but that, in my opinion, it is false idealism. Good 
idealism it is to regard all finite experience as an appear- 
ance, a hint, often a very poor hint, of deeper truth. Good 
idealism it is to admit that man can err about truth that lies 
beyond his finite range of experience. And very good 
idealism it is to assert that all truth, and so all finite ex- 
perience, exists in and for the mind of God, and nowhere 
outside of or apart from God. But it is not good idealism 
to assert that any facts which fall within the range of finite 
experience are, even while they are experienced, mere illu- 
sions. God's truth is inclusive, not exclusive. What you 
experience God experiences. The difference lies only in 
this, that God sees in unity what you see in fragments. For 
the rest, if one said, " The source and seat of evil is only the 
error of mortal mind," one would but have changed the 
name of one's problem. If the evil were but the error, 
the error would still be the evil, and altering the name 
would not have diminished the horror of the evil of this 

finite world. 

v. 

But I hasten from the false idealism to the true ; from 
the abstractions to the enlightening insights of our life. As 
a fact, idealism does not say : The finite world is, as such, 
a mere illusion. A sound idealism says, whatever we expe- 
rience is a fragment, and, as far as it goes, a genuine frag- 
ment of the truth of the divine mind. With this principle 
before us, let us consider directly our own experiences of 



18 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

good and of evil, to see whether they are as abstractly op- 
posed to each other as the mere words often suggest. We 
must begin with the elementary and even trivial facts. We 
shall soon come to something deeper. 

By good, as we mortals experience it, we mean something 
that, when it comes or is expected, we actively welcome, try 
to attain or keep, and regard with content. By evil in gen- 
eral, as it is in our experience, we mean whatever we find in 
any sense repugnant and intolerable. I use the words re- 
pugnant and intolerable because I wish to indicate that 
words for evil frequently, like the words for good, directly 
refer to our actions as such. Commonly and rightly, when 
we speak of evil, we make reference to acts of resistance, of 
struggle, of shrinking, of flight, of removal of ourselves 
from a source of mischief acts which not only follow upon 
the experience of evil, but which serve to define in a useful 
fashion what we mean by evil. The opposing acts of pur- 
suit and of welcome define what we mean by good. By the 
evil which we experience we mean precisely whatever we 
regard as something to be gotten rid of, shrunken from, put 
out of sight, of hearing, or of memory, eschewed, expelled, 
assailed, or otherwise directly or indirectly resisted. By 
good we mean whatever we regard as something to be wel- 
comed, pursued, won, grasped, held, persisted in, preserved. 
And we show all this in our acts in presence of any grade of 
good or evil, sensuous, aesthetic, ideal, moral. To shun, to 
flee, to resist, to destroy, these are our primary attitudes 
towards ill; the opposing acts are our primary attitudes 
towards the good ; and whether you regard us as animals or 
as moralists, whether it is a sweet taste, a poem, a virtue, or 
God that we look to as good, and whether it is a burn or a 
temptation, an outward physical foe, or a stealthy, inward, 
ideal enemy, that we regard as evil. In all our organs of 
voluntary movement, in all our deeds, in a turn of the eye, 
in a sigh, a groan, in a hostile gesture, in an act of silent 



THE PROBLEM OF JOB. 19 

contempt, we can show in endlessly varied ways the same 
general attitude of repugnance. 

But man is a very complex creature. He has many or- 
gans. He performs many acts at once, and he experiences 
his performance of these acts in one highly complex life of 
consciousness. As the next feature of his life we all ob- 
serve that he can at the same time shun one object and grasp 
at another. In this way he can have at once present to him 
a consciousness of good and a consciousness of ill. But so 
far in our account these sorts of experience appear merely 
as facts side by side. Man loves, and he also hates, loves 
this, and hates that, assumes an attitude of repugnance 
towards one object, while he welcomes another. So far the 
usual theory follows man's life, and calls it an experience of 
good and ill as mingled but exclusively and abstractly op- 
posed facts. For such a view the final question as to the 
worth of a man's life is merely the question whether there 
are more intense acts of satisfaction and of welcome than of 
repugnance and disdain in his conscious life. 

But this is by no means an adequate notion of the com- 
plexity of man's life, even as an animal. If every conscious 
act of hindrance, of thwarting, of repugnance, means just 
in so far an awareness of some evil, it is noteworthy that 
men can have and can show just such tendencies, not only 
towards external experiences, but towards their own acts. 
That is, men can be seen trying to thwart and to hinder 
even their own acts themselves, at the very moment when 
they note the occurrence of these acts. One can consciously 
have an impulse to do something, and at that very moment 
a conscious disposition to hinder or to thwart as an evil that 
very impulse. If, on the other hand, every conscious act 
of attainment, of pursuit, of reinforcement, involves the 
awareness of some good, it is equally obvious that one can 
show by ono's acts a disposition to reinforce or to emphasize 
or to increase, not only the externally present gifts of for- 



20 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

tune, but also one's own deeds, in so far as one observes 
them. And in our complex lives it is common enough to 
find ourselves actually trying to reinforce and to insist upon 
a situation which involves for us, even at the moment of its 
occurrence, a great deal of repugnance. In such cases we 
often act as if we felt the very thwarting of our own pri- 
mary impulses to be so much of a conscious good that we per- 
sist in pursuing and reinforcing the very situation in which 
this thwarting and hindering of our own impulses is sure to 
arise. 

In brief, as phenomena of this kind show, man is a being 
who can to a very great extent find a sort of secondary sat- 
isfaction in the very act of thwarting his own desires, and 
thus of assuring for the time his own dissatisfactions. On 
the other hand, man can to an indefinite degree find him- 
self dissatisfied with his satisfactions and disposed to thwart, 
not merely his external enemies, but his own inmost im- 
pulses themselves. But I now affirm that in all such cases 
you cannot simply say that man is preferring the less of 
two evils, or the greater of two goods, as if the good and the 
evil stood merely side by side in his experience. On the 
contrary, in such cases, man is not merely setting his acts 
or his estimates of good and evil side by side and taking the 
sum of each ; but he is making his own relatively primary 
acts, impulses, desires, the objects of all sorts of secondary 
impulses, desires, and reflective observations. His whole 
inner state is one of tension ; and he is either making a sec- 
ondary experience of evil out of his estimate of a primary 
experience of good, as is the case when he at once finds 
himself disposed to pursue a given good and to thwart this 
pursuit as being an evil pursuit ; or else he is making a sec- 
ondary experience of good out of his primary experience of 
evil, as when he is primarily dissatisfied with his situation, 
but yet secondarily regards this very dissatisfaction as itself 
a desirable state. In this way man comes not only to love 



THE PROBLEM OF JOB. 21 

some things and also to hate other things, he comes to love 
his own hates and to hate his own loves in an endlessly 
complex hierarchy of superposed interests in his own in- 
terests. 

Now it is easy to say that such states of inner tension, 
where our conscious lives are full of a warfare of the self 
with itself, are contradictory or absurd states. But it is easy 
to say this only when you dwell on the words and fail to 
observe the facts of experience. As a fact, not only our 
lowest but our highest states of activity are the ones which 
are fullest of this crossing, conflict, and complex interrela- 
tion of loves and hates, of attractions and repugnances. As 
a merely physiological fact we begin no muscular act with- 
out at the same time initiating acts which involve the in- 
nervation of opposing sets of muscles, and these opposing 
sets of muscles hinder each other's freedom. Every sort of 
control of movement means the conflicting play of opposed 
muscular impulses. We do nothing simple, and we will no 
complex act without willing what involves a certain meas- 
ure of opposition between the impulses or partial acts which 
go to make up the whole act. If one passes from single acts 
to long series of acts, one finds only the more obviously this 
interweaving of repugnance and of acceptance, of pursuit 
and of flight, upon which every complex type of conduct 
depends. 

One could easily at this point spend time by dwelling 
upon numerous and relatively trivial instances of this inter- 
weaving of conflicting motives as it appears in all our life. 
I prefer to pass such instances over with a mere mention. 
There is, for instance, the whole marvelous consciousness of 
play, in its benign and in its evil forms. In any game that 
fascinates, one loves victory and shuns defeat, and yet as a 
loyal supporter of the game scorns anything that makes 
victory certain in advance ; thus as a lover of fair play pre- 
ferring to risk the defeat that he all the wlu'le shuns, and 



22 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

partly thwarting the very love of victory that from moment 
to moment fires his hopes. There are, again, the numerous 
cases in which we prefer to go to places where we are sure 
to be in a considerable measure dissatisfied ; to engage, for 
instance, in social functions that absorbingly fascinate us 
despite or even in view of the very fact that, as long as they 
continue, they keep us in a state of tension which makes us, 
amongst other things, long to have the whole occasion over. 
Taking a wider view, one may observe that the greater part 
of the freest products of the activity of civilization, in cere- 
monies, in formalities, in the long social drama of flight, of 
pursuit, of repartee, of contest and of courtesy, involve an 
elaborate and systematic delaying and hindering of ele- 
mental human desires, which we continually outwit, post- 
pone and thwart, even while we nourish them. When stu- 
dents of human nature assert that hunger and love rule the 
social world, they recognize that the elemental in human 
nature is trained by civilization into the service of the high- 
est demands of the Spirit. But such students have to recog- 
nize that the elemental rules the higher world only in so 
far as the elemental is not only cultivated, but endlessly 
thwarted, delayed, outwitted, like a constitutional monarch, 
who is said to be a sovereign, but who, while he rules, must 
not govern. 

But I pass from such instances, which in all their uni- 
versality are still, I admit, philosophically speaking, trivial, 
because they depend upon the accidents of human nature. 
I pass from these instances to point out what must be the 
law, not only of human nature, but of every broader form 
of life as well. I maintain that this organization of life by 
virtue of the tension of manifold impulses and interests is 
not a mere accident of our imperfect human nature, but 
must be a type of the organization of every rational life. 
There are good and bad states of tension, there are conflicts 
that can only be justified when resolved into some higher 



THE PROBLEM OF JOB. 23 

form of harmony. But I insist that, in general, the only 
harmony that can exist in the realm of the spirit is the har- 
mony that we possess when we thwart the present but more 
elemental impulse for the sake of the higher unity of expe- 
rience ; as when we rejoice in the endurance of the tragedies 
of life, because they show us the depth of life, or when we 
know that it is better to have loved and lost than never to 
have loved at all, or when we possess a virtue in the mo- 
ment of victory over the tempter. And the reason why 
this is true lies in the fact that the more one's experience 
fulfills ideals, the more that experience presents to one, not 
of ignorance, but of triumphantly wealthy acquaintance 
with the facts of manifold, varied and tragic life, full of 
tension and thereby of unity. Now this is an universal and 
not merely human law. It is not those innocent of evil 
who are fullest of the life of God, but those who in their 
own case have experienced the triumph over evil. It is not 
those naturally ignorant of fear, or those who, like Sieg- 
fried, have never shivered, who possess the genuine experi- 
ence of courage : but the brave are those who have fears, 
but control their fears. Such know the genuine virtues of 
the hero. Were it otherwise, only the stupid could be per- 
fect heroes. 

To be sure it is quite false to say, as the foolish do, that 
the object of life is merely that we may " know life " as an 
irrational chaos of experiences of good and of evil. But 
knowing the good in life is a matter which concerns the 
form, rather than the mere content of life. One who knows 
lifo wisely knows indeed much of the content of life; but 
he knows the good of life in so far as, in the unity of his 
experience, he finds the evil of his experience not abolished, 
but subordinated, and in so far relatively thwarted by a 
control which annuls its triumph even while experiencing 
its existence, 



24 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 



VI. 

Generalizing the lesson of experience we may then say : 
It is logically impossible that a complete knower of truth 
should fail to know, to experience, to have present to his 
insight, the fact of actually existing evil. On the other 
hand, it is equally impossible for one to know a higher good 
than comes from the subordination of evil to good in a total 
experience. When one first loving, in an elemental way, 
whatever you please, himself hinders, delays, thwarts his 
elemental interest in the interest of some larger whole of 
experience, he not only knows more fact, but he possesses a 
higher good than would or could be present to one who was 
aware neither of the elemental impulse, nor of the thwarting 
of it in the tension of a richer life. The knowing of the 
good, in the higher sense, depends upon contemplating the 
overcoming and subordination of a less significant impulse, 
which survives even in order that it should be subordinated. 
Now this law, this form of the knowledge of the good, ap- 
plies as well to the existence of moral as to that of sensuous 
ill. If moral evil were simply destroyed and wiped away 
from the external world, the knowledge of moral goodness 
would also be destroyed. For the love of moral good is the 
thwarting of lower loves for the sake of the higher organ- 
ization. What is needed, then, for the definition of the 
divine knowledge of a world that in its wholeness is per- 
fect, is not a divine knowledge that shall ignore, wipe out 
and utterly make naught the existence of any ill, whether 
physical or moral, but a divine knowledge to which shall 
be present that love of the world as a whole which is ful- 
filled in the endurance of physical ill, in the subordination 
of moral ill, in the thwarting of impulses which survive 
even when subordinated, in the acceptance of repugnances 
which are still eternal, in the triumph over an enemy that 
endures even through its eternal defeat, and in the discov- 



THE PROBLEM OF JOB. 25 

ery that the endless tension of the finite world is included 
in the contemplative consciousness of the repose and har- 
mony of eternity. To view God's nature thus is to view his 
nature as the whole idealistic theory views him, not as the 
Infinite One beyond the finite imperfections, but as the be- 
ing whose unity determines the very constitution, the lack, 
the tension, and relative disharmony of the finite world. 

The existence of evil, then, is not only consistent with 
the perfection of the universe, but is necessary for the very 
existence of that perfection. This is what we see when we 
no longer permit ourselves to be deceived by the abstract 
meanings of the words good and evil into thinking that 
these two opponents exist merely as mutually exclusive 
facts side by side in experience, but when we go back to the 
facts of life and perceive that all relatively higher good, in 
the trivial as in the more truly spiritual realm, is known 
only in so far as, from some higher reflective point of view, 
we accept as good the thwarting of an existent interest that 
is even thereby declared to be a relative ill, and love a ten- 
sion of various impulses which even thereby involves, as 
the object of our love, the existence of what gives us aver- 
sion or grief. Now if the love of God is more inclusive 
than the love of man, even as the divine world of experi- 
ence is richer than the human world, we can simply set no 
human limit to the intensity of conflict, to the tragedies of 
existence, to the pangs of finitude, to the degree of moral 
ill, which in the end is included in the life that God not 
only loves, but finds the fulfillment of the perfect ideal. If 
peace means satisfaction, acceptance of the whole of an 
experience as good, and if even we, in our weakness, can 
frequently find rest in the very presence of conflict and of 
tension, in the very endurance of ill in a good cause, in the 
hero's triumph over temptation, or in the mourner's tearless 
refusal to accept the lower comforts of forgetfulness, or to 
wish that the lost one's preciousness had been less painfully 



26 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

revealed by death well, if even we know our little share of 
this harmony in the midst of the wrecks and disorders of 
life, what limit shall we set to the divine power to face this 
world of his own sorrows, and to find peace in the victory 
over all its ills. 

But in this last expression I have pronounced the word 
that serves to link this theory as to the place of evil in a 
good world with the practical problem of every sufferer. 
Job's rebellion came from the thought that God, as a sover- 
eign, is far off, and that, for his pleasure, his creature suffers. 
Our own theory comes to the mourner with the assurance : 
"Your suffering, just as it is in you, is God's suffering. No 
chasm divides you from God. He is not remote from you 
even in his eternity. He is here. His eternity means mere- 
ly the completeness of his experience. But that complete- 
ness is inclusive. Your sorrow is one of the included facts." 
I do not say : " God sympathizes with you from without, 
would spare you if he could, pities you with helpless exter- 
nal pity merely as a father pities his children." I say : 
" God here sorrows, not with but in your sorrow. Your 
grief is identically his grief, and what you know as your 
loss, God knows as his loss, just in and through the very 
moment when you grieve." 

But hereupon the sufferer perchance responds : " If this 
is God's loss, could he not have prevented it ? To him are 
present in unity all the worlds ; and yet he must lack just 
this for which I grieve." I respond : " He suffers here that 
he may triumph. For the triumph of the wise is no easy 
thing. Their lives are not light, but sorrowful. Yet they 
rejoice in their sorrow, not, to be sure, because it is mere 
experience, but because, for them, it becomes part of a stren- 
uous whole of life. They wander and find their home even 
in wandering. They long, and attain through their very 
love of longing. Peace they find in triumphant warfare. 
Contentment they have most of all in endurance. Sover- 






THE PROBLEM OP JOB. 27 

eignty they win in endless service. The eternal world con- 
tains Gethsemane." 

Yet the mourner may still insist : '' If my sorrow is God's, 
his triumph is not mine. Mine is the woe. His is the 
peace." But my theory is a philosophy. It proposes to be 
coherent. I must persist : " It is your fault that you are 
thus sundered from God's triumph. His experience in its 
wholeness cannot now be yours, for you just as you this 
individual are now but a fragment, and see his truth as 
through a glass darkly. But if you see his truth at all, 
through even the dimmest light of a glimmering reason, 
remember, that truth is in fact your own truth, your own 
fulfillment, the whole from which your life cannot be di- 
vorced, the reality that you mean even when you most 
doubt, the desire of your heart even when you are most 
blind, the perfection that you unconsciously strove for even 
when you were an infant, the complete Self apart from 
whom you mean nothing, the very life that gives your life 
the only value which it can have. In thought, if not in the 
fulfillment of thought, in aim if not in attainment of aim, 
in aspiration if not in the presence of the revealed fact, you 
can view God's triumph and peace as your triumph and 
peace. Your defeat will be no less real than it is, nor will 
you falsely call your evil a mere illusion. But you will see 
not only the grief but the truth, your truth, your rescue, 
your triumph." 

Well, to what ill-fortune does not just such reasoning 
apply ? I insist : our conclusion is essentially universal. It 
discounts any evil that experience may contain. All the 
horrors of the natural order, all the concealments of the 
divine plan by our natural ignorance, find their general re- 
lation to the unity of the divine experience indicated in ad- 
vance by this account of the problem of evil. 

" Yes," one may continue, " ill-fortune you have dis- 
covered, but how about moral evil ? What if the sinner 



28 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

now triumphantly retorts: 'Aha! So my will is God's 
will. All then is well with me.' " I reply : What I have 
said disposes of moral ill precisely as definitely as of physi- 
cal ill. What the evil will is to the good man, whose good- 
ness depends upon its existence, but also upon the thwart- 
ing and the condemnation of its aim, just such is the sinner's 
will to the divine plan. God's will, we say to the sinner, is 
your will. Yes, but it is your will thwarted, scorned, over- 
come, defeated. In the eternal world you are seen, pos- 
sessed, present, but your damnation is also seen including 
and thwarting you. Your apparent victory in this world 
stands simply for the vigor of your impulses. God wills 
you not to triumph. And that is the use of you in the 
world the use of evil generally to be hated but endured, 
to be triumphed over through the very fact of your presence, 
to be willed down even in the very life of which you are a 
part. 

But to the serious moral agent we say : What you mean 
when you say that evil in this temporal world ought not to 
exist, and ought to be suppressed, is simply what God means 
by seeing that evil ought to be and is endlessly thwarted, en- 
dured, but subordinated. In the natural world you are the 
minister of God's triumph. Your deed is his. You can 
never clean the world of evil ; but you can subordinate evil. 
The justification of the presence in the world of the morally 
evil becomes apparent to us mortals only in so far as this 
evil is overcome and condemned. It exists only that it may 
be cast down. Courage, then, for God works in you. In 
the order of time you embody in outer acts what is for him 
the truth of his eternity. 



IL 
THE CASE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 

THE casuistry of the numerous forms of insistent mental 
processes of a pathological character has of late years become 
very extensive. The names and sub-classes of these mor- 
bidly insistent kinds of feeling, thought, or volition have oc- 
casionally been multiplied beyond any reason, until, in 
view of the endless "manias" and "phobias" 1 that some 
writers have been disposed to dignify with special titles, I 
myself have sometimes wondered whether it would not be 
wise for some one, in the interests of good sense, to try to 
check this process by defining, as a peculiarly dangerous 
type of insistent impulses, a " new mental disorder," to be 
described as the " mania " for multiplying words ending in 
mania or in phobia. Meanwhile, despite this inconven- 
ience, and despite numerous hasty speculations upon the 
whole subject, there can be no doubt that the theoretical 
interest of these morbidly insistent mental processes is great, 
and that the pathological secret and the genuine natural 
classification of these disorders will be such as well to repay 
the trouble of the most minute study of cases, if only that 
secret ever comes to be made out, and that natural classifi- 
cation is ever set up. And while we wait for further light, 
the careful preliminary scrutiny of cases is indeed the only 
course open to students of psychology. 

The present paper is but a very modest contribution to 
the casuistry of the morbidly insistent mental processes. I 



30 STUDIES OF GOOD 'AND EVIL. 

have no new phobia or mania to define, and in any case I 
speak only as student of psychology. The medical reader 
might be able to see much more in the documents to which 
I here wish to attract his attention than I am able to see. 
My task is simply one of summary and report. The case to 
which I wish to call attention is meanwhile one of peculiar 
interest, namely, that of the author of the Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress. The principal document concerned is John Bunyan's 
remarkable confession, entitled Grace Abounding to the 
Chief of Sinners, an autobiographical statement which 
Bunyan wrote and published, as the title-page tells us, " for 
the support of the weak and tempted people of God." This 
little book is, from the literary point of view, of very high 
interest, ranking, as I suppose, amongst all the author's 
works, second only to the great Pilgrim's Progress itself. 
As a record of human experience, the Grace Abounding 
will never lose its charm, both for lovers of religious biog- 
raphy, and for admirers of honesty, of sincerity, and of sim- 
ple pathos. Nothing that can be said as to the psychological 
significance of the author's recorded experiences will ever 
detract from the worth of the book, even when viewed just 
as the author viewed it, as a "support " for the " weak and 
tempted." Bunyan, as we shall see, had at one time a de- 
cidedly heavy and morbid burden to bear. But, like many 
another nervous sufferer of the " strong type " (Koch's 
starker Typus), Bunyan carried this burden with heroic 
perseverance, and in the end won the mastery over it by a 
most instructive kind of self-discipline. In view of this 
fact, a clearer recognition of the nature of the burden, 
from the psychological point of view, rather helps than 
hinders our admiration for the author's genius, and our re- 
spect for his unconquerable manhood. It is this sort of 
case, in fact, that renders the study of the nervous disorders 
so frequently associated with genius, a pursuit adapted, in 
very many instances, not to cheapen our sense of the dig- 



THE CASE OP JOHN BUNTAN. 31 

nity of genius, but to heighten our reverence for the 
strength that could contend, as some men of genius have 
done, with their disorders, and that could conquer the nerv- 
ous " Apollyon " on his own chosen battle-ground. 

But an estimate of Bunyan's genius belongs not here. I 
venture only to say that I write as an especially profound 
admirer of this wonderful and untaught artist, whose home- 
ly style shows in almost every line the born master, whose 
simple realism in portraying human character as he saw it 
amongst the live men about him often puts to shame the 
ingenuity of scores of cunning literary craftsmen in these 
our own most realistic days, and whose few highest flights 
of poetic imagination, such as the closing scenes of the first 
part of the Pilgrim's Progress, belong without question in 
the really loftiest regions of art. Range of invention, self- 
control in production, perfect objectivity in the portrayal of 
human life these are leading traits in the work of this 
man ; and these things, as well as others that we shall later 
see, forever forbid our classing Bunyan, taken as a whole, 
amongst the weaklings. It is perfectly consistent with this 
fact, however, when we find this admirable man and artist 
living, for a bitter and instructive period of his early years, 
a life of stern conflict with a nervous foe of a fairly recog- 
nizable and, under the circumstances, decidedly grave type. 
How, unaided and ignorant, he won the victory, is in itself 
an interesting tale. And, for the rest, the case tends to 
throw light on the interesting problem as to how far the 
presence of elaborate insistent mental processes of a morbid 
type is of itself a sufficient indication of the depth of the 
" degeneracy " of constitution of the subject who is for a 
time burdened with them.* That Bunyan's malady must 



* The frequent association of the morbidly insistent processes with the 
nervously " degenerate " type is a commonplace in the literature of the sub- 
ject, and a few yean since it was, 1 believe, an almost if not quite universal 
4 



32 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

have had a certain constitutional basis will, I suppose, ap- 
pear decidedly probable to most readers of the following 
summary. Yet it will be hard to question the fact that, 
quite apart from his special creative abilities, Bunyan's 
general constitution his extraordinary and persistent 
power of work, his long endurance of very serious mental 
and physical hardships, his reasonably lengthy life of sixty 
years (ended by an acute disease, due to an exposure), his 
apparently even temper and self-possession in later years, 
his sustained influence over men as leader, adviser, and 
preacher when taken altogether, must give us an idea of 
his inherited organization that will, in any event, stand in a 
fairly strong contrast to the impression that the temporary 
nervous disorder of his early manhood, if it were taken 
alone, would leave upon our minds. 

But a deeper estimate of such things I must leave to 
more competent judges. I have here only to present the 

facts. 

I. 

John Bunyan was born November 30, 1628, and died 
August 31, 1688. The principal known facts of his life 
which bear in any way upon the question of his health and 
constitution, apart from the narrative in the Grace 
Abounding, are as follows : * Bunyan was a native of the 

dogma that considerable masses of insistent fears, impulses, or thoughts 
occurred only as part of the " stigmata " of degeneracy. The possibility of 
the development of even elaborate systems of such insistent impulses upon 
a basis of wholly acquired neurasthenia was maintained by Dr. Cowles, in 
his well-known paper on Insistent and Fixed Ideas in the American Jour- 
nal of Psychology (vol. i. p. 222 sq.), and has also been asserted by others. 
* I use, for the most part, the principal recent biography, that of John 
Brown (2d edition, London, 1886) an elaborate and extremely patient re- 
search into every discoverable detail relating to Bunyan's family and for- 
tunes. Other recent accounts are those of Venables (in the " Great Writers " 
series, London, 1888) and of Froude (in the " English Men of Letters" 



THE CASE OP JOHN BUNYAN. 33 

little village of Elstow, near Bedford. His family can be 
traced in Bedfordshire as far back as 1200. In the sixteenth 
century, an ancestor of Bunyan, and the wife of this ances- 
tor, appear in court records as brewers and bakers. Thomas 
Bunyan, his grandfather, was "a small village trader." 
Difficulties in the courts are the occasion of some of the 
records preserved of these ancestors, but the difficulties 
named are petty, e. g., minor violations of excise laws, dis- 
respect to churchwardens, and perhaps religious nonconfor- 
mity. * Bunyan's father was notoriously, like Bunyan 
himself, a " tinker " or " brasier," probably, says Brown, 
" neither better nor worse than the rest of the craftsmen of 
the hammer and the forge." Tinkers had, to be sure, in 
that time and place, a reputation as rather hard drinkers ; 
but on the other hand they wandered much on foot, and so 
lived freely out of doors. Bunyan's father lived until 1676, 
dying at seventy-three years of age. The poet's mother was 
of a poor but very honest and thrifty family ; she died 
when John Bunyan himself had reached the age of fifteen. 
Little more is known of the family before we reach our 
poet himself. He was not an only child. One sister is 
known to have died early. One brother is known to have 
lived until 1695. 

Of John Bunyan's childhood history we shall see a little 
soon. In youth he was apparently, until after the time of 
his marriage, of pretty lusty health. The " wicked " early 
life of which he speaks so severely in his Grace Abounding 
proves, on the whole, to have been, physically speaking, a 
wholesome life, during all the time preceding his marriage 
and his conversion. Alcoholic excesses and unchastity are, 
in the opinion of all his modern biographers, nearly or quite 

cries). The ground hut thus been very thoroughly gone over, for all 
literary purpoaea, in recent yean. 
Brown, pp. 27-81. 



34: STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

excluded by what we most certainly know of liim at this 
time. At about sixteen years of age Bunyan was enrolled in 
the army, probably on the Parliamentary side, and remained 
some two years in service, but apparently without any physi- 
cal ill effects. He married at twenty years of age, both him- 
self and his wife being very poor. He now followed his 
trade as tinker. Within the next four years fall, first his 
conversion, and then the experiences of which we are princi- 
pally to speak in what follows. In these years, furthermore, 
falls also the birth of his first child, a daughter who was 
very early blind. In 1653, after he had passed through 
these principal experiences, he joined the church in Bed- 
ford. In 1654 his second child was born, also a daughter. 
In 1655 he began that career as preacher which he contin- 
ued thenceforward, so far as he was permitted to do so, until 
the end. In 1660 he was imprisoned in the county jail at 
Bedford, for violating the law by acting as an irregular 
preacher ; and there he remained, in a confinement which 
varied in its degrees of strictness, for some twelve years. 
The physical strain of this imprisonment must have been 
great, and the mental anxieties involved were of the sever- 
est, as we learn from his own account ; yet Bunyan plainly 
experienced no return of his previous mental troubles with 
anything like their old force. He was now often weak in 
body and depressed in mind, but never long despairing. 
He busied himself both in preaching to his fellow-prisoners 
and in writing. He was released in 1672. For three years 
thereafter he was at liberty. In 1675-6 he suffered a second 
imprisonment, during which it was, according to recent re- 
search, that he wrote the Pilgrim's Progress.* Thenceforth 
he continued working as writer and preacher to the end. 
The list of his works contains " sixty pieces," says his first 
bibliographer, " and he was sixty years of age." One stand- 

* Brown, p. 254 ; Venables, p. 151. 



THE CASE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 35 

ard edition occupies four volumes octavo. His works are, 
of course, largely theological. They are certainly laborious 
productions, even apart from the genius involved ; for this 
man was never trained to write. 

As to his health otherwise, we know that after 1653 there 
was a time in his early life when, as he says, " I was much 
inclining to a consumption, wherewith, about the Spring, I 
was suddenly and violently seized with much weakness in 
my outward man, insomuch that I thought I could not live." 
Other times, still later, he mentions, when he was " very ill 
and weak '' ; and he notes great depression of spirits as char- 
acteristic of his state at all such times.* Brown t holds, 
concerning Bunyan, that " at any time he was far from 
strong " as to physical health. But when one considers his 
remarkable activity both as writer and preacher, and the 
long and severe strains to which he had been subject before 
he reached sixty years of age, and when one remembers also 
the possibly hypochondriac nature of the disorders of which 
his own account, as just cited, speaks, it seems hard, after 
all, to form any exact opinion as to the actual degree of the 
physical weakness of his constitution. One is disposed to 
set the work done and the external sufferings endured over 
against the rather meagre record of later illnesses in his life. 
14 His friend," says Brown (a friend, namely, who wrote an 
account of Bunyan), " tells us that though he was only sixty 
he was worn out with sufferings, age, and often teaching." 
One remembers hereupon that a persecuted genius who 
had written 44 sixty pieces" without having received any 
sort of early scholarly training, and who had passed 
more than twelve years in unjust imprisonment, and all 



* " The Tempter did beset me strongly (for I find ho is much for as- 
saulting tho soul when it begins to approach towards tho grave, then in his 
opportunity)." Grace Abounding (Clarendon Press Ed.), p. 876. 

t Op. cit., p. 890. 



36 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

his life in struggle, had a right to be somewhat worn at 
sixty. 

He died of " a violent fever," or, as others say, of " the 
sweating distemper," after having been exposed to " heavy 
rains and drenched to the skin " while on a preaching jour- 
ney. Bunyan was twice married. He had in all three 
daughters and three sons. His first child, born during the 
time of his early disorder a daughter was, as observed 
above, blind, and died before him. Descendants of another 
of his daughters are the only descendants of Bunyan still 
known to survive. The later history of the family is in- 
complete, but, as reported by Brown, contains nothing of 
any note for our present purpose no record, namely, of re- 
markable disease or ability. 

Of Bunyan's outward seeming, in his later years, we 
have two good accounts by contemporaries. One runs 
thus: 

" As for his person, he was tall of stature, strong-boned, 
though not corpulent, somewhat of a ruddy face, with spar- 
kling eyes ; . . . his hair reddish, but in his latter days time had 
sprinkled it with gray ; his nose well set, but not declining 
or bending, and his mouth moderately large ; his forehead 
something high, and his habit always plain and modest. 
He appeared in countenance to be of a stern and rough 
temper, but in his conversation mild and affable, not given 
to loquacity or much discourse in company, unless some 
urgent occasion required it; observing never to boast of 
himself or his parts, but rather to seem low in his own 
eyes and submit himself to the judgment of others. . . . 
He had a sharp quick eye, accomplished with an excellent 
discerning of persons, being of good judgment and quick 
wit" 

The other account speaks of his countenance as " grave 
and sedate," and of a sort to " strike something of awe into 
thorn that had nothing of the fear of God." The writer adds 



THE CASE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 37 

that his memory was " tenacious, it being customary with 
him to commit his sermons to writing after he had preached 
them." Bunyan's executive ability in church management 
and discipline is also noted in this account. As to his 
eloquence as a preacher, all accounts agree. This* great 
" dreamer," then, was also, in his later years, a man of de- 
cided practical power, dignified in bearing, accustomed to 

control other men. 

II. 

So much, then, for the man as a whole. As to the ex- 
periences of his early manhood, recorded in the Grace 
Abounding, biographers in general have felt their perplex- 
ing intensity and abnormity, but have been accustomed 
either to refer them once for all to Bunyan's theological 
associations and ideas, or else to conceive them as indeed 
somehow pathological, but then to define their abnormal 
nature with the utmost looseness and confusedness.* 

Patent, then, as are the reported experiences, beautifully 
as Bunyan confesses them, transparently as he unveils him- 
self, one still has to go almost alone in trying to portray 
their actual connections ; for biographer after biographer 

* Macaulay, for instance, in his Miscellanies, declares that, at a certain 
point, Bunyan's mind began to be u fearfully disordered " ; but he then 
proceeds, with a very undiscriminating analysis of the data, to define Bun- 
yan's mental symptoms so that, if this analysis were sound, they would 
make up a case of what we should now define as u hallucinatory delirium.' 1 
This Bunyan's disorder very certainly was not, in any fashion whatever. 
Taine, who, as psychologist, should have seen more clearly, is, in his way 
(in the account of Bunyan in the English Literature), almost equally con- 
fused as to Bunyan's true temperament and condition, and even imagines 
the calm and self-possessed art of Pilgrim's Progress to be the outcome of 
the " inflamed brain " whose sufferings are depicted in the Grace Abound- 
ing. But the Bunyan of 1650 was not yet the Bunyan of the Pilgrim'?* 
Progress of 167.5. Venables and Brown, well as they summarize the salient 
facts, fail to sec their psychological significance. Froude also appears to 
go wholly astray in this respect 



38 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

has passed these connections by with blindfold eyes. Yet 
the story, read in its psychological aspect, is as follows : 

As a child Bunyan showed some of the familiar signs 
of the sensitive brain. He is not at all concerned, in his 
Autobiography, to gossip as to any minor matters. He tells 
us almost nothing of the externals of his life. He is wholly 
concerned in setting forth what God has done for his soul. 
He feels it worth while, however, to describe to us, in be- 
ginning the narration of his spiritual conflicts, certain of 
his early mental experiences. In childhood, so we learn, his 
" cursing, swearing, lying, and blaspheming " were very 
marked faults. To quote his own words : " So settled and 
rooted was I in these things, that they became as a second 
Nature to me. The which, as I have with soberness considered 
since, did so offend the Lord, that even in my Childhood He 
did scare and affright me with fearful Dreams, and did terrify 
me with dreadful Visions. For often after I had spent this 
and the other day in sin, I have in my Bed been greatly 
afflicted, while asleep, with the apprehensions of Devils and 
wicked Spirits, who still, as I then thought, laboured to 
draw me away with them, of which I could never be rid." 
To these persistent nocturnal terrors there were added still 
other and evidently often waking troubles, "thoughts of 
the Day of Judgment," which gave him fears and "dis- 
tressed " his " soul," " both night and day," so that " I was 
often much cast down and afflicted . . . yet could I not let go 
my sins." These experiences came " when I was but a child, 
nine or ten years old." " Yea," he adds, " I was also then 
so overcome with despair of life and heaven, that I should 
often wish either that there had been no Hell, or that I had 
been a Devil supposing they were only Tormentors ; that 
if it must needs be that I went thither, I might be rather a 
Tormentor, than tormented myself." Of such early suffer- 
ings we have several accounts besides the foregoing sum- 
mary statements. 



THE CASE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 39 

Childhood experiences of this sort have to be estimated 
as important in direct proportion to their depth and in 
inverse proportion to their dependence upon the sugges- 
tions to which a given child is subjected. These dreams 
were, plainly, in some instances, very elaborate and detailed. 
Bunyan's later youthful ignorance, so freely confessed, 
concerning all theological matters indicates, however, that 
these fears and this despair were no part of any very co- 
herent system of childish thoughts on religious topics. The 
content of his "terrible dreams" was of course derived 
from what he heard at church and elsewhere ; but a suf- 
ficient basis, in these suggested ideas, for such marked 
trouble, seems very improbable. That the nocturnal terrors 
and the despair were in part primary symptoms of nervous 
irritability, one can thus hardly doubt. As to the depth of 
the experiences themselves, the very fact of Bunyan's care- 
ful report of them is, under the circumstances, convinc- 
ing. For his Autobiography is, as has just been noted, 
extremely reticent as to all matters that he does not con- 
sider essential parts of the tale of God's dealings with his 
soul. 

In youth, at what seems to have been the healthiest 
period of his life, these dreams left him, and were "soon 
forgot ... as if they never had been." And now began 
the wilful and sinful time which Bunyan later so unspar- 
ingly condemns. That his sins did not include unchastity 
or drunkenness seems, as aforesaid, clear to all his recent 
biographers, and for good reasons too, into which I need not 
here enter. Bunyan was now a very active and daring lad, 
who, in his almost complete ignorance, as Froude and 
others have observed, had no other way of expressing his 
genius than by " inventing lies to amuse his companions, 
and swearing they were true " (Froude's expression), and 
by showing extraordinary ingenuity as the chief swearer 
and wild talker of the village, so that even " very loose and 



40 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

ungodly " wretches, as Bunyan tells us, were shocked by 
the flood of bad language in which this still unconscious 
poet was moved to voice his latent powers. These offenses, 
and the still worse crime of playing tip-cat on Sundays, 
abide later in Bunyan's memory as evidences of the depth 
of his lost condition during these days. Meanwhile, despite 
the vulgarity of his surroundings, and the restless way- 
wardness of his life, Bunyan would otherwise appear to 
have been, on the whole, an exceptionally pure-minded 
youth. His early education, obtained in a local school, was 
extremely meagre. 

His boyish marriage must have involved serious respon- 
sibilities. He and his young wife had at first not " so much 
household stuff as a Dish or Spoon " between them. But 
the wife, " whose Father was counted godly," had, as her 
inheritance from this now dead father, two religious books, 
which Bunyan read with her, yet, so far as he was con- 
cerned, without " conviction." But ere long these books 
and his wife's speech " did beget within me some desires to 
religion," and for a while Bunyan attended church busily, 
" still retaining my wicked life," but already feeling some 
doubtful concern as to his own salvation, and much admi- 
ration for the formal side of church worship. A sermon 
against Sabbath-breaking brought him bis first "convic- 
tion." After service and dinner, that day, when his full 
stomach had made him already cheerfully forget his tran- 
sient remorse, he went, as usually on Sunday afternoons, to 
play his game of cat. But having struck the cat one blow 
from the hole, " just as I was about to strike it a second 
time, a Voice did suddenly dart from Heaven into my Soul, 
which said, Wilt thou leave thy sins arid go to Heaven, or 
have thy sins and go to Hell ? At this," he goes on, " I 
was put to an exceeding maze. Wherefore, leaving my 
Cat upon the ground, I looked up to Heaven, and was as if 
I had, with the Eyes of my understanding, seen the Lord 



THE CASE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 41 

Jesus looking down upon me, as being very hotly dis- 
pleased with me. and as if he did severely threaten me." 
The result of this sudden internal vision, of which he said 
nothing to his comrades, was an immediate sense of his gen- 
eral sinfulness, and an overwhelming despair, which kept 
him standing " in the midst of my Play, before all that 
were then present," until, with a swift dialectic character- 
istic of all his later experiences, he had reasoned out the 
conclusion that it was now too late, since he had sinned so 
much, and that the only hope was to go back to sin, and 
take his fill of present sweets. " I can but be damned, and 
if I must be so, I had as good be damned for many sins as 
damned for few." He thereupon went on with the game, 
and in the immediately subsequent days swore, played, and 
" went on in sin with great greediness of mind." 

The automatic internal vision, seen with " the eyes of the 
understanding," but seen more or less suddenly, with extraor- 
dinary detail and with strong emotional accompaniment, ap- 
pears henceforth as a frequent incident in Bunyan's inner 
life, and later became, of course, the main source of his pe- 
culiar artistic power. He was plainly always a good vis- 
ualizer. But this automatic organization of his images was 
an added characteristic of the man, and an invaluable one. 
This " power of vision " remained, as the Pilgrim's Progress 
itself shows, late in life; and without it our "dreamer's" 
genius could not be conceived. In his times of depression 
these visions, in later days, took on the shading of his 
mood ; but in themselves they were of course signs, not of 
depression, but of poetic power. Apart from other and seri- 
ous causes of disturbance they plainly never approached 
near to any hallucinatory degree ; and Bunyan always de- 
scribes them so as to distinguish them clearly from hal- 
lucinations, even when his condition, as described, is one of 
great agitation. 

Shortly after this time the reproof of a neighbor again 



42 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

startled Bunyan from his reckless ways, and he resolved to 
begin in earnest the work of reform. The result was a pe- 
riod of a year (or probably somewhat less), during which he 
undertook nothing less than a systematic course of consci- 
entious self -suppression. He " left " his swearing at once, 
and in a way that astonished himself. He gave up his 
games as vain practices; after a long struggle he even 
abandoned dancing. He read the Bible ; he lived a life of 
reform that astonished his neighbors ; " for this my conver- 
sion was as great as for Tom of Bethlem to become a sober 
man." Inhibition of all outwardly suspicious deeds became 
the one rule of his life. He still wholly lacked what he 
later regarded as true piety, and he indulged in some spir- 
itual pride in view of the approbation of his neighbors ; but 
he cultivated a painful scrupulosity. We can well conceive 
how the material cares that beset this very poor but now 
married youth, and this sudden change from a careless life, 
of numerous relaxations, to an existence wherein every act 
was a matter of scruple, and wherein the opinions of all his 
neighbors were now so much taken into account, must have 
involved a considerable strain. The immediate consequences 
were characteristic of the whole case. 

in. 

" Now you must know," says Bunyan, " that before this 
I had taken much delight in Ringing,* but my Conscience 
beginning to be tender, I thought such practice was but 
vain, and therefore forced myself to leave it, yet my mind 
hankered. Wherefore I should go to the Steeple-house, 
and look on it, though I durst not ring. . . . But quickly- 
after, I began to think, How if one of the Bells should. 

* I. e., of course, in ringing the chimes of the village church. Venablcs 
has skilfully pointed out, in various passages of Bunyan's writings, how 
deep a train of associations this practice later involved for the poet 



THE CASE OP JOHN BUNYAN. 43 

fall ? Then I chose to stand under a main Beam, that lay 
overthwart the Steeple, from side to side, thinking there I 
might stand sure. But then I should think again, Should 
the Bell fall with a swing, it might first hit the wall, and 
then rebounding upon me, might kill me for all this Beam. 
This made me stand in the Steeple-door ; and now, thought 
I. I am safe enough ; for, if a Bell should then fall I can 
slip out behind these thick Walls, and so be preserved not- 
withstanding. So after this I would yet go to see them 
ring, but would not go further than the Steeple-door. But 
then it came into my Head, How if the Steeple itself should 
fall ? And this thought, it may fall for aught I know, 
when I stood and looked on, did continually so shake my 
mind that I durst not stand at the Steeple-door any longer, 
but was forced to flee for fear the Steeple should fall on my 
head." 

The parallel between Bunyan's case and that of Dr. 
Cowles's patient, whose experience is so fully described in 
the remarkable paper before cited, will from this point on- 
wards become interesting to us. It is noteworthy that Dr. 
Cowles's patient, after some history of childhood fears, 
beginning at about ten years of age, became, for a time. 
" well of these morbid experiences," * but afterwards, in 
youth, experienced a fresh form of her previous disorder, 
and met this relapse at first in the form of " feelings of hesi- 
tation in performing simple acts," with a consequent neces- 
sity of repeating many such acts to be sure that they were 
right " From this point," says Dr. Cowles of his patient, 
"all the rest follows in its morbid train." The fortunes of 
Bunyan were to be, up to a certain point, decidedly similar. 
The childhood period, with its warning terrors, had given 
place for a time to a healthy youth. But the elementary 
conscientious fears which now appeared, and which forced 



288. 



44 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

the lately reckless Bunyan to outward acts of unreasonable 
timidity, were soon to give place, as in Dr. Cowles's patient, 
to far more insistent and systematized impulses. In both of 
these cases the topics about which the insistent impulses 
finally systematized were matters of inner conscientious 
scruples. In both cases the general outward bearing and 
conduct long remained as far as possible normal, except 
where the inner sufferings of the patient must perforce 
break through and show themselves. In Bunyan's case it 
is interesting that these first signs of the coming storm were 
motor reflexes of a timid and partly of a morbidly inhibi- 
tory sort, produced irresistibly at the sound of those bells 
which he had so much loved to hear, and which, as Vena- 
bles has shown by quotations from his later works, he 
never afterwards learned to forget. 

The conversation of certain poor and godly people about 
this time revealed to Bunyan that, with all his legality, he 
had not yet learned what the true spiritual life is ; and 
herewith began a second stage of his conversion. The con- 
sequence was much continuous meditation upon this higher 
religious life, and "a softness and tenderness of Heart," 
whereby his mind became " fixed on Eternity," and, for the 
time, refused " to be taken from Heaven to Earth." Theolog- 
ical controversy with companions added itself to the fore- 
going to intensify Bunyan's interest in the secret of true 
faith. He now constantly read the Bible, which, however, 
to him, in his environment, seemed rather a collection of 
texts than of connected treatises. Henceforth his inner life 
was full of a not uncommon, but in his case especially 
significant, associative process, whereby he was largely at 
the mercy of any single text of his now well-thumbed Bible 
that at any moment might chance to occur to him, wholly 
separated, of course, from its context He might be de- 
pressed. At such a time a threatening or discouraging text 
would come to mind ; this or that Scripture would " creep 



THE CASE OP JOHN BUNYAN. 45 

into his soul," and wound him, or chill him all through. 
He could in but very small degree resist the effect of 
chance association by recalling the original relations or the 
meaning of this text as determined by its actual setting at 
the place where it occurs. No, this " word " had come to 
him alone ; alone he must interpret it and apply it to his 
case. Did its serious import overwhelm him ? Then there 
was no way but to hunt at random, either in his Bible, or in 
the recesses of his chance associations, for some other 
" word " to set over against the first. Then would follow 
very possibly long processes of this mere balancing of texts. 
One " word " must be quoted against another, one series of 
texts must be neutralized by texts whose immediate emo- 
tional effects were more comforting. Bunyan also developed, 
in connection with such tasks, a peculiarly skilful sort of 
inner dialectic whereby he estimated the force of each text. 
He reasoned very subtly with these his own shadows. The 
decision of nearly every such crisis was determined in the 
end, however, less by the conscious dialectic itself than by 
the chances of association. At last, perhaps after days, in 
the later stages of his malady after months, of conflict, some 
decisive word would come to mind, would more or less irre- 
sistibly "dart" into his soul, would even half seem to be 
spoken within him (a few times with the force of a pseudo- 
hallucination, and only once or twice with almost complete 
hallucinatory vigor). The "word" that association thus 
made victorious might by its very clearness, or by the 
strength of its emotional setting, banish all the former 
" words " from mind ; and for the time doubts would leave 
him. Or again u two Scriptures " would " meet " in his heart, 
and one of them would triumph. This process is frequently 
exemplified in the Grace Abounding, and was of course 
largely determined, apart from the abnormal capriciousness 
of his associative processes, by Bunyan's religious opinions 
and companionships. But this method of thinking was of 



4C STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

course an inconvenient complication in view of his now 
imminent disorder. 

At the stage of his pilgrimage here reached, he began to 
read Paul's epistles with eagerness. They did not decrease 
his dialectical tendencies. One day, when alone on the 
road, he found himself wondering gloomily, as he had been 
doing for some time, whether he really had saving faith or 
110. Whereupon the "Tempter," who of course, in our 
author's account, has to bear the responsibility for many of 
Banyan's insistent impulses, and for a large part of his as- 
sociative processes, suggested, as he had several times done 
before, that there was no way for Bunyan to prove that he 
had faith save by trying to work some miracle; "which 
Miracle at that time was this, I must say to the Puddles that 
were in the horse-pads, Be dry, and to the dry places, Be 
you the Paddles. And truly, one time I was going to say 
so indeed ; but just as I was about to speak, this thought 
came into my mind, But go under yonder Hedge and pray 
first that God would make you able. But when I had con- 
cluded to pray, this came hot upon me, That if I prayed, 
and came again and tried to do it, and yet did nothing not- 
withstanding, then be sure I had no Faith, but was a Cast- 
away and lost. Nay, thought I, if it be so, I will never try 
yet, but will stay a little longer." 

In this account it is of course the hesitancy and the 
brooding, questioning attitude that is symptomatic, and not 
the logic of the quaint reasoning process, which, in view of 
Bunyan's presuppositions, is normal enough in form. To 
such breedings the dreamer added about this time one very 
elaborate symbolic inner vision of his unhappy state as re- 
lated to the state of the godly people whose faith he envied. 
The vision, which, as reported, is a fine instance of the auto- 
matic visualizing process already characterized, need detain 
us here no further. It is noteworthy that Bunyan reports 
it without any surprise, as an incident of a type very familiar 



THE CASE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 47 

in his inner life. The striving with chance Scripture pas- 
sages continued, and now often drove him to his " wit's 
end." The comforting passages were occasionally hit upon, 
but only to give way soon to doubts. His questions as to 
what faith is, and whether he was of the elect, had already 
reached the limits of the normal. He was " greatly assaulted 
and perplexed, and was often/' he says, " when I have been 
walking, ready to sink where I went with faintness in my 
mind." This is one of the few hints that we get of Bunyan's 
physical state at this time. The " Tempter " was meanwhile 
quite capable of suggesting, as regards Bunyan's relation to 
his fellows in the faith, that these [viz., the known ''godly 
people" aforesaid] being converted already, "they were all 
that God would save in those parts ; and that I came too 
late, for these had got the Blessing before I came." This 
thought was insistent enough to cause Bun y an great dis- 
tress, and even anger at himself for having lost so much 
time in the past After really desperate and lonely strug- 
gles with such wavering hopes, gloomy fears as to his salva- 
tion, and insistent questions and doubts on the whole sub- 
ject, he at length forsook his solitude, and appealed for help 
to the " godly people " themselves, who took him to their 
pastor, Mr. Gifford. 

But herewith Gifford only made Bunyan's case for the 
time worse by assuring him that he was a very grievous 
sinner, and by drawing his attention away from the uni- 
versal problems about faith and election back to the par- 
ticular facts concerning the vanity of his wicked heart 
The result was a new stage, wherein all the elements pres- 
ent in the two previous stages of his experience were mor- 
bidly combined, and the associative processes so inimical to 
his peace were rendered more automatic and systematic 
thuri ever. The first stage, it will be remembered, had been 
one of systematically insistent scrupulosity as to the details 
of his conduct, with elementary inhibitions and fears. The 



48 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL.' 

second stage had been one of large and more " tender " emo- 
tional states, and of generalized breedings and doubts as to 
faith and election, accompanied with occasional feelings of 
general physical weakness and faintness. But now this 
elaborate process of morbid training came to combine both 
generalized and specialized elements. The first effect was 
that instead of the " longing after God " which had charac- 
terized the immediately previous state of mind, Bunyan 
now found in himself a perfect chaos of " Lusts and Cor- 
ruptions," " wicked thoughts and desires which I did not 
regard before." He must " hanker after every foolish van- 
ity. 1 ' His heart " began to be careless both of my Soul and 
Heaven ; it would now continually hang back, both to and 
in every duty ; and was as a Clog to the Leg of a Bird to 
hinder her from flying. Nay, thought I, now I grow worse 
and worse ; now am I further from Conversion than ever I 
was before. Wherefore I began to sink greatly in my Soul, 
and began to entertain such discouragement in my Heart 
as laid me low as Hell. If now I should have burned at the 
stake, I could not believe that Christ had love for me : alas. 
I could neither hear him, nor see him, nor feel him, nor 
savour any of his things. I was driven as with a Tempest ; 
my Heart would be unclean ; the Canaanites would dwell 
in the land." To this fairly classic description of his general 
state Bunyan now adds for the first time a mention of the 
presence of insistent " unbelief," whereof we shall soon hear 
more. Meanwhile, however, as he adds in a most charac- 
teristic fashion : " As to the act of sinning, I was never more 
tender than now. I durst not take a pin or a stick, though but 
so big as a straw, for my conscience now was sore, and would 
smart at every touch ; I could not now tell how to speak my 
words, for fear I should misplace them. Oh, how gingerly 
did I then go in all I did or said ! I found myself as on a 
miry Bog that shook if I did but stir ; and was as there left 
both of God and Christ and the Spirit, and all good things." 



THE CASE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 49 

When a man has once got so far into the u Slough of 
Despond " as this, there is indeed no way but to go on. 
Such insistent trains of morbid association cannot be mend- 
ed until they first have grown worse. The process of sys- 
tematization continued in this case, much as in that of Dr. 
Cowles's patient.* There were for Bunyan, to be sure, the 
occasional remissions, due to the temporary success of this 
or that Scripture passage. So, in one instance, the effective 
suggestion came from without, through a sermon on the 
text, Behold, thou art fair, my Love ; behold, thou art fair 
a sermon whose pedantically multipled headings Bunyan 
years later remembered with perfect clearness. As he was 
going home after the sermon the two words, My Love, came 
into his thoughts, and " I said thus in my heart, What shall 
I get by thinking on these two words f " Whereupon " the 
words began thus to kindle in my spirit, Thou art my Love, 
thou art my Love, twenty times together, and still as they 
ran thus in my mind they waxed stronger and warmer, and 
began to make me look up. But being as yet between hope 
and fear, I replied in my heart, But is it true f At which 
that Sentence fell in upon me, He wist not that it was true 
vh ich was done by the angel. Then I began to give place 
to the Word, which with power did over and over make 
this joyful sound within my soul, Thou art my Love, thou 
art my Love; and nothing shall separate me from my 
Love ; and with that Romans eight, thirty-nine, came into 
my mind. Now was my heart full of comfort and hope . . . 
yea, I was now so taken with the love and mercy of God 
that I could not tell how to contain till I got Home." But 
this mood of course proved to be unstable, and Bunyan soon 
" lost much of the life and savour of it." 

"About a Week or a Fortnight after this," continues Bun- 
yan, " I was much followed by this Scripture, Simon, Simon, 

Cowles, he. ctt., pp. 240-245. 



50 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

Satan hath desired to have you. And sometimes it would 
sound so loud within me, yea, and as it were call so strongly 
after me, that once above all the rest, I turned my head over 
my shoulder, thinking verily that some Man had, behind 
me, called to me ; being at a great distance, methought he 
called so loud." This pseudo-hallucination of hearing, 
secondary, be it noted, to the now frequent and insistent 
automatic motor process of internal speech, whereby Bun- 
yan obviously found such texts forced upon his attention, 
concluded this special episode, and this particular text, as he 
expressly tells us, came no more. Hallucinations of hear- 
ing form no part of this case in any but this secondary, 
transient, and "borderland" form a fact, of course, which 
has to be clearly borne in mind in estimating the phenom- 
ena. Later reflection, of a sort perfectly normal upon Bun- 
yan's presuppositions, convinced him afterwards that this 
visitation was a heavenly warning that a " cloud and a 
storm was coming down " upon him ; but at the time he 
" understood it not." The minuteness of the account here- 
abouts is evidence, both of the depth of the experiences, and 
of the remarkable intactness of Bunyan's memory amidst 
all this condition of irritable nervous instability of mood 
on the one hand, and of morbidly persistent brooding on 
the other. 

IV. 

But now for the culmination of the disorder a culmina- 
tion which appeared in three successive and intensely inter- 
esting periods or stages, each one of which Bunyan narrates 
to us with extraordinary skill and vigor. 

" About the space of a month after," he continues, " a 
very great storm came down upon me, which handled me 
twenty times worse than all I had met with before." Of 
this " storm " the primary element, as we should now say, 
was a melancholic mood, of a depth and origin to him un- 
accountable. Former moods had been largely secondary, 



THE CASE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 51 

as would appear, to his doubts, although primary states of 
depression had also played their part. But this time the in- 
sistent impulses appeared as obviously quite secondary to 
the mood. The latter " came stealing upon me, now by 
one piece, then by another ; first all my comfort was taken 
from me, then darkness seized upon me, after which " (the 
order is noteworthy) " whole floods of blasphemies, both 
against God, Christ, and the Scriptures, were poured upon 
my spirit, to my great confusion and astoiiisliment. These 
blasphemous thoughts were such as also stirred up questions 
in me, against the very Being of God, and of his only be- 
loved Son; as, whether there were, in truth, a God, or 
Christ, or no ? And whether the holy Scriptures were not 
rather a fable, and cunning story, than the holy and pure 
Word of God ? The tempter would also much assault me 
with this : How can you tell but that the Turks had as 
good Scriptures to prove their Mahomet the Saviour as 
we have to prove our Jesus is ? And could I think that so 
many ten thousands in so many Countries and Kingdoms, 
should be without the knowledge of the right way to 
Heaven (if indeed there were a heaven), and that we only 
who live in a corner of the Earth should alone be blessed 
therewith. Every one doth think his own religion 
rightest, both Jews and Moors and Pagans! And how if 
all our Faith, and Christ, and Scriptures should be but 
a Think-so too 9 " 

Bunyan of course sought to argue with these doubts, but 
this expert in the dialectics of the inner life now very nat- 
urally found all the weapons in the enemy's hands. He 
would try using the " sentences of blessed Paul " against the 
"tempter." But alas! it was Paul who had taught both 
Bunyan and the " tempter " how to argue with subtlety, and 
now the reply at once came, in interrogative form : How if 
Paul too were a cunning deceiver, who had taken "pains 
and travail to undo and destroy his fellows"? Bunyan 's 



52 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

only remaining comfort was at this point the usual one of 
the patients afflicted with such harassing enemies. He was 
aware, namely, that he hated his own doubts, and was so, 
in a way, better than they. But, as he expressively words 
it: "This consideration I then only had when God gave 
me leave to swallow my Spittle ; otherwise the noise and 
strength and force of these temptations would drown and 
overflow and, as it were, bury all such thoughts." Mean- 
while insistent motor impulses of a still more specific sort 
occurred. Bunyan frequently felt himself tempted "to 
curse and swear, or speak some grievous thing against God." 
He compares his state to that of a child whom a gipsy is 
stealing and carrying away, "under her apron," "from 
friend and country." " Kick sometimes I did, and also 
shriek and cry ; but yet I was bound in the wings of the 
temptation, and the wind would carry me away." Nor 
were the fears of hopeless insanity, so common in such 
patients, absent from Bunyan 's mind, so far as his knowl- 
edge permitted him to formulate them. " I thought also of 
Saul, and of the evil spirit that did possess him ; and did 
greatly fear that my condition was the same with that of 
his." The sin against the Holy Ghost was of course sug- 
gested to Bunyan's mind amongst other possible crimes, and 
it seemed at once, of course, as if he " could not, must not, 
neither should be quiet " until he had committed that. 
" Now, no sin would serve but that ; if it were to be com- 
mitted by speaking of such a word, then I have been as if 
my Mouth would have spoken that word, whether I would 
or no ; and in so strong a measure was this temptation upon 
me, that often I have been ready to clasp my hand under 
my Chin, to hold my Mouth from opening ; and to that end 
also I have had thoughts at other times, to leap downward 
into some muck-hill hole or other to keep my mouth from 
speaking." 

But to follow further this chaos of motor processes is, 



THE CASE OF JOHN BTJNYAN. 53 

for our purposes, hardly necessary. A system there indeed 
was amidst the chaos, but this system is now manifest 
enough. Suffice it that the whole race had now to be run. 
At prayer Bunyan was tempted to blaspheme, or the 
" tempter " moved him with the thought, Fall down and 
worship me. At the sacraments of the church, which, al- 
though not yet a member of the church, he attended as 
spectator, in hope of comfort, he was also " distressed with 
blasphemies." There were still no true hallucinations, but 
"sometimes I have thoughts I should see the devil, nay, 
thought I have felt him, behind me, pluck my Clothes." 
As to mood, Bunyan was now usually " hard of heart" " If 
I would have given thousands of pounds for a Tear, I could 
not shed one ; no, nor sometimes scarce desire to shed one." 
Others " could mourn and lament their sin." But he was, 
as he saw, alone among men, in this hardness of heart, as in 
the rest of his troubles. The unclean thoughts and blas- 
phemies aforesaid were likely, as is obvious, to appear as 
reflexes, of an inhibitory type and meaning interestingly 
analogous to his earlier conscientious scruples themselves. 
For these blasphemies were excited by and opposed to any 
pious activity, precisely as the old conscientious fears had 
been excited by and inhibitory of any activity which his 
natural heart had most loved. Hearing or reading the 
Word would be sure, for instance, to bring to pass the blas- 
phemous temptations. The "tempter" was a sort of in- 
verted conscience, busily insisting upon whatever was 
opposed to the pious intention. Meanwhile Bunyan of 
course complains of that general confusion of head of 
which all such sufferers are likely to speak. When he was 
reading, "sometimes my mind would be so strangely 
snatched away and possessed with other things, that I have 
neither known, nor regarded, nor remembered so much as 
that sentence that but now I have read." This " distrac- 
tion " was often at prayer-time associated with insistent 



54: STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

inner visual images, as of a " Bull, a Besom, or the like," to 
which Bunyan was tempted to pray. 

Bunyan attributes to this condition an endurance of 
about a year. Detailed and obviously trustworthy as his 
psychological memory is, his chronology seems to suffer, 
very naturally, with a tendency to lengthen in memory 
the successive stages of his affliction. One can hardly find 
room, in the known period occupied by the entire experi- 
ence, for such lengthy separate stages as the writer assumes. 
The present, or first culminating period of the malady, 
finally passed off by a gradual decline of the insistent 
symptoms a decline assisted, as would appear, by a con- 
troversial interest which Bunyan was just then led to take 
in the " errors of the Quakers," to whose condemnation he 
devotes a paragraph of his text, hereabouts, in his Autobi- 
ography. The objective turn which such controversial 
thoughts gave his mind was used, as he himself feels, by 
the Lord, to " confirm " him. 

One would suppose that the foregoing story, written 
with the most moving pathos by Bunyan, ought of itself 
to be a sufficiently obvious confession, even to readers of 
comparatively little psychological knowledge. The long- 
trained habits of verbal and emotional association which 
are exemplified in these repeated experiences with the re- 
membered passages of Scripture, the systematized attitudes 
of conscientious fear and inhibition which date back to the 
beginning of our author's conversion, the obvious essential 
identity between all these mental habits, and those which 
Bunyan's " tempter," his inverted conscience equally fear- 
compelling, equally inhibitory of his present ardent desires 
represented, whenever this "tempter" disturbed him at 
prayer, even as his conscience had in former days learned 
to disturb him at bell-ringing all these phenomena give us 
a most instructive object-lesson concerning the familiar 
processes by which the human brain, whether in health or 



THE CASE OP JOHN BUNYAN. 55 

in disorder, gets moulded. The emotional instability that 
lies at the basis of this particular morbid process an insta- 
bility without which, of course, just these habits could never 
have become such formidable enemies is perfectly clear 
before us. Of the precise physical basis of this instability 
we can indeed only form conjectures ; but we know that 
this was an extremely sensitive brain, and that the child- 
hood dreams and terrors had been of a type such as to fur- 
nish obvious warnings that this mind needed especial care. 
We know too that such care was in so far lacking, as this 
still very young man had now to suffer the anxieties of pro- 
viding for his family at a moment when his troubles about 
his soul were intense, and when his poverty was great. 
Meanwhile, one aspect of the symptoms, which we have 
already noticed, is as obvious as it has been, in the past, 
neglected by Bunyan's readers. This man, a born genius 
as to his whole range of language- functions, had been from 
the start a ready speaker, had developed in boyhood an 
abounding wealth of skilfully bad language, and had then, 
in terror-stricken repentance, suddenly devoted himself for 
iiumy months to a merciless inhibition of every doubtful 
word. We observe now that insistent motor speech-func- 
tions were the most marked and distressing of his mental 
enemies, and that both the tempter, and that comforter 
whose strangely suggested Scripture passages occasionally 
consoled Bunyan's heart, tended to speak, "as it were," 
within the suffering soul. When one considers, still fur- 
ther, the careful way in which, by his own description, 
Bunyan excludes from his case all hallucinatory elements 
except the few pseudo-hallucinations, how can one doubt 
the type of patient with whom one has to deal ? Memory, 
as one sees, is remarkably intact Any tendency to patho- 
logical delusion is obviously lacking ; for that Bunyan is 
beset by the " tempter," is for him a mere statement of the 
obvious facts in the light of his accepted faith, and is, from 



56 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

his point of view, a strictly normal and inevitable hypoth- 
esis, which he never in any morbid fashion misuses. For 
the rest, he retains throughout as clearly critical an attitude 
towards his case as the situation in anywise permits ; other- 
wise we should never have come to get this beautiful con- 
fession. 

And yet, as said, the biographers have repeatedly missed 
nearly all these psychological aspects of the case, and that, 
too, whatever their theory of the poet's experiences. Some, 
as pointed out, have endeavored to conceive all this as mere- 
ly the deep religious experience of an untutored genius. Re- 
ligious experience it indeed was ; nor does its deep human 
interest suffer from our recognition of its pathological char- 
acter. Genius there also, indeed, is, in every word of the 
written story. But the specific sequence of the symptoms 
thus recorded, and the striking parallel with such modern 
cases as that of Dr. Cowles's patient (who was surely no 
ganius, and whose morbid conscience busied itself with far 
more earthly matters than the religious issues central in 
Bunyan's mind) these things forbid us to doubt that the 
phenomena are characteristic of a pretty typical morbid 
process, which has certainly gone on in very many less ex- 
alted brains than was that of Bunyan. Other biographers 
have spoken, as Macaulay did, of " fearful disorder," but 
have had no sense of the clear difference between an hallu- 
cinatory delirium, which could only develop either in a very 
deeply intoxicated or exhausted, or else in a hopelessly 
wrecked brain, and a disorder such as this of Bunyan's, 
which could get thus dramatically systematized only in a 
sensitive but nevertheless extremely tough and highly or- 
ganized brain, whose general functions were still largely 
intact. So sympathetic an observer as Froude, on the 
other hand, almost wholly ignoring the pathological aspect 
of the case, can actually suppose that Bunyan's " doubts 
and misgivings " were " suggested by a desire for truth " ; 



THE CASE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 57 

because, forsooth, from the point of view of a nineteenth- 
century thinker : " No honest soul can look out upon the 
world, and see it as it really is, without the question rising 
in him whether there be any God that governs it all." 
Froude imagines, therefore, that Bunyan later went no 
further in doubt largely because "critical investigation 
had not yet analyzed the historical construction of the 
sacred books." But surely thus to argue is wholly to miss 
what it is that makes a given sort of questioning, or of 
other impulse, normal or morbid, for a given man, and 
under given circumstances. And here is perhaps the place 
to define more precisely this very matter in our own way. 

Morbidly insistent impulses, of whatever sort, are, oddly 
enough, never morbid merely because they insist For all 
our most normal impulses are, or may become, insistent 
One has a constantly insistent impulse to breathe, a fre- 
quently insistent impulse to eat; and one's life depends 
upon just such insistences. Insistent desires keep us in 
love with our work, take us daily about our duties, guide 
our steps back to our homes, seat us in our chairs to rest 
are with us, in their due order, from morning to night, 
whether we bathe, dress, walk, speak, write, or go to bed. 
To run counter to such normally insistent impulses pains, 
and may in extreme cases very greatly distress, or even in 
the end quite demoralize us. Insistence of will-functions 
is, then, so far, a sign of health, and means only the kindly 
might of sound habit An "imperative impulse" of the 
morbid sort is therefore, in the first place, one that, under 
the circumstances, opposes instead of helping our normal 
process of " adjustment to our environment" But herewith 
we have still only defined, so far, that element of the mor- 
bid impulse which the latter shares in common with all de- 
fective mental processes. The peculiar differentia, however, 
of all such forms of morbidly insistent thoughts, fears, temp- 
tations, etc., as are the ones now in question, is that their 



58 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

tendency to bring one out of " harmony with his environ- 
ment " is subjectively expressed, for the sufferer himself, in 
the form of a sense that the fear, thought, or other impulse in 
question is opposed to his fitting relation to his environment 
as he himself conceives that relation. The hallucination 
or the delusion gives one a pathologically falsified environ- 
ment, and then one's adjustment objectively fails, because 
one knows not rightly the truth to which one ought to be 
adjusted. Confusedness, or mere incoherence of ideas and 
impulses, or other such general alteration of consciousness, 
equally means failure, but here also without any completer 
subjective sense of what one's failure objectively involves. 
But thepresent sort of sufferer from morbidly insistent im- 
pulses, whether or no he conceives his environment rightly, 
still knows how he conceives it, and has his general plans of 
thought and will ; but he himself, meanwhile, finds, within 
himself, "in his members," "another law warring against 
the law " which he has accepted as his own. Without pretty 
definite plans, then, there can be no such morbidly insistent 
impulses as are these of Bunyan's tale. Failure or strong 
tendency to failure, in the adjustment, as conceived and 
planned by the sufferer himself such failure being due to 
this inner conflict this it is that makes us here speak of 
morbidly insistent impulses. 

But not even thus do we define all that it is necessary 
to bear in mind in judging such cases. Impulses, feelings, 
thoughts, more or less inimical to our deliberate plans, are 
constantly, if but faintly, suggested to us, by our normal 
overwealth of perceptions and of associations. Without 
such overwealth of offered perceptions and associations, we 
should not have sufficient material for mental selection ; yet 
such overwealth is necessarily full of solicitations, tempting 
us, with greater or less clearness, to abandon or to interrupt 
our chosen plans of action. Nor is there any fixed limit to 
the range of those "imaginations as one would," that, as 



THE CASE OP JOHN BUNYAN. 59 

Hobbes already pointed out, may at any moment be initiated 
in a man's inner life by chance experience and association. 
Therefore, mere opposition between our chance impulses 
and our plans is a perfectly normal experience. 

Normal impulses then are insistent And normal trains 
of impulse, or plans of conduct, are constantly besieged by 
the faint but more or less inimical distractions of normal 
experience. When, then, is any single impulse, as such, 
abnormal ? When it insists ? No, for breathing is an insist- 
ent impulse. When it opposes the current trains of cohe- 
rent thought or volition ? No, for every momentary inner 
or outer distraction tends to do that ; and there is hardly 
any known impulse or thought or feeling of which a nor- 
mal man may not at almost any moment be reminded, 
through the chances of perception and of association. What 
then is the subjective test of the abnormal in impulse ? One 
can only find it in this : Association chances to suggest any 
impulse inimical to one's actually chosen plans for " adjust- 
ment to the environment" So far there is no essential de- 
fect This happens to anybody. But normally the cohe- 
rence of one's series of healthily insistent or of voluntary 
impulses is so great, or the strength of the intruder soon be- 
comes, under the influence of the opposed ruling interests, 
so faint, that this intruder is erelong sent below the level 
of consciousness, or harmlessly "segmented/' and that with 
an ease and a speed proportioned to the incongruity and to 
the felt inconvenience of this enemy itself. But in the 
abnormal cases, things go otherwise. Perhaps the intruding 
impulse is not a chance one, but is itself part of a previously 
established system of inhibitory habits. Or perhaps it is 
supported by numerous now partly or wholly unconscious 
motives, say by masses of internal bodily sensations (as in 
case of pathological fears, or of certain physical temptations 
of abnormal vigor). In all such cases it may prove too 
strong to be controlled. Or again, the general condition of 



CO STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

the sufferer is one of irritable weakness. The sustained 
coherence of normal functions is then already impaired by 
nervous exhaustion ; the main trains of association hang 
weakly together; their general power of resistance, so to 
speak, is lowered. The intruding impulse, on the contrary, 
is then the mental aspect of a suggested nervous excitement 
that, beginning at one point, quickly spreads to others, and 
for the time takes possession of the functions of this un- 
stable brain. And now, in any of these cases, we have a 
failure to resist the intruder, a failure which the sufferer 
himself bittei'ly feels. Objectively, the failing adjustment 
appears as hesitation, or as useless repetition of acts, or as 
unaccountable impulsive '' queerness " of conduct, or even 
as helpless inactivity, with various quasi-melancholic symp- 
toms silence, hiding, self-roproach, lamentation. Within, 
the sufferer, who, to suffer decidedly from this sort of mal- 
ady, must be a person of highly organized plans and of self- 
observant intelligence, feels a prodigious struggle going 
on. All seems to him activity, warfare, self -division, tu- 
mult 

In judging of such a case, one must therefore carefully 
avoid being deceived either by the imperativeness or by the 
quaintness of the particular impulses involved. All de- 
pends upon their relations in a man's mental life. The in- 
tense interests of the inventor, of the man of science, of the 
rapt public speaker, are not necessarily at all analogous to 
the "obsessions" of the sufferer from insistent impulses, 
although the former are, like breathing, imperative. Nor 
are the merrily absurd impulses of a gay party of young 
people at a picnic abnormal, merely because they are for the 
time incoherent, and are thus opposed to serious thought 
and conduct. No, it is the union of a tendency toward in- 
coherence in feeling and conduct, with an imperative resist- 
ance to the actual and conscious plans, whereby the sufferer 
deliberately intends to be in some chosen fashion coherent 



THE CASE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 61 

it is this union of incongruity with insistence that con- 
stitutes the subjective note of the morbidly insistent im- 
pulse. 

These are commonplace considerations. I should not 
introduce them here were not the literature of this whole 
topic so often affected by confusions of conception. In the 
light of such obvious considerations, Froude's refusal to see 
the abnormity of Bunyan's insistent questions or " blasphe- 
mies " as to the being of God, and the like, becomes suffi- 
ciently insignificant as affecting our present judgment Any 
man may by chance, in his mind, come momentarily to ques- 
tion anything. That is so far a matter of passing associ- 
ation, and involves nothing suspicious. A modern or, for 
that matter, an ancient thinker may moreover persistently 
question God's existence. If the thinker is a philosopher, 
or other theoretical inquirer, such doubts may form part of 
his general plans, and may so be as healthy in character as 
any other forms of intellectual considerateness. But if a 
man's whole inner life, in so far as it is coherent, is built 
upon a system of plans and of faiths which involve as part 
of themselves the steadfast principle that to doubt God's ex- 
istence is horrible blasphemy, and if, nevertheless, after a 
fearful fit of darkness, such a man finds, amidst "whole 
floods " of other " blasphemies,'* doubts about God not only 
suddenly forced upon him, but persistent despite his horror 
and his struggles, then it is vain for a trained sceptic of an- 
other age to pretend an enlightened sympathy, and to say to 
this agonized nervous patient : " Doubt ? Why, I have 
doubted God's existence too." The ducklings can safely 
swim, but that does not make their conduct more congruous 
with the plans and the feelings of the hen. The profes- 
sional doubters may normally doubt. But that does not 
make doubt less a malady in those who suffer from it, and 
strive, and cry out, but cannot get free. 

