What is meaning? Studies in the development of significance

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WHAT IS MEANING ?

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J

"WHAT IS MEANING?:-;

STUDIES

IN .THE

DEVELOPMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE

BY

V. WELBY > r<,

'* And in that day ... the eyes of the
blind shall see out of obscurity and out
of darkness." — Isaiah xxix. i8.

^ Of TH£

f UNIVERSITY j

■ or ,^ ,/

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MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited

NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1903 Digitized by Google

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QENERAL

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TO MY DEAR GRANDSON

RICHARD WELBY

In the hope that he may live to see what
is real more worthily expressed and
understood ; so that, when we know
better what true meaning is, the world
of signs may be fuller of sense and signify
more than it has ever done yet.

• .. *.i ■.. v^

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PREFACE

In attempting so great a venture as the suggestion
of a new point of view from which to approach the
most urgent of our present problems — among them
that of education — a few words of explanation and
warning are necessary.

In the first place, the appeal to more highly
developed forms of expression carries with it the
disability of having to write in those very idioms
and to use those very figures of speech which need
in some cases to be superseded, in others to be
vivified, to be raised to a higher power of significance.
Thus it becomes almost impossible to avoid being
credited by the reader with perpetuating those old
deadlocks of thought which are the very reason of
half our puzzles and failures.

In the second place, the very contention that the
central growth-point of the child's intellectual interest
has been hitherto not merely neglected, but habitually
checked and starved, implies that all of us who have
gone through any ordinary form of what is called

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viii WHAT IS MEANING?

education are more or less suffering from the effects
of this blight.

Ability of the first rank, yet more the force of
exceptional genius, of course persist and triumph in
spite of this or any obstacle. But even so the work
for mankind of such ability or genius is hampered
^ and minimised by the mental conditions of those
whom it has to influence and to inspire. Inevitably,
therefore, the question becomes how best to raise
\ the level of average interpretative power, and with it
that of average achievement

It is necessary here to repudiate in the strongest
possible way any claim on the part of the writer to
the possession of special or individual power to deal
with recognised difficulties by means of the method
here suggested. On the contrary, the whole point
of the book is that what is offered is for the use of
all alike. Unless its thesis can vindicate this claim
it must be worse than useless.

For what in the following pages will be called
Signifies is either of universal application or of none ;
it is a tool, an instrument, which appeals to the ne^ds
of all men everywhere and at all times. It must
therefore be judged simply and solely on its own
merits. Even if the person who after a careful study
of many years ventures to suggest this new starting-
point could be shown to have misused it, or seriously
blundered in inferences from or applications of it,
that would only be an additional reason for taking

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PREFACE ix

it up and working it out more adequately and
efficiently. What it may best be compared with is
the — happily anonymous — advent of the system of
symbolic numerals and of that other symbolic system
which we call the alphabet.

The number-system, which could be worked with-
out sticks or pebbles, or even fingers, must at first
have seemed to point to some peculiar gift in the
few. So must the alphabet, as proposing to super-
sede the pictographic methods. But, as history
shows, it soon became evident that here, open to
all, was at once a simplification and an immense ad-
vance in the means of expression, and this discovery
was promptly acted upon. For man is not prone
to be content with the first crude attempts to suggest
developments which economise as well as enrich his
mental resources.

As this is but a preliminary sketch of the inquiry
needed, no attempt is made to divide the subject
into definite heads. It will, however, be seen that
while its general aspects are mainly dealt with in the
first part, its application to the primitive mind and
thence to education comes later.

For the convenience of uninterrupted reading
the longer footnotes have been relegated with other
matter to the Appendix. But it must not, therefore,
be supposed that these are superfluous or may be
neglected. Notes and examples could be multiplied

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X WHAT IS MEANING?

a hundredfold. A very large number have been
collected. But it is far better for the reader to
observe them for himself, since they abound on
every side, and of course it has only been possible
to select a few.

It now remains to acknowledge with gratitude
the counsel, information, and criticism received from
experts or authorities in the various subjects touched
upon in these Studies. Were all such helpers to be
mentioned, a volume would be needed. Moreover,
part of this generous help was given before the
inquiry had begun to take a definite form ; and
some of those who contributed most in this way —
for instance Professor Henry Sidgwick, Professor
Croom Robertson, Professor Tyndall, Professor
Max Miiller, and Mr. Romanes — are no longer
with us.

But warm thanks are in the first place due to Dr.
Stout for ungrudging care in looking through the
MSS., and for much other invaluable help and
encouragement ; and in various degrees to Professor
Titchener, Sir F. Pollock, Sir Leslie Stephen, Mr.
Andrew Lang, Sir Alfred Lyall, Professor F. Tonnies,
M. Michel Br^al, Dr. Murray, Dr. Postgate, Sir
Oliver Lodge, Professor Lloyd -Morgan, Professor
Ray Lankester, Professor Poulton, Dr. Waller, Dr.
Shadworth Hodgson, Professor S. Alexander, Mr.
Francis Galton, Professor P. Geddes, Dr. Tylor,
Professor Cook Wilson, Mr. J. E. McTaggart, and

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PREFACE xi

Dr. J. Ward. Some or all of the MSS. or the
proofs have also been kindly looked through by
Professor Sully, Dr. Haddon, Professor Clifford
Allbutt, Mr. F. C. S. Schiller, Mr. D. Hogarth, and
Mr. A. Jenkinson.

V. WELBY.

DuNEAVES, Barrow, January 1903.

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE

Abstract of the line taken in an article in Mind on Sense, Mean-
ing, and Interpretation. Universal scope and reference of
the subject to be called Signifies, and the distinction between
Sense, Meaning, and Significance. Expression must over-
take Uie thinker and the poet if they are to open new worlds
of truth and beauty ..... 1-9

Suggestion that the existing desire for perfected mental commimi-
cation must be stimulated and directed ; that as the sense
for significance develops, Expression both may and ought
to outstrip definition ; that it is not merely a question either
of precision or of style ; that on the question What is mean-
ing? hangs the future of Literature, while it deeply concerns
the scholar, the man of science, and the man of action ; that
the next generation should be trained from the first to put
this subject in the forefi-ont of all intellectual work as well
as in that of all education . . . . .9-11

CHAPTER II

Language ought to be sensal, intentional, and significant. Let
us then be prepared fairly to examine all suggested reforms
or extensions of language. Our end must be a more subtle
expressiveness attained by a more intelligent use of the
resources, actual and possible, of language, and first
among these, of tested and valid analogy and metaphor . 12-22

CHAPTER III

Signifies, in fact, approaches Analogy from a new starting-point,
thus making for a new departure in thought, now handi-
capped by the imperious associations of language. This
brings us to the question of figurative expression, resting on
the method of analogy, which is involved in the very act of
communication between minds .... 23-24

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xiv WHAT IS MEANING?

. PAGE

All analogy as in this case is tested in the working, and thus
cAlls for a critique of imagery — much of which at present
obscures or distorts instead of illustrating . . . 25-26

An example of scientifically valid analogy )aelding really illus-
trative metaphor assumes that experience may be considered
(i) as planetary, (2) as solar, and (3) as cosmical : the first
being direct and immediate, the two latter increasingly
indirect and mediate ..... 27-28

This answers (i) to sense as means of adjustment which we share
with the sub-human organisms; (2) to meaning, which
marks the opening of the distinctively human era ; and (3)
to significance, which connotes the emergence of that which
is of the deepest moment and the highest value for us . 28-31

CHAPTER IV

It now becomes desirable to look into some of the inherited
analogies which dominate our thought and tend to falsify
our observations and inferences .... 32-36

Here we come to the most prolific source of barren controversy.
For while language itself is a symbolic system, its method
is mainly pictorial ...... 37-38

But when a term or a proposition insensibly acquires a fresh
value, we may and constantly do find ourselves committed
to unlocked for and unwelcome practical results . . 38-39

CHAPTER V

In this spirit we postulate an analogy between Context and En-
vironment, and in illustration of this consider the difference
between Fact and Idea ..... 40

This in the last resort is that if fact is seen to be false it ceases

to be fact ; whereas a false idea remains an idea . 40-41

One issue of authenticated analogy may well be that as ancient
* poetry ' was bom of the most advanced ' science ' then
possible, so the poetry of the future will be bom of that
science which only through misconception we suppose to be
its enemy ....... 41

Mind, whether we will or no, works through and by analogy.

Experimental treatment of figure by diagram, etc. . . 42-46

The triad of Sense, Meaning, and Significance may also be
expressed as Signification, Intention, and Ideal Value. From
this point of view the reference of the first is mainly instinc-
tive ; of the second, volitional; and of the third, moral . 46

The science of Man must remain in one sense abortive unless we
can master the secrets of ' meaning. ' The student trained
to concentrate his attention upon these will in his turn

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CONTENTS XV

PAGE

Stimulate his teachers. -The double reference of 'sense*
will unfold its unique significance .... 47-48
(a) Intellect exists potentially in sense, just as sense exists in
motion and change, (d) Intellect as definable begins at the
Meaning stage, (c) Intellect is itself transcended by Reason.
But this thought may easily be misapplied . . . 48-49

CHAPTER VI

Significance fully resumes, in transfigured form, all that is
summed up (i) in the idea of Motion, (2) in the idea of
Sense (in double sense), and (3) in the idea of Meaning
(intention) ....... 50

Reality is monistic in so far as actual severance goes, dualistic
firom another point of view, triadistic from a third, and
pluralistic from a fourth ..... 50

But present terminology is inadequate to the expression of a

unity thus reached ...... 50

Diagnostic, if we were allowed to use the term outside the
pathological field, would well represent the typical process
of Signifies, and would tend to the creation of a linguistic
conscience which must beneficially react upon thought.
We must raise language, as we have ourselves risen, from
the so-called instinctive to the volitional and fully rational
plane ....... 51-53

Signifies claims to centralise and co-ordinate the efforts which

are here and there being made in this direction . . 54

Thought is unduly subservient to established modes, canons,

and fashions of expression ..... 54

Orthodoxy, though valuable in the domain of language, has
degenerated into a hindrance to our acquirement of new
power adapted to express and deal with increased knowledge 55

The demand for a merely mechanical or rigid ideal of language

is deservedly ignored ..... 56-57

Signifies as a means of calling attention to the backwardness of
language in comparison with other modes of human com-
munication ...... 57-58

The tyranny of language is analogous to the former tyranny of

slow and inconvenient modes of locomotion . . 58

And therefore it hinders the freer development of our knowledge 59

Since it fits only the pre-Copemican or scholastic order of things 59

There has been an enormous advance in knowledge, but no cor-
responding advance or revolution in the expression of this
knowledge ....... 59

CHAPTER VII

What we do want is a really plastic language in the biological

sense which potentially includes the aesthetic . . 60

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xvi WHAT IS MEANING?

PAGE

False and true conservatism contrasted . . 6i

The true conservatism will not be found inconsistent with a
development of sign, which may take the form of a ' tele-
scoping ' of expression, as is the case in biological recapitu-
lation ....... 61-63

* Bad language ' might cover all forms of waste or abuse of
speech. If we take a well-known word with established
(however conventional) associations, and apply it in a new
sense, we may often create the need of a new word to take
its place ....... 63-64

The difference between the actual and ideal use of language may
be compared to that between the child's copy-book hand
and his father's legible, yet free and running hand. And
this may in its turn be compared to that between the
executant and the artist, who is not, like the mere executant,
wholly at the mercy of instrumental limitations . . 64-65

We omit to cultivate in the child the sense-wealth which we
admire in the great writer. Moreover, when we are asked
to respect what such a writer first and most respects, viz.
the value of distinction and consistency in its application,
we cry off . . . . . . . 65-66

CHAPTER VIII

The aim of literary workmanship should be to enhance the value
of language on every side ; but ' style ' too often now means
a straining after merely startling effect ... 67

Questions thus suggested ..... 68

The answers to these must wait until the 'signific' start has

been made ...... 68-69

Lucidity and its various senses ..... 69

The obscurity of great writers is often due to that very gift of

insight and prevision which their readers commonly lack . 69

Because the received modes of expression, once appropriate and
now antiquated and often irrelevant, act as a drag upon
thought ....... 70

Lucidity often means confinement to the merely 'planetary'
sphere, the writer meaning no more than what he actually
states ....... 70

The general term ' obscurity ' may be differentiated into lack of
(i) transparency, (2) translucency, or (3) it may mean
failure to radiate. The more we know the less we think
that easy or obvious explanation will in all cases serve . 70-72

CHAPTER IX

This brings us to the subject of ambiguity, which may be com-
pared (i) to the discord which is the condition, and (2) to
that which is the destruction of music . . 73-74

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CONTENTS xvii

PAGE

Of Ambiguity in the second sense we have three types, which
may be expressed as, (i) The defective 'tuning' of lan-
guage, (2) The defective mental eye and ear on the part of
the ' performers,' (3) The organic distortions which hinder
performance ...... 75-76

An SLDsdysis and experimental appUcation of metaphor being thus

much needed ...... 76

Are we then to discard en bloc the outgrown in language and
begin again ? No ; but to train up a generation to see and
acknowledge the pressing duty of contributing, as in former
ages, to the orderly development of language 76-77

And this development of expression will among other results
enable us to see that the value of certain negative ideas,
e.g. the Infinite, is protective rather than creative (in the
ordinary sense) ...... 77

When we have seen this, we shall begin to think in cube, in
voliune, in sphere, yet more in the round and in orbit ;
making Motion our paramount analogy. For ' we are all
waves' ....... 77

If we ask what is practically gained thus, we must remember
that though the value of a new instrument of research may
be generally predicted, specific results must await its trained
use ...... . 77-78

CHAPTER X

Colloquialism through popular imagery reveals general ten-
dencies, and moreover shows that we have yet to translate
the dynamics of science for mental and moral use . 79

Case of ignoring and even endorsing misuse of words by writers

on language (English) ..... 80

Example of such misuse involving practical loss . 80-82

CHAPTER XI

Signifies, as enabling us to deal in fresh and practical forms with
perennial but baffling problems, must therefore be con-
sidered, first, as a method of mental training ; secondly, as
the concentration of intellectual activities on that now
vaguely called ' meaning ' which is tacitly assumed by us
to be the main value of all study .... 83-84

At first it seems self-destructive to use the signs by which we

express mental facts as metaphors for these same facts . 84

But it is only apparently so . . . . . 84

We now come to the region where clearness, order, consistency
are most of all required and least of all found ; that de-
scribed as the conscious, mental, spiritual, etc . . 84-85

Why is it that we cannot use without grotesqueness some of the

best of all o\a metaphors — the biological ? . 85

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xviii WHAT IS MEANING?

PAGE

We live in a visceral, a spinal, and a cerebral life . . . 85

Mind or Intelligence * means ' the possibility, if not the necessity,

of meaning ...... 86

Since what exists and what happens, whatever else it may be,

even if ' unmeaning,' is at least not senseless . 86

The only question is, in what sense has it ' meaning ' ? . . 86

For chance like luck is now recognised as a fiction, and connotes

merely our ignorance of the matter of which we predicate it 86

When man asks what is the meaning of the world and of the life
upon it, he enters the true realm of Meaning, which in this
sense is • solar ' . . . . . 86-87

The human rate of life is adjusted to planetary conditions. But
there is no reason why this should not be changed ; why in
the pregnant English idiom we should not be quickened . 87-88

Also, development need not be in a straight line ; e.g. the brain
is something quite different to the spinal nervous system
from which it has been evolved .... 88-89

Nothing in us can presumably either be alien to or isolated from
the cosmic plenum which lies not merely beyond, but also
in and through the solar system and our planet . 90

The ' solar ' consciousness, not being immediately necessary to
preservation and rep>roduction of physical life, is more or
less vague, and is the source whence ' glamour ' reaches and
stimulates the poet and the artist, supplying the halo of the
saint and the illumination of the mystic. But also it excites
the intellectual activities and the ordering functions of reason 91

The ' solar' consciousness, or ' Heaven,' is the true home of all

that we call the mental and moral energies . 9a

For the earth is the distinctive home, not of the visual, but of the

tactual ....... 93

All promise here is better than frilfilment, because the true ful-
filment belongs to the planet's natural centre and origin,
and therefore to that of the rational life upon it • . 92-93

CHAPTER XII

Our only fully-developed articulate cosmos is planetary, and the

knowledge of it is originally acquired through touch . 94

' Solar ' knowledge, on the contrary, is one remove from this, and

' cosmical ' knowledge is doubly indirect ... 94

Xenophanes has here a lesson for us . . . 95

Language compels us to speak of the mental and physical as
though they were different spheres. This drives us to
analogy, which as yet is liable to be arbitrary and chaotic.
The ' planetary ' consciousness, as we have seen, is secured
by the struggle for existence. The ' solar ' answers to the
scientific activities, made possible by leisure and protection,
and stimulated by increasingly complex demands upon
brain-work. The astroph3rsicist has become the representa-
tive ' solarist ' and ' cosmicist ' . . . . 95-96

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CONTENTS xix

PAGE

But, in defiance of the scientific example, this planet is still
mentally for the rest of us a universe-centre — still flat, fixed,
founded ; whereas all the ancient thinkers were true to such
conceptions of their physical 'world' as had then been
arrived at . . . . . . . 96

Modem psychology works throughout on the assumption that
mind originates on this planet, just as the older Christianity
supposed this earth to be the centre of Divine attention . 96

What if we should here find a clue to some apparently gratuitous

aberrations of primitive belief? .... 97

The religious world is first and essentially ' spiritual.' It belongs
to the very • breath ' of our life. Yet the highest of all
religious analogies is found in 'God is light.' Without
the Divine light we should not even see God as love . 97-98

Our accepted use of ' light ' corresponds to the proposed use of
' solar.' It is more than a mere rhetorical device. In this
sense a really valid scheme of thought must be ' solar ' to
us . . . . . . . . 98-99

In science ph3rsical or exact we have this solar quality . . 99

Therefore any system of ♦ philosophy ' which only appeals to a

certain order of mind is self-confessed to be secondary . 99

Our aim is thus not to construct a new system, but to assimilate
and translate all modes of arriving at truth, by opening up
a Way that is a method, a mode, a means, a medium, a
' manner ' even, which is the interpretation and co-ordina-
tion of aU ways ...*.. 99-100

CHAPTER XIII

Man must always interpret the cosmos in terms of his own sense-
experience, but it is good for him to recognise that he is
doing so . . . . . . . Z01-103

When we use analogically the physiological sources of vision,

we are bound to take the true ones so far as they are known 103

And so we must remember that it is the far and not the near

which we most easily see ..... 103

The sensitive plate attached to a telescope gives us a conspicuous

instance of indirect evidence . . . .103

Men have for countless ages believed that objects are rendered
visible by something projected firom the eye itself ; and even
now, the most advanced of us are tempted to imagine that
the mental analogue of ' light ' is something projected from
the 'mental eye,' or to accept this as the origin of our
highest spiritual ideals . . . .104

The only true analogy for these is not the ' standing-ground ' of

a world, but the world-teeming ' ether ' . . . 104-105

Undermine all the ' foundations ' of our mental world, and even
if to the sceptical eye ' the result is painfully like nothing.'
it is all the support needed by the mental as by the physical
world ....... 105

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PAGE

Aristotle's and Von Hartmann's geocentric bias may be con-
trasted here with Bruno's cosmotropic outlook . . 105-106
J. S. Mill recognised the need to • think away the suppcnt ' . 107

CHAPTER XIV

From this point of view we may re-examine the Positivist appeal
' to submit our consciences to the oldest religion known to
this planet. But so long as we confine ourselves to life or
mind on this planet, the oldest ideas are the youngest, the
most infantile . . . . . .108

Comte's refusal to go beyond the planet for the sources of

religion is in fact the adoption of a Ptolemaic analogy . 108-109

We are compelled to speak in cosmological figure. Let us see
then that our moral cosmology does not stand or fall with
the idea of a fixed and central earth, surrounded by pro-
jected or at least tributary 'heavens,' and reflecting light
from itself upon its skies ..... 109- no

If ' mind ' must still be mystery, let it at least, like light, heat,

gravitation, be cosmically derived . . . .110

The two orders of mind which may be called the ' geotropic '

and the ' cosmotropic ' ought to be complementary . no

The religion of the geotropic mind is anthropomorphic, and its
physical analogue is a sim reflecting the earth's light. The
idea of a GoD-man belongs to the second • , .111-112

CHAPTER XV

We are all in the end driven to confess that physical facts depend

wholly on sense-experience for coming within our ken at all 113

For this our senses are the means. But ' senses ' are inherently
means of message, while ' message ' is meaningless unless
it involves the idea ' firom ' somewhat • to ' somewhat . 113

We seem to need the term ' inject,' and it would be well to con-
ceive our highest ideals in physiological analogy rather as
• injected ' than as • secreted ' .... 113-114

The recognition of our planetary status suggests a fresh solution

of the problem of pain . . . . .114

In the organic world injury alwa3rs tends in some sense to de-
terioration if not to destruction. How is it then that ethical
man with one voice admits that both injury and the sufier-
ing for which we are forced to use the physical analogies
may raise and even ennoble him ? . . .114-115

The view that confines the problem of pain to solutions on this
world and in this life is in fact founded on a £Edse analogy,
and is essentially Ptolemaic . . . . 115

But the Copernican reversal leaves us the potencies of the planet 116

The earth may have ' mothered * Man, but the whole universe

has ' fathered ' him ..... 116

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CONTENTS xxi

PAGE

This involves the choice between alternative conceptions of Man :
(i) as his own centre, creating and projecting all the
'reality' which exists ; (2) as derivative in everything, and
moved to act by the impulse which may best be called the
• cosmic,' reaching him through the • solar' energy . 117-118

CHAPTER XVI

If we have no right to the assimiption just made that conscious-
ness and mind are included in the Copemican reversal,
because we have no direct perceptual evidence of this,
neither have we direct p>erceptual evidence of their promise
in the earlier forms of animal life. In both cases we are
reduced to the conceptual . . . . . 119

' Infinity ' merely thinks away space, as • eternity ' does time,
and is, like the words banning with 'ab,' properly a
negative word ; whereas the most positive of all words in
the sense of connoting richness of character and content is
Significance ...... 119

All systems concentrate in Significance as their essential value ,

as well as test. And thus Signifies alone gives us the means
of inter-translation . . . . . 120

For the truth of a statement depends more on the ' sense' in which

it is used than on formal accuracy or clarity or exactness . 1 20-1 21

To return to the metaphor of sight, we find that it usefully

illustrates the double reference of the idea of sense . . 121-124

And we have no right to reverse the witness of vision . .125-126

We thus reach the idea of a new application of analogy which

may be called in an extended sense Translation . . 126-128

The mere attempt to state one subject in terms of another would

tend to reveal both discrepancies and correspondences . 128

One example of the various forms in which translation in this
new sense becomes a means both of testing knowledge and
of widening its range is here given . • . .129

CHAPTER XVII

• Translation ' of parts of Dr. Hughlings Jackson's Croonian

Lectures on the Nervous System (1884) . . . 130-138

If, as the welcome accorded by experts to this first attempt seems
to indicate, we have here a really valid analogy, it seems to
suggest a third mode of expression, combining the literal
and the figurative as a fine picture combines the actual and
the ideal ••••.,. 138-139

CHAPTEiR XVIII

The backward state of language leaves us victims of mislocution

on every side •••... 140

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xxii WHAT IS MEANING?

PAGE

Sentences and words are always swajring between the literal and
the metaphorical : we suddenly find ourselves using a given
expression as metaphor and then relapsing into its literal
use. And the whole context is in the same case . . 141-143

There is no such thing as 'plain' meaning, the same at all times,

in all places, and to all . . . . 143

The rise and £all of words and phrases form curves which deserve

careful study on account of their psjrchological reference . 143

Translation may be considered in the sense of mental digestion.

For in the larger use it includes transformation . . 143-144

The translation of one language into another depends on the
assumption of their common character ; and this is the idea
from which the proposed use of the term must start Its
original use is of course spatial — a transference of position . 144-145

The human prerogative is in its lower manifestation the translat-
ing of sense-impressions into their intellectual interpretation
or antitype ; in its higher the translating of intellectual inter-
pretation into what may be called verified mysticism — ^the
religious consciousness which has passed through the ordeal
of science . . . . . . .146

* Mysticism ' is often the forerunner, the onseeing of science, as

well as its afterseeing ..... 146-147

CHAPTER XIX

To take our best analogy, thought grows in definiteness and
clarity much as the visible light rays belong to a higher
development than the merely diffused light of nebulae.
And the present study of the phenomena of Radiation or
Radiancy seems to point to a similar advance . . 148

The present idea of Translation in all its applications implies, of
course, the careful recognition of Distinction, and starts from
the conception of Equation . . .148-149

Its use is seen wherever there is a presumable unity implied in

differences which can be distinguished . . . 149-150

A thing is significant, in both a higher and a lower sense, in pro-
portion as it is expressible through or translatable into {a)
pictorial symbols, (6) phases of thought and branches of
science ....... 150

An answer to those who would doubt the validity of a translation
of the physical into the mental is supplied by the word
sense itself ...... 151

There is inter-expression of the physical and the psychical . 151

In controversy thd object 'of each* controversialist should be to
translate the adversary's own position to him. This would
present no difficulty to a generation trained in Signifies . 151-153

The biological justification of the principle of translation is found
in the possibility of transforming one species into another
by the modifying action of ei\vironment . . . 153

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CONTENTS xxiii

PAGE

The statement of Professor Ernst Mach that the 'veritable
miracle of thought-transference . . . communication by
language/ is the pre-supposition of all thinking, tends to
justify the general view here taken . . . • IS3

CHAPTER XX

While truth, though in no fixed or rigid sense, remains the same,
the life of mankind describes a curve round it. The truest
analogy for religion is the relation of sim to planet . 154-155

The very language we use compels us to confess the * heavenly,'
the solar, the cosmic relation. What exalts is good ; what
degrades is bad ...... 155-157

Much may thus be hoped from an inquiry into the nature, work,
and place of the ideas expressed in the terms Sense, Mean-
ing, and Significance . . . . .157

Our ideals imply aspirations as real as the imiverse which
prompts them ; but to become more worthy of this they
need enormous exaltation . . . . . 158

And here once more we may use the relative value, in biological

development, of touch and sight . . . .158

The • positivist ' attitude may be called a bondage to the tangible 159

We must learn to come back to a world of touch — an amoebic

world — ^with the spoils of an evolved vision . . 159-160

CHAPTER XXI

Signifies then will bring us the philosophy of Significance. Its,
best type of metaphor is the ' solar,' its best mine of analogy
is the biological ...... 161

Thus it involves the philosophy of Interpretation . . 161

And gives the vital centre, the growth-point, of every existent

organism of thought . . . . . . 162

As in the biological, so presumably in the mental world there is

a tendency to recapitulation . . .162

Also to atavism ...... 162

To return to the threefold view of experience already suggested,
we may consider reality from three points of view : that of
the • geocentricist,' that of the 'solarist,' or that of the
'cosmicist' ...... 162-163

And this must be related to the central triad of sense, meaning,

and significance ...... 163

The truth is that hitherto we have been content to go to the root

of the matter and the foundation of things . . 164

But nothing springs from a root except lateral rootlets, and the

very world we live on is unfoimded . . . 164

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xxiv WHAT IS MEANING?

CHAPTER XXII

PAGE

It will now be well to consider at some length a view of the
primitive mind already suggested elsewhere. For Signifies
gives us the right to postulate Man as in a true sense the
expression of the world . . . . .165

What then are we to think of the beginnings of man looked at
from this point of view ? How can it be related to the facts
of that unbroken ascent from the protozoic life-forms which
is assumed by physical science ? .... 165-166

The question is, did the early mind start from a complete break
and therefore blank, and proceed to evolve a general con-
sensus of illusion ? . . . . . 167

If not, how are we to account for the apparently gratuitous and

destructive burden of primeval ritual ? . . . 167-168

A really primitive mind, centred upon life-preserving necessities,
would, except in cases of unique urgency, react only to
physiological stimuli, or would at least always demand their
presence ....... 168-170

And the primitive mind, as Dr. Tylor abundantly shows, is
before all things logical and consistent with its boundaries.
Then why did not early man try to dream, e.g. a feast for
the venerated ancestor dreamt of ? . . . . 170- 171

The tentative becomes organised and habitual by meeting for

many ages a satisfying response . . . .171

It is often said that the odd or queer, the strange, draw atten-
tion : thus the ghost began. But one ' odd ' would efface
another, and no two are alike. Yet ghosts are alike — per-
sistent, consistent, congruous ; an ' odd ' ghost would be
suspected like any other oddity .171-172

This seems to point to animism, fetishism, shamanism, totemism,
etc., as childish attempts to satisfy an originally organic
demand by translation into expression through rite and
word of facts generic to organic development . . 173

We may here ask, Whence came the idea of the inwardness of
mind and the outwardness of matter, and the exclusion of
what we call ' the human mind ' from the category of extra-
planetary energies ? . . . . '173

A further question would then be, whether the primitive readiness
to welcome the intangible phantom belongs to a yet earlier
era, and being translated points to baby-eflforts to put the
'dynamic* before the 'static'; to reverence for 'unseen*
power or force of whatever kind, rather than the limip of
tangible * stuff ' which was moved thereby . . . 174

CHAPTER XXIII

Everything we know points in the direction of underworking
though obscure and little understood promptings of -that

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CONTENTS XXV

PAGE

part of our nature which is in most direct relation with the 175

physical cosmos ......

On this supposition the baby mind will be perpetually ' haunted '
by a dim awareness of something which it is so far unable
to translate correctly . . . . .175

The problems of the primitive mind must be read in the light of

the pre-human activities ..... 175-176

The plea that probably the really earliest mind 'imderstood'
natural fact better than we do, must therefore be • under-
stood ' as involving the use of the word in a sense which
will almost justify its extension to the plant-root which
' knows ' what to • choose ' out of the soil it grows in . 176-177

The ideas (i) that ' blunder' accompanies right mental develop-
ment and is corrected 'as we go' ; (2) that every theory
the early man forms is ' better than none at all,' and does
seem usefully to connect facts ; (3) that in such a theory as
a 'tribal god' he is representing to himself deeply important
social truths which could only thus be realised or worked
out ; and (4) that what we ^nd in the primitive thought-
life is everywhere a ' step,' and may well constitute, and not
merely hamper, distort, or reverse a 'real progress,' only
open the door to fresh exploration . . .177

For they suggest that what seems most grotesque was only absiu'd

in a superficial and relative sense . . .178

Here arises the question what primitive man really meant by

dedicating food and other offerings to his dead ancestor . 179

The ordinary conclusions are examined and rejected on the
ground of directive continuity, the result of organic routine
throughout the evolutionary ascent .... 180-182

CHAPTER XXIV

Early man could hardly have accepted as fact the dislocation
and incongruity of dream events, since he was naturally
constrained by the monotonous uniformities of physical
Nature .... ... 183-185

It is only at a later stage that man is prepared to allow for

large margins of the possible . . . .185

When it is said that animals perceive apparitions invisible to

himian eyes, what is it that they are supposed to see? . 185

This question leads to others which can only be answered by

developments in comparative psychology . . . 185-186

The idea of ancestral spirits has been dwelt on to the exclusion
of any separate consideration of the later ' gods,' because no
dividing line can be drawn .... 186

In what sense did gods and men make up a * natural family ' ? . 186

Not in that of mental intercommunion, which is one of the latest

of thought-products . . . . .187

Where then are we to look for the link which bridges the chasm
between the sensuous and the non-sensuous? We may

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xxvi WHAT IS MEANING?

PAGE

suppose that the earliest man must have inherited a tendency
to useful reaction from protoplasmic days, and the checking
force of the physical nature which was so near to it would
have prevented its forming or putting into practice any
unwarranted delusion ..... 187-188

CHAPTER XXV

If mind has, in its embryonic forms, wholly broken with its
antecedents, we have no guarantee that what might be
called the religious consciousness does not merely deal with
fictions ....... 189

Response to appeals from the Divine Nature is more than a stage
in the development of the human mind ; rather it has all
the marks of a deep-seated instinct . . . 189-190

Since man is aware that his function is to interpret those
' problems ' which he himself has projected (though not on
his own initiative) into nature . . . .190

The whole question of the Primitive Mind resolves itself then
into one of trustworthiness. Is the modem or highly
cultured mind always and in all things more trustworthy
than the elementary mind ? . . . .190

It is one of the glories of the scientific mind that it is resolutely
learning to forswear all sophisms and plausible ingenuities
and discounting the accretions of merely conventional tra-
' dition ....... 191

Our admitted loss of some sense-developments may point to a
similar loss in delicacy of perception, and still more of sub-
or pre-conscious reaction to natural stimulus . . 191

But evidence on this point is wanting, since as yet no observa-
tions, even of the present savage's ideas or the child's, have
been undertaken from this point of view . . . .192

It is, however, admitted that language is 'kinetic' in its first
discernible forms, which originally represented action, not
object ....... 192

So we aim at a ' Metakinesis,' the extreme ambiguity of our
terms for which shows how elementary our knowledge of
' mind ' must yet be . . . . . 192

The 'voluntary element in the highest forms of intelligence, as
displayed by the intensely critical activities of the modem
intellect, is not always conducive to the validity of its
inferences ....... 192-193

It may even be as some thinkers have lU'ged, that some of our

highest mental activities are after all the least self-conscious 193

The Primitive Mind is dominated by its sense -scheme, the

meaning-scheme being still embryonic . . . 193

But with every advance in civilisation and reflection more and

more emphasis is thrown on the latter . . . 193

We might express the fact by saying that the primitive form of
intelligence was sensitive to modes of energy which it was

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CONTENTS xxvii

PAGE

incited to translate into cult or ritual in much the same
fashion as it was impelled to translate the sense of hunger
into the taking of food ..... 193-194

The rudimentary condition of the meaning-scheme was bound to
render these early translations of cosmic impulses in many
respects grotesque in our eyes . . . .194

This, however, is from the signific point of view just what we

should expect to find . . . . .194

CHAPTER XXVI

If we admit that there is evidence to suggest the reaction of the
early mind to the stimuli of a real world which might now
be called 'solar,' it follows that it is our highest duty to
improve our interpretative heritage to the utmost . . 195

One condition of this will be the outgrowing of incongruous
modes of expression to describe our noblest ideals, whether
of the conscience or of the intellect .... 196

But a question must here be asked: What is the first human
query ? The phrase is of course used in a very wide sense ;
not that of an articulate question, but of an inquiring
attitude, an active asking, a questioning activity . 196

What on this view is the cardinal distinction between the animal

and the human type of ' question ' ? . . . 196

The animal may in a sense be said to reach the what, the how,

and perhaps the where ; the when is doubtful . . 196^197

But it is not till we reach the human level that the question

Why ? is asked ...... 197

And indeed there is no occasion for the sub-human organism to

exert itself in the direction of finding out reasons . 197

Which is an activity implying a consciousness of personal

identity, and the advent of knowledge in the rational sense. 197-198

In this way the first distinctively Human Query seems reached . 198

That which links Man with the Animal world is apparently the

• How.' And this brings us back to the idea of the Way . 199

And to this modem thought has largely gone back, in reaction
from the speculative development in which the Why-Asker
over-reached himself . . . ► .199

Nor may it be an unmixed evil to forgo for a time the language

of teleology ...... 199-200

Yet to give up asking Why is to give up being fully human . 200

For humanity that which has no import has no importance . 200

And in saying this we are not making an idle play upon words . 200-201

The line of demarcation between ' why ' and • how,' for instance,

is not always as sharply drawn as we are apt to suppose . 201

May it be that we have taken a superficial and inconsistent view

of this matter ? . . . . . . 201

The morbid form of the questioning instinct tells against the
exclusive devotion and attention to detail, into which all
scientific research is liable to degenerate . . 202

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XXVIII

WHAT IS MEANING?

The average mind dreads or resents disturbing inquiry. But this
reverses the biological tendency. Exploration dominates
the whole organic series, and laborious experiment is the
note of infantile life ..... 203-204

CHAPTER XXVII

In contrast to this, the true answers to our most vital Whys? can
only come through a long, stem, searching discipline of
unanswered question ..... 205

Even the very quest for answer leaves a man's controlling and

creative power greater than it was before . . . 205

We must use and master mode and method before we ask for

reason, and must be historical before we can be predictive . 206

Man's tendency to push out and explore beyond every limit in
turn must be balanced by the tendency to analyse the
minutest of details ...... 206-207

We can only overcome the cosmic process by interpreting it . 207

The Why thus interpreted, will lead us on to the yet higher
• query Who, the ground of Personality . . . 208

In the very act of protesting that an ultimate Why or Who must
not now be asked or answer hoped for, Man shows that he
is passing from a lower to a higher stage . . 208

But the one ultimate Why which because man is man he not

only may, but must ask is. Why he asks it . . 208-209

Our present concern, however, is with the very first steps of so
momentous a journey. And these, it is surely obvious,
must be taken on the road of education . . 209

One of the most important subjects which Psychology can investi-
gate is the growth of children's minds in relation to the con-
ceptions of Significance and Personality . . . 209

And as a propaedeutic to this, men and women must be ' signifi-
cantly ' trained to distinguish between the original and the
imitative impulses of children .... 209-210

CHAPTER XXVIII

Granted, then, that a truly significant advance is desirable : How

are we to begin ? . . . . . .211

To advocate a universal language is to begin at the wrong end . 211

For it would tend to discourage the development of linguistic
resources, and diminish the psychological heritages which
the various languages transmit . . . 212

What difiference would a training in Signifies have made to the

present generation ? ..... 212-213

It would have appealed to a variety of dispositions in a variety of

ways ....... 213

Minds of each type of mind would have responded, contributing

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CONTENTS xxix

PAGE

to raise expression to the dignity and power of an organ

of prediction ...... 213-214

The teacher of the future, himself trained thus, will make the
child's Why the keynote of education, as it already is of
healthy mental growth. And he will encourage innovations
(or unconscious reversions to older usage) which in fact,
properly applied, may have a high value . . . 214-216

The result of thus touching the nucleus of the child's interest is,
as we have seen, the discovery of the principle of Translation
in a new sense ...... 216-220

CHAPTER XXIX

The arrival of the forecasting moment marks an epoch in the
infant's existence, and gives us the essential distinction
between imagination and fancy . . . .221

When we understand that ' Sense ' is the central thing as means
of (i) all experience ; (2) all interpretation ; (3) all know-
ledge ; (4) all conduct ; (5) all prediction ; and that the
forms of language are merely means of conveying this in its
highest, as well as its simplest forms, we shall use all pos-
sible means for concentrating the child's interest upon it . 221-224

The method of the conjurer has never yet been used to arm the
young mind against the illusions produced by ambiguity,
unconscious or intentional, and by the attractive charm of
the plausible ...... 224-227

The child must therefore everywhere and always be imbued with
the sense that the one thing first needful is Sense, and the
idea that, having this, all things may be added unto him . 227

One advantage of the signific method is that the danger of

specialism is avoided while its advantages are developed . 228

For whereas in one sense we may leave ' sense ' behind as we
acquire meaning and advance into the domain of pure
intellect and abstract reasoning, we only need it more and
more in the other sense which issues in Significance . 229

CHAPTER XXX

This suggests the institution of Lectures on Popular Imagery . 230

Example of such a Lecture ..... 230-234

CHAPTER XXXI

It would, however, be a mistake to make detailed plans of this

kind at present ...... 235

They will natiually follow the acceptance of the leading ideas of
these Studies, and must be devised and carried out by ex-
perienced teachers ...... 235

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XXX WHAT IS MEANING?

PAGB

Meanwhile we may once more point to a suggestively painful

contrast ....... 235-236

This can have but one reason ..... 336

We have lost the guiding clue of Nature . . . 236-241

The individual cases of success in evoking interest and even

enthusiasm at ' school ' are merely sporadic and personal . 241

And we have not yet suggested to the child that not only in a
relative sense but also as a human being its true home and
goal are ' solar ' to this world .... 241

When we do this he will see with startling clearness that the first
question is one of expression, and will be rescued from the
gratuitous confusion which our present system causes . 241-242

For in him we shall see the ' solar ' impulses making themselves

felt ....... 243

The child of the future will be trained to test and to organise

them in the service of practical and moral life . . 243

CHAPTER XXXII

What have we gained so far by our inquiry ? . . . 244

Can we yet answer the question why man asks Why ? . . 244

A brief review of the position thus far here follows . . 244-245

Supposing this in a general sense to be granted, how then is the
. needed new start to be eflfected ? . . . . 245

I Only by a generation trained to recognise the cardinal importance
' of sense, meaning, and significance, and their true implica-

tions ....... 245

This training of the future is here called Signifies, because it leads
through a new study of sense and meaning, which shows us
significance as the key of keys to reality . . . 246

No more on these lines can here be added ; but an attempt may
separately be made to show some of the applications of this
method to problems like that of personality . . 246

The natural result of concentrating all the mental and moral
energies of man, while yet his mind is wholly plastic, upon
the most significant of questions, is to earn for the first time
knowledge which not only stands but also invites the most
searching tests available ..... 246-247

At least let the experiment be fairly tried . . . 247

This will not entail an abstruse study or the search for an im-
possible absolute ...... 247

Evolution has fostered a common sense of the Why of things . 247

Man has survived through the emergence of mental beyond
muscular development, of contrivance beyond brute force —
the process culminating in the acquisition of highly-developed
brain power ...... 247

' Mind ' expresses itself in early childhood in the form of the

question Why? ...... 247

The answer is the secret of knowledge and of mental and moral

domination . . . . . . 248

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PAGB

At present to ask ultimate Whys is generally decried as futile . 248

The child is in a valid sense a metaphysician. But if the instinct
survives he tends to become either a word-weaver or a
system-maker ; if not, protesting that fact is all and theory
useless, he too often carries this particular theory out in
consistent blundering ..... 248-249

But when the metaphysician becomes and is recognised as the

Significian, this alternative will be antiquated . . 250

Philosophy and science will meet in a quest for Reason which is

first that for Sense ...... 250-251

For the true philosophy, like the true science, appeals to intelli-
gence qua intelligence; and this appeal embraces the
utmost conceivable variety and difference always on the
basis, not of separation, but of distinction . . . 251

It comes not to abstract, but to interpret — ^not to destroy, but to
fulfil ; a ray of that Light whereby we learn what beauty,
what goodness, what love, in short, what Life in its highest
sense, may be ..... . 251

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UNiVE^^blTY

CHAPTER I

Attention has already been called in an article in Mind
(New Series, vol. v., Nos. 17, 18)^ to the strange fact that
the very condition on which all forms of study and know-
ledge depend, that which is vaguely called their * meaning,'
— that very meaning which to intelligence is the cardinal
quality of fact, — remains for us a virtually unstudied subject.
It may be well briefly to summarise the Hne then taken.
It was pointed out that the conception of Meaning, its
significance and its interpretation, have so far been practic-
ally ignored, and that this curious neglect leads to the loss
of distinctions valuable for thought, and to a low average of
interpreting power.^ Attention was then called (i) to the
absence, especially in education, of any careful study of the
conditions of meaning and its interpretation, much being
lost by the present dearth of means of expression and of
training in their use, and (2) to the advantages which must
accrue from such study. Works on philosophy and science
too, and especially on logic and psychology, supply ample
witness, both conscious and unconscious, to the need for a
special study of meaning which might be called Signifies, as

^ It should be noted that Interpretation was here used instead of Signi-
ficance» because the point of view taken was mainly psychological, and the
present triad had not at the time been fully thought out.

- See Note I. (A), Appendix.

B

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2 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

no term already in use covers enough ground. It was
claimed that such a study, so far from being impossible,
seems indicated and called for on every side, and might be
made not only practical but attractive, even to the quite
young child. At present, largely from the absence of such
training, language betrays a disastrous lack of power to adapt
itself to the growing needs of experience. But this power
would soon be acquired as the result of the training here
suggested, and would even to a certain extent follow a
general awakening to the importance of the question.

The idea that definition (useful enough in its own sphere)
is the true remedy for defects of expression, was shown to
be fallacious. Ambiguity, it was urged, is an inherent
characteristic of language as of other forms of organic
function. Thought may suffer from a too mechanical

> precision in speech. Meaning is sensitive to psychological
< climate.' But the kind of ambiguity which acts as a useful
stimulant to intelligence, and enriches the field of conjecture,
is very different from that which in the intellectual sphere
begins and ends in confusion, or in the moral sphere begins
in disingenuousness and ends in deliberate and successful
imposture. We all alike, in fact, suffer and lose by these; by
the endless disputation which the one entails, and the force
given by the other to the specious oratory of charlatans.

The question of remedy was then dealt with. It was

contended that it rests with education to initiate the

needed * fresh start.' Only those trained from the first to

\ detect (i) the sense, (2) the meaning, and (3) the signifi-

> cance, — that is the tendency, the intention, and the essential
interest of what is brought before their notice, — can hope to
emerge from the present bondage to the plausible. It is
with education as with economics ; we have been told ad
nauseam that man will not work except for food : that all

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I WHAT IS MEANING? 3

else is mere play, and that the moment the economic
y pressure is removed he loafs. But that is false. Man
inherits (as Professor Loeb teDs us) the "instinct of
y^ work" ; and if this is stunted or killed, it is a pathdogical
condition : civilisation has made him ill So in education.
When that problem is solved, the difficulty will be ever to
wean the young mind from its * studies,' since these, as in
/ the case of the babe, will share the fascination of play. Play,
indeed, will be but the obverse of work, and the two will be
interchangeable under the broader term of energy. Our
language is admitted, even by foreigners, to have peculiar
facilities for inquiries and studies of this kind;^ and there-
fore it is incumbent upon English teachers and thinkers to
lead the way. These considerations led to the conclusion
that at least it would be well to realise more fully both the
extent of the present anarchy, and the direction in which we
may hope to advance.^

The article now summarised was of course written, under
advice, with reference only to psychology and philosophy.^

^ £.g; Professors Jespersen, Carl Abd, Br^, etc. But not only these :
Dr. Sweet {A Practical Study of Languages, 1899, p. 274) speaks of •
the "admitted fact that English is one of the most expressive and concise
languages that have ever existed, and that ideas can be expressed in it
with as much facility and accuracy as in Greek and Latin."

An American ethnologist (Mr. Powell, Evolution of Language, 188 1,
p. 15) is quoted by Professor Hanns Owtel in his Lectures on the Study
of Language as follows : ' ' When inflections are greatly multiplied, as they
are in the (American) Indian languages alike with Greek and Latin, the
speaker is compelled in the choice of his words to think of a multiplicity
of things which have no connection with that which he wishes to express.
... In the development of the English, as well as the French and
German, linguistic evolution has not been in vain. Judged by these
criteria the English stands alone in the highest rank."

» Sec Note I. (B), Appendix.

' It ought perhaps here to be mentioned, that in obedience to a request
made by the English and American editors of Mind, a prize was offered

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4 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

But the present Studies are attempts to show, or at least to
suggest, that the scope of the subject to be called Signifies is,
in fact, far wider than could there be claimed. There is no
imaginable form of human interest and activity which it
does not concern and could not raise in value. Yet it is
only too plain that in education and in the practical as
well as the scientific and philosophical worlds, the central
importance of Expression and its interpretation are equally
ignored.

I hope to make it clear that the * sense * of any form of
expression has not yet been differentiated from its * mean-
ing' and its 'significance'; and that this omission is of
vital importance.^ We often ask for meaning where by the
nature of the case no meaning in the sense intended can be
there : when we ought to ask for sense. And we often
despair of meaning when we might discover not merely
sense but something which includes and transforms it, —
that is, significance. For example, great movements of
population, great changes of political standard and aim,
may not be consciously * meant,' ue, intended, by those who
carry them out or even by their leaders. But they are

in 1896 for the best essay on " The causes of the present obscurity and
confusion in psychological and philosophical terminology, and the
directions in which we may hope for efficient practical remedy.*' This
was won by Professor Ferdinand Tonnies, whose admirable article (trans-
lated by Mrs. Bernard Bosanquet) appeared in Mind of July and October
1899, and January 1900. In Mind of April 1901 there appeared some
notes upon this article (unfortunately delayed by illness and bereavement),
with an answer from Professor T5nnies. Before that (in 1897), a little
book of fragments and parables on the subject, called Grains of Sense,
had been published.

^ Almost the only instance of this distinction which I have so far come

. across, occurs in an article on Tolstoy in the Edinburgh Review for July

1 901 : " the original Russian is often so involved that translators have had

occasionally to choose between the meaning and the sense of a passage "

(p. S8).