This observation, that the symptomatic value of these 



62 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

insistent impulses lies solely in the relation between the 
impulses themselves and the organized mental life, the 
plans, insight, and chosen habits of the patient, reminds us 
also in this case that Bunyan's experiences clearly indicate 
the essential psychological equivalence of several of the va- 
rious sorts of manias and phobias which some authors, im- 
agining that the content rather than the relations of the im- 
pulses concerned is important, have so needlessly chosen to 
distinguish. Bunyan was tempted to doubt, fear, question, 
blaspheme, curse, swear, pray to the devil, or to do whatever 
else conscientious inhibition and irritably weak speech-func- 
tions had prepared him to find peculiarly fascinating and 
horrible. There was no importance in the mere variety of 
the wicked ideas that the one " tempter " suggested. The 
evil lay in the systematized character of the morbid habits 
involved, and in the exhausting multitude of the tempter's 

assaults. 

v 

The malady was now, after the passage of this acute stage, 
all the more certainly in possession of the man. The tempo- 
rary remission was sure to prove deceitful. In Dr. Cowles's 
patient, after once the morbid habits had become system- 
atized, to a degree similar to the one now reached in Bun- 
yan's case, there was apparently no way out of the gloomy 
labyrinth. Whatever devices were tried led, so long as 
the patient was under Dr. Cowles's observation, to renewed 
struggles with conscientious scruples and with ingeniously 
subtle inner temptations, and the sufferer, whatever her tem- 
porary stages of relief, was doomed to walk round and round 
the charmed circle of doubt, of temptation, of elaborate self- 
invented exorcising devices, of failure, of self-reproach, and 
of despair. It was to be Bunyan's good fortune to escape in 
the end from his tempter. How he was thus to escape, the 
next and most agonizing of his acute stages was to deter- 
mine. The sufferer from such morbid systems is at best, as 



THE CASE OP JOHN BUNYAN. C3 

all the evidence shows, in a very serious position. That 
very strength of certain of his highest brain-functions 
which is one condition of the development of his weakness 
as to other functions, makes all the harder the task of teach- 
ing him wholly new mental habits. Yet without such 
wholly new habits he can never escape. Hence the evil prog- 
nosis which most observers now unite in attributing to this 
type of disorder, viz., to the chronic malady of insistent im- 
pulses with intercurrent acute stages. But there is one 
rather desperate chance which most writers on the subject 
have, as I think, generally neglected. Suppose there appears, 
in the life of the chronically affected patient, a new insist- 
ent impulse, such that yielding to this particular impulse 
brings the patient into some wholly new relation to his en- 
vironment. Suppose, thereupon, that a novel and profoundly 
different life, even if this be a very painful life, is forced 
upon him in consequence of his yielding. The result may 
be a condition of things in which, diseased though he still 
is, the old cares and temptations are entirely set aside by the 
fresh experiences given through the new environment If 
the patient has now strength enough to bear the pangs and 
the fresh and strongly contrasted nervous distresses of this 
changed life, he may actually have time to reform his men- 
tal habits before the old " tempter " is able, for his part, to 
organize his own inimical nervous tendencies upon the new 
battle-field. The substituted pangs themselves may then 
pass before the old are renewed. Then indeed, some day, 
tin- old enemy will come back, but the patient will have be- 
come, meanwhile, another man, and the whole system of 
his formerly insistent opponents will have been broken up. 
He will thus find himself thrown back, in some sense, to the 
earlier stages of his own case; he will once more have only 
elementary doubts and fears to oppose. But these his expe- 
rience will have taught him to circumvent ; and so, at any 
rate with a certain degree of defect, he may have become 
G 



04 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

cured. The elements will survive, but will 110 longer sys- 
tematize. 

This possible good fortune, to be won, if at all, by passing 
through the fiercest fire of painful impulse, Dr. Cowles's 
patient tried in vain to find, when she experimented at pre- 
tending to poison herself, or, later, deliberately wounded 
herself with a pistol, not hoping to commit suicide, but only 
seeking to expiate her faults, and to get peace from her 
tempter, through novel pangs. Bunyan, without dreaming 
of such relief, actually won it through what seemed, at the 
time, the most hopeless of all the woes that had yet beset 
him. 

" For after the Lord had, in this manner, thus graciously 
delivered me from this great and sore Temptation . . . the 
Tempter came upon me again, and that with a more grievous 
and dreadful Temptation than before. And that was, To sell 
and part u-ith this most blessed Christ, to exchange him 
for the things of this life, for anything." 

The new temptation had its own typical mental context, 
different from that of the previous stage. This was now no 
single member of a " flood of blasphemies." It stood nearly 
alone, as an equivalent for all the rest of the earlier tempta- 
tions. Still, however, the impulse to sell Christ was merely 
an imperative motor speech-function. No other word seems 
ever to have substituted itself for the word sell ; and the 
only further act involved in yielding to the temptation was 
a purely formal inner assent to the " selling." The proposed 
transaction involved, as a matter of course, no actually con- 
ceived exchange whatever. Nevertheless, in a most inter- 
esting fashion, the imperative impulse now appeared as a 
reflex, which tended, in consciousness, to enter into a sort of 
" agglutinative " combination (to use one of Wundt's well- 
known adopted phrases), with any object of passing percep- 
tive interest ; so that the special form of the experience was 
that the tempter moved Bunyan to sell Christ for this or 



THE CASE OP JOHN BUXYAX. 65 

for ttiat, whatever the insignificant thing might be that 
Bunyan was at the moment attending to, or handling, or 
dealing with in any active way. The painfulness, the asso- 
ciated fear, and the violence of the thought, were all of the 
most intense sort ; and this reflex character made the temp- 
tation infect Bunyan 's whole life most horribly ; " for it did 
always, in almost whatever I thought, intermix itself there- 
with, in such sort that I could neither eat my food, stoop 
for a pin, chop a stick, or cast mine eye to look on this or 
that, but still the temptation would come, Sell Christ for 
this, or sell Christ for that ; sell him, sell him." 

The struggle this time very soon led Bunyan to that 
grave stage where the sufferer from insistent impulses re- 
sorts to apparently senseless motor acts that possess for him 
an exorcising significance. " By the very force of my mind, 
in laboring to gainsay and resist this wickedness, my very 
body also would be put into action or motion by way of 
pushing or thrusting with my hands or elbows, still answer- 
ing as fast as the destroyer said, Sell him ; I will not, I will 
not . . . no, not for thousands, thousands, thousands of 
worlds." This kind of elaboration rapidly grew to its own 
hopelessly extravagant extremes. But in vain. A few 
added doubts, of the old inhibitory type, meanwhile ap- 
peared in the background, but the tempter had now, so to 
speak, learned his game, and had no need to waste his forces 
upon general devices of inhibition. This one suggestion was 
enough. The loathsome triviality of the motor impulse 
itself, in its pettiness, and the vast dignity of the eternal 
issues imperilled, as Bunyan felt, by its presence, combined 
to give the situation all the dreadful and inhibitory features 
that had earlier been spread over so wide a mental range of 
evil interests. 

" But to be brief, one morning, as I did lie in my bed, I 
was, "as at other times, most fiercely assaulted with this 
temptation, . . . the wicked suggestion still running in my 



G6 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

mind, Sell him, sell him, sell him, sell him, as fast as a man 
could speak. Against which also, in my mind, as at other 
times, I answered, .ZVb, no, not for thousands, thousands, 
thousands, at least twenty times together. But at last, after 
much striving, even until I was almost out of breath, I felt 
this thought pass through my heart, Let him go, if he will ! 
and I thought also that I felt my heart freely consent there- 
to. Oh the diligence of Satan ! Oh the desperateness of 
man's heart ! 

" Now was the battle won, and down fell I, as a Bird that 
is shot from the top of a tree, with great guilt, and fearful 
despair. Thus getting out of my Bed, I went moping into 
the field ; but God knows, with as heavy a heart as mortal 
man, I think, could bear ; where, for the space of two hours, 
I was like a man bereft of life, and as now past all recovery, 
and bound over to eternal punishment." 

VI. 

The nervous crisis thus passed served to introduce a con- 
dition of extremely lengthy, quasi-melancholic, but to Bun- 
yan's consciousness wholly secondary, depression. The 
hopeless sin was committed. Like Esau he had sold his 
birthright. There was now "no place for repentance." 
This, the third stage of the culmination of the malady, was 
marked by an almost entire quiescence of the insistently 
sinful impulses ; for what had the victorious tempter now 
left to do ? There were no more minor hesitancies, no 
loathsome motor irritations. One overwhelming idea and 
grief inhibited all these inhibitory symptoms. The insistent 
associative processes with the Scripture passages became, 
however, for a good while, all the more marked, automatic, 
and commanding. Thus the whole mental situation was 
profoundly altered. The secondary melancholic depression 
expressed itself occasionally in praecordial anxiety. " I have 
felt also such a clogging and heat at my stomach, by reason 



THE CASE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 67 

of this my terror, that I was, especially at some times, as if 
my breast bone would have split asunder." But Bunyan 
even now never long lost his dialectic skill ; and hopeless 
as seemed his case, he from the first set about trying to think 
of a way of escape from destruction, being throughout 
" loath to perish " a fact which, viewed in its results, indi- 
cates the relative intactness of his highest mental functions 
amidst all his gloom. 

Except for the automatic processes with the Scripture 
passages, Bunyan 's condition of secondary melancholic de- 
pression had, therefore, despite its depth and its fantastic 
background, many of the more benign characters of normal 
grief. It had, at the worst, its occasional remissions. It 
left his reasoning powers formally unaffected. And it had 
the painful but really invaluable character that, just be- 
cause his fate seemed decided, he had a long and almost 
total rest from the irritating motor processes, whose depend- 
ence upon his past habits of conscientious anxiety is thus 
all the more confirmed. For this restless anxiety, the pretty 
steady assurance of damnation was now substituted. This, 
as the event proved, Bunyan 's heroic disposition was strong 
enough to endure, despite the " splitting " sensations in the 
breast, despite the long days of grief and of lonely lamenta- 
tion; despite his inability to get any comfort or help 
from his few advisers. The case was still grave enough, 
but this light melancholia proved to be a decidedly kinder 
disorder than the foregoing one, and it led the way over 
to recovery. 

In the long tale which follows, in Bunyan 's Autobiogra- 
phy, ;nul which is largely devoted to the description of the 
inner conflicts amongst the Scripture passages (of whose 
automatic evolutions poor Bunyan's consciousness was now 
lon^ tin- merely passive theatre), there are but few things 
further to be noted for our purpose. But these few are ex- 
instructive. 



68 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

The gradual emergence from despair is obviously due, on 
the whole, to the vis medicatrix naturae. Bunyan's gen- 
eral physical health gradually improved. His conscientious 
habits of life, freed now from the tempter's teasing inter- 
ferences, had a chance to become healthily fixed and uncon- 
scious. He grieved too deeply to long for distractions, and 
never thought of returning to his youthful sins as a relief 
from despair. The doubts and other motor inconveniences 
were of course still in the background of his mental life, 
but it is interesting to note how, whenever they appear, they 
are now simply overshadowed and devitalized by the fixed 
presence of the ruling melancholic ideas. The tempter is 
thus at length known as a relatively foreign and mocking 
other self, whose power over Bunyan's will grows less even 
while his triumph is supposed to be final. He "becomes 
humorous," as Froude observes. Bunyan, so the tempter 
suggests in his old metaphysical way and with the old 
doubting subtlety Bunyan had better not pray any more, 
since God must be weary of the whole business ; or if he 
must pray, let it be to some other person of the Trinity in- 
stead of to the directly insulted Mediator. Could not a new 
plan of salvation be devised by special arrangement, the 
Father this time kindly acting as mediator with the other- 
wise implacable Son, to meet Bunyan's exceptional case ? 
But such suggestions, which in an earlier stage would have 
been " fearful blasphemies," now have to stand in contrast 
to the fixed and central grief which constitutes Bunyan's 
own personal consciousness. Bunyan knows by the very 
contrast that these suggested words of the tempter are not 
his own. This is the mere fooling of the exultant devil. It 
is meaningless. For Bunyan is consciously on the side of 
the grief itself, and the humorous tempter is the sole owner 
of the blasphemies, which therefore serve all the more to 
" confirm " the sufferer in his painful faith. A better device 
than this for the " segmentation " of insistent questionings 



THE CASE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 69 

could not have been imagined by any physician learned in 
the cure of souls. The victorious tempter had unwittingly 
dug his own grave. He could never again get possession of 
this man's central self, nor use this brain as a foundation 
for systematized evil habits. 

Another instructive aspect of the slow process of recov- 
ery lies in the fact that Bunyan was, towards the end, able, 
at some moments, and despite his always busy dialectic pro- 
cesses, to win that attitude of complete resignation, of aban- 
donment of all feverish conscious strugglings and pleadings 
with fate that attitude which, as experience shows, is so 
often the beginning of a final recovery from all forms of 
deeper mental distress. Such an attitude is consistent, as it 
was in Bunyan, with a good deal of cool consideration, and 
with much activity of thought ; but it was still effectively 
assumed. There is, for such sufferers as Bunyan, and for 
many others, a mood of gentler despair that is often essen- 
tially healing, because, as compared to their old feverish- 
ness, it is peaceful. It is the sort of despair that Edgar Poe 
has put on record in the admirably psychological lines For 
Annie. It is the mood that says, to the tempestuous striv- 
ing self of former days, " Ich haV meine Sache auf Nichts 
gesetzt." 1 One is lost ; only eternal mercy can save ; one 
finally is content to leave all to fate or to God, and to "lie 
quietly," like the conscious corpse of Poe's poem, glad a 
little that the "fever called living is ended at length." 
Bunyan is remote enough in type from Poe's lover ; and he 
was never content long to lie quiet But still, at moments, 
tliis essentially curative element also is present in this stage 
of his experience. The automatic play of the remembered 
Scripture passages became with him more and more com- 
plex, imposing, unpredictable an inner fate that he often 
h -Iplessly watched as one watches the breaking of great 
waves on the beach. Plainly God must be directing tin- 
process. Bunyan could only pray that God's will might bo 



70 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

done, and hope that so many kind glimpses of light would 
not have been shown to an utter outcast. " God and Christ," 
he says, " were continually before my face," and, painful as 
the experience was, since he was facing his judge, this kept 
down, as he himself recognizes, all the old temptations to 
" atheism." At last " I saw . . . that it was not my good 
frame of heart that made my Righteousness better, nor my 
bad frame that made my Righteousness worse; for my 
righteousness was Jesus Christ himself, the same yester- 
day, to-day, and forever." And " now," he says, in nar- 
rating this last experience, "did my chains fall off my 
Legs indeed." Such is the healing virtue of true resigna- 
tion. 

The episodes of this whole long final stage were of course 
numerous and of Protean character. There was through- 
out, despite the prevalence of the general despair, consider- 
able instability of mood. Intervals of peace, resulting from 
this or that " sweet glance " of a " Promise," were sometimes 
followed by the wildest fits of gloom. Two or three times the 
borderland pseudo-hallucinations of speech returned. Once, 
in particular, at a moment of this sort, the accompanying 
experience of calm " made a strange seizure upon my spirit ; 
it brought light with it, and commanded a silence in my 
heart of all those tumultuous thoughts that before did use, 
like masterless hell-hounds, to roar and bellow and make a 
hideous noise within me." And this sudden transformation 
of mood, produced by a comforting voice that was " as if 
heard," was so great that, many years later, though writing 
in a very cautious and self-critical spirit, Bunyan could not 
refrain, in a later edition of the Grace Abounding, from 
inserting this incident, and adding his private opinion that 
this might indeed have been " an Angel " that " had come 
upon me." Yet no element of actual delusion was, at the 
time, involved in the experience. As for the Scripture pas- 
sages, their automatic effects were such that Bunyan ere 



THE CASE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 71 

long found himself awaiting with interest what would hap- 
pen when two, already known and often studied " words " 
should, by chance, " meet in my heart " an event which 
might prove to him of the most critical importance, al- 
though, beforehand, he could do positively nothing to has- 
ten or to effect this event by any voluntary consideration 
of the passages. Only when the suggested passages were 
numerous, and the " meeting " had already often occurred, 
could he devote himself, with his accustomed dialectic 
skill, to considering with care the outcome and its mean- 
ing a thing which, just before his recovery, he learned 
to do, in some cases, very coolly and with great delibera- 
tion. 

The passing of this stage of despair was attended, at the 
end, with many of the usual exaltations and confusions of 
convalescence. " I had two or three times, at about my 
deliverance from this temptation, such strange apprehen- 
sions of the grace of God, that I could hardly bear up under 
it ; it was so out of measure amazing, when I thought it 
could reach me, that I do think, if that sense of it had 
abode long upon me, it would have made me incapable of 
business/' 

VII. 

The cure had come to pass, but it was, and remained, a 
cure with a pretty well-defined defect. The tempter could 
never again obtain control. The diseased habits were re- 
duced to their elements, and were unable to systematize 
themselves afresh. The elements, however, proved, as one 
would expect in such a case, too deeply founded in this 
wonderful constitution ever to be eliminated. At the end 
of the Grace Abounding Bunyan, with the simplest humil- 
ity, records the temptations to which his soul is now perma- 
nently subjected. His moods of spiritual interest and 
emotion are to a very considerable extent unstable, do what 
he may. There are times when he is " filled with darkness," 



72 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

however much, at other times, he may have been exalted. 
His heart becomes, at the dark times, " dead and dry," and 
he can then find no " comfort." He is also still occasionally 
tempted " to doubt the being of God and the Truth of his 
Gospel " ; and this is always the " worst " of moods. 
Furthermore, in his preaching, the tempter often besets him 
" with thoughts of blasphemy," which he is " strongly 
tempted to speak " " before the congregation " ; or again, a 
strange confusion of head comes upon him as he preaches, 
and straitens " him, so that he feels " as if I had not known 
or remembered what I have been about, or as if my head 
had been in a bag all the time of the Exercise." More sub- 
tle assaults of the tempter also come while he preaches 
condemnations of this or that which he knows it to be his 
duty to utter, or on the other hand movings " to pride and 
liftings up of heart." For a while after his malady, when 
he had joined the church, he was tempted to blaspheme 
during the sacraments. In any of his illnesses, peculiarly 
black and cowardly thoughts always come. At the begin- 
ning of his imprisonment he long felt himself to be a hope- 
less coward, unable because unworthy to suffer for the faith, 
and the tempter mocked this weakness with all the old 
subtlety. 

But now here is the important thing all these perma- 
nent enemies are still, and remain for the rest of Bunyan's 
life, in no wise uncontrollable. His deeper consciousness is 
beset, but never overwhelmed, by them. His attitude 
towards them becomes objective, resigned. They teach him 
to "watch and be sober." They are useful to him, since 
"they keep me from trusting my heart." Of one of his 
later hours of darkness he says : " I would not have been 
without this Trial for much. I am comforted every time I 
think of it, and I hope I shall bless God forever for the 
teaching I have had by it. Many more of the dealings of 
God towards me I might relate, but these out of the spoils 



THE CASE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 73 

won in Battle have I dedicated to maintain the house of 
God." The words are typical of all the later inner expe- 
rience of Bunyan ; and it is to this spirit in the man that we 
owe his immortal works. 

Of his mental regimen after his recovery a word may 
yet be said. A wise instinct guided the much-tried wan- 
derer in the darker world to forsake henceforth his solitude, 
to join himself "unto the people of God," to try to be 
objectively serviceable, and to keep in touch with the needs 
of his brethren. His gift of speech hereupon soon discov- 
ered itself. He was erelong set to preach. His power won 
multitudes of listeners during all his years passed out of 
prison. In prison he wrote busily, and preached to his fel- 
low-prisoners at every opportunity. The motor speech- 
functions, whose inhibition had led to such disastrously 
rebellious insistent habits, were never again suffered to 
remain without absorbing and productive exercise. The 
decidedly healthy self-contempt engendered by the experi- 
ence of his own weakness only served to make him more 
objective in his whole attitude towards life. Henceforth 
he knows every man to be of himself naught He has 
therefore, as Froude points out, no favorites, and portrays, in 
his literary work, Talkative, and Ignorance, and Mr. Bad- 
man, with as much cool devotion to the task and with as 
much artistic faithfulness, as Christian. He spares no one, 
himself least of all. Yet he sympathizes with every manner 
of human weakness, for his own inner life has furnished 
him with a brief abstract and epitome of all human frailty. 
His mastery is the mastery of the genius who has really en- 
tered the Valley of the Shadow and has passed through. 
Hence the seeming of the man in the eyes of those who 
knew him in later life, and who could not easily have sus- 
pected, in this modest yet commanding presence, the piteous 
weaknesses of his younger years, had he himself not so 
instructively told the wonderful story. 



74 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

Our result can be briefly stated. This is unquestionably 
a fairly typical case of a now often described mental disor- 
der. The peculiarities of this special case lie largely in the 
powers of the genius who here suffered from the malady. 
A man of sensitive and probably somewhat burdened nerv- 
ous constitution, whose family history, however, so far as it 
is known to us, gives no positive evidence of serious heredi- 
tary weakness, is beset in childhood with frequent nocturnal 
and even diurnal terrors of a well-known sort. In youth, 
after an early marriage, under the strain of a life of poverty 
and of many religious anxieties, he develops elementary 
insistent dreads of a conscientious sort, 'and later a collection 
of habits of questioning and of doubt which erelong reach 
and obviously pass the limits of the normal. His general 
physical condition meanwhile failing, in a fashion that, in 
the light of our very imperfect information concerning this 
aspect of the case, still appears to be of some neurasthenic 
type, there now appears a highly systematized mass of in- 
sistent motor speech-functions of the most painful sort, 
accompanied with still more of the same fears, doubts, and 
questions. After enduring for a pretty extended period, 
after one remission, and also after a decided change in the 
contents of the insistent elements, the malady then more 
rapidly approaches a dramatic crisis, which leaves the suf- 
ferer for a long period in a condition of secondary melan- 
cholic depression, of a somewhat benign type a depression 
from which, owing to a deep change of his mental habits, 
and to an improvement of his physical condition, he finally 
emerges cured, although with defect, of his greatest ene- 
my the systematized insistent impulses. This entire mor- 
bid experience has lasted some four years. Henceforth, 
nnder a skilful self-imposed mental regimen, this man, 
although always a prey to elementary insistent temp- 
tations and to fits of deep depression of mood, has no 
return of his more systematized disorders, and endures 



THE CASE OP JOUN BUN VAN. 75 

heavy burdens of work and of fortune with excellent 
success. 

Such is the psychological aspect of a story whose 
human and spiritual interest is and remains of the very 
highest. 



m. 

TENNYSON AND PESSIMISM* 

THE bitter criticism that greeted the appearance of Lord 
Tennyson's second Locksley Hall shows how much people 
still loved the first Locksley Hall, and how little they had 
learned from it. An almost universal opinion declared the 
new poem to be a purely abnormal product, whereas the first 
poem, according to the same opinion, was something quite 
natural and healthy. The new Locksley Hall was thus de- 
nounced as a sort of treason. This cruel father, people said, 
sacrifices the child of his own youth. This worn-out old 
hero shows himself at last before all the world as a coward, 
and whines where once he sang the battle-hymn. This Tory 
lord now bids crouch whom the rest bade aspire. Such was 
the general sense of popular criticism, at least in this country. 
And, at first sight, what could be more natural than this 
judgment ? The first Locksley Hall gave us a view of life 
so honest, so youthful, so modern, so comprehensible, that it 
would seem as if nobody capable of feeling what young men 
feel, could fail to adopt that view, or, having adopted it, could 
abandon it without regret. If now the creator of this old 
ideal appears as its denouncer and destroyer, can we who 
loved the old poem do anything but condemn the final 
mood of its maker. 

Locksley Hall Sixty Years After, etc. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson. 
New York : Macmillan & Co. 

76 



TENNYSON AND PESSIMISM. 77 

But this popular view was no less plausible than unjust. 
In fact the second Locksley Hall is, despite a certain falling 
off of technical skill, still substantially the fulfillment of the 
first. Whatever unhealthiness exists in the latest poem, is 
in germ in the original one, and, on the whole, the new 
poem, notwithstanding a number of frantic opinions and of 
unpleasant lines, is healthier, more manly, more devout, 
and even more cheerful, in a deeper sense of the word cheer- 
ful, than was the first poem. Neither poem is truly sound. 
Both suffer from the same disease. Both illustrate Tenny- 
son's characteristic weakness. But of the two the old man's 
poem, if artistically inferior, is ethically higher, and for this 
reason is far more satisfying. Such is the thesis that this 
paper wants to defend. 

What has made people blind to this is the fact that the dis- 
ease from which both of these poems suffer is a very preva- 
lent disease. It is a cause of numerous modern superstitions, 
and casts a gloom over many lives. We need to become 
conscious of its nature, and to get rid of it from our own 
minds. For my part, then, I am thankful to our poet for 
the second Locksley Hall, because, taken with the first, it il- 
lustrates so well and so instructively a great man's conflict 
with this, the favorite disease of his age. I should be glad 
if people saw this truth more readily, and I venture upon 
the few hasty suggestions which follow for the sake of 
helping others, possibly, to direct their attention to the 
matter. 

A devout man is one who believes that there is some- 
thing in the world which demands both his worship and his 
loyalty, and who, accordingly, tries to worship and be loyal. 
Now, if any man seeks to be devout, his great difficulty is 
that he is all the while in the midst of petty and disheartening 
things, which at once attract, corrupt, pain and horrify him. 
In his religious faith, or in his poetry, or in his dreams, he 
therefore tries somehow to neutralize, or to explain away, or 



78 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

at the worst occasionally to forget, this baseness of the details 
of life. Only when he can somehow either transcend or for- 
sake these coarse facts, has he the chance to feel the desired 
devotion. " If, therefore, there is anything divine in the 
world," he says to himself, u I shall not find it while I am 
joined to these cloying and hateful experiences." And so 
he asks of his religious teachers, or of his poets, or of the 
others who have spiritual wares to offer him, that they shall 
somehow purge his soul, from time to time, of the corrup- 
tion of finite things, and show him that divine good, what- 
ever he chooses to call it, which is to be the true object of 
his loyalty. 

Now, since this is the natural desire of a good man, it is 
also but natural that everybody at some time tries to take 
the shortest road to this goal of spiritual freedom. To get 
above the petty and coarse things of life, we must forget 
them, so we say. This seems the only fashion of escape. 
In consequence of this resolve, we often ask of our poets not 
so much that they shall transcend, as that they shall disguise 
or deny, or ignore, the coarseness of the real world. " Hide 
it," we say to them, " declare it unreal, dream it away, talk 
of it as illusion. Deliver us from evil by simply destroy- 
ing the very idea of it, so long as we are in your company." 
When we make this demand of our poets, we ask them to be 
romantic, and the poets who habitually appeal to this de- 
mand are called the romantic poets. As is well known, 
however, Lord Tennyson himself is a romantic poet. Al- 
ways one of the most devout of men, he gives as his ideal 
of the devout mood something that can be realized only 
through a more or less complete separation from the world 
of concrete life. He offers us the things of the spirit in 
sacred places, not elsewhere. His realm of divine truth is 
and always was for him a dream-land, to be reached through 
mystical exaltation, or by the ecstatic fancies of hopeful 
youth. He has believed in God, but in a God that hideth 



TENNYSON AND PESSIMISM. 79 

himself, and that still showeth himself, on rare and roman- 
tic occasions, to the devout. This is the God of the Holy 
Grail, or of the wondrous mystical experience during the 
night scene on the lawn, in the In Memoriam. This God, 
to tell the truth, seems afraid of his own world. He doubt- 
less knows our frame, and remembers that we are dust, but he 
regards us meanwhile with a distant, although mildly piti- 
ful negligence. On occasion he lets us catch glimpses of 
himself, but there is neither rule nor rationality about the 
coming of these glimpses. "Look at me if you can," the 
divine truth says to us. Otherwise we seem to form no part 
of its business. We are not the sort of people that it habit- 
ually meets in a social way. 

All this is only a malter-of-fact statement of the romantic 
spirit, familiar to us, of course, in many poets besides Lord Ten- 
nyson. But it is needful to remind ourselves what this spirit 
means, in order that we may see just now how it expresses 
itself in the first Locksley Hall. In that poem, to be sure, 
there is nothing of what one usually calls mysticism. There 
is, in fact, no theology at all. Hence, indeed, the essentially 
modern sound of the verses. Lord Tennyson's age is doubt- 
less out of harmony, and from the first has been out of har- 
mony, with the more esoteric and theological element in 
his romanticism. Yet this age has no sort of objection to 
divinely significant truth, if only you can express it in 
t mis of well-known astronomical, physical, or biological 
theories, and can make it sound unmiraculous. That, in a 
fashion, was what the first Locksley Hall did, by means of 
a few skilful and even prophetic phrases. What the age 
views with great dislike, namely, the expression of the 
higher truth in traditional or in mystical forms, was what 
the first Locksley Hall ingeniously avoided. Hence people 
who make little or nothing of In Memoriam, who find all 
the Idyls of the King at their best too fanciful, and who 
think the Holy Grail quite unintelligible, may still admire 



80 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

endlessly the dreams about the far-off future in Locksley 
Hall. 

Yet Locksley Hall is percisely as romantic and as full 
of the remote ideals as is the Holy Grail. You may state 
the thing in mediaeval terms if you like, or in terms of fan- 
cies about flying-machines and international Federations. 
Yet the result is precisely the same. The world that you 
move in is, in both cases, the old romantic world, the land 
of magic fire, of talismans, and of a beautiful darkness. 
You are on a quest for the ideal. It is a sort of creature 
that won't be caught in a commonplace way. You must 
go on knightly wanderings, and lose yourself in deserts and 
oceans. The mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and you 
go. Your business is somewhat indescribable. You are 
sure only that it is vastly important. Its most prominent 
feature is that it takes you away from earthly relations. 
You are shamed through all your being to have loved so 
slight a thing as an actual flesh-and-blood woman, who, of 
course, must have been quite incapable of understanding 
such a nature as yours. Nevertheless, after all your misfor- 
tunes, the crescent promise of your spirit has not set, and 
you propose to do something on a grand scale. The out- 
come of the business will be some sort of ineffable glory for 
future humanity. The distance beacons, and not in vain. 
You cry " forward," quite ignorant, of course, of just what 
the word means, but sure that if we only get far enough 
away from where we are, we shall not fail to find perfection. 
The good is something absolutely and fatally destined to be 
reached by us, although it is also of a certainty something 
so very remote that we have not the least idea when we 
shall reach it Such, then, is your Holy Grail, your increas- 
ing purpose that runs through the ages, your divine truth. 
Your description of its features may vary, but it always has 
the same " unmistakable marks," by which you may know 
it wheresoever you go. 



TENNYSON AND PESSIMISM. 81 

This summary may perhaps seem mere scoffing. The 
matter has, of course, another side. This devotion to a 
vague and romantic ideal, which is chiefly defined by the 
fact that it is a good way off, has its strong features. The 
purity of intention is, in Lord Tennyson's poems, undoubted. 
Their educating value, in their place and time, is of the 
highest How much we owe to this teacher of the ideal in 
a sordid age, who may know ? But if, for the sake of awak- 
ing our enthusiasm, these vague dreams of abstract perfec- 
tion are invaluable, we must never forget two things about 
them : first, that they are never the only expressions, never 
the highest expressions, of the love of ideals ; and, second, 
that the invariable outcome of such dreams, unless they 
give place to some more solid sort of idealism, is sooner or 
later hateful and pessimistic despair. This romantic ideal- 
ism of so many among Tennyson's poems, is, therefore, not 
only vague, but essentially transient. In case of the mood 
of Locksley Hall, also, the idealism must give place to a 
deeper and less romantic devotion, or else it must end in 
out and out pessimism. The second Locksley Hall espe- 
cially shows us in what sense the first Locksley Hall was 
already, in germ, a pessimistic poem. 

For in the first Locksley Hall, if we will be honest with 
it, there is plainly great faith that God is the God of the 
future ; but in no true sense does he appear as the God of 
tin- present. The present is a world of wicked squires, who 
drink wine and love dogs, of false and fickle cousins who 
probably lie awake o' nights weeping because they feel 
themselves unworthy of our high regard and in general 
of social lies and sickly forms. There are a few good people 
in it, in the foremost ranks of time, namely ; but their con- 
cern is not with its absurdities, but with the service of the 
ideal future humanity. The noble youth of the poem is 
simply a pessimist as to the world that now is. It is out of 
joint, and he is not born to set that world right, but rather 



82 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

to forget it. His optimism concerns the world that is not, 
but some day shall be. Of that, all sorts of amusing things 
are true. God's attention is plainly devoted to the realms 
of dreams, and the divine plan has no place for the squire 
and the cousin. This of course is optimism with a ven- 
geance, but is it not also in a much deeper sense pessimism ? 
God is not in this place, and Jacob, on a famous occasion, 
made a blunder. God is somewhere else, sleeping, as it 
were, or on a journey, and we must set out to find him. 
Nay then, is not this optimism of progress, this assurance 
that the divine truth is still playing truant, a very dark 
thought, after all ? " One increasing purpose," indeed ! But 
so far it has culminated in the squire and the social lies 
aforesaid. What is wanted is still a very great increase of 
this " purpose." For thus far we have to curse very frank- 
ly, in the poem, pretty much all, save our noble selves, that 
the " purpose " has produced. Where then is the " promise 
of his coming ? " Or rather, what is it all but a bare and 
wearisomely reiterated promise, whose fulfillment is only in 
dream-land, and is apparently there to stay for as long as 
we can definitely foresee. But then the "distance beacons." 
Yet it is only distance, only the far-off. There is no mean- 
ing in life save what that far-off gives to it. Das Dort ist 
niemals Hier. At heart then, despite all our fervor, we are 
only pessimists. The good is somewhere, just as " oats and 
beans and barley grows where you nor I nor nobody knows." 
And that is the whole tale of our airy and meaningless 
hopes. We have only to wake up to this fact to turn all 
our enthusiasm into disaster and gloom. 

Now in so far as the second Locksley Hall is truly pes- 
simistic at all, its pessimism is simply the explicit statement 
of the sense of this very thought. Unless God is here, says 
in substance the poet of the second Locksley Hall, how do 
you know that he is anywhere else ? Unless the present has 
divine meaning, how worthless the dreams of a far-off starry 



TENNYSON AND PESSIMISM. 83 

future, dreams comparable only to the fancies about the 
perfect life that may dwell in the other planets : 

Hesper Venus were we native to that splendour or in Mare, 
We should see the Globe we groan in, fairest of their evening stare. 

Could we dream of ware and carnage, craft and madness, lust and spite, 
Roaring London, raving Paris, in that point of peaceful light i 

Might we not in glancing heavenward on a star so silver- fair 
Yearn, and clasp the hands and murmur, " Would to God that we were 
there! " 

" What are men that He should heed us ? " cried the king of sacred song ; 
Insects of an hour, that hourly work their brother insects wrong, 

While the silent Heavens roll, and Suns along their fiery way, 
All their planets whirling round them, flash a million miles a day. 

Such are the thoughts that finally determine the poet to 
give up the optimism of progress. The process of the world, 
such as it is, is far too vast to be expressed in merely tem- 
poral terms. Kegarded in tune merely, there is doubt about 
all this plan. There seems at all events to be rhythm as 
well as growth : 

Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good, 
And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud. 

And so much that we take to be progress, after all, turns 
out not to be such! Still again, where we are in doubt 
about the reality of anything that we have called progress, 
we become appalled at once by the magnitude of the powers 
of the world. How, looking at them externally, can we be 
sure of their meaning ? 

Forward, backward, backward, forward, in the immeasurable sea, 
Bway'd by vaster ebbs and flows than can be known to you or me. 

To be sure, even now we can repeat our youthful dreams of 
the future peace and perfection of humanity. Perhaps there 
will come an " end after madness " for our poor earth : 



84 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

Every tiger madness muzzled, every serpent passion killed, 
Every grim ravine a garden, every blazing desert till'd, 

Robed in universal harvest up to either pole she smiles, 
Universal ocean softiy washing all her warlcss Isles. 

But then, not only are these things hard, even as dreams 
(" Who can fancy warless men ? "), but just behind all that 
is the picture of the physical death of our planet, a death 
sure to come at last. Is not the moon dead ? " The moon- 
light is the sunlight, and the sun himself will pass." For 
the old dreams we therefore have left only the gloomiest of 
mysteries, and the saddest of assurances. 

But, after all, does not the true secret of this pessimism 
lie in our original abandonment of the real world about us 
for that world of dreams ? When we sought the ideal far 
off, and refused to recognize it in human life as it is, were 
we not already just what we have found ourselves to be, 
pessimists ? Can we not then escape our outcome by aban- 
doning our romantic mood ? To a certain extent, Tennyson 
undertakes to do this in the new Locksley Hall, and this is 
what makes me say that there is, with all the weakness and 
the gloom of this latest poem, a far healthier view of life, in 
many of its lines, than we find in the old Locksley Hall. 

First then, in general, the poet distinctly recognizes at 
last that, if this is God's world, what others have called the 
" perfection in imperfection " of just these struggles, sins, 
tears, strivings and loves about us to-day, must be the ex- 
pression of God's will. The sins are none the less sins that 
they and the struggle with them are alike necessary to the 
genuine realization of the good. We need cry out no less 
against evil whilst we still hold evil to be, not the transient 
absence of the god of Evolution from his world, but the 
living strife in the midst of which the true God maintains 
himself in his world. This view of evil is the one that 
among recent poets, Browning has especially been coramis- 



TENNYSON AND PESSIMISM. 85 

sioned to illustrate afresh for us. This is what he has said 
in all his best poems. But this view is the one that Tenny- 
son's romanticism has always tried to escape. Tennyson 
has lamented the evils of life, but has never been ready to 
take them for what they are, the evils of God's own world. 
They have seemed to him the accidents of God's remoteness. 
In this latest poem he somewhat haltingly recognizes, amidst 
all his complaints, the inevitable fact. The good simply is 
not and cannot be realized, save in the midst of the conflict 
with evil. Yet that truth makes the good no less good, and 
the world no less divine. Through all his despair the poet 
now at last turns towards this light as his only guide : 

Follow you the Star that lights a desert pathway, yours or mine. 
Forward, till you see the highest Human Nature is divine. 

Follow Light, and do the Right for man can half-control his doom 
Till you find the deathless Angel seated in the vacant tomb. 

It is with this new sort of faith in mind that the poet 
says of our earth, not, as of old, that it is a joy to see her 
spinning down the ringing grooves of change, but that 

Ere she reach her earthly best, a God must mingle with the game. 

He feels too that there are " those about us whom we 
neither see nor name." He is sure that, amid all the mys- 
teries of the heavens, mysteries upon which the word Evo- 
lution throws no sort of light, there must still be a living 
presence: 

Only That which made us, meant us to be mightier by and by, 
Set the sphere of all the boundless Heavens within the human eye, 

Sent the shadow of Himself, the boundless, thro' the human soul, 
Boundless inward, in the atom, boundless outward in the Whole. 

This faith is still vague, it is still clouded, it still loves 
romantic forms of speech. But after all it is more genuine 
than that blind old trust in whatever might happen to fill 



86 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

the remote future. For if this mysterious world is even 
now the world of a divine plan, boundless both in the 
whole and in the atom, if we wait not for some far-off 
divine event, but believe in the actually present God, then 
our lives become, for all their horror and their problems, at 
any rate genuine lives. It is a game, at worst, this life of 
ours, and not a procession. We play it, and do not simply 
watch it to see what is some day to follow : 

You, my Leonard, use and not abuse your day, 
Move among your people, know them, follow him who led the way, 

Strove for sixty widow'd years to help his homelier brother men, 

Served the poor, and built the cottage, raised the school and drained the fen. 

The man who does his commonplace business in the living 
present is, after all, the true man. He fights the good fight, 
and the good is nothing if it is not the good fight. 

The particular true man, however, whom Leonard, the 
" grandson " of the new poem, is to follow, is none other, 
be it noticed, than the old squire himself, that dog-loving 
creature, who used to hunt in dreams, and behave otherwise 
disagreeably. There is a beautiful completeness about the 
late apology which the poet now makes to that much 
abused person. Every reader will be amused by the apolo- 
gy. But possibly some reader may not note its full signifi- 
cance. Returning, as the poet does from the world of vain 
dreams to the world of human beings, he finds not only 
horrible and gloomy things, such as fill him with fear, but 
true and genuine things, such as express God's own heart 
Among these things are the very relationships that the 
romantic youth had affected to despise. Amy, to be sure, is 
gone, long since. But the old squire has lived even until 
yesterday. The poet has come at last to be present at his 
funeral. And when one sums up the squire's hearty, 
simple, benevolent, unromantic life, one sees what it 
meant; 



TENNYSON AND PESSIMISM. 87 

Worthier soul was he than I am, sound and honest, rustic Squire, 
Kindly landlord, boon companion youthful jealousy is a liar. 

After all, it is the straightforward and manly life that 
is praiseworthy. Once it seemed to us mere Philistinism, 
and perhaps in its narrowness it may often have been noth- 
ing better. But narrowness is not cured by negations. 
" Forsake this present life because it is narrow," our roman- 
tic youth had said. Now we see that it is in this present 
life, not out of it that we are to find God. Take this com- 
monplace life, and without denying it, without forsaking it, 
make it no longer narrow. Make it large and full, but 
keep it concrete : that is the lesson that the old squire has 
taught us, and we thank him for it as he lies dead. We 
liave no better advice for Leonard than that he shall fol- 
low this example. 

Thus then, Tennyson's latest pessimism is not without 
its brighter comrades, courage, and faith in the real world. 
In so far as our poet has reached this view he has distinctly 
progressed from disease toward health. The old man thinks 
gray thoughts, for he is gray ; but not all his thoughts are 
of death. Experience has brought him the end of romantic 
dreams, and his only hope is now in the actual. 

One hears nowadays, very often, of youthful pessimism, 
prevalent, for instance, among certain clever college stu- 
dents. When I hear of these things, I do not always regret 
them. On the contrary, I think that the best man is the 
one who can see the truth of pessimism, can absorb and 
transcend that truth, and can be nevertheless an optimist, 
not by virtue of his failure to recognize the evil of life but 
by virtue of his readiness to take his part in the struggle 
against this evil. Therefore, I am often glad when I hear 
of this spread of pessimistic ideas among studious but unde- 
veloped youth. For I say to myself, if these men are brave 
men, their sense of the evil that hinders our human life, 
will some day arouse them to fight this evil in dead earnest, 



88 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

while, if they are not brave men, optimism can be of no 
service to cowards. But in any case I like to suggest to 
such brave and pessimistic youth where the solution of their 
problem must lie. It surely cannot lie in any romantic 
dream of a pure and innocent world, far off somewhere in 
the future, in Heaven, or in Isles of the Blessed. These 
things are not for us. We are born for the world of manly 
business, and if we are worthy of our destiny, we may pos- 
sibly have some good part in the Wars of the Lord. For 
nothing better have we any right to hope, and to an honest 
man that is enough. We may be glad that our poet won 
at last the possession of this truth. 



TV. 
THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL* 

IN a remarkable paper on Moral Deficiencies as deter- 
mining Intellectual Functions, published in the July num- 
ber of this Journal, the learned author has made a very 
interesting contribution to that famous discussion which 
was begun, according to a very respectable tradition, in the 
Garden of Eden, and which, in much more recent times, 
was continued in the incomparable conversation between 
Mephistopheles and the student in Faust. Every thought- 
ful consideration of so interesting and momentous a question 
is welcome, and no reader can doubt the thoughtfulness, 
and in many ways the instructiveness, of the admirably 
candid and fearless essay referred to. In attempting, as I 
shall here do, to explain some of the relations between moral 
and intellectual development from a point of view not 
wholly identical with that of the author of this former 
paper, I shall do best to give my argument as little as possi- 
ble the directly controversial form. Something of contro- 
versy will indeed creep into these paragraphs; but the 
matter at issue is in fact too real and tragic to warrant very 
much of the weighing of the accuracy or adequacy of this 
or of that individual phrase which one may chance to find 
in the speech of one's conscientious fellow-student. Our 

International Journal of Ethics, October, 1893. The paper was sug- 
gested by one written by Professor Gcorg Siinmel, of Berlin. 

89 



90 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

words easily differ, and may even be open to grave mis- 
understandings never more so than when we write on the 
intricate relations which obtain between moral defect and 
intellectual skill. It is easy therefore to misinterpret or to 
misuse another's expressions upon such subjects ; and this 
fact, while it certainly seriously increases the responsibility 
of any one who feels called upon to give public utterance to 
his views as to such delicate problems, makes doubtless 
only the more unprofitable too detailed a controversy over 
words that have once been uttered. It is, after all, the 
cause involved that is here of moment. For the problem : 
To what extent does an experience of evil add to our intel- 
lectual ability ? is indeed so complex as to make only too 
possible expressions of opinion that, by reason of the diffi- 
culty of the subject, may prove to be erroneous, and that, by 
reason of the practical moment of the issue in question, may 
in consequence easily cause the judicious to grieve. 

Meanwhile, of the reality of the issue itself there can be 
no doubt. The words rendered, Eritis sicut Deus, scientes 
bonum et malum, were felt by the author of the original 
tale to embody a paradoxical truth that, for us who come 
after him, has only grown more wealthy in its paradoxes ai^ 
time has gone on. As for the part later played, in the dis- 
cussion, by Mephistopheles, in the passage just referred to, 
the significance of these as of other utterances of Faust's 
tempter lies just in the fact that they contain, in all their 
cruel irony, an aspect of the real truth. Moral goodness, as 
an attainment, is doubtless something very different from 
innocence. And attained goodness is only won through a 
conflict with the forces of evil, which involves a pretty deep 
knowledge of evil. But knowledge of evil, in us men (and 
for excellent "psycho-physical" reasons, too) frequently 
leads to sin, and very commonly does so, in any given indi- 
vidual, before it actually leads the individual himself to the 
possible goodness that lies for him beyond and above this 



THE KNOWLEDGE OP GOOD AND EVIL. 91 

knowledge of evil. Therefore, on the way that leads the 
triumphant towards the goal of attained goodness, there will 
be found many who pause by the way, and who are con- 
tent, after their fashion, with this or that sort of knowledge 
of evil, and with the sin in which, in their cases, this knowl- 
edge has actually involved them. Among these numerous 
wayfarers, moreover, there will be found many in whom 
such knowledge is a very marked feature of their whole 
mental life. Some of them, accordingly, will be very clever 
and ingenious persons, and will owe much of their wit to 
their lack of innocence. As against the innocent the 
dwellers, as it were, in Eden these knowing sinners can 
always assert that there is something more advanced more 
Godlike, in fact, as the serpent said in their wisdom, than 
in the ignorance of those who cannot conceive of sin. And 
thus insight and moral defect will come to have that fre- 
quent actual association, which the writer of the paper here 
referred to has noticed as a fact in the life of the world, 
and which is, in truth, the source of so serious a tragedy in 
human life. For it is precisely this association which often 
helps to make evil so keenly attractive in the eyes of the 
young and curious. But if one examines more closely, one 
finds that the paradox of the serpent is but one special case 
of an universal paradox of all human consciousness. And 
it is only necessary to state this paradox in its extremest 
form to deprive it of half its susceptibility to misunder- 
standing. There will, of course, indeed, always remain a 
great number of perplexing special problems in this as in 
all regions of our life ; but at least we shall no longer be 
misled in our principjes of judgment, when once we have 
grasped the deepest source of the difficulty. The common 
mistake, in dealing with all such matters, is the half-truth, 
and it was just in the half-truth that the wisdom of the 
original serpent consisted. Even so, however, to point out 
in succession now this, now that case where an intellectual 



92 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

advance results from some particular moral deficiency, may 
be to any extent confusing and disheartening. To discover, 
however, a principle so universal that it would determine a 
priori the existence of many such paradoxical cases in any 
moral world, even the best, so soon as that world were con- 
ceived as more than one of transparently empty innocence 
this is an undertaking worthy of the serious moralist ; 
and, properly set forth, such an undertaking can be in no 
wise either confusing to the little ones, or disheartening to 
the earnestly-minded. And, after all, why should science, 
in its cool regard for truth, need to be disheartening when 
the truth happens to be inspiring, or choose to be confusing 
in order to prove itself to be dispassionate. 

As a fact I find, since writing the body of what follows, 
that the author of the essay here in question actually recog- 
nizes, in its universality, precisely that principle which I am 
about to expound afresh, and has elsewhere,* in the already 
published first volume of his treatise on ethics, discussed in 
a general and significant way the close relation which exists 
between the ethical worth of the individual and the presence 
of evil tendencies and temptations in his consciousness. 
Little or nothing of what I here write will therefore seem 
new to him, and therefore it is indeed better that I avoid 
the controversial tone. But in the essay now in question, 
on the Moral Deficiencies, our author has written as if he 
had forgotten or chosen to neglect his own former dis- 
cussion. This his former discussion itself, moreover, has 
just come into my own hands, and the following essay, 
written before I had seen the first volume of the Einleitung 
in die Moralwissenschaft, must therefore be regarded as, on 
the whole, far less a reply than an independent contribu- 
tion to our topic. Where what I shall here say agrees, 

* See Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft, by Georg Simmel. Berlin, 
1892, vol. i., 3tes Kapitel, on Sittliches Verdienst und Schuld. 



THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL. 93 

then, with our author's former chapter, in his published Ein- 
leitung the chapter on Verdienst und Schuld I shall only 
be supplementing his more recent essay by the thoughts 
presented in his previous publication. Where my own 
views run altogether counter to his, the contrast may still 
be of service. 

I. 

It is an old observation, which recent research only makes 
more impressive and concrete, that all organic processes in- 
volve a certain balance of opposing forces, and that, in par- 
ticular, there is in all of them such an union of conflicting 
tendencies as is, for instance, expressed by saying that the 
phenomena of physical life involve at every instant, as a part 
of themselves, all the essential phenomena of the death of 
tissues. As I read, at the moment, in the current journals, 
I come upon two very recent expressions of this now fairly 
commonplace fact. In an article on The Nerve-Cell,* by a 
well-known English expert, I find, in an argument upon the 
functions of nerve-fibers, the words, "Since the chemical 
processes which accompany death of living tissue appear to 
be very similar to the chemical processes which accompany 
activity, as is seen, for example, in the case of muscle, it is 
very possible," etc. ; but the rest of the argument concerns 
us not here. Meanwhile, a paper in the Revue Philoso- 
phique, on the movements of lower and higher organisms,t 
contains, in the author's summary of some recent discus- 
sions of the chemical processes at the basis of such move- 
ments, the statement, " Nothing more resembles the phenom- 
ena of the irritation (of living tissues) than those of death ; 
and it was a stroke of genius in Claude Bernard to insist as 

* The Nerve Cell Considered an the Basis of Neurology, by Professor 
Schafer. Brain, 1893, Parts LXI and LXII, p. 159. 

t Origine et Nature du Mouvement Organique, by J. Soury. Revue 
Ph'loaophique for July, 1893; see, in particular, p. 65. 



94 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

much as he did on the truth that every function of life is a 
function of organic death ; that in every movement of man 
and of the animals ' the active substance of the muscle is 
destroyed and burned,' just as the brain, in thinking, is 
consumed ; and in a word, that life is death (La vie c'est la 



Now, here is mentioned an union of opposing tendencies 
in one of the best-known and most-frequently studied of 
organic processes. I need not for the moment insist upon 
the true analogy, which some at first sight would think a 
strained one, between these objective physical phenomena 
and certain others which are observable in the subjective 
world, among the activities of consciousness. Of that genu- 
ine analogy I shall indeed speak in a moment. But just 
now I shall confine myself to the mere interpretation of 
phrases. And here, for the first, what it concerns us to 
note is that there does appear, in the account of the vital 
processes, a necessity of stating their nature in essentially 
paradoxical terms, and that yet nobody is likely, in this 
region, to fall a prey to certain apparently easy misunder- 
standings of the meaning of the phrases used. La vie c'est 
la mort : it is not hard, in the light of the concrete facts of 
the metabolism of tissues, as the biologists explain them to 
us, to understand the significant half-truth, the apt para- 
dox, of such an expression. But suppose that some one 
began to draw conclusions as to the implication of these 
words if taken in too abstract a sense. Suppose that one 
passed from the processes to the products. Suppose that he 
said, " If the processes of life are essentially processes of 
death, surely it follows, then, that all live things are, as 
such, dead things." This consequence would no longer be 
a happy paradox, a half-truth. It would be nonsense. The 
process is an union of balanced but opposing tendencies. 
But the product can not be expressed in merely negative or 
in indifferent terms. Living involves, yes, as it were, at 



THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL. 95 

every step, consists, in dying ; but life is utterly different 
from death. 

Well, without insisting just yet on the reality of the 
analogy of such, without dwelling on anything but the 
parallelism of the phrases, suppose that we do find, in our 
conscious life, processes whose nature has to be expressed 
in a paradoxical language similar to the one thus occasion- 
ally used in biology. Shall we let this necessity deceive 
us ? Shall we be so neglectful of the complications of 
truth as to seem to forget that you may have to affirm of a 
process what would be nonsense if affirmed of the product, 
or if so affirmed as to confuse product and process ? To 
become morally wise, for instance (if moral wisdom involves 
an understanding of moral issues), involves becoming ac- 
quainted with impurity. Shall we accordingly say, "All 
the morally wise, as such, are impure ? " Or, taking another 
vit-w of the case, shall we conceive the "moral man " just 
as a product, in whom, by definition, there is to be no evil, 
and shall we then say, " The moral man lacks the physical 
experience which gives the immoral one so thorough a 
comprehension of the immorality of others ? " * Surely 
such views are confusions. It is as if we either said, on 
the one hand, " The live tissue must lack all the essential 
characters by which either dead or dying tissues resembles 
one another ; " or, on the contrary, " All the living tissues, 
as such, are dead." No, if the matter is merely one of com- 
prehending phrases, we need not even take the physiological 
processes as our basis for illustrating this sort of confusion. 
If we are determined to confuse a process with either a 
stage or an outcome of a process, regarded as something 
fixed and stationary, we may as well turn Eleatics at once. 
Surely (for so in substance argued Zeno), the flying arrow, 



The Utter, though not the former, of these supposed assertions is an 
actual quotation from the article that has suggested the present one. 
8 



90 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

whenever it moves, is somewhere. But somewhere means 
a place yes, one place. And so, as of old, ' the flying 
arrow rests " rest precisely as all the live things are 
dead, and precisely as the morally wise man remains essen- 
tially impure. For the process of wisely conceiving the 
moral truth involves as a moment the " psycho-physical " 
impurity of thinking evil ; and the process of the arrow's 
flight involves of necessity that the arrow should be some- 
where in order that it may fly. As a fact, however, the 
arrow that rests in its place does not move, the tissue that 
merely disintegrates is dead, and it is the thought that 
dwells in impurity, that is impure not the thought that 
comprehends impurity only to overcome it* 

But I indeed am not content thus merely to dwell upon 
the analogies of phrase involved in the similarity between 
our current accounts of biological and of moral processes. 
I insist upon the actual and enlightening analogy of the 
two sorts of processes themselves. In so far as the life of 
a conscious being runs parallel to the biological processes of 
his organism, it is not surprising that just such a balancing 
of opposing tendencies, just such a unity of conflicting 
activities, just such a Heraclitean KoXAicrn; dp/iow'a T>V 8ia- 
fapovrajv, as is everywhere found on the physiological side, 
should be represented in our consciousness in more ways 
than one. For the just mentioned relation of the death and 
the activity of tissues is but a single case of the presence of 
this union of opposing tendencies on the physiological side ; 
and more complex instances of such union, instances that 
reach the grade of the co-operation of antagonist muscles in 



* Here again it is well to say that these words were written before I had 
seen the Einleitung in die Moral wissenschaft, where, vol. i,p. 268, the con- 
trast between " ruhende Qualitdt " and "Prozess " is admirably applied to the 
very case now before us. It is strange that the essay on Moral Deficiencies 
seems so much to have neglected this aspect 



THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL. 97 

a voluntary movement, are already pretty obviously repre- 
sented in consciousness. We are well aware that we give 
complex voluntary movements precision by " holding our- 
selves back. 1 ' We know that true freedom of action is 
inseparable from elements of self-restraint and of self-con- 
trol. We consciously rejoice in ruling ourselves. We are 
aware, in general, that our will, in every organized form, 
involves a consciousness of opposing tendencies a con- 
sciousness which very obviously has not only this its con- 
scious aspect, but its whole psycho-physical embodiment 
and expression. And from this point of view we get 
already a general notion of the true analogy that connects, 
in the one world of life, the most complex organic functions 
those to which our consciousness corresponds, with those 
simpler physical processes which characterize all life, and 
which make the union of contrary tendencies so familiar 
an affair throughout the organic realm. It is therefore 
more, then, than an analogy of phrases, it is a real resem- 
blance of type, which makes the lesson gained from a gen- 
eral survey of such organic activities useful when we turn 
to a study of the facts of consciousness. 

But this resulting lesson, so far, is, that if I am talking 
of something conceived as the product or outcome of an 
inic process such a product as " a live organism," or u a 
man," or " virtue," or " intellect " I must not be sur- 
to find, in the process of which this product is not 
icrely the result but the embodiment (the tvipytui, in Aris- 
>tle's sense), factors which, taken by themselves, are dis- 
ictly opposed in their character to the positive but highly 
stract definition that the product, if conceived merely as 
>mething finished and at rest, would necessarily possess. 
Fust as in the living and active tissue I find, as an essential 
of its activity, that going on which, if it were alone, 
rould mean death, just as in the voluntary movement I 
id that stimulation of the antagonist muscles going on 



98 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

which, if it were alone, would mean an utter defeat of the 
intended movement, just as every important nervous stimu- 
lation seems to involve, as part of itself, the excitation of 
processes that tend to inhibit it, so, too, I must expect to 
find in all forms of the higher life, and, in particular, of 
the moral life, a similar complexity of structure. And I do 
find, as a part of moral excellence, be it of whatever grade 
you will, that there are tendencies present which, if they 
were alone, would be the very opposite and the destruction 
of every such excellence. And this must be the case, not 
because of the weakness of man, but because of the organic 
dignity and consequent complexity of virtue ; and not be- 
cause the moral world is a mere maze of perplexing con- 
fusions, but because the very principle of every organic life 
is the combination in harmony of opposing tendencies.* 

II. 

And now, in the next place, for some illustrations 
(drawn directly from the moral world itself) of the way in 
which this union of opposing tendencies works in that re- 
gion. Then we shall be able to apply our result to some of 
the special problems suggested by our author. 

It is of the essence of moral goodness that positively 
good deeds should be the result of what we call choice 
that is, that morality should be a matter not of fate, but of 
consciousness. There is no virtue in digesting wholesome 
food when I am in sound health and have once eaten it 
There may be virtue in choosing, against momentary appe- 
tite, a wholesome food instead of a tempting but pernicious 
dainty. But if the moral processes are thus processes of 



* Here again 1 have to go over ground which the aforesaid 3ts Kapitel 
of the first volume of the Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft has on 
the whole admirably treated, while the essay on the Moral Deficiencies 
has strangely neglected the same considerations. 



THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL. 99 

conscious choice, it follows that every such choice involves 
a knowing of something against which one chooses, as well 
as s( >mething in favor of which one decides. But that against 
which one chooses is necessarily a motive, an interest, a so- 
licitation, a temptation. For the moral choice is an inner 
one ; the rejected alternative is not an outer enemy, but an 
internal " spring of action " (to use Dr. Martineau's phrase), 
If so, then of necessity every distinctly moral choice involves 
the previous presence of a certain tendency to choose the 
wrong. Yes, moral choice is essentially a condemnatibn of 
the rejected motive, as well as an approval of the accepted 
motive. Otherwise it could be no moral choice. A being 
possessed of but one motive could have no conscience. But 
if this be so, then the consciousness of every moment of 
moral choice involves, also, a consciousness a confession, 
if you will of the presence in the chooser of that which he 
himself regards as evil. He not only coldly knows, he in- 
cludes, he possesses, lie is beset with some evil motive ; and, 
nevertheless, he conquers it. This is involved in the very 
formal definition of a moral act. You might as well try to 
define the king without his subjects, or the master without 
his servant, or the captor without his captive or his prize, as 
to define a moral deed without the presence in the agent of 
some evil motive. The case, then, is here quite parallel to 
UK- case of the relation of life and death in the functions of 
tin- active tissues. Once define a given man as moral in 
respect of any one given deliberate act of choice, and then, 
indeed, you can no longer without contradiction conceive 
him as failing to possess at least one significant psychical 
experience of evil namely, the experience of precisely that 
rvil motive which he has then and there deliberately rejected 
as evil. Had he not first known that evil motive, and 
known it ;us vrrily his own, he certainly could not have 
<l-hl>cratcly chofwm against it. Or am I moral because I 
choose not to act on the motives that I can only abstractly 



100 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

conceive, as possible and remote temptations, which attract 
others and not me ? If so, how vast my morality ! Like 
the moralizing schoolmaster in Hegel's Philosophy of His- 
tory, who is represented as warning his class against the 
ambitious passions of the great men of history, I can place 
my virtues above those of Alexander, for, unlike that glory- 
seeking man of blood, I have no ambitious desire to con- 
quer Asia, or to overthrow Darius, but I leave all nations to 
fare as God pleases.* This sort of virtue is indeed cheap, 
and " moral " men in this sense are as plenty as are the 
weaklings ; while if one points out that we possess such 
virtues not in so far as we comprehend life, and are skilful, 
but in so far as we are limited, and ignorant of life, and 
unskilful, I have no objection to offer to such an argument. 
Only the virtues of Hegel's schoolmaster are simply not 
virtues in actu, and one cannot even be sure that they are 
virtues in potentia until the virtuous schoolmaster has 
proved by his deeds his capacity for self-conquest. Put the 
schoolmaster in Alexander's place, and what will he do 
with Darius and with Asia ? Who can tell ? Nay, he 
himself cannot tell, and that is just why he is here igno- 
rant both of the temptations of Alexander, and of the vir- 
tues that Alexander might have possessed, but perhaps did 
not possess. Here, then, ignorance conditions not only the 
lack of temptation, but the entire absence of the correspond- 
ing virtues as well. 

Hegel skilfully said, "Die Tugend ist nicht ohne 
Kampf ; sie ist vielmehr der hochste, vollendete kampf" t 

* Hegel, Werke, IX, p. 40 : Woraus soglcich folgt dass er, der Schul- 
meister, ein vortrefflicherer Mensch sey, als jene (Caesar u. Alexander) well 
er solche Leidenschaften iricht besasse, und den Beweis dadurch gebe, 
dass er Asieii nicht erobere, den Darius, Porus, nicht besiege, sondern 
freilich wohl lebe, aber auch leben lasse. 

t Logik, Werke, IV, p. 63. I venture to refer to my own discussion of 
tliis general topic, and to my statement of Hegel's view of it, in my Spirit 



THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL. 1Q1 

" Virtue is not without strife, but is rather the highest, the 
fulfilled strife." But forgetting this perfectly obvious con- 
sideration, people often so ignore the element of conflict in 
the process, while they think only of the assumed perfec- 
tion of the product, that when some one suggests, in the 
interest of the " intellectual functions," how an insight 
into life must involve a knowledge of evil, people at once 
assume that the washed-out soul of the colorless and inane 
person whom they have imagined as the model good man 
cannot possess such knowledge, and thereupon they lament 
the sad conflict which seems to result between the interests 
of virtue and those of insight into life. As a fact, how- 
ever, the whole case stands thus : The good man as such is 
neither an innocent nor an inane person, but a knowing, a 
warm-blooded, a passionate servant of the good. Mean- 
while, neither virtue nor knowledge exists in abstracto 
among us men. There exists always some concrete virtue, 
which shows itself in good choices in favor of this or of 
this good, as against that or some other evil end, or motive. 
And as to knowing, it too is no abstraction, but there exists 
always some concrete knowledge, which is knowledge of 
this or of that thing. We therefore, to be sure, cannot 
compare the virtuous man in the abstract with the knowing 
man in the abstract, to see whether the two concepts can be 
made to agree. Doubtless many stupid men, meanwhile, 
have some virtues, and many of the base are clever. No- 
body, moreover, has all virtues, or all knowledge. The 
only possible comparison is therefore between two men as 
to a particular virtue, either in exercise or in potentia, or 
between the same men as to the knowledge of a particular 
thing. Well, this being so, let it be a question of the 
actual and conscious exercise, in a deliberate and not in a 

of Modem I'hilosophy, p. 210, ?., and in my Religious Aspect of Philoso- 
phy, pp. 462-469. 



102 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

merely accidental way, of a given virtue, as concretely 
applied to a given case. Let one man choose the positive 
exercise of that virtue ; let another, with equal deliberation, 
wilfully reject it. Which now of these two is just then the 
more knowing as to the motives involved in this virtue ? I 
say that, so far as we have yet defined the case, there is no 
difference in intellectual capacity denned as between the 
two. Both know the good and the ill involved. For 
neither could consciously choose unless he in some measure 
knew both the good and the ill. The good man knows 
the ill, and is aware of the temptation to do it ; otherwise 
his " virtuous " act would be a matter of blind health, like 
his digestion, or of mere lack of interest, like his present 
avoidance of any wicked ambition to conquer Asia. He 
knows the rejected ill, he is tempted, and he deliberately 
resists and overcomes the temptation (whether with or 
without free will I decide not here). The other also knows, 
but chooses the ill. Which is so far the more knowing ? 
The virtuous man can surely say, " Show me thy knowl- 
edge without thy virtue, and I will show thee my knowl- 
edge by my virtue. For by knowing the ill and the good 
it is that I choose the good with open eyes." Of the later 
knowledge which for the sinner alone, not for the good 
man, results from the consequences of this sin, I shall 
speak hereafter. 

Doubtless one may indeed still insist that, unless by the 
actual assertion of a freedom of indeterminate choice, the 
foregoing precise equality of knowledge between these two 
men cannot in the end be maintained. Well, be it so. I 
am, as I have said, not here arguing the free-will issue. 
Admit, if you please, that there must be a difference of 
motive between the two, and therefore a difference of 
knowledge : the question will then once more arise, Which 
of them is, at the moment of choice, the more knowing ? 
For the same reasons as before, both of them alike must at 



THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL. U3 

least in some genuine measure know both of the motives 
between which they choose. Else there is mere blind 
prevalence of interest without any clear deliberation. 
Shall one say, as to the different degrees of knowledge 
now subsisting, It is the chooser of the good who knows 
not the full allurements of the other's temptation ? Or 
shall one say, It is the sinner who is blind to those mani- 
fold excellencies whose presence to consciousness deter- 
mines the good man's choice ? Here, if anything, the 
chances are largely in favor of the greater knowledge of 
the virtuous chooser, since in general strong temptations 
are comparatively elemental, while the reasons in favor of 
goodness are in nature usually complex and abstract. A 
mere boy can have a full sense of many temptations to 
vice ; it takes reflection to see fully all the reasons why 
vice is intolerable. But herewith, as soon as one admits 
differences of knowledge, as between these two, one enters 
afresh the realm of the indeterminate. My object was only 
to show that in order to have the same choice presented, in 
its essential features, to two agents, one virtuous, one vicious 
in his decision, it is necessary to have essentially the same 
lotives, and so the same elements of knowledge present in 
both cases. What further differences of knowledge there 
be is indeed a matter of accident ; but the chances are 
at least even that the good chooser is more knowing than 
the sinner. 

But if this is so whenever an individual case of compari- 
is taken up, how far, then, extends the possible growth, 
in insight into life, of those agents who grow in active vir- 
tue; and how does their possible collective insight con- 
cerning mere temptations compare with that of the sinners ? 
[f every active virtue involves a knowledge of evil in order 
to be a conquest over evil the presence of temptation in 
order that the active virtue maybe a victory over tern pla- 
in then what insight into life is there that will not some- 



104 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

where form part of the insight, and so of the virtue, of some 
virtuous agent ? No, it would seem that there is no insight 
into life that is alien from every possible virtue, and that 
no sinner can say to all the good, " I comprehend tempta- 
tions that no one of all of you can possibly understand." 
For had the sinner not only possessed his temptation, but 
won the victory over it, he would now be, with reference 
to that temptation alone, surely no less than he is, in insight 
or in being, and he would then have stood among the 
virtuous, where even now there may well stand some one 
who has been tempted in all points as he was, but who is, 
in this matter, without sin. I still postpone, to be sure, a 
discussion of the knowledge that the sinner gets from the 
consequences of his sin from the experiences that follow 
upon it. 

This view of the nature of virtue is, however, indeed ap- 
parently open to one or two more or less plausible objec- 
tions, which it may be well still to mention. 

" If this view of virtue is right," some imaginary objector 
may say, "then it must follow that a good man is good 
merely in proportion to the number and the gravity of his 
resisted temptations. But if so, then a man who should be 
constantly tempted to murder his mother, to steal church 
property, to be a cannibal, and to kidnap and eat children, 
and who nobly resisted all these temptations, would be a 
more virtuous man than one who was never thus tempted, 
but who lived without friction the devoted life of a phi- 
lanthropist, and of a public servant, always loyal and chari- 
table of heart. As this result is absurd, it follows that 
virtue indeed implies, as the author of the essay here in 
question asserts, a certain ignorance of evil motives." 

This objection is obvious, but trivial. No one would be 
deceived by the parallel assertion in case of the organic 
processes before referred to. Life involves disintegration 
of tissue, and so constant death, always counteracted, indeed, 



THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL. 1Q5 

by the processes of tissue-building. The more life, and the 
more activity of tissue the more disintegration, and the 
more building up. And so, for instance, in a warm-blooded 
animal, a more rapid dying process goes on than in a cold- 
blooded animal. It does not follow that, in a given organ- 
ism, the life would grow in general vigor if disintegrating 
processes at random were set up, and were then just counter- 
acted, in the struggles of a pathological condition, by the 
upbuilding processes that preserved the life. The death- 
process is not alien from my physical life, but is a part of it. 
The more active the life that I get, the more dying will be 
going on in my tissues. But the simple converse of this 
proposition very surely does not follow. I do not neces- 
sarily produce more life by introducing more death into 
my tissues. What is clear is, that if some disintegrating 
disease is present in my tissues, then I get life, if at all, by 
conquering this pathological disintegration. But without 
just that form of disintegration, I might, indeed, have a 
richer life. 

Just so it is too with the process of virtue. Any actively 
virtuous man can say, at the moments of deliberate exercise 
of virtue, " My virtue involves as one of its elements temp- 
tation to evil. Hence in doing good I know evil." Igno- 
rance of a given evil may be per accidens a condition of a 
iven virtue, but every active virtue involves some knowl- 
of evil. On the other hand no sinner can say, " My 
inowledge of temptation depends upon my viciousness, and 
if I had been good at the moment of choice in respect of the 
deeds wherein now I am evil, I should ipso facto have 
diminished my intelligence, in acquiring my virtues, since 
I should then have failed to know these temptations," For 
here the answer is simply : You could have known these 
temptations just as truly if you had resisted them. You 
would then have no less insight as to temptation, but much 
more virtue as to life. But these things being granted, it 



1U6 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

may well be that some virtues are better worth knowing 
than other virtues, just as some life is more vigorous than 
other life ; so that virtues whose knowledge involves the 
knowing and resisting of pathological temptations may 
be far less interesting, both to the afflicted sufferer from 
the pathological enemy, and to the lover of conscious or 
of moral life in general, than are other active virtues, 
based upon the conquest over more normal temptations 
Meanwhile, there can be no doubt whatever of the moral 
excellence of the man who, being burdened with a distinctly 
pathological temptation, nobly resists it, just as there can be 
no doubt that he loses no intellectual skill or insight, but 
rather cultivates both, by resisting his temptation. But 
since, unfortunately, the burdened man as much lacks 
knowledge of the normal life as the normal man fails to 
comprehend the depths of abnormality, the real problem 
here is, Which of these two sorts of knowledge of life is 
most worth having ? And this question is in no respect 
any longer a question of the relative value for the intellect 
of virtue and of vice, but it is a question of the relative 
value for the intellect of two sorts of knowledge, whereof 
one is normal, the other unhealthy, but whereof both alike 
may involve either virtue if a temptation is known and 
conquered, or vice, if the temptation is known and pre- 
ferred. 

For the rest, the kindly and public-spirited philanthropist 
of our example is indeed as virtuous as his burdened, but still 
triumphant brother, only in case the philanthropist really 
struggles as seriously as the latter with his own much more 
elevated, but none the less genuine moral problems and 
temptations. And the moral order actually demands of him 
that he shall do so. He has more talents ; from him, then, 
more moral life is required. He may think that he finds in 
himself only kindliness; but if he looks sharply as he goes, 
he will erelong find in himself sloth, or pride, or self -com- 



THE KNOWLEDGE OP GOOD AND EVIL. 1Q7 

placency, uot to speak of a horde of more elemental if still 
normal passions. If he contends with these and with their 
outcome, he will get as rich an experience of the evils of his 
own world as his weaker brother gets of the evils of his. 
In general, then, it is here not our virtue that is responsible 
for our ignorance, but rather our inevitable ignorance of 
life that limits the scope of our virtues. The healthy man 
cannot have the virtues of the sick man, nor the patholog- 
ically burdened soul the sort of goodness that distinguishes 
the genius in holy living ; not, however, because virtue 
means ignorance of life, but because the naturally limited 
insight into life which each man possesses limits his possible 
virtues. But within his limits, the more any given man 
knows of life the more chance he has to be virtuous, if he 
chooses to be so. 

Another objection, and a common one, to the foregoing 
view of virtue has reference to the influence of training 
upon the exercise of active virtues. The virtuous man of 
Aristotle's original definition is such not merely by reason 
of his acts, but by reason of the attained character that, in 
the long run, he earns by his acts. The habitual and suc- 
cessful resistance of any given type of temptations involves. 
of necessity, the gradual elimination of at least those special 
temptations. The cultivation of active virtues leads towards 
a virtuous perfection of disposition in which just these 
active virtues no longer have to be cultivated. In so far 
it is indeed true that the aim of the good man is to acquire 
an ignorance of certain evils which he now knows only too 
well. If he actively exercises virtue only in the presence 
of an actual knowledge of evil motives present in himself, 
he aims, nevertheless, at the ultimate attainment of a state 
in which these evil motives will no longer have meaning 
for him. In this fashion, then, it would seem that the 
attainment of holiness is, in some sense, the attainment of 
ignorance ; and so once more the argument of our author 



108 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

would receive a certain confirmation, and the price of pos- 
sessing certain "intellectual functions" would be the re- 
taining of certain " moral deficiencies." 

Once more, however, the general biological analogies 
will aid us in comprehending the true sense of the facts 
here brought before us. The question is now the familiar 
one as to the relation of habit and consciousness.* I am not 
conscious of the detailed execution of what is so completely 
an habitual function of my organism that I accomplish 
this function swiftly and without hesitancy. I am con- 
scious in general only of my relatively hesitant functions 
in so far as they are hesitant. This, again, is a psychological 
commonplace. On the other hand, the more by practice I 
exercise my consciousness of a given process, and so perfect 
any now hesitant function, the more I tend to bring its 
execution below the level of my consciousness. In this 
sense, to be sure, we find another paradox and one of a 
most familiar and characteristic sort in the life of the 
highest organisms. Consciousness, namely, is working, as 
it were, on all levels, in the direction of its own extinction, 
in so far as it is a consciousness of just this unfamiliar ob- 
ject ; very much as the living tissues are constantly busy 
in compassing their own death, precisely in so far as they 
are tissues with just this energy becoming free in their pro- 
cesses. I am conscious of a given function, and so of the 
objects to which this function is related, because the func- 
tion is relatively novel, is imperfectly learned, is not thor- 
oughly habitual. But it is precisely this unfamiliarity of the 
function and of its object that is unsatisfactory to me. I 
try to perfect my mastery over this function and to render 
its objects perfectly familiar. I train the function until it 
is smooth-running, facile, free from hesitancy, and so until 

* In thjs aspect this question is interestingly discussed in the Einleitung 
in die Moralwissenschaft, vol. i, p. 227 et aeq. 



THE KNOWLEDGE OP GOOD AND EVIL. 109 

it is no longer an object of consciousness. I now ignore 
both the function and its familiar objects. This I am every- 
where tending to do, precisely in so far as I engage in any 
special business of consciousness. I am conscious of the 
syntax of a foreign tongue while I am learning that 
tongue ; but the object of my conscious toil is to learn the 
language so well that I shall forget its syntax and speak its 
sentences with absolutely unreflective fluency. 

But now, on the other hand, although consciousness thus, 
as it were, aims to compass, on every stage, and in each of 
its special functions, its own extinction, still, all of us who 
love insight talk of consciousness as being an end in itself, 
and are conscious that we want not less, but more of it. 
Our general aim as conscious beings is opposed, in this 
paradoxical way, to each and every one of the special aims 
of our own consciousness, in so far as the latter is a pro- 
cess whereby the unfamiliar is rendered familiar, and is so 
gradually brought below the level of consciousness, while 
our general aim as conscious beings is not to get less, but 
more, concrete insight, and so more consciousness. 

Here again, La vie c'est la mort. " Die to live " is a 
philosophical motto that Professor Edward Caird loves to 
repeat in his writings. It may be important to vary the 
phrase, as, with the aid of M. Soury, I have here tried to do. 
But Professor Caird is unquestionably right as to the sub- 
stance of the thing. Consciousness, like living tissue, loves 
to feed on its own process of endless self-extinction. And 
tht- way in which it thus feeds is obvious enough. When I 
have no longer to be conscious of the syntax of the new lan- 
guage, I shall have acquired a new organic power namely, 
th<- power to be conscious of the relatively new and unfa- 
miliar things that I shall want to say in that language. The 
more numerous the familiar and so unconscious habits that I 
have come to possess, the more capacity I have acquired to 
adjust myself to complex novel situations, and so to have, in 






HO STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

general, more consciousness. As for the paradox of the 
whole situation, it is also a case of the general paradox of 
the will, as noted by Schopenhauer. The will wants to live. 
But life means specific desires, and each specific desire long- 
ing, as it does, for the possession of its object, really longs for 
the quenching of its restless fires in the dark Lethe of a ful- 
fillment that means its extinction as this desire. The will, 
then, in longing for life, longs for that which in every con- 
crete manifestation, as this specific desire, it longs to see ex- 
tinguished. Schopenhauer's paradox is but the expression, 
in conscious terms, of the essence of all those organic pro- 
cesses to which our consciousness runs parallel, and of 
which it is a very inadequate expression. As for Schopen- 
hauer's pessimistic comment on this essential restlessness of 
the inner world, the discussion of that belongs elsewhere. 
Restlessness does not, as a fact, mean misery, and a wise joy 
in the genuine paradoxes of life is of the essence of the 
highest reason. 

There is, then, nothing peculiar about the problem in- 
volved in the case of the growth of the virtuous man 
towards a perfection wherein he ceases to be conscious, 
both of his former defects, and of the active vii'tues whereby 
he overcame these defects. Above all, the problem is in no 
wise one of an opposition between " moral deficiencies " 
and " intellectual functions." Such as it is, the paradox ap- 
plies equally, and for the same reasons, to the intellectual 
and to the moral functions. The one sort has here no ad- 
vantage over the other. The intellectual skill involved in 
any stage of our human consciousness, in aiming at its own 
perfection in the form of the acquisition of finished, ha- 
bitual, intelligent functions, aims at what, as a fact, when 
attained, will involve its own extinction as this particular 
conscious activity. Just so, any growing and active virtue 
aims at its own extinction, as this particular virtue, by 
means of the establishment of virtuous habits that will 



THE KNOWLEDGE OP GOOD AND EVIL. m 

render the exercise of this conscious virtue no longer neces- 
sary or even possible. But virtue thus no more aims at its 
own extinction in general than intellectual skill aims at its 
own general abolition, or than Schopenhauer's will, in 
longing for fulfillment, ceases in general the desire to live. 
This must pass this desire this stage of growing intellect 
or goodness ; but there is more that is desirable, there is 
more virtue, just as there is more wit, beyond. This 
is the universal rule of conscious life. Die Leidenschaft 
flieht, die Liebe muss bleiben. When I have so well learned 
this virtue as no longer consciously to possess it, but to be 
possessed by it as by a mere instinct, well, then, indeed my 
active moral goodness will indeed cease as to this matter ; 
but, on the other hand, I shall consciously be able to pos- 
sess far more, and more complex, active virtues, than ever, 
for I shall have more powers, and so be able to undertake 
harder tasks, to go on new quests, and to fight stronger 
moral enemies. When I shall have mastered my present 
intellectual puzzles, and accordingly shall have forgotten 
their details in the possession of unhesitating and uncon- 
scious functions, I shall then be able to possess not less but 
more consciousness ; for I shall have more unconscious func- 
tions upon which to build new insights. 

The parallelism of virtue and of intellect in respect of 
the "deficiencies" thus involved in progress is here perfect. 
Whatever happens to the one happens to the other. 

niing is based upon forgetting, conscious power upon 
uiK-onscious habit, the new life upon the extinction of the 
immediate presence of the old. "Moral deficiency," if re- 
garded as a lower state in a progressive growth, involves 
"intellectual functions " only in the same sense as that in 
which intellectual deficiency itself involves such present 
intellectual functions. 

It is, then, one sign of intellectual power, just as it is one 
sign of moral power, to have forgotten, as well as to have 




112 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

remembered, many things. Such " deficiencies " are neces- 
sary moments of our human perfection. To a vain young 
man, full of the learning freshly acquired at school, the old 
and erudite scholar may often justly say, " Yes, you indeed 
have many things in mind that I now ignore ; but see, I 
have myself forgotten far more than you ever knew." 
Even so, a persistent sinner, vaunting his present knowl- 
edge of temptation as against the state of the virtuous man 
who has outgrown and learned to ignore the movings that 
are still clearly present to the consciousness of the sinner, 
may say, " I know life ; for I know these temptations, and 
you are no longer aware of them." But a by-stander, 
considering the life of the virtuous man, and seeing in him 
the hero of many past conflicts, may retort, " Ay, but he 
has forgotten, because he has transcended, more temptations 
than you ever knew." Which " deficiency " is the prefer- 
able one ? 

To sum up, then : The knowledge and presence of evil 
form, in very manifold and complex ways, a moment in the 
consciousness and in the life of goodness. And this must 
be so. It is no confusing chance puzzle of the moral world ; 
it is a necessary result of the very essence of all life, which 
is everywhere an union of opposing elements. The knowl- 
edge of this fact is not disheartening, but inspiring ; since all 
the seriousness of the moral world depends upon it. As to 
the relation of " deficiencies " and " functions," so far as we 
have yet seen, the close parallelism of the intellectual and 
moral processes, as well as their intimate interdependence, 
taken together with the general nature of life just insisted 
upon, renders this relation extremely, and yet very intelli- 
gibly, intimate on both sides. First, in both the intellectual 
and the moral life, every " function," of necessity, depends, 
in the lives of us human individuals, upon a corresponding 
" deficiency." We think in order to grow wiser, and there- 
fore all our thinking is due to relative ignorance. We 



THE KNOWLEDGE OP GOOD AND EVIL. H3 

choose the right in order to avoid the tempting wrong ; and 
therefore all moral functions depend upon present moral 
imperfections. Meanwhile, as to the cross-relation of moral 
deficiency and intellectual function, the rule holds that, 
since active goodness involves knowledge of temptation, the 
morally deficient have herein no essential intellectual ad- 
vantage over the doers of good. As to the ignorance or in- 
tellectual deficiency of the being higher in the scale of life 
as against the being lower in the scale and burdened with 
temptations unknown to the higher being, it here follows 
(1) that the " deficiency " of knowledge in question is shared 
by both beings, in so far as neither fully understands 
the other ; (2) that in neither case does this deficiency of 
knowledge as to the other being, or possession of knowledge 
as to one's own moral office and temptations, determine by 
itself either any moral excellence or any moral defect, since 
either of the two beings is doing active moral work not in 
so far as he is by nature high or low in the scale, but in so 
far as he rightly deals with his own temptations. We call 
the higher being more virtuous, when he does well, not be- 
cause, being ignorant of baser temptations, he fails to resist 
them, but because his virtues, when once they exist, seem to 
us as a part of a normal and more finished life, better worth 
knowing than his fellows'. As to moral progress, that does 
indeed involve a transcending, and so a forgetting, of ear- 
lier and simpler virtues ; but here moral progress is simply 
parallel to all intellectual progress. 

In general, then, intellectual functions seem to involve 
moral deficiencies in precisely the same sense as that in which 
MM iral functions themselves involve moral deficiencies, and 
as that in which intellectual functions also involve intellec- 
tual deficiencies, every function in our life involving the 
presence of its own antagonist, and being successful in so 
far as its antagonist comes to form an organic moment in its 
own process, instead of being it its turn the triumphant and 



114 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

absorbing factor. But, on the other hand, it does not follow 
that you can produce a given function, intellectual or moral, 
by simply introducing the corresponding antagonist or de- 
ficiency into a given organic process. All active virtue im- 
plies temptation ; but it does not thence follow that by in- 
creasing temptation you increase virtue, or that you remain 
virtuous by nursing your temptation in order to resist it. 
Change and progress play the same part here that they do 
elsewhere in the great drama of life. And if living is con- 
stant dying, it does not follow that the more death there 
is the more life there will be. 

in. 

So much for the main principles involved in our present 
issue. But now let the question be no longer of principles, 
but of cases. Moral deficiency shall be essentially involved 
in certain intellectual functions, or shall determine the lat- 
ter. When ? First, for so it may appear, whenever the 
comprehension of certain forms of evil itself involves such 
a participation in the evil as amounts to sin. But when 
does this take place ? " The task of understanding," so one 
answers, " certain elementary passions of the human soul is 
very difficult from the height of official station, as well as 
in the normal and correct life led by many scholars " ; and 
so " undeniably this is a point in which a theoretical knowl- 
edge gains depth from an experience of comparative im- 
morality, either present or past." * 

In judging of such assertions one's first reply is, Distin- 
guo. The " elementary passions " of the human soul are 
indeed the most common source of sin ; but they are not 
themselves sins in so far as they are elementary passions, 
but in so far as, in a given context of life, they are persist- 
ently preferred, despite the fact that they prove to be in- 

* These quotations are, as before, from our author's cited article. 



THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL. 115 

capable of organization, or destructive of existent rational 
good order. They are evil, in other words, in so far as they 
are anarchical, fighting against an already established or- 
ganism, and not in so far as they are " elementary." It is 
in a context that they become temptations ; and the sinful- 
ness of an "elementary passion " always depends on its re- 
lations to the other interests of life. It is as related to such 
a context that a virtuous man finds what would be an 
innocent accident of his organization a solicitation to evil. 
Experience of passion, of the " elementary " in life, is there- 
fore as such never a sin. The fault of a man is not that he 
has elementary passions, but that he cannot make out what 
to do with them, or do it when he has made it out 

In saying this I speak simply the voice of the wholesome 
consciousness, of the Greek as of the modern man, as 
against any merely superstitious asceticism which con- 
demns some natural impulses as essentially diabolical. The 
wise man does not regret the elementary impulses of his 
temperament as such, whatever these impulses may be. 
What he does regret is that they are so ill reduced to order, 
so poorly trained to an objectively significant service. 
Even the " pathological temptations " before referred to are 
pathological not by reason of the elementary impulses in- 
volved, but by reason of the union of such impulses into 
complex groups of motives hostile to the general peace of so- 
ciety, and to the whole rational system of a man's inner life. 

It is not needful to waste here many words over this 
matter, which has been endlessly discussed. Hatred is a 
fairly " elementary " passion. Shall one call it essentially 
a bad "spring of action" because it is necessarily "mali- 
cious " ? On the contrary, if we find superstitious men in 
the world who let cobras multiply, because of a superstitious 
kindliness, we shall wish that these men had more hatred 
of snakes, as well as less superstition. All depends upon 
where and when and what you hate in other words, upon 



116 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

the context of your passion. If hatred in battle makes 
given soldiers fight better against the enemies of their 
country, then surely, if patriotism is a virtue, this virtue 
may demand, for these men, the cultivation of precisely 
such hatred. For the rest, just those passions of humanity 
which, under certain conditions, appear as the grossest, the 
fiercest, the basest, are notoriously the passions upon whose 
organized cultivation, and upon whose subtle influence, 
when once they are cultivated, the whole social structure 
and its most sacred relations depend. 

It would be the saddest of cant, then, to say that a good 
man, as such, can have no experiences of the truly " ele- 
mentary passions " even the most elementary and vigor- 
ous. The fact that many moralists are and have been 
bloodless creatures, who have written about life without 
themselves possessing any temperament to speak of, is a 
lamentable historical accident, due in no wise to the nature 
of philosophy, but rather to those economic conditions of 
the thinker's profession, which have driven many persons to 
turn would-be philosophers, because they have failed in 
other walks of life to prove themselves capable men. With 
the author who has inspired this paper I regret this acci- 
dental ill-fortune of philosophy. The philosophical thinker, 
the moralist above all, should first be a man of experience 
in a wide range of elementary human life. And the great 
heroes of ethical speculation (yes, even a man of the gentle- 
ness of a Kant) are never without indications in their works 
that they have really and deeply experienced at least some 
part of our human nature. But now this does not mean that 
the thinker needs to be a sinner above other men in order 
to be wise. Elements are one thing. The organization of 
life is another. It is not necessary to experience many 
forms of chaos in order to understand good order. 

But is not sin, too, an experience ? And can the good 
man possess that experience ? We have said, in our dis- 



THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

cussion of principles, that temptation to evil is an essential 
element in every exercise of active virtue. But a con- 
quered temptation, although an evil, which is conquered by 
the good man just because it is an evil, is still no sin. Sin 
proper, however, is, in us mortals, another experience, and is 
ipso facto no part of the experience of the good man as such, 
just as an active disease is no part of the life of a healthy 
organism. Here indeed is the body of death from which the 
good man, as such, longs to be delivered altogether. His 
resisted temptation is part of his life the death in life of 
which before we spoke. But his sin is no element of his 
good life. 

And yet, since sin forms so large a part of human life, 
and is, for us men, vastly more than temptation, and since 
the endless consequences of sin remorse, all the arts of con- 
cealment, all the ingenuity of effort to repair the rejoicing, 
too, of the froward in their frowardness the fierce sense of 
freedom of which our own Hawthorne tells in the Marble 
Faun as an experience that follows upon a crime the long 
and perplexingly fascinating agony of the consciousness of 
a life of sin the revelry and the fruitless later repentance of 
the Faust of the original story the contrition of David 
the conversion of the dying thief on the cross the raptures 
of a saved Mary Magdalene : since all these, and countless 
other human experiences flow not from resisted temptation, 
but from actual sin, were we then not one-sided in our dis- 
cussion of principles, where we limited ourselves to the 
study of temptation, and said that the sinner knows no 
more of the motives of sin (which are the temptations) than 
does the good man, equally tempted, who resists and con- 
quers the temptation ? Tliat, as an one-sided view of life, 
may be true. But temptation is but a small part of the sin- 
ner's experience. It is consequence that he knows, and 
herein consists his intellectual opportunity. Here, indeed, 
is a "moral deficiency" very positively conditioning an 



118 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

" intellectual function." In hell and in purgatory they do 
thus know what must needs be wholly unknown to the an- 
gels, and but ill-conceived by the saints, excepting as the 
saints remember the long life in sin from which some of 
them escaped. This being true, can one (to use still the 
convenient allegorical fictions) can one, as a moralist, 
comprehend the world of human life, unless he has lived 
in hell and in purgatory, as well as among the good ? What 
sort of a moralist is, then, one who has had little or no ex- 
perience of sin ? 

The first answer is so obvious that I wonder that any one 
should miss it Such moral deficiencies do indeed determine 
certain intellectual functions, but precisely as they also de- 
termine certain moral functions. And the way in which 
they determine the latter is very enlightening as to the sig- 
nificance of the whole controversy. 

Sins, I say, are possible conditions, not only of a deep 
intellectual knowledge of certain very common and mo- 
mentous human experiences, but also of certain extraordi- 
narily heroic moral deeds. Nobody has harder moral work 
to do than many a sinner who has repented. Nobody, 
therefore, can show us, on occasion, a more brilliant ex- 
ample of active virtue than he may learn to do. The out- 
cast on account of a crime sometimes has a peculiarly good 
opportunity to become at one great stroke a saint. The 
thing has occasionally taken place; for the shock of the 
consequences of crime has sometimes been enough to shatter 
the habits of a sinful career in one moment of conversion. 
Apart from sudden conversion, which is rare, the most seri- 
ous moral tasks of many men are furnished to them by the 
office of building up through their newly-acquired virtues 
what theii former waywardness has destroyed.* And in 

* A brilliant literary example of moral recovery and of the heroic re- 
building of a shattered life one finds depicted in Sienkiwicz's remarkable 



THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL. H9 

this way, indeed, the wrath of man is sometimes taught to 
praise the good. 

But surely the fact that certain peculiarly great oppor- 
tunities for virtue in the way of reform and of making 
atonement are furnished to the sinner by his own past 
crimes opportunities which those of the virtuous who 
should never have swerved from the right could not get 
this fact, I say, does not at all tend to confuse us as to the 
nature of sin and of virtue. Sin, when past, furnishes 
especial opportunities for future virtue. But one who de- 
sires virtue will not think that he shows thus his desire for 
virtue by first sinning that grace may abound. When we 
once have sinned, our exceptional opportunities to atone 
may encourage us to begin afresh with zest the moral task. 
But whoever sins under pretense of seeking hereby for this 
exceptional opportunity to get a new and higher virtue by 
means of his intended repentance, such a man does not de- 
ceive us by his pretenses. He is a liar and the truth is not 
in him. He sins because he wants to sin, not because he 
wants any new moral function to be determined by his pre- 
vious moral deficiency, and until he learns not to lie he 
will remain deficient and without further function. 

I say that this very familiar determination of future 
moral opportunities and excellencies by past misdeeds 
shows, first of all, that here, as earlier in our discussion, the 
dependence of function upon deficiency holds within -the 
moral sphere itself precisely as much as in the comparison 
of moral with intellectual function and deficiency, so that 
the case is one of an universal problem of life, and not 
merely one of certain specific oppositions between moral 
and intellectual interests. I say, also, that the reason for 
this dependence of the opportunity for new goodness upon 



e, The Deluge, recently translated from the Polish by Mr. Curtin. 
Kmita, the hero of this romance, is a magnificent instance for the moralist. 



120 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

past sin is obvious enough, and the outcome in so far not at 
all misleading. 

But now, further, just as the moral function depends on 
the previous moral deficiency, precisely, and only, in so far 
as one does not remain in the deficiency, but transcends it, 
so (as I think that experience will show) it is not our mere 
dwelling in sin that ever enlarges our deeper insight into 
life so much as it is our looking back upon our sin, and 
representing it in precisely the light which makes it appear 
as sin, and so as rationally condemned, that enables us to 
read the intellectual lesson of the sinful experience itself. 
Regarding the matter, then, for the moment, solely as an 
" intellectual function," it is Macbeth after the murder, or in 
his latest monologues, who sees the truth of his case as it is. 
It is Dostoievsky's hero in Crime and Punishment, just 
before he gives himself up to the police, whose eyes are 
truly open. This is the lesson of countless works of art in 
which the moral tragedy is portrayed. However coolly 
planned beforehand, the crime is still relatively blind. The 
still cooler and far deeper intellectual insight of later mo- 
ments lifts the ransomed criminal above himself. He reads 
now the lesson of his case ; but he reads only to condemn. 
His intellectual function is itself, if his eyes get opened, the 
beginning of a moral function. 

Moreover, this not only often is, but always must needs 
be the case. If the right is, as it is, not the object of super- 
stitious dogma, but of science and of reason, and is known 
to be the right as soon as one clearly sees the situation, then 
a true intellectual insight into sin means a condemnation of 
it, and one has not the true " intellectual function " until 
one has really begun to transcend the " moral deficiency." 
After all, the freest act of sinful choice doubtless involves a 
certain deliberate ignorance of the reasons in favor of the 
good, which itself involves intellectual defect. If so, how- 
ever, the relation of the " moral deficiency " to the " intel- 



THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL. 121 

lectual function" is precisely like the just noticed relation 
of any moral deficiency to the often very noble moral func- 
tions that may be founded upon it. The latter relation is 
inspiring when we have sinned, because it shows us the 
way out. But the expectation of getting this " far off inter- 
est " of crime, of plucking this flower that blooms in hell, 
attracts of itself nobody into crime ; and whoever says that 
he commits crime with any such noble purpose in view is, 
I repeat, a liar. But just so, whoever pretended to choose 
sin for the sake of that possible sin-transcending insight, 
would be but pretending. 

For the reasons now explained, it is also clear that wilful 
sinners, who have not learned to repent, are on the whole, 
as respects the cultivation of intellectual functions, far less 
instructive to themselves than they are to the intellect of 
any observant student of human nature who, not being 
slave to their sin, has leisure to study their varied expe- 
rience, and temperament enough to interpret life with re- 
spectable skill when he sees it The sinners whose eyes are 
finally opened have transcended their "deficiency." The 
relatively blind, who are still slaves to their sin, are in many 
ways an open book to the wiser among their fellows. And 
it is indeed true that it is the right and the duty of every 
moralist to learn, with due prudence, but without foolish 
timidity, whatever he really needs to know of the disorders 
of the moral world, from an observation not cynical but 
humane of the records of sinful experience in his fellows. 
Thus indeed their deficiency may very directly and usefully 
condition his function. And he will learn of life while learn- 
ing also how to help the sinners themselves towards virtue. 

But now shall we descend from these matters to mere 
trivialities? Shall we illustrate the relations of function 
and deficiency elsewhere ? Shall we seriously inquire 
whether a successful liar is not naturally a more skilful 
person than a mere blunt speaker of the truth ? Shall we 



122 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

reason that a liar, like the skilful hero in the fairy tale, or 
like Odysseus with the Cyclops, must hold at least two ideas 
at once in his head, while his giant or other dupe thinks of 
but one at a time ? Well, if these things must be argued, it 
is indeed an old notion, precisely as old as those fairy tales 
whose heroes are liars, that lying is a peculiarly clever busi- 
ness, and is so precisely for the reason that obviously guided 
the authors of the fairy tales namely, because it is so 
much more skilful to think two ideas at a time than one 
idea. But surely the civilized man, for whom truth, whether 
legal, commercial, political, or moral, has now grown to be 
so complex an affair, has transcended such trivialities. In 
all the more serious practical affairs of our modern lives, we 
wholly exhaust our stock of ingenuity in trying even to 
think the truth as it is, and fail at that. We may lie all we 
choose, and may even succeed as liars, but we shall get no 
more cleverness thereby than would be at all events needed 
to think or to say even the blunt truth in its nakedest sim- 
plicity. We no longer live in a world where there is ques- 
tion of stupid giants with one idea, and clever heroes with 
two at a time. The honest man's wits are all needed in 
order to meet even the demands of honesty. For the rest, 
if a liar needs cleverness to think his supposed two ideas, as 
in the fairy tale, what would an honest man need who must 
learn to defeat the liar ? Surely he would have to think of 
the truth, and also of the liar's false idea, and finally of the 
proper plan for meeting the liar's falsehood and for bring- 
ing it to naught without lying himself : in sum, then, at 
least three ideas to the liar's two. But herewith such trifling 
computations may as well cease. Not thus are moral de- 
ficiencies, as such, at all peculiar in being sources of some 
sorts of intellectual ability. There is no possible degree of 
cleverness or of ingenuity that is not sadly needed in our 
complex world for every good cause whose undertakings 
are serious. 



THE KNOWLEDGE OP GOOD AXD EVIL. 123 

But surely there still remain do there not ? vast re- 
gions of knowledge which it is unholy for any given indi- 
vidual to tread upon. And to enter these fields would 
therefore involve " intellectual function," and still also true 
14 moral deficiency " ; or would it not ? Yes, indeed, it is as 
easy as you please, and as trivial, to mention, in case of any 
of us, any number of such forbidden regions. My neighbor 
has left his house unguarded, his desk unlocked. It would 
greatly amuse my curiosity to read his diary, his love-letters, 
his other confidential documents. And yet I may not do so. 
Why ? Because the intellect is somehow mysteriously op- 
posed in its interests to the conscience ? No : but for the 
simple reason that this would be theft. This knowledge is 
not mine. These secrets are his property, like his purse, 
save in being more sacred. Here the mystery of the rela- 
tion between ignorance and virtue is merely that of the 
existence of any private rights whatever. As his money is 
good for what it can buy, but is not mine to spend, so his 
knowledge is here a good tiling to have, but it is not for me 
to purloin. But now, under the category thus illustrated, 
countless types of actually forbidden knowledge fall, of 
knowledge, however, that is forbidden not because the in- 
tellect ought as such to be limited in its scope, but because 
a man must keep to his own, and in a world where men live 
together possession has to be private, and therefore exclu- 
sive. My neighbor's house, his land, his affairs anything 
that is his I must not steal or covet. If this limitation 
involves not only respect for material property, but for 
countless, and often nameless privacies of his inner and 
outer life, then it is not the rights of the intellect that are 
at stake, but the rights of the person. 

On the other hand, as to the rights of the intellect itself, 
knowledge, as such, we must maintain, is always an inno- 
cent, and frequently a holy possession. Its moral limita- 
tions, its perils, its implied sinfulness, these always belong 



124 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

to it per accidens, and with respect to specific conditions 
and individuals. There is no knowledge whatever to which 
somebody may not conceivably have a right. That not 
everybody may, without sin, possess a given sort, or degree, 
or fact of knowledge, depends always upon specific and per- 
fectly comprehensible conditions relating to this sort, or de- 
gree, or fact. I may not seek to know another's secret by 
stealth ; I may not seek to know the results of a sin by my- 
self deliberately sinning ; I may not seek to add to my pres- 
ent burdens a temptation that I have not now, and that, 
when I get it, may prove corrupting to me. But, on the 
other hand, the man whose secret this is may be blessed in 
knowing it. The man who has sinned may gain inspiration 
for reform from coolly considering the very heart and the 
essence of his sin, that he may find in its fruits the seeds of 
coming virtue. The man who has the temptation, by facing 
it, and so by knowing its secret, may win control over it, 
and may thereby use his opportunity for holiness. When 
in progress I abandon one knowledge for another, I do so 
because the other is more of a knowledge. And thus it is 
never my business as a moral being to shun knowledge as 
knowledge, but always it is my task to get wisdom as wis- 
dom, and then to use it in the cause of the right 



V. 

NATURAL LAW, ETHICS, AND EVOLUTION* 

THE discussion seems to me to have reached a stage 
where it is just as well to supplement controversies over the 
precise meaning or the bearings of Professor Huxley's ad- 
dress, by a few independent efforts, however imperfect these 
may be, to deal with the questions. (1) Whether the " ethi- 
cal process " is a " part of the cosmical process " ; and (2) 
whether it stands in a relation of opposition or of harmony 
to the tendencies of this cosmical process ; and (3) finally, in 
case the relation of the " ethical process " to the " cosmical 
process " is one of opposition, what the source of this opposi- 
tion is. The following paper is a sketch of such an effort 

The student of nature is trying to reduce observed facts 
to universal laws. In so far as he can do this, he succeeds 
in what certain recent students of the Logic of Science (e. g., 
Mach) have called the description of the facts. The funda- 
mental principle of empirical science is, that you can only 
tell what a given fact is, in so far as you can describe its 
nature in universal terms i. e., in terms which identify 
this nature with the nature of other facts. Were all the 
facts of our experience single, discontinuous, unrepeated 
even in memory, and as different from one another as tones 



* An eaaay contributed to a seriefl of papers upon the well-known ad- 
draw of Professor Huxley. The discussion, in which several other writers 
took part, was published in the International Journal of Ethics, The pres- 
ent contribution appeared in July, 1895. 

m 



126 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

are now different from odors, or as brightness is different 
from swiftness, then we might all of us experience the 
world ; but we could none of us describe in the least what 
it contained. This world might even be allowed to have one 
sort of uniformity in it viz., it might be as richly delight- 
ful a world as you please, from moment to moment ; but it 
would be not only an uncomprehended, but an unreported 
world a world of whose facts no record could be made. On 
the other hand, a world where experience can be recorded, 
reported, described, has two characters : First, there are in 
it facts whose similarities can be noted i. e., there are 
" wholes " or " groups " of phenomenal elements, which are 
alike in some respects ; and, secondly, the noted similarities 
are such as permit you, in terms of these similarities them- 
selves, to define certain complex groups of phenomena, as 
" having the same structure," or as '' being built up accord- 
ing to the same rule," or as " exemplifying the same law," 
so that at least some of the details of each fact noted are 
" explained " by this law. To " explain " a given phenome- 
nal detail, noted in your experience, say d, by the " natural 
law " which is said to " require " its presence, or to " make it 
necessary," is simply to point out that the phenomenon d is 
part of a larger whole, a " fact " in the substantive sense 
viz., abed, and that this " whole fact," abed, has a structure, 
or "make-up," a describable "build," a "typical constitu- 
tion," which other whole facts of experience, viz., ABCD, or 
pqrs, also exemplify, while this constitution is such as to in- 
volve the presence of d in case a, b, and c are present, and in 
case the whole is to preserve the aforesaid typical structure. 
You then say that, since the whole fact abed resembles 
ABCD, or pqrs, not in its details as such (i. e., in its con- 
tents), but in their structural relations i. e., in the general 
type or build of each of these whole facts therefore the 
same rule or law which defines D by its relations to the 
other phenomena, A, B, C, of its own group, and which 



NATURAL LAW, ETHICS, AND EVOLUTION. 127 

defines 8 by its relations to the other phenomena, p, q, and r, 
of the group pqrs, can be realized or exemplified when you 
pass to an abc group, only if there is present a fourth phe- 
nomenon, d, which is such as to have the same structural 
relation to abc in the whole fact whereof abc and d are 
parts, as was present in case of the facts ABCD and pqrs. 

My statement is abstract. But the principle is simple. 
It means that you cannot describe whole facts i.e., that 
you cannot report, record, verify, or comprehend their 
structures, without conceiving the phenomenal details of 
these facts as subject to laws i.e., to rules of structure, 
which are exemplified by other whole facts of experience as 
well as by the fact that may be, at any time, under discussion. 
The " uniformity of nature " is thus the conditio sine qua 
non of the describability of her facts. And on the other hand, 
to report whole facts is, to some extent, to explain their details. 
It is, therefore, not one thing to describe facts, and another 
thing to explain the elements that enter into their consti- 
tution. But, in so far as you describe the wholes, you 
explain the parts of these wholes. There is, indeed, no a 
priori principle that every experience which may occur to 
anybody is describable at all. Anybody's experience might 
be, to any extent, apparently or really unique. In so far as it 
was unique, science could only ignore it, as being a " private " 
or " personal " experience. But if an experienced fact is to 
be described, it must be, in some respect, capable of indenti- 
fication with other facts. And different facts can be describ- 
ably identical only as regards their structure. But if two 
facts have the same structure, then their details, the ele- 
ments of which they are made up, stand in relations to one 
another which exemplify this structure. Any one element, 
tln-ii. will appear in each fact, as explained by and conform- 
able to the law which links it to the other elements of the 
whole fact of which it is a part The presence in the world 
of various whole facts that exemplify the same structure, is 
10 



128 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

then a condition of the describability of each of these whole 
facts. But the describability of any whole fact involves 
what appears as the explanation of the parts or elements of 
this fact by the law or structure of the whole to which they 
belong. In brief, the structure actually common to many 
facts also appears as the law which explains or necessitates 
the constituent elements of each fact. 

Nature then, in order to be describable, has to be viewed 
or conceived as such that the details of every natural phe- 
nomenon shall be " subject to," " determined by," or " neces- 
sitated by," the laws which describe the structure of the phe- 
nomenal wholes of which each detail is a part. If any 
given natural phenomenon, itself a mere fragment (e. g., the 
petal of a particular flower, the tooth of a carnivorous ani- 
mal, the total phase of an individual lunar eclipse), is to be 
conceived as a part of a certain whole, then this part must 
be conceived as if " explained," or " necessitated," by the 
law which describes, in universal terms, the whole " thing " 
or " process " of which the fragment is a part. And this is 
what is meant by the " necessity " of natural events. Natu- 
ral necessity is an incident of the conceived describability 
of natural phenomena when grouped in whole facts. 

That natural phenomena shall be conceived as necessary, 
or as subject to rigid law, and that the " cosmic process " 
shall be viewed as one where " mere necessity reigns," is 
therefore not a belief capable of any but a relatively subjec- 
tive and human interpretation. Experience comes and goes 
in its own way. No mortal lias ever "experienced " the ab- 
solute necessity of any cosmic process whatever. Chance, as 
Mr. Charles S. Peirce has well observed, streams in through 
every channel of our senses. Trust then to mere experience, 
as it comes to any one of us, and such experience can never 
prove that there are " cosmic laws." 

But natural science depends not upon merely accepting, 
but also upon reporting, and upon recording, the phenom- 



NATURAL LAW, ETHICS, AND EVOLUTION. 129 

ena, upon comparing notes, upon trusting nobody's private 
experience as such, upon a process, then, of publicly verifi- 
able description of facts. This process not now the cosmic 
process, but the process of description involves noting uni- 
formities, and depends for its success upon our ability to note 
the latter. The describable uniformities are structural uni- 
formities i. e., those expressible in terms of universal "rules 
of structure "or "laws." The law of structure of a given whole, 
be this whole a " thing " or a " process," a coexistent whole, or a 
whole of successive elements, appears, in our slowly formed, 
socially communicated, and gradually verified scientific 
conceptions, as determining the necessity of every element 
of any fact by virtue of the whole to which the element be- 
longs. The only further assumption upon which the doc- 
trine of the objective universality of rigid cosmic laws, as 
distinct from the foregoing subjective and human need for 
such laws, depends, is the assumption which I have else- 
where examined at some length * viz., the assumption that, 
in our human experience, only the relatively describable 
data stand for the external or physical world as such the 
endless indescribabilities of our experience, the " chance " of 
Mr. Peirce's account, being viewed, by scientific thinking, as 
standing for the merely " individual "or " internal " element 
of our experience, or for the limitations of the individual 
point of view. For science, as I have just pointed out, is an 
essentially social affair. The described "cosmical" fact is 
a fact which others are conceived to be capable of verifying 
besides the observer who now describes. And as only the 
describable aspect of our experience is communicable to 
others for them to verify, and as only the verifiable is, scien- 
tifically speaking, to be viewed as "cosmical " at all, it fol- 
lows that, while private experience is full of what seems to 

* Cf. the Philosophical Review for September, 1894, and The Spirit of 
Modem Philosophy, lecture xii, on The World of Description. 



130 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

be chance, we all have come to regard the cosmical process 
as one subject to the most rigid law. But one must carefully 
bear in mind this genesis and meaning of the whole con- 
cept, both of necessary natural law and of the cosmical pro- 
cesses themselves, in any comparison of the " cosmical pro- 
cess " with the " ethical process." Hence our present need 
for this rather technical summary. 

On the other hand, the conception of moral laws, by 
which given acts are to be judged, and of "ethical pro- 
cesses," such as what is called " Progress" processes which 
involve a gradual approach towards a conformity of given 
facts to given ethical ideals this whole conception of the 
moral world as such, involves an entirely different point of 
view in presence of human experience. To conceive the 
" cosmical process " as such, you have to conceive it as in 
every detail subject to laws viz., to precisely the cosmical 
laws. But you can well view the facts in the light of a 
moral ideal, while believing that the now existent physical 
facts run in some ways directly counter to the ideal. Yes, so 
to view the facts is inevitable whenever you have ideals. 
For you derive your ideals, ultimately, from an aspect of 
your experience which has not to do with describing experi- 
enced facts, but with desiring ideal objects that are absent 
when you desire them. It is true that what you rationally 
desire, you can, in general, both describe, and hope, with the 
aid of a possible good fortune, some time either to verify 
yourself, or to view as verifiable by somebody else, in whose 
interest you desire this object. But you do not desire the 
object in so far as it is describable. And furthermore, just 
in so far as you desire any object, its presence is not yet 
verifiable. One desires the absent. The cosmical fact i. e., 
the physical fact, viewed as subject to natural law, is, then, 
an object in so far as it is both describable and verifiable. 
The object of our ideal is desirable not in so far as it is 
describable, and, again, precisely in so far as it is not yet 



NATURAL LAW, ETHICS, AND EVOLUTION. 131 

verifiable. Herein, then, lies a double contrast between the 
natural fact as such, and the object of desire, as such. The 
contrast comes out well in case of future facts. The future 
eclipse, as natural phenomenon, is but an incident in the 
vast describable whole fact called the process of the solar 
system. As such, the eclipse can be predicted as something 
necessary, because this process, as a whole, is conceived as 
one describable in terms of known and universal law. The 
eclipse is also verifiable, at the time of its occurrence, by all 
rightly situated observers. But so far the eclipse is no ob- 
ject of desire. Desire is as vain as would be prayer. The 
eclipse is to be verified only at the computed time, but then 
it must be verifiable. Science does not aim at the eclipse, 
nor does she pray for the eclipse. She predicts, verifies, re- 
ports, records all in due season. But the eclipse is not 
only natural fact, but interesting experience in the lives of 
the men who come to see it. In so far, one can desire to 
live to see the eclipse, can made an ideal of being present 
when it occurs, etc. But in desiring the experience, one 
does not compute the eclipse, nor does one verify the com- 
putation. One desires the eclipse in so far as one still ex- 
pects but cannot yet verify its coming. And to desire to see 
the eclipse is simply not to compute its coming, but just to 
make this sight as such an ideal, and not to view the eclipse 
itself as a cosmical fact 

In consequence, our present contrast might be stated 
thus: Phenomena are desired (or dreaded) precisely in so 
far as they appear to be interestingly novel. Novelty, then, 
is a conditio sine qua non of all ideal value when regarded 
from a temporal point of view. But phenomena are expli- 
cable precisely in so far as they are conceived as not novel, 
but as mere cases under law. And again : The desired, or 
the dreaded, must be, as such, now un verifiable. But the 
explained is known to be such precisely in so far as univer- 
sal explanations are actually verified. When I recognize 



132 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

something as a case of a " cosmical process," my recognition, 
as such, involves therefore no desire. One may say, indeed, 
that the actual can be approved, as conforming to an ideal 
standard. But, for us mortals, this approval, whenever 
desires are concerned (and a purely contemplative, aesthetic 
approval concerns us not here), is the approval of the fact 
in so far as it has been desired. In brief, then, the ex- 
plained or necessary phenomenon of the " cosmical process " 
is such in so far as it embodies the universal law in a specif- 
ic case. But the object of desire is such in so far as the law 
or rule which this desire involves has not yet been embodied 
in the precise sense in which it here needs to be embodied. 

Here is the root of the endless conflict between the eth- 
ical view of the world and the explanatory or " scientific " 
view. For a rational ethical doctrine is simply some uni- 
versalized system of desires. What the right system may 
be concerns us not here. Enough, if one has an ideal, he 
bases it on some type of desire. If nothing were desirable, 
there would be no ideals. A man with an ethical doctrine 
has simply taught himself what he now thinks to be wisely 
desirable. But he still desires. Thus desiring, he looks out 
upon experience. There occur phenomena. These his sci- 
ence " apperceives," recognizes, describes as cases of law, 
explains, calls necessary. But the very nature of this ex- 
planatory or descriptive sort of consciousness is that it says, 
"these phenomena are not novel." The consciousness of 
the possessor of ideals, however, essentially asserts, at every 
breath one draws, " Yet the novel, in so far as it justly ap- 
pears novel, is precisely what I want" The explaining 
consciousness insists : " The law is eternally realized. What 
has been will be. There seems to be alteration. There is 
none." The ethical consciousness retorts : " The law is not 
yet realized. In this ' not yet ' is my life. I have no abid- 
ing city. I seek one out of sight." Meanwhile, of course, it 
is perfectly possible to point out common territory, where 



NATURAL LAW, ETHICS, AND EVOLUTION. 133 

these two views seem to meet without direct conflict. 
" You must use my insight," says the explaining conscious- 
ness, " if you want to realize your ideals. In vain do you 
desire as ideal what my laws forbid as forever un verifi- 
able." The ethical consciousness must accept this inevit- 
able comment But it still responds : " Whatever laws of 
yours I recognize, they become to me not my ideals, but 
the mere material for realizing my ideals. If I could not 
interfere with the phenomenal expression that your laws 
are to get, my work would be utterly vain. You point me 
the means. But I set the goal. I do not quarrel with your 
laws. But I use them." 

Hereupon, of course, the explaining consciousness makes 
one retort which does, indeed, appear to be crushing. " Re- 
alize your ideals if you will and can," it says ; " yet what is 
your realization but a mere incident of my cosmical pro- 
cess ? Your realization, when it comes, will be a natural 
phenomenon, a part of a whole fact, like the rest. I shall 
explain this phenomenon, and show, whenever it happens, 
that it is nothing new." To this, of course, the ethical con- 
sciousness may make either one of two responses. It may 
say : " Granted. As a fact, I admit that you are right My 
realization of my ideals will itself be only a nature-process, 
involving no true novelty. I admit that my view is, in the 
last analysis, illusory. 'Nature is made better by no mean, 
but nature makes that mean, 1 just as Mr. Herbert Spencer 
quotes. Nothing really new ever happens. Hence no 
ideals, viewed as ideals, ever do realize themselves, any 
more than eclipses come because we hope for them. But 
still our human experience has its limitations. Some events 
seem novel. Some desires seem, as such, productive of 
what nature did not before contain. As a fact, the ' star- 
mist' contained everything good, evil, possible, necessary. 
But, ' Der Mensch, der beti'eglicli I''iihlende, der leichte 
Raiib dea mdchtigen AugenblicksS feels the thing other 



134 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

wise. I view the world as it seems to active beings ; and so 
I must view the world. Hence you have the truth ; but I, 
as practical common sense, must live in my necessary 
illusions ; and it is in this sense that I remain forever in 
opposition to you viz., just as an inevitable, if illusory, 
point of view." 

This is what the ethical consciousness may say ; and it is 
saying this which, to follow out to their just consequences 
the views of many writers, ought to constitute what such 
writers should consistently regard as the true " philosophy 
of evolution." The real world, thus viewed, is one of rigid 
cosmical law. In such a world, nothing essentially new 
ever happens. If we, as scientific observers, could come to 
comprehend this truth, we should no more talk of a genuine 
realization of ideals before unrealized in the universe, than 
we should regard the swing of a pendulum as a dramatic 
action. The pendulum bob, in its regular vibration, rises 
and falls, moves right and moves left, moves swiftly and 
moves slowly ; yet all the time engages in but one de- 
scribable cosmical process, which involves nothing novel at 
any point. So with the cosmical process, in its wholeness. 
New passions and desires, as well as their significant potency 
in transforming the world, are and must be illusions, if de- 
scribable natural law, as such, is universal. From this con- 
clusion there can be, upon this hypothesis, no possible es- 
cape. For to explain is to see the apparently novel, in all its 
essential details, as an instance of the old, whose former type 
is, down to the least genuinely true element, merely exem- 
plified once more in this seemingly novel situation. Either, 
then, desires, passions, ideals, are not subject to the laws of 
the describable and necessary cosmical processes, or else they, 
if mere incidents of a describable process, are nothing new, 
and bring to pass nothing new, in all the universe. What 
has been will be. There is, then, nothing truly ethical. 
There is only the cosmical. This, I say, is the only possible 



NATURAL LAW, ETHICS, AND EVOLUTION. 135 

" philosophy of evolution," if natural law is an account of 
the absolutely real world. Evolution, as a process, is in that 
case the mere appearance of novelties to unwary or to 
necessarily ignorant observers. It does not and cannot 
involve anything truly historical. But meanwhile, of 
course, the philosophical evolutionist of this type could 
make practical concessions, to his public, to himself, and 
to the ethical consciousness, so long as he did not forget 
that these concessions were such mere accommodations to 
human ignorance and to the practical point of view. He 
could say, u A portion of the cosmical process namely, our 
own voluntary activity, appears as if it were ethical i. e., 
as if true novelty, genuine progress, effective ideals, historic- 
ally significant passage to something never before realized, 
were there present. This illusion is human, inevitbale, 
and even useful. When we write on ethics we have to 
treat this illusion as if it were true ; and to do so is as harm- 
less as to speak of the sunrise, remembering all the while 
the cosmical truth." 

Such ethically disposed, but consistent, partisans of 
natural necessity ought, however, still to admit that the 
ethical process, when thus abstractly sundered from the 
cosmical process, of which it is all the while held to be a 
part, does indeed appear in very sharp contrast to the rest 
of the cosmical process. In the ethical world, illusory as it 
is here said to be, it still seems true that the pendulums do 
not merely swing, that the old does not merely recur, that 
the creation moves towards some far-off event, divine or 
diabolical. One now has to talk (although such speech is, 
by hypothesis, but illusory) of progress, which means novel 
good entering a world that has thus far lacked its presence. 
One has to treat nature as if she could be made better. One 
looks to the future with hopes which, for many evolutionists, 
become rather sentimental. And to do this is to abstract 
from the supposed fact that the " star-mist" contained it all, 



136 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

and that nothing essentially novel occurs, or will ever oc- 
cur. But the abstraction is in sharp contrast to the assumed 
truth. The ethical world is, when conceived, in vehement, 
even if in illusory, opposition to the natural process ; and 
Professor Huxley's discussion will have done great good, 
in so far as it leads to the recognition of this inevitable 
fact. How one states the details of the opposition is of 
small consequence. The opposition itself is deep and uni- 
versal. 

But the ethical consciousness, instead of thus surrender- 
ing, might decline thus to abandon its assertions. It might 
say, " But, after all, my view is right. I not merely, in the 
seeming of my ideals, contrast my illusions with a supposed 
truth, but I rightly, and in the name of truth, oppose my 
view of the real world to any physical view. After all, docs 
experience prove the real universality of the ' cosmical pro- 
cess ' ? Certainly, experience, as such, does not. That noth- 
ing new occurs is a proposition directly opposed to the seem- 
ing of every individual experience. Why may not this 
seeming be well founded ? Why may there not be true 
novelties, effective ideals, genuine progress, transformations, 
evolution which is not a mere seeming of growth, spiritual 
processes which were not present in the star-mist in any 
form?" 

To these queries would, of course, come the reply : " Su- 
pernaturalism, this base supernaturalism." " But, no," one 
might retort ; " not what that word usually suggests to some 
people, but merely what Kantian idealism long ago made 
familiar, and distinguished from all Schwdrmerei this 
alone is what we mean." 

As a fact, the assertion of the universality of rigid cos- 
mical process, and of what I have elsewhere called the 
reality of the " World of Description," is unquestionably a 
human, and, as I myself should affirm, a distinctly social 
theory for the interpretation of one aspect of our experi- 



NATURAL LAW, ETHICS, AND EVOLUTION. 137 

ence. Take human experience from that special point of 
view, and t hen, indeed, you have to conceive the world of 
experience as if it were known to be one of cosmical pro- 
cesses, which are the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. 
In that world, the only philosophy of evolution is that all 
evolution is to be called appearance. The only ethical pro- 
cess observable is one which, upon this hypothesis, is to be 
conceived as unreal. There is no question of warring against 
the cosmical process. But there is question of an undying 
opposition between the inevitable ethical consciousness and 
the hypothetically true cosmical consciousness ; for the one 
forever looks to the future for the novel, the coming, das 
Werdende, conceived as the possibly progressive ; the other 
asserts that all Werden only manifests the changeless truth 
of the cosmical process itself. 

But now, the other view of human experience, the one 
which regards the universe as what I have elsewhere called 
" The World of Appreciation," is, as a fact, equally true to 
experience, and equally inevitable. For nature we know, as a 
fact, only through our social consciousness,* and the social 
consciousness is ethical before it te physical, appreciates 
more deeply than it describes, recognizes nature for reasons 
which are, in the last analysis, themselves ideal, and is con- 
scious of novelty, of progress, of significance, in general of 
the human, in ways which, in the last analysis, make the 
whole cosmical process a mere appearance of one aspect of 
the moral world. Yet this doctrine is not " supernatural- 
ism," because the true opponent of the natural is not the 
" supernatural," but the human. The " cosmos," in the sense 
of empirical science, is a conceptual product of the human 
mind. Man is indeed but a fragment of the absolutely real 



* I may bo allowed to refer again to the before-mentioned paper in the 
Philosophical Review, and to the later ensaya in thin volume upon Sclf- 
consciouancM, Social Conscioiuncas, and Nature. 



138 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

universe. But that genuine universe of which he is a frag- 
ment is not the world of Description, but the world of Ap- 
preciation a world at which the phenomena of nature in- 
deed richly hint, but which they do not reveal. 

It is true that, when viewed in the light of such a doc- 
trine, the facts of evolution get an interpretation, not here 
to be expounded, which does away with much of the oppo- 
sition between the ethical and what had seemed the cosmi- 
cal, in the sense in which we have so far used that word in 
this paper. Meanwhile, I should still hold that, as points 
of view, the view for which the ethical process exists at all 
is very sharply opposed to the view which, in the sense of 
physical science, deals with cosmical processes as such. 
Call the whole matter one of phenomena and of human 
opinion, and then indeed this opposition need lead to no 
misunderstandings. It will then be merely one of points of 
view, no assertions of ultimate truth being made on either 
side. But if it be a question of a philosophy of reality, then 
one must choose between the two points of view, or else 
reject both. There is no chance of reconciling the meta- 
physically real and ultimate universality of the so-called 
cosmical, i. e., physical process, or processes according to de- 
scribably rigid laws, with any even remotely ethical inter- 
pretation of the same reality. 

The questions asked at the outset are then to be decided 
thus: (1) Conceive the "cosmical process" as one of de- 
scribably rigid law, as all explanation in natural science 
does, must do, and ought to do, and then the " ethical pro- 
cess " can form no part of the " cosmical process." (2) In 
essence the " ethical process," in so far as you conceive its 
presence at all, is utterly opposed to all "cosmical pro- 
cesses " when they are thus physically conceived. (3) The 
nature of the opposition lies not in any world of " things in 
themselves" at all, but in the peculiarity of the ethical 
point of view which, in dealing, as both this view and its 



NATURAL LAW, ETHICS, AND EVOLUTION. 139 

rival concretely do, with mere human appearances, esti- 
mates ideally, and desires essential novelty, progress, and 
the thus far unattained as such ; while the descriptive or 
explanatory point of view conceives its purely phenomenal 
world as if it were known to contain no novelties what- 
ever, and nothing ideal. 



VI. 

THE 
IMPLICATIONS OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 

THE present paper is an effort to set forth in brief some 
of the evidence for an idealistic interpretation of the nature 
of reality. My argument is in its essential features identi- 
cal with the one presented in a chapter on The Possibility 
of Error in my book called The Religious Aspect of Philos- 
ophy, published in 1885. Another statement of the same 
considerations is to be found, in a summary form, on pages 
368-380 of my study entitled The Spirit of Modern Philoso- 
phy. In the latter book I have also given an extended 
account of the historical relations of this line of argument 
especially of its relations to Kant's Deduction of the 
Categories, and to the philosophical development from 
Kant to Hegel. That these relations are intimate, needs 
here no further express declaration. The discussion in my 
chapter on The Possibility of Error was criticised in some 
detail by two French writers by M. Paulhan. in the Revue 
Philosophique for September, 1885 ; and by M. Renouvier, 
in La Critique Philosophique, for 1888, pp. 85-120. To both 
these critics I owe a hearty acknowledgment, and I have 
tried to profit by their objections, though I cannot here 
consider them. In a later and extended form my view 
of the doctrine here in question has so been expounded 
in a work entitled The Conception of God, published in 
1897. 

140 



IMPLICATIONS OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 



What is it to be conscious ? What does self-conscious- 
ness imply ? Such are the questions with which philosoph- 
ical idealism begins. It is by examining these questions 
that a philosophical idealist hopes to get a clearer notion of 
the world in which he finds himself, and of his relation to this 
world. A successful estimate of such a doctrine can never 
be made unless one comprehends how it has been reached. 
It is the road that here determines the result. In vain does 
one, as philosopher, try to pass the gates of this heaven of 
theory, and to get the beatific insight for which the idealist 
hopes, unless one has first followed the straight and narrow 
path of thorough -going self-critical reflection. Whoever 
has approached his idealism by this road will no longer 
imagine, like a good many of the superficial critics of ideal- 
ism, that the God of idealism "may be safely treated as 
' une quantite negligeable ' " (to quote the words of one such 
critic). The careful student of the path will have learned, 
as he went, the worth of the goal. His own insight may be 
still very incomplete, but he will know that the truth with 
which he deals is not " negligeable " merely because, like 
the earth in Browning's poem, it "keeps up its terrible 
composure," and declines to have a market value, or 
to show itself in the precise guises which tradition had 
led us to expect it to wear. For the idealist whose mind 
is as I think it ought to be, the Infinite is unquestion- 
ably a Person, and this Person is as unquestionably the 
world-possessor. The finite does not vanish in him ; but 
he appears to us, although very imperfectly, through and 
by means of the finite. Yet what it is and means 
to be a Person, and to be also infinite, and to be the world- 
possessor, only a successful philosophical analysis can 
hope to make, in general terms, clear. It is useless to 
approach such problems with only our accidental and 



1 (_> STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

traditional prejudices, concerning what personality may 
mean. 

It sometimes seems to me that to many minds the word 
" person " has come primarily to mean one who can and 
perhaps will on occasion strike back at you if you first hit 
him ; and doubtless the notion in question does in fact re- 
veal a certain aspect of the ultimate truth. The world is 
indeed a moral order, and the moral law is a hard master, 
and hard masters do strike down rebels ; and to many, who 
would reject very scornfully the crude language that I 
have just used, the idea of God and of his personality is, in 
fact, based upon an unconscious elaboration of just such 
simple categories as these. I do not question the relative 
value of such categories. We have in childhood to get our 
theology in these terms, and we never ought altogether to 
forget our childhood, or to ignore the sinewy and healthy 
truths then impressed upon us by tradition. Only such 
truths should not pretend to be ultimate. Imagery of this 
kind does not reveal the inmost meaning of the word 
"personality." Ideas of this sort ought not to be treated 
as final tests of all philosophical definitions of God. It is 
perfectly true that in our immediate inner experience, in 
our uncriticised finite self -consciousness, fragmentary as it 
is, we mortals learn at the outset, in a first rude example, 
what personality means, and it is by reflection upon this 
rude example that we have to proceed. But we need not 
wonder to find that the deeper meaning of the word " per- 
sonality " is only to be got at by a long study of the signifi- 
cance of the rude facts themselves. For, as a very little 
analysis shows, we are none of us at the outset able to 
answer sharp questions concerning the true extent, or the 
nature, or the limitations, or the significance, of this familiar 
reality which we call our self-consciousness. In other 
words, we are self-conscious, but very imperfectly so. The 
question, " Who am I ? " is not easily answerable, yet no 



IMPLICATIONS OF SELF-COXSCIOUSNESS. 143 

question is more obviously a fair one. The problem, " What 
is a person '{ " is, then, not to be solved by a mere glance 
within. 

In seeking after God, there are many who do indeed be- 
gin by asking the question, " Who am I ? " but who thence 
proceed by offering some facile answer, such as the well- 
known one, " I am a thinking substance," or the still more 
familiar one, " I am a being possessed of free choice and 
volition," and on such a basis a theology is quickly built up. 
This theology will therefore, indeed, take a comparatively 
naive shape. I am a person. God, of course, is another. 
For I have free volition. That constitutes the essence of 
me, and so of any person you please ; and this fact is ob- 
vious, and for reflection nearly if not quite ultimate. Now, 
in the exercise of my free volition, I meet resistance from 
without This resistance indicates a world of outer objects. 
But obviously only a will can resist a will. Hence there is 
will, and so personality, outside of me. The unity of law in 
the world of my objects, the cleverness of the manifold con- 
trivances of nature, or, better still, the extent and the wis- 
dom of plan which I see exemplified in the facts of organic 
life and of evolution all these things assure me that, in 
knowing the physical world, I am dealing with the doings 
of one great Person, whose creation is this natural order. 
He is free, and so am I. He limits me ; and, so far as I am 
free, I limit him. We are two ; and hence the world is a 
moral order. Any more monistic interpretation would be 
immoral, for I should not fear God unless he were another 
person ; nor regard him as my Father unless I felt his resist- 
ance whenever, in the exercise of my free volition, I push 
against his reality, After all, it is the muscular sense that, 
from such a point of view, becomes the chief revealer of the 
divine personality to us finite beings; and hence those who 
insist upon these categories love to exalt their " dynamic " 

character. 

11 



1-14 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

All such brief sketches of the views of opponents have of 
course to be inadequate, and therefore in a measure unjust. 
It is only to show in what direction I myself should look 
for more light that I make this brief hint of the unreflective 
nature of all these notions of a good deal of current the- 
ology. They are derived from a very simple inspection, so 
I must insist, of the world of the inner life. They have 
their relative truth, but they need deeper criticism. " Con- 
scious of free choice," " conscious of outer objects resisting 
my free choice," " conscious of dynamic principles beneath 
all reality " how profoundly problematic are the categories 
contained in each one of these phrases ! What is it to have 
free choice ? What is it not only to have, but also to know 
one's own free choice ? What is it to know outer objects ? 
What is it to know one's Self ? Yes, what is it to be con- 
scious at all ? What is a Self ? All these are just the ques- 
tions of philosophy. Whoever says, " But I do know all 
these things, and there is the end of it no matter about the 
how " such a person is perfectly welcome to his assurance, 
but he is not philosophizing. It is precisely the how that 
concerns one in philosophy. 

So much, then, for an indication of the reason why the 
idealist, knowing at the outset something of his own bit of 
finite self -consciousness, but longing to know more, declines 
to state d priori his notion either of Personality, or of the 
world, or of free will, or of the nature of knowledge, but 
aims to get at the true ideas of these things by means of a 
better analysis of the implications of self-consciousness 

themselves. 

II. 

Our questions, then, are no doubt fundamental, and 
worthy of scrutiny. They promise rich fruit. Yet, in ap- 
proaching them, we must, in the present paper, limit our 
undertaking pretty carefully. Amidst the wealth of these 
problems we must choose what most directly concerns us in 



IMPLICATIONS OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 145 

getting a general notion of the nature of the idealistic doc- 
trine. Let our choice be as follows. 

Idealism of the post-Kantian type is distinguished by two 
especially noteworthy features. It first involves a criticism 
of the inner nature of finite self-consciousness. I, the finite 
thinker, it says, must be in far more organic and deep 
and wide relations to my own true selfhood than my ordi- 
nary consciousness easily makes clear to me. In essence, 
then, I am much more of a self than my immediate con- 
sciousness, as it exists under human limitations, ever lets me 
directly know. The true Self is at all events far more than 
the "empirical" self of ordinary consciousness. This is 
sure because, upon examination, one finds that the flicker- 
ing and limited self -consciousness of any moment of my 
life logically implies far more than it directly contains. I 
am never fully aware of the content, or of the meaning, of 
my present self. Unless, then, I am in deeper truth far more 
of a self than I now know myself to be, I am not even as 
much of a self as I now suppose myself to be. In other 
words, it is of the essence of finite consciousness to be, in its 
logical implications, transcendent of the limited character of 
its momentary inner contents. This is the first assertion of 
idealism. Put negatively it runs: Finite self-consciousness 
never directly shows me how much of a self I am. There- 
fore finite self-consciousness never directly reveals to me 
the true nature, or extent, or limitations, or relations of my 
own personality. 

The second feature of our idealistic doctrine appears in 
its theory of the relation of any finite self to what we call 
the " external world." The idealistic view here is, that if on 
the one hand the self of finite consciousness is in any case, 
by implication, far more than it can directly know itself to 
be, on the other hand this self, in order to be in true relation 
to the outer objects which it actually thinks about, must be, 
by implication, so related to these outer objects that they are 



146 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

in reality, although external to this finite self, still not ex- 
ternal to the true and complete Self of which this finite self 
is an organic part. If the analysis of consciousness has first 
shown me that my true Self is and must be far more in its 
essential nature than I can now directly know it to be, the 
analysis of the definition of " my world of objects " shows 
that, in order to be my objects, in order to be external, as 
they are, to my finite thoughts about them, " my objects " 
must be such as my true Self already possesses objects 
which it is aware of because they are its immediate objects, 
and which it knows to be mine because it includes both 
my meaning and their inner essence. 

Uniting these two features we have, as our idealistic 
metaphysic, this result : The self of finite consciousness is 
not yet the whole true Self. And the true Self is inclusive 
of the whole world of objects. Or, in other words, the result 
is, that there is and can be but one complete Self, and that 
all finite selves, and their objects, are organically related to 
this Self, are moments of its completeness, thoughts in its 
thought, and, as I should add, Wills in its Will, Individual 
elements in the life of the Absolute Individual. 

I begin here at once with the first of these two considera- 
tions. It is a familiar assertion ever since Descartes, yes, in 
fact, ever since St. Augustine, that, whatever else I am doubt- 
ful of, I am at least directly sure of my own existence. I am I. 
What truth, so people say, could be clearer ? I exist, and I 
exist for my own thought ; for I doubt, I wonder, I inquire 
in short, I think. And in my thinking I find myself, not 
as a possible dream of somebody else, or as a fiction, or as 
an hypothesis, or as a matter of doubt, but I find myself ex- 
istent for myself. Such is one familiar way of stating the 
initial assurance of human thought. 

A popular misunderstanding of the nature of idealism 
in philosophy supposes that, beginning thus with his own 
individual existence as somehow a thing very much clearer 



IMPLICATIONS OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 

in nature and in definition than the existence of anything 
besides himself, every idealist as such must proceed, in a 
solipsistic sort of way, first to reduce all objective reality 
to his own ideas, and then to find, among these ideas of 
his, certain ones which dispose him, on purely subjective 
grounds, to assume the existence of outer objects. It is his- 
torically true, of course, that such methods have been fol- 
lowed by certain students of philosophy. It is also a fact 
tliat such methods have a value as means of philosophical 
analysis, and as preparations for deeper insight. As such I 
myself have made use of them more than once for purposes 
of preliminary instruction : not that they constitute the es- 
sential portion of the teachings of a metaphysical idealism, 
of the sort which the post-Kantian thought in Germany de- 
veloped (for they do not), but merely because they are peda- 
gogically useful devices for introducing us to the true issues 
of metaphysics. 

As a fact, however, before one could undertake, in a se- 
rious fashion, to be even provisionally and hypothetically a 
" solipsist " in his metaphysical teaching, it would be need- 
ful to define the Self, the Ipse, whose solitude in the world 
of knowledge the " solipsistic " doctrine is supposed to main- 
tain. The reason why in the end our post-Kantian idealism 
is not in the least identical with " solipsism," either in spirit 
or in content or in outcome, is that the definition of the Self, 
the answer to the question, " Who am I ? " is logically 
prior to the metaphysical assertion that a being called " I " 
is better known than is any being called " Not-I." This as- 
sertion itself may be true. But in vain does a doctrine de- 
clare that a being called by any name, x or y, mind or mat- 
ter, not-self, or Self, obviously and with absolute assurance 
is known to exist, and is more immediately known to exist 
than is any other being, unless the doctrine first defines 
what being is meant under this name. Self-consciousness 
can only reveal my own substantial existence with absolute, 



STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

or even with merely exceptional clearness, in case self-con- 
sciousness first reveals to me what I mean by myself who 
am said thus so certainly to exist. 

Idealism, then, has no more right than has any other 
doctrine to fire its absolute assurances "out of a pistol." 
That I exist is at the outset only known to me in the sense 
that this thinking, this consciousness, of mine, is no un- 
reality. What reality it is, I shall not know until I shall 
have reflected long and with success. First, then, to say, 
"I clearly know myself, but I know not certainly anything 
beyond myself," and then by analysis to reduce the outer 
world to " my Idea," and then to say, " Beyond my ideas 
I can never certainly go " all this method of provisional 
and halting reflection, which assumes " the Ego " as some- 
thing perfectly transparent, may be useful enough as a 
propaedeutic to philosophy. It is not yet thoroughgoing 
self-criticism. Nor is it upon such imperfect reflection that 
the idealistic doctrines of modern philosophy have been built 
up. Fichte, who is popularly supposed to have done his 
work in just this way, actually made the Self the central 
assurance of philosophy only in so far as he also made it 
the central problem of philosophy. Its very existence is, 
for him, of the most problematic kind, so that, in the first 
form of the Wissenschaftslehre, the true Self is never real- 
ized at all, and exists only as the goal of an unendliches 
Streben, an endless travail for self -consciousness. No sooner 
has Fichte declared at the outset that it exists this Self 
than he finds the very assertion essentially paradoxical, in 
such wise that, unrevised, it would become absurd. More- 
over, as Fichte insists, the natural consciousness is far from 
a real self -awareness. " Most men," declares Fichte (Werke, 
vol. i, p. 175, note) ," could be more easily brought to believe 
themselves a piece of lava in the moon than to regard them- 
selves as a Self." In such a philosophy the cogito ergo sum 
no longer means that I, the thinker, as res cogitans, am 



IMPLICATIONS OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 149 

from the very beginning an obviously definite entity, while 
all else is doubtful. The first word of such a doctrine is 
rather the inquiry, TFfeo, then, am J? It is the Self which 
needs winning, and which requires definition, and which is 
so far unknown, just because it is the object of our reflection. 
Beginning thus our consideration asking. What is the 
Self whose existence is to appear to a wise reflection as the 
fact surely involved in our consciousness ? we find of 
course at once that the larger empirical Ego of the world of 
common sense is by no means this Self whose truth is to be 
thus directly certified by the thinking and doubting with 
which philosophy is to be initiated. / exist cannot mean, 
at the beginning of our reflection, "I Cains or Titus I, 
this person of the world of common sense, calling myself 
by this name, living this life, possessed of these years of ex- 
perience / think, and so I am immediately known to ex- 
ist." For the Self of the world of common sense is inex- 
tricably linked with numberless so-called non-Egos. He 
exists as neighbor amongst neighbors, as owner of these 
books or of this house, as father of these children, as re- 
lated in countless ways to other finite beings. As such a 
creature, self-consciousness does not at first immediately re- 
veal him. As such a being amongst other beings, reflective 
philosophy, at the outset, must ignore him. His existence 
is no more immediately obvious at any one moment, at the 
outset of our philosophical reflection, than is the "lava in 
the moon." When Fichte's opponents accused him of teach- 
ing that Professor Johann Gottlieb Fichte was the only per- 
son or reality in existence, and that his students, and even 
the Frau Professorin, were only ideas that Johann Gottlieb 
was pleased to create such critics forgot that das Ich at 
the outset of the Wissenschaftslehre is not named Johann 
Gottlieb, and at this point of the system could not be, and 
that the beginning of Fichte's philosophy ignores the Ger- 
man professor named Johann Gottlieb as absolutely and 



150 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

mercilessly as it does the castles on the Rhine, or the natives 
of Patagonia, and knows as yet of nothing but the necessity 
that a certain pressing and inexorable problem of conscious- 
ness, called das Ich, must be fathomed, since every possible 
assertion is found to involve the position of this as yet un- 
fathomed Self. 

The Self which constitutes our present problem is, there- 
fore, like Fichte's Ich at the beginning of the Wissen- 
schaftslehre, a still unknown quantity. Its existence we 
know only in the sense that, in dealing with it, we are deal- 
ing with no unreality, but with a central problem and prin- 
ciple of knowledge. 

How much of a Self, then, is clearly to be known to our 
most direct reflection ? If we look a little closer, we next 
feel disposed to answer that if the Ego, as directly known 
in consciousness, is not as yet the whole empirical Ego of 
common sense called in case of any one of us by his proper 
name, and involved in these external social and personal 
relationships, then the best account one can give of the 
immediate subject of the cogito ergo sum is, that it is the 
knowing Self of this moment. Here, in fact, is a definition 
that has become comparatively frequent in philosophy. I 
myself cannot accept this definition without modification. 
But it is necessary for us to examine it ere we proceed fur- 
ther. I know directly, so it has often been said, nothing 
but what is now in my consciousness. And now in my 
consciousness are these current ideas, feelings, thoughts, 
judgments, and, in so far as I choose to reflect, here am I 
myself, the subject in whom and for whom are these mo- 
mentary thoughts. This is what I can directly know. To 
all else I conclude with greater or less probability ; or, again, 
the rest of reality is an object of my faith, or of my practi- 
cal postulates. As for myself, I know myself just as the 
knower of these current thoughts of this moment. Thus, 
then, is our question to be answered. 



IMPLICATIONS OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 151 

Yet once more, is this new answer quite clear ? For 
how much does the present Self, the self of this moment, 
immediately know ? And does that which the self of this 
moment knows belong wholly to this moment ? As soon as 
we try to answer these questions, we enter upon a labyrinth 
of theoretical problems as familiar, in some sense, as it is 
intricate. I should not venture to weary the reader with 
even a passing mention of these subtleties were not the 
outcome of the necessarily tedious investigation of such 
importance. 

I am to know, then, " this moment," and I am to exist 
for myself here as " the knower of this moment." Very 
well, then, shall I, taking this point of view, say that I 
know immediately the past in time ? No, apparently not. 
I have a present idea of what I now call past time. That 
must be all that I " immediately know " of that so-called 
past. Do I immediately know the future ? No, again ; I 
have a present idea of what I now call future time. I am 
limited, then, in " immediate knowledge," to the present in 
time. This moment is of course, as the present moment, to 
be cut off from past and future. Very well, then, how 
large a moment is it, and how long ? Is it quite instantane- 
ous, wholly without duration ? No, for I must surely be 
supposed immediately to know, in this moment, a passing 
of time. My psychological present is a " specious present" 
It looks backward and forward. It lasts a little, and then 
insensibly glides over into the next moment Such at 
least seems to be the definition that this doctrine of the 
" present moment " must accept as a good account of what 
the " present " is. 

But, alas ! the present, as thus denned, is only the more 
left undefined. This gliding "specious present," when 
does it cease to be present ? When does it become past ? 
Where are the boundaries ? How much is there of it ? For, 
remember, I am looking for the immediately certain truth. 



152 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

I wanted to know who I am, as an immediately sure reflec- 
tion shall find or define me. The answer to my inquiry 
was, " I am the knower of this moment." So much I am 
to be quite surely aware of about myself. Well, I have 
tried to define this assurance, and of course, if it is imme- 
diate assurance, I must be able to give at once its content, 
i. e., to define just what is contained in this moment. But 
unfortunately I at once find myself baffled. And as an 
actual fact, if I look a little closer, I shall always find that, 
despite the assumption that I do know only the " present 
moment," I cannot tell reflectively the precise content of my 
present moment, but can only answer certain reflective 
questions about the consciousness which is no longer quite 
my own, because, before I can reflect upon it, it has already 
become a past moment. As a fact, then, the assumption 
just made about my knowing fully the content of the 
" immediately present moment " turns out to be an error. 
For I know not now in full what it is that is present to me, 
nor who I myself am to whom this is present. And I find 
out that I do not thus fully know myself at any present 
moment, just because, when I try to tell what I know, what 
I tell about is no longer my present, but is already my past 
knowledge. 

This problem about the definition of the " present mo- 
ment " is one of the most characteristic of the problems of 
self -consciousness. Let us give some examples of its curious 
complications. Let the present moment, for instance, be a 
moment of a judgment. I judge that the paper before 
me appears extended. This, as it would seem, I just now 
know immediately, since I chance to notice it. But ex- 
tension even now already involves, for my consciousness, 
all sorts of consequences, which will begin to appear upon 
reflection. If extended, the paper is divisible. In so far as it 
appears to me as what I call paper, I already begin to think 
of it as something that I could fold or tear. Yes, upon re- 



IMPLICATIONS OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 153 

flection, I perceive that, even while I saw and felt it as ex- 
tended, I all the while " sub-consciously " perceived it to be 
smooth to my hand as I wrote, and also saw it to be white, 
and knew it to be partially covered by my handwriting, and 
knew to some extent what letters I was writing, and had 
furthermore in my mind the train of my more abstract 
thoughts. All this mass of " mind-stuff " was in me in a 
more or less latent form. What portion of it was immedi- 
ately present to me at any moment during the writing of 
the foregoing half-dozen sentences ? Yes, how much of it 
all is even now immediately present to my consciousness ? 
I cannot tell. I know not. " This moment " has ceased to 
be "this'' before I have observed its content, or written 
down its name. I know all the while that there just now 
was a present moment; and all the while also I am just 
coming to know this now flying moment That is the 
actual situation. My " immediate knowing " ceases to be 
immediate in becoming knowledge, and the knowledge that 
I now have crumbles forever as it passes over into my 
immediately present state of feeling. I judge what just was 
my feeling, and feel what may straightway become an ob- 
ject for my judgment. 

Enough ; I shall never thus define in any precise way 
who I am. It is here I who ceaselessly fly from myself. 
My moments as such have no power to define in any sharp 
fashion their own content. I can therefore only say they 
must actually have such fleeting content as a perfectly clear 
and just Reflection would judge them to have. That alone 
is what I seem to be sure of. For they have some content 
What it is, however, I can endlessly inquire; but I can 
never fully and at the same time immediately know. Un- 
less I am an organic part of a Self that can reflect with jus- 
tice and clearness upon the contents of my moments, these 
moments contain a great deal that exists in me, but for 
nobody. So much, then, for the first result of our inquiry. 



154 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

So much for the effort to define the " Ego " apart from the 
" external world." 

Have I learned anything about myself by this weary 
and baffling process of reflection ? Yes, one thing I have 
learned. It is the thing that I just stated. It is a difference 
which I inevitably find myself making between myself as I 
really am, and myself as I haltingly take myself to be from 
moment to moment. I am twofold. I have a true Self 
which endlessly escapes my observation, and a seeking self 
which as endlessly pursues its fellow. What I really am, 
even in any given moment, I never find out in that moment 
itself. I can, therefore, only define my true Self in terms 
of an ideally just reflection upon the contents of my mo- 
ment; a reflection of an exhaustive character, such as in 
fact I in my momentary capacity never succeed in making. 
I must exist, to be sure, for myself ; and as I really am I 
must exist for myself only. With that consideration one 
begins in our present inquiry. It is reflection that is to find 
me. It is my consciousness that is to discover me, if I am 
ever to be discovered. But the Self for whom I am what I 
am is not the self of this moment, but is thus far an ideal 
Self, never present in any one moment. To repeat, then, by 
way of summary : The Self is never merely the self of this 
moment, since the self of this moment never fully knows 
who he even now is. It is of his very essence to appeal be- 
yond the moment to a justly reflective Self who shall dis- 
cover and so reflectively determine who he is, and so who I 

am. For I am he. 

in. 