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I WHAT IS MEANING? 5

significant : they imply some vast common impulse due to
causes of which it may be we are as yet quite ignorant;
and they impel us to search for these causes in order to
direct, to utilise, or to counteract their effects. Our in-
difference to these questions is indeed nothing less than
literally insensate ; since it tends to fetter and cripple us
both in that typical human energy which we call expression,
and in its comprehension.^ When we have the sense to
concentrate training on sense in every sense, we shall for
the first time realise what meaning is and can be ; and rise
to the highest sense, — that of Significance.^ This is no
mere play upon the word * sense,' but a study of its range
of meaning.^

There is, strictly speaking, no such thing as the Sense of
a word, but only the sense in which it is used — the circum-
stances, state of mind, reference, 'universe of discourse'
belonging to it The Meaning of a word is the intent which
it is desired to convey — the intention of the user. The
Significance is always manifold, and intensifies its sense
as well as its meaning, by expressing its importance, its ^

* Like Bruno, Leibnitz hoped for a science of signs, an algebra of
thought, but he aimed at a system in which to reason and to calculate
were identical, reason being literally ratio. On the other hand, Bruno
"hoped to perfect a method for connecting universal ideas with real know- ^
ledge, while furnishing rules for discussion and directions for the exercise^^_^
of thought and of speech. The ^upil was to learn not only how to
expound, to attack, and to defend, but to combine conceptions, to form
new ideas, to conceive all which is or can be ; not to think alone, but

to use the thought of others" (Frith's Life of Giordano Bruno, 1887, p. —
94). Surely we might share this last aim ?

* Examples occiu* on all sides and abound daily. E.g. " The German
press is unanimous in regarding the Anglo-Japanese Agreement as a
political event of exceptional significance" {Times, February 13, 1902).
*'The far-reaching significance of the Colonial Secretary's visit to South
Africa" {Times, November 27, 1902).

3 See also below, p. 48, etc.

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6 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

appeal to us, its moment for us, its emotional force, its ideal
value, its moral aspect, its universal or at least social range.
All science, all logic, all philosophy, the whole controversy
about aesthetics, about ethics, about religion, ultimately
concentrate upon this : What is the sense of. What do we
mean by. What is the significance of, that is, Why do we
care for. Beauty, Truth, Goodness? Why do we value
experience? And why do we seek for Significance, and
resume the value of innumerable observed facts under
formulae of significance like gravitation or natural selection ?
Because we are the Expression of the world, as it were
* expressed from ' it by the commanding or insistent pressure
of natural stimuli not yet understood.

Man questions and an answer is waiting for him. But
first he must learn to speak, really to * express * himself and
the world. To do that he must learn to signify and to
signalise. He must discover, observe, analyse, appraise,
first the sense of all that he senses through touch, hearing,
sight, and to realise its interest, what it practically signifies
for him ; then the meaning — the intention — of action, the
motive of conduct, the cause of each effect. Thus at last
he will see the Significance, the ultimate bearing, the central
value, the vital implication — of what ? of all experience, all
knowledge, all fact, and all thought.

There is just now a marked tendency to confess that
Experience is a concept which imperatively needs both
expansion and enrichment.^ In a wholesome dread of
illusion we have narrowed its scope too much. Ex
perience can only be enriched through the acquirement
in a broad sense of fresh symbols or fresh significance :

* Among other writers Ormond (Foundations oj Knowledge ^ 1900)
pleads both for this and for a critique of experience. See also Note II. ,
Appendix.

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WHAT IS MEA1«JSQ?_

expression needs development in the same way for the
same reason. Thus it follows that, as already suggested,
every conceivable form of human interest is centrally
touched and transformed by Signifies.^ The difficulty is not
to make this plain, but to deal within any reasonable space
with the evidence for it. The attempt even to show that
the signific attitude is essentially predictive, would imply
a mass of illustrative reference which would swamp these
Studies altogether.

The materials, however, have been collected and can
always speak for themselves. Meanwhile it may be suggested
that physical science — at present the dominant source of
discovery by interpretation — best represents the signific
attitude. But when the man of science has been, as a
matter of course, trained on Signific lines, his power of seeing
through fiacts, his mastery of their relations or correspond-
ing points, of their applications and indirect implications,
and of the fittest expression of these, must inevitably be
greatly increased. He will become once more the ' natural

' ' ' The sign in speech and in writing thus has for man a significance
unequalled by anything else. Inventions and discoveries, all the material
acquisitions which the himian mind has acquired control of, are based
almost without exception upon the assumption of an intelligible and
logically employed system of signs, which is the condition at the same time
of the silent soliloquy of thought with itself, and of the intellectual inter-
course of humanity generally ; and the more we turn our glance from life
generally to the provinces of intellectual activity, the more prominent a
r^e do we observe the sign to assume : and its most important one in the
sciences, particularly in the exact sciences " (Si^ns and Symbols: Professor
Ernst Schroeder, "Open Court," October 27, 1892).

"In brief, a stupendous task arises before our eyes ; the task of still
fiu'ther perfecting the sign, to which the human mind already owes so
much, of freeing language of its imperfections, apd, by the appropriate
fashioning of the sign, of bringing the sign and the thing into perfect and
law -governed correspondence (or, as Trendelenburg says, 'into an
immediate connection')" (Ibid, Part II., November 3, 1892).

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8 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

philosopher/ but in a higher and more adequate sense of
both terms.

In fact everything is and always will be * in the line ' of
the Significian, since all converges upon it Signifies con-
cerns the practical mind, e.g. in business or political life,
more closely and inevitably than it does the speculative
mind. For the thinker may go on through all his life
turning over his own or others* thoughts and working them
logically out But the man of action must translate thought
into deed as fast as ideas come to him ; and he may ruin
the cause he would serve by missing the significance of
things. All signifies to him, 'matters' to him, interests
him. As the word implies, 'Signifies' sums up what
for the * man in the street ' signifies ; whatever does not
signify, he will tell you, is nothing to him; and he well
understands that the value of a sign is not that it may
mean anything you like, and thus be used to confuse,
bewilder, mislead, or that it means what is no concern of
his, but that it means somewhat which in some sense has
interest either for him or his fellows : he knows that it is his
business to find out what this is. He knows also that signs
of all kinds must point beyond themselves, must in that
sense ' mean ' something, or they would not be signs at all.

It need hardly be pointed out that the other man — the
man in the study, the lecture-room, the council-chamber,
the laboratory, the office — knows in a fuller sense still that
whatever his work may be, it must signify somewhat and
gain in significance as it rises and widens in importance.
And most of all the original thinker, the greatest of human
* minds,' knows this.

The Poet is, in fact, the only man who has reached a
world of enhanced expression which ought to be the common
heritage. And even he confesses that

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1 WHAT IS MEANING? 9

, The flowering moments of the mind
Drop half their petals in our speech.

When we have overtaken the Poet he will be able to
give us poetry more perfect than any he can yet put into
words, while philosophy must enter upon a new quest,
where answer and solution are no longer hopeless. We
cannot raise the level of expression without raising the
level of thought and imagination. For what is Mind, after
all, but the moment in which the world takes on Meaning
and its expression? As Jowett expressed it, the very
language which mind uses is the result of the instincts of
long-forgotten generations.^

Again, the spell which the Poet casts upon us largely
depends upon the perfect rationality of the mind which can
afford as his does, and as no other yet can, to handle
thought and language. From that secure base he can
travel at will, and take us with him into new worlds of
beauty and truth. But let his mind be really * unhinged,'
let his assumptions be merely the casual driftings of a
vagrant fancy, and some lowering of power must result, even
though certain kinds of beauty and force may still survive.

These suggestions then may be provisionally summed up
as follows : —

The function of expression and the response to ex-
pression are as yet but little developed; and if general
interest could be aroused in the question, and it came to
be widely realised that increased powers of mental com-
munication were easily within our reach — only needing
attention, resolution, and consensus — this increase would
become ours as surely as in the case of physical com-
munication.

Expression both may and ought to outstrip rigid

^ Essay on Psychology, Plato, vol. iv. (3rd edit. 1892).

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10 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

Definition : indeed it is probable that what is best worth
expressing, best worth being interpreted, and best worth
being acted upon, is often least capable of definition in the
ordinary sense. ^

As the sense for Sense becomes more acute and more
discriminative, definition will, in fact, become less and
less necessary, except in the historical form or within
technical limits ; while the power both of context and
association will be more generally realised and more
effectively utilised.

The question is one of much more than merely increased
precision,^ often the worst of pitfialls and the grave of a
living language ; much more also than a protest against
ambiguity or obscurity.

It is also much more than a question of * preciosity ' or
even of ' style ' ; though it is of vital concern to those who
care for the beauty of linguistic form.

As life rises in scale and worth, it rises in Signi-
ficance; and therefore the question of questions really
is. What is Sense, or, What is Meaning, and what
do we mean (that is, intend) to convey when we ask the

^ But strange, indeed, is the notion that the terms in which we state
or define any idea have no effect upon that idea, and that definition is
independent of predicate and of character itself I

2 In the case of scientific language, it is obvious that just because
scientific knowledge is so constantly and rapidly growing, it becomes im-
perative that there should be increased consensus and better mutual under-
standing in this necessary development. Unless there is consistency and
agreement in the definition of the term or phrase taken as a given starting-
point for discussion, the indispensable variations in sense as knowledge
grows (needing thus both wide expansions of connotation and many new
terms) are themselves hampered and checked, or even baulked ; and thus
the whole subject is liable to become the prey of needless controversy —
often wide of the mark — leading only to confusion or to a cul-de-sac. A
pamphlet ( Witness of Science to Linguistic Anarchy, 1898) aims at
furnishing convenient illustrations of this.

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I WHAT IS MEANING? il

momentous question, * In what sense ? * — an inquiry which
needs to be made much oftener and more seriously than
it is now, as the answer must at least define the sense
intended.

The future of Literature hangs first upon this question ;
for literature is that which of all written words is most
significant, gives us most thought and feeling, and is the
truest human message. And the question appeals equally
to the philosophical and the scientific thinker, the politician
and the man of business. The best hope lies in so arousing
public interest in questions of expression — language in its
widest sense — that the next generation should be trained
from the first to put the subject in the forefront of all
intellectual work as well as in that of all education.^

^ Perhaps the most significant step towards the recognition of ' mean-
ing* as a definite subject for study (and that on which all others depend)
is taken by Dr. Stout in his Manual of Psychology^ vol. i., 1898, where he
speaks of " a process of fundamental importance which we may call the
acquirement of meaning'' (p. 34 : italics his).

At present we might say vrith Lewis Carroll {Life and Letters, 1898,
p. 331) that •• one of the hardest things in the world is to convey a mean-
ing accurately from one mind to another" ; except that ' fully ' or • vitally '
would fit some cases better than • accurately.*

It may be well here to make definitely clear what was implied in the
Preface : that is, my consciousness of inability alwa)rs to avoid the very
inconsistencies and confusions of which I complain. In this I may appeal
to those writers who have shown themselves most conscious of the draw-
backs of our current terminology — e.g. Mr. A. E. Taylor in The Problem
of Conduct, p. 39 (footnote).

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CHAPTER II

In his Practical Study of Languages^ Dr. Sweet em-
phasises the fact that "language is partly rational, partly
irrational and arbitrary." He shows how strictly backward,
because irrational in the pre-reasonable sense, much of our
speech still is. Language, like conduct and thought, ought
to be Sensal : (a) expressive of sense -experience ; ip) ex-
pressive of what 'makes sense*. and is ultimately *good
sense,' or is seen to be purposely * funny.' Intentional:
(expressive of a coherent, orderly, rational, logical meaning).
Significant: expressive of the implicative, the indirectly
indicative ; or suggestive of further or larger issues.

Recognising the fact that meaning is first of all intention,
we ought to be able to say of an utterance or an action
that it is sensal, or intentional, or significant, or all three.
The word * sensal ' is here used in preference to * sensible '
because in ordinary usage when a man does a sensible thing
or takes a sensible view or course, the idea of intention is
always present None of the other current derivatives of
sense, such as sensuous, sensual, sensitive, etc, would meet
the case. This, therefore, is another reason for adopting the
term * sensal,' ^ which would ensure the required neutrality.

Many of our present modes of expression resemble the

^ This, as well as 'signifies,' has now been included in the Diet, of
Philosophy^ etc., edited by Professor J. M. Baldwin, 1901.

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CHAP. II WHAT IS MEANING? 13

surviving coat-tail buttons, having now neither sense nor
meaning. Yet they are indicative and thus significant of
a dead fashion.

But there is another aspect of the question which seems
generally ignored. Although in a true sense the Sensal
may be said to be pre-rational, and the advent of Meaning
in its fullest sense marks the attainment of the rational level,
still from the very beginning language has struck the note
of order now so grievously lost. And this order is no
mere mechanical formality, no punctilious pedantry of
utterance or script ; it is simply the analogue, nay more, the
characteristic of sanity. The present state of things is in
this sense also largely senseless — not even sensible; still
more is it unmeaning. And most of all, except as
significant of a dangerous drifting among rocks of confusion,
is it in -significant For in truth when we say that the
normal ascension of thought, therefore of expression, is
from the less to the more rational, we are convicting
language, as it is now, of descent from the more to the less
rational, and thus practically of actual insanity. We find
e.g.^ such falsifying expressions as * learning by heart ' and
* coinage ' of words (the association being sometimes, with-
out notice, contradicted on the next page) even in works
on Philology or Linguistics. Such a state of chaos cannot
but tell disastrously on clearness of thought.^

And more. So far from making for pedantry and
priggishness, the return of language from aberration to
soundness of mind would strike a fatal blow at the prim
and the pompous. Even as we are, it is just the instinct
of the orderly, the reasonable, the rational, which makes
possible the sense of humour and fun. At present too

^ Dr. Sweet's remarks on the special importance of association in a
pupil's mind apply here.

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14 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

often we fail, like the lunatic and the imbecile, to see our
own absurdities. Unfortunately we seldom fail to suffer
by them, though we generally ascribe our troubles to the
wrong causes.

Meanwhile let us be ready to examine with fair and
ready mind and judgment all suggested methods for
extending, economising,^ emancipating and ordering our
ways of speech and writing.^ As Dryden said, we must

^ •* Whenerer any idea is constantly recurring, the best thing which
can be done for the perfection of language, and consequent adtancement
of knowledge, is to shorten as much as possible the sign which is used to
stand for that idea. All that we have accomplished hitherto has been
owing to the short and expressive language which we have used to
represent numbers, and the operations which are performed upon them '
{TA^ Study of Mathematics t A. de Morgan, 1831, p. 55).

An amusing instance at once of the need of criterions of the permissible
or desirable in language, and of the present failure to supply them, occurs
at the end of a suggestive discussion of Slipshod English in the Pilot
(March 32, 1903). One correspondent notes in another's letter the
sentence, "It appears that the obnoxious 'split' (infinitive) has crept
into popular use during the last quarter of a century," and remarks,
"Surely the word obnoxious, in the sense that Mr. Dalzell intends [i.e,
noxious), is a fresh example of slipshod writing." Again anotho* corre-
spondent is complained of as saying " of a certain error that it ' is being
fallen into by even some very elegant writers and speakers.' But would
these elegant writers use such an expression as ' is being fiallen into * ?
Certainly nothing could be less elegant ! "

2 •« If language be primarily a tool, why should we not have a right to
fashion it in the same manner in which we fashion social conduct by laws»
and with the same partial success? . . . The first question, in such a
case, is whether it is worth while to take any action whatever, and if this
be answered in the affirmative, by what canon we should judge ; and for
this purpose Noreen's principles appear sound and practical: first, that
changes in the existing speech-material by which a distinct gain is not
obtained should be discountenanced ; second, that, as the chief aim of all
speech is to be a means of communicating thought, that form of speech
must be deemed best which is most quickly and most clearly understood
by the listener, and, at the same time, most easily produced by the
speaker" (Lectures on the Study of Language, Prof. Hanns Oertel, 1902,
p. 90).

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11 whXt is meaning? is

"trade both with the living and the dead for the enrich-
ment of our language."^

A suggestive lecture by Professor M*Kendrick on Ex-
perimental Phonetics ^ may serve as one illustration of such
'trading.' Language, he says, "might be recorded, not by
letters or syllables, but by signs or symbols which would
indicate what had to be done by the vocal and articulating
organs for the production of any given sound. There might
thus be a physiological method of expressing speech by a
series of alphabetical symbols for sounds varying in pitch,
intensity, and quality;" We should thus have an analphabetic
system of writing, symbolising, not sounds, but the elements
of sounds. It would be "a kind of algebra for speech
sounds." He then quotes Janssen as saying that " 'photo-
graphy is to sight what writing is to thought. If there is any
difference, it is to the advantage of photography. Writing
is subject to conventionalities from which photography is

' We may well ask with Mr. W. Cairns (Literature, September 8,
1900), "Why ... do not those who are so anxious to increase the scope
of the language seek to do so by the revival of good English words rather
than by the introduction of corrupt terms?" 'Corrupt' is, however, a
question-begging term. Some of the very words here reconmiended once
seemed corrupt, so that Skdton himself (cited by Mr. Cairns) complains that

Our natural tonge is rude
And hard to be enneude
Wyth polyshed termes lustye
Cure language is so rustye.

I wot not where to finde
Tearmes to seme ray miade
Gowers englyshe is olde
And of no value is tolde.

And Dq Bdlay, ia 1549 (Deffience et lUusiration de la langue Franfoise),
smticipated on behalf of French the present appeal : ' ' Notre langue n'est
pas assez ' copieuse et riche ' ; c'est une laison, non pour la deserter mais
poor travailler a renrichir" (quoted in Ren6 Doumic's Histoire de la
LUtiraiure Franfaise), See Note III., Appendix.
' Reported in Nature, December 26, 1901.

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i6 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

free; writing employs a particular language, while photo-
graphy speaks the universal language.' '*

Suggestions like this may well seem to us revolutionary
(as once did the alphabet and later the printing-press) : we
have not yet faith enough in the transcendent power of
mind to revolve with its own world round the sun of truth
and reason. Other suggestions will seem to us reactionary :
we have not yet learnt that the true advance is spiral, that is,
must sweep back on itself to take up ancient things and set
them in new light and on new quests in new directioi^s. But
(although through many mistakes, no doubt) we shall surely
win new ways of speaking all our mind and reaching new
mind thereby.^ The cruel waste of the present day in the

^ In an article on the effect upon Oxford of the Rhodes Will (National
Review t May 1902), Mr. Case claims for Greek that "among many
other points of superiority, its preference for concrete terms, both sub-
stantival and adjectival, teach a man to signify things as they are." At
the same time he speaks of the tendency in modem languages to use
abstract terms as a serious defect. But in that case, the languages which
we should all agree to call barbarous become also our ideal ; and we must
ignore the fact that intellectual development alwa3rs means greater com-
mand of the abstract Such ideas as the lowest type of man or the highest
type of animal may be supposed to have are necessarily concrete.

As to the need of beginning with Greek philosophy, that, of course, wil
continue in any case : there can be no question of superseding its study.
But the real principle involved is surely this. The earlier Greek thinkers
did not point students to some language which had been in its supposed
prime long ages before they existed, in such a way as to imply that it was
useless to attempt to make of their own language something yet nobler,
and capable of developing into greater force as well as beauty, and more
subtle delicacy and depth of significance. No ; on the contrary, they made
of their own 'modem* language what Mr. Case describes the now
'ancient' Greek to have been, that is, a relatively perfect medium of
expression ; they refused to cowo- before some imagined tyranny of
linguistic vulgarity, some fateful law of corruption or debasement in
language ; and thus it is that they are rewarded by und3ring life and value
for their thought and its expression.

Let us then follow so excellent an example ! Instead of wearing our

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11 WHAT IS MEANING? 17

language-world will give place to a *storing-up' of all our
precious means of mutual speaking ; to a diligent search
for ways of gaining power of expression of all and every
kind. One of the first conditions of such gain would be
the general recognition of the absurdity and inconsistency
into which we are led by speaking of verbal questions when
we really mean questions of sense — * sensal ' questions.^

A curious instance (to take the first to hand) of the
mischief thus done occurs in a correspondence between
Mr. A, J. Balfour and Mr. Henry Norman with reference
to the famous Spion Kop despatches (February 1902).
In one letter Mi: Balfour says : " But if I was mistaken in
my interpretation of your speech, I hope you will admit
that there was excuse. The word * tamper ' is 9. dangerous
one ; and those who employ it approach perilously near to
making themselves responsible for an accusation which, if
put forward in earnest, would deserve all, and more than all,
the severity with which I have endeavoured to characterise
it." But in the next he says that the question raised now
" seems in a fair way to resolve itself into a dispute about
words." And he continues by admitting that in his opinion
the use of the word * re-write' "has proved utterly misleading,
and has been constantly misused for polemical purposes."

The " dispute about words " therefore, as usual, is found
after all to be a dispute about their real sense in a certain
context, and about the implications or imputations which

eyes in this matter at the back of our heads, let us strive at least to endow
the next and all succeeding generations with this same spirit. Then shall
we assuredly find that there are still treasures of expression waiting to be
created in this age as they were in the ' ancient ' or rather the youthful
daySf in which there was no tendency to despair of the current speech,
no neglect of the duty of intentionally and resolutely developing it in the
true direction.

^ This distinction was brought forward in the article in Mind {of. cit. ).

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1 8 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

they are supposed to convey. But the question was never
for a moment " in a fair way to resolve itself" into a merely
verbal dispute. If it had, the correspondence would have
been concerned merely with technical philology or else with
' style ' in its aesthetic aspect

If we began to realise how much more might be expressed
and understood than is yet attempted, we should see that
both word and sentence might in many ways be given more
subtle expressiveness. For instance, the various senses in
which we use the word language ' and the various gradations
of sense might be indicated by some means like guiding
marks at the beginning of paragraphs. In any case, to start
with, every book would have, as a matter of course, a sense-
scheme ; and little by little general consensus would make
these less necessary, while the development of the Sense-
sense would gradually render mark-helps superfluous.

Dr. Sweet is here a witness of the first importance. Not
only does he condemn Grammar, as it is usually taught, with
unsparing severity, but, suggesting that the very alphabet
does two things badly, he advocates the use of accent
marks for 'stress-groups' and says, 'Mf we added a sign
for breath-taking, and two accents to indicate the rising and
foiling tones, we should be able to dispense entirely with
the present unsatisfactory system of punctuation, etc., and
to express clearly and precisely what they indicate only
imperfectly and vaguely." ^ In both cases the aim is the
same — ^greater expressiveness with increased economy.^

M. Michel Br^al's "Essai de S^mantique" is full of

^ Words, Logic, and Grammar {1B76), pp. 13, 14.

^ Professor Oertd remarks that '* no language, it appears, has thought
it fit to make any consistent formal distinction of names according to the
logical categories given above, distinguishing, for instance, by accent or
vowel changes, quality words from action words {Lectures, etc., p. 384).
But it is the users of language who will, it may be hoped, * think fit ' to

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11 WHAT IS MEANING? 19

instances in which one man, a group of men, a generation,
effected ^-reaching changes in language. But then no
printer existed to terrorise the writer and the schoolmaster.
It is to him — ^though we little realise it — that we owe the
absurd rigidity and central importance now given to spelling.
He practically imposes it upon us to save trouble and
expense. This of course, from his point of view, is quite
reasonable ; and, on occasion, indeed, he cheerfuUy accepts
the extra work of dialect-printing, etc. It is also true, of
course, that it is well to preserve the traditions and the
historical associations of language. Yet even academic
custom is often recklessly false to these ; it is to the mere
fashion of the hour, or to mere dead convention, that we
are abjectly submissive.

In another direction a searching reform is needed. If
we were seriously to set to work to distinguish by some
recognised sign, the untested from the tested and * passed '
simile, we should simply gain in comparison a new world.^

We should have —

I. Casual likeness, two ideas or things comparable or
similar in one point, in one context, on one occasion, to
one audience, etc., only.

combine for the purpose of initiating consistent and useful distinctions of
this kind. When they do, language will be found quite amenable ! The
same writer indeed elsewhere says of the ' organic theory * that ' ' when it
began to separate speech from the speaker, when it assumed for language
an independent existence and a development according to laws of its own,
the theory became dangerous and turned investigations into a wrong
channel " (p. 57). Why then does he use its language?

^ Lord Acton has sounded a true note here : " • The want of an energetic
understanding of the sequence and real significance of events ... is ruin
to a student of history.' Historians should learn from men of science
' how to secure fulness and soundness in induction, how to restrain and
to employ with safety hypothesis and analogy'" (quoted in Edinburgh
Review t July 1901, p. 128). See Note IV., Appendix,

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20 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

2. General likeness of the whole, with unlikeness of
constituents; results analogous but differently arrived at
or constructed.

3. Likeness in all but one point or feature. This may
be (a) important (i.) to the original figurate, (il) to the
metaphorical use ; (l) indifferent

4. Valid analogy ringing true in character throughout,
bearing pressure to the limit of knowledge, and yet remain-
ing analogy and never becoming equivalence, or identity
in varying senses.

5. Equivalence: as when we say that so-and-so applies
in both cases — (a) wholly; (d) partially. (In these cases
it is often difficult to say which is metaphorical and which
is literal. There is often borrowing backwards and forwards,
and sometimes both are neither metaphorical nor literal and
yet equally * actual.')

6. Correspondence in each point and in mass or whole.
In this case the 'figure' is a reflection as in a mirror.
Or it may be a question of concomitance, of correlation, of
parallel, of object and its shadow, seal and its stamp, etc.

Now, however, it may be said that we have to leave the
field of analogy and enter that of homology.^ In a criticism
of Mr. Spencer's comparison of society to an organism Mr.
Lester Ward urges that "the nervous system, instead of
being the last to be considered in a comparison of society
with an organism, is the first and only proper term of com-
parison. All the other terms, those upon which Mr. Spencer
has laid the principal stress, furnish only ' analogies,' as he
properly calls them. This, on the contrary, furnishes true
homologies. Analogies are of little use except in arousing

^ As in the case pointed out by Dr. J. Ward (Art. " Psychology,"
Encyc, Brit, loth edit.): "Between organic development and mental
development there is . . . more than an analogy."

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11 WHAT IS MEANING? 21

and satisfying curiosity, but homologies are valuable aids to
the sociologist The nervous system, as the reservoir of
protoplasm and seat of life, sensibility, will, and ideas, is a
fundamental factor." ^ And further on he adds that " the
same principles do not apply to human and animal socio-
logy. . . . The facts of animal association therefore — the
remarkable resemblances to man's ways displayed by insects
and the curious imitations of human customs in various de-
partments of the animal world — prove to be only analogies
and not true homologies, and as such have much less value
to the sociologist than they appear at first view to possess. "^
Here at least we touch upon one cause of present confusion
and one hope for its cure. All manner of comparisons,
from the most absurdly inapplicable to the truest and most
complete, are lumped together as * analogies ' ; and then we
are gravely told that no argument can rest upon analogy.
Bat some comparisons vaguely called analogies are really
homologies ; some again really equations ; and from these
an argument can of course properly start

If we had a classification of this kind we should come
with fresh light to the question of * pressing' or working
out analogy.^ Some comparisons bear this throughout,
others partially, others not at all. Then we have what
may be called temporary and local analogies. Some may
have borne pressure fifty years ago and cannot bear it now ;
some may bear it here and not there.* The crucial point

^ Outlines of Sociology t 1898, pp. 60-61.

2 Ibid, , pp. 92-93. ^ See Note V. , Appendix.

^ The first step is to make plain the immense difference between the
casual and the valid comparison. As an example of the latter we may
quote Charles Darwin : "There is, indeed, much analogy, as far as the
states of mind is concerned, between intently scrutinising a distant object,
and following out an obscure train of thought, or performing some little
and troublesome mechanical work. . . . When a person is lost in thought

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22 WHAT IS MEANING? chap, u

must always be to see that the main thoughts and their
inferences do really fit.^

with his mind absent, or, as it is sometimes said, ' when he is in a brown
study/ he does not frown, but his eyes appear vacant " (Expression of
tke Emoiioms, 1873, p. 228).

After describing the phenomena of chemical ' Catalysis,' Professor Ostwald
(translated in Nature , April 3, 1902) says, *• Physiological analogies
present themselves irresistibly at this point. We have here a typical
fever phenomenon." Further on he remarks, "That it is not only a
chemical interest that makes the work grateful I think I have shown you
by examples of its ph3rsiological application."

^ It is remarkable that while no one in our day seems conscious of the
difference between true and false metaphor— contrasting both alike with
the literal, and ascribing reality only to the latter — ^some at least of the
classical writers set us an example in this. E.g. in Demetrius on Style
(edited by W. Rhys Roberts, 1902) we are told that metaphors must be
used, only they must not be far-fetched, " but natural and based on a true
analogy." Some are, some are not, convertible. " Homer could call the
lower slope of Ida its ' foot,' but he could never have called a man's foot
his • slope.' " A * daring' metaphor should be converted into a simile as
less risky : even Plato's emplo3rment of metaphors is dangerous. *' Some
things are, however, expressed with greater clearness and precision by
means of metaphors than by means of the precise terms themselves : e.g.
• the battle shuddered.* No change of phrase could, by the emplo3rment
of precise terms, give the meaning with gjreater truth and clearness." The
writer could add then, what ought to be but is not, true now : " Usage,
which is our teacher everywhere, is so particularly in regard to metaphors.
Usage, in fact, clothes almost all conceptions in metaphor, and that with
such a sure touch that we are hardly conscious of it." But the editor
reminds us that " metaphors generally have lost much of their freshness
through constant use." Yet some siurvive in a form which leaves us
unaware of the harm they are doing.

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CHAPTER III

SiGNiFics in fact suggests a new starting-point from which
to approach the subject of analogy, and implies the emer-
gence of a systematic and scientifically valid critique of
imagery.^ Thus it obviously makes for a new departure in
philosophy as well as in psychology.

^ An amtising witness to the need of this, and to the prevailing ignorance
of the subject and waste of resources, appears in the Times of January 14,
1902. "There is nothing more misleading than metaphor, which has
surely played Car too great a part in the discussion of foreign relations.
Foiieign policy is a business like any other, and requires to be treated with
business coolness and address. " One would like to see such matters dis-
cussed without metaphor. To begin with, we must not speak of * playing '
or of 'coolness'!

A more serious and rational protest is made in the Presidential Address
of Dr. Cannan in the Economic Section of the British Association of 1902.

" In regard to international relations, the first business of the teacher
of economic theory is to tear to pieces and trample upon the misleading
military metaphors which have been applied by sciolists to the peaceful
exchange of commodities. We hear much, for example, in these days of
'England's commercial supremacy.' and of other nations 'challenging'
it, and how it is our duty to ' repel the attack,' and so on. The econo-
mist asks what is ' commercial supremacy ' ? and there is no answer. No
one knows what it means, least of all those who talk most about it Is
it selling goods dear? Is it selling them cheap? Is it selling a large
quantity of goods in proportion to the area or of the country ? or in propor-
tion to its populatioti ? or absolutely, without any reference to its area or
population ? It seems to be a wonderful muddle of all these various and
often contradictory ideas rolled into one. Yet what a pile of international
jealousy and ill-feeling rests on that and equally meaningless phrases !

23

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24 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

It cannot be denied that thoughts must at least be handi-
capped by the imperious associations of language only at
best adapted to the current modes of thinking. Anything
which tends to prepare the hearer or reader's mind for
change in the direction of greater and freer expressive-
ness, thus also tends to encourage, not the crank and the
faddist whose fallacies are thus more easily exposed, but the
thinker who is original in the best sense of the word. Thus
at once we are brought face to face with the question of
Expression by Figure. This necessarily rests upon the
method of analogy, the only method we have for most of
our mental work, involved indeed in its primary presupposi-
tion, i.e, the likeness between our reader's mind and our
own.^ This we have to assume though we cannot prove it,

The teacher of economic theory analyses, or attempts to analyse, these
phrases, and they disappear, and with them go the jealousies suggested
by them."

No wonder that the Westminster Gazette insists that the question (of
municipal enterprise) • • needs to be removed from these misleading
analogies before we are at the beginning of the argument. If we could
get rid of the word ' debt,' which the opponents of municipal enterprise
apply to capital expenditure, and of the word • profit,' which its advocates
apply to the operations of a body like the Works Committee of a County
Council, a considerable advance would be made towards clearness of
discussion " (September 26, 1902).

Moreover, as Mr. A. Sidgwick (t/« of Words, etc., 1901, pp. 168, 169)
usefully reminds us, the difference between the metaphorical and the literal
"is not so sharp and clear as the popular view assumes." The better
view is, that "all descriptions are more or less fanciful (or theoretical)."
It may be objected that these words are themselves somewhat misleading
here ; but it is true that " the more matter-of-fact a description appears to
be, the greater pretence of accuracy it makes ; that is precisely its danger. "

^ Here as in some other cases it is necessary to guard against being
understood to mean that there can be no intelligent communication, no
use of Signs, until this primary assumption has been consciously and
rationally made. It is assumed in the sense here meant, whenever an
animal utters a call or a cry or even adopts an attitude to which others
respond or attend.

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Ill WHAT IS MEANING? 25

or our Writing becomes an absolute waste. No one can
even controvert this statement, giving reasons for dissent,
without the use of analogy.^

Starting then from an inevitable analogy, let us remember
that just as this initial assumption is tested and established
by its working and result in "making each other under-
stand," and thus modifying each others' aims and views and
action, so must every other analogy, whether in act or word,
be rigorously appraised by the same test. No analogy, and
therefore no metaphor or figurative form of expression,
ought to be allowed to pass current in serious writing unless
it has been examined and found to bear this criterion. But
few seem to realise that, as Jowett says, " mere figures of
speech have unconsciously influenced the minds of great
thinkers."^

It surely follows that the crucial importance of verifying
our analogies, tacit and explicit, popular and philosophical,
has to be insistently brought home from the first to the
mind of every child. Lord Palmerston is credited with
having said that more mistakes in politics are due to false
analogies than to any other cause. And this is certainly
true in many other directions.

Now if we apply these ideas to the study of philosophy
and religion, we shall find many answers of which, without
this key to all problems, we have justly despaired ; we shall
approach the questions of life from a new starting-point.®

^ It must, however, be admitted that what is here meant is not always
what we properly mean by analogy, since this only places propositions side
by side, and may force either to correspond : it is rather double Applica-
tion. What is established in one context, in one universe of discourse,
applies in some degree or in some sense (it may be a recondite one) to
another. Our business is to find out where and how and how far. The
specialisms are versions, and what is needed is reciprocal translation.

2 PlatOt vol. iv. p. 157.

* Schubert says of certain geometrical problems that it is fortunate for

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26 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

For every thinker finds in the first place, in all language
open to his use, a constraining framework of imagery,
implying analogies most of which he would repudiate as he
would the belief in some grotesque fetish. Thus it is
evident that as part of our scientific crusade we must
provide a critique of Metaphors : relegating those once true
and illustrative, now false and obscurative, to their proper
place.^ This is the first need if we would gain the splendid
wealth which science is offering us;^ for science is the
condition of that philosophy which shall correlate and include,
by interpreting to the followers of both, all other modes of
thought; which shall exalt distinction to its highest point
in order to enrich the ultimate unity; which can never
confound distinction with separation or division. Science,
in short, concentrating on Significance and on our yet
unused means of reaching and translating it, of assimilating
and growing by it, will make Man conscious of powers and

us that they were insoluble. " For in their ambition to conquer them it
came to pass that men busied themselves more and more with geometry,
and in this way-kept constantly discovering new truths and developing new
theories, all of which perhaps, might never have been done if the problems
had been soluble and had early received their solutions. Thus is the
struggle after truth often more fruitful than the actual discovery of truth.
So, too, although in a slightly dififerent sense, the apophthegm of Lessing
is confirmed here, that the search for truth is to be preferred to its posses-
sion " (J/aM«ma/^a/ Essays and Recreations : Hermann Schubert, 1898,
p. 30).

^ A passage in Mr. Whitiaker's Neo-Plaionists, 1901, is here suggestive :
*'Yet Plato's metaphorical expressions had misled even Aristotle, who
seriously thought that he found presupposed in them a spatial extension of
the soul. " Whether in this instance the inference is right or wrong, it at
least implies the importance of a right choice and use of metaphor.

^ It would need a volume to enumerate the new facts of science waiting
to be used figuratively, and thus to enlarge and enrich our conceptual
treasure-house. The names given to new constituents of the atmosphere,
argon, neon, etc., and Rontgen and Becquerel's discoveries of the " radio-
activities of matter " are cases in point

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WHAT IS MEANING? 27

of a field of experience in which to use them, which inevit-
ably reveal this life and world as in every sense derivative,
and are comparable only to the solar fotces and the solar
system and to that vast universe to which both belong.

For no one will now deny — science has made it impossible
to deny — ^that the world on which we live, and of which we
are in a true sense the crowning product, is no centre of the
universe of stars and suns ; not even the centre of one system
of these. Our world is, in every possible sense, planetary.

What then, from this point of view, are the broad fects
of our experience? The physiologist and psychologist alike
tell us that our organism is a plexus of energies intimately
related to that 'environment' which we call the material or
physical world, and, moreover, that it persists or survives in
virtue of a process called adjustment ; whence it follows that
the unfit (that which is not adjusted, cannot adapt itself to
its surroundings and adapt them to itself) is eliminated.
This is the adjustment which is the condition of what is
usually called experience. We are fully * in touch * (including
all sense) with the world we live on, and therefore and thus
we live and reproduce life. Now, as sense is the typical
means of this adaptation, we may say that sense in all 'senses'
of the word becomes the fitting term for that which makes
the value of * experience' in this life and on this planet^

But this ' sense ' in its organic form we share with sub-
human and even primitive forms of life. In Man it rises,
by virtue of what may be compared to the integral unity of
this and other planets of the ' solar system,' into the higher
form which is expressed not only in phrases like the sense
of a word or a man of sense, or common-sense, but (when
the word is rightly used) by meaning, that is by volitional,
intentional, purposive, rationally idealised sense. Man sees

^ See Note VI. , Appendix.

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28 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

and deals with Meaning because he is a citizen of a greater
Commonwealth than this secondary world, this mere planet ;
and realises as its 'meaning/ its relations with that which
lies beyond and around it as well as within it. The whole
animal ' kingdom ' (if not also the plant order) shares the
sense-world: the advent of the sense of meaning — the
highest kind of sense — ^marks a new departure : it opens the
distinctively human era.

Here again Science has been the revealer. She has
shown us that all our ' energies ' are due to the sun ; that
they must all be referred to what is * beyond/ what literally
' transcends ' the limits of our own world and of our means
of communication and access. More than this. We cannot
speak without sending a thrill through the universe; and
"all rotating bodies tend to turn themselves towards the pole
star." ^ And the periods of waxing and waning, characteristic
of climatic (the * essential * or * primary ') fever, " are no other
than the cosmical periods of the earth itself." ^ Of course it
must not be supposed that even in what we have called our
planetary experience, there is no hint of 'meaning' or of
purpose. There is of course in a true sense a teleology,
an unconscious working for *end* throughout the living
world. And Man is from the first conscious not merely of
Sense as excited response, but also of what he calls
intention, governing his activities — "I mean to do, or to
prevent this*' — the voice of that rational action and
inhibition which belongs to the highest centres of his brain.^

1 Professor Perry on Tops.

2 "Pathology," Encyc. Brit, (gthedit.), p. 394.

3 The triadic form, into which ideas which belong to the category of
positive, comparative, and superlative naturally and conveniently fall,
easily becomes a snare. Even Wundt seems to have succumbed to its
fascination {Einleitung in die Philosophies 1901). Thus too much stress
must not be laid upon triads which seem both to fit facts and to correspond

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in WHAT IS MEANING? 29

This at first coincides with a crude and grotesque form
of that reference to what is * above' him which has super-
vened with the attainment of the erect attitude. That
which b^an with usefully aiming stone or stick or arrow at
the flying bird in the air, and translated itself into terror at
the supposed black beast of prey which shot out deadly
flashes and roared and growled * over his head * out of the
cloud; into fancied outlines of men or animals drawn in
stars upon the sky, or into explaining the stars as little holes
in his roof through which he could see the light-world ; that
which developed into sun worship and 'heavenly myths,'
into Walhalla or Olympus or Swerga, had always the same
idea as its moving force : " I belong to what is beyond the
world I live upon ; my world is bigger than this ; that sun
and moon are my lamps ; all that I see in the sky concerns
me." Thus astrology was bom. And throughout the
long ascent, the invisible region under man's feet was part
of the same idea : that of reference beyond the mere surface
of this earth he lived upon — even in the assumption which,
as already pointed out, still survives, to the confusion of
thought, as the ' foundation of the world.' Some of us are
so wedded to our primitive mental ' heavens ' that we resent
anything that looks like dissipating into nebulous immensities
the comfortable roof hung with earth-kindled lamps and
populated not only by cloud -cuckoos but by all manner of
(reflected) animals and men, and furnished with a con-
venient psychological zodiac.

To such a mind, then, the attempt to show that the most
deeply ingrained usages of language may have, as Dr. Tylor

with each other. Yet it may be worth noticing that the triad • • specific,
generic, ordinal" found in Outlines of Sociology (Lester Ward, 1898),
broadly answers to what is here called the planetary, the solar, and the
cosmical, and thus to sense, meaning, and significance.

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30 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

says, more significance than we suppose, seems fantastic, just
as its ' heavens ' in &ct do to the rest of us. So does the
idea that our appeal to the high, the wide, the deep, the
great, though merely quantitative, is also indicative of a
vague instinct that there is an actual less and more within
the limits of experience. But the mind that recognises three
types of experience, (i) answering to * touch,* * smell,* and
^hearing,' and therefore practically confined to earth and
its atmosphere, (2) answering to 'feeling ' which transcends
this (we fetl^ though we cannot touch, or hear, or see the
heat of the sun), (3) answering to 'sight,' the only sense by
which we respond to the sidereal universe, — such a mind
will not fall into this primitive error. It will understand
that the response which is here compared to ' sight ' is given
to a significance which may be compared with, and in
another sense constitute, the value of the mental and moral
as of the physical cosmos. What we may in a true sense
see (as e,g. we see Sirius) may yet be beyond all other senses.
Thus we reach what is here expressed by the term sig-
nificance ; a conception which in recent times has become
translated into that which used to be known as the mystical
element, as though it were an unconscious conversion of
that element into modern modes of thought For it is
again science which, having warned us of our dependence
upon sense for working knowledge, seeks in the observation
of fact for that 'meaning' which, as bringing us truth, is to
be the * value ' of her inquiries and experiments, and the
interpreter of the messages of sensation. It is science which
finally impresses upon us the duty and prerogatives of that
scientific imagination which can dare all because it can and
does control all, and which therefore points us beyond the
sense of things, beyond even the meaning of things, to their
significance, their highest value for us.

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Ill WHAT IS MEANING? 31

It is indisputable that we live and perceive on the three
levels or in the three spheres now suggested, though only
in a narrow sense.^ No one would dispute that we touch,
smell, hear, and see on the earth and in its atmosphere ; that
we do not touch, smell, or hear in the solar world, but that
we feel and see therein ; that we do not even feel though
we see in the sidereal universe. As sight is the only sense
which literally transcends all the limits of the other senses
and carries us out into the * infinite' universe — our eyes
being indeed actually * focussed to infinity * — we use vision
by valid analogy as the main metaphor of thought.
Probably it is our liability to visual illusion which has given
the * visionary * and the 'speculative' their meaning of the
fanciful and the dreamful. Otherwise what we most need is
of course more vision, more clear and distinct * speculation.'
Error arises from some degree of blindness, or of distorted
vision, or of darkness or fog. Physical science has emphati-
cally been an extension of the power of true seeing, which
in its turn was originally an extension of * touch.'

^ Curiously enough, though we do speak of the meaning of a word,
we never speak of a man of meaning, or of common meaning. To avoid
possible confusion, the word ' intention ' has been used, throughout these
Studies, as the main sense of ' meaning.' But ' intent ' would often, for
some reasons, be preferable.

It may be desirable here to anticipate a probable objection. We may
be once more told that words are quite indifferent ; that every one is ready
and able to consider and adopt or reject any idea, no matter what the
terminology used ; and that therefore the appeal to language must be
futile or misleading, at least in practical life. The witness to the contrary
I have found, however, to be overwhelming.

To cite one instance (taken at the moment and at random) we find the
Daily Graphic saying in one of its pithy articles, '• It will probably be
found that by . . . making a concession to popular sentiment in the
matter of nomenclature the introduction of the metric system will be
enormously facilitated " (Jan. 22, 1903).

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CHAPTER IV

We may here consider some of our inherited and most
widely used analogies; taking as example the idea of
Foundation as the ultimate need (an 'unfounded ' idea being
false or worthless) and the corresponding idea of the earth
as ultimate centre and as resting on an ultimate basis.
^- ^These with all their implications, dead in science, untrue to
^v^ason, live on and sway us in the mental world, and infect
the whole of psychology and philosophy : mathematics alone
in the thought-world has escaped their thraldom. But this
state of things is a case of pure survival; and survivals
were not allowed by our intellectual forefathers, the Greek
thinkers, to dominate their figurative world. Thus if we
talk of the * world ' of this and that, — say the world of mind,
the world of morality, the world of science, — and then
suppose these * worlds' to be firmly founded, fixed and
flat, so that no change of position either of the * world ' or
anything upon it and no * antipodes ' are possible, we shall
be endowing our analogical * worlds * with impossible attri-
butes, and trying to force our ideas into impossible frame-
works. It will not occur to us that if anything can rightly
be compared to a world we must expect to find it revolving
in what seems empty * space,* and moving in an * orbit'
round a moving centre. We shall reject as false or fanci-
ful that very * world* which is necessarily unfounded and

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CHAP. IV WHAT IS MEANING? 33

without basis. That is at present just our idea of a fatally
unreal and deceptive world ! And children grow up under
the idea that whatever cannot show the equivalent of a
'solid foundation* cannot be real and true; whereas in
fact the (really) * solid ' reality on which alone we can live
and act, has no foundation at all. And if by * world ' we
mean * universe,* the same objection holds good.

The fact is, that many things for which we use the
metaphor * world* ought really to be expressed instead by
such metaphors as * structure * or * edifice,* the originals of
which do require foundations. Then we should recognise
that they were secondary ; that whatever is built up requires
a world to stand on. Only, once more, such a world has
itself no base. Unless some trouble had been taken to look
into the matter, it would be difficult to credit the extent of
the confusions started by such inherited fictions, or the
number of cases in which such false premisses, used as
illustrative, had led thought astray and even created
puzzles. They are, in fact, responsible for an incredible
amount of misleading metaphor, and probably of false
popular * metaphysics.* ^

^ M. Poincar^'s words (Monist, July 1902) are here suggestive :
' ' Every one has within him his idea of the world, which cannot so easily
be put aside. For example, we have to make use of language, which is
made up necessarily of preconceived ideas. Such ideas unconsciously
held are the most dangerous of all.

• ' Shall we say that if we cause to intervene others of which we have full
consciousness, we shall but aggravate the evil ? I do not think so ; I
believe rather that they will act as mutual counterweights, I was going to
say antidotes, that in general will accord poorly and even conflict with
each other, forcing us to look at things from different aspects. This is
enough to free us : he who can choose his master is no longer a slave."

He also warns us of the risk of unrealised assumptions, even in experi-
ment : the most tlangerous h3rpotheses ' ' are in the first place and above
all those that are tacit and unconscious. Since we make them without
knowing it, we are powerless to abandon them. " On the other hand it is

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"34 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

The mischief lies in the strength of association. We
apply an altogether false criterion, because of an unrealised
constraint which forces thought into habitual grooves.
Now, of course, so far as that is possible, it is best to do
without analogy altogether. But, unfortunately, language
itself has long ago decided that whether we will or no we
shall use it or be content to forgo speech entirely. We
cannot cancel the automatic process of translative thinking.
Everything suggests or reminds us of something else. What
have we just said? Mischief Mies in' the * strength' of
something : * constraint,' * process,' * translative ' — every word
calls up more or less consciously some physical experience
transferred to the mental sphere. * Transferred,' * sphere'
— once more we are ensnared; 'ensnared,' again a case
in point, and so on.

We see all this easily enough in many cases. If we speak
of a vicious circle we mean an idea which, professing to lead
us onward, lands us again where we began. If we speak
of a * solid' fact we mean the analogue of something
which does not give way under us, or melt or turn to
vapour when touched. If we complain that we are out
of our depth we really mean that we cannot find mental
foothold in the analogue of water, and are thus in danger
of mental suffocation. If we speak of a slippery notion we
mean again something which evades or escapes our mental

often true that a theory wrongly held may in the end be so re-interpreted
through fresh observation that it is taken up again under a new name or
at least in a new context, and in a new perspective. He instances the
fluids of Coulomb, which ' ' reappear under the name eUcirans. " Again
*• Carnot's theory in its primitive form, expressed, besides true relations,
other inexact relations, d^Ms of old ideas ; but the presence of the latter
did not alter the reality of the others. Clausius had but to separate them
as one cuts away dead branches. The result was the second law of
thermod3mamics. " This is also of wide application. One wonders how
many theories will thus have to be reconsidered.