Another way of stating the foregoing result would, there- 
fore, be to say that, unless I am more than the knowing 
and the immediately known self of this moment, I am not 
even as much as the self of this moment. For this moment 
implies more consciousness than I am now fully aware of. 
That which is just now in me to be known is far more than 



IMPLICATIONS OP SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 155 

I just now know. That is the paradox, but it is also the in- 
evitable fact, of my inner life ; and thus I already begin to 
see how large may be the implications of self -consciousness. 

But herewith our task is by no means done. We have 
studied the problem of the Ego viewed apart from a world 
of " external objects." What we have learned is, that the 
subject of the cogito ergo sum is in the beginning, strange 
to say, at once the best and the least known of the posses- 
sions of our knowledge. I cannot doubt its existence. But 
I am not yet aware how much of a self it is, nor how much 
it truly knows, nor whether it is or is not limited to a single 
series of moments of consciousness and reflection, nor how 
it stands related to any sort of inner or outer truth. Those 
who have begun philosophy by saying, " The self at least is 
known," have usually forgotten that the self as known is at 
the outset neither the empirical Ego of the world of com- 
mon sense, nor yet merely the so-called "self of the one 
present moment" It is not the first, because philosophy 
has not yet at the outset come to comprehend the world of 
common sense. It is not the second, for the consciousness 
of the " present moment " can only be defined in relation to 
a reflection that transcends the present moment ; whilst, on 
the other hand, no human reflection has ever yet fathomed 
perfectly the consciousness of even a single one of our mo- 
ments. The self, then, is not yet known to us except as the 
problematic truth exemplified by the still so mysterious fact 
of the cogito itself. Much less then is the relation of the 
Ego to outer objects as yet clear. 

To this latter relation we must, however, next turn. Per- 
haps there we shall get a light which is refused to us so 
long as we confine ourselves to a merely subjective analysis 
of the inner life of this baffling Ego. The self undertakes 
to be not merely conscious of its own states, but of outer 
truth. Is its power in this respect indubitable ? And if it 
is, upon what is founded our assurance that we do know a 



156 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

world of real objects outside the Ego ? Possibly in getting 
a solution of this problem we shall come nearer to a true 
definition of the Ego itself. 

The only way of answering the question about the exter- 
nal world lies in first asking, in a thoroughly reflective way, 
what is meant by a world of objects beyond the Ego. It is 
useless to try to find the philosophical evidence for the ex- 
istence of a world of outer objects, unless you first define 
what an object beyond your consciousness is to mean for 
you. Amongst the numerous definitions of the meaning of 
the words external object, I may therefore choose three, 
which seem to me of most importance for our present pur- 
pose, and may consider each in its turn. The third will be 
my own. 

1. " The term outer object means for me the known or 
unknown cause of my experiences, in so far as I do not refer 
these experiences to my own will " such is a very common 
account of the nature of the external truth for the Ego. I 
need not expound this view at great length, since it is so 
familiar a notion. According to those who hold to this defi- 
nition, it is somehow perfectly evident to me that my expe- 
riences need a cause, and that I myself am not the cause of 
all or of most of them. The Ego itself is thus definable as 
that which is conscious of more experiences than it causes, 
and which therefore looks beyond itself for the causes of 
most of these experiences. An "external object" means 
just such a cause, known or unknown. 

It is strange that this, the most familiar definition of the 
nature and meaning of the word "object," should be the 
most obviously inadequate. In case of my perception of a 
house, or of a hot iron when I touch it, or of a wind in my 
face, I do indeed conceive myself as in relation to an object 
which is causing experiences in me. But most of the exter- 
nal truth that I usually think about and believe in is not 
truth now perceived by my senses, nor, as I think it, is it 



IMPLICATIONS OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 157 

now in any causal relations to me at all. I at present be- 
lieve in it because I " trust the validity of memory," or 
"have confidence in the testimony of mankind," or follow 
some other such well-known criterion of common-sense 
opinion. When I read my daily newspaper, light-waves 
are causing retinal disturbances in my eye ; but as for me, I 
am thinking, not about these causes of my experience, but 
about the news from Europe, about the Russian famine, 
about the next Presidential canvass, and about other such 
" external objects," all of which objects I believe in, not be- 
cause I reflect that my present experiences need causes, but 
because I trust tradition, or "current opinion," or the "con- 
sensus of mankind," or my own memory, or whatever else I 
am accustomed to trust. Only in the case where I attend to 
immediate perception, is the object of my belief at the same 
time the cause of my belief. Our " belief in the reality of 
an external world " is concretely definable, then, much more 
frequently as our belief in the validity of our memories and 
social traditions, than as our belief that our experiences 
have present causes. We all of us believe in the future of 
this external world of ours. There will come the time 
called ten years hence, or a million years hence. Something 
will be happening then among the things of the physical 
universe. That future event is an "external reality"; we 
all accept it as real, however little we know of it. But is it 
for us a " cause " of our present experiences ? We are sure 
that such an event will come. Does that future event now 
" cause impressions " in us ? 

Yet more, were "my object" once defined as that x 
which causes my inner experience, my feeling, /, then one 
would still have to ask. What do I mean by causation ? 
Causation is a relation between facts. I must myself have 
some inner idea of such a relation before I can attribute to 
the outer object the character of being a cause. By hy- 
pothesis, ar, the object, is outside me. Its causal relation to 



158 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

my feeling is therefore also, in part at least, external to me. 
To believe in my object, x, as the cause of my feeling, /, I 
must therefore first believe that my notion of causation, de- 
rived from some inner experience of mine (e. g., from my 
own consciousness of my " will " or from my exercise of 
" power "), does itself correspond to an objective truth be- 
yond me, namely, the outer causation of x, as bringing to 
pass /. In other words, I make x my object, if all this ac- 
count is true, only through first holding that the inner 
experience of a relation, called " causation " in me, corre- 
sponds to an outer truth, namely, the external causation, 
whose validity is needed to give me an idea of the very ex- 
istence of x. 

But this means that there is here at least one external 
truth, and so one " object " (viz. : the external fact of the 
causation itself), which I believe in, not because it is itself 
the cause of my idea of the causation, but because I trust 
that my idea of causation is valid, and corresponds to the 
truth. And it is only by first believing in this objective 
truth, viz., the causation, that I come to believe in x the 
cause. 

Hence it follows that even in case of immediate sense- 
perception, my belief in the external object is always pri- 
marily not so much a belief that my experiences need causes, 
as an assurance that certain inner beliefs of mine are as 
such, valid, i. e., that they correspond with that which is be- 
yond them. 

2. " By object, then, I mean that which, beyond me, re- 
duplicates, repeats, corresponds to, certain elements or re> 
lations of my own ideas." To this definition the foregoing 
one, as we have now seen, must lead us, when once properly 
understood, and when freed from the inadequacies thus far 
noted. 

Here is a definition of what I mean by " outer object " 
a definition which is far more true to the facts of conscious- 



IMPLICATIONS OP SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 159 

ness than was the foregoing. My belief in such external 
objects as the space beyond Sirius, or the time before the 
solar system was formed out of the primitive nebula, or in 
the existence of Caesar, or in the presence of monasteries in 
Thibet, or even in the things that I read about in the news- 
papers, or learn of daily in conversation my belief too in 
your existence, kind reader all such beliefs are assurances 
that subjective combinations of ideas have their correspond- 
ents beyond my private consciousness. So far then this 
definition appears adequate. And yet it is really not enough. 
For this is not all that I mean by an outer object of my 
thought. It is not enough that beyond my thoughts there 
should be truths whose inner constitution and relationships 
resemble those of my thought For the world of my own 
external objects is not merely a world which my thought 
does resemble, but a world which my thought, even as it is 
in me, intends to resemble. Here I cannot do better for my 
present purpose than to repeat language that I have used 
in the Spirit of Modern Philosophy, p. 370. " My object," 
so I had just been saying, " is surely always the thing that 
lam thinking about. And," as I continued, " this thinking 
about things is, after all, a very curious relation in which to 
stand to things. In order to think about a thing, it is not 
enough that I should have an idea in me that merely re- 
sembles that thing. This last is a very important observa- 
tion. I repeat it is not enough that I should merely have an 
idea in me that resembles the thing whereof I think. I have, 
for instance, in me the idea of a pain. Another man has 
a pain just like mine. Say we both have toothache, or 
have both burned our finger-tips in the same way. Now 
in y idea of pain is just like the pain in him, but I am not 
mi that account necessarily thinking about his pain, merely 
because what I am thinking about, namely my own pain, 
resembles his pain. No, to think about an object you must 
not merely have an idea that resembles the object, but you 
12 



160 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

must mean to have your idea resemble that object. Stated 
in other form, to think of an object you must consciously 
aim at that object, you must pick out that object, you 
must already in some measure possess that object enough, 
namely, to identify it as what you mean." 

If this be what is meant by the relation of a self to an 
outer object, then the relation surely becomes, once more, 
highly problematic. Unless, namely, the self in question 
has already its own conscious idea of its object, it cannot 
formulate its belief in this object. But just in so far as it 
has its own conscious ideas of the object, the Ego under con- 
sideration would seem to possess only inner knowledge. It 
defines for itself the object of its belief. The definition is 
internal. The self appears as if cut off from the object. Its 
ideas shall be " its own." The object, as it seems, is beyond 
them. The only relation that can exist is so far correspond- 
ence. But, alas ! this relation is not enough. Another rela- 
tion is needed. If the self in question is actually thinking 
of the object, it is already meaning to transcend its own ideas 
even while it is apparently confined to its ideas. And it is 
actually meaning, not self-transcendence in general, but just 
such self -transcendence as does actually bring it into a genu- 
ine and objective relation to the particular object with 
which it means to have its ideas agree. Am I really think- 
ing of the moon ? then I not only have ideas that resem- 
ble the objective constitution of the moon, but I am actually 
trying to get my ideas into such correspondence with an ex- 
ternal truth called the moon. In other words, whether I 
succeed or not in thinking rightly of the moon, still, if I am 
thinking of the moon at all, my thought does transcend my 
private experience in a fashion which no mere similarity or 
correspondence between my ideas and other realities can ex- 
press. The true relation of thought and object needs an- 
other formulation. 

Shall we attempt such a formulation ? In so far as I am 



IMPLICATIONS OF SELF-CONSCIOUSXESS. Id 

fully conscious of my meaning, in any thinking of mine, I 
am confined to my private ideas. But in so far as I am to 
be in any relation to an object, I must really be meaning 
that object without being, in my private capacity, fully con- 
scious that I am thus really meaning just this object. At 
the moment of my thought of the object, I am conscious only 
that I am meaning my ideas to be not merely mine, but 
actually related to some object beyond. Am I, however, 
actually thus related to a particular outer object, then my 
present consciousness of my meaning is so related to that 
which is truly, although at present unconsciously, my mean- 
ing, that, were I to become fully conscious of my meaning, 
the object would no longer be external to my thought, but 
would be at once recognized as the object that I all along 
had meant, and would be included in my now more com- 
pletely conscious thought. Complex as is this formula, it is 
needed for the sake of expressing the facts. 

In other words, the only way in which I can really 
mean an object that is now beyond me is by actually stand- 
ing to that object in the relation in which I often stand to 
a forgotten or half-forgotten name when I seek it, or to 
the implied meaning of a simple and at first sight obvious- 
ly comprehensible statement, when, as in studying formal 
logic, I have to reflect carefully before I discover this 
meaning. And thus we are led to the following formu- 
lation of our own definition of the phrase " my object." 

3. " My object is that which I even now mean by my 
thoughts, although, in so far as the object is beyond my 
private conscious thought, I cannot at present be fully 
<< >nsrious of this my relation to it Yet the relation, al- 
though just now to me unconscious, must in such wise ex- 
ist, that a true reflection upon my own meaning would even 
now recognize the object as actually meant by me. Such a 
reflection would, however, be an enlargement of my own 
present thought, a discovery of my own truer self, a con- 



1C2 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

sciousness of what is now latent in my consciousness. On 
the other hand, as a consciousness of my meaning, if com- 
plete, could still contain only thoughts, my object, as my 
object, must even now be a thought of mine, only a thought 
of which I am not now, in my private capacity, fully aware. 
In other words, my world of objects, if it exists, is that 
which my complete self would recognize as the totality of 
my thoughts brought to a full consciousness of their own 
meaning." 

To sum up both aspects of the foregoing argument, 
whether you consider your inner life or your supposed re- 
lation to a world of objects external to yourself, you find 
that, in order to be either the self of " this moment," or the 
being who thinks about " this world of objects," you must 
be organically related to a true and complete reflective 
Person whom your finite consciousness logically implies, 
fragmentary and ignorant though this consciousness of 
yours is. 

Thus, then, the essential nature of our idealistic view of 
reality begins to come into sight. I know not directly 
through my finite experience who I am, or how much of a 
personality I truly possess. If, however, I am really a self 
at all, as even my fragmentary finite self-consciousness im- 
plies, then my true Self is aware of its own content and of 
its own meaning. If directly I cannot through finite ex- 
perience exhaustively know my own nature, I can examine 
the logical implications of my imperfect selfhood. And 
this content and this meaning, which, as I find, are logically 
implied by even my finite selfhood, must include my whole 
" world of objects," as well as the whole truth of my inner 
life. If, then, this analysis of the concept of Personality be 
sound, there is logically possible but one existent Person, 
namely, the one complete Self. 

Yet perchance to the foregoing argument an answer may 
be suggested that will seem to some readers, at first sight. 



IMPLICATIONS OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 163 

conclusive. This idealism, it will be said, is, after all, un- 
able to give any notion of the extent, or of the content, or 
of the magnitude, of this world of the complete Self. What 
is proved is at best this, that if my thought is truly re- 
lated to objects outside of my finite consciousness, then in 
so far as this relation exists, that is, in so far as I truly 
think of these objects, they are in themselves objects pos- 
sessed by my true or complete Self, whereof this finite con- 
sciousness is only an aspect or organic element. But per- 
haps the assumption that I ever think of objects beyond 
my finite self is itself an error. How, at all events, can I 
ever do more than postulate, or hope, or believe, that it is no 
error ? How can the way to an objective knowledge of the 
objective relations of my finite thought ever be opened to 
me ? How can I ever transcend my finitude, to know that I 
am really thinking of objects beyond, or that I am im- 
plicitly meaning them ? 

It is at this point that the argument concerning the 
" Possibility of Error," as I developed it in my chapter so 
entitled, in the Religious Aspect of Philosophy, becomes 
immediately important to the present discussion. If, name- 
ly, in my finitude, I am actually never meaning any object- 
ive truth beyond my finite selfhood, even when I most sup- 
pose myself to be meaning such truth, then one must accept 
the only alternative. I must, then, be really in error when 
I suppose myself to be referring, in my thoughts, to outer 
objects. The objective truth about my finite consciousness 
must then be, that I never really refer to any objective 
truth at all, but am confined, in a sort of Protagorean 
fashion, to the world of the subjective inner life as such. 
I think, let us say, of the universe, of infinite space and 
time, of God, of an opposing philosophical doctrine con- 
cerning these things, of absolute truth, of the complete 
S-lf as he is in himself, or of what you will. Well, these 
are all, it may be supposed, subjective ideas of my finite 



164 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

self. It may be an error to regard them as more. No ob- 
jects outside my finitude correspond to them. I do not 
really mean any outer truth by them. I only fancy that I 
mean outer truth by them. Could I clearly reflect on what 
I mean by these objects, I should see this illusion, this error, 
of supposing that I really have in mind outer objects. So 
our sceptical objector may respond to all the foregoing 
considerations. 

But, once more, if this be true of any of my ideas, if my 
intent to mean outer truth by them is itself an illusion, 
then under what conditions, and under what only, is such 
an error, such an illusion, possible ? I err about any specific 
object only if, meaning to tell the truth about that object, 
I am now in such a relation to it that my thought fails to 
conform to the object meant. I cannot be in error about 
any object, unless I am meaning that object. If, then, when 
I think of infinite time, or of infinite space, or of the uni- 
verse in general, or of the absolute truth, I err in supposing 
that there is beyond my finite self an object corresponding 
to any of these notions of mine, then my error can only lie 
in this : that whereas my finite self means to mean outer 
objects, my true Self, possessing a clear insight into what 
truth really exists beyond my finite self, completing the 
imperfect insight of my finitude, discovers that what I take 
to be an outer object is only an idea of mine, and that in 
the world of the complete insight there exists nothing cor- 
responding to my intended meaning. But thus, after all, 
we surely change not the essential situation which my finite 
self must really occupy. For still, whatever its errors, my 
finite self is an organic element in the correcting insight 
of the true Self. My notions of time and of space, of truth 
and of the universe, may be as imperfect, in all specific re- 
spects, as you please. Only, in so far as they are erroneous, 
the complete Self, having possession of the complete truth, 
corrects them. And even if I do not mean to mean an 



IMPLICATIONS OP SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 165 

outer truth at any one moment when I imagine myself to 
be in relation to such truth, even then, this paradoxical 
situation can only be the objective, the genuine situation, 
in which my finite consciousness stands, in case my truly 
reflective Self detects the meaninglessness of my finite point 
of view in just this case. For, in the case as thus supposed, 
I am still defined as objectively in error, just in so far as 
what I mean to mean, namely, some particular kind of outer 
truth, is, from the point of view of the Self that knows my 
objectively true relations, not in correspondence with what 
I really mean. 

Or, again, to put the case once more in concrete form : I 
am trying to think of an outer object. I conceive of that 
object as existent. But I am supposed to be in error. I 
care not what the supposed outer object shall be infinite 
time or infinite space, or any other form of being. If I 
am in error, then, even now, unknown to my finite self, the 
objective situation is this, namely, that the world of truth 
as I should know it if I came to complete self-conscious- 
ness, that is, to complete awareness of what I have a right 
to mean, would not contain this my finite object, but would 
contain truth such as obviously excluded that object. In any 
case, then, we cannot escape from one assertion, namely, 
the assertion upon which the very " possibility of error " 
itself is based. This is the assertion that there is, even now, 
the existent truth, and that this exists as the object of my 
completely reflective Self. 

But, finally, does one still object that the completely 
reflective Self, the possessor of my complete meaning, and 
of its genuine objects, the Self aware of the world of 
truth in its entirety, is still, after all, definable only as a 
possible, not as an actual, Self, namely, as the possible pos- 
sessor of what I should know if I came to complete self- 
consciousness, and not as the present actual possessor of a 
concrete fullness of conscious insight ? Then we must re- 



166 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

ply that the whole foregoing argument involves at every 
step the obvious reflection that, if at present a certain situ- 
ation exists, which logically implies, even as it now stands, 
a possible experience, which would become mine if ever I 
came to complete self-consciousness, then the possibility 
thus involved is ipso facto no bare or empty possibility, 
but is a present and concrete truth, not, indeed, for me in 
my finite capacity, but for one who knows the truth as it is. 
Idealism is everywhere based upon the assertion that bare 
possibilities are as good as unrealities, and that genuine pos- 
sibilities imply genuine realities at the basis of them. A 
merely possible pain, which nobody actually either feels or 
knows, is nothing. Yet more, then, is a merely possible 
reflection, which nobody makes, an unreality. But the 
foregoing argument has been throughout devoted to prov- 
ing that the finite consciousness implies the present truth of 
an exhaustively complete and reflective self-consciousness 
which I, indeed, so far as I am merely finite, never attain, 
but which must be attained, just in so far as the truth is 
even now true. 

IV. 

Mere outlines are always unsatisfactory. The foregoing 
argument has been merely a suggestion. There has been 
no space to answer numerous other objections which I have 
all the while borne in mind, or to carry out numerous analy- 
ses which the argument has brought more or less clearly 
into sight. My effort has been to make a beginning, and to 
lead this or that metaphysically disposed fellow-student to 
look further, if he finds himself attracted by a train of 
thought to which the whole of modern philosophy seems to 
me to lead. 

Such, at all events, is the path of philosophical idealism. 
What, now, is the goal ? What definition of the complete 
Self does one thus, in the end, get ? I have elsewhere used 
the tentative definition : " The Self who knows in unity all 



IMPLICATIONS OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 167 

truth." I have accordingly laid stress upon this character 
of the divine World-Self as a Thinker, and have labored to 
distinguish between this his fullness of Being, as idealism is 
obliged to define it, and those customary notions which de- 
fine God first of all in "dynamic," rather than in explicitly 
rational terms, and which, to preserve his almighty power 
as the director of Nature, and his exalted separateness from 
our weakness in so far as He is to be our moral Judge, find 
it necessary, first of all, to make Him other than his world 
of truth, and only in the second place to endow Him with a 
wisdom adequate to the magnitude of his " dynamic " busi- 
ness. All such opposed definitions I find, indeed, hopelessly 
defective. But in insisting upon thought as the first cate- 
gory of the divine Person, I myself am not at all minded 
to lose sight of the permanent, although, in the order of 
logical dependence, secondary, significance of the moral 
categories, or of their eternal place in the world of the 
completed Self. That they are thus logically secondary 
does not prevent them from being, in the order of spiritual 
worth and dignity, supreme. That evil is a real thing, that 
free-will has a genuine existence in this world of the Self, 
that we beings who live in time have ourselves a very 
" dynamic " business to do, that the perfection of the Self 
does not exclude, but rather demands, the genuineness and 
the utter baseness of deliberate evil-doing in our finite 
moral order, and that Idealism not only must face the prob- 
lems of evil and of moral choice, but as a fact, is in posses- 
sion of the only possible rational solution for these problems 
all these things I have tried elsewhere to show in a fash- 
ion which, as I hope, if not satisfactory, is at least sufficient- 
ly explicit to make clear to a careful reader that the God of 
the Idealist is at any rate no merely indifferent onlooker 
upon this our temporal world of warfare and dust and blood 
and sin and glory. To my mind, one of the most significant 
facts in the world is furnished by the thought that all this 



168 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

is, indeed, his fully comprehended world, and that if these 
dark and solemn things which cloud our finite lives with 
problems are in and of the universe of the crystal-clear Self, 
then, whatever the tragedy of our finitude, our problems 
are in themselves solved ; while, as for our own personal 
destinies, they are, after all, and at the worst, part of his 
self-chosen destiny. For, as I have elsewhere explained, an 
absolute Reason does not exclude, but rather implies, an ab- 
solute choice ; while such a choice does not exclude, but of 
necessity implies, as it includes, a finite and personal free- 
dom in us. That this our moral and individual freedom be- 
longs, after the fashion first indicated by Kant, not to the 
temporal order of our daily phenomenal world, in so far as 
it is merely temporal and phenomenal, but to a higher 
order, whereof we are a part, and not unconsciously a part 
all this does not militate either against the true unity of 
the Self, or against the genuineness of the moral order. 
Every being who is rationally conscious of time, is, by that 
very fact, living in part out of the world of time. For what 
we know we transcend. To live in time by virtue of one's 
physical nature, but out of time by virtue of one's very con- 
sciousness of time itself, is to share in the eternal freedom, 
and to be a moral agent. 



VII. 

SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE ANOMALIES 
OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS* 

IN the present paper I shall venture to lay some stress 
upon certain familiar factors whose psychological influence 
upon the growth and the anomalies of self-consciousness, 
both in normal and in abnormal human beings, seems to 
me to have been, from the purely theoretical point of view, 
rather unduly neglected. In particular, I shall try to indi- 
cate how these theoretically neglected factors may help to 
explain certain well known types of variation, and of abnor- 
mality, to which the functions of self -consciousness, as they 
empirically appear, are subject. Meanwhile I shall of 
course avoid, in this paper, any positive reference to the 
distinctively metaphysical problems which the word self- 
consciousness easily suggests. The philosophical aspects of 
the problem of self-consciousness belong altogether else- 
where. Starting this evening with the mere empirical fact 
that any normal man has, as part of his mental equipment, 
conscious states and functions that involve, in one way or 
another, his experience, his knowledge, his estimate, or, in 
general terms, his view, of himself, and remembering that, 
in many defective and disordered people, these, the func- 
tions of individual self-consciousness, undergo changes of a 
manifold and interesting sort, I shall try to illustrate 

* A paper read before the Metlico- Psychological Association of Boston, 
March 21, 189$. 

189 



170 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

aspects of the purely psychological theory of our topic. I 
speak to practical men, who are also men of science. I need 
make then no apology for introducing here a problem, 
which, whatever its difficulty, is full both of scientifically 
attractive, and of practically important elements. For 
surely the alterations and defects of the functions of self- 
consciousness are among the most frequent phenomena in 
the region of mental pathology. 



In its inner aspects and relations, what we mean by self- 
consciousness, in any one man, is an enormously complex 
function or rather a little world of functions. But this 
world of functions is centred about certain well known 
habits and experiences which at once serve, not to explain 
it, but in a measure to begin for us the definition of our 
problem. There are, namely, in any mature person, certain 
established motor habits, which, according as they appear 
to be intact or not, enable us at once to test, from without, 
the relative normality of whatever belongs to that which 
one may call the mere routine of an individual's self-con- 
sciousness. There are also certain inner experiences, in 
terms of which the normal individual himself, from mo- 
ment to moment, can feel assured of the apparent natural- 
ness of his own notion or estimate of himself. A mature 
man whose self-consciousness is normal, if his means of ex- 
pressing himself are intact, must be able to explain " who 
he is," i. e., he must be able to tell his name, his business, 
his general relations in life, and whatever else would be 
essential to the practical purpose of identifying him. Fur- 
thermore, his account of himself must be able to show an 
estimate by no means adequate or infallible, but at least not 
too widely absurd, of his actual degree of social dignity, of 
his personal importance and of his physical capacity. He 
will, to be sure, quite normally estimate his value, his 



ANOMALIES OP SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 171 

prowess, or even his social rank, not, in general, precisely 
as his fellows do. But this sort of estimate has its normal, 
if rather wide, limits of error. If these limits are passed, 
the man's account of himself proves the presence of a de- 
rangement of self -consciousness. Finally, as to this account 
which the normal man can give of himself, he must show a 
certain degree of correctness as to what he can tell us of his 
body and of its present state. Here, of course, the limits of 
error are very wide, but are still pretty definite. A man is 
normally a very poor judge of his internal bodily states. 
But if he says he is made of glass, or that he is aware that 
lie is a mile high, or that he is conscious of having no body 
at all, we recognize a disorder involving alterations of self- 
consciousness. 

Within his own mind, meanwhile, and from his own 
point of view, a man normally self-conscious is more or less 
aware of a great deal about himself of which, it is notorious- 
ly hard for him to give any exact account whatever. Yet this 
internally normal self-consciousness has, at any time, a defin- 
itive, if not easily definable content, which, in its relative- 
ly inexpressible complexity of constitution, far transcends 
what one expresses when he tells you his name, his place in 
life, his status, or his notion of his bodily condition. This 
normal inner self -consciousness involves, in the first place, 
what we are now accustomed to call, from a psychological 
point of view, masses of somewhat vaguely localized bodily 
sensations, which, just in so far as they affect our general 
consciousness, are not sharply differentiated from one 
another. The origin of these sensations lies in the skin, 
in the muscles, and, in part, in the viscera. Moreover, the 
visual perception of the body, the auditory experiences of 
the sound of one's own voice, and yet other sensory con- 
tnits. including the more general sensations of bodily 
movement, obviously determine, now more, and now less, 
the content or the coloring of normal self-consciousness. If 



172 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

any of these masses of sensory contents are suddenly altered, 
our immediate self-consciousness may be much changed 
thereby. Dizziness, sensations of oppression in the head, a 
general sense of bodily ill-being, a flushed face, a ringing in 
the ears any of these may involve what we primarily take 
to be a general alteration of our feeling of self, and only 
secondarily distinguish from the self as a separate and local- 
ized group of experiences. In general, the more sharply 
we localize our sensations, and the more we refer them to 
external objects, the less do these sensory experiences blend 
into our total immediate feeling of ourselves. The localized 
or objectified sensory state appears as something foreign, as 
coming to us, as besetting us, or as otherwise affecting us, 
but not as being a part of the self ; and only a relatively 
philosophical reflection regards even our perceptions as part 
of ourselves. Our more naive self-consciousness tends to 
regard the sensory or immediate self as a vague whole, 
from which one separates one's definite experiences of this 
place on the skin, of this color or tone, or of this outer 
object. 

Yet our inner notion of the self of self-consciousness 
is by no means confined to this cruder appreciation of mas- 
sive sensory contents. In addition, our normal mature 
awareness of who and what we are means what one may 
call a collection of feelings of inner control, of self-posses- 
sion, or, as many would say, of spontaneity. If such feelings 
begin to be altered or lost, one complains of confusion, of a 
sense of self-estrangement, of helplessness, of deadness, of 
mental automatism, or of a divided personality. As a fact, 
since the associative processes always depend upon condi- 
tions of which we are not conscious, our sense that we can 
and do rule our whole current train of conscious states is, as 
it is ordinarily felt, a fallacious sense. But if we cannot 
really predetermine, in consciousness, what idea shall next 
come to consciousness, but are dependent, even in the clear- 



ANOMALIES OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 173 

est thinking, upon the happy support of our associative 
mechanism, it is still normal to feel as if, on the whole, our 
inner process were, in certain respects, relatively spontane- 
ous, i. e., as if it were controlled by our ruling interests and 
by our volition. This sense of inner self-possession is, to be 
sure, an extremely delicate and unstable affair, and is con- 
stantly interfered with, in the most normal life, not only by 
a series of uncontrollable sensory novelties, due to the ex- 
ternal world, but by baffling variations, either in the play of 
our impulses and ideal associations, or in the tone of our 
emotions, or in both. Yet, when we are alert, these little 
interferences continually arise only to be subordinated. We 
have perhaps momentary difficulties in recalling names or 
other needed ideas, of an imperfectly learned group, or we 
feel equally momentary indecisions as to what it is just now 
best to do, or we find our attention wandering, or our emo- 
tional tone disagreeably insistent, or our impulses numerous 
and wayward. But in all such cases we can still, in the 
normal case, " keep hold of ourselves," so that we accept as 
our own whatever content triumphs in the play of associative 
processes, and find our essential expectations met, from mo- 
ment to moment, by the inner experiences which form the 
centre of the mental field of vision. If this rule no longer 
holds of our inner life, then our self -consciousness begins 
to vary, and we suffer from confusion or from other forms 
of the sense of lost inner control. 

Thus the self of ordinary self-consciousness appears at 
once as a relatively stable group of unlocalized sensory con- 
tents or contents of feeling, and as the apparent controller 
of the train of associated ideas, impulses, and acts of atten- 
tion or of choice. Of course these two aspects of the self 
are closely related. It is the associative potency of the 
ruling feelings and interests that most secures the fact and 
the sense of inner self-control. But meanwhile the self also 
jeenis, or may seem, to its possessor, much larger than any 



174: STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

group of facts or of functions now present One notoriously 
regards the present self as only the representative of a self 
which has been present, in the remembered past of our lives, 
and which will be present in the expected future to which 
we look forward. Nor does self-consciousness usually cease 
with this view. The characters, attributes, functions, or 
other organic constituents of the self commonly extend, from 
our own point of view, decidedly beyond anything that can 
be directly presented in any series of our isolated inner ex- 
periences, however extended. When one is vain, one's self- 
consciousness involves the notion that one's self really ex- 
ists, in some way or other, for the thoughts and estimates of 
others, and is at least worthy, if not the possessor, of their 
praise or of their envy. When one feels guilty, one does 
not and cannot abstract from the conceived presence of one's 
self in and for the experience of a real or ideal judge of 
one's guilt. In all such cases the self of self -consciousness 
thus appears as something that it would not and could not 
be were there not others in the world to behold, or to esti- 
mate it, to be led or otherwise influenced by it, or to appeal 
to it. It is now from such points of view that the self of 
self-consciousness comes, in the end, to get form as a being 
who takes himself to have a social position, an office, a pro- 
fession in brief, a vast group of functions without which 
the self would appear itself to be, relatively speaking, a mere 
cipher, while these functions are at once regarded as organ- 
ically joined to the self, and centered in it, and, neverthe- 
less, are unintelligible unless one goes beyond one's private 
consciousness, and takes account of the ideas and estimates 
of other people. 

Every normal man thus knows what it means to be a 
person with a social position, or a dignity, or a place in the 
world, or a character, a person vain of himself, or ashamed 
of himself, or socially confident or timid about himself, or 
otherwise disposed to view himself either as others setem to 



ANOMALIES OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 175 

view him, or as he fancies that they ought to view him, or 
as he has faith that God views him. And such a view of 
one's self cannot be satisfied with any group of inner facts, 
however extensive, as containing within it the whole of 
one's ego. This view conceives the office, calling, dignity, 
worth, position, as at once a possession, or a real aspect, of 
the self, and as a possession or an aspect that would vanish 
from the world were not the self conceived as existing for 
others besides itself, in other words, were not the self con- 
ceived as having an exterior as well as interior form of ex- 
istence. 

The self of normal self-consciousness, then, is felt at any 
moment as this relatively stable group of inner states ; it is 
also felt or conceived as the supposed spontaneous controller 
of the general or of the principal current of successive con- 
scious states ; it is remembered or expected as the past or 
future self, which is taken to be somehow more or less pre- 
cisely the same as the present self ; and finally, it is viewed 
as having a curious collection of exterior functions that in- 
volve its actual value, potency, prowess, reputation, or office, 
in its external social relations to other actual or ideal selves, 
e. g., to its neighbors, to humanity at large, or, in case one's 
faith extends so far, to God. 

And, now, just as the immediate self of the mass of inner 
sensations and feelings can vary, or just as the self of the 
sense of self-control can be more or less pathologically 
altered; so too the identical or persistent self of memory 
can be confused, divided, or lost, in morbid conditions ; and 
so too finally, the self of the social type of self -consciousness 
is subject to very familiar forms of diseased variation. The 
social self above all can come to be the object of a morbidly 
depressed or exalted inner estimate. One's social prowess, 
position, office and other relations, both to God and to man, 
can be conceived in the most extravagantly false fashions. 

And furthermore, as I wish at once to point out, the most 
13 



176 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

noteworthy alterations of self -consciousness, in insanities in- 
volving delusions of suspicion, of persecution and of grand- 
eur, appear upon their very surface as pathological variations 
of the social aspect of self -consciousness. Note at once the 
possible significance of this fact. However you explain de- 
lusions of guilt, of suspicion, of persecution and of grandeur, 
however much you refer their source to altered sensory or 
emotional states, they stand before you, when once they are 
well developed, as variations of the patient's habits of esti- 
mating his relations to other selves. They involve, then, 
maladies of the social consciousness. The theoretical sig- 
nificance of this fact surely seems worthy of a closer con- 
sideration than it customarily receives. 

Since the psychologist, as such, can afford to be quite in- 
different to the question whether any real being, to be called 
an Ego, exists, or not, and since he is therefore still less in- 
terested in the philosophical problem as to the forms of being 
which a real Ego can possess, in case it exists I am here 
very little concerned to answer one question which these 
latest considerations may have already suggested to some of 
you. I mean the question whether an Ego really can possess 
that equivocal sort of exterior existence, outside of its own 
train of conscious experience, which, as we have seen, the 
social sort of self-consciousness seems to attribute to the self. 
When I feel humble or exalted, abased or proud, guilty or 
just, or when I say, " I am in this social office or position," 
I seem to myself as one whose actual nature and functions 
include more facts than can ever be crowded into my own 
consciousness. For unless I believe in my real relations to 
my neighbors or to God, and conceive those relations as 
somehow a part of myself, I should have no material out of 
which to weave my notion of my rank, or my duties, and 
of my external importance. But whether this idea of my- 
self is defensible or not, from a philosophical point of view, 
is far from us here. It is enough for us that a man common- 



ANOMALIES OP SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 177 

ly has just such a view as to his own nature, and that patho- 
logical variations of such a view are familiar and important 
phenomena. 

. II. 

In the foregoing sketch, I have been simply reporting 
familiar psychological phenomena. That our human self- 
consciousness involves all these various elements, is, one 
may say, agreed. The problem is, how have all these ele- 
ments come thus to hang together ? And so we next have 
to attack the central problem just mentioned, i. e., we have 
to ask, in a purely psychological sense : How does this elab- 
orate mental product called self-consciousness get formed 
out of these numerous elements and why, when once formed, 
is it so variable, and, finally, why, when it varies, does it 
vary in the directions so frequently reported ? 

It is here that our theoretical knowledge is at present 
so poor. The collection of observed facts is, to be sure, at 
present, considerable. Readers of Ribot's book on the Dis- 
eases of Personality know of the general types of varying 
self-consciousness to which attention has been most at- 
tracted. Loss of the sense of personality ; or again, the 
delusion that one is dead, or is lost, or is an automaton ; or 
the feeling or idea that there is a foreign or other self 
within one; or the attribution of one's own thoughts, or 
acts, to another and wholly external person or persons ; or 
the alternation or the apparently actual multiplication of 
one's own personality ; or the refusal to regard one's present 
self as identical with one's past self : such are some of the 
variations to which self-consciousness is subject, in addition 
to the before-mentioned alterations of the obviously social 
type of self-consciousness. But when we ask why any of 
these alterations takes place, we have so far only one un- 
questionable, but theoretically inadequate answer, viz. : In 
all such cases there are alterations of the common sensibility, 
or of the memory, or of both. Now one sees, without doubt, 



178 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

that self-consciousness involves the common sensibility, in 
the sense before indicated. One sees then that if this core 
of normally stable, vaguely localized sensory conditions 
and feelings gets altered, one's notion of one's self may also 
naturally change. And, not to leave the limits of ordinary 
experience, one knows and understands what it means to 
say, when these central masses of feeling do more or less 
change : " I feel queer ; I feel altered ; I am no longer quite 
myself ; I am not my old self." By a little stretch of imag- 
ination one can also understand such a delusion as " I am 
made of glass," quite as well as one can understand any 
other delusion. For here our dreams help us to see our way, 
and we have only to suppose that a certain association of 
ideas, whereby a partial anaesthesia gets interpreted, becomes 
fixed, and exclusive, in order to see how the delusions as to 
bodily condition or constitution, present in a measure in 
all hypochondriacs, can assume such extreme forms. Just 
so too the mere assertion " I am lost," or " I am dead," is, on 
the face of it, just an insistent verbal statement, or at best 
an inner judgment whose exclusive presence in conscious- 
ness is due merely to morbid habit, and whose meaning or 
logical consequences we often need not suppose the patient 
to develop in any delusionally definite form at all. These 
phenomena involve, where they are alone, or are segregated 
from the rest of the patient's life, rather pathological sim- 
plifications of the contents of consciousness, morbid associa- 
tions of sensations with simple groups of words or of ideas, 
than any other processes. So far, then, we see some light. 

But now the case is otherwise when one says " There 
are two of me," and proceeds actively to develop the conse- 
quences of this inner variety of self. Here, to be sure, the 
phenomena of dreams, and of the commoner forms of tran- 
sient delirium, as in fevers, bring this sort of doubleness 
within the remembered experience of very many persons ; 
and familiar moral and poetical statements about the two 



ANOMALIES OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 179 

selves or more that dwell in one's breast, assimilate such 
experiences to those of normal people. But one's conscious- 
ness, in such cases, throws little direct light upon how the 
phenomena arise. Sometimes, to be sure, in delirium their 
basis is plainly hallucinatory, as when a fever patient sees 
himself, in bodily presence, standing at a distance, or lying 
in the bed. But even then one wishes for more light as to 
the question whether and how such a tendency to patholog- 
ical duplication has any natural foundation in the under- 
stood habits of normal life. This problem seems even the 
more insistent when one observes that the sense of the in- 
wardly doubled personality often arises without any obvious 
basis in hallucinations of the special senses. But in such 
cases, our present theories often fall back again upon the 
variations of the common sensibility. Yet here one fails to 
see how any easily conceivable alteration in the contents of 
the central core of the sensory self is by itself sufficient to 
explain a tendency to apperceive that self as double. One 
does not doubt the existence, in such cases, of an altered 
common sensibility ; what one fails to follow is the link be- 
tween such alteration, and the new habits, of judgment, 
or of apperception, which tend to get formed upon this 
basis. 

But I do not wish to burden you with a mere enumera- 
tion of problems, and I will not here further dwell upon the 
inadequacies of the current theories of the factors of self- 
consciousness, whether these theories lay stress upon the 
common sensibility, or upon the memory, as the principal 
factor in their explanations of the variations of the ego. It 
is only necessary to show that, while both the common sen- 
sibility and the memory are certainly largely concerned in 
the constitution of the self, the problem of self-consciousness 
is not thus to be fully solved. One must look to other fac- 
tors as well. One has in fact only to remember that some 
large alterations of the common sensibility seem to involve 



180 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

very little change of self-consciousness at all, in order to see 
how complex the problem is. 

And now, as to the real problem itself, it is surely one 
relating to the origin, to the nature and to the variations, of 
a certain important collection of mental habits. What are 
these habits ? How do they arise ? I insist, a mere catalogue 
of the contents of self -consciousness helps us little, unless we 
can interpret the facts in terms of the known laws of habit. 
For a man is self-conscious in so far as he has formed habits 
of regarding, remembering, estimating, and guiding himself. 
And now whenever these habits are in play, they all of them, 
as I must next insist, have a common and noteworthy char- 
acter. If a man regards himself, as this individual Ego, he 
always sets over against his Ego something else, viz. : some 
particular object represented by a portion of his conscious 
states, and known to him as his then present and interesting 
non-Ego. This psychological non-Ego, represented in one's 
conscious states, is of course very seldom the universe, or 
anything in the least abstract. And, for the rest, it is a very 
varying non-Ego. And now, it is very significant that our 
mental habits are such that the Ego of which one is conscious 
varies with the particular non-Ego that one then and there 
consciously seems to encounter. If I am in a fight, my con- 
sciously presented non-Ego is my idea of my opponent. Con- 
sequently, I am then conscious of myself as of somebody 
fighting him. If I am in love, my non-Ego is thought of as 
my beloved, and my Self, however much the chord of it pre- 
tends, trembling, to pass in music out of sight, is the Self of 
my passion. If I strut about in fancied dignity, my non-Ego 
is the world of people who, as I fondly hope, are admiring 
me. Accordingly, I then exist, for myself, as the beheld of 
all beholders, the model. If I sink in despair and self-abase- 
ment, my non-Ego is the world of the conceived real or ideal 
people whose imagined contempt interests, but overwhelms 
me, and I exist for myself as the despised Ego, worthy of 



ANOMALIES OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 181 

their ill will. When I speak, my non-Ego is the person or 
persons addressed, and my Ego is the speaker. If I sud- 
denly note that, though I talk, nobody marks me, both the 
non-Ego and my Ego dramatically change together in my 
consciousness. These two contents of consciousness, then, 
are psychologically linked. Alone, I am so far not myself. 
My consciousness of my Ego is a consciousness colored by 
my conceived relations to my endlessly changing conscious- 
ness of a non-Ego. And notice, I speak here as little of any 
metaphysically real non-Ego as I speak of any metaphysic- 
ally real Ego. The whole question is here one of mental 
states and of the actual habits of their grouping, not of rela- 
tive, nor yet of real existences outside of consciousness. I 
point out merely the fact that, according as one chances to 
conceive thus or thus the non-Ego of his strongest current 
interest, even so, on the other hand, he conceives his Ego 
thus or thus, viz., as something related to this non-Ego, op- 
posed to it, concerned in it, possessor of it, crushed by it, 
desirous of winning it, or however the play of habit and of 
interest makes the thing seem. Here, I think, lies the real 
key to all the variations of Self-consciousness, whether their 
conditions involve the common sensibility or not. 

The psychological problem of self -consciousness reduces 
itself, then, to the following form. One must ask : How has 
one come to form all these habits of drawing a boundary, in 
one's consciousness, between mental states that represent a 
non-Ego, and mental states that clump themselves together 
into the central object called the Ego ? One must also ask : 
Whence comes all this material for variation, whereby the 
content called the Ego shifts endlessly as the content called 
the non-Ego alters ? And one must further inquire : How 
do the constitution and the variations of the Ego get that 
intimate relation to the sensations of the common sensibility 
upon which we have laid stress from the start ? 

Now to all these questions, as I hold, the recent study of 



182 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

childhood has tended to suggest at least a plausible answer. 
The substantial basis for the answer that I shall suggest has 
been reached, pretty independently, by my friend Professor 
Baldwin, of Princeton, and by myself. Professor Baldwin 
has given to some aspects of the matter, so far as concerns 
child life, a much fuller working out than I have done, 
both in his earlier papers and in his recently published 
book called Mental Development in the Child and the 
Race. But the application of these theoretical considera- 
tions to the study of the pathological variations of self -con- 
sciousness in the present paper is, I think, new. 

The early intellectual life of the child is lost to us in ob- 
scurity, despite numerous recent observations. But we are 
clear that the infant, in the first months of life, has nothing 
that we should call self -consciousness. The first clear evi- 
dence that we get of the presence of a form of self-conscious- 
ness intelligible to us comes when the infant begins to be ob- 
servantly imitative of the acts, and later of the words, of the 
people about it. In other words, the first Ego of the child's 
intelligible consciousness appears to be, in its own mind, 
set over against a non-Ego that, to the child, is made up 
of the perceived fascinating, and, to its feeling, more or less 
significant, deeds of the persons in its environment. From 
this time on, up to seven or eight years of age, any normal 
child remains persistently, although perhaps very selective- 
ly, imitative, of deeds, of habits, of games, of customs, and 
often of highly ideal and perhaps quite imaginary models, 
such as are suggested to it by fairy-stories and other such 
material. As one follows the growth of these imitative tend- 
encies, from their initial and quite literal stages, through 
those stages of elaborate impersonation and of playful, 
originally colored, often enormously insistent games, in 
which the child follows all sorts of real and fantastic models, 
one is struck by the fact that any normal child leads, rela- 
tively speaking, two lives, one naive, intensely egoistic from 



ANOMALIES OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 183 

our point of view, but relatively free from any marked self- 
consciousness in the child's own mind, while his other life is 
the life in which he develops his conscious ideas and views 
of himself as a person. The relatively naive life is the life 
of his childish appetites and passions; the relatively self- 
conscious life is the life of his imitations and dramatic im- 
personations, of his poses and devices, of his games, and of 
his proudly fantastic skill, and of the countless social habits 
and attitudes that spring up from this source. The two lives 
mingle and cross in all sorts of ways. But the child who 
merely eats, cries, and enjoys his physical well-being, is not 
just then self-conscious as is the child who plays horse, or 
hero, or doctor, or who carefully tries to follow a model as he 
draws, or to invent a trick as good as one that he has seen. 
The latter child, however, is essentially imitative, first of 
persons, then of ideas, then of the facts of the physical world 
as such. But the former child is simply the creature of 
natural impulses and passions, and would never come to 
self-consciousness, in our sense, if his life were not gradu- 
ally moulded by the elaborate habits which the imitative 
child constantly introduces. 

Now the psychological importance of imitation lies large- 
ly in the fact, that in so far as a child imitates, he gets ideas 
about the inner meaning or intent of the deeds that he imi- 
tates, and so gets acquainted with what he early finds to be 
the minds of other people. The child that repeats your 
words, slowly learns what they mean. The child that uses 
scissors, pencil, or other tools after you, learns, as he imi- 
tates, what cutting means, and what drawing, or other such 
doings. And as he thus learns, he gets presented to his own 
consciousness contents, which he regards as standing for 
those of your mind. The experienced interesting outcome 
of an imitated deed, is for the child the obvious meaning of 
that deed, for you, as you did it. But he does not get these 
contents these glimpses of your meaning he does not get 



184 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

them, at first, very easily. He gets them by persistently 
watching you, listening to you, playing with you, trying to 
be like you all activities that for him involve muscular sen- 
sations, emotional concerns, and still other variations of his 
common sensibility. These efforts of his to grasp your mean- 
ing are marked and often delightful incidents of his con- 
sciousness. He returns over and over to his favorite games 
with you. He encounters every time your meaning, and 
he sets over against it those experiences of his own doings, 
whereby he comes to participate in your meaning. Here 
now the child always has present to him two sets of contents, 
both fascinating, each setting the other off sharply by con- 
trast, while the contrast itself establishes the boundary be- 
tween them. The first set of contents are his perceptions of 
your deeds, and his representation of your discovered mean- 
ing in these deeds. The second set of contents are his own 
imitative acts themselves, as perceived by himself, these acts, 
and his delights in them. The first set of contents depend 
upon you. The child feels them to be uncontrollable. As 
perceptions, and as representations, these contents do not 
get closely linked to the child's common sensibility. They 
stand off as external although welcome intruders. On the 
other hand, the other set of contents, the child's own newly 
discovered powers, due to his imitation, are closely centred 
about his common sensibility, are accompanied with all the 
feelings which make up the sense of control, and get remem- 
bered, thenceforth, accordingly. The first set of contents 
form the psychological non-Ego of this particular phase of 
consciousness. The second set of contents form the psycho- 
logical Ego corresponding thereto. One sees why the Ego- 
part of this sort of consciousness includes the common 
sensibility, and the sense of voluntary control, and why the 
non-Ego here involves contents that are set off by the con- 
trast as uncontrollable, and as not closely linked to the com- 
mon sensibility. And it is in this contrast that the source 



ANOMALIES OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 185 

of true self-consciousness lies. We do not observe a given 
group of mental contents as such, unless they are marked 
off by contrast from other contents. One could have all the 
common sensibility you please, and all the feelings of volun- 
tary control, without ever coming to take note of this totality 
of united or centralized mental contents as such, and as 
clearly different from the rest of one's field of consciousness. 
Even now we all of us tend to lose clear self-consciousness 
so soon as we get absorbed in any activity, such as rowing, 
hill-climbing, singing, whistling, looking about us at natural 
scenery any activity I say, whose object does not, by the 
sharp contrast between its own external meaning and our 
efforts, call our attention to our specific relation to some non- 
Ego. Yet in lonely rowing and hill-climbing the common 
sensibility is as richly present as it is in many of our most 
watchfully self-conscious states. On the other hand, when 
I work hard to make my meaning clear to another man, or 
to make out what he means, I am self-conscious, just in so far 
as I contrast my idea of his ways and thoughts, with my own 
effort to conform to his ways and thoughts. And just such 
an effort, just such a contrast, seems to mediate the earliest 
self-consciousness of the imitative child, and to secure the 
tendency of the self to be built up about the common sen- 
sibility, while the not self gets sundered therefrom. So then 
one sees the rule : If one is keenly self-conscious, the com- 
mon sensibility must be central. But, on the other hand, 
one may have a rich common sensibility without any keen 
self-consciousness. It is the contrast of Ego and non-Ego 
that is essential to self -consciousness. 

But of course the child's relations to the varying non-Ego 
of consciousness do not remain merely imitative. When 
once he has other minds in his world, the function whose 
essence is the contrast between his conceptions of these 
minds and his view of his own response to them, can take 
as many forms as his natural instincts determine. His 



186 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

naive life of appetites gets gradually infected by his con- 
scious relations to other people. He wants good things, 
and perhaps must feign affection or show politeness, or 
invent some other social device, to get what he wants. 
Here again is an activity depending upon and bringing to 
light, the contrast between his own intention, and the con- 
ceived or perceived personal traits and whims to which he 
conforms his little skill. He learns to converse, and gets 
a new form of the contrast between the sayings of others 
(which he interprets by listening), and his own ideas and 
meanings. He reaches the questioning age, and now he 
systematically peers into the minds of others as into an 
endlessly wealthy non Ego, in whose presence he is by 
contrast self-conscious as an inquirer. Here, every time 
one has the essential element of contrast upon which all 
self-consciousness depends. Argument and quarreling later 
involve similar contrasts. As to the external physical 
world what the child shall most care for in that, is largely 
determined for him by his social relations. Whatever habit 
he has acquired by social imitation, he can, therefore, in the 
end, apply to things as well as to persons. As a fact he is 
notoriously often animistic, directly transferring social hab- 
its to physical relations, and regarding things as alive. And 
here again he becomes self-conscious, by contrasting his own 
activities with the conceived natures and meanings of exter- 
nal things. I do not at all suppose that the child regards 
all natural things in an animistic way ; but I am of opinion, 
for reasons which I have set forth elsewhere, that our whole 
tendency to distinguish as sharply, as we all now do, be- 
tween the self and the external physical world, is a second- 
ary tendency, due in the child's case, to social influences. 
It is language, it is the accounts that people give to us of 
things, it is the socially acquired questioning habit it is such 
things that extend the contrast between Ego and non-Ego, 
at first mainly a social contrast, to the relations between 



ANOMALIES OP SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 187 

one's own mind and one's physical environment. Even 
now, as I just pointed out, if we forget that nature is full 
of thinkable mysteries, of meanings, of laws, of other ideal 
contents whose significance we do not comprehend if we 
forget this, and lapse into mere busy and absorbing physi- 
cal experience, as when climbing hills alone, or rowing, or 
cheerily whistling as we walk, we forget to be self-con- 
scious, just because we lose sight of the sharper contrasts 

of Ego and non-Ego. 

ill. 

But, to return to the explicitly social relations, there is 
still another factor to note in our early relations to our con- 
ceived social non-Ego. And this is the fact that, by our 
instinctive mental constitution as moulded by our social 
habits, we are early subject to a vast number of more or less 
secondary emotions, each one of which involves large alter- 
ations of the common sensibility, while all of these partic- 
ular emotions arise under circumstances which make ex- 
plicit the contrast between one's self, and one's idea of one's 
fellow's mind. Such emotions we get as children when 
people praise us, blame us, caress us, call us pet names, stare 
at us, call us by name, ask us questions, and otherwise ap- 
peal to us in noteworthy ways. Such emotions too we get 
again, in novel forms, in youth, when the subtle coloring of 
the emotions of sex begins to pervade our whole social life. 
Such emotions are shame, love, anger, pride, delight in our 
own bodily seeming as displayed before others, thrills of 
social expectation, fears of appearing ill in the eyes of others. 
Such emotions involve blushing, weeping, laughter, inner 
glow, visceral sensations of the most various kinds, and 
feelings of the instinctive muscular tensions related to our 
countless expressive social deeds. These experiences are, 
however, aroused by situations all of which essentially in- 
volve the aforesaid contrast between our own ideas, wishes, 
or meanings, and the conceived states of other minds. 



188 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

Hence these emotional states associate themselves, as varia- 
tions of the common sensibility, first, with social situations, 
i. e., with cases where Ego and non-Ego are sharply con- 
trasted ; and then especially with the Ego-member of the 
relation of contrast. And so, altogether by the force of 
habit, these emotions, which if primarily aroused would be 
mere content, belonging neither to Ego nor to non-Ego, 
come to be the specific emotions of self -consciousness, so 
that now whenever we have just these emotions, from any 
cause whatever, we are at once keenly self-conscious and 
that merely because the emotions in question faintly or 
keenly suggest particular social situations. Emotions that 
have had no such constant relation to social situations, in- 
volve no such marked states of self-consciousness. Fear of 
physical dangers tends to diminish our self-consciousness ; 
shame intensifies it. Yet keen physical fear, as the more 
primitive emotion, involves vaster commotions of the com- 
mon sensibility than does shame. Were then the marked 
presence or variation of the common sensibility in conscious- 
ness the sole and sufficient cause of the presence or of the 
variation of one's immediate or sensory Ego, physical terror 
would make one more self-conscious than does shame. But 
panic fear, in its intensest conscious forms, involves rather 
a destruction than a positive alteration of self -consciousness ; 
while the most abject shame grows the more intensely self- 
conscious as it gets the more marked. Why ? Because 
shame, habitually associated only with social situations, 
suggests them even where it is pathological and is not due 
to them ; and so it brings to consciousness the contrast of 
Ego and non-Ego. 

Thus, then, it is that I propose to explain what the cur- 
rent theories of self-consciousness usually seem unable to 
deal with, viz., the before-mentioned fact that certain path- 
ological variations of the common sensibility profoundly 
alter the tone or constitution of a patient's self-conscious- 



ANOMALIES OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. ISO 

ness, while others, equally intimate and vast, either leave 
self -consciousness relatively intact, or simply put it wholly 
out of sight without first tampering with its integrity. 
When a man has the colic he does not say, " My Ego is de- 
ranged." His account of the case is far less metaphysical. 
But when, as in the depression after the grippe, he has cer- 
tain very much dimmer and more subtle alterations of the 
common sensibility, he may complain of precisely such a 
sense of alienation from himself. Why ? Well, as I should 
say, the colic suggests no social situation ; the vague depres- 
sion after the grippe may dimly suggest, by habit, situations 
of social failure, or confusion, or powerlessness, such as, 
from sensitive childhood until now, have played their part 
in one's life. The suggestion may be very faint, and utterly 
abstract. No particular failure, no special case of social 
helplessness, comes to mind. But our nascent associations 
can be present in all degrees of faintness ; and here I main- 
tain are associations dimly involving social contrasts be- 
tween Ego and non-Ego. Here, then, are conditions for the 
function of self-consciousness. 

Since the emotional alteration of the common sensibility 
has thus the most various habitual relations, now with our 
unsocial physical states as such, now with social activities, 
one sees how it is possible for a nervous sufferer to say, on 
one day, that he personally feels his very being wrecked, 
and his self-hood lost or degraded, while on another day he 
may simply declare that he suffers keenly, but regards the 
affair as a mere physical infliction, external to his central 
st'lf-hood. In the physical sufferings of sensitive women 
this shifting of the enemy's ground from the region of the 
physical or psychical pain felt as a mere brute fact, hateful 
but still bearable, to the region where the sufferer complains 
of an intolerable loss of self-possession, is notoriously a com- 
mon and, to the sufferer herself, a puzzling incident. Both 
times the common sensibility is deeply affected, often in 



190 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

ways not subjectively localizable ; the difference, I think, 
must be due to the nascent associations of the common sen- 
sibility now with ideas of social situations, now with ideas of 
unsocial bodily events. There are some chronic neurasthe- 
nic sufferers who, despite headaches, spinal pains, and other 
distorted sensations innumerable, preserve for years a mar- 
vellous self-possession in face of their disorder ; very many 
other such nervous sufferers, of the same general type, are 
throughout self-consciously cowardly and abject. One can- 
not assert that the latter class are more deranged in common 
sensibility than are the former. But many a neurasthenic 
man has really little to complain of, except the unspeakable 
wretchedness of his deranged self-consciousness. How can 
one explain such phenomena without resorting to the princi- 
ples of habit and association ? The social habits, however, 
of the type now defined, at once furnish a vera causa for the 
interpretation of some sensory disturbances as alterations of 
self-consciousness, while other disturbances, equally great 
and vague, get interpreted by the sufferer as merely external 
events. To be sure we cannot yet give an exhaustive classi- 
fication of the variations of the common sensibility into 
those closely associated with social situations, and those not 
associated, or but slightly associated, yet the contrast of 
physical fear and of shame has already shown us that such 
a classification might, with care, be more or less worked out. 
We know, for instance, that the sexually tinged emotions 
normally have very complex social associations. Conse- 
quently, we may expect to find self -consciousness especially 
deranged in disorders involving the sexual functions. This 
expectation seems to be abundantly verified, even in ordinary 
cases of disorder, such as the teacher of youth may some- 
times see as well as the doctor ; and if one wants more veri- 
fication, one may get it at will from the monumental records 
that fill Krafft-Ebing's too well-known and ghastly book. 
On the other hand, a sufferer from the emotional states 



ANOMALIES OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 191 

accompanying ordinary physical exhaustion, or from some 
forms even of grief, or from a severe cold that does not give 
the form of depression now associated with the grip, or from 
some forms of even violent headache, often wonders how 
much pain and emotional alteration he can endure without 
any proportionate alteration of self-consciousness. And 
these states are precisely such forms of consciousness as 
are not so closely associated with social situations. Finally, 
the emotions connected with laughter furnish an almost per- 
fect natural experiment for our purpose. There are three 
principal sorts of laughter : the laughter of mere physical 
gleefulness, such as appears much in children, less in adults ; 
the laughter of scorn, and the laughter of the sense of hu- 
mor. The first is not an especially self-conscious affair ; but 
the laughter of scorn and of a sense of humor are both of 
them always keenly self-conscious, involving what Hobbes 
called "sudden glory in him that laugheth." The emo- 
tions of the two latter types involve social situations, pres- 
ent or suggested. I shall find no time to point out at any 
length the application of the foregoing analysis to the study 
of the associative alterations of the socially tinged self-con- 
sciousness in true melancholia, in mania, or in the exalta- 
tion of general paralysis. But the mention of such altera- 
tion of the self brings us at once to the next and final stage 
of our inquiry. 

IV. 

I have so far spoken of self-consciousness as it appears 
in more or less explicitly social relations. But, one may 
reply, " Are we not, at pleasure, self-conscious when we are 
quite alone ? Does not one reflect, does not one judge one's 
self ? Is lonely meditation free from self-consciousness ? 
Is not conscience a self-conscious affair ? And yet in such 
cases does one contrast an Ego with any literal non-Ego ? 
In such processes is not the Ego explicitly related to just 
the Ego, alone by itself ? And are there not, in the phe- 
14 



192 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

nomena of insanity, many alterations of this sort of purely 
internal self -consciousness ? " I reply at once that my the- 
ory is precisely that habits once acquired in social inter- 
course can and do hold over when we are alone, and can 
then apply within the content of one's own mind. The 
transition is simple. First, I can dramatically remember 
my actually past imitative deeds, my quarrels, my success- 
ful social feats, my chagrins, my questionings, my criti- 
cisms of others, and the bearings of others towards me. In 
all such cases I am self-conscious over again in memory, by 
virtue of our now familiar contrast-effect. Further, as just 
seen, my emotions can vaguely suggest social situations 
indefinite in character to any degree. By coalescence, a 
vast group of social habits of judging others, and of feeling 
myself judged by them, can get woven into a complex prod- 
uct such as is now my conscience. Conscience is a well- 
knit system of socially acquired habits of estimating acts a 
system so constituted as to be easily aroused into conscious 
presence by the coming of the idea of any hesitantly con- 
ceived act. If conscience is aroused in the presence of such 
a hesitant desire to act, one has, purely as a matter of social 
habit, a disposition to have present both the tendency to the 
action, and the disposition to judge it, standing to one an- 
other in the now familiar relation of Ego and non-Ego. 
"Which one of them appears as the Ego, which the non-Ego, 
depends upon which most gets possession, in the field of 
consciousness, of the common sensibility. If the tendency 
to the estimated act is a passionate tendency, a vigorous 
temptation, and if the conscientious judgment is a coldly 
intellectual affair, then the situation dimly reminds me of 
cases where other people, authoritative and dignified rather 
than pleasing, have reproved my wishes. Conscience is then 
the colder non-Ego, the voice of humanity, or of God. My 
common sensibility merges with my passion. The reproof 
perhaps shames me ; yet I want to have my way ; only that 



ANOMALIES OF SELF-COXSCIOUSNESS. 193 

other, that authoritative inner non-Ego, my conscience, will 
not let me go free. But if, on the other hand, the conceived 
act is less keenly desired, and if my conscientious plans are 
just now either fervently enthusiastic or sternly resolute in 
my mind, then it is my conscience which merges with my 
common sensibility, and I myself am now, in presence of 
the conceived act, as if judging another. I feel then secure 
in my righteousness, and I look with disdain upon that 
which would tempt me if I were weaker, but which now is 
a mere non-Ego. It is in a similar fashion, by a dramatic 
imitation not of actual, but of abstractly possible social rela- 
tions, that I can question myself, and wait for an answer, 
can reflect upon my own meaning, can admire myself, love 
myself, hate myself, laugh at myself, in short do or suffer in 
presence of my own states and processes whatever social life 
has taught me to do or to suffer in presence of the states and 
processes of others. In every such case the central Ego is so 
much of my conscious process as tends more to merge with 
the common sensibility. My inner, but more peripheral, 
relative non-Ego is so much of my conscious process as 
tends more to resemble, in interest, in general tone, or in 
uncontrollable unexpectedness, the experiences which, in 
ordinary social life, are due to other people. Yet since all 
these inner contrasts are constantly corrected by my habits 
of external perception and of memory, which remind me all 
the while of a literal non-Ego outside of all these processes, 
this inner sundering normally remains only, as Professor 
L: idd has called it, dramatic a sort of metaphor, which I 
can correct at pleasure, saying at any moment, "but all this 
is merely Ego, after all. The real non-Ego is the world of 
live other people yonder." 

Thus the normal inner life of reflection, of conscience, of 
meditation, and of the so-called "spiritual Ego" in general, 
is simply, in us human beings, an imitation, a brief abstract 
and epitome, of our literal social life. We have no habits of 



STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

self -consciousness which are not derived from social habits, 
counterparts thereof. Where the analogy of our relations 
to our fellows ceases, reflection ceases also. And this is 
precisely what constitutes the limitation of our reflective 
processes in philosophy and in psychology. 

But surely, if this summarizes the conditions of our nor- 
mal self-consciousness, when we are thinking alone, it also 
gives room for indefinitely numerous abnormal variations. 
Suppose that there appear in the conscious field hallucina- 
tions of the muscular sense, of the sort so well described 
in Cramer's noted monograph. Let these be motor speech 
hallucinations. Then the patient may observe the puzzling 
phenomenon that, whenever he thinks, there is some myste- 
rious tendency present that aims to objectify his thoughts, 
in spoken words. Somebody or something either takes his 
own thoughts away from him and speaks them, or forces 
him, willy-nilly, to speak them himself. The thoughts are 
his own. The sounding of them forth, in this way, is not 
his. His thoughts run off his tongue, get spoken in his 
stomach, creak out in his shoes as he walks, are mockingly 
echoed or in the end commented upon by another power. 
This other power, this stealing of his thoughts, involves of 
course a deep disturbance of his self-consciousness, which 
tends gradually to pass over into a regular system of delu- 
sions. Yet what does the process mean ? It means, at first, 
merely the appearance of uncontrollable elements of con- 
sciousness, which by virtue of the habits connected with the 
uncontrollable in general cannot get merged in the common 
sensibility, and which are yet in a problematic and painfully 
intimate relation to what he does recognize as his own. This 
foreign power need not for a good while behave enough like 
the true voice of another to become a genuine hallucinatory 
comrade or enemy, as it would do and does if the patient 
hears his voices without of himself recognizing their close 
relation to his stream of thought. But in this uncontrolla- 



ANOMALIES OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 195 

ble hallucinatory thinking aloud there is enough suggestion 
of the foreign to make the patient feel that his own thoughts 
are getting somehow estranged from him. That these are 
his own thoughts he at first knows, by virtue of the general 
contrasts between real Ego and real non-Ego still present to 
him. That they are getting estranged he knows, for that is 
to any one a relative non-Ego which behaves more or less 
as one's original social non-Ego, one's fellow in society, 
behaves. His behaviour is relatively uncontrollable; and 
so is here that of the patient's thoughts. 

Or again, suppose that one's depressed emotional condi- 
tion, as in melancholia, or at the outset of a delirium of sus- 
picion or of persecution, contains emotions resembling the 
normal emotions of conscientious guilt, or the feeling of 
social dread. Then these feelings tend to assimilate in one's 
actual surroundings, or in one's memories, data which sug- 
gest, to one patient an actually believed social condemna- 
tion of his deeds, or an actual judgment of his inner con- 
science passed upon his sin fulness, while to another patient 
his own sorts of emotion suggest an especially hostile scru- 
tiny of his appearance by the passers-by, or an inner sense 
that he must hide from possible scrutiny. On the other 
hand, feelings quite the reverse of these suggest to the ex- 
alted general paralytic whatever remembered or fancied 
social relations, expressing his vast powers, the fragments 
of left-over social habits which still survive in his chaos 
permit him, in passing, to express. 

Or, once more, another patient has present to con- 
sciousness two or more streams of feelings, impulses, 
thoughts, which are sharply contrasted with one another, 
while the portions of each stream more or less hang to- 
gether, by virtue of common contents or tone. All of these 
streams belong to his general Ego this he recognizes by 
the normal contrast witli the actual rxti-nial world. But 
meanwhile they have their inner contrast, which is no 



196 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

longer, like the just mentioned contrasts in normal con- 
sciousness, a source of merely dramatic metaphor. This 
abnormal contrast is intense, uncontrollable, continuous. 
Now let the reflections, or the context of these streams be 
such as in any fashion to remind the patient of any social 
relation, contest, rivalry, quarrel, criticism, pity, question- 
ing, discussion ; and then the patient can only say : " There 
are in me two or more selves, I am divided." If one of 
the streams involves more of the common sensibility than 
does the others, or more of the sense of control, the patient 
may speak of the less favored streams as other selves, or 
as the "Other Fellow" without having any full-fledged 
delusion of a real outside oppressor. And in all this 
there will be mere associations of ideas, mere socially 
acquired habits no new mysteries of self-hood what- 
ever. 

I conclude with a summary of the main theses of the 
foregoing paper. 

1. Self-conscious functions are all of them, in their finite, 
human, and primary aspect, social functions, due to the 
habits of human intercourse. They involve the presenta- 
tion of some contrast between Ego and non-Ego. This 
psychological contrast is primarily that between the sub- 
ject's own conscious act, idea, intent, or other experience, 
and an expereince which is regarded by him as represent- 
ing the state of another's mind. By means of habits gradu- 
ally acquired, this contrast early comes to be extended to 
include that between one's inner states and the represented 
realities which make up the physical world. 

2. In the primary cases of contrast between Ego and 
non-Ego, the former the Ego always includes (for rea- 
sons which have been explained in the foregoing) the 
present modifications of the common sensibility, and the 
feelings of the sense of control, where these are present 
tit all. The latter, the psychological non-Ego, is a colder, 



ANOMALIES OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 197 

a more localized, and less controllable mass of mental 
contents. 

3. Emotional states, and in general all those modifica- 
tions of the common sensibility which uniformly accompa- 
ny any of our social reflexes, become, by association, linked 
with our memories and ideas of social situations, and can- 
not be repeated without more or less clearly or vaguely re- 
minding us of our social situations in an individual or in a 
summary form. 

4. When social situations involving particular contrasts 
of Ego and non-Ego are remembered or imagined, we be- 
come self-conscious in memory, or in idea. When emotions, 
associated by old habit with social situations, dimly or sum- 
marily suggest such situations, with their accompanying 
contrast of Ego and non-Ego, our self-consciousness gets 
colored accordingly. Finally, when the varied contents of 
our isolated consciousness involve in any way, as they pass, 
contrasts which either remind us of the social contrast be- 
tween Ego and non-Ego, or excite us to acts involving social 
habit, such as questioning, or internal speech, we become 
reflectively self-conscious, even when quite alone with our 
own states. 

5. The anomalies of self-consciouness are (1) primary 
alterations of the common sensibility, or of the other con- 
tents of passing consciousness, such as dimly or clearly 
suggest anomalous social situations, contrasts and func- 
tions ; or else they are (2) primary anomalies in one's social 
habits themselves. The two forms can be of course to any 
degree combined. 



VIII. 

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, SOCIAL CONSCIOUS- 
NESS AND NATURE* 

THE ultimate purpose of the present paper is to reach, 
and, in closing, to sketch some views as to the relation of 
Man to Nature. By way of introduction, I must first define 
the place of my inquiry in the general catalogue of philo- 
sophical questions, and must then state the theses that I 
mean to defend. 

There are two great divisions of philosophy theoretical 
and practical. The present paper concerns itself with a 
matter belonging to theoretical philosophy. Within the 
range of theoretical philosophy, however, one may distin- 
guish between the discussion of the ultimate problems of 
knowledge and of truth, and the treatment of the more 
special theoretical problems suggested by our human expe- 
rience. General Epistemology and general Metaphysics 
have to do with what can be made out about the deepest 
nature of our knowledge and the final constitution of the 
universe. But there are, within the scope of theoretical 
philosophy, other problems relating to the constitution of 
our finite world problems which are often grouped together 
as the questions of special metaphysics, or of the Philosophy 
of Nature a doctrine to which has also sometimes been 
given the name Cosmology. The problems of Cosmology 

*A paper read before the Philosophical Club of Brown University, 
May 23, 1895, and later considerably enlarged and supplemented. 

198 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND NATURE. 199 

are such as the questions : What is the truth behind what 
we mortals call Nature, or the physical world ? What are 
finite minds, and how are they related to physical reality ? 
What, if any, is the philosophical interpretation to be given 
to the doctrine of Evolution ? 

Now the present paper, as I just said, is an inquiry within 
the region of theoretical philosophy. Within that region 
my investigation, however, here concerns itself only second- 
arily with the ultimate problems of general metaphysics. 
I shall chiefly aim to reach, before I close, light as to a cer- 
tain problem of philosophical cosmology. Here about us, as 
we all admit, whatever our ultimate metaphysical views, is 
the natural world, the world that appears to our senses a 
world manifesting some sort of finite, and obviously, as we 
mortals see it, some sort of highly fragmentary truth. Now 
man, as we phenomenally know him, appears as a part of 
nature, a product of nature, a being whose destinies seem to 
be the sport of purely physical laws. The problem that this 
paper aims in the end to approach is : What is the meaning 
of this phenomenal relation of man to nature ? 

Now, as I need not say, a real answer to this question 
must lead us past, if not through, the realms of the most 
ultimate and general sort of metaphysical inquiry. Nor 
will this paper wholly escape the responsibility of consider- 
ing to some extent, as we proceed, such ultimate matters. 
But on the other hand, all philosophical students are used 
to the fragmentary, and I shall not here attempt complete- 
ness. Such general metaphysical views as come in sight in 
this paper will remain, after all, of rather secondary impor- 
tance. I shall attempt only to clear some of the way that 
leads from the study of man as we ordinarily know him 
towards the regions where general philosophy attempts to 
grapple with the ultimate issues of life, and with the rational 
constitution of the universe. 

The relation of man to nature this, then, is our immo- 



200 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

diate topic. But why, you may ask, if such is the purpose 
of this paper, have I chosen my actual title ? Why does a 
study of the relations of Self -consciousness and Social Con- 
sciousness seem adapted to throw light on the cosmological 
problem of the relation of human beings to natural pro- 
cesses ? To this preliminary question let us at once address 

ourselves. 

I. 

The philosophical examination of man's social conscious- 
ness has been left, rather too exclusively, in the hands of 
the students of ethics. Even the psychologists, until very 
recently, have paid a very inadequate attention to the dis- 
tinctively social aspects of their science. It is far too cus- 
tomary, in consequence, for the ethical philosophers them- 
selves to begin their study of the duties of man with a very 
abstract view of the nature of the social consciousness, and 
of its original relations to our self-consciousness. We hear 
nowadays, for instance, in popular philosophy, a greal deal 
about the supposed primal and natural conflict between 
Egoism and Altruism. Egoism, so we are told, is the 
original human tendency the natural and innate bias of 
any one of us mortals. And it is so because, as soon as 
one becomes self-conscious, i. e., aware of one's Ego, one 
finds one's self, as an animal, instinctively selfish. The 
practical tendency of the self -preserving animal organism, 
translated into the terms of self-consciousness, becomes 
deliberate Egoism. Hence the moral problem is to make a 
man altruistic. The philosophical problem of ethics, on the 
other hand, is to show a man why he ought to be altruis- 
tic, i. e., why Egoism, which is naturally prior and appar- 
ently self-evident, ought rationally to be subordinated, upon 
reflection, to its derived and slowly acquired natural oppo- 
nent, Altruism. 

But now, I insist that, as a fact, this far too customary 
notion of a natural and fatal opposition between self-con- 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND NATURE. 201 

sciousness, Egoism, and our socially determined and derived 
Altruism, is also far too falsely abstract a notion. There are 
evil tendencies in plenty in human nature, and common 
sense has a very wholesome meaning in mind when it con- 
demns our natural selfishness. But when one defines in 
philosophical terms our evil tendencies, or undertakes to 
analyse in an ultimate sense what common sense knows as 
our selfishness, one does ill if one merely substitutes ab- 
stract distinctions for our concrete and passionate life-con- 
flicts. As a fact, the abstract opposition, Ego and Alter, or 
Egoism and Altruism, ill suggests the meaning of the op- 
posed ethical aims that struggle in us. This whole cus- 
tomary popular and philosophical opposition between a 
man's self -consciousness, as if it were something primitive 
and lonely, and his social consciousness, as if that were 
something acquired, apart from his self -consciousness, 
through intercourse with his fellows, is false to human 
nature. As a fact, a man becomes self-conscious only in 
the most intimate connection with the growth of his social 
consciousness. These two forms of consciousness are not 
separable and opposed regions of a man's life ; they are thor- 
oughly interdependent. I am dependent on my fellows, 
not only physically, but to the very core of my conscious 
self-hood, not only for what, physically speaking, I am, but 
for what I take myself to be. Take away the Alter from 
consciousness, and the conscious Ego, so far as in this 
world we know it, languishes, and languishing dies, what- 
ever may become of the organism in whose fortunes this 
Ego, while it is known to persist, seems to be involved. 
Hence, I am not first self-conscious, and then secondarily 
conscious of my fellow. On the contrary, I am conscious 
of myself, on the whole, as in relation to some real or ideal 
fellow, and apart from my consciousness of my fellows I 
have only secondary and derived states and habits of self- 
consciousness. I cannot really will to preserve the Ego, 



202 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

then this derived conscious creature of the habits of my 
social consciousness ; I cannot really will to preserve the 
Ego, without also willing to preserve and to defend some 
sort of Alter, and some sort of relation to my fellow who is 
this Alter, and upon whom my conscious Ego depends for 
its very life. It is only in abstraction that I can be merely 
egoistic. In the concrete case I can only be egoistic by 
being also voluntarily altruistic, however base may be the 
sort of Altruism that I chance to prefer. I can aim, for 
instance, to be a political " boss.'' That appears to be a very 
egoistic aim. But the political " boss " exists by the suf- 
frages of interested people, and must aim at their conscious, 
even if illusory, sense of advantage in so far as he wills them 
to be sincerely interested. I can will to be a flattering dema- 
gogue, admired for vain show by a crowd of fools. The end 
is selfish ; but it also involves wishing to be agreeable in the 
eyes of many people ; and even a saint might on occasion 
wisely include so much of the demagogue's aim in his own 
vastly different context of voluntary life. The tyrant wills 
the lives and even the limited good fortune of his subjects, 
for without powerful and numerous and even devoted sub- 
jects he would be no tyrant. The master wills his slave's 
preservation, even in willing to preserve his own mastery. 
Even the thief or the defaulter wills that the hoarding of 
valuable property should be on the average sufficiently ad- 
vantageous to others to make them willing and careful to 
provide him with the wherewithal to win his thief's liveli- 
hood. Even the murderer, although he directly aims to 
destroy his fellow, does so, in general, and whenever the 
act is deliberate and intelligent, for a social end honor, 
property, power all of them ends which involve willing 
the preservation, and even the prosperity, of many social 
relations involving others than the murderer himself. 
There is, then, much bad Altruism in the world, much base, 
wishing of social relations which do involve the preserva- 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND NATURE. 203 

tion, and even the relative private advantage of others 
besides the evil-doer. But bad Altruism is not mere Ego- 
ism, nor is it identical with a lower animal's unconsciously 
naive selfishness. The mere instincts of the self-preserva- 
tion of this organism have to be far transcended before one 
can become consciously egoistic. Vanity, pride, love of 
social power, the greed of mastery, covetousness, oppression 
all these are tendencies that, just in so far as they are 
conscious and deliberate, involve not only Egoism, i. e., the 
love of the advantage of this individual, but also some more 
or less evil form of Altruism the love of the preservation, 
and often of a certain limited advantage, of those of one's 
fellows who form the necessary other term of the social 
relation which satisfies one's vanity, one's greed, or one's 
love of power. In brief, speaking ethically, you cannot 
consciously be merely egoistic. For you, as a man, exist 
only in human relations. Your aims have to be more 
or less social, just so far as you clearly define them. The 
ethical problem is not: Shall I aim to preserve social 
relations ? but : What social relations shall I aim to pre- 
serve ? 

But to return from these illustrations to the general topic : 
my first point on this occasion is that, just as there is no con- 
scious Egoism without some distinctly social reference, so 
there is, on the whole, in us men, no self-consciousness apart 
from some more or less derived form of the social conscious- 
ness. I am I in relation to some sort of a non-Ego. And, as 
a fact, the non-Ego that I am accustomed to deal with when 
I think and act, is primarily some real or ideal finite fellow- 
being, in actual or possible social relations with me, and this 
social non-Ego, real or ideal, is only secondarily to be turned 
into anything else, as, for example, into a natural object 
tli.it I regard as a mere dead thing. And I have dwelt upon 
these facts here for the sake of first introducing a matter to- 
wards whose final definition the whole of the following argu- 



204: STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

raent is to tend, viz., the assertion that what you and I mean 
by Nature is, as a finite reality, something whose very con- 
ception we have actually derived from our social relations 
with one another ; so that, as we shall see, to believe that 
there really exists a finite reality called Nature, is of neces- 
sity, when you rightly analyze the facts, to believe that 
there is, in the real universe, an extra-human, but finite 
conscious life, manifesting its presence to us by means sub- 
stantially similar to those whereby we have become assured 
of the presence of the inner life of our human fellows. As 
it is not true that we are primarily and in unsocial abstrac- 
tion merely egoistic, just so it is not true that we primarily 
know merely our own inner life as individuals, apart from 
an essentially social contrast with other minds. While it 
is true, as all idealistic analysis has affirmed, that the object 
of knowledge is precisely what it is known as being, it is not 
true that you and I ever know our own individual inner 
world of objects, without contrasting these objects with 
others that we regard as present to some sort of conscious 
life beyond our own. But primarily we learn to contrast 
our own inner life with what we regard as the inner life 
of our fellows in human society. It is by virtue of this 
very contrast of our own inner life with a finite conscious 
life beyond our own, viz., that of our human fellows, that 
we become self-conscious. When later, for reasons that I 
shall soon define, we learn to oppose to ourselves as finite 
knowers, a world of relatively independent natural objects, 
which we conceive as existent apart from any human in- 
sight, all the categories in terms of which we can learn to 
think of these nature-objects are categories derived from 
our social experience, and modified, but not really trans- 
formed, to suit the peculiar behavior of the relatively un- 
social beings whose existence our experience seems to indi- 
cate to us in nature. Our relations with nature are thus 
such as involve a more or less social contrast between our 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND NATURE. 205 

life and the life of nature. And upon this principle every 
philosophy of nature must rest 

ii. 

I have begun our research, as you see, by some decidedly 
ganeral and positive assertions. I must next try to show 
you more precisely and more in detail what these assertions 
mean, and why I find myself obliged to hold them. 

The theses of the present paper, set forth in particular, 
run as follows : 

1. A man is conscious of himself, as this finite being, 
only in so far as he contrasts himself, in a more or less defi- 
nitely social way, with what he takes to be the life, and, in 
fact, the conscious life, of some other finite being unless, 
indeed, he modifies his natural self-consciousness by con- 
trasting his own life with the conceived fullness of the life 
of God. But except by virtue of some such contrast one 
cannot become self-conscious, and the result is that, as a 
matter of simple and necessary meaning, if any metaphys- 
ical argument is to prove than I am I, viz., this finite being, 
then at the same time this argument will prove that there is 
other conscious life besides mine. For otherwise my own 
finite life as this Ego cannot be defined or conceived. 

2. The other conscious life that I must contrast with 
mine, in order to become self-conscious, is primarily, in our 
human relations, the life of my fellow in the social order. 
The original, as Hume would say, of the conception of a 
non-Ego is given to me in my social experiences. The real 
other being that I, as this finite Ego, can know is, at first, 
the human being. A man who had no social relations 
could form no clear conception of the reality of any finite 
non-Ego, and so could get no clear notion of the reality of 
the non-Ego now called Nature. Our conception of phys- 
ical reality as such is secondary to our conception of our 
social fellow-beings, and is actually derived therefrom. 



206 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

3. In consequence, any metaphysical proof that what we 
human beings mean by physical nature exists at all, must 
also be a proof that behind the phenomena of nature, just 
in so far as nature has finite reality, there is other conscious 
life, finite like our own, but unlike human life in so far as 
it, the nature-life, does not enter into closer social relations 
with us human beings. Yet all that manifests to us the ex- 
ternal existence of nature, does so by virtue of a more or less 
definite appeal to the categories of our social consciousness. 

4. But, as a fact, a probable proof, not amounting to 
philosophical demonstration, but capable of an indefinite 
degree of extension and illustration, does exist for the ex- 
istence of a real finite world called the Realm of Nature. 
Hence, this very proof indicates that there is behind the 
phenomena of nature a world of finite life in more or less 
remote, but socially disposed relations to us human beings. 

5. This proof of the finite reality of a conscious life be- 
hind the phenomena of nature is furnished by the whole 
mass of facts that in modern times have come to be con- 
ceived together as the basis of the doctrine of Evolution. 
And the doctrine of Evolution must in the end be inter- 
preted in terms of this notion. In other words, the doc- 
trine of Evolution seems to me the beginning of what 
promises to become a sort of universal Sociology, tending 
towards a definition of the social relations of the finite 
beings that together must make up the whole natural 
world, both human and extra-human. 

6. Yet, on the other hand, the view of nature thus indi- 
cated ought to be very sharply distinguished, both from 
most traditional forms of Animism and of Hylozoism, and 
from the modern doctrine of Mind-Stuff. The view that I 
have in mind is not Schopenhauer's doctrine of the Will in 
Nature, nor Schell ing's Naturphilosophie, nor von Hart- 
mann's theory of the Unconscious as manifested in physical 
phenomena. From such theories mine is to be distinguished 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND NATURE. 207 

by its genesis. It tries to avoid all premature dogmatism as 
to the inner aspect of the life of nature. But it conceives 
the possibility of a gradual and, as one may hope, a very 
significant enlargement, through the slow growth of human 
experience, of our insight into the inner meaning of na- 
ture's life, and into the essentially social constitution of 
the finite world. Meanwhile this conception of the natural 
order as a vast social organism, of which human society is 
only a part, is founded upon no merely animistic analogies 
between the physical phenomena and the phenomena of our 
organisms, but upon a decidedly deeper analysis of the very 
nature of our conception of other finite beings besides our- 
selves. And further, if my conception is true, it quite trans- 
forms certain important aspects of our whole notion of the 
meaning of Evolution. For the process of Evolution, as I 
now view it, becomes, not the history of the growth of life 
from the lifeless, but the history of the differentiation of 
one colony, as it were, of the universal society from the 
parent social order of the finite world in its wholeness. 

Such, in some detail, are my theses. They need, of 
course, both analysis and defense. I will take them up in 
their order, dwelling perhaps too long upon the first thesis, 
upon which all the rest depends. 

III. 

First, then, as to the thesis that one is conscious of one's 
Ego only by virtue of the contrast between this Ego and 
some consciousness which one regards as external to one's 
finite self. 

Speaking in psychological terms, one can say that our 
finite self -consciousness is no primitive possession at all, 
but is the hard-earned outcome of the contact between the 
being capable of becoming rational and the rationally-dis- 
posed world in which he slowly learns to move. A child 
becomes self-conscious only by degrees. When, as infant, 
l.-, 



208 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

he cries for his food, or even, when more intelligent, shows 
lively disappointment if his expectations are not met, he is 
not yet self-conscious. When later, as older child, he struts 
about, playing soldier, or shyly hides from strangers, or 
asks endless questions merely to see what you will say, or 
quarrels with his fellows at play, or shrinks from reproof, 
or uses his little arts to win praise and caresses, he is self- 
conscious. These latter conditions are all of them such as 
involve a contrast between his own deeds and meanings and 
the deeds and meanings that he takes to be those of other 
conscious beings, whom, just as his conscious fellows, he 
loves or hates, fears or imitates, regards with social curi- 
osity, or influences by devices adapted to what he thinks to 
be their states of mind. In brief, then, I should assert here, 
as a matter of psychology, what I have elsewhere worked 
out more at length, that a child is taught to be self-conscious 
just as he is taught everything else, by the social order that 
brings him up. Could he grow up alone with lifeless na- 
ture, there is nothing to indicate that he would become as 
self-conscious as is now a fairly educated cat. 

But in the present paper I am dealing, not with psychol- 
ogy, but with certain aspects of the constitution of our 
knowledge. Let us consider briefly our self-consciousness, 
now that it has developed. It is a familiar paradox of ideal- 
istic analysis that we can have true knowledge of ideas or 
other objects of consciousness only in so far as they have 
first been presented to ourselves in our own inner life. 
Whatever I know must be really known to me, one says, 
only in so far as it is in me. I know, or can conceivably 
come to know, my own states, my own presentations, my 
own thoughts, my own experiences. Things external to me 
can be known only in so far as they first appear inside my 
conscious world. When I pretend to know something 
about a far-off star, that something which I know proves, 
upon analysis, to be my own state, my experience, or my 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND NATURE. 209 

thought nothing else. I cannot transcend consciousness. 
And consciousness is for me my consciousness, or, at least, 
can always come to be regarded as mine. "Das 'Ich 
denke,'" says Kant, "muss alle meine Vorstellungen be- 
gleiten konnen." 

Now all this is, in one sense, quite true. There is an as- 
pect of knowledge which is always dependent upon my 
presentations, my direct acquaintance with mental contents. 
Without such direct acquaintance, I have no knowledge. 
But, on the other hand, if one asks a little more closely 
about the implications of our inner consciousness, one 
comes upon another, a strongly contrasted, and a highly 
momentous aspect of our human knowledge. And this as- 
pect is indicated by the well-known fact that if I can only 
really know my own inner states in so far as they are inner, 
still, on the other hand, I can never really define to myself 
just how much is actually presented at any one moment to 
my inner life. One can know the far-off star only by virtue 
of ideas and experiences that get presented in the inner life ; 
but, on the other hand, this presentation, merely as such, is 
not enough. For if anything present in the inner life were, 
as such, at once and altogether known to me, I should al- 
ways be able to know just what it is, just how much it is, 
that now constitutes the whole filling and meaning of my 
inner life. But alas, I never can find out in all my life, 
precisely the whole of what it is that gets presented to me in 
any one moment. Are you now conscious of all that is in 
your field of vision, e. g., of the head of every person who sits 
in this audience within this instant's range of your vision ? 
Obviously you are not, or at least are not equally conscious of 
all the possible objects of your momentary visual attention. 
You are now clearly aware only of what you are now at- 
tending to, and not of all the contents that are present but 
that you merely might attend to if you chose. But once 
more, what is precisely the whole of what you are now at 



210 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

tending to words, thoughts, sights, faces ? It is impossible 
just now exhaustively to tell yourself, unless unless you 
first attend to your own process of attention, capriciously 
fixate its normal fluctuating attitudes, and so give an arti- 
ficially prepared account of a deliberately falsified situation. 
The inner life, as we get it, is conscious, but normally very 
unequally self-conscious possesses contents, but cannot 
precisely define to itself what they are ; seeks not to hold 
the present, but to fly to the next ; scorns the immediate, the 
presented, and looks endlessly for the oncoming, the sought, 
the wished-for, the absent, so that the inner eye gazes on 
a flowing stream of events, but beholds rather what they 
hint at than what they present. 

Now it is this other, this curiously contrasted aspect, of 
our finite knowledge, that constitutes one of the deepest 
problems of the life of human reason. I can know only 
what can get presented to me. But, on the other hand, 
most of what gets presented to me always escapes my 
knowledge. I know not the merely presented, as such, but 
only that which in the presented facts I can hold, apper- 
ceive, contrast with other contents, and define as to the real 
meaning of this object which I am to know. But alas, the 
moment flits. What I now know turns into what I just 
now knew, even while I reflect upon it. The direct gets lost 
in the indirect, the instant in the imperfectly known series 
of states ; and my best approach to finite knowledge appears 
as only a sort of substituting of expectations and of mem- 
ories for the desired presentations. If, then, on the one 
hand, I can know only my own ideas, states, thoughts, pres- 
entations, our present unhappy result seems to be that, as a 
fact, owing to the ceaseless flux of consciousness, I cannot 
fully know even these. For, once more, I can know only 
what I can examine with steadily fixated attention ; but 
while I fixate my attention upon the inner object, it changes 
even while I observe it. Only the presented can be known : 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND NATURE. 211 

this idealistic proposition seems to be mockingly answered 
by the fairly tragic counter-assertion : Not even the pre- 
sented is, as such, known. 

In view of these paradoxes of our fmitude, in view of the 
fact that only the presented can, as such, be known, while 
the presented never stays long enough in one moment of 
consciousness to allow us fully to know what it is, the ac- 
tual situation of our human knowledge is simply this : What 
is always most clearly present to our consciously inquiring 
intelligence is the conceived relation between some content 
now immediately apprehended but very imperfectly compre- 
hended, and that which, as we hope, believe, or expect, will 
be or would be apprehended, when we come more fully to 
know, or if we now more fully knew the meaning of this 
immediate datum. What I now experience leads me to ex- 
pect another experience. My conscious knowledge is, then, 
mainly of this relation of transition from the immediate 
fact to the expected outcome. Or again, what I now experi- 
ence leads me to believe that, were I otherwise situated, I 
should apprehend such and such other facts. My knowledge 
is here again consciously concerned with the relation be- 
tween my actual and my conceived possible experience. 
Or, once more, I now have passing through my mind an 
assertion, a belief, an opinion. And I am thinking just 
what it is that I mean by this opinion. In this case, my 
meaning is partly presented to me, partly conceived as a 
more fully developed meaning, which I should get presented, 
or shall find presented, upon a further consideration of what 
I am aiming to do. 

Thus, you see, the original paradox of our idealistic an- 
alysis gets corrected by this other paradox. To the unknow- 
ableneas of whatever cannot get presented is now opposed 
the equal unknowableness of whatever merely gets immedi- 
ately presented, without being held through a constant inner 
appeal from what is presented to what in future will be 



212 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

presented, or to what conceivably would be presented, were 
consciousness otherwise determined. I know only my own 
states and ideas ; but those I know only by virtue of their 
conceived relation to states and ideas that will be, or that 
would be, under other conditions, or in other moments, the 
contents of my experience. 

But, from this point of view, the nature of the world of 
our knowledge gets transformed. Our only approach to 
that ideal of knowledge which complete and fixated presen- 
tation would involve if we had it, is afforded us by the im- 
perfectly presented relation between fleeting actual presen- 
tations and conceived possible presentations. And therefore 
you will observe at once that my notion of my own Ego and 
of its contents depends upon a certain contrast between 
these contents and a conceived world of actual or possible 
experience beyond this Ego. For what I come nearest to 
knowing at any moment is the relation between imperfectly 
grasped immediate contents and the conceived experience 
beyond the moment. It is indeed true, as idealism is accus- 
tomed to say, that of a Ding-an-sich, out of relation to pos- 
sible knowledge, I have and can have no sort of knowledge 
or conception. For, as soon as I try to tell what such a 
Ding-an-sich is, I turn it into actual or conceived possible 
experience, and conceive it only as in such experience. 
But, on the other hand, my whole knowledge of my inner 
finite Self and of its meaning is dependent upon the contrast 
between the immediate experiences of this self and a world 
of abstractly possible or of genuine experiences not pre- 
sented to any moment of my inner self as such. Thus, all 
my finite knowledge involves as much mediation as it con- 
tains immediacy assures me of fact only by sending me 
elsewhere for truth ; lets me know something, never the 
whole, of my actual experience, but through its contrast with 
possible experience ; verifies merely by presupposing experi- 
ences now unverified ; instructs me by suggesting further 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND NATURE. 213 

problems ; tells me who I am by indicating whither I am to 
go to look for my true self; suggests fulfillment of insight, 
yet all the while sending me out to wander for more insight ; 
arouses the question, What do I mean ? at the very mo- 
ment when I am attempting to answer the question, What 
is the experienced datum ? 

Now this realm of contrasts, of the light of present ex- 
perience and of the shadow of possible or of distant other 
experience, of presentation and of thought ; this dwelling in 
hope rather than in fulfillment, in search for a lost self 
rather than in enjoyment of a present self ; this realm, I 
say, and this dwelling constitute the inner finite life of 
every one of us, in so far as he lives rationally at all. My 
actual inner life is, then, always contrasted with experience 
other than is now mine ; and the problem of my intellectual 
life, whatever my worldly calling, is this : Where is the 
rest of my experience ? or, What is the content of the other 
experience with which mine is even now contrasted ? 

But it is, of course, vain to regard my inner view of my- 
self as constituted solely by the contrast between my indi- 
vidual presentation and a possible inner experience that I 
view as merely my own private, but still individually possi- 
ble experience. My possible experience and the world of 
other experience than is now mine these terms, in a wide 
but an essentially human sense, constantly include not 
merely the conceived experiences that I alone in my indi- 
vidual capacity am likely ever to have, or to find individu- 
ally accessible, but also the whole world of experiences that 
other human beings either have had, or will have, or may 
have. The upper Nile valley is, in the general and abstract 
sense, a possible experience of mine; but I individually 
shall doubtless never come to get that experience. Yet the 
upper Nile valley is, and has been, a system of actual and 
of accessibly possible experiences for very many of my fel- 
low-men. When I conceive the upper Nile valley, there are 



214 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

presented to my inner life words, images, map-experiences, 
and the like ; and these I know as meaning something to 
me, in so far as I contrast these relatively immediate data 
with the conceived contents of the experience of other men 
who more directly verify what I only conceive as to that 
region. And, in fact, the whole contents of my individual 
experience get regarded as one conscious system of remem- 
bered and expected contents, in so far as, in conception, I 
contrast my own private inner life with the experiences 
which I attribute to my actual or conceived fellows. I 
often say that my own inner life, as a whole, past and fu- 
ture, actual and accessibly possible, is better known to me, 
is more immediate, is more accessible to me, than is your 
inner life. But what do I mean by saying this ? Surely 
both my past and my future are now as truly and literally 
unpresentable to me as are your inner states. I have now 
only my memories of my past, as I have only my beliefs as 
to your inner states. Directly I can now verify neither set 
of ideas. What I mean by the relative intimacy and acces- 
sibility of my own individual past is, then, only the fact 
that my notion of my past has a " warmth," a definiteness, 
a sort of inner assurance, which contracts with the notion 
that I form of the past of any other man. 

You see, whatever way I turn, I am definable to myself 
only in terms of a contrast with other experience which 
might, abstractly speaking, be conceived as mine, but 
which, as a fact, is viewed either as now inaccessible in 
comparison with my present experience, or else as the actual 
or possible experience of my fellow, and so as now more re- 
mote than even my own relatively warm and quasi-accessi- 
ble, although actually unpresentable past experience appears 
to me to be. But to define any sphere whatever as the 
sphere of my own finite life, i. e., to define my life either as 
the sphere of my momentary finite life, or as the sphere of 
my whole human individuality, involves in each case a con- 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND NATURE. 215 

trast between what is within my denned Ego, in the way of 
relatively realized, or warm, or accessible contents of expe- 
rience, and what is beyond my denned Ego, as a sphere of 
experiences that, abstractly speaking, I regard as possibly 
mine, while, as a fact, I contrast them with mine, as being 
really somehow beyond me, and relatively inaccessible to 
me. These other experiences, which are not mine in pre- 
cisely the degree in which what I call mine is viewed as 
belonging to me these other experiences are, primarily, the 
actual experiences of other men. My opinion means, in 
general, my opinion as contrasted with opinions which I 
attribute to other men. My private experience means, pri- 
marily, whatever nobody else but myself has experienced, 
and is therefore defined by contrast with the conception of 
what everybody else has experienced. In brief, take away 
the concept of that world of abstractly possible other expe- 
rience, which might be mine, or which would be mine, if I 
were you, or Caesar, or any one else, or which would now 
be mine if I were once more my past self take all this 
other experience out of my conception, and forthwith 
I lose all means of becoming conscious of my experience 
as mine, or of knowing what I mean either by my whole 
individuality, or by my present Ego. 

IV. 

So far, then, for our first thesis. To myself, I am I, not 
merely in so far as my inner contents get presented to me, 
but in so far as I contrast my experience present, or the 
sum total of my conceived individual experience, with an 
experience which is, in some sense, not mine, but which is 
conceived as other than mine. 

But now what warrant have I, philosophically speaking, 
for assuming that there is any other experience than mine 
at all any experience past or future, remote or warm, like 
my present experience, or unlike it ? Is this merely a prac- 



216 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

tically warranted assertion of common-sense, or has it a 
deeper philosophical basis ? 

The general answer to this question is simply that I know 
the presented experience as such, and in so far as, in passing 
it is imperfectly grasped at all, only by virtue of its contrast 
to the conceived other experience. Without knowledge that 
the other experience is, there can be then no meaning in say- 
iiig that the presented experience itself exists. That the 
present is, he alone can say who regards the past and future 
as real. That I as this individual am, I can say only if I 
contrast myself with some conceived other experience. The 
judgment : " There is experience," can have meaning only 
if one defines some experience that is to be thus real. But 
the only way to define any finite experience is by its con- 
trast with other experience. The total object of true knowl- 
edge is therefore never the immediate experience of my own 
state as such and alone, although there never is any knowl- 
edge without some immediate experience as one of its ele- 
ments. The judgment : " There is experience " means, then, 
for any finite being, " There is my finite experience, known 
as somehow contrasted with other experience than what is 
here presented as mine." Thus, then, the conviction that 
there is other experience than what is presented to me here, 
has not only a common-sense value but a philosophical 
warrant. But if one says: "No, but the contrast is itself 
something given, and so is not the contrast between my ex- 
perience and any experience that is really known to be other 
than mine, but is only a contrast between my presented 
experience and one that is not presented as other than mine, 
but that is merely conceived as other than mine " then to 
this objection, once more, the answer is, that the very concep- 
tion of other experience than what is now presented as mine 
either actually relates to such other experience, or else is a 
meaningless conception. But if it is to be meaningless, even 
while it takes itself, as it does, to have a meaning, then this 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND NATURE. 217 

conception that always shadows my presentations, this con- 
ception of other experience than mine, is itself an experi- 
ence that is in fact other than it takes itself to be. For it 
always takes itself to mean something ; although, unless it 
actually does refer to other experience than mine, it is mean- 
ingless. But to say that a conception, or any other presented 
content of consciousness, is other than it seems, and is, for 
example, really meaningless when it seems to mean some- 
thing, this is already to distinguish between my erroneous 
experience of its nature, and another, a fuller experience of 
its nature which, if I knew it better, I should have. But thus 
to distinguish between what my experience really is and 
what it seems to be, is simply to distinguish between a pre- 
sented and a not presented aspect of the very experience 
in question. For what can one say of an experience which 
is not what it seems to be, and which is yet only a presenta- 
tion after all a mere matter of the instant in which it 
happens to live ? If an experience, viz., here the conception 
of other experience than mine, presents itself as meaning 
something beyond the moment when it really means noth- 
ing beyond the moment, then this very experience itself is 
really other than the experience as it is presented, and once 
more one gets a real contrast between my experience as 
presented, and related experience which is not presented. 
The conception of other experience than mine must, there- 
fore, in any case, have relation to a real experience which 
is other than my presentation. 

Thus, then, that there is some experience not individu- 
ally mine, is an assertion precisely as sure as the assertion 
that my own experience is. For neither assertion has mean- 
ing apart from the other. On the other hand, it is impos- 
sible to contrast my experience with any Ding-an-aich, 
existent apart from all experience, because the instant that 
I tell what I mean by a Ding-fin -///, 1 have converted it 
into an experience, actual or possible, and other than mine. 



218 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

But finally, in this connection, one must still further 
insist that our now frequently illustrated contrast cannot 
ultimately be one between my presented experience and an 
experience other than mine which is barely a possible ex- 
perience, and not an actual experience at all. A possible 
experience, not now mine, is a notion that has a very sound 
meaning in case it has some direct or indirect relation to 
a real experience not now mine. But bare possibilities, to 
which no actualities correspond, are indeed meaningless. 
Are there real facts or aspects of experience not now pre- 
sented to me, then I can easily define these in terms of 
logical possibilities. But possibilities need realities to give 
them meaning. There must then be other experience than 
mine, not merely as possible experience, but as actual ex- 
perience. Given such actual experience, there is not only 
convenience, but rational necessity in the attempt to define 
its nature in terms of all sorts of conceived possibilities ; 
but unless you have some actual experience upon which to 
base your possibilities, then the, possibilities themselves be- 
come mere contradictions. A barely possible experience is, 
as Mr. Bradley has well said, the same as an impossible ex- 
perience. 

v. 

There is, then, an universe of other actual experience 
than my own finite experience, presented or remembered. 
Were this central truth not known to me, I should have no 
means of being conscious of myself as this finite Ego. The 
general constitution of this world of other experience, in its 
wholeness, I must here leave to metaphysics. We are now 
concerned with the finite aspects of the complex of experi- 
ences with which, as human beings, we have to do. 

Concretely, we get information about the contents of 
experience not our own, when we communicate socially 
with our fellows. And the essence of social communication 
is this : My fellow does something in a certain situation^ 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND NATURE. 219 

deals with his environment so or so. He uses tools, utters 
words, makes gestures. If these deeds of his are new to nie, 
they do not convey to me his inner experience. These deeds 
are so far, for me, phenomena in my own experience. I 
cannot directly view my fellow's experience at all. How. 
then, is a word, or gesture, or other deed, which as yet con- 
veys no meaning to me, to acquire a meaning, or to become 
expressive to me of my fellow's inner life as such ? The 
answer is, that, from infancy on, my fellow's expressive acts 
get a meaning to me as the suggestion of his concrete inner 
life, just in so far as I am able to imitate these deeds of his 
by bodily acts of my own, brought to pass under conditions 
like those in which he, my fellow, acts. For when I defi- 
nitely repeat a bodily act that expresses any human mean- 
ing, the act, as I repeat it, under definite conditions, gets for 
me an inner meaning which I could never grasp so long as 
I merely observed such an act from without, as an event in 
my perceived phenomenal world. But this inner meaning 
which the act gets when I repeat it, becomes for me the 
objective meaning of the act as my fellow performs it ; and 
thus the meaning of the imitated act, interpreted for me at 
the moment of my imitation, gets conceived as the real 
meaning, the inner experience of my fellow, at the moment 
when he performs the act which is my model. If you laugh, 
I know what you mean just in so far as, under similar con- 
ditions, I can join with you and laugh heartily also, and 
can thus, by fully imitating your deed, get a sense of your 
meaning. But if I see you laughing under circumstances 
that absolutely forbid me even to conceive myself as imitat- 
ing your expression of mirth, then I have frankly to say 
that I do not in the least know what you mean by laughing 
at just this situation, and so cannot conceive in so far what 
your inner experience is. If I see you playing cards, or 
chess, I can only make out what your inner experience is in 
case I learn the cards, the pieces, the rules, or the moves of 



220 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

the game, and proceed to play it myself. If I want to know 
what the poets mean when they sing of love, I must myself 
become a lover. When I have imitated, in my measure, 
the lover's situation, and the lover's sincerely expressed 
devotion, then I know something of what love meant for 
the poet. In general, I believe in other human experience 
than mine in so far as I notice other people's expressive 
acts, and then gradually interpret them through social con- 
formity. What I cannot interpret by imitation, I cannot 
definitely realize as another man's experience. Yet as my 
imitations always remain incomplete, and my interpreta- 
tions correspondingly indefinite, I have constantly to con- 
trast my fellow's experience, so far as I can realize it, with 
my fellow's experience so far as it attracts my efforts to 
interpret it, but also sets a limit to the success of these efforts. 
And thus I get a notion of a boundless world of human 
meanings which I can partially, but not wholly, grasp. In 
the effort, by social conformity, i. e., by imitation of expres- 
sive actions, to interpret such inadequately grasped human 
meanings, a great part of my social life consists. This effort 
is constantly supplemented by my efforts to convey my 
own meanings to others ; and thus my self -consciousness 
and my social consciousness, each helped and each limited 
by the other, since each exists only in contrast with the 
other, get organized and developed in the endless giving 
and taking of social communications. 

Thus far, then, we have been illustrating our first and 
second theses. Their application to our notion of Na- 
ture remains to be developed. 

VI. 

So far, then, a reality, external to my finite Ego, means 
a world of other experience with which my experience is 
contrasted. This world is concretely defined, in the first 
place, as the world of other human experiences than my 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND NATURE. 221 

own. What these experiences actually are, I learn only by 
myself repeating the expressive deeds of my fellows, and 
by attributing to these deeds, when performed by my 
fellows, an inner meaning similar to the one which I 
more directly observe in the deeds when I myself repeat 
them under conditions similar to those in which my fel- 
lows have already performed them. Of course, no such 
interpretation of any human meaning is infallible ; but I 
am verifiably right in saying that, at every step, this social 
process does really bring me into relation with experience 
which, until I performed the deeds of social imitativeness, 
was not mine. This concrete new experience, which was 
not mine until I imitated, was then before my imitation, 
at the very least, a possible experience other than mine. 
The whole social world is full of suggestions of such actu- 
ally possible experiences. If every real possibility must, 
logically speaking, have a basis in actuality, I am philo- 
sophically warranted in saying that all these suggestions of 
other human experience which social imitation interprets, 
and which common-sense trusts, do as a fact stand not only 
for a barely possible enlargement of my inner Ego, but for 
real experience which, however fallible my private inter- 
pretations of it may be, has an actuality contrasted with, 
and existent apart from, my finite individuality. The world 
of my fellows' experiences may not be real just as I, in my 
narrowness, interpret it. But this world is still, from the 
philosophical as from the common-sense point of view, a 
real world, a complex of experiences other than mine, and 
more or less imperfectly communicated to me. And thus 
it is that one in general defines the metaphysics of the 
social consciousness. You observe once more the essential 
relativity of the individual Ego and the social Alter. 
Neither conception has any clearness apart from the other. 
But now, in our human world of experience, there are, 
yonder, the phenomena of physical nature. Our next 



222 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

question is, in what sense are we to attribute reality to 
them? 

J. S. Mill's answer to this question is well known, and 
is, in one aspect, closely and instructively similar to Kant's 
answer, despite all the differences between the two philoso- 
phers as to other matters. The phenomena of nature, e. g., 
the upper Nile valley, the other side of yonder wall, or of 
the moon these one conceives as systems of possible ex- 
periences, experiences which, in general, I now have not, 
but could have under definable conditions. Nature, as 
such, contains, apart from the bodies of my fellows and of 
the higher animals, no objects that I conceive as communi- 
cating to me any now intelligible inner intents, meanings, 
plans, or other socially interesting contents. Nature con- 
sists of masses of " possibilities of sensation." The problem 
is, in what sense have these possibilities of experience any 
inner or self existent sort of reality ? Is nature a Ding-an- 
sich, whose reality is absolutely inscrutable, but self-pos- 
sessed ? The answer to this last and special question is 
that such a notion is simply meaningless. I can contrast 
my experience with other experience, and can regard my- 
self as limited by facts of experience not now presented to 
me. And such a way of regarding myself is, as we have 
seen, absolutely essential to even my self-consciousness. 
But I cannot contrast experience with what is no experi- 
ence at at all. Even to say that there now exist certain 
possibilities of experience which I do not realize, is to raise 
the issue already several times touched upon in the fore- 
going. A bare possibility is a mere fiction. It cannot be 
real. To my true definition of a given experience as merely 
possible for me, there may correspond an experience which, 
as it is in itself, is very unlike my private definition of the 
real possibility. But if I am right in saying, " There is a 
possibility of experience not now mine," then to such a real 
possibility some sort of real experience, other than mine, 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND NATURE. 2?3 

must correspond. The question arises : Is there any such 
real experience behind those nature-facts which we conceive 
is our own possible experiences 1 

But there is another aspect of natural phenomena which 
perhaps brings us nearer to our goal. The reality of the facts 
of nature, when we actually confirm their presence, is 
always viewed as capable of being submitted to social 
tests. The real nature-phenomenon is not merely con- 
ceived as the object of my possible experience, but in gener- 
al as the object of my fellows' actual or possible experience 
as well. If the star that I see is a real star, then you, if 
you are a normal observer can see that star as well as I. 
This is th common-sense presupposition as to nature. 
Natural objects are viewed as phenomena that are, in some 
sense, public property, in so far as many different human 
observers could make them objects of possible inspection. 
The presupposition of common-sense is, that many observers 
could, on occasion, verify the same natural fact ; so that 
the physical world will consist, for common-sense, not 
merely of possibilities of my individual experience, but of 
possibilities of common experience on the part of many 
observers. 

Here surely is a well-known, but a paradoxical aspect of 
our nature-experience. I cannot observe your mind, but, as 
common-sense supposes, I can observe the same external 
natural fact that you observe. This presupposition is. in 
effect, a basis in terms of which we often define the facts of 
nature. What I alone experience, belongs to my inner life. 
What you can experience as well as I, is as such a physical 
fact, and, mind you, this means that, when we deal with 
nature-phenomena, common-sense supposes us, not merely to 
have similar inner states, but to refer to actually the same 
fact If you as finite being count ten, and I as finite being 
count ten, we perform similar inner acts, but our objects 

are so far not the same ; for the ten that you count is not 
1C 



STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 



the ten that I count. We can in this case be referring to 
the same truth only if there is, as a fact, some sort of extra- 
human reality possessed by the truths of arithmetic, and 
actually referred to by both of us. But just such extra- 
human reality common-sense actually attributes to the facts 
of nature. If ten stones lie on the highway, and you and 
I count them, common-sense supposes that though your 
counting of ten is not my counting of ten, though your 
perception of the stones is not mine, though your inner 
life is in no fashion, here noteworthy, identical with mine, 
still the real stones that I count are identically the same 
as the real stones that you count. Now any natural fact, 
as common -sense conceives it, could, without losing its 
identity, be made the common object of as many observers 
as could come to get the right hints of its nature through 
their inner experience. All these possible observers, so 
common-sense holds, would really refer to the same natural 
fact. 

The nature-things, then, are not merely possible experi- 
ences for me ; they pretend to be possible objects of common 
experience for many observers. 

Now when the nature-facts make such puzzling demands 
upon us as this, there are only two ways of viewing the 
situation thus created. One way is to say that in truth, all 
this common-sense notion of nature is illusory. As a fact, 
one might insist, it is impossible for two finite observers of 
nature to have the same external fact actually referred to by 
both of them at once. What one means is, that, as our social 
consciousness indicates, human beings have many similar 
experiences, and can socially convey to one another this 
similarity of their inner lives. When I rejoice, you may 
rejoice too ; yet our rejoicings are not the same, but only 
similar. Just so, one might insist, when I point at my star, 
you may point at your star also. But what happens is that 
your experience then resembles mine ; but has not the 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND NATURE. 225 

same outer object at all. Nature is the sum-total of those 
facts of our various experiences, concerning which our 
perceptual experience seems most easily to agree. But 
this agreement means merely a certain social communi- 
cable similarity of our experiences not unity or sameness 
of natural object 

This, I say, is one possible hypothesis as to nature. But 
observe at once : There is one class of nature-objects in case 
of which just this negative and sceptical hypothesis simply 
cannot be carried out without destroying the very basis of 
our social consciousness itself. And this class of seeming 
outer objects is made up of the very bodies of our human 
fellows whom we observe, and with whom we socially com- 
municate. The social consciousness, upon which, as we have 
seen, our very self-consciousness itself depends for its defini- 
tion in finite terms, involves, as an integral part of its unity, 
the observation of certain natural phenomena definable as 
the expressive movements, the gestures, words, deeds, of our 
fellows. Now these phenomena are not merely to be viewed 
as reducible to the possible similar experiences of the various 
people who may observe their fellows from without. For 
these phenomena, on the contrary, have, whoever observes 
them, their identical and inner aspect ; for they indicate the 
inner life of the social fellow-being who thus expresses him- 
self. Many of you are now observing me. Are all of your 
various inner experiences of me now actually referring to 
the same fact, external to you but having for me its pre- 
sented internal aspect, identically the same whoever it is 
that regards himself as observing my movements ? The 
answer is here, at once : Yes. If I am I, and am communicat- 
ing to you through deeds which are represented in you by 
systems of similar experiences, then, when you experience, 
in your inner lives, the observable phenomenal aspects of 
these my deeds, you are all at once meaning, referring to, 
listening to, the same genuinely real object 



226 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

Paradox though it be, the social consciousness insists 
that the same fellow-man can phenomenally manifest his 
presence to as many observers as can get some experience of 
his expressive deeds. All these observers can agree, with 
due care, as to their accounts of his deeds. These deeds, 
then, are so far nature-phenomena, like any others. My 
movements appear to any one of you in space, even as does 
this desk. So far, one could say, the fact is that the observ- 
ers have experiences that are similar in one man's case to 
the experiences of his observing fellow. The observed 
deeds are merely such similar perceptions in the various ob- 
servers. The various observers do not see the same real 
deeds ; but they do possess similar perceptions, which they 
call perceptions of expressive deeds. 

But no, this conclusion the social consciousness declines 
to accept. All your various but similar individual percep- 
tions of my deeds really refer to the same genuine object, 
precisely in so far as I am I, and in so far as it is my inner 
experience that is manifested in these deeds. Thus, then, 
you could say that, if this desk were alone here, you could 
indeed so far talk sceptically of phenomenal experiences, in 
various observers, which only seemed to be experiences re- 
lating to the same object, but which as a fact do not demand 
the real sameness of their object. But it is no longer so if, 
in terms of the social consciousness, you consider not the 
desk, but me as your nature-object. For I am to you not 
only nature-phenomenon, represented in you by comparable 
and merely similar perceptual experiences of your various 
private worlds; but I am, as communicating fellow-man, 
the same outer object for all of you. 

Now a similar proposition holds true of any fellow-man. 
Any man you please has for you his phenomenal aspect. 
In this aspect he is viewed as object of possible experiences, 
and the real facts corresponding to this view are, so far, ex- 
pressible by saying that all of his observant fellows have 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND NATURE. 227 

similar experiences whenever they come into certain de- 
finable groups of relations to their own inner worlds. But 
this man has another existence than the existence of certain 
images that his fellows form. All of these images refer to 
him, to the same man, to his manifested inner experience, 
and so to one reality. And this is what the social conscious- 
ness insists. Give up that insistence, in any general form, 
and you have no social consciousness, no fellow-men with 
similar experiences, no definable self-consciousness yes, 
nothing but an inexpressible immediacy of inner presenta- 
tions. But hold by that insistence, and what can you say ? 
I answer : You can and must say that to one portion of phe- 
nomenal nature, viz., to the observed bodily movements of 
your fellows, there corresponds an inner life which is the 
same in essence, however many may be the phenomenal 
images that observers form of it when they refer to it as 
a reality. 

The first view of nature, viz., that nature consists of a 
total of possible experiences, similar in various observers, 
thus fails as to all those nature-objects that present them- 
selves as our expressively moving fellows. Our fellows are 
real beings, phenomenally observable from without by as 
many observers as you please, but self-existent as masses of 
inner experience, contrasted with one another, and with our 
own experience*. 

But now how can you separate the phenomenal fellow, 
the originally real finite being, the original of your notion 
of your non-Ego, from the phenomenal nature of which he 
appears as a part, and with whose existence he appears to be, 
in all his life, absolutely continuous ? For at this point 
there returns to help us our whole knowledge of human 
nature as such. A man's phenomenal expressive move- 
ments, objects of possible experience for all observers, stand 
for, and phenomenally accompany, his inner life. They 
then are real manifestations of a real interior finite life. 



228 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

But his movements cannot be thus regarded as real unless 
his limbs, his muscles, his nerves, his brain, his circulatory 
and nutritive processes, the food that he eats, the desk from 
which he speaks, the air that he breathes, the room where 
he speaks, the ancestors from whom he descended yes, in 
the end, the whole phenomenal nature-order with which he 
is phenomenally continuous, unless all these things be also 
regarded as real in the same general sense, viz., as inner 
finite experience. In short, you cannot separate your phe- 
nomenal fellows from the order of phenomenal nature. 
The continuity between man and nature, known to us first 
as the absolute inseparability of the expressive movements 
of our fellows from the nature-processes in which these 
movements appear to be imbedded, and of which they are 
phenomenally a part, has now become, in the light of our 
whole experience of natural phenomena, an all-embracing 
continuity, extending to cerebral and to general physiolog- 
ical processes, and to the ancestry and evolution of the 
human race, so that the highest in expressive human nature 
is now phenomenally linked by the most intimate ties to 
the simplest of physical processes. If, then, one's fellow is 
real, the whole of the phenomenal nature from which his 
phenomenal presence is continuous must be real in the 
same general fashion. 

But observe, this deduction of the reality of the natural 
objects implies something very significant as to what nature 
is. The only possible way to get at the existence of a finite 
non-Ego is through some form of the social consciousness. 
What a finite non-Ego is, your fellow teaches you when he 
communicates to you the fact that he has inner experience, 
and is the same object, however many observers view him. 
Now if his continuity with the phenomenal nature of whose 
processes his observed expressive movements are an insepa- 
rable and continuous part, impels you to say that if he is 
real his whole body, and so, in the end, the whole nature of 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND NATURE. 229 

which that body is an inseparable part and an evolutionary 
product, is also real, in an inner and finite sense, then the 
only possible way to interpret this relation is to say : " Na- 
ture, by itself, is a system of finite experience which, on 
occasion, and by means of perfectly continuous evolution- 
ary processes, passes over into, or differentiates from its own 
organization, the communicative form of socially intelli- 
gible experience that you and I call human." 

VII. 

The force of this proof is limited, of course, by the fact 
that it is precisely an argument from continuity. It is ca- 
pable of endless development and illustration ; and I take it 
to be the only possible proof that nature exists in any way 
beyond the actual range of our more or less similar human 
experiences of nature's observable facts. Yet no argument 
from any continuity of apparent processes has absolute 
force. It does not follow that every hypothetical conception 
which you and I now form of this or that natural process, 
e. g., of the atoms, or of gravitation, corresponds to any dis- 
tinct form of the inner nature-experience. As a fact, I take 
it that our scientifically conceived laws of nature are largely 
phenomenal generalizations from very superficial aspects of 
the inner life of nature, and that very much indeed of what 
we now call nature has existence only for human percep- 
tion and thought, as a matter of the similarities of the ex- 
periences of various human observers. But my point is 
here not a detailed theory, but a general conception of na- 
ture. And my general conception is this : There is a vast 
system of finite experience, real as our socially communica- 
tive fellows are real, and manifesting its existence to us just 
as they do, viz., through the phenomena which appear to 
our senses as material movements in space and time. 
What this inner experience is we know, in case of our 
human fellows, by social communication. What the rest 



230 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

of the nature-experience is, we can only make out very in- 
directly. But the continuity proves that the nature-experi- 
ence passes over, on occasion, by unbroken although vastly 
complex processes, into the form of human experience. All 
the facts grouped together as the doctrine of Evolution, 
make this continuity seem the more elaborate, minute, and 
significant, the better we know it. In consequence we have 
no sort of right to speak in any way as if the inner experi- 
ence behind any fact of nature were of a grade lower than 
ours, or less conscious, or less rational, or more atomic. 
Least of all have we a right, as the Mind Stuff theories do, 
to accept our hypothetical atoms as corresponding to real 
nature-entities, and then to say that inorganic nature consists 
of a mass of scattered sensations. Of the reality of organ- 
ized experience we all know ; but scattered sensory states 
are mere abstractions, just as the atoms of physics are. 
There is no evidence for the reality of nature-facts which is 
not defined for us by the very categories of the social con- 
sciousness. No evidence, then, can indicate nature's inner 
reality without also indicating that this reality is, like that 
of our own experience, conscious, organic, full of clear 
contrasts, rational, definite. We ought not to speak of dead 
nature. We have only a right to speak of uncommunica- 
tive nature. Natural objects, if they are real at all, are 
prima facie simply other finite beings, who are, so to speak, 
not in our own social set, and who communicate to us, not 
their minds, but their presence. For, I repeat, a real being 
can only mean to me other experience than mine ; and 
other experience does not mean deadness, unconsciousness, 
disorganization, but presence, life, inner light. 

But it is customary to say, by way of getting rid of any 
sort of animism, that we have no right to reason by mere 
analogy from our inner experience to anything resembling 
life in inorganic nature. To this I answer that, were the 
foregoing argument one from analogy, it would be open to 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND NATURE. 31 

the same objections as could be urged against any form of 
animism. But the whole point of the foregoing analysis 
has been that you do not first find nature as something real, 
and occult, and then proceed to argue from analogy that 
this occult reality is alive. On the contrary, I have first in- 
sisted that occult realities, things in themselves, in the ab- 
stract sense, are absurd ; that the social consciousness gives 
us the only notion of finite reality that we can have ; and 
that the social consciousness recognizes, as real, beings hav- 
ing conscious experience. After this point was reached, and 
only then, could we turn, in our argument, to the phenomena 
of nature to ask if they must be regarded as conforming to 
just such a concept of finite reality, since, as a fact, this is 
our only possible concept of what a real being is. Now a 
phenomenon of nature, on the face of it, is solely something 
suggested to us by the agreement between the series of ex- 
periences present in various men. And no purely physical 
experience can possibly prove that nature has other reality 
than this, viz., reality as a series of parallel trains of ex- 
perience in various people. So far we had not to interpret 
nature, but only to wonder why nature gets taken to be 
real at all, apart from these parallel series of experiences. 
Then it was that there came to our aid the argument from 
continuity. Certain of the phenomena of nature do stand 
for real inner experience, viz., the expressive movements of 
men. It is impossible to separate these latter phenomena, 
however, from the rest of the natural world, whose phe- 
nomenal unity the doctrine of Evolution is now daily mak- 
ing more manifest. Hence so we reasoned the rest of 
phenomena] nature must be regarded as standing for systems 
of finite experience, whose inner unity has to be defined in 
the way tliat human experience illustrates. And it is thus, 
not by analogy, but by the very process whereby nature 
comes to be defined as real at all, that natural facts get 
conceived as like other finite experience. Of the relation 



232 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

of this " other experience than ours " in the cosmos, to our 
human type of experience we can then at once say, that, in 
the process of evolution, our human experience has become 
differentiated, by long and continuous processes, from the 
whole, so that relatively continuous intermediate stages now 
probably link us to the rest of the cosmical inner life. Of 
"unconscious" experience in nature we have no right to 
speak, precisely because consciousness means the very form 
and fashion of the being of experience itself, as we know it. 
Of transformations of conscious experience, with a preserva- 
tion of continuity through the whole process, our own 
inner life gives us numerous examples. 

Meanwhile, let us lay aside, once for all, the petty human 
Philistinism that talks of the evolution of humanity out of 
so-called "dead nature," as if it were necessarily a vast 
progress from " lower " to " higher," or from the meaning- 
less to the world full of meaning. What value human 
life may get we in a measure know. But we certainly 
do not know that the nature-experience whose inner sense 
is not now communicated to us is in the least lower or less 
full of meaning. Our human evolution is, as it were, 
simply the differentiation of one nature-dialect, whereby 
a group of finite beings now communicate together. We 
have no right to call the other tongues with which nature 
speaks, barbarous, because, in our evolutionary isolation 
from the rest of nature, we have forgotten what they mean. 

VIII. 

A few concluding considerations seem to be still in place 
in view of the most cogent positive objection that is likely 
to be urged against the foregoing interpretation of nature. 
The hypothesis advanced in the foregoing transcends our 
direct as well as our scientifically mediated experience of 
nature, just in so far as our view supposes that the nature- 
phenomena are hints of the existence of a finite experience 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND NATURE. 233 

continuous with ours, but such that its extra-human contents 
are not communicated to us. And this transcendence of 
our human experience is indeed a perfectly obvious objec- 
tion to my notion. Yet the objection is so far only negative. 
In admitting, as I do, all that such an objection can urge 
so far as regards the fact that our hypothesis transcends 
the limits of present human verification, I still answer that 
this objection is precisely as cogent against every theory 
which attributes any sort of genuine inner reality to nature, 
as it is against our own theory. The objection, in fact, 
contends only against the attribution of relatively inde- 
pendent reality to nature, just as such attribution, and not 
against our special view as such. No human verification, 
made as it is under social conditions, can of itself do more 
than prove (in the social sense of the word " proof ") that 
various human experiences, existent in different men, have 
certain actual agreements. To believe that nature has any 
reality apart from these, our intercommunicable parallel 
series of human experiences of what we call the nature-phe- 
nomena, is, therefore, to transcend the actual data of the 
social consciousness, so far as they are presented to us mor- 
tals. The present objection, then, is equally valid against 
all cosmological doctrines. The only question really at 
issue, however, is : What reason forces us to transcend the 
data of our literal social consciousness at all ? Why are we 
led to assume a nature outside of the various reports that 
men give of their parallel trains of describable physical ex- 
perience ? To this question, as I conceive, the only fair 
answer is the argument from continuity, as it has now been 
stated. But the argument from continuity is an argument 
for the existence of finite realities whose ultimate type the 
social consciousness in general predetermines for our con- 
ception, wliilr the nature of their sprrilic relations to our 
experience is such as to preclude our filling out this gem-mi 
conception of " other experiences than ours" with any par- 



234 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

ticular contents such as we attribute to the communicative 
minds of our fellows. My argument, then, is not for one 
concept of the reality of the facts of nature as against con- 
trasting, and equally possible, concepts of the reality of 
beings other than ourselves. My argument is, that, from 
the nature of our human consciousness, with its primal con- 
trast of inner Ego and social non-Ego, we can have just one 
general concept of a finite non-Ego, viz., the concept of 
" other experience than our own." The only real question, 
then, is : Shall we attribute this concept, in its most gener- 
alized form, to nature, or shall we not ? There is no answer 
to this question except the one derived from our foregoing 
argument from continuity. That to attribute any reality 
whatever to nature is to " transcend our own experience," in 
the human and socially concrete sense of the word " experi- 
ence," ought to be especially remembered by those who, 
while glibly attributing to nature a reality which they pro- 
fess to regard as utterly inscrutable, are still accustomed to 
insist that one must never venture to transcend human ex- 
perience in any fashion. 

But it is not this negative argument that I myself re- 
gard as the most cogent. I am, as I have just said, more 
interested in a positive objection which will occur to many 
of you. 

The nature-experience, so our hypothesis supposes, is, in 
at least a considerable degree, relatively continuous with 
ours. That is, there is experience in nature which closely 
resembles human experience ; there is other experience 
which less resembles ours, but which need not be lower ; 
there is conscious experience still more remote from ours ; 
and so on. All this experience hints to us its presence, but 
only in case of our human fellows communicates its inner 
meaning to us. But one may now answer : " It is true that 
the phenomena of our bodies are, physically speaking, con- 
tinuous with the phenomena of physical nature in general. 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND NATURE. 235 

It is not true, so soon as we leave man, that we get any 
direct signs of the existence of an inner life, or nature-ex- 
perience, at all corresponding, in its inner resemblance to, 
our own, to the physical continuity of its phenomenal pro- 
cesses with our own expressive physical life. The higher 
animals manifest their inner experience, apparently similar 
to ours, by expressive activities which resemble ours, but 
which certainly do not stand in any close physical conti- 
nuity with ours. Our own organic processes, on the other 
hand, stand in very close relations of physical continuity 
with our most intelligent conscious and voluntary deeds. 
Yet if there is any inner experience connected with those 
of our organic activities which have no conscious equiva- 
lents in our own inner life, it is hard to show any sufficient 
body of evidence to bring this ' subliminal ' experience into 
any relatively continuous inner relations with our own, 
despite the numerous, and decidedly interesting, recent 
efforts which have been made to connect our individual 
consciousness, by empirical links, with some such 'sub- 
liminal ' processes." What my theory seems to lack, then, 
is a definition of any way in which our human conscious- 
ness can be in relations of inner continuity with a world of 
experience which, although thus actually in close continuity 
with ours, gives signs of its presence only through physical 
phenomena whose inner meaning, even in case of our own 
organic processes, quickly escapes any interpretation in 
terms now intelligible to our socially limited minds. An 
objector may well urge that this is a positive fault of the 
theory. Our theory, he may say, need not undertake to 
tell precisely what the supposed nature-experience con- 
tains. But it ought to show how physical processes con- 
tinuous with those of whose inner meaning we are conscious, 
may involve, as their own inner aspect, types of experience 
more or less continuously related to our own, and yet now 
quite inaccessible to us. 



236 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

As a fact, there is a very obvious way of hypothetically 
accounting for this presence and inaccessibility of types of 
experience closely related to ours, whose presence is hinted 
to us by physical processes such that we now wholly fail to 
interpret their inner meaning. This supplementary hy- 
pothesis is suggested by one of the most interesting and 
best known principles governing the correlation of mental 
processes and their phenomenal accompaniments. 

Mental processes, in human beings, are correlated to 
physical processes whose phenomenal or externally observ- 
able basis is known to be the functions of nervous systems. 
Now the best known principle governing the physical for- 
tune.s of any nervous system is the principle of Habit. This 
is the rule that a nervous system tends to repeat its former 
functions, when once these have become set through series 
of repeated stimulations. Whatever function has frequent- 
ly been accomplished under the direction of nervous cen- 
ters, tends to be the more readily accomplished again. This 
principle tends, of course, to the production of stability and 
uniformity of conduct in us all. And the analogy between 
the results of this special tendency to the formation of nerv- 
ous Habits, on the one hand, and the existence of the ob- 
servable processes of Natural Law in general, on the other 
hand, has often been noted. The phenomenally observable 
conduct of a being with a nervous system is always, as a 
fact, and in proportion to the elevation of this being in the 
scale of life, a very irregular sort of conduct. Yet it tends 
towards regularity, because of the principle of Habit. Now, 
however, the regularity of outwardly observable conduct 
towards which, as towards an asymptote, the conduct of a 
being with a nervous system tends, is a sort of regularity 
which physical nature, especially in the inorganic world, 
continually shows us, only in a highly perfected form, in 
those extremely regular processes which we define, not, to 
be sure, as the ideally ultimate laws of the universe, but as 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND NATURE. 237 

the observable routine of phenomenal nature (such routine 
as is exemplified by the tides, the seasons, etc.). That na- 
ture's observable Laws might even be interpreted, from an 
evolutionary point of view, as nature's gradually acquired 
Habits, originating in a primal condition of a relatively 
capricious irregularity, is a conception to which several re- 
cent writers, notably Mr. Cope, and, with great philosophical 
ingenuity, Mr. Charles Peirce, have given considerable 
elaboration. I do not myself accept this notion that the 
laws of phenomenal nature, where they are genuinely ob- 
jective laws, and not relatively superficial human generali- 
zations, are the evolutionary product of any such cosmical 
process of acquiring habits, as Mr. Peirce has so ingeniously 
supposed in his hypothesis of "Tychism." But I mention 
the analogy between these regularities of physical phenome- 
na which are called the observable laws of nature, and the 
gradually acquired regularities of conduct which slowly ap- 
pear in the lives of beings with nervous systems, in order to 
introduce another consideration, of equal importance for 
the definition of the place of conscious experience in the 
cosmical order. 

If it is the rule that our nervous systems tend to form 
habits, and that habits mean uniformities of phenomenal 
behavior, it is equally true that our human consciousness 
tends to grow faint just in proportion as our habits become 
relatively invariable. Our human and conscious experience 
is the inner accompaniment of what appears, when viewed 
from without, as an irregularity of phenomenally observ- 
able conduct Or, in other words, our conscious life is the 
inner aspect of a physical process of what is called our ad- 
justment to our environment This adjustment tends to be- 
come, in proportion to the perfection of our habits, a matter 
of predictable routine. But whenever this routine becomes 
relatively perfect, our consciousness grows fainter, and in 
the extreme case of an almost entirely invariable physical 



238 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

routine, our consciousness ceases, while the perfected nerv- 
ous habit remains, for human experience, only as an exter- 
nally observable phenomenal process of a physical nature. 
A young man consciously and proudly twirls his mous- 
tache. The acquisition of this new mode of conduct con- 
stitutes a novel adjustment, and so involves change of 
routine behavior. This change is accompanied, at first, by 
a decided sense of personal importance. In time the habit 
may become set, so that it gets an entirely reflex perfection, 
and then, as in a well-known reported case, a man struck 
senseless by a street-accident, and suffering from severe 
cerebral injury, is seen, as he is carried to the hospital, auto- 
matically twirling his moustache, from time to time, in 
what, from our human point of view, appears as absolute 
unconsciousness, since we are unable, either then or later, to 
get into any sort of communication with the conscious 
experience, if such there be, that forms an inner aspect of 
this nervous habit. Just so, if one's nervous habits were so 
well formed, and if one's environment were so changeless, 
that one's whole physical life were a settled series of rhyth- 
mically performed activities, recurring with the regularity 
of breathing, or of the tides, the empirical evidence is that 
one would have no conscious life of the sort now communi- 
cated to us by our social fellows. Consciousness, as we 
know it in man, and interpret its presence in animals, is an 
incident of an interrupted adjustment to our environment 
an interrupted adjustment which, seen from without, ex- 
presses itself in conduct that involves alteration of old 
habits to meet new conditions. As Romanes well asserted, 
the signs of mind, in any animal, are best to be defined as 
just such relative novelties of conduct in the presence of 
new situations. Not routine, then, as such, but irregu- 
larity, gives the physically interpretable sign of mind. 
Habit is always present, in the actions of the obviously 
conscious being; but, whenever he shows interpretable 



CONSCIOUSNESS AXD NATURE. 239 

signs of consciousness, habit is always undergoing alter- 
ation. 

If one considers these various groups of facts together, 
one gets, at first, an impression of the place of conscious- 
ness in nature which seems quite unfavorable to our hypoth- 
esis. Inorganic nature seems to be, as we view it, a realm 
where physical routine is, at present, obviously much more 
nearly verifiable, in an exact degree, than is the case with 
organic nature. In the inorganic world, then, what might 
be called, by analogy, the habitual process of the cosmos, 
the observable routine of physical phenomena, seems to be 
especially fixed, and open in its fixity to our human obser- 
vation. In the organic world, whether or no the same ulti- 
mate natural laws would, if we knew the whole truth, 
ideally explain the facts, it is obvious that, at present, we 
see less regularity less perfected observable habits, so far as 
our present imperfect experience goes. But, just where we 
now see least regularity, there we get the only signs of 
finite minds that we can at present definitely interpret. 
The ordinary generalization from this whole situation is, 
that, phenomenal irregularity being characteristic of the 
physical processes which indicate mind, phenomenal regu- 
larity must, by contrast, indicate the presence of the Uncon- 
scious whatever that may mean. 

But now this generalization is open to many objections. 
The unconscious, as such, is, as a fact, a mere Ding-an-aich, 
a meaningless abstraction. And, on the other hand, if one 
leaves out the ultimate presupposition that all of nature's 
processes, organic and inorganic, are, in some fashion still 
unknown to us, absolutely and equally uniform if one, I 
say, leaves out this ultimate metaphysical presupposition, 
which I intend to examine in another place, and which 
does not here concern us and if one confines one's self 
simply to the phenomenal, and the to empirical differences 
between organic and inorganic nature, then one must say 
17 



240 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

that the observable or the scientifically computable and 
verifiable routine of rhythmic repetition in inorganic na- 
ture is nowhere concretely known to us as phenomenally 
invariable. The rhythm of the tides, at any given point, or 
over the surface of the globe at large, is invariable only if 
you do not take account of long periods of time. The same 
holds true of the regularity of the earth's revolution on its 
axis, and of the change of the seasons. The planetary orbits 
undergo secular variations, which are, within certain long 
periods, relatively rhythmic ; but if you take a period 
sufficiently long, these variations are doubtless no longer 
rhythmic. 

As a fact, then, the permanence of the phenomenally 
obvious " habits " of inorganic nature is only relative. It 
is true that, if you pass from such observably regular 
rhythms, whose actual degree of regularity is itself only a 
varying function of the time taken into account, and if you 
consider the ultimate and ideal "laws of nature," upon 
which all such approximate regularities are conceived to be 
founded, you do, indeed, reach systems of " force functions " 
conceived as absolutely independent of time. But thus to 
pass to the ultimate is to substitute a metaphysical concep- 
tion of rigid causation for the empirically observed uni- 
formities. And this conception which we here omit from 
consideration, must apply, if true at all, to organic nature 
quite as much as to inorganic nature. If, however, you 
cling to the observable " habits " of nature, then the differ- 
ence between the organic and the inorganic is one only of 
the length of time required to make a given alteration of 
habitual sequence in the phenomena manifest. Our solar 
system is " adapting " itself to an environment of seemingly 
limitless extent by the well-known dissipation of its ener- 
gies. This adaptation involves, in varied ways, slow pro- 
cesses of phenomenal change which must, in the end, alter 
every known phenomenal rhythm of regularly repeated na- 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND NATURE. 241 

ture-habits. When read backwards, the same tendencies 
indicate that the present phenomenal order must have been 
reached by processes whose phenomenal manifestations 
would have been, in past times, enormously different in 
their routine from any process now manifest. Even if ulti- 
mate laws exist, then, and involve absolutely ideal regu- 
larities, which hold for all phenomena, organic and inor- 
ganic, it still follows that the observable and relatively 
rhythmic regularities of inorganic nature must be as truly 
cases of constantly altered " habits," continually adjusted 
to numerous conditions in the environment, as are the 
seemingly so irregular expressive acts of our socially ex- 
pressive fellows. The difference lies in the enormously 
different times required to make manifest the alterations of 
phenomenal conduct in question. A business man in a 
great commercial crisis, or a great general, directing his army 
during a battle, adjusts his regular routine to the new condi- 
tions by changes of conduct that occur within very brief 
periods. A planet or a solar system alters the routine of its 
rhythmic processes in ways that it may take millions of 
years to make manifest. But in both cases the essentials of 
adjustment are present, viz., variations in the rhythm of 
characteristic movements occurring in correspondence to 
changing situations. 

If, thus viewed, the difference between the larger phenom- 
enal alterations of inorganic and of organic nature appears 
mainly as a matter of the time-span involved in each alter- 
ation, it remains to consider a little more carefully the re- 
lation which we all experience between the inner processes 
of our conscious experience and those expressive alterations 
of habit to suit environment which accompany our con- 
scious life. 

What appears to our fellows from without as habit 
altered to meet circumstance, appears from within, in tin- 
experience of each of us, as the apperception of relatively 



242 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

new elements of experience by virtue of their relations of 
similarity and contrast to relatively old or familiar or estab- 
lished masses of inner states. The old, the familiar, the 
established in consciousness we have always with us when- 
ever we experience. It is the element of our consciousness 
which corresponds, at any moment, to the established 
nervous habits just then aroused to the routine of our 
lives so far as it is just then repeated. The novel, the puz- 
zling, the intruding element in our consciousness corre- 
sponds to the alteration which the environment is at the 
moment producing in our established physical routine as at 
that moment represented. We breathe regularly, and are 
not conscious of the fact. But an alteration in breathing, 
produced by a novel physical situation, gets represented in 
consciousness as a shock of surprise. Thus the alteration 
of our physical routine, at any moment, corresponds to the 
degree of our conscious experience. The greater the masses 
and the contrast of the opposing new and old elements, the 
sharper is our consciousness, and, externally viewed, the 
more marked is our adjustment. If either mass of mental 
contents tends utterly to overbalance the other, conscious- 
ness becomes dim. The effacement of either element 
means the temporary or final cessation of our whole 
stream of conscious experience. In sleep one's physical 
routine is nearly regular, and one's conscious experience 
vanishes. 

Meanwhile, our human experience is subject to another 
and very important limitation, which we may call The 
Limitation of our Apperceptive Span. This limitation, so 
far as we can see, is something purely arbitrary a mere 
fact, which we have to accept like the rest of our finite 
situation. The existence of all such arbitrary limitations 
is, like the existence in general of any form of finitude, a 
proper problem for a general metaphysical inquiry. But 
a merely cosmological study has to be content, in such cases, 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND NATURE. 243 

with accepting the arbitrary fact as such. What is meant, 
however, by this apperceptive span is the fact that what we 
call a present moment in our consciousness always has a 
brief but still by no means an infinitesimal length, within 
which the " pulse " of change, which that moment apper- 
ceives, must fall. Changes of mental content which occur 
either too swiftly or too slowly to fall within the span of the 
least or of the greatest time-interval which our human 
apperception follows escape us altogether, or else, like the 
slower changes occurring in nature, are only indirectly to be 
noticed by us. Since the momentary change in the contents 
of our consciousness corresponds, in a general way, to the 
externally observable alteration of our physical routine to 
meet new conditions, one may say, on the whole, that where 
our established habits are changed too slowly or too quickly, 
the change is inadequately represented, or is not represented 
at all, in our individual experience. 

Yet a change in our routine which is so slow as to 
escape our own apperceptive span, is still a fact in the phe- 
nomenal world, a fact capable of being recorded and veri- 
fied. Why may not just such facts be represented by ex- 
perience ichich accompanies our own, and which is just 
as real as ours, but which is characterized by another 
apperceptive span I This supplementary hypothesis is 
worthy of special consideration. 

No element or character of our human experience, in 
fact, appears more arbitrary than does the apperceptive span 
when we submit its phenomena to experimental tests. That 
the whole of the contents of a finite series of temporal in- 
stants should, despite the fact of this temporal succession, 
form one moment of our consciousness that, for instance' 
a rhythmic phrase, made up of a number of successive 
beats, should constitute one presented whole, and stand 
before our consciousness as such, is in itself a remarkable 
fact That, when once this is the case, the length of such 



STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

a single and presentable rhythmic phrase or other pre- 
sentable conscious moment should be as limited as it is, is 
an entirely arbitrary characteristic of our special type of 
human experience. When once we recognize this aspect of 
our conscious life, we can conceptually vary indefinitely 
this temporal span of consciousness, and can so form the 
notion of other possible experience than ours whose essence, 
like that of our own, should consist in the contrast between 
relatively familiar or changeless contents and relatively 
new contents, but whose apperceptive span should differ 
from our own in such wise that for such experience a 
" present moment " might be, when temporally regarded, as 
much longer or as much shorter than ours as one pleases. 
A millionth of a second might constitute the span of one 
such conceivable type of experience. In that case changes 
of content far too subtle to mean anything to us would be 
matters of immediate fact to the experience in question. 
A minute, an hour, a year, a century, a world-cycle might 
form the apperceptive span of some other possible type of 
consciousness. In that case inner changes of content 
which utterly transcend our direct apperception might be 
matters of presentation to such another type of experience. 

Now, however, imagine a system of finite series of experi- 
ences, agreeing, in a great measure, in their contents, but 
differing in some graded fashion, in their apperceptive span. 
Let each of these series be characterized by the fact that 
everywhere there were present, in the inner world of each 
experience, changing groups of contents A, B, C, D, the rate 
of change, however, differing in all the series alike for each 
group of contents, so that in every one of the series in ques- 
tion the group A changed at some rapid rate r, the group 
B at some slower rate r', the group C at a still slower rate r", 
and so on. Now suppose it arbitrarily agreed that if, for 
any one of these series, a given change of contents A took 
place within the span of one of the presented moments of 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND NATURE. 245 

that series, then this degree of change should mean a clear 
consciousness of the nature of just that change from older 
to newer conditions, whereas, in so far as contents changed 
either much less or much more than A during such a pre- 
sented moment, then these contents and their changes should 
be relatively obscure for the experience in question, forming 
only the background upon which the clearly apperceived 
changes stood out It would then become possible, in one 
of these series of experiences (whose apperceptive span was 
so related to the rate r that the required change A took place 
in the group A during one presentable moment of this series), 
that the changes of A should stand out clearly, as definite 
facts, on a dimly apperceived background of the contents 
B, C, and D. In a second series, whose contents we may 
suppose the same as those of the first, but whose apper- 
ceptive span has relation to the rate r 1 , the changes of A 
would become obscure, while the changes of B were clear, 
and so on. Thus what for one of these series of experiences 
was the clearly apperceived relation of new and old, would 
be, in another series, represented only by baffiingly swift 
and confused trcmulousness of contents, or by apparently 
changeless contents. What one experience might indirect- 
ly come to regard as a conceivable secular variation of 
the content which, so far as its own direct apperception 
went, is found unalterable, another experience, substantial- 
ly agreeing with the first in all but the apperceptive span, 
would have presented to itself as definitely changing ma- 
terial. What one experience, therefore, viewed as seem- 
ingly unalterable, and consequently unmeaning routine, 
the other would apperceive as significant and momentary 
change. 

Let one now further suppose, however, that through the 
addition of still other elements to each of these series of 
experiences, the presence of one series became communi- 
cated to the others by phenomenally observable manifes- 



246 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

tations. Then surely one can conceive each series of ex- 
periences as aware, more or less indirectly, of the presence, 
and even of the inner reality of its neighbors. But of the 
meaning of this other life each series could form a director 
sort of appreciation only in so far as the apperceptive span 
of one series agreed with that of another. Socially defi- 
nite communication could occur only between types of ex- 
perience of substantially the same apperceptive span. Fi- 
nally, if one supposes the phenomenally indicated contents 
of the various series to involve many unlikenesses, as well 
as many agreements in the different series themselves, one 
approaches the conception of a system of series of experi- 
ences whereof any one series might manifest its presence 
to its neighbors, while the inner life and meaning of one 
series could be concretely realized by another only in so far 
as, along with much agreement in their contents, there was 
also close agreement in apperceptive span. But if a series 
of slowly changing contents, and of vast apperceptive span, 
manifested its presence to a series of swiftly changing con- 
tents, and of brief apperceptive span, then the only repre- 
sentative of the first series in the life of the second would 
be a group of changeless, or of rhythmically repeated phe- 
nomena, which would seem to manifest no intelligible inner 
life as such, but only those habits which form, not the whole, 
but a single aspect of the phenomenal life of any being 
whose inner experience his neighbor can interpret only 
such habits, but no significant variations or adjustments of 
habits. 