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IT . WHAT IS MEANING? 35

grasp ; while an elastic conscience stretches when it ought
to be rigid If we draw a line, or set a limit, or widen a
scope, or direct an effort, or restrain an impulse, in each
case the ideas of muscular and nervous activity called up
suggest, correct, or clear the conception which they help
to express. We describe the less by the more familiar ; we
express the higher by the aid of the lower. But suppose,
instead, that in metaphorical usage we meant by * circle'
a spiral or straight line ; that we still spoke of * solid ' fact
when we meant something which in the physical sphere
would give way under our feet, slip out of our hands, or
disappear from our sight ; that our * depth ' was depth of
air, not water, so that there was no danger of choking;
that by slippery we meant adhesive, and by elastic rigid ;
then our ideas would plainly be in hopeless confusion. We
might as well use such terms as 'barrier' or 'obstacle'
when we meant something which opened a way or helped
us on. The wrong idea or mental image conveyed would
falsify all inferences. And yet we do not see it in cases
where current usage really vitiates our most central concep-
tions.

It must be repeated that we cannot, even if we would,
dispense with metaphor, and abjure or avoid analogy. We
are, indeed, actually compelled to begin with the latter ; it
has already been pointed out that we cannot attempt to
communicate with another * mind ' without first assuming an
analogy between that and our own. This being so, it seems
but platitude to say that we had better test and verify
our analogies, and see that those we use do not make
confusion worse confounded by falsifying our mental
pictures. As Dr. J. Ward warns us, " instinctive analogies
have, like other analogies, to be confirmed, refuted, or
modified by further knowledge, i.e, by the very insight

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36 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

into things which these analogies have themselves made
possible." ^

When we have substituted fancy for imagination, we
round on analogy and say that it plays us false. But so we
might say of logic, yes, and even of fact. Everything seems
to play us false when we play it false — put it to work which
it cannot do, refuse it the work it can do. And every
mental function will continue to play us false, or rather to
fail us in real emergency and in the greatest of our
difficulties, so long as we n^lect to study and master the
conditions of the supreme category of significance.^

What then is to be our test ? Simply the result Take
as a master case this very assumption with which I must
needs begin if I am to try and convey some idea to another
person — the assumption that his mind is like mine. What
are the practical results of this assumed analogy ? Simply
the whole of human intercourse. If, on the other hand, the
presumption of the individual mind had been that other
minds were radically different from itself, no meaning would
ever have been attached to the noises which issued from a
throat. The * word ' would never have come into existence.
And in that case, how much * mind ' would ever have been
developed ?

But just as a true analogy — that instinctively assumed
between my mind and yours — creates the very thing which
makes us human, and generates the world of human converse
and society, so an inherited false one may create by its
subtle but constraining influence a whole system of fallacy.
Curiously enough, we do realise in a few isolated instances
the tremendous power of physical analogy, though we
generally act as though it mattered little whether we chose

I "Psychology," Encyc, Brit. (9th edit.).
2 See Note VII., Appendix.

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IV WHAT IS MEANING? 37

an authentic or a mythical one. In fact we are often re-
minded that it is no longer legitimate to suppose that
our earth could have been the only scene of a stupen-
dous divine drama; we must give up all idea of the
unique importance of our mere atom of a * world.' So
also, assuredly, in the case of all life and all * mind,' and
therefore of all our highest and worthiest ideals. But every-
where the tacit assumption reverses this. We begin by
taking for granted that life and consciousness and intelli-
gence originate on this world, except in some * supernatural '
or mystical sense at best appealing only to faith.

Here we come to the most prolific source of barren
controversy. We suppose that there are only two alterna-
tives, and that the choice of one to the exclusion of the
other is always imperative. But one need not be a
Hegelian in order to see that this halfness in seeing
things — which I would call monocular — can never bring
us the answers to our perplexities which we so sorely need.

Indeed if the unrealised sources of confusion (the use of
'confusion' itself too often among them) were eliminated, the
position of every pair of controversialists on every subject
would be strengthened. And thus for the first time we
should see the "survival of the fittest" in a transfigured
sense ; the emergence of the better by the detection of the
worse ; the persistence of that which has shown that it can
abide the most searching criticism, — ^the victory of the truth
through which life in its worthiest sense is attained.

The secret of hopelessness in argument may perhaps be
figured thus. When we take opposite directions in a closed
circle, we not only find it * vicious ' but obstructive. Every
moment means collision ; and although we may bear down
some one opponent, and rush round our circle our own
way over his prostrate body, still we suffer fatally by the

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^8 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

loss of one of two movements which the circle implies.
We grow giddy ; we have mental vertigo. For we cannot
reverse our course ; there is no room to turn round ! Just
open the circle, that is all. In exchange for a 'vicious*
circle we gain a * virtuous* spiral, that is, one by virtue
of which we escape our circular prison and expand our
experience. This, however, is of course more than merely
a 'tabgible' fact: it is strictly in the biological sense a
'visionary * one. But these are among the many metaphors
which would gain by a reference to physiology. If we
insist on limiting ourselves to the tangible, we are simply
proclaiming ourselves as belonging to the mental stage
which corresponds to the eyeless animal. If we are some-
times tempted to suppose that this is a playing on words,
or the laying of undue stress on casual figures of speech,
we are forgetting that while language itself is a symbolic
system its method is mainly pictorial Now a word or a
group of words is often supposed to stand for a clear
thought, or at least for a definite idea, when it really stands
only for a feeling or an instinct Here lies the danger.
For if we use the wrong words (under the delusion that
it does not matter, that it is merely a * verbal ' question),
we rouse, in ourselves and others, if not the wrong thought
or idea, the wrong feeling, which rises to emotion and sways
conduct. But we never attribute the result to its true
cause. In many cases a new impulse takes hold of words
and forcibly warps the intention with which they were
originally used. The new * sense ' thus started, unconsci-
ously adopted by the orator and in the press, and either
unconsciously or deliberately used by the thinker and
serious writer, becomes the dominant or only one. Circum-
stances, again, give the word or the sentence a fresh value,
and lo, we find ourselves embarked in a war, or committed

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IV WHAT IS MEANING? 39

to a policy, or swirling about (as in the case of * educa-
tion*) in a sort of tide race of cross currents and whirl-
pools and undertow of theory ; every man proclaiming as
the only and infallible course the one which the whirling
flood really compels him to take. All this then applies
also and necessarily to the question of metaphor.^ Most
of us as yet regard the use of analogical and illustrative —
even equational — writing as all on one level of brilliant or
amusing fatuity. We class together an illustration or a
comparison or an equational parallel by a Clerk Maxwell,
a Clifford even (or now an Osborne Reynolds), and the
veriest absurdity of an after-dinner orator. Many of our
fashionable metaphors enshrine an analogy which is an
actual *bulL' On the other hand some indicate a deep
and essential (though perhaps as yet ill understood) com-
munity of structure or function, of character or tendency.
But when we begin to be masters of the world of Expression,
riding the waves and steering a steady course, — learning
(not without difficulty) what we want to mean, ought to
mean, by realising what we do mean, — then at least we
shall no longer, except in the purely technical sense, talk
of merely verbal questions.

1 See Note VIII. , Appendix.

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CHAPTER V

It is in this spirit then that we must postulate an analogy
between Context and Environment : the adaptation of the
word, as of the organism, to its surroundings, and conversely
its effect upon these. If we enthrone one queen -word
instead of another in the midst of a hive of working
context- words, these will behave very differently. They
will expel or kill or naturalise it.^

An example here may help to illustrate this suggestion.
Taking both words in the generally accepted English sense,
what in the last resort is the difference between Fact and
Idea? What is that essential meaning of both which, if
changed, will necessitate a new word to express what we
are losing ? Surely there can be no doubt of the answer.
If we can say of any supposed fact that it is false : unreal
from one point of view, untrue from another (these again
never to be confounded), it ceases to be fact. No fact
can be either unreal or untrue, only our idea of it. Other-
wise we may as well say at once that the real may be the
delusive, or the true may be the deceptive. Of course the
* real ' tends to become illusory to us, and the true deceptive,

* The organism retains its unmistakable character as distinct from
others : it is faithful to type. How far does or might the word retain
character, whatever the difference of context ? That is, how far does B
modify A, and conversely? We must beware of pressing the organic
analogies.

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CHAP. V WHAT IS MEANING? 41

owing to the inadequacy of our inferences, which is again
due to our little-developed interpretative power. But this
must become more adequate when we have learnt to make
Sense, Meaning, and Significance our central concern,
and have developed our sensifying and signifying faculties.
At the very least we shall be more clearly aware of the
presence of illusion, and thus of the risk of delusion and
deception; and that will deprive them of their danger.
Of course any given idea, false or true, as existing, is a
fact. The absurdity of some ideas is also a fact. But this
only witnesses to the supremacy of Fact ; our very ideas
must be facts before they are anything else, or acquire any
kind of value. Once then verify and authenticate our
analogies, our links, our ideas of relation, — once rectify
our figurative scheme and make it before all loyal to fact,
and thus significant in the highest and fullest sense, — and
the result will be a command both of the material and the
spiritual, a power to co-ordinate, inter-relate, and translate
them, of which we do not yet dream. The greatest poetry
and deepest thought in ancient days was born of that Cos-
mology which was the most advanced science, the most
adequate view of Nature and Fact then possible, and natur-
ally turned to it for inspiration. So it may well be that the
poetry of the future will be bom of that science of the present
which (from our defect alone) seems to be antagonistic to
the supremely true and real, revealed in forms of beauty.

This is the first age in which men have been found
proud of being merely imitative, and content to divorce
science from poetry, mechanism firom art. And our very
attempts to marry them, such as they are, simply issue,
not in the exaltation of the first, but in the degradation of
the second. But that surely will not always be so.

Once more, then, let us recognise that whether we

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42 WHAT IS MEANING? chaf.

will or no, all our ideas work through and by analogy.
Pessimism results from the voluntary or involuntary, direct,
indirect, or unconscious use of analogies which science
and experience are steadily falsifying. As many of these
are merely implied or involved, and nowhere definitely
stated, they should be systematically searched for as an
important factor in education. The great thing to remember
is that in the end we have no alternative : if we take liberties
with 'nature* we pay the penalty; 'nature' is the self-avenging
power. The leading case is, as we have seen, the Coper-
nican reversal Whether he knows it or not, the typical
positivist is a pre-Copernican, and is thus discredited from
the outset If we are using metaphor rightly we ought to
be able to translate it back in other words, e,g, in Westcott's
Gospel of LifCy p. 230, 'light' and 'salt' of the earth.
" Christ is welcomed as a light for revelation to the Gentiles ;
His disciples are pronounced by Him to be the light of the
world, the salt of the earth (Matt. v. 14, 13), the power which
shows finite being in its true beauty; the element which
keeps that which is corruptible from decay." ^

We use defective, misleading because plausible analogies,
not only of set purpose but because, whether we will or no,
the needs of language compel it And then we never
attempt to study, analyse, and classify them ! Either we
suppose them to be substitutes for argument or for proof,
or else we declare that they are all alike casual, arbitrary,
or rhetorical, and go our way satisfied with our acumen and
assured of our security and our success. Hence our treat-
ment of metaphors. We use these in such fashion as, it
may be, to wreck a policy or a measure ; we produce the
conditions of a great famine or a great war, by the power
of some vivid simile which arouses the passions of man-

1 Sec Note IX. , Appendix.

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V WHAT IS MEANING? 43

kind, — and then? Are we challenged? Are we called
upon to justify our action or to undergo its penalty ?

No ! As soon as it is seen that somehow the ' figure of
speech,' apparently so harmless, sways us powerfully-— ^ven
'changes the whole situation,' — we either insist upon its
replacement by another which probably, if examined, would
turn out worse still ; or, * mirabile dictu,' we clamour through
the newspapers for the abandonment of all metaphor ; we
would have the figurative outlawed, or at least excluded
from public life ! And, be it noted, we almost always make
this demand itself through metaphor ; often, indeed, in its
least defensible forms.

We strangely ignore the fact that comparison is our one
way of acquiring or imparting knowledge ; that no percep-
tion has its full ' sense,' much less meaning, until we have
started from its likeness to or correspondence with some
other perception already ours ; as we have seen, we forget
that we cannot say one word to our fellow without assuming
the analogy between his * mind ' and our own. And then
we wonder what can be the cause of the swarming con-
fusions which, like locusts, devour the produce of the mental
land ! Have we not just touched upon one such cause ?

We must test metaphor by applying it experimentally
in divers directions. Has colour an inside and outside?
No ; but colour has innumerable gradations in * brightness,'
etc. ; may be * strong' or 'weak.' The idea of inside and
outside is here unmeaning, the metaphor does not help.
* Depth ' in the sense of distance expresses the visual sense
of the third dimension, of the eye's action in * running back
and forth ' on the lines of sight.

As one out of innumerable examples of the way in which
we use metaphor now, we may notice one of the falsest,
ue, the skeleton afterwards to be clothed with flesh {e.g.

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44 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

Lord Rosebery's speech at Chesterfield in December 1901).^
Many years ago it was vainly urged by the present writer
that grammar as 'skeleton' should come last in mind-
development, the muscular and nervous tissues of language
coming first ^ In the same way, long before the Kinder-
garten was introduced, it was suggested that geography
should first be taught by making a mud-map of the family
* premises,' be it only ground-plan and back garden. Then
would come the flat paper map with parish, estate, county,
and other boundaries representing the 'skeleton.'

It would be well also to test our imagery by diagram more
systematically than we do; it would give some curious
results. Though even so, unless we used a solid or
hollow globe or a screw, we should still only represent
plane - thinking, whereas we have to learn to think in
sphere.

There are cases where the direct use of a word has
lapsed because the man in the street has taken it for
metaphor. For instance 'Answerable.' We are directly
answerable as we are competent to receive the answer to a

^ It is often supposed that we owe this falsity to the imagery of Ezekiel.
But it must be remembered that his parable assumes that the ' very dry '
bones had already formed part of living bodies ; so that the process was
merely a reversal of development We, on the contrary, begin with the
skeleton, as though we supposed that this was the normal order of
development.

^ It is encouraging to find this at last emphatically laid down by a
competent authority. At the Headmasters' Conference ( Times, December
23, 1901), Mr. Bell (Marlborough) said there was "first a venerable
relic of the old classical system of teaching, which still survived in what
was called the grammar method, by which a pupil was put through a
manual of grammar as a preliminary, the reading-book being regarded
mainly as a magazine of illustration of grammatical facts and principles " ;
and he quoted Mr. Bowen of Harrow as saying that ' ' every year he was
more convinced of the uselessness of formal grammar as a means of
teaching."

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V WHAT IS MEANING? 45

question.^ The popular use is here, as in so many cases,
a virtual blunder. A man is notable, irritable, lovable,
manageable : ue, he is noted, irritated, loved, managed. It
is not a question of his noting, irritating, loving, managing.
It is certainly a curious instance of unrecognised confusion
that in the Oxford Dictionary we find the main sense ' able
to be answered ' marked * rare,' while in all other similar
cases it is universal. In the negative form * unanswerable,'
strangely enough, we revert to the right use. There is of
course a secondary, a forensic sense of 'answerable.* A
man is brought up to answer an indictment by pleading
guilty or not guilty. After an accident a man in charge or
authority is questioned, and if he cannot clear himself
becomes liable to penalty. But this usage is akin to one
in which we say that a certain machine or apparatus does
not answer, and therefore is to be rejected. Do we suppose
then that the mechanical is answerable, either in the sense
of ability to receive or to give an answer ? Ought we not

* The baneful power of false metaphor, inherited and habitually used, has
of course been already perceived by some thinkers, though these are still
too^rare : e.g. Mr. D. G. Ritchie, in a notice of Windelband's Prdludien,
says that "the widely accepted and fatally influential figure of speech
which makes the mind a mirror of the world is criticised with searching
logic" (Mind, January 1885).

"Figurative language pervades our daily talk. We need, how-
ever, very little consideration to see that in the hands of a master
the empire of metaphor must needs be constantly widening. Shake-
speare emplo)rs words in figurative senses not previously used. The
Shakespeare metaphors cover the wide expanse of nature ; hence the
incomparable value of Shakespeare as an educational lever. It would be
a most useful exercise to go through the dramas, one by one, selecting
examples of every principal kind of figure, then classifying them and
contemplating what is signified alike in the letter and the spirit. These
diligently collected and collated would constitute no trifling lesson in that
grandest of the sciences, the science well designated by Bacon ' respon-
dence'" (Grindon on "The Figurative Language of Shakespeare," read
before the Clifton Shakespearian Society).

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46 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

to acquire some new word for the moral agent liable to
* answer ' for his conduct ? The fact is that the Answerable
is in this case and in two senses the Questionable. Thus
we are debarred from the best solution of the question by
another senseless usage. The Unaccountable is another
form of the same solecism, and is open to the same
objections.

It must be remembered that Signifies implies in more
than one * sense ' a careful distinction between sense, mean-
ing, and significance. This triad is found in many forms, of
which perhaps one of the most striking comes from the
East : " The meaning (that may belong to a word) is held to
be three-fold, namely. Express, Indicated, and Suggested.
The Express meaning is that conveyed to the understanding
by the (word's) Denotation ; the (meaning) Indicated is
held to be conveyed by the (word's) Suggestion. Let these
be the three powers of a word." ^

We have already touched upon some forms of this triad,
which may also be put as signification, intention, and ideal
value. From this point of view, the reference of sense is
mainly instinctive, of meaning volitional, and of significance
moral ; we have a sense of discomfort, a thing is true in a
certain sense, we mean (/>. intend) to do something, and
we speak of some event, " the significance of which cannot
be over-rated." In such a case as this last it would be
impossible to substitute the * sense* or the 'meaning' of
such event for its significance, without serious loss.^

* TAe Vedantasara, edited by Colonel G. A. Jacob.

2 The following is an instructive case of the force of sense and signifi-
cance, where meaning could not be expressed : —

' • Speech is, indeed, a rather over-rated medium of social intercourse.
Were more eloquent words ever heard in a public assembly than those of
the peer who defended Richard Steele, though he could not put two
sentences together ? After floimdering about for some time, he exclaimed

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V WHAT IS MEANING? 47

Signifies emphasises the relation of sign in the widest
sense to each of these, recognising that there is here an
ascending grade of practical importance.^ The term
' importance ' itself witnesses, at all events in our language,
that 'import' includes all with which we need concern
ourselves. The science of Man must remain in one
sense abortive unless we can master the secrets of what
we vaguely call * meaning.' We have looked for purpose ;
let us rather seek purport ; we have sought the final end,
aim, object of action or process; let us rather seek for its
Sense, its Meaning, and, above all, for its Significance.

It has been rightly urged * that when attention is insisted
on (by the * interesting ') it is more and more conceded,
until it becomes in its turn an urgent demand. Thus as the
plajrwright and actor call and play for, and thus evoke a
higher dramatic standard in, the audience which powerfully
reacts upon them both, so when we demand and expect
in the student close attention to and keen interest in

passionately, • I love this man so much that I would cheerfully give my
life for his, and yet I cannot speak for him. ' No doubt this was all that
anybody remembered at the time of a once fomous debate. There are
emergencies in which semi-articulate feeling is more memorable than
consummate oratory " (" The Right Word," Speaker, December 12, 1896).

1 In this connection it is suggestive to find a leader-writer in a
prominent literary periodical seriously writing thus : •• By the very form of
the words, by the sound of the rolling Greek line or the sonorous Latin
prose, we are reminded of the fact that the essence of articulate speech
lies not in its sense, its utilitarian convenience (for animals can com-
municate their needs and purposes to one another), but in its beauty, its
power of suggesting images which are not useful but aesthetic."

In the first place, he depresses the significant and purposive to the lowest
admissible level, that of mere 'utilitarian convenience,' and then con-
trasts it with the aesthetic alone, entirely ignoring the ethical. In the
second place, however, his position might be accepted in reference to sense,
though rejected in reference to meaning and emphatically protested against
in tiie case of significance.

* Renascence of the Drama, Jones, 1895, p. 17.

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48 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

questions of ' meaning/ he, as hearer, reader, learner, will in
time and in his turn stimulate his teachers.

Sense in all its senses may be called the link or nexus
between the intellectual, the moral, and the aesthetic worlds.
For in all senses it is the sense wherein and whereby they
are possible. The double reference is the condition of this.
And it must be hoped that the future teacher and examiner
will see the necessity of working from this (developed into
Meaning and Significance) as from a new centre outwards
and a new circumference inwards. We say of two things
that they are Senseless: (i) the unconscious; (2) the
unmeaning. Thus we virtually identify the ascent from the
first dim sensation through consciousness to intelligence,
with the ascent from the sense of expression in the widest
sense (beginning of course in the animal world) to the
meaning of Expression {ie, its intended reference) culmin-
ating in its significance ; this being the highest form which
sense or meaning can take. For, once more, it is true in a
new sense that there is nothing in thought not already in
sense ; and we must not add in this extended sense of sense
* except intellect itself,' because the senseless can never be
the intellectual; it can never be the reasonable, it is
essentially not merely the unmeaning but the insignificant,
the * negligible ' ; that which is of no account.^

In this sense Intellect exists in sense ^ though potentially,
as promise and potency; just as sense in its turn exists

^ And it is perhaps truer than we think that to be ' out of our senses '
is as much to be insane as to be ' out of our mind, ' although in some
cases both insanities may really mean only that while one experience has
expanded, the rest remain narrow.

2 I am purposely using the word in two of its • senses. ' Its primary
sense of course is undiflferentiated organic response. When we ask ♦ in
what sense? ' the era of ' specialised senses ' has begun. And this applies
in all uses of the word.

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V WHAT IS MEANING? 49

(not in matter but) in Motion and Change. Here as usual
we need words to describe the reality which we see in
physical form as 'motion.' When we say that we are
deeply moved or stirred, when we speak of energising, of
quickening mind, etc., we implicitly confess that physical
Motion is capable of Translation into something which we
see as * higher.' But the two modes of existence must not
be confounded any more than * existence' and * being,'
which ought to be carefully discriminated. Intellect as de-
finable begins at the Meaning stage, and is itself transcended
by Reason. We must here, however, beware of pressing the
superiority of reason over intellect or * understanding ' in
such wise as to assume, under the specious appeal to reason,
a right to defy the natural canons of logic Sensationalism
has only to include sense in the meaning-sense in order to
imply rationalism and idealism.^ We need a word to
symbolise the synthetising whole thus arrived at. Con-
versely, not merely rationalism but Platonism has only to
include sense in its fullest sense in order to absorb sensa-
tionalism. In English usage, happily, the reasonable, far
from transcending the intellectual, is allied to the sensible ;
while the rational in equally close alliance with it, is the
indispensable condition not merely of the supreme signifi-
cance of things but also of their intelligible meaning.

^ It may be well here to remark, with reference to what has been said
about Fact and Idea (on pp. 40-41) that it must be read in the light of
the proposition that the idea of fact is itself the starting-point of our
apprehension of the supremacy of fact. Most of us have hitherto, perhaps
from lack of the habit which Signifies forms, held ' fact ' and ' idea ' in an
absolute instead of a merely expedient opposition. If fact gives us the
idea of its own domination, the testimony of that idea is all the evidence
we have of the existence of fact.

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CHAPTER VI

Significance, then, fully resumes, in transfigured form, all
that is summed up (i) in the idea of Motion, force, energy,
activity, function, (2) in the idea of Sense (in all senses)
and in that of Meaning (intention, purport, purpose). The
concern for reality is the ultimate tie between the 'plain man,'
the scientific man and the philosopher. The * ideal ' of the
artist as of the poet is but purged or potential reality ; the
Ought in the sense of the May be. Might be. Would be,
Shall be.^ The attempt to reach an ideal order and con-
nection by the dialectical method, as we see in certain
schools of thought, easily becomes a snare. Our * ideal '
may be persuaded to conspire with us to coerce truth. The
inestimable service of science is to support a natural
correction of this tendency. It is the glory of the scientific
army that it marches to victory over fields strewn with the
fragments of dead theory, which is thus never allowed
to harden permanently into obstructive dogma. Let us
beware in sense, meaning, and significance of allow-
ing the old antithesis 'matter and mind' to coerce us.
Reality is monistic so far as ultimate division or separation
or sunderance goes, but dualistic from one point of view
and triadistic from and in another, pluralistic in and from
yet another. The unity thus reached cannot yet be
adequately formulated in our present terminology, which is

* Cf. Problem of Conduct y A. E. Taylor, 1902, pp. 53-54.

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CHAP. VI WHAT IS MEANING? 51

cramped on every side by the outgrown shells of controversy
once protective, now mere sources of danger to intellectual
and moral life. For language is radically tainted by
association, which, being mostly automatic, we do not realise.
We cannot possibly talk the real * twentieth century * philo-
sophy, as we are trying to do, in the b.c. centuries dialects,
or that of the twelfth century, or even the seventeenth, with-
out at all events acquiring leading terms which shall (as in
ancient days was a matter of course) bring fresh ideas, and
shall rule out the stale ones and relegate them to their proper
place, — at best a literary one.^

It is unfortunate that custom decrees the limitation of
the term diagnosis to the pathological field. It would be
difficult to find a better one for that power of * knowing
through,' which a training in Signifies would carry. We
must be brought up to take for granted that we are
diagnosts, that we are to cultivate to the utmost the power
to see real distinctions and to read the signs, however faint,
which reveal sense and meaning.^ Diagnostic may be
called the typical process of Signifies as Translation is its
typical form ; and the combination of these must make for
the detection of lurking confusion or specious assertion in
directions where the discipline of formal logic would help

* " At present . . . our words have only confused meanings, to which
the human mind has been accustomed for so long a time that it now
possesses a perfect insight into hardly anjrthing" (Signs and Symbols,
Schroeder, " Open Court," November 24, 1892).

* Here General Baden- Powell's little book on 'scouting,' applied to
the mental world, would be invaluable to the trainer. He would take
examples like those on pp. 67-77, and first giving out-door practice,
would translate the method and use it in the detection and interpretation
of meanings not obvious or • on the surface, ' and yet of vital importance
for the future of the student. This would render him quick to detect self-
contradiction, inconsistency, or fallacy, and lead him always to the central
interest of the study. See also note X. (A), Appendix.

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52 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

less directly and simply. But this form of study, so far from
superseding or displacing or even distracting attention from
the disciplines already recognised, would rather render them
more effectual because more vitally significant: more ob-
viously related to ordinary experience and interests. It
would also bring out the moral value of a greater respect
both for the traditions and the future of language, and would,
in fact, while preparing the ground for an expansion of the
limits of articulate expression as yet scarcely imagined, tend
to create a linguistic conscience which must beneficially
react upon thought; thus bringing about gradually and
naturally a spontaneous consensus in definition, which shall
provide in orderly freedom for all contingencies of growing
need and widening knowledge.^

Language is still in what we have to express by that vague
and misused word, the * instinctive ' stage. We must raise
it as we have ourselves risen from the * instinctive level ' to
the volitional and fully rational plane, in the fullest sense.
What we will it to be (and thus to give us) that it must
inevitably become. The only difficulty is to * create the
demand,' to arouse the sense of lack and the determination
to supply it. Yet how urgent that is already ! ^ It does not

^ One of a large mass of scientific witnesses to this which have been
collected (and some of which were printed in pamphlet form in 1898,
"The Witness of Science to Linguistic Anarchy") may here be cited :
• • Objections to the use of the word neurone as a designation for the nerve
unit have been offered by Kolliker, Schafer, and others. It is, however,
so much more convenient a term than any other which has so far been
suggested . . . that I think it must be accepted ; if so, the use of the
term 'neuron' as a name for the axis-cylinder process ... is to be
deprecated, and more particularly because a few distinguished teachers
have been induced to continue the use of the term in this way, thus leading
at times to considerable confusion" (The Nervous System, L. F. Barker,
1901, p. 39). A curious — ^and too common— example of the general help-
lessness.

2 Some sociological writers feel this keenly ; for instance Mr. Lester

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VI WHAT IS MEANING? S3

even need to be created, only to be directed into profitable
and practicable channels. In most newspapers, even, we
find firequent complaints of the present state of things. As
the Spectator once rightly though vainly lamented (April 19,
1890), " it is the *man in the street * who makes, and some-
times unmakes, the English language, — who, that is, adopts
a new word, or modifies a grammatical form, or degrades
a word from its rank by depriving it of all precision of

Ward, who says of self-consciousness (Outlines of Sociology, 1898), "if
it could only be seized and clearly understood, self-consciousness would
doubtless prove to be the primary and fundamental human attribute.
Unlike reason, it has no roots in the animal stage ; but neither do all
men possess it. Our language seems to lack the proper word to express
it in its simplest form " (p. 87). Again, of the delight of bringing true
thought into the world, " it seems almost a mockery to call it a pleasure,
so far above all those experiences commonly called pleasures does it rise,
. . . and our language lacks the appropriate term to characterise it"
(p. 107). Also "the proper designation of a true science should have the
termination 'nomy' or 'onomy.' ... As a matter of fact, the name
of only one of these sciences, astronomy, has the proper termination.
Bionomy has already been used, and fsychonomy and socionomy are
naturally formed, but physics and chemistry do not readily admit of a
similar modification. The former might logically be divided into baronomy
and etheronomy, the first embracing the gravitant forces, and the second
magnetism, electricity, and all the radiant forces" (p. 139).

Mr. Ward even complains that he has to employ " terms that connote
function instead of feeling, because the latter would have been difficult to
find. This is due to the functional side being almost the only one ever
mentioned, so that, not only are there no well-crystallised terms in which
to describe the side of feeling, but even with the most careful explanation
it is difficult to convey the idea" (p. 147). (The same kind of difficulty
is of course found in the present attempt to reconsider traditional positions
and to reinterpret experience. ) And further, after insisting that • ' social
progress is either genetic or telic " the writer says, • • obviously, therefore, the
sociologist at least demands a terminology that shall clearly indicate this
important distinction. ... A term is wanted to describe this major part
of social evolution. So pressing is this need that I feel justified in striving
to find and introduce such a term," and he ends, " in order to supply such
a term I propose to revive the Greek form telesis, giving to it the required
meaning" (p. i8o).

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54 WHAT IS MEANING? chaj>.

' meaning. There is absolutely no referee upon the subject
to whom people look even in theory for guidance, or who
can control usage in any degree whatever. No university,
no corporation of critics, no maker of dictionaries, possesses
on this subject any authority, nor has any poet or author
or orator any power, recognised or informal, of exercising a
veto." And throughout, there has been an unconscious will
at work, as M. Br^l and Prof F. Tonnies point out, and
Profs. Eucken and Jespersen show. Let there be an orderly
freedom, a free order ! We have but to resolve that there
shall be.

It is obvious that much work is already being done in
this direction. Signifies claims to centralise and co-ordinate,
to interpret and inter-relate, to concentrate and actualise
the efforts of all true teachers to bring out the meaning of
experience in every form ; and in so doing to classify the
various applications of the signifying property clearly and
distinctly, — showing that the distinction above made be-
tween sense, meaning, and significance is not merely valid
but pregnant with practical issues.

It will be admitted by all who look below the surface,
that thought is unduly subservient to established modes,
canons, fashions of expression. As medieval philosophy
was forced to remain rigidly within orthodox lines, and thus
became scholasticism, so now all thought has still to present
itself in orthodox philosophical and literary form. And
the wildest vagaries or most elaborate weavings of * style '
do not help us here. Indeed, they increase the difficulty.
For they leave intact those very elements which are most
obstructive. We are running the risk of a modem linguistic
scholasticism, more fatal than the original.^

^ An instructive case of the unconscious scholasticism of science is
described by Dr. Divers in his opening address to the British Association

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n WHAT IS MEANING? 5$

Now orthodoxy is of course a good thing in so £^r as it .
IMreserves tradition and order, and makes for reverence,
dignity, truth. But when, as now, it is supposed to provide
us with canons and limitations of permanent value, — when
throughout the prevalent systems of training, no hint is
given that language is a vital instrument in the same sense
that the hand is, but in immeasurably higher degree, — it must
inevitably bring about the results upon thought which we
see : the cutting off or nipping or starving of the buds of
original power.^ True that we may have giants of mental

at Belfast, 1902. He says, "The atomic theory of chemistry stands un-
surpassed for the way in which it has fulfilled the purpose of every great
theory, that of giving intellectual mastery of the phenomena of which it
treats. But in the form in which it was enunciated, and still is universally
expressed and accepted, it has the defect of resting upon a metaphysical
basis, namely, upon the ancient hypothesis that bodies are not continuous
in texture, but consist of discrete, ultra-minute particles, whose properties,
if known, would account for those of the bodies themselves. Hence it
has happened that, despite the light it throws upon the relations of
chemical phenomena and the simple means it affords of expressing these
rdations, this theory has always been regarded with misgiving, and failed
to achieve that explicit recognition which its abounding merit calls for.
. . . Now, it is not my intention to discuss the merits or demerits of the
atomic hypothesis, which can indeed no longer be treated as a merely
metaphysical speculation. What I would do to-day is to impress upon
you that, in spite of all that has been said and written about the atomic
hypothesis in -.connection with chemistry, the atomic theory propounded
by Dalton and adopted, implicitly at least, by all chemists, is not founded
upon the metaphysical conception of material discontinuity, and is not
explained or illtuninated by it. " He continues, ' ' For the sake of clearness,
it is convenient to restrict the term • atomic hypothesis ' to the old meta-
physical view of the discontinuity of matter whilst applying the term
' atomic theory ' to the current elaborated form of the Daltonian theory. **
We have here a good example to follow in many directions.

1 "In the general ignorance of Logic which prevails, and which is
fostered by the traditional teaching system, it is not difficult to make
people accept a circular truism as a deep philosophical truth" (C/se of
Words in Reasoning, Alfred Sidgwick. 1901, p. 39). Speaking of
the endless risks of error to which we are needlessly exposed, Mr.

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56 WHAT IS MEANING? chaf.

force who can bring wonders out of language as we have
it ; but these very wonders are earnest of what we might
have, and have not yet ; of what the mental giant of an
age of Signifies will have for us when he not merely finds
available a far higher development of Expression, —
especially in language, — than is now possible, but is also
free and even expected to contribute further perfections
because his hearers and readers all look for this through
him.^ If there is still so much confusion, if disputation and
definition have as yet done so little for us, if the area of
misunderstanding seems rather to increase than to diminish,
the reason perhaps is that while * things that mean,' things
observed and words to express them accumulate with over-
whelming rapidity and profusion, in other words, while
questions multiply with constantly enlarging experience, the
means of dealing with them remain substantially the same.^

Sidgwick says that " the difficulty is to see any reason, other than merely
accidental, — such as the wish to save time or trouble, — ^for putting a limit
to the process of looking behind words to the details they obscure and
obliterate. Even without attempting to push the inquiry far, a little re-
flection shows at least that this misleading power of words has a much wider
range of action than common sense is at first inclined to expect " (p. 70).

^ As a philosophical thinker has told us (David Masson, Recent British
Philosophy t 1B77, p. 113): " There are several vital points on which no one
can now think, even were he receiving five thousand a year for doing so,
as he might very creditably have thought not very long ago. There have
been of late, in consequence of revelations by scientific research in this
direction and in that, some most notable enlargements of our views of
physical nature and of history — enlargements even to the breaking down
of what had formerly been a wall in the minds of most, and the substitution
on that side of a sheer vista of open space. "

2 The political parallel to this is well expressed by Mr. Asquith in his
letter to Mr. Scott in the Times (March 3, 1902). After deprecating
adherence to an effete programme, he says : "And, meanwhile, the world
has been moving ; proportions and perspectives have shifted ; new problems
have advanced into the foreground ; old problems have changed their
position, and have to be approached by a different road. Is it not the

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VI WHAT IS MEANING? 57

We add names till the attempt to remember defeats itself,
and we add meanings to words until even consistency in use
and context fails to interpret them. For the reader's mind
is full of deeply ingrained associations, and he will un-
consciously supply * missing links ' ignored by the writer.^

Again, the present state of things is all in favour of the
plausible. We slide over this and slur over that ; we labour
a secondary point and neglect a primary one. And how
can it be otherwise? The man who makes an effort to
show that received usages in expression vitiate our thought
is simply set down, as Professor H. Sidgwick complained,
as an eccentric or a purist or a pedant And indeed there
is good excuse for this view so long as such complaints are
made casually and in isolated cases, or conversely imply a
merely mechanical, that is a rigid, ideal of language.

Signifies is a practical means of calling attention to the

duty of the Opposition to take stock of the new situation, to put on one
side the unattainable and the relatively unimportant, to combine its efforts
upon a few things, which are at the same time weighty, iu*gent, and within
reach ? This is what I understand by the doctrine of the ' clean slate ' as
set forth at Chesterfield. It is the same doctrine which I have preached
to you for years past in less picturesque language ; the doctrine of selection
and concentration. " It is surely the duty of man in dealing with language,
through which alone can we hope for political or any other advance,
to recognise the imperative necessity of cleaning that 'slate' which is
obviously meant for temporary record, just as parchment, papyrus, or,
better still, tablets of stone, etc. , are meant to be permanent record.

* Sir Thomas Elyot (quoted in Emerson's Brie/ History of the English
Language, 1900) tells us (in 1533) that he "intended to augment our
English tongue, whereby men should as well express more abundantly
the thing that they conceived in their hearts (wherefore language was
ordained), having words apt for the purpose. . . ." And it is of course
admitted that Dryden, Swift, and others, to say nothing of Dr. Johnson,
set seriously to work, according to their lights, to develop and transfigure
the language. The same spirit is sorely needed now, though by no means
the same methods. Bishop South's well-known protest ( ' The Fatal Im-
posture and Force of Words' : Sermons, vol. i., 1686), might be usefully
repeated in otu* day.

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58 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

backwardness of language in comparison with other modes
of communication, and to the urgent need of stimulating
thought by the creation of a general interest in the logical
and practical as well as the sesthetical value of all forms
of Expression. It provides a convenient general term
under which to work both for a willing and loyal inter-
national consensus. It supplies a natural check upon
wilful waste or misuse of the existing resources of langus^e,
by bringing to bear that deterrent of social and academic
ostracism now sometimes misapplied to the hindrance of a
healthy development.

We complain now of the tyranny of language just as we
used to complain of the tyranny of slow and inconvenient
modes of locomotion. Only then we became discontented,
and our discontent issued in concerted and energetic efforts
to improve what we had, and that on fresh lines ; leaving the
horse first for the steam-engine, then for the electrical engine.
It once seemed that we could never send news quicker
than a horse could gallop or a ship sail ; next we sent it
by steam, and now our telegrams travel in a few moments
all over the world and sometimes arrive quaintly, * before
they were sent* But in Language we may say that we are
still in the * horse * stage ; just as an army with its cavalry
is still in the oar and sail stage. Why not seriously face
the fact that we have only to utilise an undoubtedly growing
discontent and to apply it to the discovery of more effectual
modes of expressing our minds; and that then we shall find
a general raising of the standard of speech quite as feasible
as the raising of the standard of news-sending ? ^

^ Certainly the Elizabethan age cannot be accused of content with a
ready-made literary vocabulary ; it has been truly said with reference to
Slang that ' ' what Rabelais did for France, whose wit was still Gallic in
his day, our Elizabethans did for England. They sought new words, as
they sought new continents ; their enterprise was as keen in the domain of

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There has been an immense advance in knowledge,
involving revolutions in conception ; but there has hitherto
been no corresponding advance and no revolution in the
expression of this knowledge, and of its relation to and
effect upon our theories, our philosophical preconcep-
tions and systems.^ As we have just seen, there has
been an enormous development in various forms of
physical communication, but none in psychical ones. Yet
the whole object of physical communication — even on trade
lines — is to facilitate and develop psychical communication,
— even commercial or merely journalistic.

We may welcome Mr. John Grote's warning ^ that it is not
the fault of language, (as we are so absurdly told,) but our own
fault that we are * betrayed ' by it But that which he treats
as a mere contingency to be guarded against, in fact describes
our actual state : "a complete philosophical language at any
stage of knowledge short of complete, say the present,
would be a hindrance to advance: we do not want our
language to fit any particular stage of our knowledge,
because then it would not fit the next : we should be like
growing boys in an old dress, cribbed, confined, embarrassed,
not knowing what to do with ourselves." This, in fact,
is to a large extent just what we are.

Our present vocabulary, and especially our current meta-
phor, only fits the pre-Copemican or at best scholastic order
of things, and is pre-scientific in a sense which would have
aroused energetic protest and entailed effective reform in the
days of those classic forefathers whom we profess to revere.*

literature as in the golden realm of adventure. They found their words
not in books, but in the world ; nothing was above or below their
vocabulary, if only it were strange and nimble- witted ' (Charles Whibley,
Literature, March 2, 1901).

1 See note X. (B), Appendix.

2 Exploratio Philosophical Part II., p. 23 (1900).
^ See note XI. , Appendix.

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CHAPTER VII

What we do want is a really plastic language. The biologist
tells us that rigidity in organic activities can never secure
accuracy — is indeed fatal to it The organism can only
survive by dealing appropriately with each fresh emergency
in more and more complex conditions.^ Only the utmost
degree of plasticity compatible with persistence of type
can give the needed adaptiveness to varying circumstance.

But at present we accept as a substitute for this true
plasticity — this exquisite adaptiveness of the highly
developed function-complex — either the cumbrous forms
and the clumsy expedients of the barbarous mind, or the
arrested skill which, with all its elaboration, misses the marks
and is beside the points of a social state and scientific
standard far beyond its range. Such an arrested skill in
an organism would, in the sphere of natural selection, have
ensured its elimination as the unfit.^

^ For instance, in discussing the importance for plants of the possession
of " a very plastic organisation, that is, one which will respond readily
and accurately to the demands of the external conditions of life," Professor
Farmer (" Review of Goebel on Organography," Nature, December 13,
1900) says that "plasticity is clearly only of use (and therefore will come
to a like extent within the purview of natural selection) in so far as it will
provide the organism with the power of striking the right note in response
to a particular call."

2 It is obvious that the 'moulding' of materials by the artist into
complexes of beauty derives originally from the biological model.

60

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CHAP. VII WHAT IS MEANING? 6i

As the publication of the eighth edition of The Founda-
tions of Belief v& sure to direct fresh attention to that work, it
may be well to refer here to Mr. Balfour's strong advocacy
of the elasticity for which we are now pleading.^ But
it must be remembered that, as in the case of social
order, the more complete the freedom conceded, the more
inexcusable becomes the licentious use of such freedom.
Such license degrades the nobility of the free citizen to the
level of the mobsman and lowers voluntary or spontaneous
consent to the reign of order, into all-destructive anarchy.
Unhappily, as things are now, it is just this evil to which
we are exposed, and of which in writings like this we are
rarely or never warned.

It is never easy at the first glance to distinguish between
the false conservatism, which thinks that to develop is always
to deteriorate, and the true, which guards and cherishes the
precious human heritage stored up and assimilated through
the ages, the very condition of true development Thus
our present system of writing and printing, alike for all
purposes, is supposed by some to be the permanently fixed
form to be kept at all cost in a rigid immutability, while
others would deform, deface, mutilate, or monstrify it as
though there were nothing in it beyond some vulgar form
of advertisement to be superseded by one yet more vulgar.

The true view of course is different from either. As we
learn to realise what Signifies can do for us in concentrating
our energies on the development and the interpretation of
all forms of Expression, we shall see that it must provide
us at once with a more practical and more delicate sense of
the fitting in modes of speech and writing. We shall realise
that the paramount need, even in the use of alphabet and
syntax, is to give in enhanced form to the thinker and the

^ Pp. 364, 365, new edition (1901).

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63 WHAT IS MEANING? ciutF.

poet, no less than to the man of science or of business, the
power which the very invention of the alphabet has already
given him as an advance upon the pictorial method. It is
not a question simply of enlarged vocabulary. Perhaps,
just as we have but twenty-six letters and a vast store of
combinations, so a relatively small vocabulary might be
made immensely more adequate.^ It would be easy to
illustrate the fallacy of supposing that, in proportion as we
acquire new means of economy, abbreviations and methods
of fore-shortening, we should lose in the quality either of
the thought conveyed or of the mental process of assimila-
tion ; that, in short, thought would suffer more than ever
from the principle of cram. This undoubtedly would
be the case as things are now; but our whole point is,
that a different condition of things is required. The
complexity of a cell is not lessened by the fact that it
appears to the naked eye a simple speck, and only reveals
its intricacies under a strong microscope: similarly in a
new generation definitely educated, if not to evolve a
new aptitude, at all events greatly to develop an existing
one, the necessary detail of process would not be

^ There are few things more curious in Engh'sh literature than the
recent r^id evolution of the dialect story. There seems to be, at all
events in our own tongue, an unconscious craving for a great expansion
of current modes of speech. For these books and stories sell, although
reading them must entail to the average man much trouble of a distasteful
kind. If only we could get rid of the disfiguring and needless apostrophe
this would be lessened and the effect doubled. Writers like Pett Ridge
have already begun to discard it. But this may well be connected with
the distinctive merits of English, admitted, as we have seen, by prominent
foreign critics.

The Athenaum has told us (October 13, 1894) that " a German critic
has recently reiterated what has often been said in these columns, that . . .
the riches of the English language in simple composite words give it a
paramount place." This points to special advantages in the pioneer
work here advocated.

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^ VII WHAT IS MEANING? 63

„(j- omitted or slurred by the concentrative effect of signific

jj^ methods.

jlj As things are now, we think it necessary to realise all the

rhajs! poii^ts of our thought with the naked mental eye. This
takes so much time that if a writer attempts to carry
penetrative analysis beyond a certain point, he very rarely
finds in his reader a corresponding power to assimilate
his results. Many accusations of hair-splitting may con-
ceivably be the result of this. There must be * telescoping '
in expression as in recapitulation ; and we must be taught
to allow for this as a matter of early training. ^ y^

The phrase * bad language ' should gain a more general
application, and include waste and misuse of words, abuse
of speech, chaos in expression, degradation of painfully
acquired and slowly rising standards of language. We are,
happily, ready enough to censure and even punish profane
or impure language: we go further, we socially ostracise
the man who mispronounces a letter or misplaces an accent
or a 'part of speech,^ or mis-spells a word or drops his ^hs,^
But we rarely have a word of rebuke for the man who takes
some well-known word or phrase in common or philosophi-
cal use, and proceeds without preface or explanation to twist
it into a fresh reference. Nor do we chide the man who uses,
as equivalent, words which embody valuable distinctions, or
who uses the same word without warning in various senses.
And no one seems to realise that if we take a well-known
word or phrase with established (however conventional)
associations and apply it in a new sense, we may often create
the need for a new word to express what has hitherto been the
accepted sense of this one. Yet if this is not supplied, we
are deliberately introducing fresh confusion. True that
flagrant cases are sometimes pointed out and deprecated
by the reviewer or critical writer. But even he usually

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64 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

overlooks the broad facts that language is the most
precious * tool * of humanity, that it is still strangely back-
ward as compared with other intelligent activities, and that
it is morally wrong either to tamper with the expressive
treasure which it already offers as the result of long and
difficult acquisition, or to waste in the smallest degree its
discriminative power.

At present our system may be compared to the child's
copybook hand, while the system we want may be compared
to his father's legible, yet free and running hand. Or we
may say that our system is like the merely mechanical
photograph, recording in impartial detail, in blank and
literal monotony, the objects seen from its own point of
view ; whereas our true need is supplied by the ideal artist,
whether he works by pen or brush or chisel or camera ; that
is, the beauty, the truth, the goodness, ue. the significance
of the world.

But of course the question at once arises. How are we to
obtain this or its analogue ? An atmosphere, though charged
with moisture or fine dust, yet gives us a clear and distinct
view of the manifold objects around us, and also gloriously
transfigures with the messages of colour the worlds of land,
sea, sky. How are we to gain a graphic system which shall
be a true analogue of the atmosphere? For we need
transparency and translucency, which may be ignored,
which never obtrude themselves, and which yet bring
loveliness of their own.

It has been pointed out ^ by Mr. Arthur Symons that the
difference between the artist and the executant (constantly
ignored) lies here. (And the artist, be it remembered, is
one with the true Man, be he seer, thinker, scholar, or
worker. For the true Man is never merely these, that is

^ Arthur S3rmons, Academy, December i, 1900.

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vii WHAT IS MEANING? 65

* executant.') In the case admirably described by Mr.
Symons, after the task of the executant had been * magnifi-
cently accomplished ' the artist began : " the face had been
like a mass of clay, waiting the sculptor's thumb. As
the music came, an invisible touch seemed to pass over
it . . . Then, in that instant, a beauty which had never
been in the world came into the world ; a new thing was
created, lived, died, having revealed itself to all those who
were capable of receiving it."