If one again reviews, in the light of these considerations, 
the facts before considered, one finds a situation which our 
single supplementary hypothesis now enables us in general to 
understand. This hypothesis is that the apperceptive span 
of finite experience is a quantity relatively fixed for our 
social fellows, but very vastly variable in the realm of cos- 
mical experience in general. The " other experience than 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND NATURE. 247 

ours," of which we suppose the inner life of nature to con- 
sist, is everywhere an experience of new contents viewed on 
the background of old contents, of changes arising on a 
basis of identity, of novelty contrasted with familiarity. In 
order that such streams of gradual change should be in- 
wardly appreciable, the change must everywhere be pres- 
ent, to a finite degree, within one presented moment of the 
series of experiences to which, in each case of conscious ex- 
perience, this appreciation belongs. But a present moment 
does not mean a mathematical instant It means, in any 
type of conscious experience, a period of time equal to the 
apperceptive span, and this period, in case of any given 
finite experience, might as well be a world-cycle as a sec- 
ond. Only, in case a type of changing experience whose 
apperceptive span is a world-cycle, hints its contents to a 
sort of experience whose apperceptive span is brief, like 
ours, then the phenomenal manifestation in question may, 
to any extent, take the form of an apparently final uni- 
formity of contents, such as we seem to observe in the secu- 
lar uniformities of physical nature. But, where uniformity 
alone is suggested, the element of change of contents, upon 
which every appreciation of any inner experience depends, 
is absent. One then seems to be apperceiving only fixed 
laws, absolute routine, settled habits of nature, and can de- 
tect no inner meanings, unless by the aid of the most fanci- 
ful analogies. Between experience of this august span 
and our human experience a relatively continuous series of 
types of experience may lie, whose presence gets manifested 
to us in processes of increasing phenomenal irregularity, 
such as those of organic nature. Nearest to our own type 
of human experience would doubtless lie masses of " sub- 
liminal" experience related to those changing habits of 
our own organisms which escape our apperceptive span. 
Below our own brief span there may lie types of experience 
of still briefer span, whose phenomenal manifestations 



24:8 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

have, like the hypothetical collisions of the molecules of a 
gas, an enormous irregularity, such as only the law of aver- 
ages, as revealed by the doctrine of chances, enables us to 
conceive as resulting, by virtue of the vast numbers of facts 
that are concerned, in a secondary regularity of outward 
seeming when these facts are grouped in great masses. 

But in itself, nature, as such, would be neither a world 
of fixed habits or yet a world of mere novelties, but rather 
a world of experience with permanence everywhere set off 
by change. For the rest, the problem which has been 
raised by Mr. Charles Peirce (to whose brilliant cosmo- 
logical essays the foregoing discussion, despite the indi- 
cated disagreements, obviously owes very much) the prob- 
lem whether in nature there is any objective "chance," 
and whether all natural law is, in the last analysis, a 
product of evolution, has been in the foregoing, deliber- 
ately ignored. It is a problem, as above remarked, whose 
discussion belongs elsewhere than in this context. 



IX. 
ORIGINALITY AND CONSCIOUSNESS* 

IT takes but a small experience of men and of literature 
to bring to our notice the fact that one of the most power- 
ful enemies of effective originality, in conduct, and in artis- 
tic production, is the conscious wish and intent to be original. 
Yet any man who means to do good work desires to be origi- 
nal. Hence there arises, for every such man, a problem 
a problem of self -con quest. It is easy to be commonplace. 
One has only to follow the crowd, to drift, to live from day 
to day. The ambitious man rebels at this destiny. He 
wants to be himself. He realizes the force of the one 
great command that the moral law addresses to the indi- 
vidual in regard to the individual's own self-cultivation. 
This command is : "Be unique, as your Father in heaven 
is unique." All other moral commands tell the individual 
about the law of self-surrender. Such commands run : 
Sacrifice yourself be a servant find your office and fulfill 
its tasks be loyal to your ties in a word, give up your 
separate life. There remains, side by side with all these 
precepts, the other, the equally sacred commandment : Be 
unique. That is : Render your service as nobody else can 
render it ; do your work as you alone can do it ; fill the 
place that nobody else can fill. There is no inconsistency 
between these two aspects of the moral law. One supple- 
ments the other. Some unique form of self-sacrifice re- 



* From the Harvard Monthly, June, 1897. 

M 



250 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

mains the individual's inalienable privilege. Therein alone 
can he fulfill his destiny. Well, all this the ambitious man 
feels. And to feel this introduces the problem of every 
noble youth : How shall I be original ? Forthwith, how- 
ever, the problem deepens. To wish to be original is, as we 
have said, to come face to face with one of the principal 
foes to originality. Conscious, deliberate, intentional effort 
at originality is likely to involve one of two things : viz., 
either waywardness or self-imitation. Waywardness is 
such trivial attempt at originality as depends upon follow- 
ing the passing mood of the moment. Self-imitation is the 
well-known besetting sin of anybody who has once observed 
himself saying or doing what he takes to be an uncom- 
monly clever thing. Teachers, clergymen, and poets once 
past their prime, all share with self-conscious children the 
temptation to repeat their old successes by imitating their 
own once novel, pretty deeds. Thus, in these two ways, 
the will to be original tends to defeat itself. One must 
begin one's self-assertion, even in this its most sacred under- 
taking, by an act of self-conquest. And meanwhile there 
arises a certain purely theoretical question, namely : Why 
this strange conflict between originality and conscious- 
ness ? Why is the best human originality so largely an 
unconscious product ? 

To this very natural theoretical question the present 
paper suggests some answer. The answer, so far as it goes, 
is founded upon a very simple analysis of our human type 
of consciousness. It is easy to indicate that the narrow 
field or span of conscious life in which you and I live is 
not large enough to permit the source and essence of our 
best and most individual processes to become directly pres- 
ent to us at all. Hence it is not so much the nature of 
originality as the accidental limits of the human type 
of consciousness which force us to admit that, for us 
men, our originality, whatever be its grade, must in gen- 



ORIGINALITY AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 251 

eral belong to the unconscious side of our life. On the 
other hand, such a study of the reason why human con- 
sciousness and originality are related as they are, may help 
us to suggest, in a measure, how to treat the practical prob- 
lem with which we began, and how to show the way towards 
that self-conquest upon which the successful effort of an 
individual to mould himself to originality must depend. 

Our conscious mental life is, as everybody knows, usually 
classified under three heads, the Intellect, the Feelings, and 
the Will. And one may raise the question : To which one, 
if to any one, of these three aspects of our mental life, is 
the originality of any given individual say of a literary 
artist to be attributed ? This is of course an elementary 
problem of mental analysis. I regard it as of essential 
importance for the task before us. 

In answer, I may first venture to point out one very 
simple, but not infrequent popular mistake as to the region 
of a man's mind in which we may most naturally look for 
originality. It is customary for popular moralists to exhort 
a man in a tone which presupposes that anybody can 
accomplish essentially original acts of conscious Will. 
The will is, in fact, often conceived as the most originative 
aspect of mental life. " It lies with you," one says. " If 
you will, you can be this or that within your limits, of 
course, but still in an original way." It is thus supposed 
to be especially the will that, in the course of my life, initi- 
ates new fashions of conduct, and so transforms my destiny 
by virtue of its own spontaneity. My will and my " power 
of initiative " are often, in popular speech, identified. This, 
one may suppose, is often what those have in mind who 
identify genius with a " capacity for taking pains." Such 
may mean, by this expression, that, whereas a lazy man 
cannot invent and accomplish great and original things, a 
painstaking man, by persistently exercising his power of 
initiative, reaches results which, because they are the prod- 



052 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

uct of his individual will, have a special right to be novel, 
and so to embody originality of some higher grade. 

But it is a serious mistake thus directly to identify volun- 
tary activity with origination. Every voluntary act, just in 
so far as it is voluntary, must for that very reason possess 
no originality whatever. For I cannot will to do anything 
unless I first know what I am to do. This, however, I must 
have learned by previous experience of precisely such acts. 
And this, again, implies that every voluntary act is essen- 
tially identical, in so far as it is voluntary, with an act that 
I have already performed before. Hence, every voluntary 
act depends upon previous acts whose origin, in the first 
instance, must have been involuntary. One can illustrate 
this principle indefinitely ; and it is of boundless impor- 
tance for the practical training of the will. Voluntary acts 
come to be such only after they have first been involun- 
tarily performed, their origin lying in the realms of instinct, 
of imitation, of chance experience, and of passing impulse. 
Inner, or psychological "power of initiative," so far as 
concerns the positive content of our actions, the will has 
none whatever. I cannot will to swim, unless I have first 
learned how to swim. I cannot learn, except by the grad- 
ual adjustment of inherited tendencies to environment, and 
of past habits to new situations. I can will to set about 
learning to swim ; but when I will that, I will merely old 
deeds, such as walking in shallow water a process which I 
this time can choose to continue until I am beyond my 
depth. In that case the situation becomes at once novel 
enough ; but the novelty is not now in me, but precisely in 
the situation ; and what I thereupon do, namely, to strug- 
gle, to gasp, to try to obey the orders of the swimmer at 
my side, and so on, involves the reverse of conscious origi- 
nality. If I at last learn to swim, that is because, after a 
time, I somehow involuntarily hit upon the right combina- 
tion of movements, and get used to the strange situation. 



ORIGINALITY AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 253 

It is just so if I try to write anything novel. My will can 
lead me into the deep waters of literary effort. It cannot 
teach me what to do there besides kicking and gasping, as 
many poor poets involuntarily do. We imagine the will to 
be originative merely because, very often, by repeating old 
deeds, we can get ourselves into unheard of situations. But 
it is life, in such cases, that contains novelties ; it is not 
we who are original. The maiden says nothing original or 
novel when she says either No or Yes. Two lives happen just 
then to depend upon her word ; but that has nothing to do 
with her originality. She is usually, in just such matters, 
an extremely unoriginal person, who behaves very much 
as the other women from time immemorial have behaved. 

Volition, then and that, too, without the least reference 
to the question whether the will is free or not is, as to the 
contents of our voluntary acts, a wholly unoriginal pro- 
cess. As for Intellect that, with respect to most of its 
factors and processes, constantly involves elements of novel- 
ty, but leaves at best a very sharply limited room, in all of 
its human conscious activities, for what can be called indi- 
vidual initiative. Why this has to be the case, it is easy to 
see. Novelty may be possessed to any extent by the facts 
of our external experience, or by the experiences due to our 
merely physical condition. But an experience of novelties 
in the outer world, or of novel physical states of our bodies, 
forms no part of our intellectual originality. A comet, an 
earthquake, an explosion, an attack of the grippe all these 
are novelties. But the one who experiences these things 
does not thereby become original or " creative." In fact it 
is just such extreme novelties that, so long as they remain 
novelties, confuse us, and help the intellectual life least 
We know best what we best recognize ; and that, while it 
has some novel features, is essentially like what we have 
known before ; and is in so far not a new thing. Learning 
means assimilating ; and the rate of our learning of novel- 



254 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

ties has to be comparatively slow, because we need gradually 
to assimilate them to one another, and to our own past. 
Hence most intellectual processes are conservative in type ; 
and essentially novel ideas enter the conscious intellect 
only gradually. Most rapidly we get possession of hosts of 
new ideas when, as in childhood, we acquire them by direct 
social imitation of the preexistent ideas of others, or when, 
as in later years, we get them from our fellows by pro- 
cesses of reading, of listening, and of watching the world's 
ways. But all such externally acquired novelties are not 
our own in any originative sense. Moreover, in a large meas- 
ure, the intellect is essentially and explicitly concerned in 
learning and imitating the truth of things truth which we 
find, and which we do not make ; so that there is a sense in 
which the normal intellect spurns many sorts of originali- 
ty, even if they offer themselves, and professes itself as not 
merely by accident unoriginal and dependent, but also by 
choice devoted to submissive repetition of the truth. There 
is indeed, in all this, always room left for a certain sort of 
originality, but plainly, in the normal case, the possible 
range of conscious and fruitful intellectual originality is, 
psychologically speaking, very decidedly limited. The re- 
sult so far is that it is at least very hard to define what 
constitutes the realm that is still left open, in the conscious 
intellectual life, for genuine and valuable originality. 

But the realm of Feeling still remains as the one region 
of mental life not so far considered. Here the scope for 
possible originality is much larger ; and, in fact, the most 
original literary men are obviously such, in a measure, by 
virtue of the strong individuality possessed by their char- 
acteristic emotions, interests, and tones of inner life. On 
the other hand, it must be insisted that mere novelty, or 
individuality of feeling, never by itself constitutes any in- 
dependently valuable type of originality. The nervous- 
ly degenerate, the " cranks," the acute, nervous sufferers, 



ORIGINALITY AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 255 

know of a great variety of feelings, both agreeable and 
disagreeable, both transient and lasting, which are often 
marked, in particular cases, by very decidedly individual 
and original shadings, and which therefore give their sub- 
ject, upon occasion, a strong and often not unfounded 
sense that he is very " different from common men." But 
such originality of feeling constitutes something very re- 
mote from original genius, unless, indeed, the abnormity 
gets precisely that union with the life of the intellect which 
does distinguish true originality in great minds. One is 
never a man of parts because of his novel feelings ; genius 
implies knowing how to use feelings. 

The result so far is that, as a matter of analysis, the 
most characteristic processes of the conscious intellect are, 
in the main, imitative, assimilative, and in so far uncre- 
ative. The conscious will is similarly an unoriginal pro- 
cess. On the other hand, the feelings are a possible source 
of very manifold and individual mental processes, but as 
mere feelings they are not an obvious source of what is 
valuable about originality, since a perfectly useless degener- 
ate may have countless feelings of the most novel and 
intense character without any happy or creative result. 
The question then becomes : What union of intellectual 
and effective processes is responsible for valuable origi- 
nality ? 

A step nearer we come to the answer to this question 
when we observe in what senses a mental creation, such as 
a work of literary art, can possibly be novel at all. The 
truth of things an artist finds, but does not make. Even 
where a man of action creates new truth by voluntary pro- 
cesses, as a statesman or a conqueror creates, the activity, 
just in so far as it is voluntary, is, psychologically speak- 
ing, as we saw, decidedly unoriginal and unoriginative. And 
as fact, the greatest artists, however original, are also imi- 
tators imitators of artistic traditions, of the forms of their 
18 



256 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

mother tongue, of life, of human nature, of truth ; and, un- 
less they were thus in a due measure imitative, they would 
be lunatics. Their creative power is an extremely relative 
thing, which must be confined within strict limits. But 
there are three ways in which sane originality can display 
itself. They are these : (1) One can be original in the style 
or form which he gives to his work ; (2) One can be original 
in the selection of the objects which he imitates ; (3) One 
can be original in the invention of relatively novel com- 
binations of old material. 

The first of these forms of originality exists, in some 
very limited degree, in the activities of even the most un- 
artistic and commonplace people, in so far as they possess 
individuality at all. The voice of your friend, by which 
you recognize him in a crowd, the step, the bearing, the 
little tricks of gesture, the handwriting, of any individual 
these are features comparable in nature to those often 
indescribable characters which distinguish the style of one 
artist from that of another. In commonplace people these 
particularities of bearing, of manner, of personal quality, are 
of only domestic or neighborly interest. In great artists 
such features chance to appear extremely significant. One's 
individual style colors both one's purely physical activities 
and one's mentally significant ways of expressing one's 
self. Such a style may be modified by conscious self-obser- 
vation, but no voluntary process can ever transform it. In 
its mentally valuable phenomena it is commonly rather the 
embodiment of one's ruling tones of feeling, one's prevailing 
moods, than of any consciously voluntary or intellectual 
process. Intellect and will may toil to improve it, but be- 
yond certain limits they toil in vain. Its origin is in the 
unconscious realm. Its originality is due to hereditary fac- 
tors. Its basis is something born and not made. It often 
constitutes, in artists, the most inscrutable aspect of their 
genius. Its value is due to our fondness of whatever most 



ORIGINALITY AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 257 

suggests fascinating individuality. Our aesthetic demands 
upon the individual are, like those of the moral law, para- 
doxical. We want an individual to do what his fellows 
do, to imitate, to follow custom ; and yet all the while we 
want him to be something unique, to give us a fascinating 
personality that nobody else can show us. Thus we object 
to everybody whose deeds are unconventional ; yet when a 
man is merely conventional, we despise him as a common- 
place fellow. How then shall our neighbor please us ? One 
answer is : He must in a large measure do the thing that 
everybody does he must follow the modes of the day, say 
the ordinary things, but he must do all this in his own 
unique way, in a style that is his own. Then, when he thus 
imitates inimitably, as a great actor does, we say. in case 
this his individual style chances somehow to touch our 
feelings, so that they surge up in sympathy with his own 
we say : What a manner he has ! It is thus that the great 
artist impresses us, so far as concerns his literary style. 
Herein his personality gets an embodiment whose only 
directly conscious representative in mind is his prevailing 
way of feeling. But his way of feeling colors the form of 
all his intellectual work. 

The second form of originality, named above, has a 
more obviously intellectual character. An artist's selection 
of his themes, of his ideals, of the characters, situations, and 
so forth, which he chooses to imitate, belongs of course 
amongst what we commonly call the labors of his intellect 
Yet one must not misunderstand the true relations here. 
Consciously the artist may think, " What shall I choose f 
What shall I write about ? What shall I depict f " But 
the best choices of anybody's life are made for unconscious 
reasons. 

The third form of originality, that of the larger combi- 
nations of one's ideas and acts, is the highest, and, in its 
best forms, the rarest of all. Tet no artist lias ever been 



258 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

able to tell us, with conscious truthfulness, how such origi- 
nality of combination is accomplished. Nor do we know in 
our own cases. The processes of combination are very 
slow. What it has taken you years to learn, may at last 
appear in its unity before you. At the moments when your 
mental combinations come to light, you may be getting 
what seems to be a bird's-eye view of an entire life. But 
how you came to get this view, your consciousness, which 
is of the moment, cannot tell you. 

In sum, in case of all these three sorts of originality, 
you are dealing with a complex union of mental elements 
belonging to the feelings and to the intellectual life. But 
how the happy union takes place, how the valuable origi- 
nality is acquired, your consciousness does not inform you 
and that for two reasons. First, your consciousness never 
lights up the depths of your personal temperament never 
shows you, at any moment, precisely why you feel as you 
do. And secondly, your originality, where it is important, 
has to do with the gradual organization of your life as a 
whole, while your consciousness, limited as it is to a very 
short span, flickers along from moment to moment, and 
never reveals the true meaning of your life-processes in 
their linkage, growth, and rationality. Hence your con- 
scious moments show you little but dependent volitional 
and intellectual processes, which are powerless to reveal the 
secret of their own evolution. The feelings of the mo- 
ment may be consciously original, but need not on that 
account be important. Your current consciousness inter- 
prets your true individuality, much as lightning at night 
shows the storm clouds. Whence the storm came, and 
whither it whirls, the lightning, like your passing moments 
of conscious life, is too brief to show. We men are always 
struggling to grasp eternity in a fleeting instant. 

Yet of course our human type of consciousness, with 
all its flickering, is the best type that we have ; and the 



ORIGINALITY AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 259 

practical problem remains : What shall I do consciously 
to direct myself towards my best type of originality in 
word and deed ? 

The answer runs thus: First, see why it is that your 
human sort of consciousness never can fully reveal to you, 
at any moment, what is best or most original about your 
own individuality. Seeing this, give up the vain desire 
to seem, at any instant, consciously original. You could 
only deceive yourself by following that vain desire. 
What seemed to you most inevitable, and perhaps most 
commonplace, your fellows would often find the most 
original and the best about you. What pleased you as 
your most original product, others would see to be a poor 
imitation, or else a trivially wayward mood. For the rest, 
consciously to aim towards originality in your whole de- 
velopment, and in your organized individual self-expres- 
sion, is not to aim at the momentary consciousness : " Just 
now I see myself as an originator." Your self-conquest lies 
in saying, " I will serve as if I were nothing but a servant, 
but all the while I will not fear to be unique in my form 
and plan of service." The best thing, then, that one can 
consciously do towards attaining effective individuality is 
to put down one's paltry Fears of being as original, in style 
and in expression, as fate, despite all of one's loyalty to ser- 
vice, chances to make one. Think, then, thus : " I have a 
right to be unique ; I will not fear to be unique when, as a 
matter of fortune, I find myself so ; but I will not at any 
moment try to feel as if I were just then in the least an 
originator. I will consciously serve and efface myself ; but 
when my individuality chances, nevertheless, to express 
itself, I will rejoice in the happy accident of having un- 
consciously done what vindicates my right to be this indi- 
viilual." With this in mind, with this assurance that the 
effectively best about you must grow up in its own way, 
and must grow, so far as your human mind goes, uw<>n 



260 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

sciously, devote your conscious life to putting yourself into 
a serious office, where plenty of wholesome experience will 
come of itself ; and then wait for the outcome with assur- 
ance. Whatever originality is yours will then come as a 
matter of life. For it is Life, and not Consciousness, that, 
in us men, is the originator. Yet the conscious purpose to 
become original is not unwise, if it only takes the form of 
choosing to accept that sort of devotion to life which en- 
sures the conscious dependence of our will and of our 
intellect, but the actual freedom of our individual tem- 
perament 



MEISTER ECKHART* 

BROTHER ECKHART, later known as a Magister of the 
University of Paris, and accordingly called Meister Eck- 
hart, was born about 1260, in the upper Rhineland, and 
died in 1327. The first in the series of German mystics, 
he was the direct teacher of the more popularly known 
Tauler, and the beginner of all the later German mystical 
movements. In the order of the Friars Preachers, or Do- 
minicans, he was early a prior, later a provincial, and later 
again a prior. He held offices, in his order, in Erfurt, in 
Frankfort, in Strassburg, in Cologne ; he was twice at the 
University of Paris, as learner and as lecturer ; and won, in 
his time, no small fame as a preacher. In the annals of his 
Church and of his order, he appears as a man who, however 
devoted and loyal his purpose, taught, in addition to the 
faith of the Church, certain reputed errors that finally re- 
ceived, although not until two years after his death, the 
official condemnation of the Pope. In the history of Ger- 
man thought, occupying as he does the place of the first phi- 
losopher of mark to write in German, he has been given 
very various degrees of importance by the historians, accord- 
ing to the estimate that different writers have placed upon 
the originality of his ideas. As a fact, so far as his mere 
opinions are concerned, the most recent scholarly research 

* A paper road before the Plymouth School of Ethicn in the summer oi 
1894. 



262 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

has come more and more to see in him, not so much the 
qualities of an independently constructive philosopher, but 
rather the character of a fairly representative Catholic mystic 
of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, whose religious ca- 
reer was, however, much modified by the really original per- 
sonal temperament that led him in the end, although not by 
his own intent, to the verge of pronounced heresy.* And it 
is in this character, as a Catholic mystic, of no very novel 
philosophical opinions, but of a very marked individuality 
of personal character and influence, that I shall here try to 
portray Meister Eckhart. That reputation for startling origi- 
nality of speculation which many writers have sought to 
give to this first in the long series of German philosophical 
writers, has been due largely to the very fact that Eckhart 
wrote and preached upon the profoundest speculative topics 
in the German tongue, with the deliberate intention of initi- 
ating the people into the deepest mysteries of their faith. 
He first thus translated into the vernacular speech of his 
land thoughts which were not new to scholastic philoso- 
phers, but which were sure to be startling to laymen, and 
which to us now, if we forget the earlier history of mysti- 
cism, have an air of uniqueness, which is increased by the 
skill of Eckhart's often marvellous German style, and by 
the sincere tone of personal experience which runs through 
all that he says. A mystic must always seem, when you 
consider him by himself, an original person, because it is 
not authority but intensely individual experience to which 
he constantly appeals. Before I am done, I shall especially 
indicate the practical side of Eckhart's life work. It is 
therefore at the outset enough to say that he was the first 
who translated speculative mysticism into the German 
tongue, in order to indicate how wide the range of his 
practical importance is, in view of what was to be the fu- 

* Cf. Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, iii, 376. 



MEISTER ECKHART. 263 

ture of the German mind. Learn, then, from what fol- 
lows something of how it felt about 1300 to be a Catholic 
mystic and at the same time to be a philosophical Ger- 
man missionary to the people. 



The order of St. Dominic, confirmed as an order of the 
Church in 1216, had grown by the end of that century to 
be one of the most important instruments of Catholic piety 
and learning. To this order had belonged Albertus Magnus, 
and his still greater pupil, St. Thomas Aquinas. In the 
care of these men, and of their immediate pupils, the scho- 
lastic philosophy had reached its most classic expression. 
St Thomas died in 1274, when Eckhart was still a boy. 
Albert, who outlived his own pupil, died in 1280. The order 
of the Friars Preachers, according to the wording of its own 
constitutions,* " was principally and essentially designed 
for preaching and teaching, in order thereby to communi- 
cate to others the fruits of contemplation and to procure 
the salvation of souls." The triumphs that its great schol- 
ars won in the cause of philosophical and theological learn- 
ing were therefore intended by themselves as a means to 
an end. The faith was to be defended ; heresy was to be 
refuted ; the world was to be taught. The fruits of contem- 
plation were to be communicated to others. 

Now Eckhart appears, in every recorded line of his writ- 
ings, as one who understood the constitutions of the Do- 
minicans in a very literal sense. He was very early trained 
to follow, and in time to administer, the discipline of his 
order; he received a thorough preparation in philosophy 
and in theology ; he gave the closest attention to the art of 
preaching with effect in the vernacular tongue. All this 
was in the line of his education for his calling. The tech- 

* Drane, HUtory of St Dominic (edition of 1891), p. 164. 



264: STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

nical finish of much of his preserved work reveals the ex- 
pert veteran, who must have been made such by long and 
merciless exercise in harness. Mystics have often been 
essentially wayward and capricious persons, of sentimental 
nature and rebellious habits. Against just such wayward- 
ness, however, was the monastic training of the mendicant 
orders especially directed ; and this man was thoroughly 
hardened to service ; was of rigid life, and of well-knit, 
although gradually progressive ideas ; and as far as possible 
his sentiment was kept under the control of his insight. 
So far you have just the monk. But his was withal, indeed, 
an extremely rich and individual temperament, and one in 
which the deepest emotion, when once it was permitted to 
go free, found ample room. Meanwhile he was rugged and 
manly, being impatient of mere formulas, fond of para- 
doxes, quick and original in expression. A very marked 
personal piety, too, inspired him. He was a faithful monk, 
but he must go beyond the mere formalities of his profes- 
sion. He needed to restate everything in his own words. 
He could rest in none but absolute solutions of his prob- 
lems. And he must, indeed, communicate to others the 
fruits of his contemplation. 

Accordingly his experience, in its most general form, 
was this : He was throughout minded to preach the Catholic 
faith, and to move his hearers to live it in their daily lives. 
But the faith had now received, through the scholastic 
philosophy, an extremely elaborate formulation. And the 
Rhineland, in Eckhart's time, was a region where religious 
experience was intense and manifold, where individual in- 
tuitions of the highest truth abounded, and were often 
very waywardly followed out to heretical conclusions, and 
where more or less irregular efforts to found and to develop 
religious orders, and to save souls by extraordinary devices, 
were frequent and significant phenomena of social life. 
Practical mysticism, the ordering of the life of an individ- 



MEISTER ECKHART. 265 

ual upon the basis of the sensation of some form of imme- 
diate communion with God, was, in that time and region, 
in the air. The communities known by the vaguely applied 
names of Beghinen and Begharden more or less irregular 
unions of women and of men, as the case might be, de- 
voted to some sort of religious separation from the world, 
and to the pursuit of a piety that was not always free from 
the well-founded accusation of heresy these were familiar 
phenomena along the upper and lower Rhine in the thir- 
teenth century. The people in general longed for religious 
guides. The previous ages of conflict between the Church 
and the empire had left behind them, at the end of the cen- 
tury, a perplexed people and much confusion of faith. It 
was in large part for the sake of meeting just such spiritual 
needs as this, both in Germany and in other lands, that 
the Church had so warmly favored that organization 
of regular armies of her trained servants which occurred 
through the rise of the two mendicant orders, the Francis- 
cans and the Dominicans themselves. And so Eckhart 
undertook, as his own special life work, the guiding of the 
religious life of his hearers by means of the translation 
of the philosophy of his Church and his order into the 
language of the people.* 

But for Eckhart scholastic speculation must now be 
brought over from Latin into German, from the technical 
speech of that most highly elaborated of philosophical 
methods into words suited to all who looked to their own 
highest good, who were submissive to God, who aspired, 
and who had overcome themselves. For to all such Eck- 

* For this general conception of Eckhart's life work, due in large part 
to the recent researches of Denifle, but also in part maintained by 
Prcgcr, see (in addition to Harnack's book, above cited, and to Preger's 
account in his Oeschichto d. Mystik), Loof's Dogmonpeachichte, p. 
288, and Windel band's History of Philosophy (English translation), p. 
834. 



266 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

hart, as he tells us, addressed his speech.* And according- 
ly such speculation must tend from the outset to be modi- 
fied as it was delivered. The truths of philosophy must be 
linked to the actual experience of the faithful. Yes, what 
were these truths but the outcome of learned reflection 
upon such experience ? Eckhart must preach with the 
understanding ay, but with the spirit also. He had been 
early trained to a sense of the importance of learning. But, 
once more, these so precious fruits of contemplation must 
be communicated to others ; yes, must be built up anew in 
every hearer's mind, as the actual outcome, as the very form 
and body of his own personal and religious life. For all 
this meant the one great object the salvation of souls, the 
guidance of the perplexed, the portrayal of the truth. Such 
popular translation of philosophy, in case a man's phi- 
losophy means to himself in any sense the mirror of human 
life, the theory of passion, must always tend, in the man 
who thus translates, to a continual renewal and refreshment 
of his most fundamental thinking itself. The technical 
weaver of philosophical theories may or may not bear in 
mind the fact that had it not been for the vital perplexi- 
ties of experience the immediate issues of life the prob- 
lems of the schools would never have come into existence. 
Accordingly, such a technical student may long neglect 
the renewed examination of his own fundamental princi- 
ples for the sake of devoting himself to the development 
of their most remote theoretical consequences. But the 
man who wants to make his philosophy immediately in- 
teresting to the serious-minded amongst the people, must 
not dwell upon those remoter consequences so much as upon 
principles ; for it is just the most fundamental principle of 
life that the unlearned inquirer desires to get. People 
naturally begin in philosophy with the most critical and 

* Cf. Pfeifler's edition, Deutsche Mystikcr, ii, p. 2. 



MEISTER ECKHART. 267 

tremendous of its issues. But if you are to translate such 
fundamental principles into the speech of your hearer's 
spiritual experience, if you are to show him that the 
most abstruse truth walks daily beside him, well, then, 
daily you too must experience and must restate to your- 
self this abstrusely spiritual truth that lies at the basis of 
your life, as of your hearer's. You must continually re- 
initiate yourself into the mysteries of your own philo- 
sophical doctrine. It must become and remain a personal 
as well as a technical matter with you. 

Accordingly, we find Eckhart, although in many re- 
spects a Thomist, and also a sincere follower of the general 
traditions of Catholic mysticism, still from the outset evi- 
dently disposed to be always afresh dependent upon his 
own personal experience for the formulation and proof 
of the philosophy that he expounds to his hearers. Learn- 
ing is there and at his call, but while he preaches he keeps 
it in the background of his mind. Authorities he can cite 
in numbers, and, like Thomas, he is especially fond of cit- 
ing, sometimes expressly, sometimes indirectly, Aristotle, 
St Augustine, and the Neo-Platonic Christian writer 
known to the scholastics under the traditional, although 
false, name of Dionysius the Areopagite. But after all Eck- 
hart regards mere authority in itself as something princi- 
pally serviceable in the deepest matters, by way of illustra- 
tion. In physics he is, to be sure, altogether dependent 
upon Aristotle. His psychology he gets in part from St 
Augustine, in part from the Aristotelian conception of the 
Creative Intelligence as it had then been interpreted by re- 
cent philosophy. His technically theological concepts are, 
up to a certain point, largely Thomistic. But the heart of 
his doctrine, and so that group of conceptions which in the 
end he comes most to love and to expound these may 
indeed be found more or less expressed in Augustine, in 
Dionysius, in Thomas ; but Eckhart, for his own conscious- 



268 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

ness, neither believes nor expounds these opinions precisely 
as he there finds them, nor yet because the authorities in 
any fashion support them. On the contrary, he is conscious 
of telling the truth as immediate religious experience, 
interpreted by the light of reason, reveals this truth both 
to himself and (for so he firmly holds) to every properly 
guided soul amongst his hearers also. Hence Eckhart's 
philosophy, at first evidently a scholasticism, became, to his 
own thoughts, as he actually preached, more and more the 
record of a soul alone with God and with the absolute truth. 
He wandered into strange regions in the spiritual world. 
St. Thomas had sought to teach this age afresh, with great 
elaboration of detail, the exact sense in which human rea- 
son can go only so far, and needs revelation from above to 
guide it further. The precise relation of natural to revealed 
religion was accordingly one of the chief problems of philo- 
sophical discussion in that period. But Eckhart, in his 
own inner experience, erelong, both by the aid of Dio- 
nysius and by virtue of his own meditation, came to a cer- 
tain wondrous place where not only human reason, but, as 
he held, all reason, sees its own birth out of something be- 
yond reason, out of something that is essentially a divine 
mystery. For at this point this birth of reason from a yet 
deeper principle, this derivation of the light of insight from 
a still diviner light that to us seems darkness all this, I 
say, appeared now in Eckhart's mind not as a mere acci- 
dent, dependent only upon the chance that some things 
have been hidden from our reason in this life, and have 
been revealed only to our faith not such an accident, but 
an essential truth of things. In God, too, there must be 
something corresponding to just this failure of reason to 
finish its own work. The highest truth of religious ex- 
perience, thinks Eckhart, is that the Godhead as such 
simply cannot be absolutely revealed to any form of ration- 
al insight, human or divine. On the contrary, it is of the 



MEISTER ECKHART. 269 

very essence of reason itself to be dependent upon some- 
thing that is not reason. And this, I repeat, is not, for 
Eckhart, the mere mischance of our human reason, but the 
very nature of all reason. Knowledge of God, even when 
complete, and just because of its completeness, would see 
its own very self as essentially rooted in a certain central 
mystery, which Eckhart undertakes to define, so far as defi- 
nition is possible. That this i& true, Eckhart constantly 
seeks to verify afresh in his own experience. The con- 
ception in question, the conception of a principle to be 
called the One, or the Godhead, or the Absolute, above 
knowledge, yet the source and principle of knowledge, is 
old ; it is Neo-Platonic yes, it is much older than that 
It is almost identical with the conception of the Abso- 
lute Self or Atinuii of the earliest Hindoo speculation. 
But Eckhart, knowing nothing of course of the remoter 
sources or counterparts of his conception, and himself 
learning it in the main from Dionysius, discovers the ever- 
lastingly fresh and convincing verification of it in his own 
religious life. And now this is just the essential feature 
of the man, in so far as he is a typical mystic this concep- 
tion of a central mystery at the very heart and source of 
the highest knowledge Eckhart treats not as a merely 
theoretical matter, but as an intensely practical concern. 
The salvation of the soul depends upon a certain act of 
rising above knowledge to what is beyond knowledge. 

n. 

I suppose that this central notion of Eckhart, as of 
most speculative mystics, will seem at first sight either a 
trivial commonplace, or an unnecessarily abstruse doctrine, 
according as it chances to strike you. That the world shall 
have something Unknowable at the heart of it is, in this 
age of Herbert Spencer and of the Agnostics, indeed a 
trivial enough observation of popular philosophy. But 



270 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

Eckhart's Unknowable, the wuste Gottheit, or " wilderness 
of Godhead," of wliich he loves to speak, is not Spencer's 
Unknowable, but is rather the One above knowledge of 
Plotinus and of Dionysius. Eckhart's reason for asserting 
this as the final truth is not a vexation over the special 
limitations of human knowledge, but is a certain reflection 
upon what a mystic takes to be the absolute nature of all 
knowledge. It is the fullness, not the lack of insight that 
seems to bring the speculative mystic to this affirmation, 
that all insight must be rooted in mystery. In one of the 
preserved Spruche of Meister Eckhart there is a striking 
passage whose parallel to the well-known burden of the 
angel's song in the Prologue to Faust is all the more remark- 
able, since of course Goethe can have known nothing of 
this word of Eckhart's. Goethe's angels sing : 

Der Anblick giebt den Engeln Stiirke, 

Da Keiner dich ergrunden mag. 
Dnd alle deine hohen Werke, 

Sind herrlich wie am ersten Tag. 

Eckhart says : " When God created the angels, the first 
glance that they took was, that they saw the Father's 
Essence, and how the Son burst forth from the heart of the 
Father, even as a green branch from a tree. This glad- 
some vision they have had more than six thousand years, 
and How it is, that they know this very day as much [i. e., 
as little] as when they first were made. And that is from 
the greatness of the knowledge. The more one knows, the 
less one understands." * 

Now this principle, which is as old as mystical philoso- 
phy, has played not a little part, as I must at once assure 
you, in the discussions of modern Idealism. Here is no 
place to face the issue upon its own merits. But I want you 

* Pfeiffer's Deutsche Mystiker, ii, p. 606. 



MEISTER ECKHART. 271 

to remember that here is no mere whim of the mystics, but 
a central problem of all philosophy. Readers who know 
anything of the modern forms of the doctrine of the Uncon- 
scious in philosophy are more or less acquainted with types 
of metaphysical speculation which have found the world 
in essence incomprehensible, not because it is unspiritual, 
but just because it sball be known to be spiritual, while the 
essence of spirituality shall be something beyond any 
transparently reflective definition, although it shall be 
productive of all the possible life of experience and of reflec- 
tion, and shall be known, although never quite compre- 
hended, as such, a supreme source of light. The motive of 
this special sort of recognition of mystery (of a mystery 
involved in the very light of the spiritual world), and the 
contrast between this and other shapes of the doctrine of 
the Unknowable, are not hard to indicate, if one may be 
permitted to speak for a moment in rather modern terms. 

The common, the popular, if you like, the relatively 
trivial form of the doctrine of the Unknowable, runs thus: 
There is the world yonder, which goes its own way, and ex- 
ists as a world of things in themselves. Here, however, 
is a creature called a sentient, or, by the grace of evolution, 
a more or less rational being. He wants to make out the 
nature of the things in themselves. He can do so only 
Inasmuch as eyes and ears, smell and touch, permit him 
to get at the sense-data that his wits are to interpret The 
things give him the sense-data. No further can he go than 
these data permit Hence, in one way or another, as he 
reflects, he finds himself cut off by his limited senses from 
the real truth of the things. He has not data enough. No, 
he could not possibly have data enough. For a thing is 
never a sensation. The things never wander through your 
eyes. Only the sensations of color, of smell, of touch, 
somehow get awakened in you by the things. And so, 
too, with any other senses that one might have. We might 
10 



272 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

come to possess countless new senses added to our present 
ones. These would indeed indefinitely enrich our experi- 
ence ; but they would only show their various data, never 
the unconquerable external facts as such. Das dort ist 
niemals hier. Experience is never reality. Hence reality 
is unknowable. 

This, I say, is the usual form of the doctrine of the Un- 
knowable. Spencer indeed gets somewhat beyond this 
form, being himself a bit of an undeveloped mystic ; but he 
never really reaches the other form, and so he remains in a 
region which does not now further concern us. Your 
genuine mystic, whether Neo-Platonic in his categories, 
or fashioned more like a modern idealist, takes a totally 
different view of the universe, and of the nature of truth ; 
and accordingly he defines quite otherwise the nature of 
his mystery. Observe still closer the contrast 

The world, so our typical mystic holds, is not an Un- 
knowable Reality, external to all knowing beings. It is 
in deepest essence a spiritual world, i. e., it is the world that 
exists in truth, not apart from any knowing being, but in 
and for, or else wholly by the ever-sustaining will and 
pleasure, of a being who is essentially omniscient, i. e., a 
being who knows whatever can logically become know- 
able, and what can logically become knowable is not a 
world of things in themselves, but of ideas, or of facts 
whose only reality is that they express or embody ideas. 
To exemplify by Eckhart's own case our Meister, as a 
follower of Thomas, held that, in advance of the creation, 
the world of truth was represented in and so, in an inner 
sense, was eternally existent for the divine knowledge as a 
world of archetypal Ideas Ideas, namely, of everything 
afterwards created, as well as of all that was never created, 
but that remains only possible. These divine Ideas are con- 
ceived as in nature similar to Plato's Ideas, except for the 
fact that they are explicitly to be defined as just content in 



ME1STER ECKHART. 273 

the divine mind, while Plato's ideas existed apart from any 
mind. God foreknew all things ; he saw all things in 
eternity. I, for instance, was there too, as ideal object 
amongst ideas one of the objects that God knew I in 
the inmost truth of me not yet as created thing, but 
as thought of God. Then, God, of his goodness, choos- 
ing to impart himself, chose from his ideal world, the 
content of this world, and willed it to be. Its being well 
Eckhart holds that such being is a sort of divinely sup- 
ported shadow-being. " If God withdrew his own back to 
himself, all creatures would become nothing." * The things 
have no true being of themselves. God grants them the 
support of his own will as a sort of substitute for being ; 
and in speaking of this shadow-land of created being Eck- 
hart, who, as you remember, loves paradoxes, voices him- 
self much more unguardedly than his master Thomas had 
done, whose gentle prudence had avoided, by means of fine- 
ly shaded but sometimes rather suspiciously subtle distinc- 
tions, the conscious admission of any pantheistic interpre- 
tation of the dependence of the world upon God. For 
Eckhart, too, as for Thomas, the creation is unquestionably 
to be thought of as a real fact ; but Eckhart has no great 
concern with what may have constituted this creation, be- 
yond the consideration that God gave the created things 
nothing that they have any right to keep for themselves. 
Thus, then, for Eckhart, the spiritual order gets defined. In 
any case, the world preexisted for God, in God's knowl- 
edge, and as a group of divine ideas. In existing now out 
of God, but solely by God's sustaining will, the world gets no 
such independence as makes the least atom of it otherwise 
than absolutely transparent to divine knowledge. And so, 
for God, both the ideal and the created world contain no 
unknowable elements. Their very esse, you see, is, from 

* Pfeiffer, ii, p. 51. 



274 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

the divine point of view, joined with what, for God's insight, 
would constitute their divine sort of percipi. There are, for 
God, no things in themselves at all only ideas in God, 
and shadow creatures of his will without him. 

This is the familiar Christian conception of the world as 
a spiritual order, only interpreted as a Thomistic mystic is 
disposed to view it. I use it here not only as an expression 
of Eckhart's own view, but also as an example of the 
general type of conceptions for which the reality is, first 
of all, a system of essentially ideal truth. But now to 
come nearer to the general reason why both Christian 
(and, as we shall later see, non-Christian speculative mystics 
also) have found, deep hidden at the very centre of this 
world of divinely spiritual transparency, another element, 
one of impenetrable mystery. For our Christian mystic, as 
you now see, the divine knowledge is not, from that divine 
point of view, engaged in the business of conforming to 
any such thing as an extra-divine reality, but depends sole- 
ly upon the Godhead itself. God is not obliged to conform 
his ideas to things. On the contrary, the things are help- 
lessly obliged to conform themselves to his ideas. Hence 
no external limits confine this divine knowledge to any 
imperfect sense that the things yonder are mysterious. 
There is for this view no Spencerian Unknowable outside of 
knowledge. The world of knowledge is a closed sphere, full 
of light. But now look within the conceived world of 
knowledge itself, not indeed at any part of it, but first at the 
structure and then at the root, at the source of it. There, 
within this world of the divinely transparent truth, is still 
the familiar distinction between Subject and Object, between 
knower and known, between the Self for which all this truth 
has being and that which has being for this Self. Now for 
God, as the mystic has thus far conceived him, the known 
object world, of eternal ideas and of temporally created 
things, is such that God as knower is absolutely adequate to 



ME1STER ECKHART. 275 

it, while this world itself in its wholeness, as eternal and as 
temporal world together, is the full expression of God's ne- 
cessary as well as of his freely constructed truth. But now, 
once more, whence this perfect adjustment of subject to ob- 
ject, of divine knowledge to divine truth ? Surely the an- 
swer must be : God's nature makes this so. There is, then, 
something to be called God's Essentia, or Wesen, his 
Godhead, his very being as God, his absolute self-control or 
self-possession, the very fullness of his life as the Absolute 
there is something, I say, of this sort, which requires God's 
world of truth, distinct as it is from his knowledge of this 
world, to be still precisely the adequate correspondent to 
this his knowledge of it, as the latter is the adequate cor- 
respondent of the former. Suppose, if you will, to make 
this conception a little clearer, that one conceived God as 
being ignorant and as so far like our finite selves. Well, 
then, surely he would be, like us, of limited Wesen or 
Essentia. We know little because we are so little. Our 
essence is almost a naught. A stone or a brute has still 
less or lower being than a man ; hence it knows either 
nothing at all or less than a man. Just so God, if he 
were ignorant like us, would be of an undivine (i. e., of 
imperfect) essence. It is then hjs Godhead, his perfection, 
his limitless wealth of nature, that merely expresses itself 
in his omniscience. He is omniscient, if you choose so 
to express the matter, for two reasons : First, because his 
divine nature or essence, of its very fullness, begets from its 
own heart that distinction between known object and know- 
ing subject whereon the divine knowledge itself is based ; 
second, because, since God's own nature or essence is su- 
preme and limitless, the two members of this derived an- 
tithesis between kiiower and known, subject and object, 
cannot themselves be limited with respect to their own ful- 
Bllment, but must both, in their completeness, be adequate 
to each other, and so unlimited. 



276 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

All this so far appears and is a revelation of the glory 
of God. But look still a little closer. Consider one fact 
more. God's Essentia thus appears as what Plotinus called 
the One, or the principle ; while that distinction, that dou- 
bleness, upon which God's knowledge is based appears to 
our mystics to be itself a secondary derivative from this 
One principle. And here at length we reach the point 
where the genuinely divine mystery begins to appear, ac- 
cording to the opinion of the speculative mystics, as it is in 
itself not beyond or external to the world of knowledge, 
but within, and at the heart of this world not indeed as 
any part of this world, or as any one mysterious object 
there, but as the root and source of all knowledge and of 
all objects. 

For God's life itself, his Essentia, his oneness that is above 
all distinctions this, you see, is now the mystery, not for 
us, but per se. And it is the mystery because it is the 
source of that very distinction upon which the world of 
knowledge rests. Hence it can itself never enter into the 
world of knowledge, for that world is derived from it 
Even the very omniscience of God cannot fathom this mys- 
tery, because this mystery is logically unfathomable. Nor 
would one really in presence of this mystery even wish to 
fathom it or treat it as a limitation to knowledge, for you 
are limited by unknown objects within the world of con- 
ceivable knowledge. But the source of the very world of 
knowledge is itself no object in that world. The divine 
knowledge is by the very power of the divine essence limit- 
less as to all logically possible objects of knowledge ; but just 
for that very reason this limitless knowledge, expressing it- 
self through the distinction between knower and known, and 
so presupposing and depending upon this distinction, never 
gets as its own explicit object the divine essentia, in so far 
as the latter is source and foundation of the distinction upon 
which this very limitlessness of God's knowledge depends. 



MEISTER ECKHART. 277 

The One, the principle of the distinction, the source of 
God's omniscience, is deeper than the distinction, and so 
than the divine omniscience itself. If by truth you mean 
an object of knowledge, then the Godhead, as such, is the 
source of the world of truth, and so never becomes any 
part of the world of truth, which at best is the result and 
not the inclusive container of God's essence. Thus indeed 
the heaven of heavens yes, the very wealth of the divine 
Word itself cannot contain the Godhead. And omnis- 
cience itself presupposes, implies, involves, is based upon 
mystery. 

I have kept so far fairly close to the relatively Christian 
categories of mystics such as Eckhart. Eckhart himself is 
never weary of going over and over this paradox of mys- 
tery in knowledge. The aforesaid remark about the angels 
was, to be sure, an assertion that moves altogether within 
the orthodox range of St Thomas's own opinion.* But 
Eckhart far exceeds such expressions whenever he lets 
himself go free in the use of the mystical speech. " I say," 
so runs his word,f " who thinks of anything in God and 
names it with any name, that is not God. God [i. e., here 
the essential Godhead] is above name and above nature 
[i. e., above all derived distinctions, even the highest]. We 
read of a good man who prayed God in his prayer, and 
would give him a name. Then spake a brother : 4 Be still, 
thou debasest God ' [' Swig, du underest Got']." Even this, 
to be sure, is still somewhat extravagantly paradoxically 
phrased Thomism. But Eckhart goes still further : " In the 
naked Godhead," he elsewhere says, t " there was never form 

* See Summ. Theol. Quest, xii, art vii, Corpus : " Quod comprehendere 
Deum imposrtibile est cuicumque intellectui create." (Yet some created be- 
ings know, although they cannot comprehend, God in his essence.) On the 
other hand, Thomas, as Aristotelian, attributes to God complete self-knowl- 
edge, and so would reject Eckbart'a absolute mystery of the Godhead. 

t Pfeiffer, p. 92. J Pfeifler, p. 468. 



278 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

nor idea." The essential Godhead is often described as 
wordless (ungewortet), * or by similar epithets, where Eck- 
hart means by Wort the derived word, the world of Ideas, 
the Son, who is indeed from eternity, but who is just the 
derived. The Neo-Platonic and Dionysian expressions 
about the divine Nothingness, as expressing the exaltation 
of the divine essence above every " iht " i. e., above every 
even conceivable object that has predicates are favorite ex- 
pressions with Eckhart himself. " God is nameless, for of 
him none can speak or understand. Therefore a heathen 
master says : Whatever we understand or assert of the First 
Cause that we ourselves are, rather than is the First Cause 
any of these things ; for it is beyond all speech and under- 
standing. If I say God is good, it is not true. Rather, I 
am good, God is not good. . . . What is good, that can grow 
better ; what can grow better, can grow best. Now God is 
not good, and therefore it is that he cannot grow better ; 
and since he cannot grow better, he cannot grow best ; for 
these three things [good, better, best] are far from God, for he 
is above all. . . . Therefore be still, and prate not of God 
for with whatsoever speech you prate concerning him you 
lie and commit sin. . . . What, then, shall I do ? You shall 
always sink away from your selfhood, you shall flow into 
his self-possession, and your very thought of Yours shall flow 
into his Mine, and become there his Mine so completely that 
you with him eternally apprehend his birth less fullness of 
being and his nameless nothingness." t The original here, 
as often in its rugged skill, defies translation. 

But yet further : Eckhart takes up an older and much 
discussed scholastic terminology, which St. Thomas himself 

* Pfeiffer, p. 319. 

t Loc. cit., p. 319 : Du solt alzemale entsinken diner dinesheit, unde solt 
zerfliezen in sine sinesheit, unde sol din din in sinem min ein min werden 
also genzlich, dass du mit ihm verstandest ^wigliche sine ungewordene 
iatigkeit und sine ungenannten Nihtheit 



MEISTEE ECKHART. 279 

had, on the whole, either carefully avoided or very skil- 
fully modified, but which Eckhart uses freely. Our mystic, 
namely, is fond of making the already indicated technical 
distinction between God as the developed Trinity and the 
Godhead as the Essence or Wesen proper, a distinction of 
central importance in his doctrine. Sometimes, to be sure, 
he uses the words God and Godhead interchangeably. But 
whenever he wishes to be especially exact he speaks of the 
Godhead as the unrelated One, the first principle, or, as he 
also calls it, the " unnatured nature," from which God him- 
self, viz., the Trinity, as the sphere of the divine power, 
knowledge, and love, is secondarily derived. The latter, or 
God as the Trinity, Eckhart then calls the " natured nature " 
of the divine. Of the divine persons as one in essence 
but distinguished by their mutual relations St. Thomas 
had elaborately treated, and in a great measure Eckhart 
follows the angelic doctor's doctrine of the Trinity as 
such in itself. But in the mystic's hands the scholastic 
distinction between the divine essence and the divine per- 
sons is fearlessly exaggerated. It was Thomistic to make the 
generation of the Son from the Father, a procession in the 
divine "according to the emanation of the intellect," so 
that the world of the divine Wisdom, or again that realm 
of Ideas, before mentioned, so far as it is viewed, as pro- 
ceeding from the originating nature of the Father, is the 
Son. Then the Holy Spirit's procession is the processio 
aworis, arising from a relation of a loving, and so volition- 
al, type between the Father and the Son ; and thus the 
scheme of the Trinity is complete. All this Eckhart often 
expounds, after Thomas. But, as we have now seen, the 
very heart of this speculative mysticism lies in observing 
that if, through what is called in Christian terminology 
the procession of the Son, the divine omniscience gets a 
complete expression in eternal terms, still there is even at 
the centre of this omniscience the necessary mystery of the 



280 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

divine essence itself, which neither generates nor is gener- 
ated, and which is yet the source and fountain of all the 
divine. Eckhart is sure : If you really want to come into 
communion with the absolute God, then even the holy 
Trinity can never suffice you. That the Trinity is the 
revealed God. The mysterious origin of this revelation 
well, that is the Godhead. Who stops short of that knows 
much, for he enters by the grace of God into the world of 
the revelation of God, where God is omniscient. But deeper 
than God's omniscience is that which is the source of om- 
niscience, the essentia, which, so far as it is considered in 
itself, apart from the birth of the Word, is not yet even 
the Father, much less the Trinity. Yet in that Source, in 
the Godhead, all that the Father begets, all that the Divine 
Word reveals, all that the divine Love prizes, all that the 
Trinity in its unity has created all this is eternally hid- 
den. For thence from that One, that Source proceeds in 
eternity the relational distinctions of the Trinity, in time 
the whole created world. Do you want the reality, the 
soul of things, the absolute truth, then you must get past 
God the Trinity, past the revealed God, past the God with 
whom in the beginning was the Word. For that God is in 
his very existence only a being who is relative to the objects 
of his omniscience. Yes, you can say, as Eckhart often 
says, that just as the Father were not, in case there were 
not also the Son, so God would not be were there not the 
world of God's ideas. In God as the Trinity, in the re- 
vealed, in the omniscient God, all exists only relatively, 
not absolutely : the Father exists as related to the Son, 
both exist as related to the Spirit ; knowledge and its object 
are relative ; yes, even the ideas of the created things are, 
in God, just as real as he is himself. Had not God thought 
of me, he would not have been God ; so I am in a sense 
cause of him as much as he is cause of me. For God, as a 
relative term, is relative also to even the creatures. But the 



MEISTER ECKHART. 281 

Godhead that is the source of sources that is above all re- 
lations. And our true divine home is there, and there only, 
viz., in union with the incomprehensible depth of the God- 
head. God, says Eckhart, becomes and fades away, although 
not temporally. Only the Godhead has fullness of being. 

" When," says Eckhart, speaking in a sermon of this 
difference between absolute and relative being " when I 
stood in the depth, on the ground, in the fountain and 
source of the Godhead, no one asked me what I would or 
what I did. There was no one who should ask me. But 
when I issued forth then all creatures, speaking, said : 
4 God ! ' If one asked me : ' Brother Eckhart, when did 
you go out of the house ? ' I should say : ' I must have 
been in it' Well, just so all creatures speak of God." [I. e., 
God is a term relative to the term creature.] " But why do 
they [the creatures] not speak of the Godhead ? All that 
which is in the Godhead that is One, and thereof is not to 
be spoken. God acts. The Godhead does not act It has 
nothing to do. There is no deed in the Godhead. Never 
did it look upon deed. God and Godhead differ as deed 
and non-deed. When again I come into God, if I form no 
image, my re winning [of the Godhead] is nobler than was 
my issuing forth. I alone [viz., as thinking being in this 
world, conceiving of the true natures of created things] 
bring all creatures from their own reason into my reason, 
so that in me [i. e., in my conception] they become one. 
When I come to the depth, to the ground, to the fountain 
and the source of the Godhead, no one will ask me whence 
I come, or where I have been. No one had missed me when 
I vanished thence." 

And hereupon, in this sermon, Eckhart, to whom all 
this has an intensely practical significance, closes with the 
following characteristic speech : " Whoever has understood 
this sermon, I wish him well of it If nobody had been 
here then I still must have preached it to this stick. There 



282 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

are some poor folk who go home again and say : I will sit 
in one place and eat my bread and serve God. I say by 
the truth, such people must remain in darkness, nor ever 
win or conquer what those others win who follow God in 
poverty and in want. Amen." But of this practical aspect 
further in a moment It is enough so far to see that, as 
Eckhart says in another sermon : " When a man turns 
from himself and from all created things," . . . then the 
central light, or, as Eckhart loves to call it, the " Spark," or 
" Glimmer " of his soul, the highest form of rationality, the 
creative reason of Aristotle, "takes no contentment in 
Father, or Son, or Holy Ghost, nor in the three persons, so 
far as each subsists in its own character. ... I will say 
still more," he goes on. " This lighttakes no contentment in 
the simple movelessness of the divine essence, that neither 
gives nor desires. But it longs to know whence comes this 
essence ? It wants to go into the unity that is in the 
depths, into the still wilderness, where never was seen 
difference, neither Father, nor Son, nor Holy Ghost ; in that 
absorption, where there is no one at home, there the Spark 
of the soul is content in the light, and there is it at peace 
more than in itself. For this depth is a simple stillness, 
that in itself is moveless ; but from this movelessness all 
things are moved, and all things have their life that live in 
reason and possess themselves. That we may thus live in 
reason, may God help us. Amen." 

You have now before you the speculative basis of Eck- 
hart's mysticism. Apart from the specifically Christian 
and scholastic terminology, the central thoughts are simply 
these : (1) The world of explicit being or of interrelated 
being, both finite and infinite, is a spiritual, an ideal world, 
where all objects are what they are only for a certain om- 
niscient Subject, the Self of this world of truth. Hence 
there is indeed no unknowable object; and this divine 
Self is so far omniscient (2) But what even the knowledge 



MEISTER ECKHART. 283 

of this omniscient Self cannot word, or voice forth, or have 
for its own object, that is precisely the very selfhood, the 
highest nature or inner source of the divine Self in its own 
unity. Self-knowledge is notoriously a problematic thing. 
Well, this mysticism consists in saying that all the knowl- 
edge of even a divine Self is rooted in the impenetrable 
mystery of the existence, the nature, the inmost essence, of 
its own Selfhood. Whoever still obstinately and with 
divine love of the highest seeks to know this, must first lay 
aside the very conditions of knowledge, and pass into the 
still wilderness, where there is no longer either subject or 
object But to do this is to reach the light above the light 
is to touch the Absolute, and so to be in unity, and at 
peace, in the wilderness where no one is at home but the 
Godhead, and where even that is nothing determinate, and 
is yet the fountain of all things and determinations. 

Now I have said that this sort of mysticism is something 
historically well and often known. As a fact, you can find in 
some of the posthumously published lectures of Fichte (e. g., 
the Wissenschaftslehre of 1804) almost the same essential 
thoughts as those at the basis of Eck hart's sermons, expounded 
upon the foundation of a post- Kantian idealism, by a man 
who himself revolted from many of the practical conse- 
quences of mysticism, who was far from pushing it to such 
consequences as Eckhart's, and who was as ignorant of 
Eck hart as he was of the Catholic middle ages in general. 
In the other direction, if you pass backwards from Eckhart, 
past Dionysius, past Plotinus, far beyond and before the 
Christian era, you find, as I have already said, in the very 
dawn of Hindoo thought, in the Upanishads, the same 
problem, with the same elements. There is, of course, no 
trace there present as yet of the doctrine of the Trinity; 
but already one conceives the world as the world of the 
absolute Self. And in a famous legend, a sage, Yajna- 
valkya, addressing his wife, Maitreyi, concerning imuior- 



284 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

tality, reasons that while we can attain to immortality by 
union with this absolute Self, still we must not think of 
this absolute Self as itself the prey of mere consciousness. 
And the sage reasons substantially thus : Here, in this life, 
one sees another, one hears another, one touches, smells, 
tastes another yes, one greets, thinks, knows another. 
That is consciousness. That is explicit knowledge. That, 
he apparently intends to suggest, might so far be conceived 
as extended to omniscience without essential change. But 
thus knowing subject and known object remain forever 
apart ; and therefore such knowledge would not yet be 
union with the real Self. For, he goes on, if all had become 
to one the Self, " Wherewith and whom should he then 
see ? Wherewith and whom should he then hear, smell, 
touch, taste ? Wherewith and whom should he then 
greet ? " [" Da fragete mich nieman," says Eckhart, speak- 
ing of what one finds in the wilderness of the Godhead, 
" da enwas nieman der mich fragete," or again, " There was 
no one at home "]. " Wherewith," continues Yajnavalkya 
" wherewith and what should he then think ? Wherewith 
and what should he then know ? Wherewith should he 
know him through whom he knows all things ? Where- 
with, O Beloved, should he know the Knower ? " 

In this mystic land, as you see, all roads lead to the 
same eternal city, this conceived refuge of the ages, yet a 
city that, alas, as Eckhart tells us, is after all the place da 
nieman heime ist. Beyond eternity it shall lie but the 
way of glory is to be also the way of darkness. 

So much then for the speculative aspect of our mystic's 
thought. You may see now something of the magnitude of 
the motives that have led human thought again and again 
into this region, where the profoundest thinking comes at 
times so close to a pathological love for a merely passive 
rapture of inexpressible feelings. But in any case, I am 
not here to criticise or to reconstruct ; but to portray. You 



MEISTER ECKHART. 285 

will be anxious to pass before we cloge to the practical 
aspect. Eckhart, who taught thus, expressing Catholic 
ideas in a form obviously so full of danger to his orthodoxy 
why did he suppose that the people could possibly need to 
hear such things in their own vernacular ? And how did 
he escape that danger of the merely passive rapture ? 

in. 

Practically regarded, a mystic, as a public teacher, has 
in general two especially valuable characteristics : First, 
he is a man who believes himself to have faced absolute 
issues, and to have discovered absolute values. Hence he 
is not easily dismayed when he faces any lesser human 
problem. Suppose that there is something called union 
with God, which involves rising above the sphere within 
which even the assumed and unquestioned dogma of the 
Trinity is instructive. Then surely, if one knows the way 
to this union, or towards it, one who has in a measure tran- 
scended even the dogma of his infallible Church, is not 
likely to speak with an uncertain sound when he has to 
face the lesser problems of faith or of life. The little ones 
of his flock come to him with their sins. He says, Turn to 
God. There alone is peace. Forsake yourself. It is in 
your separation from God that lies the essence of sin. Turn 
from the creature. Forget the creature. There is but one 
good. There are not many ways to peace. There is one 
way. That is absolute surrender of all good but God. 
Others in our preacher's flock boast of their good works. 
Eckhart despises good works, unless here is his often 
repeated formula unless not the righteous man, but only 
God in him, does these works i. e., they must be done 
without self-consciousness, without thought of merit, as 
the mere overflow of love and peace. Your righteousness 
must issue, like the Trinity, from the very Godhead 
itself; else all your striving is in vain. Or the afflicted 



286 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

in the flock lament their woes. Death and pain have 
come into their lives. They grieve and cannot be com- 
forted. That, says Eckhart, is because you love creatures. 
Why do you not love God alone ? There is no thing 
good but God. That is what sorrow teaches you. Hence 
sorrow is not to be lamented, but is to be prized. Do not 
think of your woes as a punishment, but as a call from God, 
a call to go home to his peace. From this point of view 
grief is itself something divine. " I say that after God 
there was never anything that is nobler than sorrow. For 
had there been anything nobler than sorrow, then surely 
the Father from heaven would have granted that nobler 
gift to his son, Jesus Christ. But we find that, except for 
his humanity, there was nothing of which Christ had so 
much of as sorrow. . . . Yes, I say, too, that were there any- 
thing nobler than sorrow, then therewith would God have 
redeemed man. . . . But we do not find that Christ was ever 
an hour upon earth without sorrow ; therefore sorrow must 
be above all things."* The doctrine, you see, is not alto- 
gether new, but the absoluteness of the tone this is one 
special privilege of the mystic. 

The second general advantage of the mystic as a public 
teacher is that he speaks always upon that basis of direct 
experience of which we have already made mention. Other 
men are dependent upon their traditions, or their abstract 
formulas. The essence of the mystical doctrine is the 
recognition that all abstract formulas must fail in the pres- 
ence of the highest truth, whose own innermost nature it is 
to be absolutely simple, and yet beyond words. Hence 
only religious experience can really touch this truth. 
Argument, tradition, authority all these fail. When that 
which is perfect comes, that which is in part is to be taken 

* Pages 337, 388. The suggested variation of the doctrine of the atone- 
ment is itself characteristic of Eckhart 's type of mysticism. 



MEISTER ECKHART. 287 

away. And the perfect, according to the mystic, is reached 
as soon as you abstract from all that is derived or explicit, 
and return to the depth, to the source, to the fountain of 
the Godhead. But that you apprehend only by an act of 
inward surrender to the divine presence and absoluteness. 
Other men hear of God, read about God, believe in God, 
serve God. The mystic, in so far as he speaks with author- 
ity, declares that he has in some measure attained God. 

Hence it is that Eckhart, like other mystics, speaks 
always with the simple confidence of the man for whom 
there are no alternatives. It is so. This he sees. He has 
no doubt. To his followers (as the scribe of one of the 
manuscripts of his sermons phfases it) he appears as 
"Meister Eckhart, dem Got nie niht verbarc." For the 
mystic this sort of assertion involves no vain pretense, no 
unseemly pride. Of himself as this man the mystic makes 
no account But the simple revelation of God's unity and 
consequent absolute mystery has not one the right to 
voice this revelation ? And if in this revelation lies the 
whole secret of man's salvation, and one has experienced 
that fact, must not one say so ? 

These two advantages (1) the fearlessness in the pres- 
ence of all the lesser issues of life, because one has faced 
once for all the central issue ; and (2) that assurance of 
one's doctrine which is derived from the fact that all this is 
a fresh report of one's own religious experience these two 
advantages, I say, Eckhart shares with many mystics. But 
now, as the readers of mystical literature well know, the 
practical danger, yes, the curse, of the doctrine, as taught 
by many mystics, lies in that often fairly pathological 
tendency towards dreamily passive emotions, and so to- 
wards what is well called Quietism. If God's central 
Wesen is thus a voiceless mystery, a wilderness of un- 
utterable Being, and if the highest union with God means 
an absorption in the presence of this mystery well, then, 
20 



288 STUDIES OP GOOD AXD EVIL. 

is not the best, even in this life, a deedlessly passive and 
unspeakable rapture in God, a doing of nothing, a fasci- 
nated gazing towards the exalted Essence, which is to 
ordinary thought a mere Nothing, but that to the mystic is 
his All ? To many mystics this indeed has seemed the 
whole solution. But is this so with Eckhart ? 

In answer to this question it must first be distinctly 
said that Eckhart is no quietist. I have spoken of his 
manly temper, of his rugged plainness of mood and man- 
ner. This man, so long as he is in this world, simply 
means business, viz., his life's business. Union with God 
is indeed his whole aim. But first he remembers that you 
cannot come into union with God until after you have 
learned to put off the creature, the world. Now you do not 
put off the world by pretending, in your private rapture, to 
have sentimentally forgotten it. You must, by the power 
of God, have overcome it ; and overcoming is a matter of 
many years of growth, growth which Eckhart conceives as 
lying in a marvellously original combination of spiritual 
freedom and of rigid self -discipline. It is hard to sketch the 
precise picture of the true spiritual life as Eckhart presents 
it in his sermons, because the elements involved are so 
many. But still I can suggest a few things. 

At all events, bear in mind that the soul of man, 
for Eckhart, has various higher and lower powers, or 
faculties, of which, of course, the intellect and the will 
are the most significant. These special powers do their 
work, and must continue to do their work, so long as we 
are in the body. What joins, or may in the end join the 
soul to God, is, however, no one of these powers, but the 
aforesaid Spark or Glimmer of the soul, the Fiinkelin or 
Ganster, of which Eckhart often speaks. This, I say, is no 
power of the soul, though it is meant to correspond to 
Aristotle's Creative Reason. It is the uncreated essence 
of our created soul. Now this Fiinkelin Eckhart con- 



MEISTER ECKHART. 289 

ceives as something eternal and immortal, which has an 
inscrutable but real relation to the essence of the God- 
head. This Spark of the divine light it is in us which 
makes us eternally discontented with all but the Godhead, 
so that whatever we know or do, it is all naught to us 
whilst we still find ourselves out of union with God's 
essence. And so far you have the psychological basis of 
our human longing for salvation. 

Now the soul's destiny it is to lay aside, in the higher 
life, all but this Spark of light, and by virtue of the Spark 
to be united to the Godhead. But next observe carefully, 
Eckhart never conceives that union with the Godhead as 
any utter absorption, wherein our individuality is to be 
really and substantially lost Could the soul ever come to 
comprehend God's essence completely, then indeed it 
would be utterly absorbed into God, and would so become 
nothing but God. But, as a fact, except in a consciously 
hyperbolic speech, Eckhart never conceives the union of 
the soul with God as a process to be finally completed. 
Eckhart believes in individual immortality, and this he 
explicitly maintains. I said earlier that Eckhart held 
man's salvation to be dependent upon the very recognition 
that the divine essence involves an impenetrable mystery. 
How true this is you will perhaps now for the first time 
appreciate when I say that upon this very mysteriousness 
of God's own essence Eckhart, in a striking passage, founds 
his assertion that the union of our individual Spark of 
light witli the Godhead can never be completed, and founds 
also his consequent affirmation of the immortality of the 
individual. Speaking of the state of the blessed, Eckhart 
says : * "In the exalted state the soul has lost itself, and 
flows all flowing into the unity of the divine essence. 
But, ' Ah ! ' one might ask, ' How is it with the soul thus 

* Pfeiffer, p. 887. 



290 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

lost, does it find itself or not ? ' And I will respond as it 
seems to me, namely, that the soul finds itself at the point 
where every rational being possesses itself in self -conscious- 
ness. Though it sinks all sinking in the unity of the 
divine essence, yet it can never comprehend its own source. 
And therefore God has left it a tiny point [Pilnct eliri] where- 
with it returns again into itself, and knows itself to be a 
creature. And that is most of all the soul's essence, that 
she can never comprehend thoroughly her own Creator." 

Here then already you see why Eckhart's mysticism, 
quite unlike that of the Hindoos, knows of the absorption in 
the Absolute only as something wholly relative to the pre- 
served subsistence of the essence of the individual soul. 
And here you also see why he cannot become and remain a 
quietist. For a quietistic mystic, as such, simply ignores 
the individual. But Eckhart maintains individuality. The 
Spark or Filnkelin of the soul is itself something uncreated, 
and capable of the deepest and most mysterious union with 
the divine Essentia. But the created individual, shadowy 
as his creature existence in itself is, still accompanies, even 
through the ages of ages, this endless process of the union 
with the divine. Or, in other words, Eckhart means the indi- 
vidual soul to be absorbed by virtue of a self -surrender in the 
divine i. e., in the contemplation of the Godhead but never 
to be absorbed into the divine. Or, again, to try a familiar 
metaphor not used by Eckhart : Whatever you will, de- 
sire, know, think, or aim to possess, all that in the end, if 
you are saved, turns out to be, according to Eckhart's doc-- 
trine, nothing but the Godhead itself, towards which, as the 
absolute haven, all the winds of eternity are even now 
wafting the ship of your soul. But in that haven your 
bark will still float in the waters of mystery and peace yes, 
and will eternally sail onwards, like a ship piloted forever 
through the landlocked fiords of some now far-off region of 
sky-piercing mountains. The mountains and the dark wa- 



MEISTER ECKHART. 291 

ters of the longed-for homeland will indeed be all in all ; 
but the little ship will still sail on these waves of eternity, 
sustained and moved forever in an unresting peace amidst 
the mountains of God. 

Now here also appears another aspect of what is the 
most important practical feature in Eckhart's teachings. 
You have often seen in the foregoing how, like mystics in 
general, he loves what one might call a nihilistic phrase- 
ology. The Godhead, as above all distinctions is, he has 
told us, in a sense Nothing. It is equally true to say, in 
our stammering human speech, that it is the creature 
that is absolutely nothing, while God alone is the true 
" Iht" And this also Eckhart says in countless places. 
God then may be indifferently said to possess, as we have 
seen, " ungewordene latigkeit" or " ungenannte Nihtheit" 
unborn reality, or nameless nothingness. Now the note- 
worthy thing about all such nihilistic phraseology is that 
it is explicitly founded upon the purely relative character 
of all our human conceptions and speech. We live in con- 
trasts, in relations, in a consciousness of light and shade. 
Hence our every effort to express our relation to the simple 
and ultimate mystery involves a duplicity of terms, and in 
fact of mental attitudes. But this, I say, is itself a matter 
of intensely practical import. Just as you cannot be in 
union with God, unless, in the very union, you remain you, 
just so your passivity, your self-surrender, your willing 
nothingness, when you are absorbed in God, is something 
that has also a very positive aspect. Unless your soul had 
its special powers in addition to that central Spark already 
mentioned well, then, you could not surrender these 
powers. Master Eckhart. when did you go out of the 
house 1 "Do was ich darin." " I must have been in the 
house." Well, just so, your absolute surrender to God, not 
only in its beginning, but also in its continuance, means 
that you in a sense keep your lower self in order endlessly 



292 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

to surrender it. But this does not mean quietism ; it means 
activity. In this life, at all events, the surrender to God is 
for Eckhart always as much a positive as a negative pro- 
cess. Begin anywhere you please. Say, " I as creature am 
nothing. I must forsake myself." What hereupon hap- 
pens ? Escape implies first control. You must bind the 
strong man of your lower nature or you cannot spoil his 
house. Hence Eckhart condemns all the " wild " mysticism 
of his time, all merely antinomian tendencies. Your early 
training as mystic must mean self-control, such as the 
monks practise. And self-control means once more a pro- 
saic business, which the love of God inspires, but which 
only minute daily discipline can accomplish.* 

On the other hand, this daily discipline is itself only 
valuable in so far as it contributes to spiritual freedom. 
There must be an absolute union of spirituality and of 
daily activity. Eckhart has a manly contempt for all that 
is merely external, for mere penances, for formal good 
works as such, for all slavery to forms. All these external 
things are but means to ends. Not even vows need bind 
the free soul that once finds its former vows, in case they 
are not, like the marriage vow, public obligations, but are, 
like vows of penance, or of similar spiritual exercises, pri- 
vate affairs in case, I say, the soul finds such vows to be 
a hindrance to the higher life, t The one rule is : Take the 
nearest way Godwards, but be always sure to keep in mo- 
tion on that way, until God's rest comes of itself. 

This preparatory self -discipline once in a measure ful- 
filled, and the next stage of piety reached, then what is for 
Eckhart the deep paradox of the spiritual life first really 
begins. Here is the soul in the body a soul which has at 
its centre that uncreated Spark, whose life it is to rewin 

* See especially the introduction to Sch wester Katrei. 
t Pfeiffer, p. 23. 



MEISTER ECKHART. 293 

and retain union with the Godhead but a soul also which 
has its special powers, some of these powers being spiritual, 
like intellect and will, some of them bodily, like sense and 
desire. How, in view of the persistent survival of these lower 
powers, shall the soul now find its earthly life ordered ? The 
situation is one of infinite complexity. Does the soul look 
Godwards, then that way lies a peace to be won, not by 
means of the life of the soul's special powers, but only 
through the virtue which Eckhart calls Abgescheidenheit, 
" departedness " of soul absolute freedom from the bond- 
age of the creature, rest in God, patient waiting for him, 
indifference to earthly fortune a curious union of im- 
movable stoicism in the presence of the finite, and of pas- 
sionate love for the infinite.* Abgescheidenheit is the 
special virtue related to the centre or Spark of the soul. 
As so related it is a virtue higher even than charity. The 
man who has it is so far above not merely ill fortune, but 
even repentance for his past sins. He sees all as God's will. 
The Godhead is all in all to him, and the peace that passeth 
understanding. Is it God's will that of old he was a sinner, 
that concerns him not now. Let God's will be done in 
heaven ? And it is heavenward only, to the absolute home 
of mystery, that Abgescheidenheit looks. Nothing is good 
save what is yonder. And now you will say is not this 
once more Quietism ? 

But no all this is true, but it is not the whole story of 
virtue upon this stage of the religious life. Abgescheiden- 
heit does not strive or cry, but it calmly and with absolute 
assurance, prays, or, what is the same thing, irreversibly 
determines and declares in its peace, that God's will shall 
be done on earth as it is in heaven. And "on earth,' 1 in 
the mystic language, means in the world of the soul's lower 

* On Abguchttdenhtit, of. especially the ninth Tract of Pfeiffer, pp. 
488-493. 



294 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

powers. The lower powers continue here on earth, to exist 
in their shadow land of created being. There, for instance, 
in the finite world, is the " outer man," of whom Eckhart 
often speaks. The outer man, as creature of finitude, is 
and must often be visited by pain and passion. Herein 
lies his very finitude. That indeed is his unalterable acci- 
dent That is his way to be troubled. Did not Christ, 
who inwardly dwelt in absolute divine peace, say, " My 
soul is very heavy," and " My God, why has thou forsaken 
me ? " Christ said all this in and with the outer man. 
Well, the outer man, as created shadow, defined through 
his very contrast to the divine, cannot possess Abgeschei- 
denheit, but must be vitalized by it, as the body's members by 
the life of the heart. This is the only possible salvation of 
the lower man, and so in that lower world of the spiritual- 
ized materiality of the good man's nature there is indeed no 
quietism, but endless activity, even strife. For the inner 
man, in his Abgescheidenheit, stands as a sort of Aristotelian 
unmoved mover, beyond this tempestuous sublunary world 
of finite passion, never, during our earthly life, destroying 
but vitalizing the lower nature. The outer man has and must 
have temptations, and is better for having them if he only 
overcomes them. He overcomes them by outer strife ; but 
the strife itself is inspired by the moveless peace of the 
inner man.* 

It is with temptations as with sorrows. They are the 
nobler incidents of the life of the outer man, if only the 
inner man is at peace. "That a man has a restful and 
peaceful life in God is good. That a man endures a pain- 
ful life with patience, that is better ; but that man has his 
rest in the midst of a painful life, that is best of all." t And 

* Cf. Pfeiffer, p. 551, tq. 

t Pfeifter, p. 221. On the whole relation of higher and lower, inner and 
outer nature, and on the whole doctrine of good works, cf. especially Sernion 
III, Pfeiffer, pp. 16-24, and the passages pp. 34, 35, 50-58, 188, 856, 607, 609. 



MEISTER ECKHART. 295 

therefore whoever as observer of the good man views from 
without the soul thus constituted, such an outer observer 
sees in general for such is Eckhart's usual thought a 
person who appears to be not at all an ecstatic quietist, 
but a strenuous, busy, virile, essentially practical being 
a man of hard sense, fearless of speech, vigorous in main- 
taining his cause, indifferent to the mere form of good 
works, little disposed to fasting, to going barefoot, or to the 
other non-essentials of the religious life, much disposed to 
helping the brethren. " You should remember," says Eck- 
hart in one passage,* addressing the formal penitents who 
are proud of their own private good works, and who are de- 
voted to petting and to admiring the personal beauty of their 
own pious plumage "you should remember that God is 
the common Saviour of all mankind, and that much more 
thanks are due to him therefore than would be due if he 
had only undertaken to save you. And so you ought to 
try to be a common saviour also." Nor need the man of 
the higher life despise even the creature enjoyments, so far 
as they nourish his outer man. The good man honors all 
created things when he uses them by transforming their 
lower forms into the higher form of his own nature. The 
good men ought thus to help all lower creatures back to 
God, namely, by subordinating them to his lower, and so 
to his higher needs. t To be sure the perfect man prefers 
in general poverty, but he would be indifferent if God sent 
his outer man even wealth and pleasure. He leaves in 
general the matters of fortune to God. 

But if this inspiration of the strenuous outer man by 
the passionless peace of the moveless inner man is, so far 
as this world is concerned, the ideal, it must be remembered. 



Pfeiffer, p. 561. 

t For thin frequent thought of Eckharf*, Me especially Pfeiffer, pp. 
ISO, 18*, 851, 474. 



296 STUDIES OF GOOD AXD EVIL. 

on the other hand, that the union in question is something 
essentially miraculous the gift of God. Our striving may 
prepare the way for it, and without preparatory discipline 
and slow growth it comes not. But the victory is the gift 
of God. Hence, as I said before, a good man's works are 
not the direct result of his own will, but of God's power. 
Our will surrenders itself, then God acts on us. 

Yet God has countless gifts. He might choose, even in 
this world, to grant the peculiar grace of mystic ecstasy it- 
self. If he does so you can but accept it. In ecstasy the 
outer man, to be sure, does fall quite away, and no good 
works are done. As a fact, however, nobody has the power 
directly to produce the ecstatic experience by any effort. If 
God gives this his highest earthly revelation of his perfect 
peace, he himself undertakes the responsibility for the good 
works that are neglected while the outer man is silent. 
Hence the recognition of the existence of the mystic ecstasy 
does not make Eckhart a practical quietist. Ecstasy is like 
the heavenly state, something beyond this life, such as came 
to St. Paul. 

Of a typical ecstatic mystic Eckhart has given an ac- 
count in his marvellous tract, half-true portrayal of some 
real person or persons, half-free poetical invention, called 
Schwester Katrei. Schwester Katrei is a religious woman, 
although apparently not a woman of a regular order. 
She is turned to the higher life by her confessor (who repre- 
sents Eckhart himself) ; but erelong she far transcends her 
teacher, rises superior to all formal obedience to him, or 
even to the Church, and follows God's secret leading into 
a life of uttermost unworldliness. She at length attains the 
place where she can say to her confessor, in the fearless 
mystic speech : " Rejoice with me, for I have become God." 
She, after years of merciless self-discipline and of saintly 
living, reporting her highest experience, can declare, in the 
words of typical ecstasy: "I have with angels and with 



MEISTER ECKHART. 297 

saints nothing to do, nor aught to do with any creature, 
nor with anything that has been created . . . nay, nor 
with anything that has ever been conceived in words. 
... I have been confirmed in the naked Godhead, 
where never was form or idea . . . Where I stand no 
creature may come in created fashion ... I am where I 
was before I was created. There is but God and only God. 
There are neither angels nor saints nor choirs nor heavens. 
Many tell of eight heavens and nine choirs. There is noth- 
ing of the sort where I am. You must know how all that 
one conceives thus in words and pictures thus to the people 
is but a hint to stimulate towards God. But in God there 
is naught but God, and no soul can come to God unless he 
becomes God as God was before the soul's creation." Yet 
Schwester Katrei, speaking at last as inspired wise woman 
to her now humbled and receptive confessor, who asks 
whether he too can come to such union with God, says 
plainly to him : " Ir sit ungetempert dar zuo.'' (For this 
you are not tempered). The way is long, she says. You 
must first learn not only to ascend but to descend the mys- 
tic road, year after year, till you know both the way and the 
heavenly company of the Trinity and the lonely place of 
peace, as a man knows his own courtyard. Then only can 
you finally remain at the threshold of the Godhead. This 
is not an affair of mere feelings, but of deeds, of grace, and 
of slowly won nearness to God. Till you have won all that 
you must cultivate your lower powers, take due pleasure in 
created things, and wait God's time. 

And thus you see something of the fashion in which 
Eckhart conceives the unity of the Christian life, and the 
race that one must run toward the mystical glory. 



XI. 

AN EPISODE OF EARLY CALIFORNIA LIFE: 

THE SQUATTER RIOT OF 1850 IN 

SACRAMENTO. 

PRELIMINARY NOTE. 

THE following paper was first prepared as a contribution 
to local history, and was addressed to an audience familiar 
with the traditions of the early days of California. The 
text still retains forms of speech due to this origin. The 
author here often speaks as a Californian to his fellows, 
refers freely to local issues, and presupposes an interest in a 
special region and group of people. 

Yet if the affair here in question is one of local history, 
the passions, the social forces, and the essential ideas con- 
cerned, are of permanent significance. How often, even in 
some of our latest American conflicts, at Homestead, at 
Chicago, or at Hazletown, can we not recognize the same 
essential motives that were at work in the affair here de- 
scribed ? A lofty and abstract idealism, such as, despite 
the opinions of foreigners, is a permanent and potent force 
in our American life, appears, then, in this little story, as 
coming into contact with a very concrete problem of social 
existence a problem about land ownership, about the 
rights and privileges of poor men, and about the good order 
of a new community. The Transcendentalist a being who 
is, in one form, a characteristic American imagines him- 

298 



AN EPISODE OP EARLY CALIFORNIA LIFE. 299 

self called upon to lead his fellows in a struggle for prop- 
erty and for bread. The Idealist gets into conflict with the 
sheriff; the Higher Law has to face the processes of the 
courts ; a company of homeless wanderers have to solve, in 
a moment, a critical problem of civilization. The philoso- 
pher (who is here also a man of the people) pretends, for 
the passing hour, to be. by popular choice, the king ; and a 
crowd of men, who know not precisely what they mean, are 
forced to decide whether or no to follow this new king. 
Such incidents may well be studied in miniature as on a 
grand scale. They may seem petty, local, transient, acci- 
dental, but their meaning is permanent, and they will re- 
cur, over and over, and perhaps on a constantly grander 
and grander scale, as long as our national history lasts. In 
miniature we have then, in this case, a process of universal 
meaning. 

As an example of the way in which the solution of the 
most practical problems of the daily life of a community 
may involve the ultimate issues of an idealistic philosophy, 
the present Study of Good and Evil seems to me to have its 
place in this volume. And I have deliberately left its 
locally determined form essentially unchanged. 

The most general outlines of early Californian history 
are very commonly known, and may here be, for the most 
part, presupposed. California, acquired by the United 
States during the Mexican War, had long been under the 
irregular government characteristic of a remote and 
sparsely settled Spanish-American province. Land owner- 
ship, at the time of our conquest of the country, was legal- 
ly founded upon Grants, which the various governments of 
the province had, from time to time, made to settlers. 
These "Spanish Grants," frequently in the region near the 
coast, both in the central and in the southern parts of 
California, did not extend (except in a single instanco), 
into the mountain regions where, in 1848 and later, the 



300 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

great gold discoveries were made. On the other hand, the 
portions of California nearer the coast, where the large 
towns soon grew up, and where the commercial interests of 
the new State, during the gold period, were principally 
centred, were especially affected by the controversies which 
soon began concerning the validity of the land-titles of 
Mexican origin. By the treaty of 1848, between Mexico 
and the United States, the general validity of all such 
titles was guaranteed. On the other hand, the precise defi- 
nition of individual titles was often doubtful ; their authen- 
ticity could easily be questioned by unsympathetic stran- 
gers, unused to the simple provincial ways of a Spanish- 
American community ; and the rude surveys through 
which, in some cases, their supposed boundaries had been 
determined, had sometimes been carried out in a most 
primitive fashion. Such titles needed a very considerate 
treatment, if they were to be recognized at all. 

But the American newcomers were, in a goodly pro- 
portion of cases, men from the regions of our Middle West, 
where land ownership had very generally been determined 
either directly by settlement, or through conformity to easily 
comprehensible general laws. The Oregon wilderness, 
from which some of the newcomers came to California, 
was similarly the natural paradise of the " squatter." In con- 
sequence, the settlers in California were ill-prepared to be pa- 
tient with the Calif ornian laws, and with mysterious sources 
of land ownership. To add to the confusion of men's ideas, 
the lands of the gold region were, in general, actually free 
to all ; for they were, on the whole, untouched by the Grants. 
They were therefore now public lands of the United 
States. The National Government refused, for years, to part 
with the title, or to survey the gold-producing lands, and 
thus left the whole question of the practical ownership of 
claims to be determined, so far as mining was concerned, 
by the local " Miners' Custom " of each district. The result 



AN EPISODE OP EARLY CALIFORNIA LIFE. 301 

was, for California miners, a system of temporary land own- 
ership, determined by the actual occupancy and use of the 
land itself, the limits of such occupancy being subject to 
local regulation by miners' meetings. The contrast between 
this simple and practical system of the mining districts, 
and the complex and mysterious problems of land owner- 
ship in the large commercial towns and in the coast regions, 
was especially vexatious for those who, in the course of their 
business, needed land in the portion of the State covered 
by the Grants, and who could not get such land by the pro- 
cess with which the mining life, as well as the customs 
common to all squatters, had familiarized them. 

Social unrest and discontent immediately resulted. The 
remoter consequences, however, have been very far-reach- 
ing. The agrarian theories of Mr. Henry George (to men- 
tion one instance only) form a striking example of the later 
outcome, in certain minds, of this early Californian experi- 
ence. The ideal of land ownership which Mr. George de- 
fends is simply the ideal suggested by the miners' methods 
in the gold districts of California. The ideal which he 
combats is the ideal of whose difficulties the weary history 
of the early litigation over the "Spanish Grants" in Cali- 
fornia was a peculiarly tragic example. 

The present paper, in dealing with a single incident of 
the early struggle, is led to study, however, not so much the 
special problem as to the best form of land ownership, as 
the still more universal question of the conflict between ab- 
stract ideas and social authority, at a moment when the 
order of a new society, and the eternal conflict between the 
private and the universal Selves, had to be settled, for the 
time, by men of energy, of idealistic temper, and of very 
fallible intelligence, just as we to-day have, as men and as 
citizens, to solve our own analogous problems. 

That the issues of the passing moment are also the issues 
of metaphysics, and that the eternal problems are met with 



302 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

in the midst of the temporal, is the familiar lesson for the 
sake of which I have ventured to introduce this paper into 
the present series. 

So much by way of preliminary. Now follows the origi- 
nal discussion. 

A prominent California pioneer, Doctor Stillman, pub- 
lished in the Overland Monthly for November, 1873, as one 
of the chapters of his since well-known book called Seeking 
the Golden Fleece, a contemporary record of his experiences 
at the time of the Squatter Riot of 1850 in Sacramento. In 
a note to this valuable reminiscence, Doctor Stillman re- 
marked that no detailed account of the remarkable affair 
had ever been printed. So far as I know, the same thing 
can still truthfully be said. But the scenes of violence them- 
selves form but a small part of the real story of the move- 
ment ; and I shall venture in the following to try to present 
a somewhat connected account of the events that preceded 
the riot and that culminated therein. I draw my materials 
principally from the contemporary files of the Placer Times 
and the Sacramento Transcript; but I shall also seek to 
accomplish what has certainly so far been neglected viz., 
to indicate the true historical significance of this little epi- 
sode in our pioneer annals. For, as I think, the impor- 
tance of the conflict was greater than even the combatants 
themselves knew ; and most of us are not in a fair way to 
comprehend the facts, unless we remind ourselves of a good 
many long since forgotten details of the narrative. 



And now to begin the story with the moral, let us try 
to understand at once why this episode should seem of a 
certain more general significance. That a few lives should 
be lost in a squabble about land, is indeed a small thing in 
the history of a State that has seen so many land quarrels 



AN EPISODE OF EARLY CALIFORNIA LIFE. 303 

as California. The Squatter Riot of 1850 was but a prelim- 
inary skirmish, if one will judge it by the number of killed 
and wounded, while the history of settler difficulties in the 
whole State, during the thirty-five years since, seems, by 
comparison of number, a long battle, with killed and 
wounded who would need to be counted, not by fives, but by 
hundreds. 

Not, however, for the number of lives lost, but for the im- 
portance of just that crisis at that moment, must we consid- 
er the Squatter Riot noteworthy. Just as the death of James 
King, of William, by leading to the formation of the famous 
Vigilance Committee of 1856, happened to seem of more im- 
portance to the California community than the death of 
ninety-and-nine just miners and other private persons, 
who were waylaid or shot in quarrels ; just as that death 
had many times the historical significance that it would 
have had if King had been slain under the most atrocious 
circumstances a few months earlier ; even so the Squatter 
Riot in Sacramento is significant, not because bloodshed 
was unknown elsewhere in California land quarrels, but 
because nowhere else did any single land quarrel come so 
near to involving an organized effort to get rid, once for 
all, of the Spanish titles as evidences of property in land. 
Elsewhere and later, men followed legal methods, or else 
stood nearly alone in their fight Men regarded some one 
title as fraudulent, and opposed it ; or frankly avowed their 
private hatred of all Mexican land titles, but were com- 
paratively isolated in their methods of legal or illegal re- 
sistance to the enforcement of the vested rights; or they 
were led into lengthy and often murderous quarrels by 
almost hopelessly involved problems of title, such as so 
long worried all men alike in San Francisco. Elsewhere 
than in Sacramento men thus tried, in dealing with numer- 
ous questions of detail, to resist the enforcement of indi- 
vidual claims under Mexican titles ; but in Sacramento in 
21 



304 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

1850 the popular opposition was deeper, and its chances of 
a sweeping success were for a moment far greater. 

In form, to be sure, even the Sacramento squatters, like so 
many successors, pretended to be doubtful of the legal va- 
lidity of Butter's " Alvarado grant," and to believe that, if 
it were valid, the grant still did not cover Sacramento. But 
this pretense was here a very thin veil for an undertaking 
that was in its spirit and methods distinctly revolutionary. 
The squatters of that time and place were well led, and they 
meant to do, and contemporary friends and foes knew that 
they meant to do, what would have amounted to a deliberate 
abrogation by popular sovereignty, of Mexican grants as 
such. Had they been successful, a period of anarchy as to 
land property would probably have followed far worse in 
its consequences than that lamentable legalized anarchy 
that actually did for years darken the land interests of our 
State, under the Land-Law of 1851. Bad as that enactment 
proved, the squatter doctrine, as preached in 1850, came 
near proving far worse. To investigate how the people of 
Sacramento showed their weakness in letting this crisis 
come on as it did, and their strength in passing it when it 
at last had come on, is to my mind, in view of the dangers of 
that and of all times, a most helpful exercise in social sci- 
ence ; since it is such investigations that enable us to dis- 
tinguish the good from the evil tendencies of the popular 
mind, and to feel the difference between healthy and dis- 
eased states of social activity. I want, in short, to make 
this essay a study of the social forces concerned in early 
California land difficulties. 

Captain Augustus Sutter, the famous Swiss pioneer, 
whose name is closely connected with the gold discoveries 
of 1848, owned at the time of the conquest, and, in fact, since 
1841, eleven leagues under a grant from the former Cali- 
fornian Governor, Alvarado. Moreover, as is again notori- 
ous, Sutter supposed himself to own much more than this 



AN EPISODE OP EARLY CALIFORNIA LIFE. 305 

grant by virtue of promises made to him by GoVernor 
Micheltorena, in 1845. In the latter supposition Sutler 
made a serious blunder, as was pointed out to him in 1858, 
by the United States Supreme Court Micheltorena had 
made to him no valid grant whatever. In 1848, as soon as 
the gold seekers began to come, Sutter began to lose his 
wits. One of the pioneer statements in Mr. H. H. Ban- 
croft's historical collection says rather severely that the dis- 
tinguished captain thenceforth signed " any paper that was 
brought to him." At all events, he behaved in as unbusi- 
nesslike a fashion as could well be expected, and the result 
was that when his affairs came in later years to more com- 
plete settlement, it was found that he had deeded away, not 
merely more land than he actually owned, but, if I mistake 
not, more land than even he himself had supposed himself 
to own. All this led not only himself into embarrassment, 
but other people with him ; and to arrange with justice the 
final survey of his Alvarado grant proved in later years 
one of the most perplexing problems of the United States 
District and Supreme Courts. 

One part of his land, however, seemed from the first 
clearly and indisputably his own, to deed away as he might 
choose. That was the land about his own " establishment 
at New Helvetia." Here he had built his fort, commanded 
his laborers, received his guests, and raised his crops; and 
here the newcomers of the golden days found him, the 
reputed possessor of the soil. That he owned this land was, 
in fact, by this time, a matter, so to speak, of world- wide 
notoriety. For the young Fremont's " Report," which, in 
various shapes and editions, had years before become so 
popular a book, and which the gold-fever made more popu- 
lar than ever, had distinctly described Sutter as the notori- 
ous and indisputable owner of this tract of land in 1844. 
If occupancy without any rival for a term of yearn 
could make the matter clear to a newcomer, Suiter's tille 



306 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

to his "establishment " seemed beyond shadow. Moreover, 
the title papers of the Alvarado grant were on record. 
Governor Alvarado's authority to grant eleven leagues to 
Sutter was indubitable, and none the less clear seemed 
the wording of the grant, when it gave certain outer bound- 
aries within which the tract granted was to be sought, and 
then denned the grant so as to include the " establishment 
at New Helvetia." Surely, one would say, no newcomer 
could attack gutter's right, save by means of some purely 
agrarian contention. A settler might demand that all 
occupied land in California should be free to every settler, 
and that Mexican land-ownership should be once for all 
done away with. But unless a man did this, what could he 
say against Butter's title to New Helvetia ? 

And so, when the town of Sacramento began to grow 
up, the people who wanted lots assented at the outset to 
Sutter's claims, and recognized his title. That they paid 
him in all cases a perfectly fair equivalent for his land, I 
venture not to say. But from him they got their titles, and 
under his Alvarado grant they held the lands on which the 
town grew up. Land-holders under Sutter they were who 
organized the town government, and their speculation was 
soon profitable enough to make them quite anxious to keep 
the rights that Sutter had sold them. The question, how- 
ever, quickly arose, whether the flood of the new immigra- 
tion would regard a Spanish land-title as a sufficient barrier, 
at which its proud waves must be stayed. The first safety 
of the Sutter-title men lay in the fact that the mass of 
the newcomers were gold-seekers, and that, since Sacra- 
mento was not built on a placer mine, these gold-seekers 
were not interested in despoiling its owners. But this 
safeguard could not prove sufficient very long. The value 
of land in the vicinity of a thriving town must soon at- 
tract men of small capital and Californian ambitions 
from the hard work of the placers ; and the rainy season 



AN EPISODE OP EARLY CALIFORNIA LIFE. 307 

would, at all events, soon crowd the town with discontented 
idlers. 

Moreover, the whole question of California land-titles 
was a critical one for this new community. The Anglo- 
Saxon is, as we so often hear, very land-hungry. Many of 
the newcomers were accustomed to the almost boundless 
freedom of Western squatters ; the right to squat on vacant 
land had come to seem to them traditional and inalienable ; 
they would probably have expected to find it, with a little 
search, somewhere in the Declaration of Independence, or 
among the guarantees of the Constitution. Among these 
men some of the more influential pioneers were strongly 
under the influence of the Oregon tradition. In Oregon, 
squatter sovereignty, free and untrammelled, had been set- 
tling the land question, of a newly occupied wilderness 
most happily. The temptation to apply these methods to 
California was very strong ; in fact, during the interreg- 
num after the conquest of the Territory of California, and 
before the golden days began, the discontented American 
settlers of the Sacramento Valley and of the Sonoma region 
had freely talked about the vexations caused by these Mexi- 
can land-titles, and had even then begun to propose meth- 
ods of settling their own troubles. The methods in ques- 
tion would ultimately have plunged everybody into far 
worse troubles. 

The dangerous and blind Americanism of some among 
these people is well shown by discussions in the California 
Star for 1847 and 1848, a paper which I have been able to 
consult in Mr. H. H. Bancroft's file. There is, for instance, 
a frequent correspondent of the Star in those days, who 
signs himself "Paisano.'' Although I have nobody's au- 
thority for his identity. I am sure, from plain internal evi- 
dence, that he is L. W. Hastings, then a very well-known 
emigrant leader, and the author of a descriptive guide to 
California and Oregon. Hastings was a very bigoted 



308 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

American, at least in his early days on the Pacific coast, 
and his book had filled many pages with absurd abuse of 
native Californian people and institutions. Such a man was, 
just then, an unsafe popular leader, although he was a 
lawyer by profession, and later did good service in the Con- 
stitutional Convention of 1849. In discussing land-titles, 
in these letters to the Star, " Paisano " plainly shows the 
cloven foot. Let us insist upon a Territorial Legislature at 
once, he says, in effect ; let us set aside this nuisance of 
military government by its own consent if possible, and let 
us pass laws to settle forthwith these land difficulties. All 
these " Paisano " cloaks under an appeal to the military 
government to call such a Legislature. But the real pur- 
pose is plain. The Legislature, if then called, would cer- 
tainly have been under the influence of the squatter-sover- 
eignty tradition of Oregon, since its leaders e. g., Hastings 
himself would have been, in many cases, Oregon men. It 
would, at all events, have been under purely American 
influence ; it would have despised the natives, who, in their 
turn, fresh from the losses and griefs of the conquest, 
would have suspected its motives, would have been unable 
to understand its Anglo-Saxon methods, and would have 
left it to its work of treating them unfairly. Unjust land 
laws would have been passed, infringements on vested rights 
would have been inevitable, and in after time appeals to 
the United States authority, together with the coming of 
the new immigration, would have involved all in a fearful 
chaos, which we may shudder to contemplate even in fancy. 
Yet " Paisano " did not stand alone among the pioneers of 
the interregnum in his desires and in his plans. That such 
plans made no appearance in the Constitutional Conven- 
tion of 1849 is due to the wholly changed situation of the 
moment, and to the pressing business before the Con- 
vention. 

But if things appeared thus to the comparatively small 



AN EPISODE OF EARLY CALIFORNIA LIFE. 309 

group of Americans in the dawn of our life here, even 
before the gold discovery, how long should this complex 
spider web of land- titles, wherewith a Californian custom or 
caprice had covered a great part of the Territory, outlast the 
trampling of the busy newcomers ? Who should resist these 
strange men ? The slowly moving processes of the courts 
how could they, in time, check the rapacity of American 
settlers before the mischief should once for all be done, and 
the memory of these land-titles buried under an almost uni- 
versal predatory disregard of them, which would make the 
recovery of the land by its legal owners too expensive an 
undertaking to be even thought of ? The answer to this 
question suggests at once how, amid all the injustice of our 
treatment of Californian land-owners, our whole history 
has illustrated the enormous vitality of formally lawful 
ownership in land. Yes, this delicate web, that our strength 
could seemingly so easily have trampled out of existence 
at once, became soon an iron net. The more we struggled 
with it, the more we became involved in its meshes. Infi- 
nitely more have we suffered in trying to escape from it, 
than we should have suffered had we never made a strug- 
gle. Infinitely more sorrow and money and blood has it 
cost us to try to get rid of our old obligations to the Cali- 
fornian land-owners, than it would have cost us to grant 
them all their original demands, just and unjust, at once. 
Doubt, insecurity, retarded progress, litigation without end, 
hatred, destruction of property, expenditure of money, 
bloodshed : all these have resulted for us from the fact 
that we tried as much as we did to defraud these Calif or- 
nians of the rights which we guaranteed to them at the mo- 
ment of the conquest And in the end, with all our toil, 
we escaped not from the net, and it binds our land-seekers 
still. But how all this wonder came about is a long story, 
indeed, whereof the squatter riot of 1850 forms but a small 
part 



310 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

At all events, however, the critical character of the 
situation of Californian land-owners at the moment of the 
coming of the gold-seekers appears plain. That all the 
rights of the Californians should ultimately be respected 
was, indeed, in view of our rapacious Anglo-Saxon land- 
hunger, and of our national bigotry in dealing with Span- 
ish-Americans, impossible. But there were still two courses 
that our population might take with regard to the land. 
One would be the just-mentioned simple plan of a universal 
squatters' conspiracy. Had we agreed to disregard the 
land-titles by a sort of popular fiat, then, ere the courts 
could be appealed to and the method of settling the land- 
titles ordained by Congress, the disregard of the claims of 
the natives might have gone so far in many places as to 
render any general restitution too expensive a luxury to be 
profitable. This procedure would have been analogous to 
that fashion of dealing with Indian reservations to which 
our honest settlers have frequently resorted. Atrociously 
wicked as such a conspiracy would have been, we ourselves, 
as has been suggested above, should have been in the long- 
run the greatest sufferers, because the conspiracy could not 
have been successful enough to preserve us from fearful con- 
fusion of titles from litigation and warfare without end. 
Yet this course, as we shall see, was practically the course 
proposed by the Sacramento squatters of 1850, and for a 
time the balance hesitated between the choice of this and of 
the other course. The other course we actually adopted, 
and it was indeed the one peculiarly fitted to express just 
our national meanness and love of good order in one. 
This was the plan of legal recognition and equally legal 
spoliation of the Californians ; a plan for which, indeed, 
no one man is responsible, since the cooperation of the 
community at large was needed, and obtained to make the 
Land- Act of 1851 an instrument for evil and not for good. 
The devil's instrument it actually proved to be, by our 



AN EPISODE OP EARLY CALIFORNIA LIFE. 31 1 

friendly cooperation, and we have got our full share of the 
devil's wages of trouble for our ready use of it But bad as 
this second course was, it was far better than the first, as in 
general the meanness and good order of an Anglo-Saxon 
community of money-seekers produce better results than 
the bolder rapacity and less legal brutality of certain other 
conquering and overbearing races. 

This struggle, then, resulting in the triumph of good 
order over anarchy, we are here to follow in a particular 
instance. The legalized meanness that was to take the 
place of open rebellion disappears in the background, as 
we examine the immediate incidents of the struggle, and 
we almost forget what was to follow, in our interest in the 
moment. Let us rejoice as we can in an incident that 
shows us what, amid all our folly and weakness, is the real 
strength of our national character, and the real ground for 
trust in its higher future development 

II. 

In the winter of 1849-'50, that winter of tedium, of rain, 
of mud, and of flood, the trouble began. The only con- 
temporary record tliat I know bearing upon this contro- 
versy in that time, I did not mention above, because it is 
so brief and imperfect. Bayard Taylor, then travelling as 
correspondent for the New York Tribune, had his attention 
attracted by the meetings of malcontents on the banks of 
the Sacramento. They were landless men, and they could 
not see why. These people, Taylor tells us,* " were located 
on the vacant lots which had been surveyed by the original 
owners of the town, and were by them sold to others. The 
emigrants, who supposed that the land belonged of right to 
the United States, boldly declared their intention of retain- 

* Bayard Taylor, Eldorado (in hU Works, Household Edition), chap, 
javi, p. 279. 



312 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

ing possession of it. Each man voted himself a lot, defying 
the threats and remonstrances of the rightful owners. The 
town was greatly agitated for a time by these disputes; 
meetings were held by both parties, and the spirit of hos- 
tility ran to high pitch. At the time of my leaving the 
country, the matter was still unsettled ; but the flood which 
occurred soon after, by sweeping both squatters and specu- 
lators off the ground, balanced accounts and left the field 
clear for a new start." 

The papers of the following spring and summer refer a 
few times to these meetings. Taylor was wrong in suppos- 
ing that the affair was to be ended in any fashion by the 
flood. More water does not make an Anglo-Saxon want 
less land, and this flood of 1850 itself formed a curious 
part of the squatter's pretended chain of argument a little 
later, as we shall see. Much more efficacious in tempora- 
rily quelling the anger of the landless men was the happy 
but deceitful beginning of the spring of 1850. Early fair 
weather sent hundreds to the mines, and put everybody 
into temporary good humor. Arguments gave place to 
hopes, and the landless men hunted in the mountains for 
the gold that Providence had deposited for the sake of fill- 
ing just their pockets. 

The intentions of Providence included, however, some 
late rains that spring. The streams would not fall, mining 
was delayed, provisions were exhausted in some of the 
mining eamps, and a good many of the landless men went 
back to that city where they owned no land, abandoning 
their destined fortunes in the mountains, and turning their 
attention afresh to those ever-charming questions about the 
inalienable rights of men to a jolly time and a bit of land. 
And then the trouble began to gather in earnest ; although, 
to be sure, in that busy society it occupied a great place in 
the public attention only by fits and starts. The growth of 
the evil seems to have been steadier than the popular notion 



AN EPISODE OF EARLY CALIFORNIA LIFE. 313 

of its character and magnitude. But let us turn for an 
instant to glance at the general social condition of the city 
that was to pass through this trial. 

The Sacramento Transcript, in its early numbers in 
the spring of 1850, well expresses the cheerful side of the 
whole life of the early days. The New California world is 
so full of wonders, and the soul of the brave man is so full 
of youth and hope ! Mr. F. C. Ewer, the joint editor 
with Mr. G. Kenyon Fitch, is a person of just the sort to 
voice this spirit of audacity, and of delight in life. " The 
opening of a new paper," he says (in No. 1 of the Tran- 
script, April 1, 1850, absit omen), " is like the planting of a 
tree. The hopes of many hearts cluster around it ... In the 
covert of its leaves all pure principles and high aims should 
find a home." As for the city, he tells us in the same issue, 
everything is looking well for its future. The weather is 
becoming settled, business activity is increasing, substantial 
buildings are springing up, health " reigns in our midst." 
The news from the mines is good. There is Murderers' 
Bar, for instance. Late reports make " its richness truly 
surprising " ; two ounces per day's work of a man for from 
one hundred to one hundred and fifty workers. To be 
sure, however, there has been a great rise in the water, and 
a large portion of those holding leads have been obliged 
to suspend operations. But all that is a matter of time. 
When one turns from the contemplation of the mines 
to the contemplation of the general condition of the 
country at large, one is struck with awe ; for then one 
has to reflect on what the great American mind has 
already done. "Never has a country been more orderly, 
never has property been held more inviolable, or life more 
sacred, than in California for the last twelve or fourteen 
months." (Editorial, April 20.) " Is it strange, then, that 
this feeling of self-reliance should be so strong and broad- 
cast in the land ? With a country so rich in resources so 



314 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

blest in a people to manage it the future destiny of Cali- 
fornia is one of the sublimest subjects for contemplation 
that can be presented to the mind/ 1 (Id.) All this sub- 
limity is, of course, quite consistent with occasional items 
about affrays and robberies of a somewhat primitive sort 
here and there in the sublime country ; but such things do 
not decrease one's rapture. Surely "bliss was it in that 
dawn to be alive," and Mr. Ewer and Mr. Fitch were the 
generous youth to whom " to be young was heaven." 

In such a good humor one finds, of course, time to write 
glowing accounts of the wondrously good society of Sacra- 
mento, of the great ball that those charming belles at- 
tended ; that ball whose character was so select that every 
gentleman had to send in beforehand to the committee his 
application for tickets for himself and for the fair lady 
whom he intended to take, and had to buy a separate, pre- 
sumably non-transferable, ticket for her ; the ball, whose 
brilliancy and high character, when the great evening 
came, surprised even Mr. Ewer, in this delightful wilder- 
ness of the Sacramento Valley. Nor in such a period does 
one forget the fine arts of music and poetry. One's heaven- 
favored city is visited by Henri Herz, indubitably the 
greatest of living pianists, "every lineament" of whose 
face " marks the genius," and who is therefore comparable 
in this respect to Daniel Webster, to Keats, to Beethoven, 
and to Longfellow (see the Transcript of April 20). Herz 
plays the sublimest of music to an enraptured audience : 
"The Last Rose of Summer," "The Carnival of Venice," 
and, greatest of all, his own grand " Voyage Musicale," 
actually a medley of national songs, with passages of his 
own composition, illustrating the Rhine, the castles, the 
sunny vales of Bohemia, the Napoleonic wars, a storm at 
sea, and other similarly obvious and familiar experiences, 
even on unto his " California Polka," wherewith he con- 
cludes ! It is divine, this artistic experience, and the story 



AN EPISODE OP EARLY CALIFORNIA LIFE. 315 

of it fills columns of the generous little paper. Further- 
more, one writes even sonnets, and having first printed 
them, one later finds occasion to quote them one's self, 
since, after all, one's own newspaper is a good place to 
be quoted in. The intellectual life of Sacramento is 
thus at the highest point. What shall such a community 
fear? 

As for the Placer Times, that paper, a little later, calls 
attention to the stability of Sacramento conditions. San 
Francisco is a restless place, but for Sacramento, the specu- 
lative era is past. Solid business, permanent and steady 
growth, now begin. All this, you must remember, is in the 
spring of 1850. The whole picture is really an enchanting 
one ; and only a churl could fail to feel a quickened pulse- 
throb when he reads these generous and innocent outbursts 
of splendid courage in both the newspapers. Here are ener- 
gy, high aim, appreciation of every hint at things beautiful 
and good ; here is every element of promise, save any assur- 
ance of real steadfastness and wisdom. Are these qualities 
truly present ? For the trial is coming, and by another year 
these two papers will be as realistic and commonplace as 
you please. Will their purposes and those of the commu- 
nity gain in wisdom and in tried purity what they must 
lose of the bloom and beauty of a childlike delight in 

novelty ? 

ill. 

On April 23, 1850, there appears in the Transcript, for 
the first time, an advertisement that announces as "just 
published," and now for sale, a " translation of the papers 
respecting the grant made by Governor Alvarado to ' Mr. 
Augustus Sutter,' showing that said grant does not extend 
any further south than the mouth of Feather River, and, 
therefore, of course, does not embrace Sacramento City." 
This document could be bought for fifty cents. I have never 
seen the pamphlet itself, which contained some comments 



316 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

that would now have much interest ; but the course of its 
argument, at all events, when taken together, with the 
other popular squatter talk of the time, is made plain by 
subsequent discussions in the newspapers. John Sutter, the 
squatters intend to show, has no claim, save, of course, as 
squatter himself, to the land on which Sacramento is built 
Fremont found him here; but then he was, for all that, 
just a squatter. For, behold, what becomes of his boasted 
grant, when you turn a keen American eye upon it ? In 
the first place, it is incomplete, since no evidence is pro- 
duced that the central Government in Mexico ever sanc- 
tioned it. Furthermore, it is informal, if you will insist 
upon legal technicalities at all. For we will let land specu- 
lators have all the law that they want, if it is law that they 
are talking about. The grant is to " Mr. Augustus Sutter." 
Is that the Sutter known to us as the great captain ? Still 
more, the grant is within a tract that is to have Feather 
River for its eastern boundary. Is the Feather River east 
of Sacramento ? Yet again, the grant is specially framed 
to exclude land overflowed in winter. Let the land specu- 
lators, who were lately driven off their precious possessions 
by the flood, read and ponder this provision. Can you float 
in boats over a grant that is carefully worded to exclude 
the overflowed tracts near the river ? Best of all. however, 
is the evidence of figures that cannot lie. Sutter's grant is 
not only too informal and ill-defined, but it is also far too 
formal and well-defined to afford the speculators any 
shadow of excuse for their claims. For the latitude of the 
tract granted is limited by the outside boundaries, recorded 
in the document. The southern boundary is, however, ex- 
pressly stated as latitude 38 41' 32". And this parallel is 
some miles north of the city, crossing the Sacramento River, 
in fact, not far above its junction with the Feather. This is 
conclusive. The inalienable rights of man are no longer 
to be resisted by means of such a title as this one. The 



AN EPISODE OP EARLY CALIFORNIA LIFE. 317 

public domain is free to all. And Sacramento is obviously 
updn the public domain. 

Such was the contention for which this pamphlet under- 
took to state the basis. Many a man has heard the old story 
repeated in lawsuits occurring years after that time. Early 
in the seventies the California Supreme Court Decisions 
contain a settlement on appeal of a suit in which the ap- 
pellant, resisting a title in the city of Sacramento derived 
from the Sutler grant, had managed still, after all State and 
national decisions, to present as a forlorn hope the old argu- 
ment about the latitudes. The argument was, of course, at 
that date promptly rejected ; but one watches with interest 
the reptilian tenacity of its venomous life. The whole 
case had received, as late as 1864,* the honor of restatement 
in the records of the United States Supreme Court, by the 
help of Attorney -General Black, who never missed an oppor- 
tunity of abusing a Californian Land Grant title. The court, 
indeed, had failed to recognize the force of the argument 

And yet, even in 1850, this chain of squatter reasoning 
seems as one reads it to express rather a genuine American 
humor than any sincere opinion of anybody's. It is so 
plain that the squatter, annoyed by the show of legal right 
made by the other side, has determined in a fit of half- 
amused vexation to give the "speculators" all the law 
they want "hot and heavy." It is so plain, too, that what 
he really means is to assert his right to make game of any 
Mexican title, and to take up land wherever he wants it 
For every item of his contention is a mere quibble, which 
would have been harmless enough, no doubt in court pro- 
ceedings, but which at such a moment when urged with a 
view to disturbing the public mind of an established com- 
munity, could easily become a very dangerous incitement 
to disorder and violence. Every Californian land-title had, 

United States Reports, 8 Wallace, 675. 



318 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

of course, to be interpreted with reference to the conditions 
under which it was given. Substantial rights could not be 
left at the mercy of quibbles about matters of detail. A 
bona fide grant to Sutter, intended to include his " establish- 
ment at New Helvetia," could not be ignored because its 
boundaries were awkwardly described, nor because a sur- 
veyor, with poor and primitive instruments, had blundered 
about the latitude both of the northern and of the southern 
boundary, after Butter's petition had described both of them 
with sufficient clearness, by the natural landmarks. No- 
body, for instance, could have pretended that by Sutter's 
Buttes, the " Tres Picas " of the grant, must be meant some 
imaginary point out in the plains to the north, merely be- 
cause the surveyor, Vioget, had erred about the latitude of 
the peaks, so that the grant put them just north of the north- 
ern outside boundary, while the line of latitude named 
for that boundary actually ran north of those familiar land- 
marks themselves. The Tres Picos formed an evidence of 
the true northern boundary of the tract in question, that 
was worth far more than Vioget 's figures ; for the peaks 
are visible and the lines of latitude are " merely conven- 
tional signs," after all. The figures did in fact lie, and 
Vioget this time, so soon as the trouble had begun, frankly 
confessed his old error in an affidavit signed by him at San 
Francisco. There had been a constant error in latitude in 
his work, he averred, and by the southern boundary in lati- 
tude 38 41' 32" he had meant " the estimated latitude of a 
point of land on the east bank of the Sacramento River, on 
the high ground south of the lagunas, below a town now 
called Sutter and distant about four and one half miles in a 
southerly direction from Sutter's fort."* As for the argu- 
ment about the exclusion of the overflowed lands, that 
capped the climax of the squatter humor. The flood was, 

* Transcript for June 8 ; see also Placer Times of the same date. 



AN EPISODE OF EARLY CALIFORNIA LIFE. 319 

indeed, a land-speculator whom no one could gainsay, and 
to its writ of ejectment nobody made successful resistance. 
But then, if one calls his beloved tract of firm land swamp- 
land, because a great flood has driven him from it, one is 
understood to be amusing himself with hard words. 

Here, then, was the outer armor in which the squatter 
doctrine encased itself. Its inner life was a very different 
thing. " Captain Sutter," said a squatter correspondent of 
the Placer Times, u settles this question himself, by plainly 
declaring with his own lips that he has no title to this 
place, but he hopes Congress will give him one." These 
words of the correspondent are false on their face, but they 
express truthfully enough the spirit of the squatter con- 
tention. Sutter " has" indeed, as yet no patent from the 
United States and he " hopes " that Congress will pass some 
law that will protect his right to his land. So much is true. 
But when a squatter interprets Sutler's position as this cor- 
respondent does, he plainly means that there are at present 
no legally valid Mexican land-titles in the country, since 
Congress, the representative of the conquering power, has 
so far passed no law confirming those titles. The squatter 
wants, then, to make out that Mexican land-grants, or at 
the very least, all in any wise imperfect or informal grants, 
have in some fashion lapsed with the conquest ; and that in 
a proper legal sense the owners of these grants are no better 
than squatters themselves, unless Congress shall do what 
they " hope" and shall pass some act to give them back the 
land that they used to own before the conquest That the 
squatters somehow held this strange idea about the grants, is 
to my mind pretty plain. The big Mexican grant was to 
them obviously an un-American institution, a creation of a 
benighted people. What was the good of the conquest, if it 
did not make our enlightened American ideas paramount in 
the country f Unless, then. Congress, by some freak, should 
restore to these rapacious speculators their old benighted 
22 



320 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

legal status, they would have no land. Meanwhile, of 
course, the settlers were to be as well off as the others. So 
their thoughts ran. 

Intelligent men could hold this view only in case they 
had already deliberately determined that the new-coming 
population, as such, ought to have the chief legal rights in 
the country. This view was, after all, a very obvious one. 
Providence, you see, and manifest destiny were understood 
in those days to be on our side, and absolutely opposed to the 
base Mexican. To Providence the voyagers on the way 
to California had appealed at Panama, when they called on 
General Persifer Smith to make his famous proclamation 
excluding foreigners from the Californian mines. " Provi- 
dence," they in effect declared, " has preserved the treasures 
of those gold-fields all through these years of priestcraft 
and ignorance in California, for us Americans. Let the 
Government protect us now." * Providence is known to 
be opposed to every form of oppression ; and grabbing 
eleven leagues of land is a great oppression. And so the 
worthlessness of Mexican land-titles is evident. 

Of course the squatters would have disclaimed very 
generally so naked a statement as this of their position. 
But when we read in one squatter's card t that " surely Sut- 
ter's grant does not entitle to a monopoly of all the lands 
in California, which were purchased by the treasure of the 
whole nation, and by no small amount of the best blood 
that ever course'd or ran through American veins," the 
same writer's formal assurance that Sutter ought to have his 
eleven leagues whenever they can be found and duly sur- 
veyed, cannot blind us to the true spirit of the argument. 
What has this " best blood " to do with the Sutter grant ? 
The connection in the writer's mind is only too obvious. 

* See the Panama Star, in the early part of 1849. 
t Transcript, June 21, 1850. 



AN EPISODE OP EARLY CALIFORNIA LIFE. 321 

He means that the " best blood " won for us a right to har- 
ass great land-owners. In another of these expressions of 
squatter opinion I have found the assertion that the land- 
speculators stand on a supposed old Mexican legal right of 
such as themselves to take up the whole territory of Cali- 
fornia, in sections of eleven leagues each, by some sort of 
Mexican preemption. If a squatter persists in understand- 
ing the land-owner's position in this way, his contempt for 
it is as natural as his wilful determination to make game of 
all native Californian claims is obvious. 

But possibly the squatters would not have shown, and 
in fact would not have developed, their doctrine as fully 
as they in the end did, had not events hastened on a crisis. 
With mere argument no squatter was content He was a 
squatter, not because he thoretically assailed Sutler's title, 
but because he actually squatted on land that belonged to 
somebody else. In order to do this successfully, the squat- 
ters combined into a " Settler's Association." They em- 
ployed a surveyor and issued to their members " squatter- 
titles," which were simply receipts given by the surveyor, 
who was also recorder of the Association, each certifying 
that A. B. had paid the regular fee for the mapping out of 
a certain vacant lot of land, 40 x 160, within the limits of 
the town of Sacramento. The receipts have the motto, 
"The public domain is free to all."* The Association 
announced its readiness to insist, by its combined force, 
upon the rights of its members. 

A member, who has already been quoted, wrote to the 
Placer Times, that " with the Sutter men there has been 
and is now money and power, and some of them are improv- 
ing every opportunity to trouble and oppress the peaceable, 
hard-working, order-loving, and law-abiding settler, which, 
in the absence of the mass of the people in the mines, they 

* PUcer Times, June 7th. 



322 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

do with comparative impunity." The italics are his own. 
The letter concluded with an assurance that the settlers 
were organized to maintain what "country, nature, and 
God " had given to them. The mention of the " absence of 
the people in the mines " is very characteristic of the pur- 
poses of the squatters ; and the reference to " country, na- 
ture, and God " illustrates once more the spirit of the move- 
ment 

As for this " absence of the people," the squatters plain- 
ly hoped for much in the way of actual aid from the min- 
ing population, whenever it should return for another rainy 
season. That system of land-tenure which was so healthful 
in the mining districts, was not just the best school for 
teaching a proper respect in the presence of Mexican land 
grants. Colonel Fremont's later experience in the matter 
of the Mariposa grant proved that clearly enough. And 
not only the miners, but also the newly arriving emigrants, 
were expected to help the squatter interest, and to over- 
whelm the speculators. In an editorial on squatterism the 
Placer Times * expressed not ill-founded fears, as follows : 
"Reckless of all principle," it said, the squatters "have de- 
termined to risk all hopes upon the chances of an immedi- 
ate and combined effort, as upon the hazard of a die." 
" They hope," the editorial continued, " to overcome all re- 
sistance for the moment, and to get the land. Then they 
will have a colorable show of title ; surveys and associated 
action of other sorts will make the thing look formal ; and 
there will be the law's delay. Then the immigration of 
strangers from the plains will come in with the autumn, 
undisciplined by our system, untutored by our customs, ig- 
norant of our laws, and wholly actuated by a desire for 
rapid and enlarged accumulation." These will finish the 
mischief. "Through their thronging ranks the apostles of 

* Weekly edition, June 29th. 



AN EPISODE OF EARLY CALIFORNIA LIFE. 323 

squatterism " will " penetrate far and wide, disseminating 
radical and subversive doctrines, and contending for an 
indiscriminate ownership of property by the whole people, 
qualified only by a right of possession in the actual pos- 
sessor." The editor, of course, considered a conflict immi- 
nent when he wrote these words. And what makes me 
think his notion of the significance of the squatter move- 
ment correct, is, in addition to what has been mentioned 
above, the fact that the squatters continued to assert their 
claims more and more violently and publicly from this 
time till the end, but never took any pains to allay the 
very natural alarm that they had thus aroused as to their 
intentions. The movement was plainly an agrarian and 
ultra- American movement, opposed to all great land own- 
ers, and especially to all these Mexican grantees.* 

The appeal quoted above, to " nature, country, and 
God," is also, as I have said, characteristic of the spirit of 
the movement. The writer of the letter in question is very 
probably no other than the distinguished squatter-leader, 
Doctor Charles Robinson himself, a man to whom the move- 
ment seems to have owed nearly all its ability. And when 
we speak of Doctor Robinson, we have to do with no insig- 
nificant demagogue or unprincipled advocate of wicked- 
ness, but with a high-minded and conscientious man, who 
chanced just then to be in the devil's service, but who served 
the devil honestly, thoughtfully, and, so. far as he could, 
dutifully, believing him to be an angel of light This 
future Free-Soil Governor of Kansas, this cautious, clear- 
headed, and vigorous anti-slavery champion of the trou- 



One of the Tribune oquatter correspondent* (see Tribune for October 
8, 1850) says, after the crinis, that, owing to the crowd in California, people 
are much in one another's way ; but, he adds, " of necessity the right* of 
the majority are mot worthy of respect, and ought to be maintained." 
Thin is the old story of robbers. 



324 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

blous days before the war. who has since survived so many 
bitter quarrels with old foes and old friends, to enjoy, now 
at last, his peaceful age at his home in Lawrence, Kansas, 
is not a man of whom one may speak with contempt, how- 
ever serious his error in Sacramento may seem. He was a 
proper hero for this tragic comedy, and " nature, country, 
and God " were his guiding ideals. Only one must under- 
stand the character that these slightly vague ideals seem 
to have assumed in his mind. He was a newcomer of 1849, 
and hailed from Fitchburg, Massachusetts. He was a col- 
lege graduate, had studied medicine, had afterwards re- 
belled against the technicalities of the code of his local 
association, and had become an independent practitioner. 
His friends and interests, as his whole subsequent career 
showed, were with the party of the cultivated New England 
Radicals of that day. And these cultivated Radicals of the 
anti-slavery generation, and especially of Massachusetts, 
were a type in which an impartial posterity will take a 
huge delight; for they combined so characteristically 
shrewdness, insight, devoutness, vanity, idealism, and self- 
worship. To speak of them, of course, in the rough, and as 
a mass, not distinguishing the leaders from the rank and 
file, nor blaspheming the greater names, they were usually 
believers in quite abstract ideals ; men who knew how to 
meet God "in the bush" whenever they wanted, and so 
avoided him in the mart and in the crowded street ; men 
who had " dwelt cheek by jowl, since the day " they were 
" born, with the Infinite Soul," and whose relations with 
him were like those of any man with his own private 
property. This Infinite that they worshipped was, however, 
in his relations to the rest of the world, too often rather 
abstract, a Dens absconditits, who was as remote from the 
imperfections and absurdities of the individual laws and pro- 
cesses of human society, as he was near to the hearts of his 
chosen worshippers. From him they got a so-called Higher 



AN EPISODE OF EARLY CALIFORNIA LIFE. 325 

Law. As it was ideal, and, like its author, very abstract, it 
was far above the erring laws of men, and it therefore re- 
lieved its obedient servants from all entangling earthly 
allegiances. If the constitution upon which our sinful 
national existence depended, and upon which our only hope 
of better things also depended, was contradicted by this 
Higher Law, then the constitution was a " league with hell," 
and anybody could set up for himself, and he and the 
Infinite might carry on a government of their own. 

These Radicals were, indeed, of the greatest value to our 
country. To a wicked and corrupt generation they preached 
the gospel of a pure idealism fervently and effectively. If 
our generation does not produce just such men, it is because 
the best men of our time have learned from them, and have 
absorbed their fervent and lofty idealism into a less abstract 
and a yet purer doctrine. The true notion, as we all. of 
course, have heard, is. that there is an ideal of personal and 
social perfection far above our natural sinful ways, and 
indeed revealed to us by the agencies of spiritual life, and 
not by baser worldly means, but not on that account to be 
found or served by separating ourselves, or our lives, or our 
private judgments, from the social order, nor by rebelling 
against this whole frame of human error and excellence. 
This divine ideal is partly and haltingly realized in just 
these erring social laws for instance, in the land laws of 
California and we have to struggle in and for the actual 
social order, and cannot hope to reach the divine by sulk- 
ing in the bush, or by crying in the streets about our pri- 
vate and personal Higher Law, nor by worshipping any mere 
abstraction. That patient loyalty to the actual social order 
is the great reformer's first duty ; that a service of just this 
erring humanity, with its imperfect and yet beautiful sys- 
tem of delicate and highly organized relationships, is the 
beet service that a man can render to the Ideal . that he is 
the best idealist who casts away as both unreal and uuideal 



326 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

the vain private imaginings of his own weak brain, when 
ever he catches a glimpse of any higher and wider truth ; 
all this lesson we, like other peoples and generations, have 
to study and learn. The Transcendentalists, by their very 
extravagances, have helped us towards this goal ; but we 
must be pardoned if we learn from them with some little 
amusement. For when we are amused at them, we are 
amused at ourselves, since only by these very extravagances 
in our own experience do we ever learn to be genuine and 
sensible idealists. 

Well, Doctor Robinson, also, had evidently learned 
much, in his own way, from teachers of this school. The 
complex and wearisome details of Spanish Law plainly do 
not interest him, since he is at home in the divine Higher 
Law. Concrete rights of rapacious land speculators in Sac- 
ramento are unworthy of the attention of one who sees so 
clearly into the abstract rights of Man. God is not in the 
Sutter grant, that is plain. It is the mission of the squatters 
to introduce the divine justice into California: no absurd 
justice that depends upon erroneous lines of latitude, and 
establishments at New Helvetia, and other like blundering 
details of dark Spanish days, but the justice that can be ex- 
pressed in grand abstract formulae, and that will hear of no 
less arbiter than the United States Supreme Court at the 
very nearest, and is quite independent of local courts and 
processes. 

For the rest, Doctor Robinson added to his idealism the 
aforesaid Yankee shrewdness, and to his trust in God con- 
siderable ingenuity in raising funds to keep the squatter 
association at work. He wrote well and spoke well. He 
was thoroughly in earnest, and his motives seem to me 
above any suspicion of personal greed. He made out of 
this squatter movement a thing of real power, and was, for 
the time, a very dangerous man. 

Thus led and moved, the squatter association might 



AN EPISODE OP EARLY CALIFORNIA LIFE. 327 

easily have become the center of a general revolutionary 
movement of the sort above described. All depended on 
the tact of the Sacramento community in dealing with it 
If the affair came to open bloodshed, the public sentiment 
aroused would depend very much upon where the fault of 
the first violence was judged to lie. The mass of people 
throughout the State looked on such quarrels, so long as 
they avoided open warfare, with a mixture of amusement, 
vexation, and indifference. Amusement they felt in watch- 
ing any moderate quarrel ; vexation they felt with all these 
incomprehensible laud grants, that covered so much good 
land and made so many people trip ; and indifference largely 
mingled with it all, at the thought of home, and of the near 
fortune that would soon relieve the average Californian 
from all the accursed responsibilities of this maddening and 
fascinating country. But should the "land speculators 11 
seem the aggressors, should the squatters come to be looked 
upon as an oppressed band of honest poor men, beaten and 
murdered by high-handed and greedy men of wealth, then 
Robinson might become a hero, and the squatter movement, 
under his leadership, might have the whole sympathetic 
American public at its back, and the consequences we can 
hardly estimate. 

How did the community, as represented by its generous- 
hearted papers, meet the crisis ? Both these newspapers of 
Sacramento were, as the reader sees, editorially opposed to 
the squatters. They bandied back and forth accusations of 
lukewarmness in this opposition. But in July the Tran- 
script, not formally changing its attitude, still began to give 
good reason for the accusation that it was a little disposed 
to favor squatterism. For, while it entirely ceased editorial 
comment, it began to print lengthy and very readable ac- 
counts of the squatter meetings, prepared, it is said, by a 
reporter who was himself a squatter, thus giving the squat- 
ters just the help with the disinterested public that they 



328 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

desired, and supplying for the historical student some amus- 
ing- material.* By the beginning of July the arguments 
were all in ; the time for free abuse and vigorous action had 
come. Yet it is just then that this paper, whose motives 
were but yesterday so pure and lofty, shows much more of 
its good humor than of its wisdom, and so actually abets 
the squatter movement. 

IV. 

The reader needs at this point no assurance that the 
quarrel was quite beyond any chance of timely settlement 
by an authoritative trial of the Sutter title itself. Such a 
trial was, of course, just what the squatters themselves were 
anxious to await. It was on the impossibility of any imme- 
diate and final judicial settlement that their whole move- 
ment depended. Mr. William Carey Jones's famous report 
on California Land Titles reached the State only during the 
very time of this controversy. Congress had, as yet, made 
no provision for the settlement of California Land Claims. 
The Supreme Court was a great way off ; hence the vehe- 
mence and the piety of squatter appeals to God and the 
Supreme Court. Regular settlement being thus out of the 
question, some more summary process was necessary to pro- 
tect the rights of land-owners. In the first session of the 
State Legislature, which had taken place early in this year, 
the landed interest seems to have been fairly strong, appar- 
ently by virtue of those private compromises, which one can 
trace through the history of the Constitutional Convention 
at Monterey, and which had been intended both to meet the 
political exigencies of the moment, and to further the per- 
sonal ambitions of two or three men. The result had been 

* See the bitter letter to the editor of the Placer Times just after the 
crisis, published Aug. 16th. This letter may probably be trusted as to 
this one fact. 



AN EPISODE OF EARLY CALIFORNIA LIFE. 329 

the establishment in California of a procedure already well 
known elsewhere. The "Act Concerning Forcible Entry 
and Unlawful Detainer" provided a summary process for 
ejecting any forcible trespasser upon the land of a previous 
peaceable occupant, who had himself had any color of right 
This summary process was not to be resorted to in case the 
question of title properly entered into the evidence intro- 
duced in defense by the supposed trespasser, and the pro- 
cedure was no substitute for an action of ejectment It was 
intended to defend a peaceable possessor of land from vio- 
lent dispossession, even in case the assailant happened to 
have rights that would in the end prove on final trial supe- 
rior. The act, therefore, was well able to meet the case of 
the naked trespasser, or squatter, who, without pretense of 
title, took possession of land that was previously in the 
peaceable possession of anybody. The act provided for his 
ejection, with the addition of penalties ; and its framers had, 
of course, no intention to make it any substitute for a judi- 
cial determination of title. 

To this act some of the land-owners of Sacramento now 
appealed for help. Moreover, as they were in control of the 
city council, they proceeded to pass, amid the furious pro- 
tests of the squatters, a municipal ordinance, which in the 
end was indeed practically unenforced, forbidding any one, 
under serious penalties, to erect tents, or shanties, or houses, 
or to heap lumber or other encumbrances, upon any vacant 
lot belonging to a private person, or upon any public street 
The land-owners also formed a " Law and Order Associa- 
tion,' 1 and printed in the papers a notice of their intention 
to defend to the last their property under the Sutter title. 
They began to drill companies of militia. A few personal 
encounters took place in various vacant lots, where owners 
tried to prevent the erection of fences or shanties. Various 
processes were served upon squatters, and executed. The 
squatter association itself plainly suffered a good deal from 



330 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

the internal jealousies or from the mutual indifference of its 
members. Only the ardor of Doctor Robinson prevented an 
utter failure of its organization long before the crisis. In 
the latter part of June, and for some time in July, the move- 
ment fell into the background of public attention. The 
Transcript helped it out again into prominence. But the 
squatters themselves longed for a newspaper of their own, 
and sent for a press and type. They were accused, mean- 
while, of threats to fire the town in case their cause was put 
down. But, after all, their best chance of immediate suc- 
cess lay in raising money to resist the suits brought against 
them ; and to this course Doctor Robinson, although he had 
conscientious scruples about the authority of any California 
law, urged his followers as to the most expedient present 
device. It is at this point that the meetings of the squatters 
begin to receive lengthy reports. 

At a meeting reported in the Transcript for July 2d, one 
squatter objected to going to law. It was unnecessary, he 
said; for this whole thing of the Sutter title was illegal. 
He was answered by one Mr. Milligan, to the effect that 
the object was to keep their enemies at bay until the ques- 
tion could be brought before a legal tribunal, where justice 
could be done. Mr. Milligan was then sent about in the 
country to the "brother squatters," who were so numerous 
near Sacramento, for subscriptions. In a meeting narrated 
in the Transcript for July 4th, he reported imperfect success. 
Some of the brethren were not at home ; one told the story 
about the man who got rich by minding his own business ; 
few had money to spare. Doctor Robinson had some re- 
assuring remarks in reply to this report, and Mr. Milligan 
himself then made an eloquent speech. " The squatters 
were men of firmness ; their cause had reached the Stales ; 
they had many hearty sympathizers on the Atlantic shores." 
His thoughts became yet wider in their sweep, as he dwelt 
on the duty of never yielding to oppression. " He saw, a 



AN EPISODE OP EARLY CALIFORNIA LIFE. 331 

few days ago, a crowd of Chinese emigrants in this land ; 
he hoped to be able to send through these people the intelli- 
gence to the Celestial Empire that the Emperor don't own 
all the laud in the world, and so he hoped the light would 
soon shine in Calcutta throughout India, and Bengal, and 
Botany Bay, and lift up the cloud of moral darkness and 
rank oppression." This Oriental enthusiasm reads very 
delightfully in these days, and is worth preserving. 

By the time of the meeting of July 24th, which was held 
in " Herkimer Hall," and was reported in the Transcript of 
the 25th, the talk was a little less world-embracing, and the 
feeling keener. Some land-owners had taken the law into 
their own hands, and had been tearing down a fence erected 
by squatters. Doctor Robinson announced that he would 
help to put up that fence next day, whereupon rose Mr. Mc- 
Clatchy* He was a law-abiding citizen, but would submit 
to no injustice. He would rather fight than collect sub- 
scriptions any day. If land-owners wanted to fight let them 
fight, and the devil take the hindmost " Let us put up all 
the fences pulled down, and let us put up all the men who 
pulled them down." This last suggestion was greeted with 
great applause and stamping. 

Doctor Robinson introduced resolutions declaring, among 
other strong words, that " if the bail of an arrested squatter 
be refused simply because the bondsman is not a land-holder 
under Captain Sutter, we shall consider all executions issued 
in consequence thereof as acts of illegal force, and shall 
act accordingly." In urging his resolutions, he pointed out 
how the land speculators' doctrine about land grants would 
certainly result in the oppression of the poor man all over 



* Jamea McClatchy, author of the March -J.'.th letter to the New York 
Tribune, had previounly boon Mtociated with land-reform movement* in 
York State. He, too, knew the Higher Law by heart, and was a man 
of some ability. 



332 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

California. " Was this right ? Was it a blessing ? If so, 
Ireland was blessed, and all other oppressed countries. 
Would any Anglo-Saxon endure this ? The Southern slave 
was not worse treated." Doctor Robinson dwelt on the low 
character of these speculators. Look at the mayor, at the 
councilmen, and the rest. "There were no great minds 
among them. And yet these were the men who claimed 
the land. Can such men be men of principle ? " He thought 
that " we should abide by all just laws, not unjust." 

Mr. McClatchy now pointed out that God's laws were 
above man's laws, and that God gave man the earth for his 
heritage. In this instance, however, the laws of our own 
land, whenever, of course, we could appeal to them in the 
Supreme Court, were surely on our side, and so seconded 
God's law. " If the land-holders," he said, winding up his 
philosophic train of thought, " act as they do, we shall be 
obliged to lick 'em." 

A Mr. Burke was proud to feel that by their language 
that evening they had already been violating those city or- 
dinances which forbade assemblages for unlawful ends. " A 
fig for their laws ; they have no laws." " Mr. Burke," says 
the report, " was game to the last all fight and was highly 
applauded." The resolutions were readily adopted, and the 
meeting adjourned in a state of fine enthusiasm. 

In the second week of August a case under the " Forci- 
ble Entry and Detainer Act " came before the County Court, 
Willis, Judge, on appeal from a justice's court of the city. 
The squatters' association appealed, on the ground that the 
plaintiff in the original suit had shown no true title to the 
land. The justice had decided that under the evidence the 
squatter in question was a naked trespasser, who made for 
himself no pretense of title, and that, therefore, in a trial 
under the act the question of title had not properly entered as 
part of the evidence at all. The appeal was made from this 
decision and was promptly dismissed. The squatters were 



AN EPISODE OP EARLY CALIFORNIA LIFE. 333 

furious. Sutler had no title, and a man was a squatter on the 
land for just that reason ; and yet when the courts were ap- 
pealed to for help in sustaining the settler they thus refused 
to hear the grounds of his plea, and proposed to eject him 
as a trespasser. Well, the United States courts could be 
appealed to some time. One could well afford to wait for 
them if only the process under the State act could be stayed, 
and the squatter left in peaceable possession meanwhile. To 
this end one must appeal to the State Supreme Court But 
alas ! Judge Willis, when asked in court, after he had ren- 
dered decision, for a stay of proceedings pending appeal to 
the State Supreme Court, replied, somewhat informally, in 
conversation with the attorneys, that it was not clear to him 
whether the act in question, or any other law, permitted ap- 
peal from the county court's decision in a case like this. 
He took the matter under advisement But the squatters 
present, in a fit of rage, misunderstood the judge's hesitat- 
ing remark. They rushed from the court to excited meet- 
ings outside, and spread abroad the news that Judge Willis 
had not only decided against them, but had decided that 
from him there was no appeal. Woe to such laws and to 
such judges ! The law betrays us. We will appeal to the 
Higher Law. The processes of the courts shall not be 
served! 

Doctor Robinson was not unequal to the emergency. At 
once he sent out notices calling a mass-meeting of " squat- 
ters and others interested," to take place the same evening, 
August 10th. It was Saturday, and when night came a 
large crowd of squatters, of land-owners, and of idlers, had 
gathered. The traditional leisure of Saturday night made 
a great part of the assembly as cheerful as it was eager for 
novelty and interested in this affair. Great numbers were 
there simply to see fair play ; and this general public, in 
their characteristically American good-humor, were quite 
unwilling to recognize any sort of seriousness in the occa- 



334 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

sion. These jolly onlookers interrupted the squatter orators, 
called for E. J. C. Kewen and Sara Brannan as representa- 
tives of the land-owners, listened to them awhile, interrupted 
them when the thing grew tedious, and enjoyed the utter 
confusion that for the time reigned on the platform. At 
length the crowd were ready for Doctor Robinson and his 
inevitable resolutions. He, for his part, was serious enough. 
He had been a moderate man, he said, but the time for mod- 
eration was past. He was ready to have his corpse left on 
his own bit of land ere he would yield his rights. Then he 
read his resolutions, which sufficiently denounced Judge 
Willis and the laws ; and thereafter he called for the sense 
of the meeting. Dissenting voices rang out, but the resolu- 
tions received a loud affirmative vote and were declared car- 
ried. The regular business of the meeting was now done ; 
but for a long time yet various ambitious speakers mounted 
the platform and sought to address the crowd, which amused 
itself by roaring at them or by watching them pushed from 
their high place. 

Next day Doctor Robinson was early at work drawing 
up in his own way a manifesto to express the sense of his 
party. It was a very able and reckless document. Robin- 
son had found an unanswerable fashion of stating the 
ground for devotion to the Higher Law as opposed to State 
Law. There was, the paper reminded the people, no true 
State here at all ; for Congress had not admitted California 
as yet, and it was still a mere Territory. What the Legisla- 
ture in San Jose had done was no law-making. It had passed 
some "rules" which had merely " advisory force." These 
were, some of them, manifestly unconstitutional and op- 
pressive. The act now in question was plainly of this na- 
ture. Worst of all, the courts organized by this advisory 
body now refused an appeal from their own decisions even 
to the Supreme Court of the State. Such a decision, thus 
cutting off an appeal on a grave question of title, that could 



AN EPISODE OP EARLY CALIFORNIA LIFE. 335 

in fact be settled only by the Supreme Court of the United 
States, was not to be endured. The settlers were done with 
such law that was no law. " The people in this community 
called settlers, and others who are friends of justice and hu- 
manity, in consideration of the above, have determined to 
disregard all decisions of our courts in land cases, and all 
summonses or executions by the sheriff, constable, or other 
officer of the present county or city touching this matter. 
They will regard the said officers as private citizens, as in 
the eyes of the Constitution they are, and hold them respon- 
sible accordingly." If, then, the document went on to say, 
the officers in question appealed to force, the settlers " have 
deliberately resolved to appeal to arms, and protect their 
sacred rights, if need be, with their lives." 

The confused assent of the Saturday night torchlight 
meeting to a manifesto of this sort, an assent such as the 
previous resolutions had gained, would have been worth 
very little. Where were the men and the arms ? Doctor 
Robinson was man enough himself to know what this sort 
of talk must require if it was to have meaning. But what 
he did he can best tell. In his tent, after the crisis, was 
found an unfinished letter to a friend in the East It was 
plainly never intended for the public eye, and may surely 
be accepted as a perfectly sincere statement The news- 
papers published it as soon as it was found, and from the 
Placer Times of August 15th I have it noted down. 

The date is Monday, the 12th of August. "Since writing 
you we have seen much and experienced much of an im- 
portant character, as well as much excitement . . . The 
County Judge on Saturday morning declared that from his 
decision there should be no appeal." Then the letter pro- 
ceeds to tell how the meeting was called, as narrated abore. 
The call " was responded to by both parties, and the specu- 
lators, as aforetime, attempted to talk against time. On the 
passage of a series of resolution* presented by your humble 
U 



330 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

servant, there were about three ayes to one nay, although 
the Transcript said that they were about equal. Sunday 
morning I drew up a manifesto, carried it to church, paid 
one dollar for preaching, helped them sing, showed it to a 
lawyer, to see if my position was correct legally, and pro- 
cured the printing of it in handbills and in the paper, after 
presenting it to a private meeting of friends for their ap- 
proval, which I addressed at some length. After a long talk 
for the purpose of comforting a gentleman just in from the 
plains, and who, the day before, had buried his wife, whom 
he loved most tenderly, and a few days previous to that had 
lost his son, I threw myself upon my blankets, and ' seriously 
thought of the morrow.' 

"What will be the result ? Shall I be borne out in my 
position ? On whom can I depend ? How many of those 
who are squatters will come out if there is a prospect of a 
fight ? Have I strictly defined our position in the bill ? 
Will the world, the universe, and God say it is just, etc. ? 
Will you call me rash if I tell you that I took these steps to 
this point when I could get but twenty-five men to pledge 
themselves on paper to sustain me, and many of them, I felt, 
were timid ? Such was the case." 

In the night we deal, if we like, with the world, the uni- 
verse, and God. In the morning we have to deal with such 
things as the Sheriff, the Mayor, and the writs of the County 
Court things with which, as we have already learned from 
the squatters, God has nothing whatever to do ! One won- 
ders, in passing, whether the church in which Doctor Rob- 
inson so lustily sang and so cheerfully paid his dollar that 
bright August Sunday was Doctor Benton's. If so, the set- 
tlers' leader surely must have noticed a contrast between his 
own God of the Higher Law and the far more concrete 
Deity that this noted and able pioneer preacher always pre- 
sented to his audiences. That orthodox Deity, whatever else 
may have seemed doubtful about him, was surely conceived 



AN EPISODE OP EARLY CALIFORNIA LIFE. 337 

and presented as having very definite and living relation- 
ships to all rulers who bear not the sword in vain. And no- 
body, whatever his own philosophic or theological views, 
ought to have any hesitation as to which of these two con- 
ceptions is the worthier of a good citizen, however incom- 
plete both of them may be for philosophy. And now, to 
state this crisis in a heathen fashion, we may say that the 
concrete Deity of the actual law, and Doctor Robinson's ideal 
abstract Deity of the Higher Law, were about to enter into 
open warfare, with such temporary result as the relative 
strength of unwise city authorities and weak-kneed squat- 
ters might determine. For to such earthen vessels are the 
great ideals, good and evil, entrusted on this earth. 

What other squatters thought meanwhile is sufficiently 
shown by two letters from their side, one written just after 
the crisis, the other some months later, and published in 
Eastern newspapers. The first says : " The cause of all this 
[difficulty] is nothing more or less than land monopoly," 
and denies that the squatters could have done anything but 
what they did. The second says, long after, be it noticed, 
and when the lessons of the affair ought to have been clear 
to every one, that the squatters have clearly shown their 
intent to fight to the death against all " favoritism " shown 
to old Califomians. American citizens will never, the 
writer of the letter says, submit to such outrageous injus- 
tice. He was himself present at the fight and speaks au- 
thoritatively. 

v. 

Morning came, and with it the printed manifesto. The 
city, with all its show of care and all its warnings during 
the last few months, was wholly unprepared for proper re- 
sistance to organized rebellion. The populace was aroused, 
crowds ran to and fro, rumors flew thick and fast Doctor 
Robinson was found on a lot, at the corner of Second and 
N Streets, where the Sheriff was expected to appear to serve 



338 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

a writ. By adroitness in making speeches and by similar 
devices the doctor collected and held, in apparent sympathy 
with himself, a crowd of about two hundred, whom he de- 
sired to have appear as all squatters, and all " men of valor." * 
Meanwhile names were enrolled by him as volunteers for 
immediate action, a military commander of the company 
was chosen one Maloney, a veteran of the Mexican War 
and in all some fifty men were soon under arms. Mayor 
Bigelow now approached on horseback, and from the saddle 
addressed the crowd. It would be best, he said, for them to 
disperse, otherwise there might be trouble. Doctor Robin- 
son was spokesman in answer. " I replied," he says in his 
letter, "most respectfully, that we were assembled to injure 
no one and to assail no one who left us alone. We were on 
our own property, with no hostile intentions while unmo- 
lested." The Mayor galloped off, and was soon followed to 
his office by a little committee of the squatters, Doctor Rob- 
inson once more spokesman. They wanted, so they said, to 
explain their position so that there could be no mistake. 
They were anxious to avoid bloodshed, and begged Bigelow 
to use his influence to prevent service of the processes of the 
Court. Doctor Robinson understood the Mayor to promise 
to use the desired influence in a private way and as a peace- 
loving citizen. They then warned him that, if advantage 
should be taken of their acceptance of his assurance, and if 
writs were served in the absence of their body of armed 
men, they would hold him and the Sheriff responsible ac- 
cording to their proclamation. The Placer Times of Tues- 
day morning declares that the Mayor's reply assured the 
squatters of his intention to promise nothing but a strict en- 
forcement of the law. 

Doctor Robinson's letter seems to have been written just 
after this interview. In the evening the rumor was preva- 

* See his letter, after the passage quoted above. 