Now, can we suppose for an instant that this living
power which has taken to itself all the exquisite adjustments
of material instrument given us by time, would not also
work the simpler forms of its magic through a mere flute,
a reed? And will it be outpaced in time to come by
growth in our command of natural resources ? Supposing
some day we acquire the means of 'making music' with-
out strings or pipes as now we can send thoughts great
or little without wires? Then surely the artist will here,
once more, be at home. He will rejoice to be freer than
he can be now from the instrumental limitations which are
the whole stock-in-trade of the mere executant.

It is not possible here to follow out in the region of
literature suggestions like these. Enough if we recognise
a principle which, once grasped, furnishes in good time and
in practical form its own applications.

It is strange that we appreciate our sense-wealth indirectly
while neglecting and wasting it directly, and omitting to
cultivate it in the young. We can say nothing too good of the
really fine writer, the master of language, as we inconsistently
call him. We are all ready to praise his force and his
significance ; his beauty of diction, his gift of * choosing the
right word ' and of arranging and balancing his sentences so
that his reader should see with him, though deprived of the

F

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66 WHAT IS MEANING? chap, vn

enonnous help of manner, gesture, intonation, and the
common thrill of an audience.

But the moment we are asked to respect what such a
writer first and most respects — ^the value of distinction and
consistency in its application — ^we cry off. Oh, we say, that
is pedantic ; that is to make words money, not counters
(whereas they are more than either). Even Huxley him-
self—that expert in lucidity — could write, in flat contra-
diction of his own practice, that "it really matters very
little in what sense terms are used, so long as the same
meaning is always rigidly attached to them."^ Did he
really think it possible or desirable to attach, ^^., the sense
of dryness to the word moisture, without cruel waste of
attention and memory, and injury to the word reversed in
sense -value? Did he really suppose that such a rigid
attachment was even possible, in view of the living forces
which influence and develop language ? ^

1 Hume (1894), p. 86. * See Note XII., Appendix.

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CHAPTER VIII

We hear much of Style nowadays. Too often this means
the use of rich (even of luscious) word for poor or stale
thought. Mean thought struts in, robed in splendours not
its own. Proud word and mean idea are the sorry sub-
stitutes for the humble word which is content to be a way
to life, — to that noble thought-life only to be won through
truth. Or, as some one well said, it is a wrenching of
words into unusual collocation for the sake of effect Walter
Pater knew better than this : "the essence of all good style,
whatever its accidents may be, is expressiveness"; while
Bagehot described it as "the practice of writing like a
human being." ^

* I cannot resist qaoting here the first words of a brilliant appreciation
of Pierre Loti in the Literary Supplement of the Times (March 14,
1902) : "At first sight it would seem indeed that Pierre Loti's chief and
distinguishing gift is that of definite vision. He sees the object before
him, man or landscape, with the same easy, vivid precision, the modem
categorical eye, which, to us, seems most peculiarly the attribute of Mr.
Rudyard Kipling. Only, with M. Loti, it is the eye of a Frenchman
among Frenchmen. With him, and beneath his most careless, his most
contemporary flippancy of epithet, we are always avrare of the training,
the school, the severe and self-imposed limitations of the ardent and
scrupulous Writer. A long national tradition enriches and clarifies his
simple yet supple phrasing. Where the Englishman cuts to the heart of
hb sub^t with swift and coloured meUpbor, regardless of all but Che
ttUiiiiate vesadty of his effect, M. Loti, with equally definite vision, ponders,

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68 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

But in this connection suppose we ask questions like the
following :

How much can we convey — the one to the other?
How far, that is, can all, or at least many, be enriched
with the treasures of each ?

How can we make that which we convey growingly
significant — ^that is, symbolic and suggestive, pointing beyond
itself, within itself, below itself, above itself?

How can we discourage waste and encourage creation :
how can we help words to decrease while thought increases
and expression develops with it in a thousand exquisite
forms ? What are the limits of the articulate ?

How can we escape the grinding tyranny of the vulgar
mind which brings the roller to crush each point of life in
meaning, or which infects the language of its betters with its
own parasitic growths? And how best cherish the force
and aptness, sometimes indeed the beauty and dignity, of
the * common ' speech of the poor ?

How can we best secure the offered speech-gifts both
of past and future, and best exclude, or at least repress,
all which tends to degrade instead of ennobling man's
experience ?

How, especially, may we best seat metaphor on its true
and splendid throne, chasing the impostor and usurper from
the kingdom of our speech ?

Once more, the answers to such questions can hardly be
hoped for until we have begun to train a generation to see
the urgent importance and the vital reference of that signi-

measures, selects ; presenting us at last with some impression too vivid
and personal to be ' precious ' ; too much filtered and elaborated in its
cunning simplicity to be popular ; a thing compact of art, and valuable
because of its serious and careful beauty." The only element one misses
here is that to which, ultimately, all the value of such seeing is due. As
far as he goes and within definite limits, Pierre Loti is intensely significant.

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Yiii WHAT IS MEANING? 69

ficance which is sense but more yet, meaning but more yet
— ^the central value of all man's experience, the gift of true
Expression which creates and in another sense is created
by that which is expressed^

This suggests a fresh study of what, by a true analogy,
we call lucidity. But the word has a wide connotation.
In its best sense it represents something of priceless value.
Too often, however, it merely means that we have been
saved the trouble of interpretation and of thinking for our-
selves; we have been given ideas, inferences, conclusions,
ready made and unmistakable; nothing fresh has been
added to our store. Of course, even in this case we may
receive the boon of a clearer knowledge of our own minds
and of facts which we had so far but vaguely or even
confusedly apprehended.^

But it is safe to say that the merely lucid writer never
means more and often means less than he seems to mean
— to the average reader. As a rule, the more a man means
the more obscure to most of us he becomes. And why ?
Because in the majority of readers the channels of attention
and interest and comprehension are narrowly restricted, and
it requires an effort to form new ones. The previsional
thinker is obscure to the man whose mind is bounded by
the present ; whose mind lacks, that is, the scientific note
of prevision which ought to be the definition of all thought
in the highest sense of thinking. Again, why? Because

^ The experience of deafness teaches the enormous difference between
sound -hearing and sense -heoxing. This has its counterpart in mind.
When we care about things either for mere noise at for music, we are deaf
to the store of sense, and thus can never rise through meaning ( = intended
sense) to significance.

2 M. Paul Bourget's article on Victor Hugo (Times, February 26,
1902) admirably sums up what is here suggested : that lucidity and force
of expression, no less than beauty of linguistic form, may far exceed the
user's power to think or even to feel,

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70 WHAT IS MEANING? cmap.

the only language available insists on perpetuating what the
race in its most advanced symbolisers and spokesmen — the
men who signify most and thus are of most importance —
are growing out of. The efforts of a child learning to talk
are obscure to one that is only learning to walk and is
content with uttering mere noises; the efforts of a child
learning to write are again obscure to the one which is only
learning to talk. And the child in its first attempts to write
carries on the movements which will soon become super-
fluous, just as we carry on, in our advancing thought,
symbob and modes of e3q)ression which we must needs
outgrow.

But there is another charge to bring against that spurious
ease in being understood that we often admire under the
fascinating term lucidity — as if it really brou^t to light the
hidden things of life. It never means more than the speaker
or writer meant himself, while in proportion as we are prophets
in the scientific sense we mean more in everything we say
or do than we can possibly be now aware of; hedged in as
we are by the limitations of age, race, contemporary or
accessible knowledge. We may be quite sure that unless
we mean more than we now think we mean, our words are
not of much account in the long-run.

It would be suggestive to look a little at what lucidity
connotes. It may convey the idea of an object which is
shining with reflected light or one which is translucent ; or
it may simply mean, a means whereby objects in all
detail become definitely evident. When we complain
that a writer is * obscure,' do we mean, not transparent,
or not sharply outlined, or not reflective or radiant?
In using the metaphor we ought to observe these
distinctions. Or is the most lucid writer transparent,
the next best translucent, and the obscure one opaque?

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VIII WHAT IS MEANING? 71

(These have been described as the three successive stages
in the condition of the windows of a famous museum!)
Do we want to see into and through or to see by what is
writt^i ; or do we want simply a brilliant surface ? And is
the writer whose attainments or merit we call 'solid'
credited with translucency like a block of ice ? We are at
least loth to call him dense. Perhaps some day we shall
realise that the ideal organic solidity is transparent, and
modify our figures accordingly.^ This view of lucidity, it
must be admitted, depends cm the assumption that the
clearest mind is that which is nearest to a perfect medium
of light But of course we may take the more ordinary
view that the writer (or his mind) is the analogue of a lamp
and sheds light on his subject which is either lucid, />. clear,
searching, perhaps even brilliant ; or obscure, i.e. dim and
indistinct The analogy works in both forms.

^ The very important discovery by Mr. Thayer, which appears with
an Introduction by Professor Poulton in Nature of April 24, 1902, is
suggestive in this connection. For as we are compelled to express the
mental in terms of the phj^ical, we may as well do this relevantly.

It appears that the vast majority of the Animal Kingdom is coloured
"so that its tones constitute a gradation of shading and of colouring
counter to the gradation of shading and of colouring which light thrown
upon it would produce," so that "such object will appear perfectly flat,
retaining its length and breadth, but having lost its appearance of thick-
ness, and when seen against a background of colour and pattern similar to
its own will be essentially indistinguishable at a short distance." The
author adds, " I believe (this) will ultimately be recognised as the most
wonderful form of Darwin's great Law."

In this case, then, it is that very 'solidity' which we use as the
governing figure for the materially real which when seen in full light may,
merely by an arrangement of shadow, become invisible. In the mental
world this would seem a bull or a fanciful paradox. And yet it may be
that in abstract thought, e.g. geometry, where we have to think away the
irrelevant actual thing, we throw so much light upon a given subject
that we render it invisible to all but the specially trained eye, and are
consequently accused of dealing with nonentities and the imreal.

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72 WHAT IS MEANING? chap, vm

The reader of the lucid writer says, The whole question
or subject is perfectly clear to me ; or, I have no difficulty
in following his course or line of thinking. But here lies a
special snare. The more we know and the better we
know it, the more we realise that in the popular sense
we cannot explain things as the lucid writer seems to
do, *off the reel' In other words, the more inadequate
we see explanation to be the more misleading we discover
lucidity to be, unless we remember its narrow limitations
and its provisional character. Then, of course, it is
priceless, and its absence is a vice or misfortune. Here
we may perhaps quote Ruskin: "Be sure also, if the
author is worth anything, that you will not get at his
meaning all at once. Not that he does not say what he
means — but he cannot say it all ; and what is more strange,
will not, but in a hidden way and in parables, in order
that he may be sure you want it." ^

* Sesame and Lilies, p. 36.

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CHAPTER IX

This brings us to the subject of ambiguity in its various
senses and forms.^ Voluntary and beneficial discord may
be compared with intentional and beneficial ambiguity. In

^ It is a commonplace that increase of knowledge, and with it develop-
ment of conceptual and critical power and of the experience which we call
civilised, brings with it an enlarged vocabulary. The English labourer
finds about 300 words enough ; the man at the other end of the intellec-
tual scale if he be a writer has about 2000. Now we are often told that
it does not matter at all how small the received vocabulary is ; that
context sufficiently determines the various senses of a word ; that the
acquisition of a word for each meaning would correspond, say, to an
alphabet of fifty letters, and would become cumbrous and mechanical like
the Chinese. True. But in that case context must become far more
delicately and discriminatively indicative than it now is. We must at
least be sure what enlarged vocabulary stands for. At present, context
often presents us with three or foiu:, perhaps half a dozen, alternatives.
True that the reader of high interpretative power — one who has been
trained to be significant, and who has had his natural sense of Meaning
and Significance made keen and exquisite, will in the fiiture choose almost
imerringly the right alternative. Like the expert on the one hand, and the
genius, the man of prophetic insight, on the other, what to us now is the
faintest or most fleeting sign, escaping our attention or apparently of no
account, is to the significantly trained mind an unmistakable and imperative
signal, pr^^ant with consequence.

* • Double meanings lurk in the vacillations of usage. They are a per-
manent violation of the fundamental demands of logical consequence or
discipline in the use of the sign, and are pregnant with great dangers for
thought" ("Signs and Symbols," Schroeder, Open Court, November 3,
1892).

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74 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

one sense discord may be described as the condition of
true music, of which the essence is significant and ordered
harmony. So ambiguity of which writer and reader are
equally aware, and which is adaptive and meets new
emergency (exigency), is the condition of the highest forms
of expression. But there are three causes of involuntary
discord, all fatal to any kind of music (i) Defective
'tuning' of the instruments used. (2) Defective 'ear for
music ' on the part of performers. (3) Defective larynx or
lungs in singing, or defective hands, fingers, arms, in the
use of instruments, organic distortions or morbid growths ;
preventing perfect command over the sounds evoked.

But while intentional discord is in music good, inten-
tional discord in conduct is always evil 'Discord' is a
metaphor of evil. On the other hand, in the intellectual
sphere, Fallacy answers to Discord ; and there the immoral
thinker may deliberately use fallacy which he thinks safe
from detection in order by an apparently valid train of
reasoning to achieve some harmful result. Involuntary,
unconscious Fallacy is always mischievous; it is impossible
to use Fallacy as in music we use discord. This suggests
an illustration.

Suppose that man had made more and more perfect instru-
ments of music but had never conceived the possibility of
tuning them, and then had wondered at the confusion and
discord which he supposed to be the inevitable drawback of
all music. This would roughly correspond to the present
state of language. Then when some one had discovered
the possibility of tuning, he would also discover that what
he had till then called music was not worthy the name ; he
would, in fact, discover what true music and an ' ear ' for it
was. But until then how such a proposition would be
sneered at ! To make the intervals exact ? To harmonise

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IX WHAT IS MEANING? 75

an orchestra into accurate correspondence? To obtain a
quantitative precision ? Why, that is to medianise music ;
to turn it into an exact science ; to degrade it to the level
of arithmetic and algebra !

To return to the main question ; the real difficulty often
depends not on the ambiguity of word or even of phrase,
but on the ambiguity of context We take for granted that
among competent writers this is rare ; and in doing this we
assume, not the competence of authors, but what, in fact, is
far rarer, the self-evidence of expression in words. Gesture
is less ambiguous, but still is ambiguous except to the keen
and delicate observer.

Even J. S. Mill seems to forget that context itself in its
turn needs context to interpret it, and has no better context
than the very words or sentences which it is to elucidate.
It is like jumping off one's own shadow. Context is treated
as Aough it were the atmosphere which surrounds planetary
bodies and gives us diffused light. But the atmosphere
cannot change places with the earth, the relation is not
reciprocal; whereas the relation of context and word is
reciprocal

Of pernicious Ambiguity there are thus three types, (i)
We have the defective * tuning ' of language. Everywhere
we find the slight yet fatal discord resulting from neglect
to ensure that perfect relation between every element of
Expression which ought to reign in the articulate as in the
musical world. Thus we need to train a generation to see
the need and imperatively to demand its supply. (2) We
have the defective mental ear and eye on the part of the
* performer.' This he shares with his hearers and readers,
so that neither the one nor the other discovers the true
cause of the general inability to bring the greatest of
thoughts into definite consciousness, or realises the endless

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J6 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

confusion which at present to our shame prevails.^ (3) We
have distorted organs or instruments of expression, prevent-
ing the full use of our true articulate and graphic powers.
As things are, we even say that this or that truth or reality
— this loveliness, that good — cannot be expressed, are
beyond expression ; whereas truth and beauty and goodness
actually are expression : that which conceives them is itself
Expression. The fact is that as children we have never
had our Signific powers systematically trained, and thus our
organs of significance are not yet fully developed, and we are
often unable to detect the organic deformities which hinder
us in expression.

Are we then to discard en bloc the outgrown in language
and begin again ? No ; we are to do once more what has
always been done until 'modern' days by the greatest
thinkers of the world; only we are to do it more thoroughly,
effectively, and universally than has ever yet been possible.
For by a now possible international consensus and the united
wisdom which this means, we are to train up a whole
generation in the vivid and steadfast sense of the paramount
duty of contributing to a vast advance in the resources of

' " The term • radiation ' has the advantage of avoiding any suggestion
of the fallacy that there is some essential difference in the nature of the
ether-waves which may happen to terminate their respective careers in the
production of light or heat or chemical action or something else ; but it is,
unfortunately, impossible in the present condition of things to use it as
freely as one could wish without pedantry, and we must still often speak of
light or of heat when radiation would express our meaning with greater
accuracy" (Curiosities of Light and Sight, Shelford Bidwell, 1899, p. 21).

Yes, we ' must ' still continue to make important names a quite need-
less source of the very confusion we are always deploring, and of which we
reap a specially bitter fruit. But we might as well say that we ' must '
use a musical instrument out of tune or with strings missing, or the wrong
shade of colour in painting, etc. , because in the present condition of things
we cannot do otherwise ! Why do we tolerate in the most important case
of all what we should tolerate in nothing else ?

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rx WHAT IS MEANING? 77

Expression. This indeed will pave the way to restatement
of problems in the highest and best sense. Such an achieve-
ment will lead, in the case of the thinker, to results in con-
ception of which at present we can no more * dream * than
the seventeenth century dreamt of gravitation, or the
eighteenth of the work of Darwin or Pasteur.

But these results, as tending everywhere to transcend by
intensifying the significance of what we call 4imit' or
*end' or the 'finite 'or the * concrete,' will make possible
a positivism in a new and higher sense, recognising the
abstract, the absolute, the infinite, as owing their value to
their negative character; to their antiseptic power, their
neutralising and sterilising force. For all such negative
ideas are not creative but protective, forming a natural
criticism which rules out a lower, a parasitic or fungoid
life, until we can reach the higher life through truth.

When we have once seen this we shall begin, as already
suggested, to think in cube, in volume, in sphere : we shall
reunite the current oppositions and apparent contradictions
into a world-whole, which shall then become the universally
accepted starting-point of new mind-revolutions in new
orbits, round new advancing centres of energy. New?
But that is monocular; such orbits and such centres are
as much * old ' as * new,' and better than either ; for no such
current terms, as we use them now, are rich enough to meet
the case.

Once more : we think on the flat and in a straight line ;
we must learn to think in the round and on a curve.^ But
why? (For this is not a casual or arbitrary metaphor.)
Because we may then find answers waiting for us of which
we must else despair. But if we attempted even to indicate
what these answers may be, the result would be the same

1 See below, p. 333.

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78 WHAT IS MEANING? chap, ix

as the attempt to give the results of the spectroscope
before that instrument had been introduced and used.
Until then, it would only be possible to foresee that its
messages would be of the highest value and would tend to
solve problems otherwise insoluble.^

So again, we think in specks and lumps of stuff; we
must learn to think in throb and complex whirl o^ intricate
convolution. Lastly, we think on a basis and we must
learn to think in orbit ; we think in hahes and must learn
to think in wholes — or to confess that the enigma of life
arises from this half-thinking. When we see the meaning
of the enigma, half our perplexity is gone ; we discern the
potency and promise of our divided state. Although our
minds, like hemispheres, are incomplete and even severed
from their true complement, we can conceive how satisfy-
ing would be the result of entering into wholeness. Oh
for the commissures of mind to grow and supply the link
which gives the full current of Life, known as yet but
indirectly through what we sometimes call ^th and some-
times insight — the first strand of the commissure of the
future! Our thought must accordingly be binocular —
in three not two dimensions ; and this must alter all om*
figure-scheme.

^ As it happens, science furnishes us with an apt illustration of this
difficulty. In his forcible protest against the present waste of coa]»
Professor Perry {Nature, March 20, 1902) suggests that "an organised
attempt be made to convert the energy of coal into electric energy in some
form of engine which shall not cost more or have greater weight than a
steam-engine of the same power," and continues, "many men have
advanced the subject beyond its first principles ; they know of directioas
in which to work with prospects of success. In the animal machine the
thing is actually done ; but of this machine the mere conversion of fiiel
energy into mechanical work is not the most important function, and the
machine is very complex. Still, in it we have no heat engine, but the sort
of thing we are looking for."

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CHAPTER X

Colloquialism reveals tendencies as well as attitude and
character of average thought, educated or ignorant For
instance^ we come to or take leave of our senses. We never
do that to our meanings, and we cannot even talk of our
significances. ' He is out of his senses ' as equivalent to
' out of his mind ' (a pregnant commentary on the current
philosophical controversies) is a case in point So, * I cannot
stand it' (One longs to say, * move it then * or even * let it
push you onwards!') We 'take our stand' and a 'point
of view.' We do not so often * start on our way.' No ; our
thought has usually one dimension only, and we take care
that our use of even that shall be statical. We boast of
*our own line,' not even of our own 'vector.' And so we
fix ourselves proudly on a point from which we see along
our * line ' in one direction only. There we ' take our stand '
and entrench our 'positioa' Presently something of vital
importance to us (if we are to escape being 'stranded')
requires us either to move on to a fresh point of view or
change the whole direction of our line (that is, to learn to
radiate from a centre) ; in fact to take to some other line,
secure of returning to the first and to our original point,
whenever we like. But that seems to us betrayal or desertion.
We conceive our ideal as fixed. We have hitherto taken,
so to speak, a straight line and supposed a curve to be a

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8o WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

deviation from that, probably due to laxity or weakness.
Now we may take a curve and say that a straight line is
but a small part of it, only so small that the curve is
imperceptible. And everywhere we may take the moving
from point to point and not the line thus made, as our
image. But in truth we have not yet learnt how to translate
the dynamics of science for mental and moral use.

Much is said on the subject of meanings in two linguistic
studies— one more popular than the other, but both very
interesting — ^recently published in America.^ But even here
we find slipshod or confusing usages apparently endorsed
by the authors, or examples of the very errors which they
themselves denounce. And this, in treatises on language
itself, in which the writers were bound not only to be
unusually accurate in diction but to warn readers of possible
sources of confusion.^

This being so, let us again examine some of the acknow-
ledged metaphors by which we now use the world we call
material or actual, to express the world which we call spiritual
or real Certainly one of the worst used of these is the
useful metaphor of the root Rightly employed together
with the other main ideas connected with the plant world,
it would contribute to a lucidity of exposition at present
impossible.* Yet, no matter where we look, we find it

^ Words and their Ways in English Speech : Greenough and Kittredge
(1902), and Lectures on the Study of Language: Oertel (1902).

2 See Note XIII., Appendix.

3 • • The root is merely a prolongation downwards of the stem, and the
part where they unite is the coUum or neck. Afterwards the root is dis-
tinguished from the stem b^ the absence of a provision for the development
of leaf-buds " (• Botany/ F. H. Balfour, Encyc. Brit. 9th ed.). " . . . The
living protoplasts take the first place as the essential portion of the
tree, and all the other features are important mainly as ministering to
their individual well-being and to their multiplication" ('Physiology of
PlantS)' J» R. Green, Encyc. Brit. loth ed.). Our forefathers, had they

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X WHAT IS MEANING? 81

used in such a way as to destroy its value and falsify thought
We are told, e,g,^ by Blackstone (in 1769) that "though
the forest laws are now mitigated, yet from this root has
sprung up a bastard slip known by the name of the
game- law." In Welton's admirable little book on the
Logical Bases of Education^ he most truly says that
" looseness of expression is sure to react more or less on
thought," and then goes on: "Indeed, it is continually
found that ambiguities such as we have been considering
are the root from which spring many of the fallacies, or
erroneous interpretations and inferences, which meet us on
every hand." He may well add that "the educator can

known the fact, would certainly have spoken of the 'vital centre' or
•spring' of the matter where now we say 'root' But it may be well
here to cite Dr. Ogle's translation of Aristotle's Youth and Old Age,
1897, p. 62: —

" There is a great contrast in this matter between plants and animals.
For in man and in man alone, owing to his erect attitude, the upper part
of the body is turned towards the upper part of the universe ; while in
other animals it is turned neither to this nor to the lower aspect, but in
a direction midway between the two. But in plants that are fixed to the
earth and derive firom it their nourishment, the part by which they imbibe
nutriment, that is their upper part, must of necessity always be placed
downwards. For the roots of plants are analogous to what is called the
mouth in an animal, being the organ by which food is administered ; and
io the case of plants the food is derived from the earth, etc. ..."

And to this bit of the translation is added the following extract from
Bacon's Novum Organum in a note (Note 7) : —

* • Nor is that an absurd similitude or conformity which has been re-
marked between man and a plant inverted. For the root of the nerves
and faculties in animals is in the head, while the seminal parts are the
lowest — the extremities of the legs and arms not reckoned. In a plant,
on the other hand, the root (which answers to the head) is regularly placed
in the lowest parts, and the seeds in the highest " {Nov, Org. II. xxvii.).

(I am indebted for this extract to the kindness of the Translator himself. )

Yet more curiously, Linnaeus himself wrote that plantarum ventriculus
est terra (Nature, March 2, 1899).

^ (1899), p. 61.

G

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82 WHAT IS MEANING? chap, x

engage in few more useful tasks than that of training his
pupils to clear and exact expression of meaning/' But as
this absurd usage is practically universal it is needless and
indeed invidious to specialise cases.

On the other hand, we find the true natural and
scientific use of the figure in Isaiah (chap. xl. v. 24), " yea,
their stock hath not taken root in the earth." Let us take
as illustrative of practical loss the man who, as himself
compared to a tree, sends forth his mental * growth-points,'
(i) into the earth where he gains that support and elasticity
by which, while he remains sound, he resists the tossing of
the wind, and also that nourishment by which his life is
energised and fructified ; and (2) into the air and sunlight
in which he breathes and brings forth the * leaves, flowers,
and fruit ' of intellectual and moral achievement.

This is a distinct help to thought. For the great thinker
may truly be said to strike roots into the world on whose
surface he lives ; that is, he is not content with the truths
which lie on the surface, and he needs and gains for his
thought stability. But also he puts forth branches into the
air which inspires him as he breathes it ; more yet into the
light of a rational and moral world. Those who, not
having yet learned the lesson of an * erect posture,' look
only at the stem on a level with themselves, assure such a
man that his aspiring into a region above their heads, where
he finds the power to * flower and fruit,' or his plunging
into one below that surface to which they are confined, is a
question of mere illusion, or at best of poetical imagining.

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CHAPTER XI

SiGNiFics, as enabling us to deal afresh and in a practical
form with the ancient problems, must therefore be con-
sidered first as a method of mental training, which, though
implied in all true views of education, is not yet practically
recognised or systematically applied. In a special sense,
it aims at the concentration of intellectual activities on that
which we tacitly assume to be the main value of all study,
and vaguely call 'meaning.* Its instructive and disciplinary
value must be secondary to this, as they are both ultimately
dependent upon it.

If we take any special scheme of thought which claims
to be ultimate philosophy, we shall find it represented as
* resting on a basis * or on a foundation. Of course there
is a class of ideas which may rightly thus be likened to a
boulder or a building. They are fixed or they are helpless :
they are beyond all lifeless. But they are resistent and
persistent. There is another class of ideas which may be
said to be * rooted to one spot ' ; they are living and they
can grow, but they cannot move. There is another type
of ideas which are, so to speak, free to move — on the earth,
in the water, in the air (those again giving distinctions of
great value). And again there is another — what word shall
we use ? for class and type, tribe and kingdom, kind or
species, are all metaphors which commit us — another
organised group of ideas which is not only living and free

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84 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

to move in three mediums as in three dimensions, but is
fully conscious, which has also a reasoning mind. . . .
Here we are suddenly pulled up : we were about to say,
' which has and interprets ideas.' But to write of ' the ideas
of a group of ideas ' is merely meaningless.

It seems self-destructive to use the signs by which we
express mental facts, as metaphors for these very facts them-
selves. If we compare an * organised group of ideas ' to the
highest physiological organism we know, we cannot again
give this organism 'ideas.* Yet, though we want, so to
speak, the conception and the word for * idea * in a higher
form (though certainly not the self-refuting * absolute'),
language in its present stage fails to give us what we want.

Perhaps one reason why the 'deepest' thoughts fail to
find any expression which our fellow-man can read is that
we have not yet learnt that consciousness, and thought itself,
are but a metaphor quarry for the expression of what stands
in the same relation to mind, as * mind ' does to * matter.' ^

This, however, leads straight into a region which one
thinker will call that of reality and another that of illusion
and dream. These three words, consciousness, mind,
thought, like feeling and will and other 'mental' terms,
must, as we are now, constitute a natural boundary of
expression. And they are used in ways so inconsistent,
often even so casual and capricious, that before we try to
use their associations figuratively, it will be well to ask our-
selves what we really intend to signify by them. The true
answer of course is that we only 'know' vaguely and
casually what we mean by them. A thinker will urge
upon us his particular experience as that of the ' Human
Mind.' In doing this he is unconscious that he is the
victim of a fallacy which is betrayed by the confusion of

1 See Note XIV. (A), Appendix^

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XI WHAT IS MEANING? 85

senses in our philosophical vocabulary. And generally, in
ignoring that confusion he makes it worse by assuming that
his own value for *mind* or 'consciousness* or *wiir or
* feeling' is that of his reader, and that it does not matter
even if he uses, e,g,^ consciousness for mind, or thought for
either, since he is aware of no loss in such use.

Take again our use of * »«^i?rstanding.' This, in figurative
reference, ought always to sjrmbolise the highest level of
our powers. But as we commonly use it, it ought to be
*^^r-standing' : we are dealing, not with a world above our
heads, but with firm ground under oiu: feet We reason
about both and their content, but to under^XaxidL is after all
our ultimate rational duty, since we belong to a greater
than planetary world Yet if we try in this way to make
language bring more clearness into current ideas, we are at
present either laughed at or censured, and gravely told that
this is mere playing with words or else misusing them.

For instance, we cannot yet use without grotesqueness or
at least a jocular flavour some of the best of all our
metaphors. We have even lost the wisdom of our ancestors,
who understood the * bowels ' in their poetical value. Now
the word is hard for a poet to use. And how can any one,
and least of all a poet, speak of the viscera in figure and
show us how we live a visceral Hfe, a spinal life, and finally
a life including these, of cerebral cortex : the two first faithful
ministers to the third, but apt to get the upper hand through
failure of the highest controlling * centres '? Yet there are
truths which can only thus be expressed.^ The life energies
rise from merely working the animal needs, to ruling and
directing the human powers. How far this state of things
is responsible for the impotence of much of our ablest
thinking is perhaps hardly suspected

1 See Note XIV. (B). Appendix.

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86 WHAT IS MEANING? chaj*.

Whatever view we take of what we agree to call * mind '
and 'intelligence,' one inference we shall all concur in
making. It ' means ' the possibility, if not the necessity, of
what we vaguely call 'meaning' and practically identify
with sense. What exists and what happens, whatever else
it may be, cannot, we say, be wholly 'unmeaning.' We
really, however, 'mean' here 'wholly senseless' if only because
' sense ' alone makes it ' fact ' to us. The only question is,
in what sense has it ' meaning,' and how far may we or can
we at present trace 'meaning' in it? It may be hoped
that the haunting spectre of 'chance' (or 'luck') as some-
thing which defies both law and order and sequence of
every kind — a sort of patron-deity of caprice enthroned at
the heart of the natural — has been finally laid by the
careful definitions we owe to scientific thinkers, and that
the 'fortuitous' is now recognised as either something
of which the relations are as yet unknown or some-
thing which is not the result of consciously purposive
action on our part. In short, 'chance' is the relatively
incalculable and the wholly unpredictable. Thus every
'co-incidence' coincides by virtue of some orderly com-
bination just as much as a previously designed meeting
could do. Only in the first case we cannot, and in the
second we can, trace the antecedents of the experience.
In both cases we have something which we vaguely call
meaning.

But, as we have already seen, it is when Man asks what
is the meaning of the world and of the life upon it,
and recognises that nothing must be excluded from the
astronomer's scheme; when the problem of evil or suffer-
ing begins to distress him ; when he begins to ask whether
wrong here may be righted ' elsewhere ' ; when he speaks of
aspiration, of higher aims and hopes and standards, a 'let

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XI WHAT IS MEANING? 87

us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die ' ; when he discovers
that this attitude of demanding the inclusive and the trans-
cendent 'centre' and looking there for his answers, is the
only one tolerated by science; it is then that he enters (though
here only tentatively or partially) the true realm of meaning,
— which in this sense is solar. Surely here then we have a
word of great value. The word * heavenly ' has acquired a
specially religious meaning as *sky' has retained a 'material'
one and * cloud' a depreciatory one. But * solar ' appeals
at once to the scientific, the philosophical, the religious, and
the practical instincts. It gathers up all our ideas of the
extra-earthly source of energy, and is equally interesting to
the students of fuel questions or to those of mechanics and
engineering, and to those of *universals' or the 'transcendent,*
or of ' magic and religion.' Yet it is as absurd to ask for
clear-cut definite statement of 'solar' fact in 'planetary
language ' as to ask for algebra or geometry in terms of arith-
metic. There is no gulf; but the one must rise to the other.
Here, however, it is necessary to anticipate an objection
which will at once occur to the reader, and unless met would
tend to sterilise the argument of the following pages. The
triad of sense, meaning, and significance is not quantitative
but qualitative. We do not get therein a strictly measurable
world within which you merely have three scales or ranges
of experience, as in the 'planetary,' the * solar,' the 'cosmic'^

^ A friend points out that Aristotle insists (Nicomachean Ethics, Bk.
iv. chs. 2 and 3) • ' that true beauty implies greatness, the grandeur which
belongs to matmal bulk subserving a worthy end." He says (iv. 2, § 10) :
** As a work of art, that is most valuable which is great and beautiful ; for
the sight of such a work excites admiration, and a grand thing is always
admiratde." And again in iv. 3, § 5 he sa3rs : " Beauty implies stature ;
small men may be neat and well proportioned, but cannot be called
beautiful." No doubt this is a true interpretation of a principle of Greek
art. The noblest works of Pheidias, the Athene in the Parthenon and
the Zeus of Olympia, were colossal.

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88 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

The use of this analogy labours under the same disadvantages
as the familiar examples of our already established quanti-
tative standard. When we speak of a great mind with its
wide outlook, its high aspirations, and its profound know-
ledge, we are, of course, open to the deserved retort that
value, which we are thus trying to describe, can never be a
mere question of size or amount, position or dimension.

Our only direct knowledge of the solar and sidereal
worlds is, of course, a question of measurement, number,
and physical (or chemical) analysis. But these and other
quantitative determinations are plainly incongruous as
applied to questions of what we call * mind,* although, alas !
we allow them to master us in cases like the idea of ' ever-
lasting life,' as though amount and not worth were our main
demand. Yet the fact that man seems to use them every-
where and at all times as thus applicable may well suggest
that, as indeed in some cases we already see, quantitative
changes may always at a certain pomt involve qualitative
ones.

Of course we shall be at once reminded of the supposed
dictum of science that there can be no *life ' (and therefore
no consciousness) in the sun, and that we have no evidence
of *life' in any other planet Quite so. Here let us re-
member that in English our very word for the living, evolved
by what science, again, pronounces to be a true instinct, is
the 'quick.' The human rate of life is adjusted to
planetary conditions. But there is no reason why this
should not be changed ; why, in the pregnant English idiom,
we should not be 'quickened.' Physiological death, from
this point of view, is a slowing down. One reason why life
is supposed to be impossible in the sun is that vital
activities, as we know them, could not keep up with the
tremendous velocities of solar heat, and would be destroyed

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XI WHAT IS MEANING? 89

by dissociation. Only, if we have to own, on indirect evi-
dence, that there probably exist, e,g, in Sirius, temperatures
which we cannot reproduce in the laboratory here, why are
we to assume that there are no forms of life (and of con-
sciousness) more intense than our own, and therefore more
capable of resisting dissociative influences? We have re-
cently discovered that some forms of life can survive pro-
longed exposure to far lower temperatures than had been
supposed possible; we may have next to discover that another
form of life (raised into abnormal * intensity ') is found to
be capable of corresponding resistance to heat.^ Until it
became possible to reinforce the telescope by the sensitive
plate, many stars, of the existence of which we now have
indirect witness, were beyond our ken. Such indirect
evidence of the existence of more highly resistant because
swifter forms of life may well some day be ours.^ Anyhow

* See Note XV. , Appendix.

2 See, e.g., the strange pathological fact that to the maniac fire seems to
have an irresistible attraction, like the candle for the moth, and to give him
no pain when he has flung himself into it.

In this connection it is interesting to remember Nikola Tesla's answer
to a challenge to show that an electric current of enormous power might
be innocuous to an intervening organism. He demonstrated that "power-
ful electrical discharges of several hundred thousand volts, which at that
time were considered absolutely deadly, could be passed through the body
without inconvenience or hurtful consequences," and adds, "I have
produced electrical oscillations which were of such intensity that when
circulating through my arms and chest they have melted wires which
joined my hands, and still I felt no inconvenience. I have energized with
such oscillations a loop of heavy copper wire so powerfully that masses of
metal, and even objects of an electrical resistance specifically greater than
that of human tissue, brought close to or placed within the loop, were
heated to a high temperature and melted, often with the violence of an
explosion, and yet into this very space in which this terribly destructive
tiumoil was going on I have repeatedly thrust my head without feeling
an)rthing or experiencing injurious after-effects " [The Century Magazine,
June 1900, pp. 204-5).

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90 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

one must come back to the position of science, which is that
nothing here can be assumed to be independent of that
sphere of larger possibilities which we call solar.

And there is another consideration which must not be
lost sight of. Science has shown us that when the develop-
ment of the spine with its appropriate nervous system from
the primitive notochord had reached a certain point, de-
velopment on the spinal line ceased, and a new energetic
and directive centre, that which we call par excellence the
* brain,* was evolved. Now, of course, we may if we choose,
speak of the spinal brain ; but none the less this expression
has become for us to some extent metaphorical ; the brain
is now unlike and quite distinct from what we mean by the
spine, although of course perfectly continuous and co-
ordinated with it. Thus if we are to conceive a * solar '
form of life and consciousness, we should expect it not to
present a merely enhanced degree of our present conditions,
but a development which should bear to the one now
reached a relation similar to that between the cerebral
cortex and the spinal * brain.'

We may remind ourselves here of Kant's famous saying,
that two things fill the soul with evergrowing admiration and
reverence : the starry heavens above and the moral law
within us. Anti- materialist though he was, he was not
afraid to express the same reverence for what to a lower
type of mind would have been a merely material world,
that he felt for the highest forms of intelligence. This
being so, what then are our relations with that which lies
again beyond the solar system? That we have them is
implied by the fact, once more revealed by science, that
every movement, and therefore every *idle word' of ours,
is transmitted across unsounded depths of space, through
millions of star-systems, whither and with what result we

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XI WHAT IS MEANING? 91

know not It is not necessary to assume the truth of any
present theories of * telepathy,' or of any mystical scheme
of the cosmos, in order to admit that in this sense also
nothing in us can presumably be self-contained or isolated.^
To answer this question, we must remind ourselves that
the * solar ' consciousness, not being immediately necessary
to the preservation and reproduction of physical life, is more
or less * vague.' It is the source whence * glamour ' reaches
and stimulates the poet and the artist, supplying the aureole
or halo of the saint and the illumination of the mystic ; but
it is also the source of the ordering activities of the reason.^

^ " So long as mere observations were taken, the general opinion that
the earth was fixed, and that the sun and stars moved round it, could not
be overthrown. It is true that there were many phenomena which made
against this belief ; but simple observation could not furnish means for the
attainment of a better explanation. Then came Copernicus, with the
thought : ' Suppose I stand upon the sun ! ' and henceforth it was the
earth that moved, and not the sun ; the contradictions of the old theory
disappeared, and the new system of the universe had come into being.
But it was an experiment that had led to this, though an experiment of
thought Observation still tells us that the earth is fixed, and the sun
moving ; and if the opposite view is to become clear, we must just repeat
the Copernican experiment, and take our stand upon the sun " (Wundt,
Human and Animal Psychology ^ 1894, p. 10).

2 I quite admit that there is only one reason why a solar Ufe should
mean advance in quality as well as quantity, and that is, our want of direct
knowledge of anything but the measurable in it. Thus it does not yield
a sufficient figure or model. But, so far as we know, and in some sense,
the destiny of every living thing has been persistently worked for : ener-
getically, untiringly worked for, or else unresistingly waited for. We never
find signs that anything struggles against, complains of, is discontented
with the ' destiny ' of its ' world * ; we never find any signs of protest,
except in the ignorant individual. You find it in the animal as strenuously
endeavouring to escape pain or violent death for the individual or the
progeny. But then the race (though it may be, like the horse, in trans-
lated form) is safe. The curious thing is that man as man (not as the
over-civilised pessimist who is a mental invalid) always postulates ultimate
truth and good as the natural right of the world and its conscious and
rational product, his Race (whatever form for him this may take) ; and

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92 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

The ' solar ' consciousness is thus the true field of what
we call the mental and moral energies. * Heaven,' in fact,
represents the fitting goal of all that is best or highest
in us; and the very idea of high aims and * aspirations '
shows that after all we have some really valid metaphors.
Only, of course, high and low are transcended by the round-
ness of the world ; * heaven ' now is around us, environs us
— is below as well as above, without and within alike. The
earth is emphatically not the world of the visual. The
universe is that ; the earth has only evolved the means of
transcending its own limits and even its atmosphere, not in
body or geographically, but in vision, thought, imagination,
and reasoning. The earth's proper sense is touch ; it is the
distinctive home of the tangible and the palpable ; the things
of earth are * within our grasp.* But so they are within the
animal's — at least the monkey's !

We must not confound the immature, the half-developed,
the partial, with a process or an activity, a movement or a
change, complete {qua those things) in itself, and as such
*good.' And even with the immature, there is a sense in
which the child, as the growth-point of the race, is the perfect
of the race, the spring of its *year.' For in all promise
that we know here, promise is better than fulfilment. Why?
Because in every sense the presumption is that we are but
satellitic, not focal; the fulfilment belongs to our natural
Centre, also our natural Origin. How strangely archaic we
are when we demand the satisfaction of our ideals here and
now, on this plane, in this present form of consciousness
and experience, in the mere sense-levels of life ! We often
wonder why the ineffable promise of spring is never realised

betrays the real existence of this truth and good by the violence of his
repulsion from what he sees as false and evil. And this, no matter what
the moral type of his ideals may be.

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XI WHAT IS MEANING ? 93

in summer. Autumn has its own sad beauty; but few
admire the monotonous richness of mid-summer as they do
spring or autumn, or even winter, the analogue of death.
Surely the above reason is obvious.

What then, once more, are our cosmical relations ? We
can only think them at present as analogous to the inter-
cosmic means bf communication,^ in terms of light, of gravita-
tion, of identity in constituent and constitutive energies, and
so on. But they are certainly as real and as operative as
either the planetary or the solar.

* It may here be noted that some confusion is caused by the use of the
word * distance ' to express both space or interval which is empty, and
space or interval in which there is some kind of medium. You may
establish a link and initiate action of some kind between places at a -great
' distance ' from each other, and yet hold that ' action at a distance*— Z.^.
across an interval void in every sense — is impossible. Probably this has
something to do with popular confusions on the subject, and illustrates
the necessity of laying stress on the sense in which ' distance ' is used, at
all events until we acquire some fresh distinctive term.

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CHAPTER XII

It has already been suggested, and may here be repeated,
that our only fully developed articulate world is planetary,
which is also satellitic. To adopt, therefore, within the lines
already laid down, the comparison between the sense-world
and the planetary, the meaning-world and the solar, the
world of significance and the visible universe which includes
both, let us see how it vindicates itself in working out.

All 'planetary* knowledge is directly acquired either
through observation and experiment, or through processes
inductive or deductive. We are in full * touch* with the
world we inhabit. * Solar * knowledge, on the contrary, is
one remove from this. We can indirectly explore both our
sun and sister planets in a way impossible in the case of the
suns which used to be called fixed stars, and the unsounded
depths beyond even these. Thus 'cosmical* knowledge
is in a sense doubly indirect, as though we needed a third
instrument corresponding to the spectroscope to give us the
spectra of the stars found recorded on the photographic
plate attached to the telescope.

A system of thought may be a means of relation, of inter-
pretation, of emancipation; it may absorb other systems
by recognising their validity, and by perceiving its own
inadequacy except from a specified point of view or in a
specified sense. All systems here formulable are presumably

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CHAP. XII WHAT IS MEANING? 95

planetary ; the burden of proof that they are more falls
on the thinker. This proof must depend on the predictive
as well as on the harmonising and absorbent power of any
system. It must win on every side ; it must appeal to all
healthy instinct and all sound reason ; and every year must
increase its influence among all men of light and leading
whatever their special tendencies may be.

Here then Xenophanes has a lesson for us. Just as he
protested against ascribing to Divine being our petty parts
and passions, and worse, our shameful ways, and showed
that oxen and lions would certainly figure a mere ox-god or
lion-god in creed, so we have to protest against the virtual
blasphemy of indiscriminate, capricious, and therefore dis-
honouring use of metaphor gathered from the physical to
express the spiritual, or gathered from the spiritual to
express the Divine.

Whatever our view of (the whole of) things knowable
may be, — whether monistic, dualistic, or pluralistic — whether
we are materialist, realist, or idealist, — we are compelled, at
least, to speak of the mental and physical as though they
were different spheres. And the absence of any recognised
criterion of analogy, and therefore of metaphor, the confusion
of the equative with the comparative, of both with the
illustrative, and of this with the merely rhetorical, tends to
confound what may be reflection with what at best may be
refraction, or an image of no more value than the baby's
picture of a man or the * signs ' of a fabulous zodiac.

Thus, though it has to be said, first, that the three grades
or levels of consciousness (and therefore of experience) here
suggested as the human heritage are, on the one hand,
* grades ' of the physical, and on the other * grades * of the
psychical, such a suggestion must be understood in the sense
above indicated. And we may postpone the misused word

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96 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

spiritual because (i) it assumes too much; and (2) it
embodies obsolete conceptions of nature, though by no
means these alone. With this proviso we may repeat that
the planetary consciousness is for all practical purposes
fully developed. Whether we are aware of it or no, this
world is the measure of our ordinary experience and our
ordinary ideas, conceptions, and theories. The 'struggle
for existence ' has secured this. The only reservation here
necessary is caused by the extraordinary backwardness of
our rational thought of the world, as betrayed, and fostered,
by the falsities of civilised language. In ancient days
man's thinking accurately followed and corresponded to his
physical conceptions ; it was everywhere consistent with the
current view of the cosmos; with the accredited ideas of
matter, of light, of heat, of life, etc. Now everywhere our
thinking, as language shows us, is more or less false to
the facts which, by the agency of scientific method, we
know as we never before knew them.

The * solar' answers to the scientific activities, made
possible by the leisure and protection of civilisation, and
stimulated by more and more complex demands upon brain-
work. The astrophysicist has become the representative
*solarist'; but he is not content to stop therfe. He is
always exploring and endeavouring to interpret the * depths *
and contents of cosmic space. Thus he also has a lesson
for us — one of the utmost significance.

It is a fact curiously overlooked, that whereas Christianity
has been condemned on the score of being geocentric, and
we are always being reminded how completely the Copernican
astronomy discredits the notion of this little earth becoming
the centre of Divine attention, modern psychology has
taken its place, and works throughout on the assumption
that * mind ' does originate on this planet What if this be

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XII WHAT IS MEANING? 97

the reason for the comparative barrenness of its results as
yet? What if the assumption — ^merely for the sake of
argument — that 'mind' is essentially derivative, and that
its conditions answer to those of light and gravitation and to
those of the world on which it is found, should give us a
clue hitherto wanting, and go far to explain what seems now
simple aberration in the long story of human 'belief in
spirit or in revelation ? What if here, as elsewhere, what we
need is translation in the widest sense, — ^the power to master
the many dialects of thought, and interpret men to each
other by learning their thought-tongues?^

So ^ as we know, the direct (or immediate) conditions
of life, as we have them here, are not present in the * ethereal '
world, but only in a kind of 'atmosphere* (light and
attraction-world v. breath-world). Thus the religious world
is first and inevitably 'spiritual.* It belongs to the very
' breath ' of our life, and the use of the idea ' spiritual ' in
the philosophical world is essentially religious. For this is
the vital woHd for man. But then you only need lungs and
heart to be fit for mere breathing — the pulse of inspiration

^ Since writing the above I have been struck by the indirect witness to
the validity, or at least usefulness of the appeal to the ph3rsical and
astronomical status of our home-world, given by Mr. Morris Jastrow in
his Study of Religion (Contemporary Science Series, 1901). He lays
special stress on the apparenUy universal feeling of man's dependence,
' ' which we cannot get rid of, either by an act of volition or by a process
of reasoning " (p. 168). Again, " Man is forced to attach himself to some
object r^iarded as higher than himself, and conceived of as transcendental.
His speculations about this object cannot suppress his longing for it, and
even though he proves to his satisfaction that the object has no existence
outside of his brain, the ' yearning after the Infinite ' still haunts his rest-
less spirit" (p. 293). But the use of ' Infinite' is here, as ever in this
context, dangerous. Even this careftil writer speaks of the perception of
the Infinite as ' ' from being faint and indefinite " becoming • ' more sharply
outlined*' (p. 280). But of course 'outiine' belongs only to the 'finite.'
Thus * cosmical ' is the safer term.

H

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98 WHAT IS MEANING? cHAr.

and expiration. Remember that the idea belongs to the
organic rhythms. For a life of mere breath you need not
have any special sense at all — least of all sight. You need
neither see, nor hear, nor smell, nor taste, but only feel
and breathe. You may be and often are a very inferior
anhnal qua animal to those which in depreciation you call
brute beasts; your religion may be but a civilised, * refined,'
'spiritual* animism; and so may be your philosophy,
especially if it claims to be ' transcendental ' and ultimate.
But when mankind b^ins to live in the royal world of
Sight, then at once those who are still in the merely vital
world, the world of Breath, the * spiritual,' are tempted to call
him either a mystic or an atheist, and in any case a virulent
heretic. Every thinker who shows a tendency to use his
vital powers, represented by his breath or spirit, in seeing
depth and distance ; who sees God in all truth, and knows
that men of all conceivable opinions are custodians of some
constituent of truth, and have some lesson to teach us (the

* materialist * as well as the * spiritualist '); every thinker who
knows that * fact and reality ' are not merely what is good
in their eyes, but yet more what is true in all true eyes, is
liable to be called either fanciful or mischievous. Yet the
highest of all religious analogies is found in ' God is light'
Without the Divine light we could not even see God as love.

It is well to remember that our use of * light ' to express
intellectual, rational, moral need corresponds to the pro-
posed use of * solar.' This is not a deliberately chosen figure,
it represents an inherent fitness of expression dependent
on community of nature. In this sense a really valid

* philosophy,' or mode and scheme of thought, must be

* solar' to us, that is, must belong to what is central to
all our energies, and therefore to all our aspirations and
ideals, and must answer all our questions as far as we know

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XII WHAT IS MEANING? 99

the language of the Answer-world, and are ready to welcome
true replies.

In science physical or * exact ' we have this solar quality
in a central assumption, such as the theory of gravitation,
which is readily owned by all. Variation, of which we
cannot have too much, as long as it enriches by distinguish-
ing instead of impoverishing by dividing and excluding,
comes in development of the thought-germ. Therefore it is
that any system of philosophy which does not appeal to
Man as Man when he has attained a philosophical level of
intelligence and a scientiiic criterion of knowledge, is self-
convicted, not of being untrue, but of being secondary ; of
being really only one of many possible solutions of ultimate
problems, or at best of being a condition of these. In
Signifies we are not, therefore, claiming to add one more to
the historical systems or methods of thought already exist-
ing. Rather does it aim at and indeed imply the assimila-
tion and translation of all modes of arriving at truth — to be
a Way which is the interpretation and co-ordination of all
wajrs,^ It explains and accounts for the widespread desire for
universality, and the feeling that this must somehow play an
important part not only in securing our recognition, but also
in constituting the validity, of any truth under examination.
It is in virtue of the secret working of this agency that men

^ The main characteristic of the present day is the enormous develop-
ment of the literal Way — of means of locomotion and physical communi-
cation ; also of means of exploration, examination, analysis ; of instrument
or apparatus, and of industrial machinery. Is this a translation of a
growing but obscure Sense that the idea of the way reveals the secret of
our nature ? We must, however, beware, on this line of thought, of exag-
geration. As there is a well-known Questioning mania, so there may well
be a Signific disease, a morbid development of interpretation such as we
apparently see in the Bacon-Shakespeare craze. It is too seldom remem-
bered that this danger is always in proportion to the value of any idea and
any form of method.

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loo WHAT IS MEANING? chap, xn

instinctively suppose that philosophy on the intellectual, and
religion on the emotional side, if really worthy of these names,
must bring us the significance of all facts given by experience
and verified by scientific method — ^must act as automatic
crucibles wherein to test ideas. And it must be borne in
mind that the significance is infinitely rich in its aspects,
yielding a world of delicate reactions to the complexities of
varying mind in races, societies, and individuals. But, as we
have abready seen, significance must not be confounded with
the meaning or intention of acts and events ; it is rather
their value for us, that which makes them signify for us, that
which constitutes their importance, their moment, their
consequence for mankind.

Both philosophy and religion, therefore, are absolutely
free to vary in presentment to any extent, so long as they
remain loyal to certain conditions which are not 'funda-
mental' (because neither wisdom nor goodness can be
* built ' of mere mental stone or brick as e,g, systems of
notation, of machinery, of law, can), but are rather germinal
— the energy of the generative cells of thought and feeling.

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CHAPTER XIII

Of course man must always interpret the Cosmos in terms
of his own sense-experience. No other is available. He
has no choice but to * project ' his own sense-scheme on to
his surroundings. And he cannot directly know, he can
only infer what transcends that sense-experience; begin-
ning with perception he conceives, constructs, concludes,
* creates' his world in rational order, which implies its
analysis. But having done this the post-Copernican prin-
ciple begins to tell. The sense-scheme itself is presumably
derived like the world on which it is found.

Physiology warns us that even the term * motor' is
dangerous as implying 'spontaneous origination of forces.'
" A centre is an organ of return of action, and the type of
all motor action is a reflex act."^ This principle is re-
cognised by all leading physiological workers, e,g, by Hitzig,
Munk, Bastian, Foster. All action is literally ex-cited —
called from beyond; all physiological phenomena are
generated, not self-created. The presumption, then, is that
we do not originate and then * project' our highest con-
ceptions ; we receive and pass them on, though it may be in
woefully childish dialects.

We have to credit the sun with the constituents of the

^ Dr. A. Waller, "On the Functional Attributes of the Cerebral
Ck)rtex," Brain, Parts lix. and Ix. p. 345.

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.102 .... WHAT IS MEANING ? chap.

'• - '•* r !•*: •. •

earth.. ,JBut we^nQ.Jonger suppose that these have been

'i)estdi;^d;{>];^.^^e\s)ip by the earth. When we say that
given gases are in the sun, we are only giving back intel-
lectually what we have received materially. The cosmos
and our sun in particular endows us with all our ^ gases,'
our liquids, our solids, and all our energies.

Once more the presumption is all against the geo-
centric view that our little satellite is the mental centre
of the universe; according to the post-Copemican order
the human world cannot be centred on itself. Man is
heliotropic, he is beyond that cosmotropic, moving round
a moving centre on a way beyond his ken. The primitive
mind, much closer than we are to its mother-life in the
protozoon, may well have been organically * conscious ' of its
ultra-earthly origin,— its nervous system restlessly thrilling
with survivals of primordial pulses which have trembled into
life upon our cooling planet. The promise and potency of
all mind as well as life have lain within the swathes of cosmic
cloud, the nebulous embryos of a million worlds. Man is
evolved through zoophytes frorti the interaction of the
atomic forces in a nebula. As G. H. Lewes says, "A
stream of molecular energy flows through the organism from
the great cosmic source, and returns to the ocean whence it
came. For the organism is but an unit in the great sum of
things. The continuity of Existence admits no break.
Our life is a moment in the larger life." ^ How then can
we seriously suppose that what we call ^mind' or 'in-
telligence * is so absolutely independent of * life * that there
is no greater mind to be its cosmos or even its special sun ?
Yet the same writer can say that "we are the centres to
which the intelligible universe converges, from which it
radiates," and insist that " the human point of view is in all

^ Problems of Life and Mind, vol. ii. p. 463 (1875).

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xiii WHAT IS MEANING? 103

respects absolute and final for us." ^ So, with more excuse,
said the ancient cosmologists of their tiny world. But
science has at least exploded that theory ; and as we are in
any case confined to analogy, we are bound to keep as long
as we can to those furnished not only by astronomy, but
also by biology, and especially by that plant-life which so
wonderfully grasps and embraces, so to speak, the radiant
energy of the sun, and transfigures it into leaf and flower
and firuit. John Fiske may well say that here we reach
something deeper than poetry.

Two things must, of course, be borne in mind. One,
that when we use analogically the physiological processes of
vision, we are bound to take the true ones so far as they are
known. Thus we have no right to speak of the eye as
though it were adjusted to the near, and needed to strain
with painful effort to discern the far (as we so often do when
contrasting philosophy with science or practical life), but
rather as * focussed to infinity'; while what requires muscular
effort is the vision of — the tangible. Another, that not merely
do we look through our sense-window at a vast star-peopled
universe as real as our own world, — a universe of which the
telescope reveals further depths but no limits, — but also that
we can devise a mechanical eye (the sensitive plate) which
shall * see ' and record a further world of suns and nebulae
beyond even the power of the telescope to reveal to the
human eye.^ That is a triumph of indirect evidence. And
after all, as Professor Tait says, " it is to sight that we are

1 IHd, p. 16.

2 "The invention of the telescope is to me the most beautiful ever
made. Familiarity both in making and in using has only increased my
admiration. With the exception of the microphone of the late Professor
Hughes, which enabled one to hear otherwise inaudible sounds, sight is the
only sense that we have been able to enormously increase in range "
(Professor W, H. Perkin's Presidential Address, Brit. Assoc. , 1900),

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I04 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

mainly indebted for our knowledge of external things. All
our other senses together, except under very special condi-
tions, do not furnish us with a tithe of the information we
gain by a single glance." ^

This being so, it is very remarkable, he continues, to
find how slowly men have reached some even of the simplest
facts of optics, and how easily they have believed for ages
that objects are rendered visible by something projected
from the eye itself! It seems no less curious that even
now those of us who claim to represent advanced thought
should be tempted to imagine that the mental analogue of

* light' is something projected from the * mental eye,' or to
accept this as the history of our highest ideals. Huxley
complained that theologians, having rested the spiritual
world "on the elephant of Biblical infallibility, and furnished
the elephant with standing ground on the tortoise of

* antiquity,* they, like their famous Hindoo analogue, have
been content to look no farther; and have thereby been
spared the horror of discovering that the tortoise rests on a
grievously fragile construction."^ Nothing could better
express the contrast which we are considering. The

* tortoise * would not really have even a fragile construction
to rest on. We are inexorably compelled to postulate
something much more to the purpose than any 'standing
ground* for anything which is rightly called a * world.'
The true analogue here* is the ether of the modern
physicist, in which we find no immutable base or immovable
foundation, or even impregnable * rock ' to fix our * worlds '
upon, but across which we get our messages or * revelations '
of light and electricity and gravitation — and life.

Neither morality nor anything else can be * based ' on the

^ •• Light," Encyc. Brit, 9th edit.
' Essays on Controverted Questions, p. 27 (1892).

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cB XIII WHAT IS MEANING? 105

. I idea of a solid rock-in-itself fixed beneath the cosmos or even
coDi below the world. True that the * ether ' is as yet hypotheti-
iXit cal, and cannot be made to fit all the facts which need to be
accounted for. But how is it that our little world goes on
^ I its way so steadily and securely without a vestige of what we
iple usually mean by support? Undermine all the 'foundations*
of our mental world, and even if the result, as the agnostic tells
us, ' is painfiilly like nothing,' it is all the ' support ' we can
have, and seems to answer very well And if we are wisely
warned against * soaring ' into it, at least the very sense of
sight calls us to see into it and make inferences — to find in
the messages of the astronomer no fanciful dream, but
verifiable and predictive records of fact. Of course, as Sir
Leslie Stephen says, popular instinct protests that "this
planet is the universe ; never mind the stars." ^ And as he
sees, the mass of mankind still believes that the sun goes
round the earth. It is here, then, that we may look for the
real cause of our demand for fixed bases in our mental
world, where they are no more possible than in the case
of the planets, the sun, or the stars. The metaphor is, of
course, valid up to a certain point. Man himself needs no
foundation, but must have solid ground to walk and build
upon. Only we must remember that all such foundation
is in its turn unfounded. This is an idea absolutely vital
to clear thought. And this is where the mischief of
Ptolemaic thinking is betrayed ; the fatal mistake of sup-
posing that the * sun ' of a true moral ideal goes round the
* earth ' of our satellitic instincts and impulses.

It is a familiar fact that Aristotle's marvellous insight —
so predictive in some directions — was entirely led astray by
the geocentric bias. His false cosmography and false
physics were linked to his metaphysics, and were to play a

^ An Agnostic's Apology, p. 324 (1893).

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io6 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

large part in the discredit into which all metaphysics have
since fiallen. But he, at least, had an excuse which cannot
be allowed to von Hartmann, when he tells us that
" beyond that which is the Substrate of everything Existing
no Philosophy can go. Here we stand at the inherently
insoluble problem of problems. The earth rests on the
elephant, the elephant stands on the tortoise, and the
tortoise?"^

Well, if an ultimate base were either needed or possible,
the question would concern us ; as it is, the appeal is simply
unmeaning. And it is one made on every side, to the con-
fusion of ethical as well as philosophical thought Truly we
want not merely another Copernicus, but another Bruno.
For even Copernicus imagined an immovable centre of the
universe in the sun, whereas Bruno placed it in sun after
sun, " even in the outermost parts of the universe and in
infinity," and exclaims, "Let the earth eschew privilege;
let her fulfil her course and obey. Let not this contempla-
tion dispirit man, as if he thought himself abandoned by
God; for in extending and enlarging the universe he is
himself elevated beyond measure, and his intelligence is no
longer deprived of breathing space beneath a sky meagre,
narrow, and ill-contrived. . . . Dwellers in a star, are we
not comprehended within the celestial plains, and established
in the very precincts of heaven ? " ^ Yes, here we reap the
harvest of at least a comparatively true analogy.

J. S. Mill proposes to "think away the support, and
suppose the phenomena to remain and to be held together
in the same groups or series by some other agency, or with-
out any agency but an internal law " ; and urges that " every
consequence follows without substance for the sake of

' Philosophy of the Unconscious, vol. iii. p. 196 (1884).
* Frith's Z,(/5f of Giordano Bruno, pp. 45, 46 (1887).

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UNIVERSITY ]
XIII WHAT IS ^t^^^it>^^ 107

which substance was assumed." * So, of course, with the
'basis' which we fancy to be so indispensable. "The
Hindoos," remarks Mill, " thought that the earth required
to be supported by an elephant ; but the earth turned out
quite capable of supporting itself and hanging * self-
balanced ' on its own centre." ^ Perhaps, rather, it found
itself capable of revolving on a cosmically attracted centre,
on an orbit, the result of co-operative forces. So it may be
with primary ideas or convictions which certainly cannot
boast of any elephant or tortoise to uphold them, and
therefore run the risk of being condemned as necessarily
* unfounded,' which is exactly what, if true, they must be.

^ Examination of Sir W, Hamilton' s Philosophy , p. 252 (1872).
2 JHd.

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CHAPTER XIV

From this point of view we may re-examine the Positivist
appeal "to submit our consciences to the oldest religion
known to this planet." ^ But so long as we confine ourselves
to life or mind on this planet, the oldest ideas are the
youngest, — the most infantile. Thus we should be sub-
mitting the adult to the standard of the infant, as though
we were to give up talking and even walking, and resume
our place in the cradle and on the nurse's knee. And
however true it may be that we have much to learn, e,g, in
psychology, from the * little child' now with us; however
likely that our most remote ancestors were more fully ' in
touch with nature ' than the descendants who, losing instinct,
had not gained the power of inductive reasoning, we have
no right to sacrifice the fruit of man's long travail and
relapse into the childish primitive cults.

For when Comte is described as * unearthing' or 'ex-
cavating ' for us " the real religion, ample in itself without
supernatural and superterrestrial ideas about religion," this
is using a Ptolemaic analogy and making earth central
With a revised cosmology the idea falls. Natural science
knows nothing of our planet as an ultimate centre. Even
where any given phenomena cannot be traced by our
present methods beyond our little satellite or its in-

^ "The Emancipation of Women," F. Harrison, Fortnightly Review,
October 1891.

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CHAP. XIV WHAT IS MEANING? 109

habitants, we are not, therefore, free to reckon our earth
as the original seat of any known energies or activities.
It is sometimes urged, in pre-Copemican metaphor, that
"all we need is to clear human nature from the clouds."
But in fact the metaphor, as usual, betrays its user. For
we cannot clear our planet from the clouds which belong
to its natural atmosphere and are essential to its fertility.
Nor can we abolish by simply shutting our eyes to them
the sun, the moon, the stars, nay, the light and the infinite
blue of the heavens. To other eyes, still open, they are
there all the same.

We are compelled to speak in cosmological figure. Let
us see, then, that our moral cosmology does not stand or fall
with the idea of a fixed and central earth, surrounded by
projected or at least tributary 'heavens,' and reflecting
light from itself upon its skies. Either natural phenomena
have no bearing on the questions called religious or ethical,
or they have a bearing which compels us to revise our mode
of conceiving and expressing the latter, where this may
traverse what we know — however little — of the order of the
actual universe.

For these reactionary appeals to centre ourselves upon
the earth are found far beyond the limits of professed
Positivism, and they cannot fail to affect our views of the
.origin of human conceptions and conduct, more than we
have perhaps suspected. After all, there is a valuable truth
in the Positivist exhortation. The really primitive mind
may well have been (in an organic and pre-logical sense)
more in touch with nature than we think. For once more,
what right have we to speak as though we knew that life
and mind have originated on a globe which we now know
to be satellitic and subordinate to a moving centre, itself
one of millions in an unexplored universe? At least

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no WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

the presumption is all the other way, and the burden of
proof rests with the man who admits (for instance) an
* ultra ' of vibration at each end of the narrow human slit of
spectrum and the narrower one of sound-compass, and yet
supposes that somehow this strictly derived little planet
had once contrived to originate so stupendous a thing as
life with its yet more marvellous ^consciousness' and
'intelligence,' and that man's narrow slit of vital and
mental spectrum includes its whole range.

Kant called himself a Copernicus of mind. He claimed
that his thought reversed the starting-point then accepted
in philosophy, and began at the other end. But that
reversal seems to need now a wider, less abstruse, more
practical application than his. If 'mind' must still be
mystery, let it at least be cosmically derived mj^tery, with
light and heat, and ether and gravitation, until we have
some real right to claim it as the unique privilege of earth.
There may well be in the mental world as in the physical,
(so clearly exemplified in the phj^iology of plants,) two
complementary tendencies, of which the one ought to be
included in the other. One would be *geotropic'; the
mind would be drawn towards and centred upon this earth
and its concerns : the heavens would then exist merely for
the sake of the earth : —

The strong base and building of my love
Is as the very centre of the earth,
Drawing all things to it.

The other would be * cosmotropic ' ; would be always
reaching out into the surrounding greatness, vague though
its limits were and beyond the tactual range. Touch would
represent the first ; sight the second, reading me^ages of
light, and revealing a mine of untouched treasure.

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XIV WHAT IS MEANING? iii

The geotropic — so far as it professed to be a complete
and sufficient answer to the questionings of man — would
either ignore entirely a * spiritual * world, or would fix it in
the clouds, and make it an offshoot of this actual world,
the only * real ' one we know. It would inevitably imply
anthropomorphism. Man would make his 'god' in his

* image.* The cosmotropic, on the other hand, would
suppose all which belongs to this earth — including the
aspiration of man — to be given and recalled from beyond,
whether from the boundless universe or from its particular
sun. Visible or invisible, energy or power of every kind
and in every sense would have an ultra-earthly source.
Man's true God would *make man,' not merely in His
image, which might be but a dead picture or a doll, an
imitation of the living being, but in the Divine Energy:
God would generate him as a father does a son — whatever
we were to understand by such metaphors. Man would
know at least that he was not self-centred. For we are
very much derived indeed, — more than even second
hand, — we are perhaps but a by-product in the vast
cosmical process of world-growth. What then follows?
That we must, in decent consistency, give up the pre-
sumption that our tiny speck in a third-rate system has
been or is the original centre of any class of phenomena
found upon it. Else the psychical becomes miraculous in
the worst — the magical — sense of that word. And
at least through all his wildest aberrations, man has
retained in almost every form of religion the sense of
dependence on powers beyond the world; from the first
he has conceived his objects of worship as somehow

* above ' himself.

The question in the last resort is always. Does the earth
reflect the sun's light, or the sun reflect the earth's ? The

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112 WHAT IS MEANING? chap, xiv

idea of a ' God man/ a being absorbing and giving out the
energies of a greater centre, and beyond that of an infinite
treasure, of life, at least answers to the first. The idea of
man as his own ultimate god, and his religious conceptions
as merely magnified reflections of himself belongs to the
second. Which is the more likely to be true ?

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CHAPTER XV

If now we turn once more to a writer who cannot be
accused of a leaning towards speculative mysticism or
dogmatism, we shall find Sir Leslie Stephen warning us
emphatically that we cannot have a world complete in
itself and " limited in every direction," or " lay down definite
bounds to the labour of investigation " ^ at the horizon of
our own world, under the supposed common-sense notion
that we are concerned with nothing else. We are all in
the end driven to confess that physical facts depend wholly
on sense-experience for coming within our ken at all. For
this our senses are the means and medium. But senses
are inherently means of message, and * message ' is mean-
ingless unless it involves the idea 'from somewhat to
somewhat,' just as Mink' must needs be between two
somewhats.

We have the term * eject ' as well as * object ' ; but we
seem also to need the term * inject,' and to conceive our
highest ideals in physiological analogy rather as * injected '
than as * secreted' When it is claimed that religion is a
stimulus which impels the response of recognition, the
analogy is that of food which reaches us, be it noted, not
as secreted within the limits of the organism, but as * in-
jected' into the digestive canal and absorbed through its

^ An Agnostic's Apology, p. 324 (1893).

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114 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

walls into the system. And our main physical needs — air,
food, light, warmth— come to us as ' first principles ' from
' without ' the organism — in this sense as much beyond the
race as beyond the individual We do not elaborate them
from our own tissues. Thus we are not ultimate arbiters
of our own destiny, because we are determined by what is
greater than our * geotropic ' selves. Discount analogy as
severely as we may, — and few of those current will stand
any test, — in so far as we use it at all it must make all the
difference whether we take fact or -fiction as our source of
comparison.

Perhaps what suffers most from this inherited bias is the
problem of suffering or pain itself. No one could deny
how much suffering and pain increase in bitterness and
horror so long as we look at them with reference to this
world alone, seeing in the instinct of appeal to 'another
world' for the solution of the problem only a survival of
* baseless ' mythologies.

"Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest
thought" ^ This strikes a true note, an unused clue, hidden
in a seeming paradox ; for one question of deep significance
seems here to suggest itself. In the organic world injuries,
deformities, mutilations, and pain in every form, only tend
in some sense to deterioration if not total destruction of
the organism.* How is it, then, that the very miseries and
sorrows, to express which at all we have to lise these
physical analogies, may yet raise man in a true scale of
being and even ennoble him — performing for him the
inestimable service of " bringing him nearer to his kind "

1 Quoted in An Agnostic's Apology, p. 36.

' The phenomena of compensation have of course to be considered
here. But they do not seem to afifect the general conclusion, taken in the
broadest sense.

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XT WHAT IS MEANING? 115

and fitting him to play a worthier part in life ? ^ We see
this apparent paradox, thank God, on every side; we see
that those who are spared suffering can know but a poorer
love, and live but on a lower level as compared with those who
know its pangs and cruel aching. But does it not suggest that
suffering has some real relation or reference of some actual
kind to a greater life than that either of the individual or
the race on this small planet ? The view that confines the
problem of pain to solutions on this world and in this life
is, in fact, founded on a false analogy and is essentially
Ptolemaic Let us, at least, use by preference the only one
now scientifically permissible, and see that if there be a
'solar system' of moral ideal, suffering may be the very
sign that we are in training for a greater and higher form
of life within it. Indeed, the very passion of our protest
against the agony and injustice of the world may well be
due to that higher life stimulating us to the Divine discontent
which alone can make for such development and bring us
the true answer. Truly, as Mr. Francis Galton finely says,
we need " a vigorous resolve to use all the intelligence and
perseverance we can command to fulfil our part as members
of one great family that strives as a whole towards a fuller
and a higher life. . . . We must look on the slow progress
of the order of evolution, and the system of routine by
which it has thus far advanced, as due to antecedents and
to inherent conditions of which we have not as yet the
slightest conception. ... In our doubt as to the character
of our mysterious relations with the unseen ocean of actual
and potential life by which we are surrounded, the generally
accepted fact of the solidarity of the universe — that is, of
the intimate connections between distant parts that bind
it together as a whole — ^justifies us, I think, in looking

^ An Agnostic's Apology, p. 112.

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ii6 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

upon ourselves as members of a vast system which in
one of its aspects resembles a cosmic republic."^ In
truth the repudiation by science of all claim to deal with
'causes* or 'impelling forces * engenders the suspicion that
in one sense the position of science answers to that of the
pre-human animal The scientific intelligence seeks for
the What and the How, but stops short of that Why which
is the special human acquisition. For the demand for a
reason, a be-cause, is, as we see in very early days of normal
childhood, exactly the difference between 'lower animal'
and ' man.' From this point of view the scientific type of
mental activity is strictly agnostic, as corresponding to that
of the bee or the ant, the sphex or the spider. Ask these
or their like the questions which, while they are vital to
man, are not to be asked of science ; and even if we endow
them, for the purpose, with language, they cannot answer
or tell us Why they act thus or what impels them. Science
is in this on the same level, and shares their impotence.
But it need hardly be said that this is not to undervalue
her work.*

The Copernican reversal, while reducing our little
world to its dependent status, does not imply disbelief in
the potencies of the planet. On the contrary, the more
clearly we realise the stupendous mine of energies, per-
ceived or inferred, which our tiny earth has for her illimit-
able quarry and treasure-house, the higher must be our
hopes for the flower of her products, the consummation of
her generative activities. She may have ' mothered ' Man ;
but it is no case of 'parthenogenesis'; he has nothing less
than the vast universe to * father ' him.

There are two conceptions of man, as there are two

1 Human Faculty (i%Z^), pp. 298, 302, 333.
^ See above, p. 96.

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XV WHAT IS MEANING? 117

conceptions of the world on which he lives and to which
he belongs; between these two in some sense or other,
and whether consciously or no, we all have to choose. May
we not sum up the alternative thus ? —

(i) Man, as his own centre, fixed and firm, or revolving
round his self-axis ; man as the last product of finished self-
evolution.

Man as throwing off, after originating, heat to warm self
by, light to guide self by (in the form of accumulated
experience).

Man as projecting his own poetic fancies, — what he calls
the suns and stars, comets and meteors, into what he calls
the sky.

Man as ultimately a core of solid physical reality upon
which you can * take your stand ' — a dense entity which you
can feel, touch, measure, weigh ; man with a star-studded
mind-sky belonging to him as evolved by him, and a sun
going round him as well as a moon, — all ultimately products
of his fertile imagination and his busy logic.

This is Ptolemaic, or at least pre-Copemican.

(2) Man as the offspring and dependent of a greater,
nobler, fiiller, stronger, and more energetic centre round
which he revolves — that centre revolving also, and drawing
him onwards with it on a yet mysterious journey.

Man as derivative in everything — as living and moving
and having his being by the energising cosmic forces ; man
as related through consciousness, and (beyond that) through
what he calls mind and soul and spirit, to a boundless
universe which, atomic as he is, he can at least 'perceive,'
recognising his familiar home -stuffs in remoteness else
inscrutable.

Man as instinctively expressing this 'mind,' 'soul,'
'spirit' in terms of 'sight,' responding to 'light'; in terms

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ii8 WHAT IS MEANING? chap, xv

of attraction and repulsion, responding to 'gravity.* For
he is moved to act by impulse which transcends him, and
therein lie his natural ideals.

Man as knowing that his so-called 'emotion* and
'intellect,* 'will* and 'conscience,* and all else that is
his, are gifts from a greater source, messages from a
higher greatness, beams radiated from a nobler sphere,
waves running in from a deeper sea of being: such
waves, beams, messages, gifts, summed up in 'revelation*
and 'inspiration* whether in a theological or a general
sense, and conceived as generative energy shining upon
and pressing into him, and bringing forth the being bom
to aspire as the plant grows upwards.

Man using the atmosphere which enfolds him and makes
breathing possible, for bringing forth innumerable Life —
knowing that the life shall grow till Mind is bom at last ;
making the living units kin, through Man their world, with
a cosmos of which suns, if not whole sun-systems, are the
seeds and the germs. These are his truest metaphors.

This is Copemican.

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CHAPTER XVI

Yet it may be said that we have no right to the assumption
just made that consciousness and mind are included in the
Copemican reversal, because we have no direct perceptual
evidence of their existence past or present * beyond the
world' in space. But neither have we direct perceptual
evidence of their promise in the earliest forms of animal life^
In both cases we are reduced to the conceptual

* Infinity ' by negativing the less implies the more, but
never gives us the most. Its use is that it thinks away
space, as the use of 'eternity' is that it thinks away time.
Only, alas ! we generally use both terms as a sort of overflow
or extra of space and time — a further away and a further off,
or a greater amount of the same entity. But thinking away,
ruling out (if we merely abstract), leaves us with No Thing,
and more, with Nowhat and therefore with Nowhy. And
this applies to all words beginning with * ab ' ; the use of
the * absolute 'to symbolise the fullest of realities is itself
an * unresolved ' contradiction.^ Significance, on the other
hand, is the gathering, the concentrating into its focus of

^ It is curious how much more consistent we are in the use of prefixes
like 'ad' or 'ap' (and in other like cases)» than in that of 'ab,' e.g.
to ad-here, ad-join, ad-vocate ; to ap-point, ap-portion, the ap-posite, ap-
petition, etc., all belong to the same category. And yet consistency m
the use of terms which claim (even in protest) to deal with the most
ultimate of human ideas seems especially imperative.

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I20 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

radiation ; it is in a deep and predictive sense the assimilat-
ing, the life-generating, the life-crowning term.

All systems also inevitably concentrate in Significance as
their essential value as well as test And thus Signifies
alone gives us the power of inter-translation. As Giordano
Bruno truly says, " Certitude is only acquired by a kind of
comparison, by conferring (in its true sense) one sensible
object or one sense with another." ^ This is true in a richer
sense even than he intended. What you say is true : (i) in
one sense; (2) in many senses; (3) in all but one sense;
(4) in all senses ; (5) in no sense (/>. is nonsense or is false).
"For the same Truth may be in different subjects . . .
and given us through diverse senses,*' in both senses of
that term.

What is truth? "All this may be very accurate, very
exact, very precise; but it is not true." In what sense?
Or "All this may be very inaccurate, very inexact, very
vague, but it is true." In what sense? In the first case
the given statement may rest on a suppressed premiss
which is fallacious or erroneous. Or it may be dishonestly
put forward as a complete statement, whereas it depends
for its truth on some complementary factor which supplies
a given character and meaning. In the second case,
realities, verities, actual facts may be set forth pictorially,
even hyperbolically where the receiving mind needs it, so
as to call out response. Or they may be given in action,
being lived or acted in outward conduct, thus impressing
present spectators, hearers, touchers, with the sensuous
conviction of their reality. The test in the first place is
mechanical; it is applied in the laboratory, or (mathe-
matically or logically) in formal analysis. In the second it
is tested by result; not result of insentient process, but
* Toland's Essays, etc. (1726), pp. 319-20.

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XVI WHAT IS MEANING? 121

result on a living mind In the first case we have the
insincere and unveracious; result, false impression and
inference. In the second we have sincerity and veracity ;
result, valid impression and inference, albeit possibly vague
or general The first may be accurate, but the second is
true — a very different thing. Here also, surely, we have
the difference between knowledge about and knowledge of;
between mechanically correct information and intimate
appreciation. The first is laborious and lifeless; we see
only too much of it in the threshing and rethreshing of old
straw in the literary world : the second is spontaneous and
vitally penetrative, piercing as by an arrow of light to the
core of the matter ; to what really signifies and avails.^

To return to the analogy between physical and mental
vision : if we test it by result upon thought there is perhaps
no truer metaphor in language than that of the mental and
especially the intellectual *eye.' The simplest and most
ignorant of us says ' I see,' meaning ' I understand'; and the

^ A good practical description of the dead or as it might be termed
dessicated knowledge turned out by the present school system may be
found in Prof. Dewar's Presidential Address to the Brit. Assoc at Belfieist,
1903. "It is in the abundance of men of ordinary plodding ability,
thoroughly trained and methodically directed, that Germany at present
has so commanding an advantage. There are plenty of chemists turned
out, even by our Universities, who would be of no use to Bayer and Co.
They are chock full of formulae, they can recite theories, and they know
text-books by heart ; but put them to solve a new problem, freshly arisen
in the laboratory, and you will find that their learning is all dead. It has
not become a vital part of their mental equipment, and they are floored
by the first emergence of the unexpected. The men who escape this
mental barrenness are men who were somehow or other taught to think
long before they went to the University. To my mind, the really appalling
thing is not that the Germans have seized this or the other industry, or
even that they may have seized upon a dozen industries. It is that the
German population has reached a point of general training and specialised
equipment which it will take us two generations of hard and intelligently
directed educational work to attain."

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122 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

man of science as well as the philosopher has nothing better
to say. For the phjrsical eye forms actually part of the brain,
which everybody admits to be the condition of what we call
* thought* The processes and functions of the brain are
thus inevitably taken to symbolise the processes and func-
tions of rational thinking. Whether they do correspond
point for point or no, we are impelled by a constraining
force, apparently felt by the whole race, to express the one
in terms of the other. The mischief is that this is done
with a fatal inconsistency. For example, whereas the
mental eye is constantly credited even in philosophical
writing with the power to *see itself directly, the physical
eye which is seen in others cannot, except in a mirror, be
seen by itself: we can only explore our own eye by means
of touch.

But if we seriously appeal in this case to the physical
analogy, let us ask what the oculist means when he tells a
patient that, so far as physiological conditions are concerned,
he sees true, his vision is * emmetropic,' normal, sound.
What by this does he intend us to infer? That the trouble
which is complained of arises from disturbance of general
health, since he finds the mechanism and tissues of the eye
healthy, the focus and accommodation normal, and the two
eyes acting together.

Now the corresponding mental trouble may in the same
way be due, not to disturbance or failure of normal function
in the mental * eye ' itself but to disturbance of the general
mental or intellectual health. But it is well known that in
the physical sphere defective eyesight tends injuriously to
affect general health in various ways. Unless therefore we
consistently decline to use the analogy of vision at all in
speaking of intellectual and moral phenomena — which is
impossible — we must assume the falsity of the accepted

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XVI WHAT IS MEANING? 123

'view' that the near and the palpable is what we can 'see'
with least effort, while the remote, that which transcends
our grasp, and indeed all our senses except that of
sight, is what costs us the greatest mental exertion. For
if we are true to our analogy in the only sense which
justifies it at all, it follows, as we have already seen, that " in
what may be regarded as the normal eye," normal mentally
as well as physically speaking, " the far limit " (of accom-
modation) " may be put for practical purposes at an infinite
distance." We are conscious of a distinct effort in turning
from a far to a near object, while the converse act is an
easing, a relaxation of effort^ But which of us has
practically recognised this fact when modes of thought or
philosophical principles were in question? These are
always spoken of as dealing with things * transcendental ' ;
by which the * plain man ' means beyond his reach, beyond
the limits of what he unconsciously admits to be merely the
tangible or the palpable, which is the range of the tentacle
and in us of the arm. Thus he is accusing himself of
mental blindness : for to see what is beyond our physical
reach is precisely the function of the eye. But which of us
really understands that normal mental vision must needs
deal most easily, not with the near or the dose by, but
with the far and the remote : which of us has applied this
pregnant idea in interpreting experience? Which of us
fully faces the fact that the seer who boasts of the narrow
limits of his mental outlook, and decries as dreaming or
idle star-gazing the natural activity of the mental eye, is
radically false to fact or is really boasting of a distortion of
mental vision which must vitiate all his inferences ? Which
of us has fully realised the fact that we must not, if we
use it at all, violate the analogy and falsify the metaphor by
^ Text-book of Physiology^ Dr. M. Foster, vol. iv. (1891), pp. 1154-55.

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124 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

thinking of one 'mental eye* merely, but under normal

conditions must appeal to both eyes in combination ? And

even so, which of us remembers that the two must not be

set one on each side of a head, with a snout — a projecting

barrier — between them?^ In short, which of us realises

that we are wholly dependent for our very ideas of mental

phenomena on a ludicrous travesty of the facts of organic

vision, and that the inevitable issue of this is disastrous

psychological confusion reflected in all philosophical theory

as well as in the plain man's common-sense ' views ' ?

Professor Karl Pearson insists that in consequence of the

fetishistic use of the terms matter, mass, motion, force, space,

time, cause, atom, body, law, etc. (especially in text-books),

physical science has made a false start. But the biologist,

the physiologist, the psychologist, have all been dependent

on such terms in this untenable and misleading sense, since

no others were current So they have everywhere used

them both directly and figuratively. Thus if Professor

Pearson maintains his position even in the broadest sense,

psychology and ethics have so far made a false start too

Their premisses are liable to vanish with the superannuated

connotations of the main terms of physical science. At

all events if (as in the case of alchemy and chemistry,

astrology and astronomy) the modem scientist is compelled

to use the old terms, they must be carefully charged with

new meanings, for in too many cases the popular mind is

steeped in the logic of magic and yet never suspects it.

Perhaps the securest stronghold of myth is the mind which,

in the name of common-sense, refuses to question its own

1 •• In some of the lower animals the position of the eyes is so com-
pletely lateral that no rays of light proceeding from the same object can
fall on any part of the two retinas at the same time, and in these creatures
vision is wholly monocular" (Text- book of Physiology, Dr. M. Foster,
vol. iv. (1891), p. 127s).

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XVI WHAT IS MEANING? 125

certainties. For it is almost invariably unconscious of the
extent to which its common-sense has been distorted by
the action of our essentially defective system of ideas,
revealed as well as reinforced by deformity of figurative
expression.

Take again the rods and cones, the receivers of light.
The accepted view in analogical use is that if you want to
be enlightened you must not ask Might' to come in and
reach you (from ' behind ') at the point of some mental organ
turned inwards. That would be fatal 'introspection,' we
say, and a sad waste of time ; we must turn the point of
our mental eye-organ outwards if any light is to be thrown
thereby upon any subject. And so on throughout our
thinking. We are always appealing to facts to furnish us
with illustrations. But if we appeal to a mere fancy and
treat it as a fact, — if we seriously take the centaur as we take
the * horse' and the *man,' and use its supposed move-
ments as the analogues of something actual which we want
to illustrate, arguing from the one to the other, as though
a * man-horse ' were a * fact ' in * nature,' — then, of course,
we re-import into our reasoning the very fallacies which are
everywhere else discredited. If we appeal to a centaur at
all it must be as a fabulous monstrosity used to illustrate
something also monstrous. But we too often use mythical
* facts ' belonging to the .same order as the centaur, or satyr,
or dragon, or phoenix whereby to express the reasonable,
the congruous, the orderly, the real ; for instance, matter,
force, spirit, cause, etc., in their popular or inherited sense.
They create fictitious difficulties, and these of course react
on the emotional sphere and generate pessimism.

Many attempts have been made to establish special
analogies between the facts or laws of the physical world
and those of the social, moral, or intellectual world. The

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126 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

misfortune is that all these have been made in the interest
of some special view or theory of the world of * soul ' or
'mind/ some special form of idealism or spiritualism, of
ethical or social system, or indeed simply of * belief/ And
the consequence has been that the comparisons made would
not bear strict examination; there has always been a
tendency to ignore or to overpress points which told against
or for the desired conclusion. Analogy has been treated
too much as though it were an advocate to be secured by
a retaining fee, and safe to put a certain case as strongly as
possible in a certain way. But, of course, as J. S. Mill
truly says,^ " there is no word, however, which is used more
loosely, or in a greater variety of senses, than Analogy."
And it ought to be obvious, as he further tells us, that the
value of a true analogy is that of a guide-post " pointing out
the direction in which more rigorous investigations should
be prosecuted."

But there is a method both of discovering, testing, and
using analogy (or in some cases homology), the value of
which does not yet seem to be recognised ; and this may
be called in an extended sense Translation.^ While

1 SysUm of Logic, pp. 364, 368 (1895).

^ It must be borae in mind that although the term ' translation ' has
been chosen because it is ah-eady used in at least part of the sense here
suggested, it does not cover the whole ground required. Many words
with the prefix ' trans ' represent one aspect of the process in question,
e.g. transference, transformation, transmutation, transfiguration, and,
above all, transvaluation.

Reference may here be made to a profoundly significant article by Mr.
A. B. Kempe on "The Subject- Matter of Exact Thought," in Nature,
December 18, 1890. The pregnancy and suggestive force of the whole
essay make quotation difficult, but the following may serve as example :
' ' The essential elements of the subject-matter of exact thought are in
reality of an extremely simple character ; and, though they exhibit infinite
variety, that variety is due to simple and easily-defined causes. There is
nothing vague or metaphysical about them ; but, even when mere figments

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axvi WHAT IS MEANING? 127

J ints emphasising and illustrating what R. L. Nettleship called
soa'' the apparently ultimate fact that "all language and all
dim expression is a form of translation^^ ^ Signifies claims to
f ir extend and develop the application of that idea in practical
lefts directions. We already find that it is not by endeavouring
bea to kill deep-seated tendencies of human nature but by
ag2£ translating them into a higher form, that we achieve the
treai regeneration of man. Adulation turns into reverence,
iredr license into orderly freedom. Even 'gambling,' which
Dgki thus turns into * venture ' and * daring an issue,* is under-
mined by translation, and becomes the boast of the ex-

of the brain, they are precise and definite, with parts and properties
which can be analysed and catalogued just as much as if they were the
elements of a chemical compound, the wheels of a watch, or the organs
of a vital structure. Let me try to show that this is so. I will begin by
considering and comparing the essential matter of two ' branches of
science,' which will, I think, be regarded by most persons as of quite
different characters, and as very properly relegated to separate and distinct
treatises. I refer to the geometrical theory of points, and the logical
theory of statements. The investigation will, I hope, fully prepare the
way for an acceptance of the general definition of the subject-matter of
exact thought which will follow."

This admirably expresses one of the main forms which translation
may take.

^ Philosophical Lectures and Remains y vol. i. p. 86 (1897).

This is very obvious in the case of the infant. ' ' There is no device ot
words that can evade or supersede the ultimate recourse to things. Now
the significations of words are learned in most cases not so much by
definitions and verbal descriptions as by the observation of the various
applications of the words. Indeed, this is the primitive way in which the
meanings of words are found out The child knows nothing of what,
say, the word horse means until someone shows it an actual horse, and,
maybe pointing to it, says repeatedly, horse, in such a way as to excite
the observation of the child to the intended application of the word to
the thing" (Francis C. Russell, Monist, January 1893, p. 279).
Indeed, it begins even earlier. The little one becomes accustomed to the
sound of the word 'milk' or 'bottle' in the nurse's mouth when it is
looking for or enjo3ing its meal, and soon translates the one experience
into the other.

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128 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

plorer ; even the fighting and drinking tendencies may be
transfigured as we get to the sound impulses which they
distort and degrade. The translation of the first is already
seen in war in the form of devoted gallantry. The second
is due to the craving for an enhanced sense of life and
power and delight which appears thus to be gratified ; the
morbid and deadly satisfaction could at least, in many
cases, be replaced by a healthy one, and in any case points
to a true need. The mere attempt to state one subject
in the terms of another, to express one set of ideas in those
words which seem to belong properly to another, changing
only the leading terms, could not fail, if done systematically
and critically, both to enlighten us on points of connection
or correspondence which have not been suspected,^ and
also, perhaps, to reveal ignorance in some cases where we
have taken knowledge for granted. It would automatic-
ally sift the superficial or partial from the deep or complex
likeness ; and it would lead to the recognition of a wide
difference between the casual, the merely illustrative analogy,
and that which indicated inter-relations not yet recognised
and utilised.^

^ A striking case of this in physical science is the 'singing flame.'
And it appears that, "extravagant as the suggestion may have seemed "
when Professor Ayrton first made it, an electric arc has actually started
playing tunes in one laboratory, and succeeded in evoking a sort of chorus
in others, to the astonishment of the physicists working in them. Thus
the time is perhaps not far distant when the arc will ' ' compete as a musical
instrument with the violin or grand organ," and "we shall be able to
realise something of the grandeur of • the morning stars singing together. ' "
( " Musical Arcs," Nature, April 4, 1901).

This is indeed a startling case of natural and practical ' translation.'
* A good scientific example of this occvirs in an address to working-
men by Sir Norman Lockyer. ' ' The next point is that the astronomical
record, studied from the evolution point of view, is in other wa)rs on all-
fours with the geological record. We get the same changes of forms,
I may say that we get the sudden breaks in forms, disappearances of old

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XVI WHAT IS MEANING? 129

One example of the various forms in which translation
in this new sense becomes a means both of testing knowledge
and of widening its range is here given. To give others
would increase the bulk of the book too much. In this case
' translation ' consists of openly borrowing the statement by
some master of thought and word, of a given thesis, and
applying this with some necessary changes to another.
Whether this involves the incongruous or falsifies argument,
or whether it fits, it will prove equally useful as a ' signific '
exercise

accompanied by appearances of new forms, and with this we get, whether
we consider the atomic weight point of view or the series point of view,
a growth of complexity. The geological story is exactly reproduced"
(Nattire, June i, 1899). Again, the very title of a leading article in
Nature (November 21, 1901) involves the principle of translation:
•• Zoological Problems studied by a Psychologist, Psychological Problems
studied by a Zoologist"

In an article on ' ' The Light-Sensations of Eyeless Animals " (Natural
Science, March 1897) we find the following: "Distinct vision of the
external world would result as soon as there were a sufficient number
of the sensory cells to give a connected translation of the image with its
various lights and shades into sensation."

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CHAPTER XVII

It is necessary to explain that the following translation
of parts of Dr. Hughlings Jackson's Lecture on the
Nervous System (1884) was the result of a friendly
challenge by the late Professor Croom Robertson to obtain
for such an attempt the endorsement of the experts in any
subject.

Although no one knows better than the writer how
defective it is, the example here given had the honour to
meet with a warm acceptance and welcome not only from
Sir J. Crichton-Browne, Dr. Mercier, and other alienists and
medical authorities, but from Dr. Hughlings Jackson himself.^

* Translation ' of Parts of Dr. Hughlings Jackson's
Croonian Lecture on the Nervous System (1884)^

Regarding the spiritual system as that part of us related
most nearly and fully to a postulated mental sphere, * solar '
to us, let us consider diseases of its functions as reversals of
evolution^ that is, as dissolutions — looking upon evolution in
the mental and spiritual (as in the physical) region as an
ascending development in a particular order.

^ I should be willing to show to any one interested the terms in which,
by letter, this acceptance was couched.

2 Verbal quotations from the Lecture are printed in italics ; the rest is
translative application. It will be seen that in this instance the transla-
tion is from what Mr. Rutgers Marshall would call the ' neurergic ' to the
•spiritual' sphere {Mind, October 1902, p. 479).

130

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CHAP. XVII WHAT IS MEANING? 131

Such a development ts (i) a passage from the most to the
least organised; {2) from the most simple to the most complex ;
{z)from the most automatic to the most voluntary. The triple
conclusion^ therefore^ from this is, that the highest (mental)
centres are the least organised, the most complex, and the most
voluntary. They are, in fact, always prophetic. There is
no inconsistency whatever in speaking of tnental centres being
at the same time the most complex and least organised. Dis-
solution being partial, the condition in every case of it is duplex
— negative and positive. To undergo (mental) dissolution is
equivalent to being reduced to a lower level <2/^ (mental) evolu-
tion. Normal thought and conduct are, or signify, survivals of
the fittest states of what we may call the topmost * layer* of the
highest (mental) centres. The illusions of the fanatic, or of the
morbid mystic and the superstitious devotee, are not caused
by (spiritual) disease, but are the outcome of the activity of what
is left of him in the highest sense ; of all there is of him ;
his illusions, etc, are his faith and his theology (or his
spiritualism) at the time of their prevailing. Thus the
various 4sms' claiming at present to be * spiritual,' and
to be revelations of the spiritual or heavenly world, may
well be witnesses, not merely of decay, but of something
to decay; something belonging to the very crown and
glory of our nature, to which they point and from which
they spring, but which has lost for the time its royal power
of rule and sway and co-ordination, whatever the reason
for this may be. And of course the disordered presenta-
tion of these activities — now illusory — tends to discredit
that whole sphere of mental action which we call religious.
Superficial observers are apt to confound the symptoms of
spiritual insanity with sjrmptoms which really imply and
point to spiritual wholeness.