AN EPISODE OF EARLY CALIFORNIA LIFE. 339 

lent that a warrant was out for his arrest and that of the 
other ringleaders. Many squatters, very variously and some- 
times amusingly armed, still hung about the disputed lot of 
land. On Tuesday, possibly because of the Mayor's sup- 
posed assurance, the squatters were less wary. Their ene- 
mies took advantage of their dispersed condition,* and ar- 
rested the redoubtable McClatchy, with one other leader. 
These they took to the " prison brig," out in the river. In 
the afternoon the Sheriff quietly put the owners of the dis- 
puted lot in possession, apparently in the absence of squat- 
ters. The Mayor's assurance, if he had given one, was thus 
seen to be ineffective. There was no appeal now left the 
squatters but to powder and ball. 

It seems incredible, but it is true, that Wednesday morn- 
ing, August 14th, found the authorities still wholly unpre- 
pared to overawe the lawless defenders of the Higher Law. 
When the squatters assembled, some thirty or forty in num- 
ber, all armed, and "men of valor" this time when they 
marched under Maloney's leadership to the place on Second 
Street, and once more drove off the owners ; when they then 
proceeded down to the levee, intending to go out to the 
prison brig and rescue their friends ; when they gave up this 
idea, and marched along I Street to Third in regular order, 
Maloney in front on horseback, with a drawn sword, there 
was no force visible ready to disperse them ; and they were 
followed by a crowd of unarmed citizens, who were hooting 
and laughing at them.f Reaching the corner of Tliird 

* The letter in the New York Tribune of October 15, I860, by a squat- 
ter, says that the young man who claimed possession as a squatter waa 
absent from the disputed land on Tuesday by reason of hi* attendance at 
the examination of the arrested squatters in court McClatchy is also her* 
said to have given himself up. 

t Transcript and Times of August 15. Compare Mr. Stillman's Golden 
Fleece, p. 172 : New York Tribune of September 21, September 25, Octob 
7, October 15, 1850. 



34:0 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

Street, they turned into that street, passed on until J Street 
was reached, and then marched out J toward Fourth Street. 

At this point, Mayor Bigelow, who had already been 
busily attempting to rouse the people near the levee, ap- 
peared in the rear of the crowd of sight-seeing followers, on 
horseback, and called upon all good citizens to help him to 
disperse the rioters at once. His courage was equal to his 
culpable carelessness in having no better force at hand ; but 
to his call a few of the unarmed citizens replied (men such 
as Doctor Stillman himself, for instance) that the squatters 
could not be gotten rid of so easily by a merely extempore 
show of authority, since they surely meant to fire if mo- 
lested. The Mayor denied, confidently, this possibility ; the 
squatters- were, to his mind, but a crew of blustering fellows, 
who meant nothing that would lead them into danger. He 
overtook the crowd of citizen followers, repeating his call ; 
and the mass of this crowd gaily obeyed. Three cheers for 
the Mayor were given, and the improvised posse, led by 
Mayor and Sheriff, ran on in pursuit of their game. Only 
one who has seen an American street-crowd in a moment 
of popular excitement, can understand the jolly and careless 
courage that seems to have prevailed in this band, or their 
total lack of sense of what the whole thing meant. They 
were indeed not all unarmed, by any means ; but it seems 
impossible that, acting as they did, they could have been ex- 
pecting to draw fire from the squatters. 

On J Street, Maloney of the drawn sword turned about 
on his horse to look, when lo ! the Mayor, with the Sheriff, 
and with the little army, was in pursuit. The moment of 
vengeance for broken promises had come. Promptly the 
squatter company wheeled, drew into line across Fourth, and 
awaited the approach of the enemy, taking him thus in 
Hank. Undaunted the Mayor rode up, and voiced the maj- 
esty of the law, by ordering the squatters to lay down their 
arms, and to give themselves up as prisoners. The citizen 



AN EPISODE OP EARLY CALIFORNIA LIFE. 34-1 

array cheerfully crowded about Bigelow, and in front of 
the armed rioters, curious, no doubt, to watch the outcome, 
anxious, it would seem, to enjoy a joke, incredulous of any 
danger from the now so familiar boasters. Armed and un- 
armed men seem to have been huddled together in confu- 
sion, beside the Mayor and the Sheriff. But the armed men 
displayed their weapons freely, and were ready for whatever 
might result Thus everything was done to tempt a disaster. 

The accounts of the scene that are written by the 
squatters themselves, pretend that they replied to the May- 
or, refusing to surrender their arms, and even add that he 
himself first discharged a barrel of his own pistol before 
they began. But the newspaper reports, and Doctor Still- 
man's account, make it tolerably clear that the squatters had 
no intention of treating further at this moment with the 
Mayor, and make it doubtful whether they even replied to 
him. As the Mayor spoke, Maloney was heard giving or- 
ders. " Shoot the Mayor," he said ; and at the words firing 
began a volley, Doctor Stillman calls it, who saw the 
whole from a block away an irregular, hasty, ill-aimed, 
rattle of guns and pistols, most accounts make it 

Men standing further down the street saw the crowd 
scatter in all directions, and in a moment more saw the 
Mayor's horse dash riderless towards the river. Those 
nearer by saw how armed men among the citizens, with a 
quick reaction, fired their pistols, and closed in on the 
rioters. Maloney fell dead. Doctor Robinson lay severely 
wounded. On the side of the citizens, Woodland, the city 
assessor, was shot dead, the Mayor himself, thrice severely 
wounded, had staggered a few steps, after dropping from 
his horse, and had fallen on the pavement In all there 
were two * squatters and one of the citizens' party killed, 

Thrtt, nays the Transcript, but never gives the name of tfaia third. 
The other account* name two. 



342 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

and one squatter and four citizens* wounded. Like a 
lightning flash the battle came, and was done. The array 
of the squatters melted away like a mist when the two 
leaders were seen to fall ; the confused mass of the citizens, 
shocked and awe-stricken where they were not terrified, 
waited no longer on the field than the others, hut scattered 
wildly. A few moments later, when Doctor Stillman re- 
turned with his shotgun which, on the first firing, he had 
gone but half a block to get, the street was quite empty of 
armed men. He waited for some time to see any one in 
authority. At length Lieutenant-Governor McDougal ap- 
peared, riding at full speed, " his face very pale." " Get all 
the armed men you can," he said, and rendezvous at Foster's 
hotel." 

" I went to the place designated," says Doctor Stillman, 
" and there found a few men, who had got an old iron 
ship's gun, mounted on a wooden truck ; to its axles was 
fastened a long dray pole. The gun was loaded with a lot 
of scrap iron. I wanted to know where McDougal was. 
We expected him to take the command and die with us. 
I inquired of Mrs. McDougal, who was stopping at the 
hotel, what had become of her husband. She said he had 
gone to San Francisco for assistance. Indeed he was on 
his way to the steamer 'Senator' when I saw him, and he 
left his horse on the bank of the river." 

In such swift, dreamlike transformations the experiences 
of the rest of the day passed by. In the afternoon, Caulfield, 
a squatter leader, who had fled from the scene of the fight, 
was captured, and brought toward the prison brig, his feet 
tied under his horse's belly, his face covered with blood and 
dust. He had been knocked from his horse with the butt of 
a pistol as he fought with his pursuers. So Doctor Stillman 

* Of these four one indeed was a non-combatant, a little girl just then 
on the street, whose injury was not very serious. 



AX EPISODE OF EARLY CALIFORNIA LIFE. 343 

tells us. From the newspapers we learn how people gener- 
ally felt that afternoon. Rumors were countless. The 
squatters had gone out of the city ; they would soon return. 
They were, it was asserted, seven hundred strong. They 
meant vengeance. They would fire the city. Yes, they 
had already fired the city, although nobody knew where. 
No one could foresee the end of the struggle. The city, 
men said, had been declared under martial law. Every- 
body must come out. The whole force of the State would 
doubtless be needed. If the squatter's failed now, they 
would go to the mines, and arouse the whole population 
there. One would have to fight all the miners as well. 
Such things flew from mouth to mouth ; such reports the 
" Senator " carried towards San Francisco, with the pale-faced 
Lieutenant-Governor, who himself landed, by the way, at 
Benecia, to appeal for help to the general of the United 
States forces there placed. Such reports were even sent 
East by the first steamer, and there printed in newspapers 
ere they could be contradicted. 

As a fact, however, the most serious danger was already 
past The opening of the fight had made the squatters 
seem, in the public eye, unequivocally lawless and danger- 
ous aggressors. They could expect, for the moment at least, 
no sympathy, but only stern repression. And so, in reality, 
the city was never safer, as a whole, than it was a few 
hours after the fatal meeting at the corner of Fourth and J 
Streets. A little flowing blood is a very effective sight for 
our public. Conscience and passion are alike aroused in 
the community. American good-humor gives way, for the 
instant, to the sternest and most bigotted hatred of the of- 
fenders. So, in Sacramento, there was just now no mercy 
for the squatters. Their late attorney was threatened with 
hanging. Their friends fled the town. And even while the 
wild rumors were flying, the most perfect safety from inva- 
sion had been actually secured in the city limits. 



344 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

But yet neither the bloodshed nor the terror was wholly 
done. Outside the city limits there was yet to occur a most 
serious and deplorable encounter. The squatters were ac- 
tually scattered in all directions ; but the rumors made it 
seem advisable to prevent further attacks, by armed sallies 
into the country, and by arrest of leaders. Thursday after- 
noon (just after the funeral of Woodland), the Sheriff, 
McKinney, with an armed force in which were several well- 
known prominent citizens, set out towards Mormon Island, 
with the intention of finding and bringing in prisoners.* 
That the Sheriff had no writs for the arrest of any one, and 
only the vaguest notion of his own authority, seems plain. 
Panic was king. At the house of one Allen, who kept a 
bar-room some seven miles out, the Sheriff sought for squat- 
ters, having been informed that several were there. It was 
now already dark. Leaving the body of his force outside, 
the Sheriff approached the house with a few men and en- 
tered. There were a number of occupants visible, all alarmed 
and excited. The writless Sheriff's party were unaware 
that, in the back room of the house, Mrs. Allen lay seriously 
ill, attended by her adopted daughter, a girl of sixteen. To 
be seen at the moment were only men, and they had arms. 
McKinney called out to Allen to surrender himself to the 
Sheriff. Allen replied, not unnaturally, that this was his 
house, his castle. He proposed to fight for it. McKinney 
repeated : " I am Sheriff ; lay down your arms." What 
followed is very ill-told by the eye-witnesses, for the dark- 
ness and the confusion made everything dim. At all events, 
some of the Sheriff's party left the house, perhaps to call for 
assistance from the main body ; and in a moment more the 
occupants had begun firing, and McKinney was outside of 



* See on this affair the Transcript and Times of August 16th and 17th, 
and Dr. Stillinan's experiences, Golden Fleece, pp. 176, 177 ; also see the 
account in the New York Tribune, 



AX EPISODE OF EARLY CALIFORNIA LIFE. 345 

the house, staggering under a mortal wound. He fell, and 
in a short time was dead. That the firing from without 
soon overpowered all resistance, that two of the occupants 
of the house were shot dead, that others lay wounded, and 
that the assailants shortly after took possession of the place 
and searched it all through, not sparing the sick room : 
these were very natural consequences. After about an hour 
the arresting party left, taking with them four men as pris- 
oners. Allen himself, sorely hurt, had escaped through the 
darkness, to show his wounds and to tell his painful story 
in the mines. 

The little dwelling was left alone in the night Nobody 
remained alive and well about the place save the young girl 
and two negro slaves. The patient lay dying from the shock 
of the affair. For a long time the girl, as she afterwards de- 
posed, waited, not daring to go to the bar-room, ignorant of 
who might be killed, hearing once in a while groans. About 
ten o'clock a second party of armed men came from the 
city, searched again, and after another hour went away. 
" Mrs. Allen died about the time this second party rode up 
to the house/ 1 deposes the girl. She had the rest of the 
night to herself.* 

The city was not reassured by the news of the Sheriff's 
death. In the unlighted streets of the frightened place, the 
alarm was sounded by the returning party about nine 
o'clock. Of course, invasion and fire were expected. The 
militia companies turned out, detailed patrolling parties, 
and then ordered the streets cleared. The danger was 
imminent that the defenders of the law would pass the 
night in shooting one another by mistake in the darkness. 



* Allen was a Miwourian, who, like other*, had brought hi* slave* to 
California at a venture. The Bute Constitution, when once the 8Ute waa 
admitted, made slavery, as is known, impomible. Allen survived, and 
found his way back to Missouri in a year or so. I there lost sight of him. 



346 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

But this was happily avoided. The families in the town 
were, of course, terribly excited. " The ladies," says Dr. 
Stillman, " were nearly frightened out of their wits ; but we 
assured them that they had nothing to fear that we were 
devoted to their service, and were ready to die at their feet ; 
being thus assured, they all retired into their cozy little 
cottages, and securely bolted the doors." During the night, 
the Senator arrived from San Francisco, with reinforce- 
ments. Lieutenant-Governor McDougal had already re- 
turned on Thursday from Benecia, bringing, according to 
the Placer Times, muskets and cartridges, but no United 
States soldiers. He had felt seriously the responsibilities of 
his position, and had accordingly gone to bed, sick with the 
cares of office. 

But morning came peacefully enough. Quiet in exter- 
nal affairs was restored. In the city Sam Brannan and 
others talked mightily of law, order, and blood. There 
were, however, no more battles to fight. In a few days, 
quiet of mind also was restored ; people were ashamed of 
their alarm. Squatters confined themselves to meetings in 
the mining districts and in Marysville, to savage manifes- 
toes, and to wordy war from a distance, with sullen sub- 
mission near home. The real war was done. A tacit 
consent to drop the subject was soon noticeable in the 
community. Men said that the laws must be enforced, and 
meanwhile determined to speak no ill of the dead. There 
was a decided sense, also, of common guilt. The commu- 
nity had sinned, and suffered. 

Of the actors in this drama little needs further to be nar- 
rated here. Doctor Robinson disappeared for the moment 
as wounded prisoner in a cloud of indictments for assault, 
conspiracy, murder, and what else I know not. Mayor Bige- 
low was taken to San Francisco, where he almost miraculous- 
ly recovered from his three bad wounds, only to die soon of 
the cholera. The squatter movement assumed a new phase. 



AN EPISODE OP EARLY CALIFORNIA LIFE. 347 

Doctor Robinson, indeed, was in little danger from his in- 
dictments, when once the heat of battle had cooled. He 
was felt to be a man of mark ; the popular ends had been 
gained in his defeat ; the legal evidence against him was 
like the chips of drift-wood in a little eddy of this changing 
torrent of California life. With its little hoard of drift, 
the eddy soon vanished in the immeasurable flood. After a 
change of venue to a bay county, and after a few months' 
postponement, the cloud of indictments melted away like 
the last cloudflake of our rainy season. Nolle pros, was 
entered, and the hero was free from bail, as he had already 
for a good while been free on bail to recover his bodily 
health, to edit the previously projected squatter newspaper, 
to run for the Legislature, and even to form friendships 
with some of the very men whom he had lately been assail- 
ing. In a district of Sacramento County, Doctor Robinson's 
friends managed, with the connivance of certain optimists, 
to give him a seat in the Assembly, that late " advisory '' 
body, whose " rules," before the admission of the State, he 
had so ardently despised. The State was admitted now, 
and Doctor Robinson cheerfully undertook his share of legis- 
lation. But the Legislature cared more for senatorial elec- 
tion, and such small game, than for the Higher Law. Doc- 
tor Robinson was not perfectly successful, even in pleasing 
his constituents. Ere yet another year passed, he had for- 
ever forsaken our State, and for his further career, you 
must read the annals of the New England Emigrant Aid 
Society and the history of Kansas. I have found an account 
of his career in a Kansas book, whose author must have a 
little misunderstood Doctor Robinson's version of this old 
affair. For the account says that the good Doctor, when 
he was in California in early days, took valiant part for 
the American settlers against certain wicked claimants 
under one John Sutter, who (the wretch) had pretended to 
own " 99,000 square miles of land in California." Alas, 



348 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

poor Sutler, with thy great schemes! Is it to come to 
this? 

I cannot close this scene without adding that a certain 
keen-eyed and intelligent foreigner, a Frenchman, one 
Auger, who visited our State a little later, in 1852, took 
pains to inquire into this affair and to form his own opinion. 
He gives a pathetic picture of poor Sutter, overwhelmed by 
squatters, and then proceeds to give his countrymen some 
notion of what a squatter is. Such a person, he says, repre- 
sents the American love of land by marching, perhaps 
"pendant des mots enters," until he finds a bit of seem- 
ingly vacant land. Here he fortifies himself, " et se fait 
massacrer avec toute sa familie plutdt que de renoncer a 
la moindre parcelle du terrain qu'il a usurped * This is 
well stated. But best of all is the following : " Celui qui 
se livre a cette investigation prend des lors le titre de 
' squatter,' qui vient,je le suppose, du mot 'square ' (place), 
et signifie chercheur d* emplacement." It is evident to us, 
therefore, that Doctor Robinson and all his party were " on 
the square." And herewith we may best end our account. 

* Auger, Voyage en Californie, p. 154. 



XII. 
JEAN MARIE GUYAU. 

JEAN MARIE GUYAU,* one of the most prominent of re- 
cent French philosophical critics, and one of the shortest 
lived amongst those philosophers who have obtained, 
whether by critical or by constructive work, any considerable 
fame, was born October 28, 1854, and died March 31, 1888, 
at the age of thirty -three years. To the pursuit of philoso- 
phy he was determined, not only by temperament, but by 
his earliest home training. His education was directed by 
Alfred Fouillee, the most distinguished constructive philoso- 
pher of contemporary France. Fouillee was the cousin 
of Guyau's mother, and became, by second marriage, her 
husband, and Guyau's step-father. The mother is known 
in France as an author of educational works. The happy 
intellectual conditions that resulted from this union show 
themselves throughout our hero's brief career. His literary 
skill, from the very first of his books, is that of the expert ; 
his scholarship, from this beginning on, is mature. His 
eye is always set on the goal ; he has but to run the 
race, and no longer to learn the art, of the thinker, after 
once he has begun to show his powers. His opinions de- 
velop ; but the spirit of his work remains substantially the 
same. His pace quickens, his feats of critical skill and of 



* A paper prepared for the Cercle Fran<;at of Harvard University. 
M 



350 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

speculative imagination grow more remarkable as he pro- 
ceeds. But what one sees is the progress of the man, and 
never the maturing of the boy. Yet Guyau's first book, a 
memoir of some thirteen hundred manuscript pages upon 
the history of Utilitarian Ethics from Epicurus to the pres- 
ent day, was crowned by the Academy of Moral and Politi- 
cal Sciences in 1874, and had been written in the previous 
year, when its author was nineteen years of age. Its two 
parts, the one on ancient Epicureanism, the other on mod- 
ern English Ethics, were later published separately, and 
Guyau's youthful summary and criticism of the contempo- 
rary English ethical movement has received especial praise, 
and very serious consideration both in France and in 
England. 

It thus becomes at once plain that we have here to deal 
with one of those cases of early promise and swift develop- 
ment of which the history of philosophy, like the history of 
poetry, shows us a number of instances. Amongst philoso- 
phers, Berkeley and Schelling readily come to mind, by 
way of comparison, as we consider Guyau's brilliant youth. 
To be sure, Guyau is not to be set beside either of these 
men as regards constructive ability. He is a critical essay- 
ist rather than an originator of systematic doctrine ; yet in 
native brilliancy of intellect he compares well with both. Of 
the two Schelling the more resembles Guyau in respect 
of the swiftness and manifoldness of literary production. 
Schelling was born in 1775, began to write for publication, 
like Guyau, just before he was twenty years of age, and 
was professor of philosophy at Jena by the time he was 
twenty-two. But Guyau has one trait that the young 
Schelling lacked, namely, speculative self-control. He con- 
structs less originally, but he criticises more soundly. 
Schelling's early works followed one another like lightning 
flashes, each one striking in a new and unexpected place. 
Guyau is the product of a training as severe as it was 



JEAN MARIE GUYAU. 351 

kindly and stimulating. He has genius, but shows no way- 
wardness. He covers a wide range, and, as just said, his 
opinions develop. But he does not, like Schelling, alter 
essential features of his whole system at every new presen- 
tation. And, in fact, as just observed, Guyau, except in his 
Ethics, never had a system. On the other hand, by the 
tendency to determine all that he has to say through its 
relation to a few central and persistently elaborated prob- 
lems, Guyau reminds us of Berkeley. Like the young 
Berkeley, Guyau had been inspired by Plato. Like Berke- 
ley, Guyau had also to make use of this inspiration in deal- 
ing with problems and interests very far removed from those 
of Plato himself. But Guyau differs from Berkeley by the 
wider outlook and the far more complex character of his 
undertakings, as well as by the extent of his learning, 
although here too Berkeley is a more original and construc- 
tive thinker than Guyau. 

Both Berkeley and Schelling lived far past the period of 
their youthful philosophical Sturm und Drang. Here 
Guyau differs from both. His is the philosophy not only 
of a young man, but also of a doomed invalid, who had 
indeed his intervals of physical vigor and his hopeful years, 
but whose eyes were, almost from the first, accustomed to 
look death in the face. His step-father, who has put on 
record a beautifully clear, faithful, affectionate, and yet per- 
fectly objective account of our thinker's philosophical de- 
velopment and career, until his death, is very sparing of 
biographical detail, and I do not happen to know of any 
account of the nature of our philosopher's maladies. It 
seems to be admitted, however, that his early intellectual 
labors involved a physical overstrain which certainly did 
not take away the acutenesa of his intellect, but which 
added at all events to his constitutional or acquired burdens, 
and hastened the end. Yet when one considers what the 
man accomplished, despite his fatal maladies, one cannot 
24 



352 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

view this brief career without feeling, as the ancients would 
have felt, that there are many ways of living well besides 
merely living long. One hears much of overstrain. Guyau, 
in his book upon Education, wrote himself upon the sub- 
ject. Overstrain is a bad thing. It may have helped to 
deprive us early of this remarkable man. Yet there are 
young men, and even here at Harvard I have known 
such, who, perhaps in order to add prudently to their 
chances of intellectual efficiency in old age, are disposed to 
sacrifice, in a restful way, nearly the whole of the intel- 
lectual opportunities of their youth. For my part, I regret 
to see men throw away either end of life. But when one 
observes that Guyau's permanently useful memoir upon the 
history of Utilitarian Ethics was written in that year of life 
which here in Harvard is dedicated, by most men, to the 
work, and even, in a few instances, to the leisure of the 
Freshman Class, it occurs to one afresh that, as Quintilian, 
I believe, said, we ourselves are the ones who make our 
lives short. At all events, death is not the only shortener 
of life, and I venture to think that if more of our American 
youth were to labor like Guyau, we as a nation could well 
endure even a certain increase of the death-rate amongst 
scholars. A man is but a man, and if you call a life wasted 
that is passed in invalidism between twenty and thirty- 
three, and then ended, still be willing to observe with me 
for a little how our philosopher wasted away this his bril- 
liant youth. 

I. 

Since 1870 France has been the centre of a philosophical 
movement which as yet, to be sure, is not of the first grade 
as to originality and constructiveness, but which certainly is 
of great variety, liberality, courage, and fruitfulness. Our 
first interest in Guyau is in his character as a representative 
of the general tendencies of this whole French national 
movement. To philosophize extensively and successfully, 



JEAN MARIE GUYAU. 353 

whether as system-maker or as a critic of systems, such as 
was Guyau, you must combine, first, a strong love of life 
with a great deal of critical coolness ; next, a considerable 
range of intellectual vision with a keen eye for the unity of 
things ; and, finally, a cautious sense of human fallibility a 
power to doubt, with a courageous willingness to take your 
risks, and even to make your blunders. Now the first of 
the three characteristics thus enumerated, namely, a com- 
bination of a strong love of life with a critical coolness in 
observing life, appears to be very characteristic of the 
French nature. A comparison with two or three other 
philosophical peoples will serve to make the fact clearer. 
The Hindoo, as a philosopher, has always been a keen critic 
of human illusions, but since it chanced, by some accident 
of race-development, that the Hindoo, from an early period 
of his evolution, did not love life, Hindoo philosophy, ex- 
tensive as are its literary monuments, is in essential doc- 
trine always very brief and unfruitful. Life for the Hindoo 
is an ill ; one philosophizes to seek salvation. And salvation 
lies in some sort of absolute contemplative abstraction 
from life an abstraction which you can define in many 
ways ; but the goal is always the same a peace that passeth 
understanding, and that flees from facts to the Absolute be- 
yond life's illusions. The Greek, on the contrary, not only 
criticised life, but loved it His philosophy is accordingly 
various, complex, and extremely fruitful. Well, Matthew 
Arnold has declared the French to be the Greeks of modern 
civilization, and Guyau himself, in a passage of his most 
mature book, has gladly accepted the characterization.* 
Something of the Hellenic willingness to live to live how- 
ever life comes to live first and to be scrupulous only in 
the second place this we who are ourselves of a more hesi- 
tant and scrupulous race generally feel to be characteristic 

* L'lrreligion de PA venir, p. 215, ??. 



;,,M STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

of the French temperament. Meanwhile, if the Frenchman 
seems to accept life with fewer preliminary scruples and 
conscientious inhibitions than those to which we are early 
trained, he always seems by nature more fearless than we 
in dissecting life if ever he chooses the thinker's business. 
In case of our English stock our consciences often seem to 
make us fearful of thorough-going and deliberate reflection, 
although, strangely enough, the very essence of our own 
conscience is a sort of fatal and unpremeditated reflection. 
If a man merely lives, and has not learned to think, he has 
no conscientious scruples. But if thought about action 
arises in him spontaneously and fatally, as a sort of obses- 
sion, coming he knows not whence, then a man very gener- 
ally becomes hesitantly conscientious, scrupulous, con- 
cerned about his motives and his future, disposed to inhibit 
his instinctive acts. Guyau himself observed this tendency, 
and expressed it in the psychological principle that the 
consciousness of our various and separate instincts is, in 
general, primarily opposed to the continuance and to the 
strength of these instincts themselves. Think about your 
pleasures too much, and they will please you less. Guyau 
has very skilfully used this principle in his criticism of the 
English utilitarian ethics. But the principle frequently 
has, in case of our English temperament, this further ex- 
emplification, that, although we are by nature and early 
training fatally predisposed to conscientious considerate- 
ness and to consequent inhibitions of our instincts, so that 
we get our native hue of resolution sicklied o'er with the 
pale cast of thought, we often fear, for this very reason, to 
let even our considerateness go free, in its own way. Very 
common, in our race, even amongst those who philosophize, 
is the sense that there are a good many things about which 
you must not philosophize ; that there are questions which 
you must not ask ; that there are topics which you must 
not mention even in philosophy ; that, in short, reflection 



JEAN MARIE GUYAU. 355 

and considerateness are only tolerable where they them- 
selves come upon you, with the force of instincts, of obses- 
sions, of God-inspired fate, and not when you make them 
a deliberate ideal. From this point of view it seems as if 
you might not dare to make reflection itself anything 1 
thorough-going, to think for the sake of thinking, or to be 
considerate for the sake of mere considerateness. Con- 
science, which inhibits instincts by reflecting upon them, 
thus in the end often, with us, tends to inhibit even itself as 
the instinct to reflect ; and in consequence you will often 
meet, as in our own very community, with people sometimes 
very noble women, sometimes very laborious clergymen, 
sometimes saintly laymen of devoted practical life who 
are by nature essentially and fatally thoughtful people, but 
who nevertheless pass their lives in thoughtfully limiting 
and restraining their own disposition to think, in so far as 
such thinking would involve a criticism of sacred things, 
or an inquiry into too central recesses of our nature. 

But now the French mind, less primarily and fatally 
scrupulous than our own, not only loves life with fearless- 
ness, but also fears not to think critically, when the time 
and the taste for thinking chance to come to think with- 
out any scruples as to the extent to which this considerate- 
ness may be allowed to go. One sees this essentially fear- 
less tendency in every page of Guyau. To think is an 
ideal : well then, let this ideal have its way, just as if it 
were a part of your primal love of life. Nothing is so sacred 
that you may not name it, bring it out to the light, scruti- 
nize it, define it One's considerateness becomes frankly 
quite free from scruples. But as Guyau himself maintains, 
in defending one of the most subtle of his own ethical 
principles, this very willingness to make thought and self- 
possession an ideal may be the best way to escape from th.it 
primarily paralyzing tendency which wo linve just Keen to 
be, in our own cases, the first consequence of rell<Ttion. 



356 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

The man of instinct acts unscrupulously because he has 
not yet learned to think. When he begins to think, if he 
thinks after the frequent fashion of our own race, he be- 
comes conscious of his instincts. This consciousness, in the 
first place, involves a sort of paralysis of instincts. To see 
why you acted is to see through the illusions of instinct. 
For each instinct is but a part of your life, and as such is 
now seen to be opposed to some other part of life. Knowl- 
edge brings this inner disharmony to light. You lose your 
naive belief iu each element of instinct as you reflect upon 
its blindness, and upon the false hopes that it involved. It 
hoped to realize the end of life. But life is larger than any 
desire, and every individual desire is seen as in war with 
others. This resulting paralysis may, as is the case with 
the conscientious people of whom I have just spoken, ex- 
tend itself to include the very exercise of your own reflective 
powers. Even reflection is seen, as an instinct, to oppose 
other instincts. You learn to fear life, and consequently 
to fear even the life of thinking. But now go further. 
Make thinking itself your ideal, and comprehension for its 
own sake your goal. What is your result ? To compre- 
hend life wholly would mean simply the conscious and 
deliberate judgment of every instinct and desire in its 
relation to the whole of life. In such judgment your very 
guiding principle would be the ideal of a rational and com- 
prehensible harmony of your life. You would still find the 
individual instinct paralyzed in so far as it was at war with 
the unity of life ; but you would get before yourself the 
ideal of bringing desires into unity with one another and 
with life's plan ; and this ideal would itself be the begin- 
ning of a new life, still subject to the laws of your nature, 
but organized by the pervading motive which your reason 
determined. Let reason have her perfect work, and she 
will suggest to you new and positive plans of life. You 
will no longer fear life, because you will see the plan 



JEAN MARIE GJTYAU. 357 

of a way out of the conflicts which have aroused your 
fears. 

To sum up so far, the merely scrupulous join to their 
other instincts the instinct to reflect This reflection dis- 
covers the conflicts of their own nature. This discovery is 
paralyzing. Moreover, it reacts upon their very reflective 
instinct, and makes them fear to think. They remain per- 
manently in a state of thoughtful inner discord, scrupulous 
and yet unwilling to scruple.* In such a state of mind our 
own racial temperament forces some of us to live. But 
there is the other way, more easily followed by many 
who are less fatally doomed to be scrupulous. It is the 
way of first finding out how to think, and of then letting 
thought run absolutely free, with a general sense that no 
scruples need hinder any instinct from winning its rightful 
place. But thoughtful ness, thus given its freedom, may, in 
happy cases, transcend the stage in which it merely dis- 
covers inner conflicts. It may come to conceive the ideal 
of a complete and now positive harmony of reasonable life. 
This ideal will be beyond criticism, because, when once 
formed, it proves to be the very basis and presupposition of 
all criticism of life. The evil about desires and primary 
instincts is that they are out of harmony with one another. 
This disharmony is what reflection first shows us. What 
we want is a way out of the disharmony, and when once 
thought, allowed to grow freely, learns to define this want, 
thought has won an ideal that henceforth justifies the most 
unscrupulous use of our insight, because whatever stead- 
fastly means to make for harmony can never itself be in 
essential conflict with any of the interests of the life that it 
means to harmonize. 



* For claiwic mutancc of the resulting poMibUitie*, the reader in re- 
ferred to the experiences of John Bunyan, as recorded ia an earlj eatay of 
tho present volume. 



358 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

I have stated, and already in very much the way of 
Guyau himself, an ideal of the work of thinking which has 
especially good chances of being illustrated in the work- 
ings of the French mind. The French mind is apparently 
able to win the true freedom of the reason more easily than 
our own, just because the Frenchman carries into the realm 
of thought that gracious readiness to let himself go which 
is at once his glory, and his danger. In baser form this 
unscrupulousness of critical thinking appears, in modern 
French literature, in certain well-known and cynical out- 
growths with which Guyau's whole tendency is strongly 
contrasted. But it is the privilege of those who love life to 
show their love in many guises. The Frenchman who 
loves discipline, order, loyalty, and his family, can express all 
this devotion with a gracious gaiety unknown to those who 
have scrupulously to consider every love before they quite 
know whether it is righteous. On the contrary, our own 
conscientiousness is itself often the parent of many forms 
of anarchy and confusedness. Thus many of the more un- 
happy incidents that accompany our modern English and 
American movement a movement admirable on the whole 
in favor of an improvement of the destiny of women 
many, I say, of the accompanying and unhappy incidents of 
this movement appear to be due to a form of conscien- 
tiousness which leads certain sensitive women to feel deep 
scruples as to whether, after all, one is doing perfectly right 
to remain a woman at all, since that is only an accident of 
blind nature, and not one's moral choice. Well, much 
safer, in a way, is the position of natures that are not pri- 
marily and insistently scrupulous, and that love to let 
themselves go, if only their love chances to be for disci- 
pline, for order, for loyalty, for the family, and for reason as 
being simply the noblest of one's instincts. And this, I 
say, is essentially the position of the better natures that to- 
day represent French philosophy and in particular of a 



JEAN MARIE GUYAU. 359 

nature like Guyau's. The result is a spirit of altogether 
enviable freedom of freedom disciplined, critical, rigidly 
devoted to law, yet still of joyous freedom-r-a spirit which 
breathes through all our author's work, and which consti- 
tutes the chief charm of Guyau's whole manner and meth- 
od, whatever may be his problem. He is a man who fears 
nothing, who shrinks from no topic, however delicate, and 
who still never runs the risk of feeling any morbid interest 
who would comprehend all, and to that end first doubt all, 
but who nevertheless loves construction, duty, and the ideal. 
In many, one must say in most liberal thinkers who write 
in English, one feels, in their stern polemic, or else in their 
anxious defense of their rights, in their very conscious- 
ness of their merits, how with a great price they obtained 
this liberty. But Guyau was free-born. And in this respect, 
as I have said, he is only one culminating point in the re- 
cent French philosophical movement, which, in all of its 
best work, is characterized by this union of the spirit of 
thorough criticism with the graciously gay French love 
of life. 

This union of the critical spirit with the love of life I 
mentioned above as the first condition of extensive and suc- 
cessful philosophizing. The second condition, also men- 
tioned above, is the union of a considerable range of intel- 
lectual vision with a keen eye for the unity of things. Now 
the French mind, wherever it has philosophized, has always 
shown great skill in swift, exactly statable, and highly 
unifying generalizations. The defects of French philosophy 
have often been determined in former periods of its history 
by the one-sided ness of the individual French thinker's view 
of his world. The Cartesian doctrine, the Systbne de la 
Nature, and the Positive Philosophy of Comte, are all of 
them cases of this one-gidedness and relative superficiality 
of thought. Vast regions of life, accessible to his day and 
generation, still lie below the horizon of the man whoso 



360 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

thought would encompass the whole knowable world. His 
very exactness is often but one aspect of his superficiality. 
He analyzes so skilfully, because he analyzes but a very 
little. He states so exactly, because he has found out so few 
things to state. The German thinker, on the other hand, 
has often been confused by the wealth of the life that he has 
discovered. His generalizations have been vast and many- 
sided, but so obscure that either, like Kant, he spends years 
in elaborating many and various thoughts as wonderful as 
they are, in certain regions, mutually inconsistent, or he is 
driven, like Hegel, to invent a barbarous tongue in order 
to conceal rather than to reveal his deep but too manifold 
meaning. The classic German philosophy of former gener- 
ations is a realm of many-sided, but to the student baffling 
paradoxes a labyrinth, where one wanders long before one 
even conceives the goal. French philosophy, as it has been 
developed in former times, is too often like a relatively 
bare room, full of electric lights, that shine with brilliancy 
upon a few diagrams, which pretend to be a picture of the 
universe. A similar one-sidedness has held in case of much 
of the more orthodox and official French thinking, where 
freedom gave place to discipline, and that was taught which 
officially ought to be declared true. Yet in the midst of all 
these defects, the French have at least always stood out 
for clearness, and have insisted that when you see the truth, 
you at all events see, whereas the German thinker has too 
often, in the past, baffled the untrained student by at least 
seeming to imply that if you want to see, you must use 
some wholly new sort of intuition, and must lay aside once 
for all your eyes. 

I have thus spoken, and of course here one-sidedly 
enough, not of the value, but of the defects of the older 
sorts of philosophizing in France and in Germany. The 
strength that in both countries has gone beside these con- 
trasting forms of human weakness, I have not here to de- 



JEAN MARIE GUYAU. 301 

fine. Enough it is to say that despite this past history, the 
present day no longer justifies the old contrast The French 
philosophical movement since 1870 has, on the whole, been 
nowise lacking in many-sidedness, and nowise disposed to 
the older superficiality. In fact, of late years, it is to France 
rather oftener than to Germany that you must go in order 
to enjoy the treasures of genuine many-sidedness and of 
truly philosophical liberality. For contemporary philo- 
sophical Germany suffers from one heavy burden from 
which France now appears to be free. I refer to the burden 
of academic officialism. In vain does that undertake to be 
free thought which may not use methods, or announce 
opinions, which a current university tradition declares to be 
opposed to the Zeitgeist, or to involve the appeal to an ueber- 
irundenerStandpunkt that bogie of German scientific su- 
perstitions. And one cannot read current German philoso- 
phy, even in its best representatives, without feeling more or 
less of the burden of these current academic superstitions. 
Scherer, in his history of German Literature, has compared 
Germany's repeatedly exhibited tendency to turn her back 
upon the ideals of her own past to Siegfried's magic forgetful- 
ness of Brynhild. Yet even Siegfried, in the days after he 
drank the cup of forgetful ness, did not boast that his old 
love for Brynhild was nothing but an u&berwundener 
Standpunkt. And there is often something pathetic in 
to-day's brutally outspoken neglect, in Germany, of the 
former ideal struggles of a philosophy whose work was 
indeed imperfect enough, but whose problems survive de- 
spite all the efforts of contemporary students to ignore or 
independently to struggle with them, as if they were not 
old stories, or as if philosophy, even according to their own 
confession, did not live in the history of philosophy. 

On the other hand, the modern French movement, 
whatever else may be said of it, is free from superstitions, 
both religious and scientific. It is peculiarly many-sided 



362 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

and liberal. If it is not yet very richly constructive, it at 
least does not fear construction. Its representative maga- 
zine, the Revue Philosophique, was for years the world's best 
philosophical periodical. The most manifold interests get 
here a hearing, the spirit of the mere school is at a mini- 
mum, the relations of philosophy to all human interests, 
scientific, ethical, and practical, receive the best represen- 
tation possible under existing circumstances. The spirit 
shown is at once docile and original, at once discreet and 
hopeful, at once constructive and historical. 

And now of this modern movement Guyau himself is an 
admirable representative in just these respects. His out- 
look is wide, his desire to get his world into unity is strong. 
He began under the influence of Plato and Kant, he early 
experienced to the full the significance of the English 
schools, he remained always closely in touch with current 
psychological investigation. He was interested in ethics 
and in metaphysics, in aesthetics and in educational theory. 
He shared and expressed the modern interest in sociological 
problems. His general view of life is a sort of transformed 
Kantian, or even Fichtean ethical idealism, stated in a mod- 
ern psychological terminology, and modified but never 
wholly overcome by its ingenious combination with a be- 
lief in modern naturalism, and by his acceptance of a some- 
what conventional view of the process of evolution. His 
exquisite intellectual sensitiveness kept his mind open to 
influences of the most varied sort. He speculated with 
equal interest upon anthropological problems, such as the 
origin of religion, and upon confessedly transcendent prob- 
lems, such as immortality. For him the first duty of the 
modern man is to live in every wise sense, to live open- 
mindedly, many-sidedly, and considerately, and then to set 
down as he can the meaning of life. 

I mentioned before, as the third prerequisite of philo- 
sophical success, a combination of a cautious sense of hu- 



JEAN MARIE GUYAU. 363 

man fallibility with a courageous willingness to take your 
risks, and even to make your blunders. It is customary for 
people to condemn philosophy because it risks error in 
dealing, as it does, with transcendent problems. As if com- 
mon sense did not risk error at every moment, and as if 
common sense did not, at every moment, deal, and very 
practically too, with all sorts of transcendent problems 
with right and wrong, with truth and error, with appear- 
ances and with realities, with life and all the issues of life. 
The philosopher is not in the position of being able to avoid 
the risk of error by merely ceasing his beloved specula- 
tions. He knows, having once been awakened, that he 
deals with the problem of the meaning of life, and that he 
dealt with that problem, in a practical way, before he was 
awakened, from the very moment when first he per- 
formed his least act He knows that if he ceased to think, 
he would not therefore cease to err, but that he would only 
err more blindly. For the essence of error lies after all in 
the falsity of your mental attitudes, of your inner deeds. 
All thought is action, as Guyau himself loved to say ; and 
all action implies thought When one thinks, one merely 
finds out the meaning of one's acts. But the meaning was 
there before one reflected. And all error in the end is 
practical, just as all practice is liable to the penalties 
of error. 

One would not then avoid error, nor yet its consequences, 
temporal or eternal, if one ceased to think of the deeper 
problems of life. The philosopher, unable, as fallible man, 
to avoid the risk of error, merely seeks clearness. Where 
others blindly go right or blindly err, he aims to make out 
what he can of the difference between true living and false 
living. Since life is his object he ought to fear reflection, 
which aims to give life unity, as little as he fears life itself. 
But, on the other hand, nobody knows better than tho phi- 
losopher what risks he takes when he thinks, and nobody 



364 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

ought more frankly to confess, or more frequently to re- 
member, his fallibility. 

And now the modern French movement, influenced as 
it is by the spirit of recent empirical science, is at once 
constructive and sceptical. Guyau himself can never be 
ranked amongst the system-makers, and is in nowise as 
constructive a thinker as his step-father Fouillee. He was 
in fact too cautious, with all his facility, to construct ex- 
tensively until he had gathered together his materials. 
There are signs that had he lived longer he would have 
become more systematic. As it is, one goes to him not for 
a system, but for far-reaching and ingenious ideas, which 
he never had time to weave into one whole. These ideas, 
as I said before, relate indeed to a few persistently central 
problems. And they certainly are in nowise disconnected 
ideas. But before Guyau could have become responsible for 
a systematic doctrine he would have needed to devote time 
to some fundamental matters which, to judge by the topic of 
one of his latest papers, on the Origin of the Ideas of Time 
and Space, he was just reaching when death cut short his 

task. 

II. 

I have thus far very inadequately treated Guyau merely 
as a representative of a few of the general tendencies of the 
modern movement of French philosophy since 1870. I 
must now ask you to consider a little more closely the man 
himself. 

One who was no special student of philosophy could easily 
take delight in Guyau's books for the sake of the author's 
personality. Our thinker's temperament continually and 
directly gets expression in his work. His style has that 
quality which is, once more, one of a Frenchman's not ex- 
clusive, but peculiarly frequent privileges the quality of 
being full of sentiment, of personal experience, and of 
the frankest confession, without ever seeming to approach 



JEAN MARIE GUYAU. 3C5 

what we ourselves fear as mere sentimentality, or scorn as 
"gush." The man's whole personal bearing towards his 
world embodies itself before you as plainly as if he were 
present speaking his words ; the author never seems to note 
or consciously to control this fact ; yet this childlike sim- 
plicity of confession is as free from awkwardness as from 
posing. Every confession meets the author's purpose, but 
meets it without premeditation, without any painful or sus- 
picious self-consciousness. The person who speaks to you 
in these books is obviously an invalid, who has suffered 
much. He is accordingly self-observant, a professional 
introspective psychologist Yet he is never morbid in his 
introspection, never takes himself too seriously, and never 
even likes to boast, like some invalids, of the dangers he 
has passed, although in one eloquent passage he has indeed 
occasion to mention them. His enjoyment of the beautiful, 
both in nature and in art, is manifold and intense. In the 
intervals of his invalidism he gives himself over to long- 
continued physical exercise, finds great fascination in 
mountain-climbing, and makes frequent use in his discourse 
of metaphors drawn from life amongst mountains. His 
sensory life is very wealthy and complex, and he notes the 
fact. He cannot see, for instance, why the prevalent aes- 
thetic prejudice declares that we get an experience of the 
truly beautiful only through the senses of sight and hear- 
ing. To him all sensations that appeal deeply and richly to 
the general feeling of life within us, of life in its wholeness, 
will be beautiful in so far as they heighten rather than de- 
press this feeling of life. And what sensations may not, 
under given conditions, possess this character. "I shall 
always remember," says Guyau,* " the wonderfully grateful 
sensation, that, in the heat of a violent fever, was produced 
in me by the touch of ice upon my brow. To express very 

* ProbUmes d' J-JitL<$tique Contemporaine, p. 61. 



3G6 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

feebly the impression that I received, I can only compare it 
to the pleasure that the ear experiences in finding again the 
perfect chord after a long series of dissonances; but this 
simple sensation of freshness was far deeper, more grateful, 
and altogether more aesthetic than the passing accord of a 
few notes exciting the ear ; it made me witness, as it were, 
a gradual resurrection of the whole interior harmony; I 
felt in me a sort of moral and physical pacification that 
was infinitely sweet." Nor is our author limited to the ex- 
periences of illness when he wishes to illustrate such ex- 
traordinary aesthetic effects : " One summer day," he says,* 
" after a tramp in the Pyrenees which had been continued 
to the maximum of fatigue, I met a shepherd, and asked 
him for milk. He produced, from his hut, beneath which a 
brook passed, a vessel of milk that had been plunged into 
the water, and kept at a temperature almost ice-cold. In 
drinking this fresh milk, into which all the mountain had 
mixed its perfume, and whose every draught gave me new 
life, I certainly experienced a series of sensations that are 
ill-defined by the word agreeable. It was, so to speak, a 
pastoral symphony, tasted instead of heard." 

The rich life of sensation of which such passages, which 
are frequent, are only a hint, is in our author's case, how- 
ever, first of all supplemented by a generous wealth of the 
more humane emotions. Guyau is evidently an admirable 
lover, and was so, we are told, from his earliest childhood. 
Fouillee tells us that Guyau's youth began with a Platonic 
faith that love is the soul of the universe, and with a meta- 
physical doctrine worked out upon this basis the world 
being conceived as a collection of beings, conscious and 
unconscious, who somehow worked together in the bonds 
of a not always conscious but universal love, towards the 
common end. Fouillee also calls attention to one of Guy- 

* Probldmes d'JSsthdtique Contemporaine, p. 63. 



JEAN MARIE GUYAU. 3G7 

au's own passages of childhood reminiscence: "I remem- 
ber," says Guyau, " my long despair the day when, for the 
first time, it came home to me that death could be an ex- 
tinction of love, a separation of hearts, an eternally mutual 
coldness ; that the cemetery with its stony tombs and its 
four walls could be the truth ; that 'twixt to-day and to-mor- 
row the beings who constituted my moral being could be 
taken away, or that I could be taken away, and that we 
should never be restored to one another. There are certain 
cruelties that you do not believe in, because they go too 
far beyond you. You say, ' It is impossible,' because within 
you feel : " How could I do that ? " 

This humane tenderness of an affectionate nature re- 
mains with Guyau to the end never paraded, always well 
controlled, but always ready to find such expression as was 
consistent with the thinker's clearness and honesty. The 
delights of a happy home-life are frankly confessed as the 
climax of his own private and earthly interests. He finds 
no better office for a man than to love and to be loved. He 
was himself husband and father, and writes as from his 
own home, in which, first of all, he is minded to be gay. To 
be sure, love is not only a gay but a grave thing ; for the 
shadow of death is constantly present to the invalid. More- 
over, to think about the universe means, for this natural 
lover, to try to love the universe ; and in face of the mys- 
tery of evil, this sort of love is a grave passion. As Guyau 
himself expresses the matter : * " The higher metaphysical 
emotion, like the higher aesthetic emotion, is never clear of 
a certain sadness. The day comes, when, in all hearts, 
grave and even painful chords will awaken, will demand 
at times to vibrate as they once vibrated in the privileged 
hearts of such as Heraclitus and Jeremiah. The metaphysi- 
cal sentiment cannot exist without something of sadness, as 



L'lrreligion de 1'Avenir, p. 8*7. 
25 



368 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

is the case with the sublime that we feel ourselves inca- 
pable of ever grasping, or with doubt itself, or with that 
intellectual, moral, or physical ill, which always mingles 
with all our joys, and which this doubt echoes in our own 
consciousness. From this point of view, one may say that 
there is a measure of suffering in every deep philosophy, as 
in every deep religion. . . . One day," our author continues, 
" as I was seated at my desk at work, my love came to me, 
full of concern : ' How sad your brow ! ' she said. ' What 
troubles you ? Tears, alas ! Have I caused you grief ? ' ' Ah, 
no, what grief have you ever caused me ? I am weeping at 
a thought nothing more yes, at a thought, in the air, 
abstract at a thought concerning the world, concerning 
the fate of things and of creatures. Is there not in the 
universe enough misery to justify a tear that seems without 
an object, just as there is enough of joy to explain a smile 
that seems to spring from nowhere ? ' Every man may 
weep or smile thus, not for himself, not even for his own, 
but for the great Whole where he lives. And it befits man 
this conscious solidarity wherein he lives with all beings 
this impersonal pain or joy that he is capable of feeling. 
This faculty of impersonal izing one's self, so to speak, is what 
will remain most lasting in the religions and in the phi- 
losophies, for it is hereby that they are most interior to our 
natures. To sympathize with all nature, to seek its secret, 
to want to contribute to its betterment, to leave thus one's 
egoism, in order to live the universal life that is what man 
will always do merely because he is a man, because he 
thinks and feels." 

Over against this warmth of natural experience, this rich 
life of sensory and emotional tenderness, there stand, in 
our thinker, two very marked characteristics. The one is 
a love of order a love very freely and simply expressed, 
but very potent. This man has the invalid's fondness for 
regimen. Joys and griefs have to be well-ordered. He 



JEAN MARIE GUYAU. 369 

loves experience ; but he must not experiment upon his 
frail constitution. Once, to be sure, he narrates, very mod- 
estly, how for a while he tried a quasi-Buddhistic experiment 
upon the art of attaining Nirvana. The method lay in re- 
ducing his nourishment to a few cups of milk instead of the 
usual meals, in leading a life of abstraction from all worldly 
concerns, and in devoting his mind to u abstract meditation 
and aesthetic contemplation." After a prolonged period of 
such discipline the experimenter reached a stage that was 
" not a dream," but that was certainly very remote, he says, 
from ordinary life. Life now obtained " something ethereal 
which is not without charm, although without savor, and 
without color." But erelong he was now led to observe 
that if he had left earth, he was after all no nearer heaven. 
There was painlessness, but no clearer insight Thought, 
even the most abstract, began to lose its outlines ; and so, 
after some stay in the shadow realms on the very confines 
of peace, where even the last desires were ceasing, our 
philosopher deliberately returned to earth, observing, as he 
says, that in the Pyrenees the best paths are those which have 
been worn by the heavy feet of the asses. As in the moun- 
tains, so, he here says, in life, and even for the philosopher, 
the best rule as to the general conduct of one's earthly 
business is the mountaineer's motto: "Follow the asses." 
They do not understand mountain scenery, nor the heavens 
above ; but here on earth they somehow know the road. 

Apart from this one excess of severity in regimen, our 
author shows us, amidst all his complexity of thought and 
of sentiment, his love for simplicity and clearness of liv- 
ing. And now the other trait, which, as I said above, 
joins with this love of order to characterize our thinker's 
attitude, and to offset the natural warmth of his sentiments 
is a very strongly practical sense for the application of 
doctrine to business. Guyau thinks for the world ; and it 
is his practical skill that goes far to make him acceptable 



370 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

to the partisans of the modern spirit as such, both in France 
and elsewhere. He descends readily from the highest prob- 
lems to the plainest questions of the day. His book called 
Education and Heredity, published posthumously, and 
known to our own public through an English translation, 
is an example of this practical disposition. From an intro- 
ductory study of the deepest questions of psychology, Guy- 
au passes, in this work, to a detailed discussion of the con- 
temporary problems of both physical and mental training 
in the schools of France. In another book, that upon the 
future of religion, Guyau interrupts extremely subtle and 
profound philosophical inquiries to introduce a vigorous, 
delicately written, but extremely practical chapter upon the 
relations of religious belief and unbelief to the fecundity 
of races, with especial relation to the recent course of 
events in France. These easy transitions from theory to 
practice, from central issues to the plain of daily life, are 
characteristic and noteworthy. They help to complete the 
picture of this vigorous and suffering, gay and serious, ten- 
der and thoughtful, cool and sensitive, common-sense and 
speculative, essentially manifold personality. You will not 
be surprised to learn that Guyau published a volume of 
poems Vers d'un Philosophe poems that, so far as I 
know them, seem as frank and simple as were all of the 
author's other confessions. 

ill. 

The philosophical doctrine that resulted from the work 
of this life passed through stages which Fouillee has au- 
thoritatively summarized. First there was the youthful, 
quasi-Platonic metaphysical hypothesis, never, as you will 
see, wholly abandoned, of the world as a community of be- 
ings, conscious and unconscious, engaged in working out 
an ideal upon the basis of an universal law of love. This 
hypothesis was obviously the direct result of Fouillee's own 



JEAN MARIE GUYAU. 371 

influence upon his step-son's mind. A little later, the study 
of the Utilitarian moralists culminated in a careful exami- 
nation of the doctrine of evolution. Guyau came under 
Spencer's influence, absorbed the naturalism of the day, 
and accepted the physical doctrine of evolution, a doctrine 
to which he henceforth remained true, although, like many 
other modern thinkers, he reserved the right to study inde- 
pendently the probable metaphysical meaning of the pro- 
cess of evolution itself. But the current interpretation of 
the doctrine, in so far as it was applied to the problems of 
ethics by Spencer and by others, seemed to him from the first 
unsatisfactory. His own ethical views never lost touch 
with the Kantian influences that had so early moulded his 
mind. He was, in his essential features, still an ethical 
idealist, i. e., a man disposed to interpret the universe as a 
realm whose significance lies in the ethical ideals that its 
processes realize. Yet he had meanwhile become converted, 
despite this fact, to the current modern naturalism. He 
was deeply impressed by the apparent indifference of nature 
to the ideals, and by the equally obvious isolation and in- 
significance of man's place in nature. From the physical 
side, it now appeared to him only too plain that our mo- 
rality, our beauty, our ideals in general, are an affair of the 
race, not of the universe. Unable to overcome, for the 
time, this conflict between nature and the ideals, our phi- 
losopher resolved to define, at all events, the moral world, 
and proceeded to his brilliant essay called Esquisse d'une 
Morale Sans Obligation ni Sanction, where the view of our 
moral nature already indicated in the introduction to this 
paper is developed. Man is now defined as a being whose 
manifold and inherited instincts determine all his natural 
conduct, and whose intelligence means simply, at the start, 
a bringing of his instincts into the light of consciousness. 
There is no intelligence apart from some sort of action. 
To know is simply to be aware of what you are doing. 



372 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

But, to be sure, since our various instincts conflict, we no 
sooner bring them to the light of consciousness than we 
find ourselves naturally disposed to various and conflicting 
sorts of action, egoistic and altruistic, passionate and pru- 
dent, pleasure-giving and pain-producing. The first result 
of consciousness is therefore, as we saw, a tendency to a 
certain paralysis of conduct, a considerate inhibition of our 
instincts, because we have found them out. The problem 
of ethics is to find some fashion of viewing ourselves that 
shall relieve us of this sceptical paralysis of instinct by con- 
sciousness. Older ethical writers have sought to solve this 
problem by appealing to the idea of our obligation to God 
or to some form of higher law. But the modern man, in 
order to be ethical, must find his law within himself, and 
mvst not even, like Kant, seek for it in some supernatural 
aspect of his own being. Hence the now ethical doctrine 
must teach us a "Morale sans Obligation." To do right 
must come to mean for us simply doing what we ourselves 
most truly desire to do. But just so, once more, former 
writers have sought to give the moral law an external sanc- 
tion, to tell us to do right in order that we may be made happy, 
by Providence, or by the rewards of our fellow men. Yet, 
in Guyau's view, true morality must be relieved of all such 
external sanction. Right must mean for me my own will, 
chastened and dignified, no doubt, by insight, but still my 
own very will, and not the will of another. 

Well, the solution of the problem thus set for the ethical 
teacher, Guyau finds in a very originally stated form of a 
doctrine which many others have in recent times taught, and 
which is, after all, the Kantian ethic, much as Fichte re- 
stated it, but then translated into a terminology more in 
accord with the spirit of modern naturalism. What every- 
body wants, after all, is life intense life, brqad life, deep 
life. For this fullness of life instinct blindly gropes. This, 
too, our reason, even at the moment when consciousness, 



JEAN MARIE GUYAU. 373 

bringing to light the one-sidedness of the individual in- 
stinct, paralyzes the instinct by detecting its conflict with 
the rest of our nature this fullness of life our reason even 
then desires. For reason, like every state of intelligence, 
is simply the coming to consciousness of some mode of ac- 
tion. When life as a whole comes into the light of con- 
sciousness, this means simply that we no longer blindly 
desire life as a whole, but are aware that we desire life. 
Not otherwise can we become conscious of our life. For all 
knowing is simply doing lighted up by consciousness. All 
ideas involve acts. When you learn to see, what you see, 
within yourself, is simply your own mode of activity. Ac- 
cordingly, to know life as a whole is consciously to love 
life as a whole. If the single instinct, now become a con- 
scious desire, wars with the whole of life, our interest in 
life's wholeness now consciously demands that the rebel- 
lious special desire be subordinated, that our wants take on 
the form of wholeness, that life be harmonized, and that 
the desire for more life, for more harmonious extended, and 
intense life, become the law of our being, ruling over special 
desires, putting them down if need be, giving life a plan, 
fulfilling the end of the Self in its wholeness. Such a 
consciousness is that of our so-called reason. It invents 
no supernatural mysteries. It simply counsels harmony 
of growth. To be sure, I am not now harmonious. Yes, 
but I can become so. I can, and therefore I ought This 
consciousness of the power to make the love of life in its 
wholeness victorious over special and subordinate aims is, 
as Guyau maintains, the true form of the moral con- 
sciousness. 

For the rest this moral consciousness is theoretically 
defensible only because it consents to be more than merely 
theoretical. Kant's error lay in appealing to pure reason, 
without noting that the pure reason, viewed merely as an 
abstract source of law, would be empty. Action is preliini- 



374 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

nary to theory, and survives mere theory. The truth of 
Kant's Categorical Imperative of the so-called pure reason 
lies in the fact that the desire for life in its wholeness is 
more fundamental than any special desires. To become 
conscious that what one wants is life, in all its fullness, 
intensity, and unity, is to become conscious of a categorical 
imperative superior to all particular aims, such as the aim 
of pleasure. Here then is at once the truth and the correc- 
tion of Kant's view. 

But this love of life has its social as well as its individ- 
ual significance. The ordinary separation of the ego from 
the rest of the world depends upon an essentially false 
classification, which our blindness often makes, but which 
nature ignores. Man's organism is already within itself, as 
Guyau loves frequently to point out, a society, a combined 
group of living cells, which cooperate in order to carry out 
the end of all. And by nature, this cell -colony which con- 
stitutes for each one of us our organism, is linked in the 
most manifold and real ways to the other organisms about 
us. One cannot first live for himself, and then for others. 
To live his own life is to recognize his organic relationship 
to his fellows. My desire to love is as much a part of my 
own inner life-interest as is my desire to eat. If I want to 
live largely, intensely, and in unity, I want to live a life 
that cannot be conceived alone. I want to love largely, in- 
tensely, harmoniously. Were pleasure my goal, I could 
ask, how much pleasure will loving acts give me person- 
ally. But if I want just to live, for life's sake, I can no 
longer separate my own life from the common life. The 
richest interior life, as for instance the life of thought, is at 
the same time the life that is most obviously social. I can- 
not think alone. I can only think with others. If I want 
to live the thinker's life, I must then make it part of my 
aim that there should be other thinkers in my world, my 
equals, whose ideas are as valuable to me as my own, and 



JEAN MARIE GUYAU. 375 

whose mental advantage is as much a part of my goal as is 
my own intellectual growth. All communication is social, 
if you will altruistic. It is done for the sake of those to 
whom I speak. But it is also done for my own sake, since 
utterly uncommunicative thought quickly comes to mean 
nothing. To think is already to speak interiorly to some 
conceived companion. Thus life and action exist only 
through their fecundity. Mere egoism is self -mutilation. 
Life is expansive, goes beyond itself, lives in social rela- 
tions, is best for me within, when it is best expressed for 
those without. Or again, I live best when I do work. But 
work means the production of fruit that my social fellows 
enjoy. 

In such fashions, which could be indefinitely illustrated, 
Guyau undertakes to give his ethics of life, or, as many 
would prefer to say, of self-realization, an essentially socio- 
logical turn. The more our philosopher proceeded in his 
work, the more his formulas became, in fact, sociological. 
His posthumous book on Education and Heredity is con- 
ceived in this sociological spirit The problem of the in- 
tense and harmonious life is to be solved, for the individual 
as for the race, for the philosopher as for the educator, by 
laying stress upon the fact that man is born for the richer 
experiences of companionship, and can solve the problem 
of his own destiny only by recognizing to the full his soli- 
darity with all men. Only he who loves most lives most 
Hence no egoistic consciousness can be successful in the 
pursuit of its true aim, which, consciously or unconsciously, 
is life in its fullness. 

The charm of these ideas, as Guyau presents them, lies 
in the originality, not of their essential contents, but of 
their form, and of the manner of their presentation. Such 
truths get a new meaning whenever they come as the em- 
bodiment of the more personal experience of a man of 
original temper. The book now before us is the work of 



376 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

a man of twenty-nine. The union of vigor with sim- 
plicity, of vitality with clearness, of naturalism with 
idealism, of youth with mature though tfulness, are thor- 
oughly characteristic of the author's position and quality. 
As Guyau now, in 1885, turned from morals to his wider 
philosophical interests, he saw immediately before him, 
amongst the countless tasks which awakened his ambition, 
three that he had time in some measure to accomplish be- 
fore his death. One of these was the topic of a posthumous 
work, namely, that on Education and Heredity, already 
mentioned. Another was the problem of ^Esthetics, which, 
in Guyau's mind, is closely associated with that of morals, 
for if the ethical ideal is the attainment of the fullness of 
life, the aesthetic pleasure is, according to Guyau, the en- 
joyment, through sympathy, of the contemplation or the 
presence of life. In his own words : " To live a full and 
strong life is already aesthetic ; to live an intellectual and 
moral life, is beauty carried to its maximum, and therein 
also is the supreme delight.' 1 The beautiful is " a percep- 
tion or an action that stimulates in us life in all its three 
forms at once (sensibility, intelligence, and will), and pro- 
duces pleasure by the swift consciousness of this general 
stimulation." In consequence, the beautiful is such be- 
cause, on the one hand, it awakens in us " the deepest sensa- 
tions of our nature," while on the other hand it appeals 
" to the most moral sentiments and the loftiest ideas of the 
mind." The study of aesthetics has thus for Guyau an 
extremely practical aspect. And the sociological impor- 
tance of the beautiful is, in his eyes, rendered all the greater, 
not only by this close relation of the beautiful (as that 
which appeals to our deepest sense of life) to the moral 
(as that which depends upon making life an ideal) not 
only by this relation but also by the fact that in mod- 
ern times the beautiful must more and more be depended 
upon to take that inspiring place as the moral awak- 



JEAN MARIE GUYAU. 377 

ener of men which in the past has been taken by dogmatic 
religion. 

The third problem which Guyau had still time to treat, 
he dealt with in his very remarkable book L'Irreligion de 
1'Avenir another of his "sociological studies," and his 
strongest work. 

The title of this book easily misleads any one who has 
not come to know our thinker's childlike simplicity, and 
transparent honesty of speech. One may well doubt whether 
he is right in maintaining, as he does, that his own view is 
essentially irreligious, or that the future to which he looks 
forward is, even in his own account of its destiny, in any 
proper sense a future of " irreligion." The matter is large- 
ly one of words. But Guyau loves frankness so much that 
he had rather lay stress in his title upon his differences with 
tradition, than arouse false expectations by an appearance 
of conformity. These are matters that every man must 
decide for himself. If Guyau's opinions, as here expressed, 
were my own, I should unhesitatingly call them religious, 
for the reason that I should then see in them, as he himself 
sees, the fulfillment, in reasonable form, of what the reli- 
gious instinct of humanity has been seeking. For the rest 
this volume breathes everywhere that spirit of spiritual un- 
conventionality which, as I must confess, seems to me one of 
the first qualities that the philosopher ought to cultivate in 
relations with the universe. To love law, is not to love 
convention as such. To accept convention in one's daily 
life amongst men is, within certain limits, the ordinary 
business of the loyal citizen. But your relations with the 
universe, with the truth, with the absolutely ideal, are sim- 
ply not conventional. And that is precisely why some of 
us, even if we love both the name and the universal cause 
of religion, may find outward and personal conformity 
to the mere accidents of current religious convention 
personally repugnant, and distinctly depressing to our 



378 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVTL. 

best concerns, so that, however much we sympathize, 
still outwardly such amongst us must stubbornly decline 
to conform. For with God even when he appears to your 
insight through the thin and transparently fragile veil of 
every human thought and relation with God as he is in 
himself, you have, in a certain sense, to be alone, especially 
if you reflectively and independently think out for yourself 
what you take to be your relation to him. Consequently 
it is in one way with God as it is with death, and with love. 
These exist for all men ; yet into each man's life they come 
as in some sense incommunicably his own. Of course you 
may tell this or that about them if you will. Speech is 
free. Thought has, as thought, no secrets. The way to the 
truth is open to all, and is to be publicly heralded and 
discussed. But your own sight of the truth when you see 
it nobody else has or can have just that. You and your 
truth, at the moment of insight you are alone together, in 
one harmony of appreciation not elsewhere attained in the 
universe. And now, this being so, one has a right to be 
sensitive as to the essentially lonely freedom of this one's 
union with the truth. It is a marriage. If any given con- 
ventional mingling with others who are or who take them- 
selves to be in presence of that truth, chances to jar on 
one's private sensibilities, not because one fails to love one's 
fellows, but because one does not love the note they strike, 
one has here an absolute right to one's private taste. The 
world has a right to your service, but never to your reli- 
gious conformity. That is due to God alone, and you can 
only express it in your personal way. If a given outward 
and worldly conformity chances to inspire you, you are 
welcome to it. But then that is merely your temporal 
accident. In the eternal world there are countless worship- 
pers and servants, but there are no conventional religious 
ties. Such worldly ties are the mere trappings, and the 
suits of the religious insight, which, in itself, passeth show. 



JEAN MARIE QUYAU. 379 

Now in these last words I have spoken of course for 
myself, and not for Guyau. His religious, or, as he would 
say, in his simple fashion, his irreligious insight, is not that 
of a metaphysical idealist, but rather that of a merely ethi- 
cal idealist. He takes nature, to the end, much more seri- 
ously than, in our philosophy, some of us are disposed to 
do. But the sense in which I find myself agreeing with the 
tone of Guyau 's book, even on its negative side, is deter- 
mined for me by this spiritual unconventionality which has 
led him to choose his title. By irreligion he means, after 
all, little but unconventionality in one's religion. In the 
future, he holds, men will differ as widely as now in opinion, 
they will never give over speculating upon the eternal prob- 
lems, and they will love the ideals and consciously ful till 
the harmony of life better than we do. But they will 
lay aside both the authority of dogma and the forms of 
conventional religion. They will reason together, live to- 
gether, observe together, but every man will, in the end, 
aim to see the truth with his own eyes. That men can 
learn to live in this way without losing the very aims 
which the religious consciousness in the past has pursued 
this is Guyau's thesis. He defends it by a series of brilliant 
analyses, full of learning, ingenuity, criticism, kindliness, 
and hope. 

First comes a briefly sketched theory of the religious 
history of humanity. The motive for the development of 
the religious consciousness was primarily dependent upon 
the psychological nature of the social consciousness of 
man. Having in an especially clear and vivid fashion the 
idea of human fellow-beings, man, as a social creature, was 
peculiarly predisposed to use this central idea of his con- 
sciousness as a means of interpreting nature. Hence he 
easily saw comrades, enemies, and masters all about him. 
The world of spirits, and later the gods, consisted of the 
members of an enlarged society, of a society formed in the 



380 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

image of human society. Not so much anthropomorphism 
as " sociornorphisin " is the principle that determines the 
contents and the growth of religious faiths. In time, civil- 
ized man, just as he learns to live in orderly and organized 
political bodies, learns to conceive his gods as in orderly 
and organized relations to himself. The constitution of his 
ideal religious state gets definitely conceived, just as his 
own political constitutions come gradually to his conscious- 
ness. The result is a series of highly determinate and 
elaborate social relations to the gods relations which are 
expressed in myth, in cultus, and at length in dogma. The 
religious world is the world of a mythical social order. 

But this elaborate sociological structure, viewed in the 
light of a larger knowledge of nature and of man, appears 
in every case, first as an accidental product of given historical 
conditions, which produce one set of conceptions in one 
region and another in another and then as a product not 
of the scientific study of nature, but of the sociological 
imagination of man. Hence, in the long-run, every deter- 
minate mythology, rite, and dogma, must be doomed ; 
and for the truth one must turn to science and to specu- 
lation. 

Science ,when we appeal to her for light, shows us not the 
ultimate, but only the partial truths. She does reveal to us 
that apparent indifference of nature before mentioned. But 
hereby science only whets our appetite to know the final 
truths, which science as such cannot, at least at present, 
hope to bring within the range of experience. 

There remains speculation. Speculation involves risk of 
error at every step, but, on the other hand, speculation is 
the expression, in theoretical terms, of that very love of life, 
boundless and ideal, which we have already seen to be the 
soul of morality. As a limitless expansion, guided by rea- 
son, but incapable of being cut off at any point by any 
rational interest, is what the self, as it becomes conscious, 



JEAN MARIE GTJYAU. 381 

sets before itself as the practical business of life, so a con- 
stant striving to pierce behind the veil, and to find out the 
mysteries of truth, is the inevitable theoretical business of 
the awakened mind. We cannot yet know. We must hope 
to know. This is the way in which theory expresses what 
our practical consciousness puts in the form of the principle : 
We are not yet fully living ; but we must hope and strive 
to live more and more intense, and organized, extended, and 
harmonious lives. Consequently, while Guyau apparently 
does not expect that exact science will at any definable time 
replace our speculation, he does believe that, so long as exact 
science is incomplete, men may and must speculate, and that 
therefore the decay of faith will never involve the cessation 
of philosophy. The eternal, the ideal, will always be, next 
to life itself, our strongest interest 

Our actual speculations must of course be guided by 
probability. The task of the philosopher, in reviewing the- 
ories, is to find which of the theories proposed is the most 
consistent, both with experience, and with itself. With 
ready skill Guyau reviews a number of the best known of 
the world's metaphysical hypotheses. Dualistic theism dis- 
contents him ; the optimistic pantheism of Spinoza and the 
pessimistic pantheism of Schopenhauer and von Hartmann 
are alike rejected as inadequate expressions, both of the 
place of evil in the world and of the facts of evolution. A 
metaphysic that in the present day is to be plausible in the 
light of experience, and in view of the demands of our 
thought, must take account both of the doctrine of evolu- 
tion, and of the sociological constitution of those regions of 
reality best known to us men. The religions have been 
wrong in their dogmatic sociomorphism, which has filled 
the universe with arbitrarily imagined social structural. 
They have probably not been wrong in conceiving of the 
universe as substantially, after all, a social order, where, as 
in our own case, beings develop from unconscious isolation 



382 STUDIES OP GOOD AND EVIL. 

to conscious and social unity and harmony of life. A the- 
ory, closely related to that of Fouillee, and intimately re- 
lated to Guyau's own sociological interests, is thus pro- 
pounded as the most likely interpretation of the universe. 
The world is one of evolution from unconscious to con- 
scious will, with a growing solidarity of interest amongst 
the members of any groups that thus evolve. The appar- 
ent indifference of nature is very possibly illusory. The 
universe is doubtless full of life, and the sociological rather 
than the mechanical view of the nature of being has the 
better chance of being true. 

Meanwhile, as we are now, every man of us, loving life, 
wants immortality. Have we any right to hope for such a 
fortune ? Once come to regard the universe, as Guyau 
now does, in the light that makes probable a deep sympathy 
between the inmost nature of things and our own highest 
interests, and then your naturalism will no longer exclude 
the hope that immortality, if not already in the possession 
of the present humanity, will be obtained by the future 
race as the result of further evolution. In the closing 
chapter of the work now before us, and with a literary skill 
that makes this eloquent peroration the very climax of our 
author's artistic efforts, this dying invalid, joyous in the 
face of death, sets down the speculations which occur to him 
concerning the last great mystery. One cannot prove im- 
mortality; but does our knowledge of nature tend to ex- 
clude its possibility ? Here the sociological view of man's 
nature comes to our philosopher's aid. Man could not sur- 
vive merely by virtue of the survival of a soul-substance. 
Man must survive as a conscious being. But then con- 
sciousness is social. One lives in one's common life with 
others. Why is it not possible that, if sufficient social unity, 
sufficient quasi-telepathic interrelationship came to be estab- 
lished amongst minds, one individual, in the course of 
human evolution, could come actually to live as consciously, 



JEAN MARIE GUYAU. 383 

as genuinely, in the midst of the very mental life of those 
whom he loves, as in what is now called his own mental 
life ? At present, when our friends die, their memory re- 
mains, love holds them, and they seem to live on, because 
they live for us, in our love. Suppose that the group of 
mental states that now constitute my memory of my friend 
became as warm, as full of movement and spontaneity, as 
independently active, as are now the states of mind of my 
living friend. Suppose that this spontaneity went so far as 
to establish a continuity of memory between this living 
image of my friend and his real past Would not my 
friend then live on in my love ? And if many loved him 
so, if in social intercourse all their loving images united 
into one, might not, upon some higher plane of evolution, 
love hold its own forever, and the beloved survive, not as 
voiceless memories, but as speaking comrades, sustained in 
life by the activities of other organisms than used to be 
theirs, but genuinely alive, in precisely whatever was most 
ideal and lovable about them ? These are indeed bold 
speculations, and Guyau fully knows the fact But reasons 
Guyau, we stand, as we study some of the newer psychologi- 
cal oddities, upon the borderland of mysteries hitherto un- 
dreamed of as to the relation of mind and mind. And so 
we have still our right to hope. 

As for death as it is, one, by facing it frequently, may 
get quite used to it, says Guyau. " Death, for the rest," so he 
concludes " death for the philosopher, that friend of every 
unknown, offers still the attraction of something that is 
yet to be known. It is, after birth, the most mysterious 
novelty of tin- individual's life. Death lias its secret its 
enigma, and one keeps the vague hope that it will solve that 
enigma by one last irony even as it crushes you, that the 
dying, as the old faith had it, prophesy, and their eyes only 
close because dazzled by a flash of light Our last sorrow 
remains our last curiosity ! " 
26 



384 STUDIES OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

In this paper I have not desired to criticise, but to por- 
tray. I beg to introduce to you in this way one to whose 
immortality, if his brilliant conjecture be right, you may 
perchance joyously contribute, by finding him a very gra- 
cious, ingenious, and abiding friend. 



THE END. 



BY EMINENT SCIENTISTS. 



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