The highest centres of men's mental and moral activity

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132 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

being least organised *give out * first and most entirely ;
the middle centres^ Mng more organised^ resist longer;
and the lowest centres^ being most organised, resist longest.
Does not this tend to account for the special liability
to exhaustion and perversity shown by the highest kind
of spiritual function, — that which inherently reveals the
origin, reason, and object, and also rules and directs the
lower forms of natural activity in the history of religious
thought and * revelation' generally?

That in us which is in touch with the Divine is the least
organised, the most sensitive, the easiest injured and lost ;
that in us which is in touch with the secondary sources of
light and energy is more stable and persists longer, while
that which has become merely matter of dogma, second-
hand belief or assent — *on authority' — or prescribed
conduct and obeyed law under promise and threat, belongs
to the third and lowest and most organised type.

The habitual reference to * texts' or to 'Church
authority,' to dogma and creed, to the letter rather than
the spirit of truth, would suggest our belonging to this
third level — a very useful one while the higher ones were
in abeyance, as in sleep, — ^but still answering to an animal
level of conscious life, and not to be confounded with what
alone deserves the name of the real religion of a true
Manhood

It must, however, here be observed that there are local
dissolutions of the highest centres. We may look upon some
kinds of morbid religious experiences — often accompanied
with great power to attract and much real beauty — and
some unnatural and overstrained developments of spiritual
truth enforced as absolute dogma, as representing this most
terrible of dissolutions.

Progressive muscular atrop^ begins in the most voluntary

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XVII WHAT IS MEANING? 133

limb — the arm ; and in its most voluntary pari — the hand
and fingers. So also progressively spiritual atrophy befalling
a Church (or community) or an individual, may perhaps be
said to begin in prayer, its most voluntary functioa (The
atrophy of insight, leading to the decay of prophetic,
that is, revealing power, is not here considered) Recourse
is had to repetition : m the higher form, of liturgy borrowed
or inherited from a time of really voluntary and spontaneous
religious articulation, or in the lower form of repeating by
rote composed and prescribed 'offices' of our o^n or
others' compilation as * private devotions.' The unlikeness
of this to what our Lord shows us to be the essential nature
of prayer will be obvious to any one who reminds himself of
its analogue — ^the communion of a child with its father and
mother. That the child should * perform a service,' in the
sense of repeating daily or weekly some form of words ; and
should * say ' his talk as we speak of * saying ' our prayers,
reciting in ready-made forms his reverent, loving appeal, or
thanks, or confidence, — the very idea refutes itself.^

1 (Note on Lecture) : — " The becoming more automatic is not dissolu-
tion, as 1 believe some think it to be, but is, on the contrary, evolution
becoming more complete. The highest centres are the most complexly
evolving, but are also the least completely evolved. In other words, the
highest centres are ' the ravelled end. ' In them evolution is most actively
going on, whilst in some lowest centres, e.g. the respiratory, evolution is
Probably nearly completed,"

Thus the 'liturgical' and other cognate instincts do represent the
attainment of an organic aim. But we must ever bear in mind that it is
the highest t3rpe of spiritual activity which is at once most complexly-
evolving (thus difficult to reduce to any simple ' common - sense ' or
' dogmatic ' definition), and least perfectly evolved, so that their experience
and expression must alike be expected to have, so to speak, 'ravelled
ends'; to be fragmentary, obscure, or too purely 'speculative.' The
very fact that in them the evolution of religious apprehensive and in-
terpretative faculty is actively going on entails this. We have to hope
for this (not fear it) ; and look for it and welcome its advent, if we would

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134 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

Ultimately the highest * motor centres * of practical moral
conduct and saintly devotion represent — or in other words
co-ordinate^ — movements of all parts of the (spiritual) organism
in the most special and complex combination.

Just as the anatomical bases of consciousness and memory
(the highest nervous centres) represent the whole person
physical^ consciousness represents the whole person psychical.
And may this not again form a basis or rather starting-
point for that further * layer ' of personality which, e,g,^ St
Paul calls "not I, but Christ that dwelleth in me"; that
spiritual living Identity which, like the highest centres of
the lesser personality, is potenticUly the whole Organism —
whether of individual or Race?

Again, it may be said that, as in the nervous system,
there are thru degrees of exhaustion^ three increasing depths
of dissolution of the highest functions of our being; that is,
of those functions which answer to the cosmical relations
of our earth.

(i) Roughly analogous to ordinary sleep with dreaming.
Here comes in (without fixed or definite delusions, or
unreasonable action) a want of correspondence with what is
going on round us, and a fitful and chaotic action of the
religious imagination, uncontrolled by will and intelligence.

(2) So-called loss of consciousness of the links between
outward and inward spiritual experience — analogous to sleep
with somnambulism,

(3) Coma^ significant of the dissolution of all three layers ;

with whichy seemingly ^ there is a full persistenu only of

^ vital* operations such as respiration and circulation^^

vindicate the supremacy of that spiritual dominion which we have so
suicidally called • supernatural,' instead of claiming for it in an emphatic
sense the term ' natural,' as being in a sense ultra-natural.

^ It will be noticed that no attempt has been made in this ' translation '
to apply the distinction ab-eady suggested between the 'breath' — i.e. the

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XVII WHAT IS MEANING? 135

indicating the retention of the activity of a fourth layer belong-
ing to a form of life low down in the organic scale.

We may, broadly speaking, distinguish on all sides in
the religious world these three 'layers' of degenerating
religious function ; and they surely go far to account for the
discredit into which the very name of religion (and indeed
both theology and the spiritual life) has fallen with many
of thos$ to whom the appeal of the true energy of the
'highest centre' of Man would have met with an instant
and unreserved response.

The first degree involves inability to perceive clearly
and act freely and fearlessly in touch with all orders of
fact and types of thought, even those which seem most
diverse; confusion and illusion are consecrated as mys-
tery or miracle, just as ignorant credulity or confident
dogmatism are confounded with faith. There is a want of
power to originate sequences of thought or movement, or to
receive new impressions, or to express these when formed in
word or act, and a want of reason and clearness in the so-
called 'religious ideas'; on which indeed we may even
pride ourselves, calling such blind incoherence ' faith,' and
deprecating orderly lucidity as though it were something
other than divine or spiritual — something baser and less
worthy. We can scarcely, therefore, wonder at others calling
this state of mind simply 'dreaming,' and telling us that
they have awakened to the * realities ' of common-sense, of
ascertained fact and logical statement. In too many of
those called 'believers' it gradually deepens into a more or
less complete effacement even of the dream-activity, until

spirit — world, and the world of special senses culminating in Sight and
involving high rational and moral development. It seemed best to leave
it as originally written, before the analogical value of the distinction had
been fully tested and realised.

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136 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

at last we are actually unconscious of our own unconscious-
ness, and cannot conceive that there is any attainable state
of active correspondence with spiritual reality, or any
accessible verifying or interpreting power like in character
and force to those which we call * inspired ' and * prophetic,'
but immeasurably enriched and enlarged in scope by the
growth of general knowledge and the growing means of
scientific test until now withheld from us.

This state betrays itself by the conviction that while at
some other tune or place the phenomena of active (fully
awake) spiritual life — involving powers of swaying the
world of mankind to which we are self-convicting strangers
— ^were indeed all present in full use, all that is utterly gone
by ; that now there is no possibility of any such experience,
in complete correlation with knowledge of every kind.

In this stage there is persistence only of automatic vital
operations, — a spiritual breathing and a spiritual circulation,
— a holy tone and atmosphere in the life, and a sacramental
current through it fertilising it, showing that a real though
low form of spiritual life is still present We want that.
But we want more yet

In the ascent of spiritual life from its germ to its adult
development, the higher types of order keep down the lower,
(As in organic evolution, the higher races keep down the
lower, the more complex keep down the simpler.) Dissolu-
tion is not only a * taking off^ of the higher y but is at the
very same time a * letting go^ of the lower. The relaxation
of the higher means the release of the lower. The energies
of the lower level of evolution are not goaded into activity^ but
are let go.

All elaborate spiritual states in cases of unhealthy
religious consciousness of every kind, are the outcome of
activities of healthy spiritual functions or arrangements on

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XVII WHAT IS MEANING? 137

the lower level of evolution remaining. The more rapidly
control is removed the greater is the activity on that lower
level ; as in the case of the furious delirium of the epileptic
maniac who has undergone sudden dissolution^ contrasted with
the quiescence of the senile dement whose dissolution has been
some thousand times slower}

Dr. Hughlings Jackson asks, " Of what substance can
the organ of mind be composed^ unless of processes^
representing movements and impressions 1 . . . No one
ever touched anything {had a vivid tactual image) without
fnaving his fingers ; and no one ever saw anything {had a
vivid visual image) without moving his eyes.''^ And of what
'substance/ we may ask, can the true personality be
composed unless of similar processes? Surely it may be
said of the religious Hfe that both to do well and to see
aright are active processes, and that being is a knowing and
a doing by a living One. And language — the message-
giving, the revelation of thought, — in a sense the Word also,
is a part of personality. It is true of the spiritual as of the
physiological order, that the question of articulation and
expression {as of locomotion) is fundamentally one of move-
ments of a very complex and special character.

Motion is thus the ultimate secret of conscious intelli-
gence and of living faith. We develop as we must and as we
can. But Dr. Hughlings Jackson tells us that " there is some-
thing more ; there is what I will call Internal Evolution —
a process which goes on most actively in the highest {nervous)
centres. On account of its great preponderance in the highest
centres of man, he differs so greatly from the lower animals,

* And this ought to warn us of the tendency of that activity which we
often call sudden conversion — that is an induced religious convulsion.
This is totally different from a true 'sudden conversion' — the arrival
of a ' soul ' at its flash point — the detonation of long - accumulating
fulminates.

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138 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

I contend that permanent re-arrangements {internal evolutions)
are made during so-called dreamless sleep. The doctrine I
submit accounts for what^ at the first glance^ seems the
inadequate number of fibres from the lowest centres towards
the highest:'

And in the spiritual life also there is truly something
more than the 'external' development There is an internal
evolution which goes on, thank God, even during the most
unconscious or dreamless form of spiritual sleep. And
that internal evolution is the very secret why the true Man —
the Man divine in Christ — differs from, as higher than, the
self-man which we call the * natural' man; why the man
in conscious relation with the spiritual cosmos is higher than
the man merely in conscious relation with his own little
religious planet, supposing it to be the centre of the spiritual
universe. We may indeed be thankful here for the "in-
adequate number of fibres from the lowest centres towards
the highest"

"/« the case of visual perception there is an unbroken
physical circuity complete reflex action^ from sensory periphery
through the highest centres back to the muscular periphery.
The visual image, a purely mental state, occurs in parallelism
with — arises during (not from) the activity of the two highest
links of this purely physical chain ; so to speak, it * stands
outside ' these links.**

And of course it may be said that 'spiritual insight'
stands outside the physical links. But surely these thoughts
suggest that thus it may well be not the less, but the more
important and central to our experience.

It is obvious that if, as the approval of the author and
of representative experts in the subject thus 'translated'
seems to warrant us in assuming, this points to really valid

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XVII WHAT IS MEANING? 139

correspondence between the highest mental and the most
complex neural activities, we must consider in this context
the question of the existence of a class of ideas which
cannot be considered either as merely literal or as merely
figurative, but as combining both. This, we may say, as of
a fine picture, is the combination of the actual and the
symbolic, of the real and the ideal.

In the case of knowledge acquired by the scientific
method, we know that beyond the simple directness of
sense-perception we have various forms of indirect know-
ledge. Perhaps the most obvious of these is found in the
case of vision already touched upon. First we * see ' with
the naked eye ; then we acquire the telescope, and * through '
it indirectly or mediately see more ; lastly, we use a sensitive
plate in connection with telescope and eye, and our vision
becomes doubly indirect But we are throughout dealing
with the same * realities.'

Now we are accustomed to reason as though in the
pursuit of fact or truth there could only be two possible
alternatives. We are dealing either with something literal
or actual, or with metaphor. The former is fact, the latter
is at best merely useful illustration, essentially casual and
partial, and therefore never to be treated as evidence.

Suppose, however, that what we take for mere metaphor
may in some cases be indirectly perceived fact^ which must
be expressed, if at all, analogically ? Suppose that there is
a middle region in which we are dealing neither with the
merely literal nor the merely metaphorical, but with direct,
indirect, and doubly indirect experience ? ^

1 See Note XVI., Appendix.

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CHAPTER XVIII

One of the main results of the backward state of language
and the prevalent 'mislocution' is, of course, the unconscious
see-saw of senses and meanings which goes on between the
usages of the common-sense or practical man in the ordinary
intercourse of life, and the usages of the scientific and
philosophical teacher. The former freely uses words like
Sense, Sensation, Feeling, Matter, Force, Mind, Will, in all
sorts of * senses,' according to the impulses inherited or ac-
quired at school These * senses ' are usually called out or
suggested by experience which varies almost endlessly with
age, circumstances, health, etc The same thing happens
with short sentences or conventional phrases embodying
such terms.

But both words and phrases (or sentence-sections) creep
out into ever wider circles of usage, and infect serious writing
and careful argument on every topic. Few suspect that
there is any danger in the extraordinary inconsistencies which
such words and phrases carry with them in their popular use.
They are harmless enough in the ordinary rambling or random
talk in which mistakes are generally food for fun only, though
even then they are often the source of that result of discus-
sion which is appropriately called * misunderstanding.' ^ But
they get into higher and higher society, until at last they are
^ See Note XVII., Appendix.

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CHAP. XVIII WHAT IS MEANING? 141

found not only in abstract philosophical controversy, but in
scientific lectures and text-books which are heard and read
with a sort of veneration by the common-sense public Thus
like boomerangs they return to confirm original confusions
(which probably the Lecturer or Manual-writer had himself
outgrown), and make them 'worse confounded.' In this
way sentences, or parts of them, as well as single words, are
alwa3rs swaying backwards and forwards between the ex-
tremes of literal or direct and metaphorical or indirect
meaning. We suddenly find ourselves using this or that
one as a pure metaphor for the first time, or as suddenly
relapsing into its literal or direct use. As the whole context
is in the same case^ and cross-currents of meaning, untraced,
unnoticed, ripple out in every direction (as social or other
conditions become modified, and new combinations arise)
we have practically no trustworthy criterion anywhere.
Some newspapers are, of course, largely responsible for the
flood of ambiguous writing which is daily poured forth;
it is a common-place that they have inflicted ' Journalese '
upon us, and helped to deteriorate rather than to raise
the language standard But once they are roused to a
sense of what is lost in economy of time and trouble by
preventible causes, and might be gained by consensus even
of the most elementary and provisional kind, they would be
the most eager and the most efficient promoters of that
which would so strongly conduce to their interests. For
the writer as well as the reader of * ephemeral ' literature is
more and more forced to economise time and labour ; and
under present conditions he has to wade through swamps
which could be easily drained and levelled for his use.
Thus he would help to persuade parents and schoolmasters
that the first need is to centre all education upon the
question of * Meaning and how to convey it.' As a fact,

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142 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

we have abundant evidence to show that the Times has for
some years acted as a pioneer in this matter. But how
little impression has been made ! ^

At present a word (or phrase) means whatever the fashion
{i.e, casual consensus of clique, set, or class) constrains it to
convey. Thus * phenomenal' is often distorted to mean
unusual, exceptional, very large, simply odd or tiresome,
or anything else that idly occurs to the first comer
who starts a mere fashion in language. And here lies the
promise of the future. Sometimes we have many ways of
saying one thing and few of saying another ; then it is well
to take a word out of the richer store to add to the poorer.
But the old word transplanted will not mean exactly what
the established word has done. And when we use it in the
old sense, we find that we are not properly understood,
except in purely technical writing.^ But we must learn to

^ For instance, take the grovelling helplessness revealed in passages like
the following : — '*The term 'law' has undergone so many changes of
meaning since it was first introduced firom jurisprudence into the various
sciences, that it would be futile to try now to oppose its use where it has
once been firmly established" (Lectures, etc., Oertd (1902), p. 262).
Suppose that this had been said of the slave-trade or of children's labour
and the other social abuses which have been successfully opposed ? Of
course, the attitude of mind which assumes all attempt at resistance or
reform to be ' futile,' creates the futility. With minds of this stamp — ^too
many, unhappily, in positions of official authority — President Roosevelt's
success in the recent coal-strike (1902) would have been impossible.

^ Even in this we find cases where the use of a term is persisted in
when practically it only serves to perpetuate needless controversy. In
a review of Wundt's Grundziige der physiologischen Psychologies 1902
(Nature, Nov. 6, 190a), the writer says : **The discussions of the func-
tions of the cortex and especially of the ' speech-centres ' are admirably
thorough and suggestive, and here Wundt g^ives a great development to
the conception of a ' brain-centre.' It is, perhaps, to be regretted that he
retains the term ' centre,' for it properly expresses a crude conception of
which the period of usefulness is now at an end. " Then surely the experts
ought unanimously to discontinue its use !

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XVIII WHAT IS MEANING? 143

control and order all this. For one thing meaning is not,
and that is * plain* in the sense of being the same at all
times, in all places, and to alL^

Besides the words and phrases which, on the whole,
have risen or fallen steadily in meaning, there are those
which seem to rise and fall in irregular tidal rhythms, the
law of which perhaps some day we may learn to understand
better than we do now ; we may even arrive at * curves ' of
thought revealed by change of meaning. And these 'curves'
are probably far less simple and less easily mastered than
either the missionary of religion or the anthropological
missionary has imagined.

Translation considered as mental digestion renders
foreign substances' innocuous if not actually nourishing.
Digestion (next to vibration turned into sense-product) is
the ruling example of translative change. Even waste pro-
duct manures the glorious rose, the com, the vine, etc.,
and water, through the agency of * life,* becomes sap, grape-
juice, wine. For in the larger sense wherein it is here used,
translation includes transformation.^

^ There is nothing more curious than the prevalence of the myth of the
'plain' meaning which all can read at all times and in all places.
Probably the only type of this which exists out of the sphere of mathe-
matical formula is that of the gesture indicating hunger ; yet contro-
versialists like Sir W. Harcourt tell us that some types of mind ' • seem to
labour under an invincible incapacity to attach a plain meaning to plain
words" {Times t January 19, 1899). As if, except in the loosest sense,
any one could !

^ It is worth remembering that not only can you translate the serious
into the humorous and vice versa (though the latter is too seldom done)
but you can translate from one sphere of humour into another. E.g.
Alice in Wonderland translated by the Westminster Gazette, pictures and
all ; a perfect example of translation from the social into the political
sphere.

Again, Darwin's Expression of the Emotions has stimulated and indeed
started a good deal of research into the origin of emotional signs ; but we

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144 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

But we think that to digest what we have read, marked,
and learnt does not mean that we ought to expect results
from acting thus, analogous to the results of actual digestion.
The consequence is that this metaphor actually hinders us
in expressing what we mean. We look for what, judged by
our own figure, we cannot have. Digested food is pro-
foundly changed by the process. If I say, " I will carefully
weigh your statement after sifting the evidence you have
brought," I give you quite a different impression from what
you would have received if I had said, "I will carefully
sow, cultivate, and then eat and assimilate your statement,
and let you know the result" The latter alone refers to
digestion: sifting and weighing belong to quite another
order of ideas. At present a really illustrative use of
metaphor would often read like burlesque. But this is a
great loss.

It is obvious that in the literal sense the translation of

do not enough notice the importance of the translation of these which is
always going on. The history of the licking of a dog, of a kiss, of an arm
round the neck or 'waist,' of stroking, even of a loving smile, gains a
new ethical significance when we realise that these and other sig^is of
attachment and even tender or passionate affection have been translated
from savage violence and the natural expressions of hatred or contempt ;
while the trembling, faintness, and tears of sudden joy or thankful relief
were originally signs of suffering or terror. The lesson here seems to be
that we are utterly wrong in trying merely to eradicate evil tendencies in
children or savages ; what we have to aim at is always the translation
of th^se into the corresponding good. But until the wide application
of the term, especially in training, is realised, we cannot hope to e£fect
this.

In one case, however, it has been successfully done for practical purposes.
The sheep-dog's enthusiasm in guiding and guarding the flock which he has
been trained to supervise is the translation into its converse of the wild
dog's instinct to hunt, scatter, and destroy them. It is said that the
intense energy with which the collie pursues his translated vocation
makes him liable, unless precautions are taken, to die prematurely of
heart-disease.

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XVIII WHAT IS MEANING? 145

one language into another (and the degree in which it is
possible) depends on the ultimate common character of the
two. In this case that community of nature is settled
already. We admit that the languages are human, and
that therefore they belong to the same category ; the differ-
ences are all secondary.

Thus the translation whether good or bad must always be
valid, justifiable; we discover that we have one thing in
two forms. And this conclusion is only strengthened if
we refer to the original meaning of translation, which is
spatial — a transference of position. But there is another
sense in which translation of this kind may necessarily fail,
because it cannot convey the subtle context of association,
that Significance which is the highest form of meaning.
As Jowett well says, " The famous dispute between Nominal-
ists and Realists would never have been heard of, if, instead
of transferring the platonic ideas into a crude Latin phraseo-
logy, the spirit of Plato had been truly understood and
appreciated." ^

Translation, again, may be admirable from the linguistic,
the grammatical, and idiomatic point of view, and yet
detestable from the literary standpoint. Only when it is
admirable from the highest point of view does it become a
version. And the typical example of this is the authorised
translation of the Old Testament.

As well remarked in an article in the Times on "The
Poetry of King Alfired," ^ "the originality which is felt in
Alfred's work through the guise of translation consists largely
in his masterful transformation of his text, like a man whose
purpose is well known to himself and is remote from aims
merely literary." The instance taken is the passage in

^ Plato^ vol. iv. p. 39 (3rd ed., 1892).
* August 20, 1901.

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146 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

which " the position of the Earth in the celestial system is
likened to the yolk in an egg " :

similar to what we see in an egg ;

the yolk in the midst, and yet gliding free,

the egg round about. So all the world resteth

still in its place, while streaming around

water-floods play, welkin and stars ;

and the shining shell circleth about,

day by day now as it did long ago.

The writer continues: — "But in this simile of the egg
the text has no part ; it is a solid addition from his own
stores, and it illustrates the purpose of his mind He is
seeking to convey great ideas by easy and familiar means ;
he is seeking to bring down the lore of the philosopher to
the comprehension of his untutored folk. The egg mani-
fests this purpose in a concrete and conspicuous manner,
and it is a typical example of his teaching." Here we have
a case of conscientious analogy.

Just as it is the human prerogative to translate the
organic form of appreciating what sign signifies into the
intellectual form of intentionally interpreting symbol, and
to translate sense-impression into the terms of its excitant,
so it is the highest form of that prerogative to translate the
intellectual form of interpretation into what for want of a
better term may be called verified or disciplined mysticism,
that which has passed through the ordeal of science.^ Also
* mysticism ' is often the raw material, or at least the fore-
runner, the * onseeing ' of science. The dreams of alchemy
have thus been transmuted into the achievements of
chemistry, its prayer has been answered in an unexpected
sense ; it has been itself transmuted from base metal into

^ There are many signs of the advent of this, notably in recent articles
in Nature.

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XVIII WHAT IS MEANING? 147

gold ; the dreams of astrology have become the realities of
astronomy. We have reached no final limit in either, and
are warned that the progress of science is never linear, but
that the next advance (as in the biological *tree') may
involve new direction in departure. And direction is often
more important than distance.

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CHAPTER XIX

Taking what is, at least so far as it goes, one of our best
analogies, we may say that the world of man's thought,
like the world of his sense-life, goes through a period of
merely diffused light ; through impenetrable belts of cloud
wherein the sun, the fellow-planets, and, beyond both, the
stellar universe, — its nebulae, its comets, its sun-systems, —
can only be inferred, or can only bestir us and evoke
* intuitive' response as do the X-rays, through apparently
dense media, and as shadows of real objects. The visible
light rays then belong to a higher and future development.
And the present study of the phenomena of Radiation or
Radiancy seems to point to a similar advance.

For it is not for nothing that we honour the man who
'throws light' upon the obscurities and 'clears away the
mists and fogs ' of life ; it is not accidental that we use the
post-Copemican relation between sun and earth ; although,
alas ! side by side with that true translation we preserve the
false translation, the misinterpretation of earth as fixed and
central.

The idea of Translation in all its applications naturally
implies the recognition of Distinction, and starts firom the
conception (or principle) of Equation, which is in the
quantitative what Translation (the discovery and applica-
tion of the common element in the diverse or different) is

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CHAP. XIX WHAT IS MEANING? 149

in the qualitative sphere. Much work, like that done by
Mayer and Joule, remains to be attempted on a different
plane. But it is obvious that only within narrow limits
can we expect to find mechanical or even logically perfect
equivalence. And even if we did we might suspect (in the
world of mind) that the one was the derivative or reflection
of the other ; that we had found the analogue of the mirror.
This, of course, cannot be excluded from the domain of
translation in its extended (signific) sense; but we must
carefully understand its conditions.^

But Translation may be helpful, that is, revelative and
illuminative, when there is much less literal correspondence
than in this case. It applies wherever there is a presumable
unity implied in differences which can be distinguished.^

1 A good case of doubtful ' translation ' seems to be afforded by Dr.
Haacke, who "seeks to prove that the mechanical conception of nature
leaves room for £EUth in a moral order of nature, by showing that natural
bodies and organisms, and human ideals alike follow a great law of
tendency to equilibrium." In his book (reviewed in Nature, April 2,
1896) "Schopenhauer's *will to live' is replaced by the 'will to equi-
librate,'" and he shows that "art, morality, and religion exhibit the
tendency to unite various elements into an equilibrium, that is, in simpler
language, into an organic system." The reviewer, however, objects that
"Dr. Haacke apparently takes natural selection to be a force instead of
a mere process according to which forces act, dismisses it for this reason,
and sets up in its place an unreal striving after equilibrium, which equi-
librium is only an efifect. "

The kind of distinction which is nearest to actual identity may be
illustrated by 12 + 8 =: 15 -H 5. Though these are both 20 there is a differ-
ence caused by logical perspective ; we think the result- in either way
from either standpoint.

3 "He (Emerson) respects common-sense, and dreads to disturb his
vague aspirations by translating them into a definite system. . . . (He)
may even be translated into the phraseology of the humble ' Lockist ' "
("Emerson," Leslie Stephen, National Review, Feb. 1901, p. 890).

"The leaders of the Conservative party carry their sublime heads in
clouds fiar above the common affiairs of municipal life. They have never
translated Imperialism into terms that fit these affairs, or thought out

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ISO WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

What we want is neither an artificial mode of uniting the
apparently diverse, discrepant, separate, nor an equally
artificial postulate of primary identity which either ignores,
minimises, or excludes distinction.^

As Translation involves both unity and distinction (the
one actually and the other implicitly), language must itself
be recognised as the means of discovering contrasts together
with the links which constitute them elements of unity, or
at least completely exclude the idea of final disparateness.
Even the wildest analogy which betrays itself in popular or
inherited (and animistic) metaphor is seen as a serious eflfort
to accomplish this rational duty, one in which, as a fact, the
whole race at all stages of its psychological ascent shares.
For a thing is significant, both in the lower and in the
higher sense, in proportion as it is expressible through bare
sign or pictorial symbol or representative action. In the
higher sense (that of vital or moral or rational import-
ance) it is significant in proportion as it is capable of
expressing itself in, or being translated into, more and more
phases of thought or branches of science. The more varied
and rich our employment of signs (so long as such employ-
ment be duly critical, securing that we know well what we
are doing, also the indispensable condition of humour), the
greater our power of inter-relating, inter-translating, various
phases of thought, and thus of coming closer and closer to
the nature of things in the sense of starting-points for the
acquisition of fresh knowledge, new truth.

social and economic problems from any independent standpoint " ( Times,
March 4, 1901).

^ An amusing instance of the double sense of translation occurs in the
Westminster Gazette (Sept. 2, 1902), where the heading " Chinese * Char-
acter' Mistranslated" may perhaps describe some diplomatic dealings
with that enigmatic race, while it directly refers to a hitch in the verbal
rendering of a treaty.

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XIX WHAT IS MEANING? 151

As the distinction between the * physical* and the
'mental' world is one of the last analysis, an answer to
those who would doubt the validity of a translation of the
one into the terms of the other is to be found in the word
' sense/ This in Latin and all derivative languages has
references of observation as well as of ulterior meaning :
there being involved in this word a translation which is
perfect, from the perceptual to the conceptual. At first
sight, like many other terms used in more than one sense,
* sense* itself seems merely ambiguous. But we have seen
that there is an ambiguity, which, as the witness to one
reality in diverse forms, is of high value.

Further, the physical certainly expresses itself in the
psychical, and, in a slightly different sense, the mental in the
physical. And this identity of result may be observed any
day : mental conditions may be reflected in a man's bodily
appearance — often against his will; and the environment
expresses itself in our ideas of it. The strictly metaphysical
aspect of this question, however, needs fuller consideration
than can be given to it in a mere introductory sketch of
the subject called Signifies.

There is another aspect of Translation already touched
upon which might well be utilised in controversy, and has
in fact been found of definite service. In an ordinary
discussion or argument, the controversialist endeavours
simply to overthrow or discredit his adversary's position
or contention. Each proceeds against the other as the
champion of an opposite thesis. But in the end, it is
evident that whichever side prevails, the upshot is nothing
more than the displacement of one view by another.
Now, instead of this, the object of each controversialist
should be to translate the adversary's own position to him.
And in proportion as our own position is really the most

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152 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

valid, we shall be able to afford to look as it were through
his eyes and to call his attention to what, on his own show-
ing, he is bound to see and has unwittingly overlooked.

But in order to do thb effectually it is necessary
genuinely to follow his line of thought; and the present
contention is that only a previous training m Signifies
can enable the ordinary mind to surmount the difficulties
of this task. Even if we succeed we shall almost certainly
find that either we have ourselves dropped out some
factor, the loss of which invalidates our own train of
reasoning and has exposed us to his attacks ; or are uncon-
sciously starting firom some premiss no longer tenable ; or
have stopped short in our advance at some arbitrary point
or selected finality which suited the convenience of our
thinking or feeling; or else that our opponent has done
one or all of these things.^

Then the premiss on either side can be revised, the
missing Hnks provided ; and above all, the logical journey
continued at whatever cost to our respective predilections.
If in any controversy we feel that we can afford to do this,
the probability is, as has already been suggested, that we
shall supply our opponent with a new perspective from
which he can see an unsuspected value in our position or
force in our contention. And we shall avoid the hindering
appearance of gaining a victory at our adversary's expense.
He will say : in that sense I can admit that my position
needs revision. In making himself stronger with the help
we have had the courage to give him, he will strengthen

^ And be it noted, we as well as our opponent (if we have thoroughly
entered into the scientific attitude) sbaii be nearly certain to discover
that this has largely been due to the relatively undeveloped state of articu-
late expression. Language is too often allowed to remain the accomplice
of a 'personal equation' which in any case is sure to be potent and
persistent.

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XIX WHAT IS MEANING? 153

us also. For instead of the mere substitution of one half-
view for another, or, on the other hand, the mere mixture, so
to speak, of some oil with some water of thought, we shall
better understand the causes of our difference, and make
that difference (which may even be one of race) a means,
through combination, of enriching the common store of truth.

There is, however, yet another aspect of Translation in its
transformative character which sends us for examples to the
world of physical science. We may say that the biological
justification of the principle is found in cases such as that
described by Professor A. M. Marshall,^ in which one
species is transformed into another by the modifying action
of environment. And of course the fact of transformation
by preferential breeding and by domestication is also a case
in point. It is deplorable that we should neglect as we do
the educational value of such facts. Like the facts of
physical training, they all need translation into our systems
of mental training and of thought.

We have only to consult thinkers like Professor Ernst
Mach (who at least cannot be accused of idealistic meta-
physics!) to realise that what he calls "that veritable
miracle of thought-transference . . . communication by
language," ^ is the very supposition of all thinking, and is
essentially translation in the sense now suggested, that is, as
including transformation, transmutation, and transfiguration,
making translucent and transparent, recognising as the
medium of all mediums that Expression which, alas ! we have
been too content to leave opaque and dense in a sense which
might almost be said to confine us within pre-visual limits.

^ Lectures, pp. 30-33 (1894). ' See Note XVIII., Appendix.

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CHAPTER XX

Even the Darwinian thinker ought to be able to defend
his position in far less vulnerable terms than he does. The

* Origin ' of species, Natural ' Selection/ the * Descent ' of
man, are all cases in point ; so is the * rudimentary ' used for

* vestigial ' ; while the extreme materialist, rationalist, idealist,
and spiritualist are all victims of the falsities of Expression
which once, in another age, were truths. While thus truth
remains the same (though in no fixed or rigid sense), the life
of mankind describes a curve round it, and it is impos-
sible to express in identical terms the different, the even con-
trasted outlooks which his spiral advance, like that of his
world, gives him. Put solar for Divine, and planetary for
Human, — that is, sun for Divine centre, for God ; and
planet for Man, for the offspring and satellite of that centre
— and you have at once the greatest and the truest analogy
for religion.^ It is heliotropic and beyond that cosmotropic,
never geocentric. If this contention seems to involve the

^ It ought to be noted that this is not a quantitative figure. The
objection that thus we are postulating a host of divinities, each with its
system of satellites, is irrelevant We are speaking only of a relation and
from the qualitative point of view. In this sense we may, if we will, con-
ceive the known universe itself as such a solar centre with dependent
worlds beyond our ken revolving roimd it ; or as in its turn one • planet '
of a further and unimaginable 'Sun.' It is not a question either of size
or of number.

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CHAP. XX WHAT IS MEANING? 155

difficult question of the Divine Personality (made surely
more difficult by irrelevant assumptions), we must repeat that
in these cases we are compelled to use the signs by which
we express mental facts, as metaphors for what these facts
suggest to us.

We can never rightly ascribe any quality to the Divine
which makes it Divine to us, without doing this very thing.
We feel something as Divine, because this has become a
metaphor for the most vital of our ideals. We accept the
ideal of a supreme love, truth, justice, even though we
cannot believe in its personal realisation. So, when we
postulate Divine facts, we express them in human metaphor.
We already use such terms as father, mother, brother, sister,
in more than their literal sense on the human plane. Then
in turn we apply them to that which, though we can only
approach or imagine it through the human, cannot be more
than figured by the human, unless, indeed, once more we
recognise the natural presumption that planetary humanity
is but an infantile form of that which may be assumed to
belong to a solar and a cosmic * world ' ; in which case our
anthropomorphism is also the natural expression of the pre-
dictive, which is also the immature. We must either feel that
personality is but a metaphor as applied to Perfect Being,
or that indeed our own personality is but the metaphor —
in a true sense the image — of the Divine personality. That,
at least, accounts for our instinct of protest against all that
would degrade or debase humanity as the manifestation of
a Life which is true, whether that protest be against vice or
selfishness, or against 'infidelity' on the one hand and
* superstition ' on the other. Both dishonour what we see as
pure and noble, and as the very light of life. We cannot be
too thankful that language already compels us to confess the
'heavenly,' the solar, the cosmic relation. Whatever raises.

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156 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

exalts, is higher in scale and standard, that the Man worthy
of his race aspires to and welcomes. Whatever ^degrades
and debases, such a man repudiates with scorn. Th^ pro-
cess of evolution itself is one which he calls^- ^ ascension,'
although it may and does include that of reversioa-and
degeneration.

It must be once more repeated that, whether we.jyill or
no, our thought starts from analogy. Strip all aWay, and still
you cannot speak except by assuming the analogy between
your mind and the mind you speak to. In the san^e way,
learn to assume the post-Copemican analogy and ^ou will
find it work better in practice than the pre-Copg^can.
Christ is not merely the supreme outcome and flowfer of
the race any more than the sun or its rays are the highest
product of the earth, or light its gift to the universe. He
is and manifests the Energy which is solar to us ; and we
may rejoice to think of the infinite riches of such radiating
Energy.

But in the case of all analogy, its claim in any given case
to be valid has to be established by evidence ; it has endless
degrees of presumable validity. It has to vindicate its
claim to be more than a casual illustration, however brilliant
and forcible. We are right in saying that ansdogy is not
argument, and we cannot too carefully examine the ground
on which we appeal to this or that one, and form any
conclusion from it.^ For the very virtue of analogy lies
in its supposed or professed ability to relate modes of ex-
perience apparently divergent, even discrepant, but certainly
discrete and disparate, and to relate these in such a manner
as to increase our productive command over the two appar-
ently incompatible or unrelated lines of thought or work.

^ Is not metaphorical gesture the earliest application of analogy in
figure and always valid ?

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XX WHAT IS MEANING? 157

What, then, is the evidence to which we must appeal?
First, the conditions of the comparison made; and, secondly,
its results. The * leading case ' which must govern all our
ideas of 'stating one part of experience in the terms of
another' is, of course, that which man has from the first
been compelled to do ; that is, after having named his own
muscular activities, and then bestowed these names on the
motions which he saw in the world around him, to proceed
to speak of his own 'feelings' and thinking processes in
terms of these physical activities. At a later stage this
process again reversed itself, and we find him expressing the
phenomena in nature, and their changes, in terms of his own
emotions or sensations.

If we had really been trained to understand not merely
the changes, but the nature and work and place, the endless
richness and growing variety of the ideas of Sense, Meaning,
and Significance ; if we had really leamt the inestimable
value of organising our present * chaos ' of expression ; if we
had only in expression arrived at the point which the
method of physical science has reached, — it would be difficult
to exaggerate the effect on current controversy.

Take the case of * miracle.' It is strange how little even
yet we act upon the knowledge that, as Harnack reminds us,
" the strict conception which we now attach to the word
* miracle ' was in former times unknown ; it came in only with a
knowledge of the laws of nature and their general validity " ;
and that primarily " no sound insight existed into what was
possible and what was impossible, what was rule and what
was exception," so that even a thousand years ago there
were "no such things as miracles in the strict sense of
the word." ^

^ What is Christianity f Adolf Haraack, trans, by T. Bailey Saunders
(1901), p, 25,

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IS8 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

The same writer asks how, since we all live " in a language
of metaphor," we can " avoid conceiving that which is Divine
and makes us free, as a mighty power working upon the
order of Nature, and breaking through or arresting it ? " *
This of course, as he says, belongs to the realm of fantasy.
But how if we have never thought of translating the Divine
in the light of our solar dependence ? Hamack clearly sees
that no one has yet set bounds to the actual, much less to
the possible. But of much that now baffles us, " perhaps
the meaning will dawn upon you later, and the story assume
a significance of which you never dreamt" ^ Only first we
must train ourselves and our children to see that this meaning
and this significance, as in this case properly distinguished,
are themselves, with the sense that as it were mothers them,
our main concern.

Part of our discontent and pessimism is * planetary,
and therefore must and will be outgrown. But part is the
voice of the ' cosmos ' in us, its messengers and spokesmen
(as even a microbe may be the ambassador of life) ; for we
are the offspring of that parent, and our ideals imply aspira-
tions as real as the universe which prompts them. Only,
these ideals and desires need enormous exaltation. We
do not know yet how mean they are, because we do not
know how much we are fettered by mistaking the mind of
a mere speck-world, a second-rate planet of a minute system,
for the mind of that system or of that which the system
belongs to. Why, for instance, should we always insist on
* grasping * a subject, and refuse to * touch ' it unless we can
grasp it ; while what can neither be grasped nor touched is
simply ignored? Have we really evolved no eyes? Does
the astronomer grasp the Milky Way? and if he cannot
reach and touch Sirius, or even Mars, can he tell us

^ What is Christianity f p. 27. * Ibid. p. 29.

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XX WHAT IS MEANING? 159

nothing at all about them? What cannot be grasped we
think may be neglected, for it must be beyond our reach,
and therefore any attempt to deal with it becomes futile.
We might as well describe astronomy as manifestly specula-
tive and therefore essentially visionary. We are bidden to
believe that if we could reach or touch them we should find
some of the heavenly objects solid or at least materially real,
but this, we might protest, is either an appeal to faith or a
merely logical inference. Let us confine ourselves to the
tangible and over^tajid. the solid ground ! We can only under-
stand the heavens as blue ceilings studded with discs and
points of light. Probably some day we shall find that they are
all survivals of primordial illusions bom of that instinct for
the transcendental out of which we must grow.^ We have
projected them as we have projected our pains and aches
into our extremities ; and they are therefore like our philoso-
phies and our religions, which, indeed, are concerned with
the so-called universe and the so-called heavens. Earth,
and Earth alone, we proclaim with misplaced arrogance, is
our heritage ; for the things of that alone are really within
our grasp, of that we can take firm hold, and it is thus only
that the messages of sight can be tested. Once leave this
solid standing-ground and we are the victims of hallucinations
at every step.^

We used to assume the earth (touch) and arrive at the
sun (vision). Now we get our truest cosmology by assum-
ing the sun (vision) and arriving at the earth (touch).
We need to come back to a world of Touch— an amoebic
world — with the spoils of an evolved Vision. Then we
should no longer confine our interest to the 'tangible'

^ In another sense this is true. We have to * grow out ' of these
instincts or intuitions as out of a fertilised germ.

* This is hardly a caricature of the attitude of the ' positivist. '

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i6o WHAT IS MEANING? chap, xx

or dread the 'transcendent'; our only fear would be
lest we should confound the subjective illusion with the
objective reality, like the man who identified an assailant
" by the flash of light his blow on my eye produced " ! ^

* Like many other writers, Mr. A. E. Taylor {TAe Problem of Conduct,
p. 20) protests against the use of a physical term like ' energy ' to express
mental phenomena. I am, of course, the last person to complain of any
one's denouncing the abuse of physical imagery. But I fear that here, as
usual, the practice is only complained of where it makes for a view dis-
liked by the writer, and in all others is unconsciously followed. In truth,
our whole mental vocabulary is borrowed from the ph3rsical world, though
it was originally the expression of our own organic * activities.'

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CHAPTER XXI

SiGNiFics, then, will bring us the philosophy of Significance ;
ue, a raising of our whole conception of meaning to a
higher and more efficient level ; a bringing cosmos out of
the present 'chaos' of our ideas as to sense, meaning,
and significance, and showing us that we need to use
these terms in a certain order of value and range. Its
best type of metaphor is the * solar,' its best mine of
analogy is the biological ; because, as implying an extension
of purview given us in spatial form by (post-Copernican)
astronomy, it tends to relate the idea of life to the 'ideas of
motion and matter, and moreover to relate the idea of mind
to both. Thus Signifies involves essentially and typically
the philosophy of Interpretation, of Translation, and thereby
of a mode of synthesis accepted and worked with by science
and philosophy alike ; profoundly modifying what we
wrongly call the * root ' ideas of religion, of ethics, of poetry,
of art, and, lastly, of practical life in all forma But if studied
systematically it would be seen from the first to provide a
method of observation, a mode of experiment which ex-
tends far beyond the laboratory, and includes the inductive
and deductive methods in one process. There would never
be any need to struggle that this view of things may
supersede others ; it could never be a supplanting system,
and could never thus be attached to any individual name ;

M

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i62 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

it must necessarily be worked out by many co-operating
minds. The principle involved forms a natural self-acting
Critique of every system in turn, including the common-
sense ideal But also it gives the gist, the vital centre,
the growth -point of every existent organism of thought.
It explains its own thinker to himself; it accounts for his
thinking what he does as he does, and thus explains other
thinkers to themselves. In fact, for the first time we gain
a glimpse into what lies * beyond the veil,' which both
our own primitive and confused idea of Meaning and our
modes of applying it have drawn over the world. The
criteria thus reached will vindicate themselves alike to the
most opposed of our thinkers.

As in the biological there is presumably in the mental
world a tendency to recapitulation. Indeed, comparative
mythology and folk-lore have brought to light what corre-
spond to the miscalled rudimentary, really vestigial, survivals
in modern thought It would seem also that the present
pre-Copernican character of science as applied to theories of
life and mind (and called Positivism or Agnosticism) is a
case of atavism. We may be supposed to have re-developed
the Ptolemaic mode of thought (as we may revert to a lower
level physiologically), having yet to reach in full mental use
the Copernican scheme of cosmogony.

Thus our thinking is full of practical fallacy. We are
unconsciously bound by a travesty of Euclid. And we
have not merely to be true to Euclidean geometry in so far
as it still holds good, but to advance with the geometrical
thinkers who (as presumably he would himself now have
done) are finding his limitations provisional

To refer once more to instances already dealt with, we
assume that the farther you go on a given * line ' of thought,
the farther you go from your starting-point. But this does

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XXI WHAT IS MEANING? 163

not follow. It will be objected at once that what the
positive curvature of space symbolises is ultimately a closed
sphere. Thus you instantly have to conceive another one
outside of it which might be reached and traversed, so that
the 'fallacy ' is true again. No. The true idea of the content
of the conception of infinity is not that it is merely quantita-
tive ; it not only means area after area of experience or of
anything else ; it means infinity in Change in the sense of
transformation from worse to better in our ideal of the uni-
verse, our theory of the knower and the known. It is a
question of change in direction and change in quality ; the
fourth dimension, whether reached in tenable form or no, is
* a parable of this ; so is * mind ' itself with reference to the
organic, — it is 'infinite' to that: it is not subject to the
same limitations, though it has some of its own.^ But then
what a disgrace to have only a negative term for this ! To
, the *geocentricist' to stand over or upon; to the *solarist'
, to stand under, and to the 'cosmicist' to stand within:
these are the three forms of * apprehension ' which, fortu-
nately, we do call under-, not over-standing. If only we were
^ consistent in thisl But all alike must leam to do more
, than stand, must learn to move and to advance and to
' rise.' Corresponding to this we have three forms of ex-
perience rendered by metaphors : one of line, one of surface,
one of cube. No doubt the three are ultimately one ; but
^ to our great practical loss and danger we confound their
distinctions.

That which * transcends' in any sense the ordinary

limits of experience is often rightly enough referred to the

vague, unknown, unsafe, unreal. Well, that * beyond'

J which the telescope and spectroscope bring us (especially

I;" 1 When the above was writteo I knew nothing of Croll's theory of

jv direction v, force.

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i64 WHAT IS MEANING? chap, xxi

the latter) gives us the bases of the most accurate
predictions which science makes. The tree is known by
its fruit No one would protest against transcendency of
that kind. Now think of the incredible power of projec-
tion possessed by plant and insect, as shown in the ejection
of seeds, the jumping of grasshoppers, etc This is at least
a hundred times greater than our own muscular power.
Suppose that by contracting into the scale of the insect we
were to gain a tremendous projective power? Perhaps the
demand for greater size as the invariable concomitant of
fuller power to which we are so much addicted would thus
be relegated to a truer place. The greater energy often
belongs to the smaller body.

Again, in this region of greater intensity we find a
minute world the existence of which we had not suspected ;
and here lie many answers to Whys that we have vainly
sought in the expansive ' beyond.'

The truth is that hitherto we have been content to go to
the root of the matter and the foundation of things. And
when we have got there and described what we found, we
are surprised and disappointed at the very partial welcome
which our proposed solutions of life problems find. But it
cannot be too often repeated that nothing (except indeed
lateral rootlets) springs from a root, and all that is greatest
(or its symbol) is unfounded. There is, for instance, no
basis for this present statement; it has to do with the
worlds which roll in space, 'solidly' real and absolutely
secure in an orderly orbit ; and what is of ultimate concern
to our thought is the whither of its Way.

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CHAPTER XXII

It now becomes desirable to go at some length into a view
of the primitive mind which has already been elsewhere
suggested, and has met with some degree of welcome from
students of the subject.^ For this forms the natural
introduction to the *signific' treatment of the subject of
education.

When the method of signifies has made possible the
philosophy of significance (and we must have the method,
as the way to it, first), we shall for the first time have a right
to say that Man is in a true sense the expression of the
world, since it finds in him articulate description and
definition ; and therefore significance (the pressure of the
Excitant, the Answer-world, stimulating us to Question) is
the bond of bonds and the very character of true unity.
All races and all types can meet here, on the lowest grade,
that of sense, on the higher, that of meaning, on the
highest, that of significance.

What, then, are we to think of the beginnings of man

looked at from this point of view ? How can it be related

to the facts of that unbroken ascent from the protozoic life-

* •* Is there a Break in Mental Evolution?" paper read at the British
Association, 1890 ; "An Apparent Paradox in Mental Evolution," paper
read at the Anthropological Institute, December 9, 1890 ; " The Signifi-
cance of Folk-Lore," paper read at the International Folk- Lore Congress,
1891.

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i66 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

forms which is assumed by physical science? The most
widely-held recent views of the * primitive mind ' involve a
startling jump from the coercive action of natural fact upon
physiological and psychological response, to the wildest
licence of grotesque fancy. Instead of a consistency (even
too rigid) of human custom and belief naturally succeeding
a consensus of organic reaction, we have to assume a collapse
into violent and even deliberate defiance of the very order
which has hitherto dominated all the vital and psychical
activities. And this not as sporadic, not as individual
variation from a common standard of primitive 'common-
sense,' but as collective and indeed universal in the earliest
tribal stages. Yet " in treating of illusions we shall assume,
what science as distinguished from philosophy is bound to
assume, namely, that human experience is consistent ; that
men's perceptions and beliefs fall into a consensus. From
this point of view illusion is seen to arise through some
exceptional feature in the situation and condition of the
individual, which for the time breaks the chain of intellectual
solidarity which, under ordinary circumstances, binds the
single member to the collective body." ^

Now the * intellectual solidarity' here postulated by
Professor Sully takes, of course, in the earliest and latest
stages of intellectual development a different form. In the
earlier types, custom and habit, reinforcing the organic
tradition, must be the ruling factors ; in the later, a rational
discipline has set the conceptual power free (as e,g, in
mathematics) to construct system and interpret it. But in
both alike the condition of social coherence and even of
the recognition of a * common humanity' is an adaptive
consensus in reading the facts of nature.^

^ Illusions, James Sully, p. 8 (4th edition, 1895).

2 " Not the least prominent feature of Vaudoux is the drum that calls

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xxii WHAT IS MEANING? 167

The question here therefore is, Did the early mind start
from a complete break and therefore blank, and proceed to
evolve a universal consensus in favour not merely of illusion,
but of complicated forms of what is virtually delirium ? Or
did it carry over into the imaginative and intellectual region
certain self-acting clues derived through the organic from
the physical world ?

Supposing the early mind had such clues, and that these
and all else with which we credit * mind ' came to us with the
primeval energies which built up the world and brought forth
life upon it, how then are we to account for the curiously
unanimous devotion to elaborate and oppressive tribal ritual

the worshippers together. One which I saw and examined was four feet
high. Its frame was made of some jointed wood like bamboo, in girth it
was as large as a man's tnmk. The upper surface was of black goatskin,
thinned by the thrumming of many fingers, with hair still adhering to the
edges where it was pegged to the frame.

' ' This instrument is so singularly constructed that although at a distance
of a mile or more it sounds loudly, near at hand its throbbing note is
indistinct and low.

• • Where the negro picked up this secret in acoustics it is hard to imagine.
But the peculiarity has an important use. A sect with rites like the
Vaudoux have naturally strong reasons for desiring that none but the
initiated should be present at their gatherings : hence the low, misleading
soimd that mutters about you when the drum is played close at hand,
whereas the initiated, who have warning of a sacrifice, hear the call at
really wonderful distances, and at once proceed to the appointed spot

• • The difficulty of following up the low throb at close quarters is extra-
ordinary. On several occasions I have tried to trace from the ear alone
the tmmistakable vibration, and have failed. There is some thrilling
quality in the muffled and mysterious beat which cannot be described, but
which stirs the pulse in spite of familiarity " ( Where Black Rules White,
H. Prichard, pp. 79-80; 1900).

This, like the hitherto inscrutable rapidity with which, e.g, in Africa,
news will spread over a vast continent without civilised means of com-
munication, seems to suggest a fund of psychological power not yet drawn
upon, because not properly studied and understood by the civilised world,
which has lost many aptitudes once common.

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i68 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

(and to beliefs starting from those), of which the common
experience was constantly demonstrating the futility ? True
that, as we shall at once be reminded, there was no
intellectual absurdity in even the most grotesque forms of
belief. The idea of order or law in ' nature ' only accrues
at a much later date than any with which we are now con-
cerned. Thus one idea of nature is as reasonable or prob-
able as another, and no miracle of any kind is in question.
But the usual inferences from this still ignore the inexorable
pressure of the routine of response, the violation or neglect
of which meant to the organism death. And this routine
of response must have tended to survive in the form of
intelligence.

We shall be answered when we are shown where the
break occurs which releases the earliest *mind' and its
imaginative and inferential power from the strong ties of the
reflex type of 'response,' — before that 'mind' has acquired
the culminating 'faculty' of abstraction, also of logical,
metaphysical, introspective analysis and generalisation, in
the forms found in the highest Greek and other culture.
What is here meant by the reflex type of response is the
tendency to react upon definite stimuli without the smallest
reference to 'fictitious resemblance' or to any difierence
which does not affect the reaction itself.

Take two instances: (i) The sense of taste at once
detects and reacts on the one point of real resemblance
between 'saccharine' and 'sugar'; all the wide differences
are ignored ; reaction in the normal condition is invariable.
(2) The story of the pike in the tank. This now celebrated
fish was separated from the small fry which is his ordinary
prey by a glass partition. Every time he darted at the fish
he was stopped by this invisible obstacle. But for a very
long time he went on obeying the established inference:

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XXII WHAT IS MEANING? 169

"There is my food, I ought to be able to seize it," in spite
of his thumps against the ghostly glass. Now (unlike the
later wayward and desultory spectre !) the glass ghost was
invariably persistent Therefore at last its substantial
reality forced itself upon the slow-learning 'mind' of the
pike, and in spite of his desire for the prey he refused any
longer to hurt himself uselessly.^

Now to transfer this to the human level. Our human
pike sees, so to speak, the food and drink, the shelter,
weapons, tools, etc waiting for his use. He inherits the
tendency to react to all such ' substantial ' appeals.

But now and then something odd seems to him to come
in his way; his attention finds something interposed
between it and the usual objects. Perhaps it is visible ; but
then it cannot be smelt or touched, and it is constantly
changing in character, while dislocating the rest of
experience in many ways. It may give (as in dream) a
vivid 'impression,' but the experiences usually associated
with it are not there to enforce and maintain it. Yet he at
once and permanently accepts this curious intervention, this
thread of alien mystery running athwart his life ; and he
actually orders that life in accordance with endlessly
shifting phantasms, whether of dream or waking life, without
a moment's delay or struggle ! How then has he so
completely lost the sound instinct which the pike repre-
sented? It is to be noted that in the instance taken, the
pike ignores in his persevering efforts, not vision, but the
fundamental sense of resistance. And in favour of what ?
Of running after flowers instead of small fry? Of taking a
stone for a fellow-pike? No; in favour of the primary
demand for food. For this it was habitual to overcome

* Darwin's Descent of Man, p. 75 (and edit. 1888) (the Mobius
experiment).

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WHAT IS M

resistance, whether of the prey
shelter which could be broken i
human animal collapses at tl
position, failing in the recog
immediate descendant of the Hi

The primitive mind^ as Dn
before all things logical and cc
Then why did not early man tr
a tool, a house, a wife, for the n
venerated, and would fain serve
induce dreams for the sake ol
dream-] an d> And he must ea:
limited extent this was possible
his dream -sequences. But i^
man actually felt, seen, rem em
dreamt; (2) the man and his si
vital energy carried on into fc
and his weapons, tools^ etc, '
The two last alone are in our e
first are quite clearly separabl
the third blended or fused.

We credit the human pri
about' in welcoming the first
This wayward welcome, strani
corrective, is supposed to be m*
It is not a case of that norm^
we find w^ithin well-defined li
tion which we rightly caU mc
heraldic zoology. It is as the
to fur and the plant to gills ;
dog's nose, and a cow develops
From the point of view of g
well within the organic preroga

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XXII WHAT IS MEANING? 171

and rearrangement of existing organic conditions. But it
does not happen, and if it did the animals would certainly
not survive. So also with the primitive mythical variation.
It is well within the rights of the symbolising power. In
both cases, if we saw it occur we should be compelled to
infer and search out causes subtler, and perhaps more
remote than the ordinary, for such an apparent freak. We
should feel sure that such variation was somehow reversion
to a very early type.^

Let us insist on the pressing necessity of the accustomed
signs of bodily presence to a primitive mind, without legends
or pre-perception of the * spiritual.' How empty and vacant
would be a ghost-chief who could not strike a visibly blood-
drawing blow ! How blank would be a ghost-mother who
could not suckle her wailing child I Everywhere the
* instinct ' would be to converge attention upon what resulted
in familiar events.

The tentative becomes organised and habitual by
meeting during many ages a satisfying response ; the attempt
to swim, to fly, to climb, to walk has always met with the
same assent in resistance, support, etc. But the attempt to
'realise' a merely unseen or spiritual world must always
have been defeated in the last resort by non-response,
precisely as would be the attempt to fly in water, swim on
earth, walk in air. Refusal, not consent, in every case must
starve out the abortive efforts.

It is often said that the odd, the queer, the strange, draw
attention : thus the ghost began. Yes ; but one oddity
would efface another, and no two are alike. Yet ghosts are
alike — persistent, consistent, congruous; an *odd' ghost
would be suspected like any other oddity.

Of course, now that we have police and soldiers to

1 See Note XIX., Appendix.

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WHAT I!

\rl

protect us, we may safely t
in pnmitive days not on!}
ancient level of mind as
but mistakes, e^. ghosts, l
from the bogey which was
of the real Hon.

Where the early mind {w
inarticulate) fails is in discri
it wants to e?cpress, and th^
of expression. This last
end If one of the two 1
innumerable analogies ma
occurred to it. But the tr
ally through the living fran
response would not allow
speak us, and interpret us !
Man means* And so c
'symbolism/

Was it the continuity, in
spine and hand as one ' n
simply antmal realism in ej
chiromancy, divination, at
express the supremacy of ^
rites like that of burying a
bridge or the wall of a tem
Life, as 'underlying * all hi
ritual form would be an ac
a deep instinct that men
* influenced ' ^ by a Htghe

' "'A flowmg in, and particula
planets ; their vertue mfused im
creatures ' (Cot grave, quoted in
cdiu 1884).

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XXII WHAT IS MEANING? 173

astrology would simply mean the sense of the dependence
of the earth on cosmical conditions.

Let us suppose, however, that defunct ancestors,
^spiritual beings' of all sorts, and the notions we call
animism, fetishism, shamanism, totemism, etc., were, as we
suppose them to be, utterly unreal in every possible sense,
having no basis in experience, and ranking with what we
now call the mere figments of fancy. It follows that they
had no business to assume the importance they did assume
at so early a stage, since they lacked the consistency and
consensus which they would have had if, like the pike's glass
partition, they were persistently invariable in effect Except
on one supposition. That supposition (here tentatively
made) is, that however grotesque and unreal in themselves,
all such notions owed their power over the baby-mind
of man to the fact that they were attempts to satisfy an
original organic demand, by translation into expression,
through rite and word, of facts generic to organic develop-
ment.

What, then, are these facts? This, of course, is the
ultimate question at issue into which we are not attempting
to enter. It is only suggested that here come in two un-
touched questions: (i) How did we come by the curious
idea (at once popular and philosophical) that mind is
'inward' and matter * outward' in experience? Where
and when did the connection between the * subjective ' or
self-generated and * internal ' on the one hand, and between
the * objective' and 'external' on the other, start? Can
we suppose it to be arbitrary ? (We are always forgetting
that what has now decayed into 'mere' metaphor brings
with it a very ancient character of 'actual reality.')
(2) How did we arrive at the absolute exclusion of what
we call * mind ' from the category of ' energies ' — vital and

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'7^ WHAT IS MEANING? ,«

^ ^ CHAP. XXII

no n- Vital — which we

-that sense. externa. 'I„V°tir'.'''°"^ ^'^^ P'-'^'-

/Vl^en these ,.estio„rhJCrti"''' •
o( recent advances i„ psychoL " "^ '° *^« ^^^t

equal importance with '^lidl ^ ' *^ P''*"'°'» ^
yet n^ore pri„ordia] en. ndtEh ? "°^ ''"■' ^^"^ «
<ioes not mean a natural all ^''' *^'»& '"^"slated, it

Motion, .n cor.u.,is,::L:Trzf ^'^^' - -"

'" short, whether it was not d .. T k J ''^ "^^ ^^''^^>
'<^ynamic' before .he "L 1?!?^''^ ^'^^"^ t<> P"t the
Po>ver or force of whatever kind rl 'T^"""^ '""''^"'
tangible 'stuff' which was '?."'" *"" *« ^"mp of
f ows itseif in .,, ea:;^:;:! r'^^; ThistendLy
fi'^t -words' always indi^te 1. T °^ ^^^^' *«

With reference tn *h-. t.

-r^^-rc'^^rr ■*'^"*- "«^^

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CHAPTER XXIII

To re-state the question in other words : Does not every-
thing we know point in the direction of underworking though
obscure and little understood promptings of that part of our
nature which is in most direct relation with the physical
cosmos ?

If so, a baby-mind with a baby-language just emerging
from the gesture and *yo-he-ho' stages, will be perpetu-
ally * haunted ' by a dim awareness of what it cannot yet
translate into precise and correct proposition, or even into
definite image. It fails and falls short ; its dumb organic
postulates have to grope for (literally) fitting expression.
It will *want' to express this or that in act or word, in
grimace or speech, just as the baby first wants to sit up,
then wants to crawl, then wants to walk and run — is always
longing to do something which it comes short of doing
well But it is * inwardly ' (as we say) impelled to try and
try, until it succeeds. By what? Reducing our answer
to the lowest terms, we must presuppose some recurrent
stimulus. And it is diflScult to see where we are to draw
the line short of the class of impulsion (or incitation)
which we call * inorganic*

But if we go on to ask whether one would not expect the
primitive mind to know how things actually go better than
the mind which has become artificially complex without yet

175

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WHAT IS MEANING

becoming really scientific (and therefore com
of course we are liable to be understood a
in the intellectual sense^ which is plainly ri*
is meant is, broadly speaking, the human a
what you like — of that subtle organic n
obvious phenomena shown by migratory^ 1
other like * animal instincts ' ; especially
sensitiveness is shown to changes in natui
other) condition, which we are at best only
perfected instrumentSj to detect

Even telepathy may be due to the subcc
of those apparently lapsed Vsenses' of a:
Lord Avebury and others tell us, and which
still seem to survive in undisputed activity ii]
habitant of wild countrj^ where a ' sense '
of the whereabouts of water, or of the appr
may directly conduce to the preservatioJ
would account for the preponderance o]
telepathy among women and even children,
would, of course, be pre- rational, and wc
grotesque interpretation, which is what w^e .

The plea that probably the really
* understood' natural fact better than we
fore be * understood ' as involving the use
a sense that will almost justify its extensi
root which 'knows' what to * choose' ou
grows in.

Do we not need to ask afresh how
restraint or prescription as 'tribal laws* a
can we know what was in the earliest days
able way of correcting given groups of fact:

Say that we begin with the primitive r
powers * and consequent * blunders^ : at a lal

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XXIII WHAT IS MEANING? 177

it with imagining a * tribal god* But what a complex process
we are surely thus supposing! Such imagination as the
early mind is capable of must be as obvious and cost as
little effort as the more literal * image ' on his retina of the
tangible object in front of him. E.g, for him * remember-
ing * the charge of an elephant must mean the apparently
spontaneous starting up of the ^ image ' of what has made
a painful impression on, or has * excited ' or * terrified ' him.
It gives him no trouble to construct. But the image, faint
or vivid, * comes up* right, because * reality' is at work
for him. The elephant does not represent itself as a wasp
or a cobra. Only in one class of instances do we suppose
that gratuitous (that is, grotesque and meaningless) confusion
sets in.

To quote here a letter written in 1891 to Sir Leslie
Stephen : —

"In 4 certain sense and to a certain extent I can
honestly adopt your language, when you urge the ideas
(i) that 'blunder' accompanies right mental development
and is corrected *as we go.' (2) That every theory the
early man forms is ' better than none at all,' and does seem
usefully to connect facts. (3) That in such a theory as a
* tribal god ' he is representing to himself deeply important
social truths which could only thus be realised or worked
out ; and (4) that what we find in the primitive thought-
life is everywhere a 'step,' and may well constitute and
not merely hamper, distort, or reverse a 'real progress.'
All this finds much echo in (what I am pleased to call)
my own thought. But then I feel that we have only thus
opened the real ground where the answers grow. For
'theories' which were vaguely, crudely, roughly, broadly,
true to natural fact so far as they went, would surely have
served the primitive man's purpose better than the marvel-

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^M tion. Elaboration as well as (

^^H

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^^HM il

^M Unless^ indeed, we take the

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^M deeper sense than is usually do

^M of all that was then most obviou

^^l'''l ■

H food, the fittest of the tribe, th€

^^H 1 .itf

^M skill— was no waste at alL "L

^^^^^1 1 '^^^|[

H 'blunder' and parody and all

^^^^H u ^^^^1

^M down the stream of experience c

^^^^^^H ' ^^^^1,

^M of early * conduct * than we hav<

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^^^f 1 ^^^H

^m in the most superficial and reh

^1 so in that Unless we ask whetl

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^M in our expressions of human pre

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^M is to be the straight line whicb

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H distance between any early or !

^1 J

^^ (one fault which underlies Comte

■ ^HI

^B at all events may ultimately

1 ^^H

^m (relatively) ancient points m exp

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^M us each time the spoils of a fo

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^M begin again our ' spiral ^journey

^^^Hd ^^1

^M In considering accepted vi<

^^^H mjI

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^^H ^^H

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^^m ^ Here it might be said that voice an

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1 ^^H ^^fl

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^^^^^^B ^^^B

^H unseen to enemies and wild beanSls, to s

^^^^^H i^^l

^B also every* subtle tone and timbre of v

be taken in as is the civilised mind ? It 1

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XXIII WHAT IS MEANING? 179

(3) The energy and matter, woxk-force and stuff of an
object ; its power to be useful and its tangible mass. All
three contrasts are of course reflected in dream.

(i) Here there is complete distinctness, but the shadow
has only outline given by obstructed light; an idea of
content is given.

(2) Here we have reproduction in the flat or in the solid ;
e,g, in the mirror or in an artificial copy. The two are
again inseparable.

(3) Here we can no longer separate or even distinguish
except mentally. We cannot look at food -stuff or food-
body on one side and food- shadow or food -soul on the
other. You cannot take the ghostly feeding- power and
leave the lump intact, as you can (in some sense) with
shadow and reflection or image. We could, therefore,
dedicate to the ghost the meat-shadow or meat-reflection
or imitation -meat; but we could only dedicate the im-
palpable * nourishment ' of meat if we could isolate this
last as we could the others.

So with the tool or weapon. But usage, loss of work-
power, is shown by signs of wear. If the ghost-ancestor
were so inconsistent and unpractical as to leave his proper
sphere, to decline to use ghost-tools and weapons, or eat
ghost-meals, and to take to using and consuming the energy
of real ones, we should see signs of wear in the implements,
while the food after use must have an unusual look, of which
the natural analogue would be the waste product after assimi-
lation. The savage would have an * organised ' expectation
of this ; would be prepared to wonder at its absence. We
may ask whether the very consistency of the primitive mind

repetition in tone and word. Naturally the ghost -ancestor would be
expected to answer in his own voice ; and would, as in life, make his own
remark, and not insanely repeat his interlocutor's.

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WHAT IS MEANING

which, — a given start once made, a give
accepted, — tends to make it an easy mtim
ence, would not here press the simple dv
(/,^ tangible) things for real men, and shad
things, dream-thingSj for shadow-men (* sha
(^ghosts*), dream-men. And as in very e^
find attempts to produce vivid dream an
fasting, etc., would not that distinction be a
so that, for such a ghost, a man would try to
' visualise * something, and thus quiet or sat
appropriate gift, one the same in kind as 1
ghostly? Or at least should we not hnc
cautions to provide^ with the object^ its shadi

The tool or weapon, etc, would be so p
if possible a perpetual shadow, or to
water which was never allowed to dry up,
metal, and so on* But that would not 1
the food* The test of food- cons umptic
established in the * structure' of the cons^
be the disappearance, sudden or gradual,-
sight, but from smell, taste, and touch, — of 1
when devoured Some quite unique ct
naturally looked for, were it supposed that ;
the ghost (or good) of the food could be i
rest left.

Take a savage who wishes to devote, le
the buck that he has killed to the making i
dead ancestors. The rest he keeps for
We will suppose that his theory is that
' ghostly ^ identity or double like his own, — t
the body at death, — and that it is this whic]
when he ea^, and which the ghost cons
dedicator cannot help observing^ soonei

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XXIII WHAT IS MEANING? i8i

precisely the same result happens in the case of the devoted
and undevoted food. If not consumed at once, in hot
weather both will decompose in exactly the same manner ;
there will be no difference between the two. The ghost has
taken the good of the one, no one has taken the good of the
other. Then let him profanely eat (as, under stress of
famine, must surely have sometimes happened), and the
food is found to feed him still — the food-ghost has not been
consumed !

On the other hand, he will observe that if the supposed
* soul ' or spiritual double leaves his child or his enemy or
his dog or the game he has been hunting, changes in
appearance as well as in activity and attitude supervene at
once. But no change takes place in the ancestors* dinner
other than what takes place in his own, before he has
absorbed its * spirit ' and felt the satisfactory result.

Again, take the case of arms and cooking utensils laid up
(as well as perishable meals and dead wives and slaves) with
a corpse. The savage, if he examined them from time to
time, would find the instruments of whatever kind unworn
but rusted; that is, exactly as he finds them when he
returns after some expedition and they have been untouched
in any way. Take them out and clean them, and you can
use them just the same. Their 'spirit' or 'essence' is
still there intact ; no sign of lost force, no worn surface or
chipped or blunted edge is found. And then the corn.
It was to be planted in the garden or field of ghost-land.
But any moment if you sow it you will find its life-content
intact. The ghost has never used it !

Of course in one case the solution seems obvious. The
ghost-chief wants a ghost-slave. Then let us kill one, and
release the ghost to go to its master. But we do not
thereby send his shadow or his reflection to ghost-land.

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His dead body continues to cast both. Ho^
we jump to the conclusion (of which there is
the practical sphere) that the life-force, identi
are gone there? Why did they not take '
shadow which had always been associated i
reckoned in the same ghostly category ?

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CHAPTER XXIV

But here we are confronted with the dream theory. The
dead ancestor has been seen in dreams, therefore we are
sure that he lives somehow and somewhere, and all the rest
follows. Yet surely it would sometimes strike the im-
molators forcibly that it did not always follow that next
time they dreamt the chief they dreamt the slave, to corre-
spond with the new state of things. Dreams are not now
and surely never can have been, as coherent, consistent,
and invariably repeated in due logical and practical order
as such an idea would require them to be.

Do we find anything to suggest that when a great chief
died he was dreamt by the dreamers as alone and destitute,
while after his funeral, with all its attendant ceremonies of
provision, he was dreamt surrounded and provided as in
life ? If not, if (as would surely be natural) he was some-
times dreamt from the first as duly attended and fitted out ;
or appeared afterwards, in the caprice of dream, as alone
and unprovided, would not this waste of precious property
strike the men who had produced or acquired it at much cost
of effort, and who had the strongest reasons for laying stress
on its absence or presence in all the world they knew of?

The savage's digestive process, so far as he was occasion-
ally conscious of it, would be his natural * origin' of the
* inner.' Cultured man connects * dreams' as he does

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WHAT IS MEANING?

'reflection* with an * inner* which he has ac
physically — in an advanced mental stage.

But to the savage the dreams if not U
would only be * inner ' in the mucous mem!

* digestive cavity' sense* And this sense of

* inner' may well be launched with us into
mind at its earliest stage, since as ectoderm a
it belongs to the first difTercntiation of the
Everywhere, therefore, touch, taste, and smell
tests by which a visual impression would
confusion averted, whether in the case of
spectral illusion. And we must once moi
one of the first traces one would expect to
reflex and automatic training would be an even
in the primitive mind than in ours, of the i
dream events and objects. Our range of cone
widened that there is always a vague reservatio
in face of the strangest * surprises/ The pos
multiplied But, to the * savage,' the utter di
distortion of events and objects of waking
dreams would have made it difficult to accept
—except so far as there was disorder of mi
more recent the emergence from the auton
*mind,' the stronger the mechanical eleme;
inexorable the demand for the monotony
sequence. Is not this after all {in some sen
of the 'logical consistency* in primitive inf<
Spencer, Tylor, and others point out? Tbj
the child J is incapable of logic in a consciot
sense ; but once started, his * thoughts ' arran^
(by reason of a persisting tendency to rec
orders) in normal sequence.

Now dreams and delirium alike mean ^bnor:

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XXIV WHAT IS MEANING? 185

and therefore would be less likely by the primitive mind
than by ours, to be confounded with that real experience of
which the secret is, — continuity.

It is at a later and higher stage, when the controlling
power of conscious criticism has been correspondingly
evolved (just as the physical sentinels, the protective
organs, are evolved) that there is room for the acceptance
of what is odd, and strange, and apparently chaotic: we
generalise more broadly, and are prepared to allow for large
margins of the possible.

Another question. The ghost left the chiefs body as
Breath. One can, of course, imagine that the simultaneous
departure of the breaths of hero, wife, slave, might suggest
a breath-community in a breath-world of which individual
puffs or whiffs might make up wind. The smoke-columns
of the funeral pyre might well be supposed to mingle as
they were dissipated into the invisible before the very eyes
of the sacrificers, and to turn into wind. Why then do we
not find everywhere a supreme Wind-Deity, and a swinging
fetish to represent the sacred breath-rhythm — and the
heart-beat too ?

It is commonly supposed that animals — notably dogs
and horses — 'see' apparitions of some kind invisible to
human eyes. Stories pointing in this direction are familiar
to most of us. But the question never seems to be asked.
What are they supposed to see ? The spectres of recently
deceased dogs and horses, the doubles of living ones, or the
wraith of some remote ancestor ? And do they only see, or
also hear — and above all smell them ? Again, where in the
animal world do we draw the line, if we accept such stories
as evidence of a mysterious commerce with an invisible or
supernatural world ? Do bees ever see the ghost of a dead
queen, and place food for her in a cell-temple, etc. ? On the

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WHAT IS MEAN

W ' 4

mm

Other hand, if animals are supposed to
does not this come under the quesdc
tion or influence (using both terms ii
between man and the animals most (
him? If so it would seem that th
studied to much purpose till pres
direction of what is called hypnotic
carried much further. Here we toucl
' mental epidemics 'in the whole anil
whether leading e.g'. to wholesale mi,
panic Every extension of the know
tices and customs surviving even to th^
emphasise the strangeness of cumber
tionsj often found in cases where th
nature might specially be expected
inhibitive power, checking what tende

One more point. We have been
of the * ghost of the ancestor* as l\
marked off from any idea of a *g
of course, this would falsify the be:
and is indeed impracticable. As a
to draw any definite line between g
hero or tyrant, chief (and later king), ,

Professor Robertson Smith, for
that " the relation between the gods-i
worshippers was expressed in the
relationship, and this language y^
figurative sense, but with strict lite
spoken of as father, and his worshij
the meaning was that the worshippe
stock, that he and they made up or
reciprocal family duties to one anotl
^ The Religion of the SemiieSt pp,

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XXIV WHAT IS MEANING? 187

act had a reference to the gods as well as to men, for the
social body was not made up of men only, but of gods
and men."

But as such a parentage could not be accepted on the
same grounds as all other parentage known (since touch
and smell were out of the question, and the main signs
of physical reality were all missing), in what sense was the
human relationship * strictly literal*? How did gods and
men make up a * natural family ' and a * social body ' ?

This thought takes us far indeed from the dream, the
shadow, the reflection, the echo, the breath. And one
would like to be shown the link between the flesh and
blood human family and the family of a god and his
human oflspring.

Our own spiritual ideal, the outcome of ever increasing
powers of abstraction ; our own comparative independence
of the physical in ties of what we agree to call the highest
affection and reverence; our very idea of mental inter-
communion in any worthy sense, is the latest of thought
products. But are we not constantly betrayed, even by the
(little realised) ambiguity of modern language, into ascribing
such ideas or their corollaries to the practical and sensuous
primitive mind ?

On what ground have we any right to do this ? Once
more, where and why do we suppose that early men broke
away from the strongest ties they had — those to the actual,
— and where are we to look for the link which bridges the
chasm between the sensuous and the non-sensuous, which
in early animism might well be spelt nonsens-uous ? Do
not all the theories hitherto advanced really imply that the
primordial mind effaced all traces of its pre -intellectual
ancestry, and bequeathed to the earliest of its descendants
of whom we can And traces a practical tabula rasa ? Do

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WHAT IS MEANINI

they not one and all involve the assurnpt
men had to begin from the very begini
pressions of environment, instead of inhe
to right reaction or correspondence ingrai:
protoplasmic days and in the protozoic nu
which had but to be carried over and utili
departure in development?

No wonder, if we could believe in s
this, that the most suicidal as well as grol
forms of cult should have prevailed a
raerely or chiefly in theory, but in grim ar

But if we cannot believe this in the
whelming evidence of continuity throug
ascent^ then the checking force would be
the follies (except in the case of disease
would not, except rarely, survive, or les
likely to do so) would be stamped out aa^
or die out after a very brief reign.

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CHAPTER XXV

It cannot be too often repeated that only if what we vaguely
call 'mind' has in its embryonic forms broken with its
antecedents, can its acceptance (without demur, and as real)
of the Unresistent, and of the fleshless, bloodless, weightless,
warmthless, helpless, be accounted for. The * associative
memory ' has failed the race ; life has lost its way and is
contentedly pursuing shadows, and reacting to echoes or
reflections as though these were original realities. Night-
dream and day-dream are then, of course, accepted also,
without any sense either of lack or strangeness ; they arouse
the same interest and prompt the same conduct — whatever
effort or cost involved — as if the conditions of what we call
physical reality were all present. And it is impossible to
deny that we do find, so far back as we have hitherto traced
mind in man, this curious readiness, nay, eagerness, to
welcome and persistently to act upon appeals that fail con-
spicuously in those very conditions of temperature and
resistance (besides much else) which have formed the
fundamental ' perceptual touchstone' throughout the organic
ascent. It is even claimed by some that response to what is
variously called the unseen, the spiritual, the supernatural,
etc., is found among the higher animals. Be this as it
may, once more we must ask whence the tendency which,
once there and active, translated itself into such varied and

189

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WHAT IS MEA

yet on the whole such broadly sim
the development of the human in
Huxley and others warn us, h may
which is simply outlived, it may b
* instinct ^ which yet survives in
tendency so strong and firmly roote
direction, it will explode in anothe
sides, will act as a mental toxin a
And pessimism, leading to suicidal c
to our ineradicable demand that
meaning and Suffering a purpose
we ourselves are constituted to qi
to insist upon its answer j Man
of those 'problems' which he him
Nature. For it must never be for;
so far as we know, has that ideal
protests against evil or pain, or tl
judges of his own ignorance, l'h€
neither that life and the world are
nor that they themselves are sur
insoluble problems, nor that they ai
long to know, nor that they might bi
they are.

The whole question of the Primit
then, into one of trustworthiness, I
cultured mind always and in all i
than the elementary mtnd? Is it
of practical confidence, in the sense i
us the mental equivalence of more ex
However far from the type of *tr
activity always nearer to this than
gence'? Or, in this last, may the
there obscurely survive even among

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XXV WHAT IS MEANING? 191

reactions' which date from an extreme remoteness, and
belong to the moment (whenever that may have been) of
the advent of * intelligence * itself — the point where neurosis
acquired its new * concomitant ' psychosis ? In any answer
we give, the first thing we have to allow for is the artificial,
the conventional, the sophisticated, the 'scholastic' It is
one of the glories of the sciehtific mind that it is resolutely
learning to forswear all sophisms and plausible ingenuities,
and become as a little child ; so simply and frankly, indeed,
that it is more and more impressing upon us the im-
possibility of entirely effacing the accreted inscriptions
which our laboriously complex civilisation has deeply
incised upon our * minds.' Just as we have lately realised
much more clearly than before the degree in which
ancient Greek thought anticipated recent science,^ so in
time we may further realise that under the disguise of the
ludicrous or the shocking, the crazy or the abominable,
the primitive mind did the same.*

Thus it may even be possible that, while because of our
immeasurable advance in power of test, we have gained
enormously in accuracy of inference, we may in some
directions have correspondingly lost in delicacy of percep-
tion, still more in our power of sub- or pre-conscious reaction

1 Cf. Philosophy of Greece, by A. W. Benn, 1898 ; also Greek Genius,
by Professor Theodor Gomperz, trans, by Laurie Magnus, 1901.

^ And here it may be suggested that the enormous recent advance of
the inductive habit of mind, the conspicuous development of impartial
and self-correcting observation, of laborious and strictly tested experiment
which we owe to the modem scientific spirit, might well be, on thb hypo-
thesis, naturally accounted for. We should see it as a true renascence,
though in translated and transfigured form, of a really primitive tendency
to see an even implacable, rigid order in 'nature,' and to reflect it in
equally rigid custom ; in taboos, or in burdensome or painful rites, in
totem laws and magic formulas. As it is, one wonders how the scientific
sanity of our own time can ever have been developed from such welters of
the senseless as we suppose primitive minds to have been.

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Ig2

""^■^ 'S M

"'s*' C /'" »- '.^ "■ "> «>4?*°

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XXV WHAT IS MEANING? 193

certain cases render its inferences, its results, less instead
of more trustworthy than those of the lower, sinking to
the reflex, forms of * intelligence.' 'Agnosticism' would
be an instinctive confession of this. To walk by direct
volition is a much more awkward process than to walk
without thinking or willing it; and there are important
activities on which we cannot bring will and intelligence
to bear at all

So also, may we not Suspect, there are 'mental processes'
test done or only to be done in the reflex fashion ; when
intellectual consciousness supervenes, it gradually interferes
with and dislocates much of the smooth-fitting mechanism
of * response to stimulus ' which -Natural Selection has so
fostered in its physical form, and which must have exercised
so powerful a control on the early 'imagination.' In one
form we shall all admit that we know it; self-conscious
humility and modesty is immensely inferior to the
* automatic ' form of these virtues !

It may then be suggested that while the sense-scheme of
the primitive mind was for obvious reasons more exclusively
dominant than it afterwards became, and may be supposed
to have reacted to more subtle appeals from the various
realms of nature (as to the spinal was added the specifically
cerebral type of response), the meaning -scheme, now so
highly developed, was still embryonic ; while the element of
Significance, as we now at least tacitly recognise it, was not
yet assimilated. In other words, the primitive form of
intelligence may be supposed to have been sensitive to
certain modes of energy, modes which it was incited to
translate somehow into cult of some kind and then into
formal doctrine ; just as it was impelled to translate the
sense of hunger into the taking of food, and, in a higher
stage, to translate the whole experience into articulate

o

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WHAT IS MEi

statement- Only, in this last class
as life directly depended upon it, ha
the case of the more indirect fomis c
was purely tentative, and was thus
wrong. Even where its principle s
in the highest scientific, and on t
religiousj poetical, or philosophical
its earliest applications were repuls;
This, however, would be, from
just what we should expect to fi
includes much which requires the
sense to interpret rationally ; and
ness to the meaning, intent, pur
experience, direct and indirect, i
— now become the recognition-
import » the importance, the ultin
moment of all experience and alt k

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CHAPTER XXVI

If then we provisionally admit in a broad sense that there
is evidence of the existence in the early mind of an element
of healthy reaction to stimuli which we still translate into
a far more refined, poetic, or reverent form inadequately
termed ' spiritual,' and endow with supreme ethical value ;
what follows ?

The term spiritual has become inadequate, not merely
because it concerns life only and not mind (for which last
the metaphors of air and breath as well as those of light
and sight are needed), but because, of the serious deprecia-
tion of its religious and philosophical value, altering all
its associations. The world of which the primitive mind
was presumably aware is, of course, included in that idea
of a natural world which has now become one of an
ordered world, a world of unbroken sequence and con-
tinuity — in short, of * law.' But according to the scientific
account of things, it would follow that there was presumably
some 'real' stimulus to which baby man was doing his
poor best to react and respond ; and that our business is to
employ every conceivable means so to increase and enrich
our own powers of critical and constructive interpretation
and translation, as to attain to worthier conceptions of this
'reality' than has yet been possible. For "I have yet
many things to say unto you ; but ye cannot bear them now."

195

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J

Can we pretend to be ready to bear them e
not, while we are content with incongruous
sion— once accordant, now discordant, — t
ideals, intellectual and ethical, to which our
and consciences bow in what we know to be c
and which appeal alike to the noblest and
men in all the human world. Here we
question which must precede any effort t<
ground of experience by rectifying a virt
and therefore vitiating scheme of ideas. ^
human query?

The phrase is, of course, used in a
We are not thinking of an articulate que
inquiring attitude^ an active asking, a que
We are proposing to ask what, in the first
forms of curiosity which are undoubtedly \
or less degree by the whole animal worl
those which, gradually taking on the chara
wonder, are recognised by us as distinctly
the outset, however, it must be understc
gap nor barrier^ except in the sense of dis
assumed. So far as any analogy serves^ w<
of the stage in the development of the ver
the notochord may first rightly be called a,

What then may be safely reckoned as
human queries — carried on, indeed, inli
development, but not specially char acta
intelligence ? Is there not obviously, to st
which our word *what* stands? Attentii
by movements, or by object, incident or obi
scious organism responds. The reaction i
the words. What is this ? food ? danger ? <
Which (this or that) and Where (here oi

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XXVI WHAT IS MEANING? 197

or Whither. And then follow, Whether to exert itself,
and How to reach, to capture, to escape, and so on.

A question here arises which seems as yet difficult to
settle. Does the animal ask ' when ' ? Has it a time-sense
as it certainly has a sense of locality, the same in kind as
our own ? Leaving this as possibly belonging to a border-
land in the query world, and certainly needing separate
discussion,^ we come to a significant moment.

It seems reasonable to assume that the animal qua animal
cannot be said to ask Why. Why indeed should it ? The
only sense in which such an inquiry on the animal level
would not be a mental irrelevance, would be that of an
extended What or How. When a search for food or the
construction of a nest had failed, and the animal or its off-
spring were consequently suffering, we might urge that the
reason for, if not the cause of, the failure was sought;
that the animal in asking, What was wrong ? How had things
gone wrong ? virtually asked the * reason why,' and proceeded
to try again in new directions or with fresh materials.

But this would surely be a far-fetched use of the word.
What the animal needs is to find out simply w?iat is wrong.
How can things be set straight, hunger appeased, eggs
safely laid, or young properly sheltered and nourished?
Such queries as. Why is there nothing to eat ? Why do I
suffer ? Why is this district barren ? Why is the nest or
burrow destroyed? or. Why has it collapsed? — still more. Why
am I dependent on food or shelter? and Why should I
seek for the one or make the other, or care for the needs

* Since this was written, • time ' as derived and inferential (space and
motion being the originating factors) has been made the subject of a
Study not included in this volume. The suggestion seems justified by the
fact (which does not seem to have been noticed) that ' time ' is the only
category of which the terms are all borrowed. An answer to this question
would thus be supplied.

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WHAT IS ME

J

of another generation and othet
beyond the range of the needs, ar
the animal. Indeed^ they at onc<
region, and suggest more directly
conscious identity* Even if it
justly — that in some cases anima
and trained by man, show these si
instance, man acts as be does, this
of a predictive mental activity, —
Some biologists, e^^ Ralph of Lei
of this kind, and maintain that i
by the organism in its progress i
again strives to pass. The organi
normally, but to develop new nee
Thus the first distinctively hm
Man might fairly be called the ^
reason for everything ; that is, no
meaning in all that happens am
experiences. What be does has
why ' ; he is humanly intelligent,
human, in proportion as he desire
and know it. Man has called hii
given nicknames, the cooking a
does not live in order to feed, but
to learn with his developing brain
ing, and much else. The quei
mean ? ^ takes on the sense of *
grown, so to speak, a mental feelc
dp wherewith he explores his wor

^ Critical Notice of BiohgischE Prm
April 18B5, p. 282.

^ " Man otily koowj* the Why, not the
l^nik Century, September j 896^ p* 45^)*

See also Note XX. , Appendix.

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XXVI WHAT IS MEANING? 199

the entrance into that region of abstract conception which
reacts upon, and endows with new value, the world of per-
ception and action. More than that, it means the inter-
pretation of this, the perception of its significance. The
' whats ' of the animal acquire more and more general senses
and an immensely wider scope.

What then may be called the pre-human query, which
yet marks the most conspicuous human intellectual develop-
ment of the present day — the historical and scientific ? Is
it not. How have things come about? If so, we have
reached a suggestive idea. No one will deny that the
tendency of positive modem thought, in reaction from the
speculative development in which the Why-Asker over-
reached himself and forfeited his answers, is to forbid us
two things : (a) The assumption of conscious or deliberate
purpose in nature; and (^) The asking of why, or the reason
why, except of course in a proximate, concrete, or practical
sense. We are free to ask how things come to pass as well
as what things are for us; but we inherit the animal's
limitation which forbids further exploration. And at times
this restriction, although belonging to the less than human,
may well do us inestimable though humbling service. It
may be needed as a sort of storage of force, some day to be
used with unlooked-for effect.

Is this after all so terrible a deprivation as we are apt
to suppose? Until our thinking and thus our modes of
speech have been far more effectually purged of false or
mistaken associations than is yet possible ; until the patience
of science and history, of investigation and criticism, has had
a yet more perfect work in changing or reversing, or at least
severely testing, starting-points which we inherit from ages
of unrestrained guessing (or arbitrary dogmatising), may we
not confidently and even gladly forgo for a while terms like

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WHAT IS MI

^

\

I

ij

4

Purpose and Design, if onty we I
upon such terms as Purport and I
not suggest carpenter or watch n
while they do lead us on to the
uJrimate warrant for brain- worI<
reflect or reason upon, to thin
senseless. Strike out meaning fr
speech itself becomes an imp
research is sheer and preposterot
of the scientific rebuke of barre
speculation is ultimately unmej
nothing. The most uncompror
dealing with what he conceives \
ihe nature and value, the * mome

But more than this. The H
what way P by what methods ? th
this brings us to that way througl
advance thus expressed, reaches
cance and the power of its interj
to this thought later.

To give up asking why, then,
up being fully human. Even if,
of the words, symbohsm and si,
range of the animal, Man has i
world, an insignificant life. Th<
give a practically senseless result
in such a view.

For humanity, what has no ii
what does not signify is nothing
like playing upon words? The
current use of terms like *sigm
lesson for us. To play with lang
are dealing with facts; to work

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XXVI WHAT IS MEANING? 201

thing. The former we may do when we least suspect it ;
the latter may be rarer than we think. Real work with
words may yet bring us into clearer mutual understanding
than at present seems possible.

The very question we are asking owes much of its diffi-
culty and apparent obscurity to the varying senses and
applications of our query-words. The line of demarcation
between *why' and *how,' for instance, is not always as
sharply drawn as we are apt to suppose. Taking one of
the most recent manuals of logic, Professor Minto's, we find
it laid down that " Science aims at reaching * the causes of
things ' ; it tries to penetrate behind observed uniformities
to the explanation of them. In fact, as long as a science
consists only of observed uniformities, as long as it is in the
empirical stage, it is a science only by courtesy. Astronomy
was in this stage before the discovery of the Law of Gravita-
tion. Medicine is merely empirical as long as its practice
rests upon such generalisations as that quinine cures ague,
without knowing why. It is true that this explanation may
consist only in the discovery of a higher or deeper uni-
formity, a more recondite law of connection; the point is
that these deeper laws are not always open to observation,
and that the method of reaching them is not merely observ-
ing and recording." ^ Probably the word * why ' ought here
to be * how.' Yet this is a case of typically accurate writing.
One often comes upon passages like this : — ... " how it
is that molecular changes in the brain cells coincide with
modifications of consciousness ; how^ for instance, the
vibrations of light falling on the retina excite the modi-
fication of consciousness termed a visual sensation, is a
problem which cannot be solved." ^ This is surely a case

1 Logic^ Inductive and Deductive, p. 268 (1893).
2 The Functions cf the Brain, Ferrier, p. 255 (1876).

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WHAT IS R

■

1

both of Why and How. And

carefully edited recent transbi
Crtation^ that Danvun^s Theory
the different species of organ isr
simplest primary forms." ^ H

Again, Professor Karl Pears
that ** science answers no wk^
express the problem and the i
*-why space seems the same
more precisely to ask *^why y
alike/ ^'* and ^**w^jf should mei
of science ? ' The answer is cl

Professor Sully reminds us t
year a child is wont to perpl
why of everything. He no?
ring for a purpose, and can or
as they present some analogy tc
In other words, the child fn
vindicates the human instinct 1

Of course there is a futile 1
an insane How and even a i
a thing as a * questioning r
condition J characterised by coi
tionings as to the origin and
smalL'* Griesingt^r tells us
symptom was a kind of mort
secure, at any expense of tif
accuracy in the most trivial thJ

^ \''ol. i. pp, 124 and 15J
- {Italics mine: V. W,)
' TAe Grammar of Scitn\
^ Ibid, p, 1 87.
^ Outlines of Psyckologyf

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XXVI WHAT IS MEANING? 203

began the questioning, and was speedily in a labyrinth of
problems, the solution of which he felt compelled to
attempt, although conscious of its impossibility.'' ^

But this tells just as strongly against the exclusive devo-
tion and attention to detail into which all scientific research
is liable to degenerate, especially in these days of unbridled
specialism. And Sir Leslie Stephen does us good service
in exposing the true source of much ostentatious repudiation
of the question why. " There is nothing, as every school-
master knows, which the average mind resents so much as
the demand for reasons. It will gladly accept any rule,
provided that it has not to answer the troublesome question.
Why? Tell me how to answer; but, for heaven's sake!
don't explain the reasons of the answer. We are sometimes
told that men of science have to encounter the natural
desire of mankind to extend the limits of knowledge. That
seems to me to be an inversion of the truth. What a man
naturally desires is to put a fixed stop to inquiry. . . . We
want a world limited in every direction ; we desire to lay
down definite bounds to the labour of investigation ; and
we make our limits by an arbitrary hypothesis. ... To
ask why is to be not only impertinent but profane." ^ But
Sir Leslie here forgets to tell us that this is dead
against the whole trend of biological development From
the primitive tentacle, even from the root and tendril to the
little child's hand, exploration, the acted question, dominates
the whole organic series. In the normal young child's
brain this translates itself into explorative ideas, and passes
through the What and the How to the Why. Then comes
the heavy hand of the elder who has himself had the
Why -asking instinct, not developed and trained, but

^ *• The Questioning Mania," W. R. Gowers, Mind, July 1876, p. 413.
" An Agnostic* s Apology, pp. 323-24-25 (1893).

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204 WHAT IS MEANING? chap, xxvi

dulled and blunted by what we now call elementary educa-
tion, and by the artificial repulsion from research which Sir
Leslie so well describes. There are few things more striking
to the careful observer than the indomitable and unweaxying
perseTerance of the baby and the little child in (what the
adult would call) the drudgery of acquiring first muscular
dexterity and then the use of speech.

Over and over again, day after day, it repeats its arduous
exercises, needing no extraneous prompting. Its self-
imposed muscular lessons, — first in raising its head, then
in sitting up, then in crawling, lastly in walking and stand-
ing, with all the subsidiary movements of hands, feet, £Eice,
eyes. etc. — are of course mainly involuntary. But its
strenuous devotion to the acquisition of speech belongs to
the stage of brain development in its higher forms, which
education by its elders ought to continue and complete on
the same lines. The normal child will be heard murmur-
ing words or sentences to itself with untiring reiteration;
endless exercises in discovering their use and meaning
follow. The very absurdity of its attempts to utilise its
new resources shows how absorbing is their interest And
thai interest grows rather than slackens till the stage of the
Why is reached. But then begins a woeful change. From
the earliest nursery training the secret of willing and glad
ap[ilication seems to be lost, and the child has to be per-
suaded and even urged to do what it now learns to hate
under the name of * lessons.' When this pressure is reversed
we may indeed hope for great things.

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CHAPTER XXVII

To give up asking Why, then, is to give up being fully
humaa Yes. But let us make up our minds that the true
answers to our most vital Whys can only come through a
long, stem, searching discipline of unanswered question.
We have first to learn What and How to ask, and thus also
Why we do ask and must ask. Man must win his patient
way through a world of baffling problems, all pressing for
solution, and yet apparently insoluble. A strange paradox,
until we suspect that here we touch after all the very
stimulus which has helped to make man's mental supremacy.
Even the very quest for answer leaves his brain, meta-
phorically speaking, the stronger and the abler; his con-
trolling and creative power greater than it was before.
Better, from this point of view, even misdirected curiosity
and wonder than none at all.^ Children often ask a ques-

^ The mischievous absurdity of the general attitude on this question
is well represented by the following extract from the Outlook (Feb. 8,
X903): — "A member of Parliament asks as many questions as does an
inquiring child, and they are apparently just as unanswerable. ' Mother,
why?' is a favourite question with all children. A harassed friend of
min^ who was as worn out with endeavours to satisfy the queries of her
family as Mr. Brodrick is of solving the riddles propounded to him in the
House, foimd refuge at last in the uncontrovertible statement ' Because.'
Infantine curiosity for a time accepted this solution as profound and
satisfying ; but, alas 1 the day came when the inquiring mind took to
sajring, * Because why, mother? ' "

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2o6 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

tion and do not wait for the answer, or else foi;get it the
next moment But the effort has not been wasted.

It seems to follow that the assiduous devotion of modem
thought to the ' How ' is not only one of the most healthy,
but one of the most hopeful of signs for our intellectual and
spiritual future. We are rightly asking how all that we find
in the world around us or in our own minds has grown up
or come to pass ; how things develop and work, grow and
decay, succeed and fail, are made, changed, destroyed,
regenerated or reconstructed ; and, not least, how we learn
these and kindred facts. We must be historical before we
can be predictive, must carefully trace the intricacies of
process, the elaborations of development, before we can
understand and forecast the result We must collect, test,
relate, and combine our facts before we can interpret them.
Man's tendency to push out and explore beyond every limit
in turn must be balanced by the tendency to analyse the
minutest of details. He must be content, for the sake of a
more profitable advance, to re-learn the elements of human
experience ; and to take up over and over again not merely
the standpoints of the growing child's mind, but those which
he clearly shares with the sub-human animal And this is
true of individual as well as of racial development.

This suggests the reason why education has for so long
tended to lay all its stress on accumulating and memorising
a mass of information ; on providing the student with a store
of already acquired and digested knowledge, historical and
other, failing which he is called ignorant or a dunce, and is
supposed to be uneducated. It can hardly be doubted that
this tendency is due to the recognition of stored knowledge
as the indispensable means of utilising the results of re-
search, exploration, and inquiry generally. It is undoubtedly
man's characteristic power to accumulate the intellectual

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.XXVII WHAT IS MEANING? 207

;. - and moral treasure which makes his What, his How, his

Why, and finally his Who, no idle questions, dying down as

. r they arise and before they can be answered, but a true

,- seeking of light wherein each attained discovery suggests

. and makes possible the next. But in education this storing

- power has been allowed to numb, almost to kill out the Why,

. — ^the seeking, questioning, and (except in physical science)

. the observing and investigating power, — until the average

man is no longer interested either in that or in any know-

[. ledge beyond what actually brings him comfort or pleasure.

It is curious here to note that the questioning spirit which

medieval theology found so inconvenient has been branded

. with the scarlet letter of Scepticism, so that the mere fact of

question which would put any established 'orthodoxy' to

, fresh test is treated by many as wrong-doing.

Yet the average child is intensely interested both in
question and in knowledge ; and especially in exploration,
which, balked in the natural and fertile form, is of course
liable to take destructive forms. Thus the crying need is
to restore this experimental instinct to its true place in our
training scheme; to encourage a healthy questioning and
a healthy search for the answer, since this cannot but
assure a corresponding thirst for knowledge in the true
sense, which reacts upon and rectifies the moral ideal

Thus alone can we hope to rise from a forlorn hope of
resistance to the * cosmic process ' — a Partington's mop for
the cosmic ocean — ^to victory through interpretation. When
we learn, through diligently asking our Whats and Hows,
our Wheres and Whens, etc., what Whys to ask and How
rightly to ask them, then indeed new worlds of possible
answer open before our eyes. What had seemed hope-
lessly transcendent, ultimate, even ' absolutely ' unknowable,
may then prove to be far short of any such inaccessible

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2o8 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

region ; to be nearer and perhaps more intimately oars than
we had suspected. We may sometimes, like the mother
unconsciously hugging her baby in the burning house, be
searching fyn and wide for what is in our very grasp.

For again our Why, reached and interpreted thus, earns
for us a yet higher query, Who. How often in these
days our personal questions, Who am I? Who art thou?
Who are we? seem to evoke but a dreary echo — ^Who?
In reaction, again, from the off-hand or dogmatic certainties
of earlier speculative and mystical introspection, we wonder
whether What are we ? is not a truer or at any rate safer
question than Who are we ? The ego, if not the self, has
a baffling or an empty sound to us. Or we transfer all
such ideas to the sphere of emotion, and say that we feel
our own identity, and leave the subtleties of its discussion
to the interminable metaphysician !

Perhaps here, too, the discipline of conscious reversion
to a lower stage of experience may be needed. Our ideas
of personality may be overlain and obscured by mistaken
inference, mistranslated feeling and instincts. At present
there is much to be done before we can hope to unravel
even the simplest of the apparently tangled webs of adult
experience ; to translate the facts of life rightly, and make
them yield a harvest of living significance. May we not
say that when man has reached a further stage in this
essentially human work, he may rightfully claim his human
prerogative to ask Why? Will he not discover that his
very helplessness so far to solve the enigmas of life, to
interpret and thus control what he sees as evil, to bring
about a higher standard and level of organic, ethical,
intellectual life, is profoundly significant in an unexpected
sense ? Does it not belong to the stage which he is out-
growing in the very act of protesting that an ultimate Why

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XXVII WHAT IS MEANING? 209

or Who must not now be asked, or answer hoped for?
This question, however we may answer it, cannot fail to
react powerfully on our ethical ideas, and thus on conduct
itself, convicting both, it may be, of the need of some re-
vision.

At all events, to ask What can never be an unprofitable
question : we do well, are even bound, to inquire what is
the first human query. Supposing this query to be Why ?
then man has been and is gradually learning how he asks it
from the historians of mythology and philosophy, from the
philologist, and in a special sense from the experimental
psychologist But the one ultimate Why which, because
he is human, he not only may, but must ask, is, why he
asks it

This, however, carries us a long way. At present our
concern is with the very first steps of so momentous a
journey. And these, it is surely obvious, must be taken
on the road of education. There is now a marked tendency
among psychologists to stimulate the accurate observation
of children and their ways. Hitherto the difficulty has
been, that what we assume to be a child's natural ideas are
often really his attempts to adapt himself to those of his
elders. Children, by the very necessities of the case, are
such inveterate and often unconscious imitators ! Probably,
as we learn better how to allow for this, we shall surprise
more really primitive and original characteristics in children
than we now suspect to exist. When women, who are
nearer to and understand children better than most men,
are, in the sense here suggested, significantly trained to
observe children and to distinguish between their imitative
and their original or spontaneous impulses, we may learn
more about the genesis of the Why and the Who than so
far has seemed possible.

p

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210 WHAT IS MEANING? chap, xxvn

To sum up : the most natural and spontaneous tendency
in man is the tendency to search out, to explore, to master
the unknown; and the unknown in this case is the very
reason and value of his being. The systematic training of
this tendency will alone reveal the answer to such ultimate
questions as why man asks Why.^

^ Since the above was written, I have found in Aristotle's criticism of
the earlier Greek views of 'cause' {Afet i. 3), what is apparently an
interesting parallel to the genetic development of the Question-series here
traced. In a passage kindly translated for me by Sir Arthur Hort.
Aristotle says : '* And the causes which we assign are fourfold : one cause
we declare to be the Essence (Formal Cause) or the What is it ? (for the
Why in the last resort comes under the Principle (Differentia) and the
Why is above all things a Cause and* a First Principle). And the second
is the Matter (Material Cause) or Substance. And the third is that
whence comes the origin of Motion. And the Fourth is the cause which
answers to this last, viz. the ' on account of which ' or the Good : for this
is the end of Generation and Motion."

Here Aristotle makes the Why start, as well as crown, the ascending
series. From our present standpoint this may readily be admitted in the
sense that the Why is potential in all question, though it is the last to
become definitely articulate. The What designates the quality and gives
us the name. But the Formal and Efficient may surely be included under
the How : ' this or that idea or object is formed thus ' : or, ' it acts in this
way or by that means and in that manner. ' Then the last, also implicitly
the first, becomes the fully conscious Why and Wherefore, to which the
answer should give, in the higher sense, the significance of all Expression,
including that which we generalise under the term phenomenon or appear-
ance. Though it cannot here be dealt with, the far-reaching significance
of this last inclusion, in relation to discussions on appearance and reality,
will be manifest

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CHAPTER XXVIII

Granted, then, that an advance in our powers of expression,
an enrichment of the resources of language, a greater mastery
of significance, clearer apprehension of needless obstacles
to mutual understanding, more effective consensus in all
these directions is desirable : how are we to begin ? The
difficulty is that hitherto every one who has been at all
alive to the serious consequences of our present lack of
mutual understanding has thought of it almost exclusively
from the point of view of the inconvenience resulting from
diversity in civilised languages. Many proposals or sug-
gestions have been made for the acquisition of an universal
language; and even now the adoption of neo- Latin as a
common language for philosophical as well as scientific
purposes is being urged as meeting a crying need. But I
venture to suggest that, except in a limited sense or as a
temporary expedient, that would be beginning at the wrong
end.i

^ The latest proposal of the kind — Sir F. Bramwell's — well illustrates
this contention. As the Times (April 4, 1902) truly says, his scheme for
"the adoption of a common language for intercourse between civilised
nations, " which is to be preferably Italian, is impracticable and fantastic.
But the dogma that English, as we now know it, is to become the common
language of the world is also shown to be unsound. Both Latin and
French seemed once destined to become practically universal. And we
must not ignore the undeveloped language-groups like the Sclavonic and
that which includes Chinese. The true ' common language ' of the future

211

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212 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

For even if the whole civilised— or intelligent — ^world
could be brought by means of some great international
movement to unite in the formation and consent to the
use of such a language, — ^whether an old language adapted
or a new one constructed, — it could at best but touch
the surface of the question, and might indeed easily
tend, by engendering content with unworthy ideals, still
further to hamper and discourage that development of
linguistic resources for which at present the very variety of
tongues and dialects must indirectly make.^ Many 'ways
of putting it,' ancient and modem, are at least now
at man's disposal. With an artificially introduced and
sanctioned universal language, imposed upon us at our
present stage of linguistic development, much of this
precious psychological heritage would wither and be wasted
and lost. It may be that the world cannot do without that
opulence of distinction in idiom which makes for richness in
• human life as a whole. This opulence arises from and issues
in differences of practice, themselves valuable as providing
the means of dealing in various ways with the emergencies
of the future. The problem surely is, how to keep this
priceless treasure without allowing it either to divide us, or
to silence that which, being everywhere the highest thought
of the highest man, is most of all worthy of expression.

Let us suppose, then, that our parents, and therefore we
ourselves, had been brought up to recognise the crucial im-
portance of preserving and utilising all which in language
makes for (i) convenience and economy; (2) lucidity,
grace, melody, dignity, beauty; (3) power to express what

— so far as one can be used at all — will not be artificially foisted on the
present sjrstem of education : it will be a spontaneous and thus really
effective product of that change of educational standpoint and aim which
the method of • signifies ' involves. See Note XXI. , Appendix.

^ G. Moore's "Soul of Ireland," Nineteenth Century ^ February 1901.

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xxviii WHAT IS MEANING? 213

now seems beyond expression both in range and complexity
of constituent and distinction. Let us suppose, further,
that two generations, as a matter of course, had been taught
from their earliest years that it was morally wrong, socially
impossible, and practically idiotic, to make anything but the
very most of all existing means of expression. Let us
suppose, also, that we had thus been taught the true place
and value of the sense of things (their appeal to us), the
meaning of things (their intention, if any), the significance
of things (their moment, their importance to us). Let us
further suppose that this typically significant triad, on which
all action as well as all knowledge depended, was clearly
seen by all as most of all worthy of concentrated attention
and interest : what difference would this have made ?

We must remember that while the appeal to the matter-
of-fact character would have told on the side of economy,
of simplicity, and of efficiency — the attraction being, in fact,
the doing most at least cost, doing it most thoroughly with *
most useful results — the appeal to the imaginative character
would have told on the side of truer conception, whether
abstract or pictorial, whether ethical or artistic, whether
making for truth, goodness, or beauty. The prosaic type
would have seen the point best on the economical, the * least
trouble most result ' side, as a question of success or failure,
praise or reproof, reward or punishment The imaginative
or emotional type would have seen the iniquity and folly
of crippling or mutilating the most precious of its gifts, of
starving instead of fostering a really vital energy. All alike
would by this time have contributed abundantly to our store.
For the whole mental atmosphere and attitude of a genera-
tion thus trained from the very beginning of life would be
altered. Its centre of gravity would be changed. Its world
would also at once be expanded ; the area of the common

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214 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

interest enlarged and concentrated, the value of life revealed
and enhanced.

Such a generation would find in its hand the key to
problems which now, in fact, for lack of thought expressive
enough to be fully predictive or prophetic, cannot adequately
be interpreted. It would find in a pregnant simplicity,
now lost in a futile elaboration, the secrets which master
death and give a new empire to the life reached through
truth.

We know now that witchcraft is practically suggestion.
You believe you are bewitched, and so you pine away. So
with pessimism, the witchcraft of philosophy. You believe
that all is bad and hopeless, and it becomes so. On the
other hand, the wildest optimism has the merit — an un-
speakable one — of bringing about what it hopes for, just as
pessimism brings about what it fears.

It is the same in education. If you start daunted, or
become daunted by 'disillusion' or disappointment, of
course the child will not be 'interested.' Children are
sensitive to suggestion. Reiterate the glad tidings of hope.
This is what the Gospel is — the Supreme Suggestion.

Let us then consider how the teacher of the future,
himself thus trained, can accomplish this transfiguration of
study.^ At present the child's natural interest in and
control over language is by direct and indirect means
systematically blunted, especially by the premature teaching
of formal grammar; while his typical instinct, that of
asking for the reason of things, of putting the question
Why, is not sufficiently recognised as the keynote of true
education as of true mental growth.^

1 See Note XXII. , Appendix.

^ The evidence of this is happily now being brought forward on every
side. The difficulty, as usual, is to select from the chorus. In an article

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XXVIII WHAT IS MEANING? 215

The necessity for social consensus (which in the really most
important directions we are impotent to secure) is pressed to
the uttermost as a reason for the merely customary. We
waste the often valuable innovations or corrections of current
fashions of speech unconsciously made by children. These
are merely received and recorded in shouts of laughter, so
that the children are careful never to repeat them. But in

on Educational Reform (September 5, 1901) the Times says : "We are
cxymg out in all directions for something, we hardly know what. . . . We
have prided ourselves, not without reason, upon the practical qualities of
our race, and have cared little for mental training ; and now we discover,
through the inexorable logic of fact and the pressure of competitors in
fields where once we had no rival, that these practical qualities need supple-
menting and sharpening by that very education that we have affected 'to
despise." Reformers need the driving power of popular interest. "We
are convinced," said the Commissioners of 1868 at the close of their
report, " that it is vain to expect thoroughly to educate the people ot this
country except by gradually inducing them to educate themselves. Those
who have studied the subject may supply the best guidance, and Parlia-
ment may be persuaded to make laws in accordance with their advice.
But the real force, whereby the work is to be done, must come from the
people." It is true that " we must work out our educational salvation in
our own way." " Our men know how to do their work," said an English
manufacturer, "but they don't know why they do it" Exactly. The
mere Whats and Hows are stuffed in, and the Whys are left out. And
then we wonder at our national stupidity, especially when it issues in
intellectual as well as practical sterility and apathy. To Nature the
country owes a debt of gratitude for having persistently called attention
to the cruel waste of power going on not only in the scientific, but in the
whole social world. In an article on the ' ' Teaching of Physiology' ' reprinted
in its pages (B^ebruary 28, 1901), Professor W. T. Porter says, "Too
often in our medical schools information is mistaken for knowledge. Only
knowledge is power. The getting of mere information wastes the student's
time. The vast accumulations of centuries of medical study confuse the
imdisciplined mind and crush the spirit. The burden of fact which any
man can bear is relatively small, and each year grows relatively smaller.
To find new truths and to look undismayed upon the old is the perfect
fruit of education."

A review by Dr. B. Moore of the same author's ' ' Introduction to
Physiology" (Nature, July 25, 1901) strikes the same note : "The Weary

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2i6 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

time we shall b^in to see that the child may not merely

contribute to a truer psychology, but also to a more

significant philosophy than any we yet dream of. Only

first we must put into his hands the power to understand

the value of what we call * meaning'; we must 'educate'

in the fullest sense of the word ; we must aim at bringing

out and thus expressing treasures of human nature now

hidden in helpless silence or ineffectual talk, or in the shy

reserve intensified by dread of the snubbing process.^

The result of pressing home all forms of knowledge in

an appeal to sense, meaning, and significance, is an enormous

brain (of the British student) has been enslaved at unpalatable task-work
all the two 3rears, grinding up. at the same time, all four of these important
subjects so that he may make answer to stock questions upon them at
examination time. . . . When we introduce a rational system of studying
these subjects, which will teach our students to think, to examine critically
the work done by others who have gone before them, and to make attempts
to proceed farther by themselves, a new era will dawn in which students
will take an interest in their work, and will rejoice in knowing that they
will be judged on what they have been doing throughout their course, and
not upon the extent to which they have impaired their memories and
intellects by merely memorising the opinions of other men from their text-
books and lectures. " For the sake of what are virtually intellectual weeds,
*'we arrange a system which chokes out, or does the best that can be
imagined to choke out, our choicest flowers. This furnishes a sufficient
clue to the well-known observation that our men of highest genius in the
past have often been those that the schools rejected, or found no occasion
to honour." See Note XXIII. , Appendix.

^ Since writing this, an article by ' Linesman ' has appeared in the
Spectator (February 8, 1902), which, though it only applies to the Army,
expresses exactly what is here meant. ' Linesman ' speaks of the soldier
(including of course the officer) as ' miraculous material,' and as one who
" carries within him the force to do with manipulation ten times what he
does neglected — to think, instructed, with an astuteness of which, un-
taught, no gleam has been shown to the casual observer — the force to be,
in fact, the ten times better soldier he must be to cope with the tenfold
work which confronts him. Ekx>nomise and mature this force, teach the
men it informs how to perfect and apply it," and the work will be done.
See also Note XXIV., Appendix.

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XXVIII WHAT IS MEANING? 217

development of the child's power of appreciating and using
distinction, and of avoiding confusion and fallacy. The
child is also helped by the use of a principle of Translation
by which the 'common denominator' of all the subjects
learnt, however diverse, may be discovered, so that within
varying limits each may illustrate the other. The appeal to
the child's expression -power will always make for that
pictorial road to the abstract which is natural to the young
mind. It must be remembered that the child's mind
begins with the generic {e.g, all men are at first * Daddy '),
which might, perhaps, be called the mother of the abstract.^
The instinct which prompts the typical child to ask Why
at every turn would thus for the first time be fully worked
upon. We should at last touch his natural tendency to
seek a * because ' for everything — to link together all parts
of his growing experience. As all fun and chaff, no less
than all wit and humour, depend on turns either of sense
or meaning or significance; as the ludicrous depends on
the incongruous, and our sense of the incongruous depends
on the strength of our mastery of the congruous, this method
of education would lend itself, as no other could attempt to
do, to the child's craving to be interested, excited, even
amused in learning. Then we should see in ' brain-work '
an unbroken continuity from that marvellous, untiring,
intelligent * nerve -work' which gradually perfects the
organic activities.^ And this natural brain-work entirely

1 The systematic study of the child's (and of early man's) 'art,' of his
mode of reproducing objects, has brought out the little understood fact
that, as Professor Sully remarks (Studies of Childhood, p. 369 ; 1895), the
" transition to the representation of action marks the substitution of a more
realistic concrete treatment for the early abstract symbolic treatment."
As yet we treat the symbolic and the abstract as last in the mental ascent !

^ The one most notable achievement affecting us all alike, of that
• Signific ' power which has never yet been consciously and systematically

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2i8 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

takes the sting out of monotony, even out of drudgery.
As we have seen, the young child faces both with undaunted
perseverance in its natural process of acquiring and extend-
ing both vocabulary and sentence-form.

A good example of the practical value of the Signific
method in education is supplied in an article on ' British
Industry' by Mr. R. Neville.^ He says: "The problem
is how to change the mental attitude of the working man.
How to insure his interest in his work, and to incite him
to put forth his full powers." Our present methods of
education may or may not permanently store the pupil's
mind with a number of facts; it certainly does not
necessarily increase his perception of the value of work and
of the meaning of taking pains and trouble ; it does not give
him the common-sense * worth whileness ' of things which
otherwise seem hard, seem things to be shirked. " Yet in
truth," he proceeds, "this incentive to exertion must in
some be supplied; without it all the preaching in the
world will be without effect" But he concludes: "The
fatal weakness in all proposals for reform of which we hear
to-day is that they are content to deal with symptoms, and
leave unsought and unremedied the cause of the social
ills they undertake to alleviate. Even in a case like the
present, where the cause stands plainly in view, the last
thing thought of is to attempt to deal with it. On all hands
it is ignored or explained away. It is quite useless to
complain that things are as they are, unless we are pre-
pared to alter the conditions that made them so."

Yes ; when, instead of giving him ready-made answers

cultivated, is the endowment of • printed matter ' with the living energies
of speech. The child should be shown how great a result this is — how
much he has already tried to add, and how far he has already tried to
penetrate in this case.

^ Monthly Review ^ February 1902.

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XXVIII WHAT IS MEANING? 219

or none, we have learnt to take up nature's plan, and thus
shown every child at school how to discover these Whys
of hard work and good conduct for which from the first
he has normally thirsted ; when we have made it a duty on
his part (instead of a distracting luxury) to hunt for reasons,
to look through the that and the what to the how and the
why, — we may reap an unexpected practical harvest^ For
to work and to ask ; to do and to inquire ; to see why he
should learn, and how he shall succeed, and what success
ought to signify to him, — these very things are already his
deepest instincts. They only need translating. And when
men have learnt to translate them into conscious and
voluntary action, then 'reform,' industrial or other, will
assume a different aspect in their eyes; it will appeal to
all in a different way from any now possible. We shall
have learnt to respond to the * next higher ' in social
development exactly as the baby responds to the call to

^ " Perhaps the most marvellous exhibition of memory is that displayed
by players of blindfold chess ; but who would select a man, because he was
an expert in this science, to conduct a business ? In regard to the claim
of development of reasoning powers, it may be that the absolute reverse is
the truth, and to learn by rote things that have no meaning to the learner
is possibly the surest way to stunt the intellect The most valuable
intellectual gift a man can possess — I speak with all deference, not as an
educationist, but as an engineer — ^is the power of concentrating his mind
on the problem immediately before him ; and the learning of meaningless
or objectless things — they need only be meaningless or objectless to the
learner — is the surest way to cultivate a discursive mental habit. Let any
one who doubts this watch an average schoolboy getting by rote a Greek
verb, or any other lesson equally empirical. The most trifling incident will
distract his attention, and that not from wilfulness, for the penalty of not
knowing his lesson has many real terrors. Educational methods. I know,
have improved and are still improving in this country, but when all is said, I
attribute the greater mental alertness of Americans, especially American
middle-class youths, to the lead that American schools have taken in this
respect" (Times on "American Engineering Progress," December 29,
1900).

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220 WHAT IS MEANING? chap, xxvm

stand, walk, talk, ask — only in a higher and yet more
entrancing fonn.^

The truth is, the infant unconsciously translates all its
labour, its pains and its troubles, into ^ more abundant ' Life
So we have everywhere to teach the chDd to translate,
giving him the additional incentive of knowing that he is
using a royal power, one which exalts him in all eyes,
his own included.

^ One of the many iUuminating distinctions which we neglect or ignore
is that between copious and mathematically accurate, and iniimate
knowledge. The latter is sometimes gained almost at a glance, and
translates itself as food does into the living tissues of the learner ; the
former merely gives us walking text-books, manuals, encyclopaedias, or
else simply kills out the living energies of mind. This is well put in an
article in thit North American. Review (June i6, 190a): "College
courses and laboratory practice teach the youth what has been done ; they
prepare him to begin original work for the increase of knowledge. When
it comes to this point in their courses of education, however, many
excellent students display a certain sluggishness, or, as T3mdaU would
say, 'a lack of the scientific imagination.' Our problem is to stimulate
and cultivate the intense mental energy needed by the investigator"

(P- 839).

"Of course, minor considerations inevitably come into play in the
ultimate decision as to the filling of a given vacancy ; yet, if the first and
major consideration is simply, ' What has this man done that demonstrates
his intellectual energy, his productiveness, his enthusiasm, his intimate
knowledge of the subject, his fitness to lead those who must be taught ? '
then we shall certainly rule out all undesirable candidates" (p. 840,
Science in America, by Professor C. Abbe).

The Spectator (June 21, 1902) may here be quoted in contrast : "The
Prince of Wales showed very plainly at the annual dinner of the Civil Service
that a speaker may have no intimate knowledge of his subject, and yet by
instinct or good fortune go straight to the very heart of it." Now * inti-
mate ' knowledge is exactly that which does go to the heart of a subject ;
the writer meant • technical ' or • official ' knowledge merely.

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CHAPTER XXIX

What Professor Sully calls the germ of the imagination
normally appears during the first year of life. "The
moment when the baby's mind first passes on from the sight
of his bottle to a foregrasping or imagination of the blisses of
prehension and deglutition . . . marks an epoch in his
existence. He not only perceives what is actually present
to his senses, he pictures or represents what is absent."^
Now this true imagination is quite distinct from fancy,
which if gracefiil and even fascinating, always involves more
or less desertion or defiance of fact, whereas the imaging
power, however much it may idealise, is still faithful to its
basis of fact. And this imagination in its first 'germs'
gives us the sense of movement, event, or object — what that
* sense ' signifies.

When we understand that Sense is the essential thing as
means of (i) all experience, (2) all interpretation, (3) all
knowledge, (4) all conduct, (5) all prediction; and that
Sentence, Word, Letter (also position, form, or content),
are merely means of conveying that sense, we shall begin
to train children in a new spirit.

To go at any length into detailed applications of the
signific method of training would of course in this book be
out of place, and indeed would demand a separate volume.

^ studies of Childhood, p. 405 (1895).
221

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222 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

They should all be the reasoned outcome of a serious study
of the subject by representatives of the most advanced edu-
cational thought in the world. But at least we may be sure
that the pupil's powers of interpretation will be trained in
a fresh and living sense. This interpretative power (leading
to valid inference) is still so feeble that we resent the least
obscurity, even where such obscurity is the inevitable con-
dition of expressing facts of the highest importance from a
new point of view. Where this is really the case (and is
not the device of the sham thinker for evading the incon-
venient critic under a shower of fine words) we might as
reasonably complain of the shadow which gives to physical
light its value. The child will thus learn to unravel and
to reconstruct sentences and paragraphs, and to detect
changes of sense which alter value or * venue.' He will be
shown the loss of clearness, the confusion, the poverty of
idea caused by the common neglect of valuable distinctions
such as that between the imaginative and the fanciful

Let us look into this particular example a little. In
this case the scientific imagination has been amply and
eloquently vindicated by Tyndall and others. Yet how
few seem to grasp the fact that by Imagination alone
do we realise and avert the dangers of Fancy ! ^ By the
road of true imagination we approach, even if we do not
reach, reality. By the road of fancy — the fanciful — we
swerve away from it No harm if we know this. But how
few of us do ! And how many make the fatal mistake of
confounding Imagination and its greatest enemy — Fancy:
using indifferently the words which embody this precious

^ The present anarchy of use results (as Dr. Schofield and others have
pointed out) in our dangerously confounding imaginary diseases with
diseases of the imagination. But even here we ought to speak of fanciful
or fantastic diseases. For a disease which cannot be imagined cannot be
diagnosed.

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UNiVERc/I/

XXIX WHAT IS UEAH^mi^::-'. -^ 223

distinction. A good example (among multitudes) of this
unfortunate habit is found in the use of fancy, imagination,
and even conception as convertible terms, which is found
even in such admirable writing as that of the Spectator articles.
One of these makes imagination equivalent to fancy, and then
says, " Conceive " (meaning imagine) " Nietzsche in such a
world." ^ No wonder that as we read on we find that while
" we can all think of eternity forwards — it is only like think-
ing of a motor which in exerting itself for ever renews its
own power — but the most earnest believer among us fails
to conceive of the Being without beginning. De Quincey,
in that marvellous dissertation on Lord Rosse's telescope —
he who has not read it fails to recognise the full majesty of
expression that lurks unused in the English language — wisely
made of this idea of being without beginning the climax-
mystery of the universe ; but even to him it can only have
been an idea expressible in words, but incapable of realisation
in thought." But that is just because the * full majesty of
expression' Murks unused.' We need find no inherent
difficulty in either, until we want to make others share
our conception ; and then of course, though we could our-
selves express it, they could not understand an unrecog-
nised usage. As already said, it must always be re-
membered that for this reason it is as yet practically
impossible to say on this subject many things which
urgently need expression. We must wait for an audience
trained and ready as of old to welcome innovations or
reversions in language which make for enriched signifi-
cance, and to grudge no trouble in learning the most
valuable language of all, that of the growing points of
thought. The pupil will then be given lessons in * seeing
through' the most ingeniously and convincingly plausible
* "The Limitations of Fancy," Spectator, Nov. 24, 1900.

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224 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

statements : in detecting, not merely formal Maqr, but also
intentional or unconscious inconsistency, which (as we are)
easily escapes notice.

The intentional production of illusion has never yet
been systematically used in education or employed by a
philosophical writer to put his readers on their guard
against errors which are not merely logical. It is a pity
that the highest developments of the power to produce at
will, and therefore to detect and expose fsdlacious inferences,
have hitherto been called mere 'conjuring,' and devoted
only to money-making by amusing trickery, if not to less
defensible objects.

If the power wielded by the conjurer, which is largely
the result of special training, were only translated into an
altogether higher form, we might look forward to striking
results in education. We should obtain most valuable
studies in ambiguity of thought as well as of word, both
voluntary and unrecognised ; and students would learn the
extent to which the plausible dominates us. They would
also realise how easily even the ablest writers occasionally
miss significant points by fixing attention on issues really
less centrally important than others which, through the pre-
sent lack of early signific training, may even seem trivial.

Professor J. Jastrow's study of the Psychology of De-
tection^ well illustrates this suggestion, and his appeal to
physiology is illuminative. Not merely in 'recognising a
book, a picture, a face ' or in judgments on the occurrences
of a ' stance,' but also in the deepest thought and study, men
may in a true sense fully see and understand what they call
the * world,' but yet, in fact, suffer from * psychic blindness '
and find it unmeaning — whence pessimism results. For
Man in such case blames the world; to him it is an in-

^ Fact and Fable in Psychology, pp. 106-7 (*90i)-

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XXIX WHAT IS MEANING? 225

explicable, and therefore distressing * riddle ' ; but what he
needs is the stimulus of this very distress (carried, indeed,
to the point of the intolerable) in order to develop in him
an enhanced power of 'interpreting, assimilating, reading
the meaning * of that which, as things are, seems to him
cruelly senseless, or drives him to arbitrary and precarious
solutions.

We have never yet deliberately trained this faculty ; is it
not time to begin ? The conjurer can, if he will, make you
see the true meaning of his apparently insoluble puzzles;
the same power applied to the great problems of life would
make us see significance where now we most despair of it.

The child must therefore learn to gauge context by con-
text, and to hunt with unerring scent for some else unnoticed
peculiarity of apparently chance expression or form of ex-
pression which gives a clue to the writer's (or speaker's) real
sense, and therefore to the true order of sentences. In this
work he must even in the interests of detection ignore
grammar. He must learn to become a sense -detective,
detecting his own as well as others' more subtle blunders,
more hidden flaws in that significance which it is the object
of articulate expression to convey. The accomplished Signi-
fician is at least a Sherlock Holmes, and more, a Helmholtz.

When the pupil has been thus trained he can be trusted
to economise Sense and to clear himself. For throughout
his studies he must be constantly reminded that were it
once understood that it was possible to learn to be more
expressive, much of his labour would be needless.

But his teachers and examiners must first set him the
example. When an average child informs his examiner
in history that Wat Tyler led the pheasants' revolt and
pillaged the Crystal Palace: that the Black Prince extin-
guished himself at Crecy, and that Common Pleas should

Q

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1

226 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

not be carried about on the king's person : when he answers
to such a question as " What is a watershed ? " — " A shed
for keeping water in " ; or to the question " Where were the
kings of England crowned ? " — " On their heads/' this simply
betrays the failure of his teacher's methods, or the absur-
dity of this kind of question at a given stage. The answers
make, of course, delightful nonsense ; but while enjoying the
joke, we ought to realise with shame the terrible witness to
educational stupidity (and that not the child's) represented
by these specimens.^

A curious witness to the strength of our natural interest
in questions of expression and therefore of sense, meaning,

1 •• Any one who chooses to observe the development of a child's mind
will, if he does not suppress its natural bent, convince himself that a child
from three to five years of age possesses thinking powers of greater capacity
than we are in the habit of crediting to it. One of the external evidences
of a thoughtful mind is the asking of questions which bear definite and
logical relations to each other ; and this is precisely what an average child
of that age, when talking to a person in S3rmpathy with it. is persistently
doing. It is not content with a flimsy and evasive answer, and how strong
is its intellectual craving is manifested by its evident disappointment or
display of temper when its ignorant parents impatiently curb its curiosity.
It is very seldom that one finds a mother who has endeavoured to retain
her child's thinking capacities. I was once present when the four-year-old
little daughter of such a mother was making inquiries about the planet
Venus, and alter she had been informed that both Venus and the earth
travelled round the sun, and were illuminated by it, she put the query.
• Then if there were people on Venus our earth would look to them like
Venus looks to us?' This question demonstrates that a child possesses
thinking powers sufficiently vigorous to enable it to see the logical relation-
ships of bodies to each other that would certainly do credit to many of its
superiors in point of years. This is not an isolated instance, and my im-
pression, derived from observation and from conversation with observant
persons, is that the average child, if not suppressed, is capable of a quality
of thinking that leads its elders, when they try to follow it, into an
intellectual quagmire of inconsistency and abstirdity from which they beat
an inglorious retreat by angrily bidding it ' not to ask silly questions.' If
they bid themselves not to give silly answers their request would be just*
(G. P. Mudge on •• Darwinism and Statecraft," Nature^ April ii, 1901.)

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XXIX WHAT IS MEANING? 227

and significance, may be found in the general delight, some-
times even too absorbing, and common to all classes, in
guessing riddles, solving puzzles, putting letters together to
form sentences, re-setting anagrams, and so on. So with
games like 'cross questions and crooked answers,' * Russian
scandal,' * buried cities,' verse-making and story-telling (each
one contributing line or incident without knowing what the
other ones are), besides charades and dumb crambo. And
this takes the form even of more serious mathematical
problems, cheerfully undertaken by the ordinary family
party as an evening's amusement !

It must, of course, be remembered that much of the
work here suggested describes at least in part or in spirit
what is already the aim of every progressive teacher. The
point is that such work is only incidental ; that it has never
been gathered up under a definite general term ; that it is
recognised in no public school or university curriculum, and
depends wholly on the chance of individual tendencies,
where these are free to act. Whereas, in the mode of teaching
which the term Signifies properly connotes, the child must
everywhere and always be so imbued with the sense that
the one thing first needful is Sense, and with the idea that,
having this, all things may be added unto him, that he will
instinctively and habitually start from it and look for it
in every step of his way ; knowing that it is this which he
has to grasp — to mark, learn, and digest — in every part of
every subject ; so that in after life he * cannot help ' — cannot
avoid — becoming a private, at least, in the great army of
generators of a transfigured Expression and a new trans-
valuation.^ He will, at last, unconsciously accept or reject,

^ There is no doubt Uiat the method of -Socrates might be and ought to
be freely used in education. As the Spectator (March 25, 1899) has well
said, "The greatest method of destroying error, of unveiling truth, of

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228 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

as he already does in letter-forming and spelling, in reading
and in cyphering.^

One advantage of the signific method is that the danger
of specialism is avoided, while its advantages are developed.
The bent (sometimes more than one) of each child and
young man having been discovered, he would be permitted
as a privil^e to pursue his £sivourite aim. And when the
examiner's turn came, the master and tutor would say :
Examine Smith major in that ; all the rest of his course is
elementary. Only it would be understood that, of course,
all the boys alike had their penetrative and interpenetrative
powers cultivated to the utmost ; so that they would, accord-
ing to their several abilities, have seized the gist, the purport,
the application, the true value even of those subjects which
they had not specially chosen as their own. Thus there
would be fewer specialists in the bad sense — men whose
minds are warped, who can harp only on one string, and
who, therefore, cannot play in the best way even on that

But there would be more specialists in the good sense :
men who are real masters of one subject — of two or three,
if they are great enough — and the intelligent discemers of
significance in all others. Thus they can place their own
subject, and compare it with others ; they can enrich it by
realising alike its relations and its uniqueness. When a man

awakening the mind, was the method of Socrates. Perhaps of all our
needs to-day there is none so great (as we think Dean Stanley observed)
as a thorough dialectic aiter the manner of Socrates, in which all the
vexed questions of our time should be subjected to that most wonderful
intellectual analysis. How our mental shuffling, our begging of the
question, our stupid confusion, would be burnt up in that consuming
flame ! " And no one would appreciate and benefit by it more than the
child and the youth, for many of their own questions which we often
merely laugh at or snub are in fact Socratic, although they themselves
may be but partly conscious of the irony of these.
\ See Note XXV., Appendix.

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XXIX WHAT IS MEANING? 229

boasted that he read nothmg but the Bible, "then you
haven't read that," was the deserved retort We may para-
phrase one famous dictum, and preface every lesson with
the pregnant maxim that there is nothing gained in life
which has not been first found in sense ; and continue with
another dictum, that where all experience begins in sense
(in one sense) it assuredly all ends in sense (in the other
sense): that whereas in one sense we may leave 'sense'
behind, as we acquire meaning and advance into the domain
of pure intellect and abstract reasoning, we only need it more
and more in the other sense which issues in Significance.

It ought to be needless to remind ourselves here that
these suggestions have presupposed some recognition of
the working of phonetic laws and of the history of language
generally; and does not exclude, but adds interest to the
ordinary lines of grammatical study, especially in its com-
parative form.^ But a teacher worthy the name will have
taken this for granted. Unfortunately, the study hitherto
often called philological, sometimes even literary, is in the
most technical sense linguistic only. Thus it has so far
proved attractive merely to a small class of too often
pedantic specialists.

Now, however, that some of the most distinguished
experts in language — notably M. Michel Br^al and Dr.
Postgate — have begun to protest in plain terms against the
prevailing neglect by linguistic scholars of Semantics,
the * science of the changes of meaning,' the outlook is
more hopeful.

^ It will be remembered that this was urged in Chapter II.

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CHAPTER XXX

When the study of Significance becomes a recognised and
vital element of education, as the very nexus of all experience
and expression, it may naturally become the subject of a
series of Lectures. And these would include a course on
the principles and practical working of imagery — popular,
poetical, philosophical, and scientific. (This, of course,
might be varied to suit audiences of the young or the
uneducated, or of any degree of culture.) The lectvuer
on Popular Imagery would have a number of simple
objects and some elementary apparatus by which he would
illustrate the original, generally the material, conditions of
figurative usage. For instance: he would show a given
object reduced or magnified or distorted in various ways
by the action of lenses through which it was seen. He
would show it also through media of varying degrees of
transparency and manifold tints. He would * throw light '
upon it and then obscure it. He would show that while,
say, its form and its colour and size were distinct, they could
not be separated except in certain cases and senses, and he
would show what these were, and how we should gain in
clearness by using the idea of distinctness and the idea of
separateness to mean different classes of fact

Again, standing on a given spot, he would grasp various
objects, and then make efforts to reach what was nearly or

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CHAP. XXX WHAT IS MEANING? 231

quite * beyond his grasp.' Then he would show that he
could still smell the rose beyond his reach, and remind
us that he could hear what was much too far away to touch
or smell; and beyond that could see what 'transcended'
the utmost powers of hand, foot, nose, or ear to reach.
Lastly, he would remind us of the further world (strictly
'transcending' that of the unaided senses) which micro-
scope, telescope, spectroscope, revealed, or in which the
X-rays acted. And once more, he would suggest that as
we already used these very expressions, and were tempted
to refuse to have anything to do with what we could not
' grasp,' that we had better learn when young to use such
terms in a truer and more orderly, therefore simpler and
clearer, fashion.

Then he would have a box, a doll, a nut, etc, to illustrate
the metaphorical use of inner and outer, and a model of a
house with its foundations, also a model of a globe set fast
on a fixed stand (showing that the stand again required a
table, the table a floor, the floor a * ground,' and so on, but
* under ' all — what ? he would ask).

Then, by means of a rotating globe (one of the ordinary
ones used in elementary science lectures), he would show
the diflerence made in our ideas of the over and under, the
above and below, the higher and lower, by the discovery of
the antipodes. So he would explain that it is no longer
true in the ancient or absolute sense that the 'heaven' is
higher than the ' earth,' or above us ; while it remains true
in a practical sense. Then he would have scales of * higher '
and * lower ' temperature, and would show that what we call
the 'higher' gifts of intelligence were actually associated
with the * highest ' point in our physical frame.

Then the Lecturer would have a veil, to be drawn or
uadrawn between L,ookei: or Observer and Object, — this

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232 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

again (like the box) making an inner and outer, and ^ sides '
and 'aspects.* He would show how, in fact, whether you
will or no, you imagine yourself an Outsider trying to look
into the recesses of a nucleus, the innermost point of which
you imagine as something smaller than yourself, immensely^
within your own scale of magnitude ; or else you imagine
yourself an Insider, trying to look out to the expanding
reaches of the sky as to something immensely beyond your
own scale of magnitude, and in that sense Outside. Thus
his audience would find out that you cannot say Insider,
or out-to j you look *into * even the farthest, the 'outermost'
stretches of space.

Then he would translate the mathematical abstraction of
a * line ' into a wire, or a rope, or a plank to picture a * path,'
etc., and to represent that which we all unconsciously repre-
sent when we say we are taking this or that line. Also he
would translate it into a scratch or mark, and then ask, What
can we do with that only, — never going beyond it on the ' one
hand or the other'? Then he would show the practical
equivalent of a plane siuface, and thirdly of a cube ; and
he would give representative passages of commonplace
writing from letters, newspapers, simple books, showing
that we do in fact use these three main ways of putting
things : in other words, that much of our mental picturing
has a relation to the * three dimensions ' of which perhaps
we have not even heard. Then he would show a * dead-
end,' — a cul'de-sac beyond which to go would be — nonsense.
But, reminding us of the * veil ' or * curtain,' he would show
how a subject may be * closed ' and * reopened ' \ and then
he would pictorially show a 'way' — whether roadway or
waterway— proving that an object using any means of ad-

^ Here he would note that we have only the terms of comparative
greatness wherewith to express comparative smallness.

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XXX WHAT IS MEANING? 233

vance or progress must needs leave more and more of such

* means ' behind it.

Then he would take a straight line and show that the
farther it went (was produced) the farther it was from its
starting-point. He would show that this idea did not apply
to a curve, and was reversed in a circle. Thus he would
show that, while a straight line may always form part of a
great curve— one too great to be detected, — a curve can
never form part of a straight line.

Then he would revert to the globe, and show, by that
analogy, that when we start from a point upon it we come
back to where we started, — but from the opposite direction.
Pointing to the rotating and moving sphere representing our
earth in movement, he would show that meanwhile we have
really moved on, first round our sun, then with that sun in
a further unknown direction. He would thus show the
difference between thinking on one line, thinking on many
lines on a flat surface, and thinking in cube; also how
thinking in the round and in motion like our earth, differs
from thinking on the flat and the fixed, like a fabulous and
fictitious and impossible world. He would show us what we
lost both by using current imagery in false senses, and by
not learning to use the priceless figurates which science is
putting into our hands.

Then he would show us a lump of stuff which could not
move of itself, and if moved would stop of itself without
resistance or friction, and in that image represent to us the

* mind ' or the * soul.' Again, he would show us a complex of
movements — a passage of melody, the evolution of birds on
the wing, the movements of water, our own co-ordinated
muscular actions and various combinations of wave-motion
observed or inferred in air and * ether,' and he would show
us how different the ideas called up by the two classes of

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234 WHAT IS MEANING? chap, xxx

imagery must needs be, and therefore how different our prac-
tical inferences. In every case (and he would have a legion
to choose from) he would warn us to make sure that the
original of the image, the thing or occurrence which we use
figuratively, does really bear the use to which we put it, does
really yield the notion we want, does not actually contradict
or confuse this, does not, that is, convey something quite
different ; and thus make us, unconsciously, the cause of the
confusion we condemn in others.

Then he would wind up with a collection of * bulls of
metaphor,' which would certainly make his audience,
already excited and amused by a * new way of looking at
things,' explode with laughter. They would in the end dis-
perse with the seeds of a new figurative conscience im-
planted in them, and the first blow struck at a demon of
Confusion.^

* We might also have Lectures on : —

(i) Expression : its scope and value.

(2) Value : (a) as sense, (d) as meaning, {c) as significance.

(3) Sense : Reactive (sensation), Interpretative (of sign), moral and

aesthetic.

(4) Meaning as (a) intentional, (d) significant.

(5) Significance as the finally inclusive value-term and the best

definition of the Divine.

(6) On the instinctive vocabularies of language. ' Eastern,'

• western,' and their possible implications : (a) Time ; {d) Pain,
Pleasure, etc.

But this of course is only one out of many possible developments.

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CHAPTER XXXI

But it would be a serious mistake, at a stage of mere
suggestion, to make more definite proposals or plans on the
above lines. That would need, indeed, both an experience
and an aptitude much greater than any to which the writer
can lay claim.

When the leading idea of Signifies is accepted ; when we
have begun in good earnest to subordinate every other
subject to the study of that sense, of that meaning, and
above all of that significance which makes the whole value
of fact or idea, and of the order and sequences of either ;
when we have thus reached the vital point of every kind of
inquiry and mastered the reasons for every kind of activity,
then the mind of the race may be trusted to work out its
own method in many practical directions and forms. ^

Meanwhile we may once more urge upon the reader
a significant contrast. On the one hand, we have the
energetic and never faltering labours of the infant and of
the young child, first to master complex muscular feats,
and especially those of the hand (even at the cost of
discomfort, fatigue, and pain); then to master language
and to apply a primitive logic (failing only through lack
of experience) in its use ; then to question, to inquire, to
explore — to ask not merely the What and the How, but

» See Note XXVI., Appendix.

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236 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

most of all the Why, of things and happenings around him,
a pushing out of intellectual tentacles which indeed often
reach far into the remote and the unknown. (As we have
already seen, a valid use of this metaphor will involve the
passing beyond the tentacle stage itself, and the entrance
into that of vision ; of the clear perception and the true
interpretation of the things which lie beyond the reach of
the most adventurous * tentacle.')

On the other hand, we have the listless want of interest
in, sometimes even the sullen dislike of and resistance to,
what is understood by 'school,' by Messon,' by * study,' and
the eagerness to be on any pretext released from them, so
bitterly complained of by the teachers of later youth.

This can have but one reason. We have lost the
guiding clue of Nature; we have failed to take up her
really educative task on her own system ; we have neglected
to begin by cultivating the penetrative sense of the why and
to place the idea of sense, of meaning, of significance, at the
centre of all our training.^

1 ' • No one is so original as a child, and whatever they mean by the
names in the Education Office, all of our education, especially in Primary
schools, is secondary ; it takes no heed of the untutored instinct, the sort
of camaraderie that at first lives between children and nature. And what
a mass of originality this ' secondary ' education has crushed out ! How
many people, the old rheumatic Puritan schoolmaster among them, are
altogetho- incapable of receiving the

impulse from a vernal wood,

because they have spent all their own plastic spring in getting by heart
other men's notions. Our children are becoming second cousins, many
times removed, from natiure ; and this is what Huxley lamented when he
spoke of the ' saddening and revolting sight of men sunk in ignorance of
everything but what other men have written,' and yet possessed of a
' sense of beauty so keen and power of expression so cultivated that their
sensual caterwauling may almost be mistaken for the music of the spheres.'
At the other extreme a sympathetic study of nature, such as we saw
evidence of in the pretty results of the field expeditions of the Board

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XXXI WHAT IS MEANING? 237

Why is the child the arbiter of the future, the discoverer
of world-secrets? Because the parent inherits a primal
tendency to revert to the fixed and rooted form, while the
child is * free-swimming ' ; it is the natural explorer. And
for ages we the parents, through the teachers, have been more
and more successfully trying to train and educate our * free
swimmers ' into fixed and rooted prisoners ; thus atrophising
or mutilating their discovering and interpretative powers,
just as our own were injured at the same age.

Again, throughout the plant-world, we find in the * child '
— in the baby growth-point, the leading shoot, the seedling —
what Mr. F. Darwin -^ calls " a wonderful kind of sensitive-
ness — a sensitiveness to the force of gravity." He con-
tinues : — " To those accustomed to think of Mimosa as the
sensitive plant par excellence my words may sound strange.

school children in the north, would save many so-called educated people
from that affected mania for nature which so irritates the true nature-
lover, the man who has enjoyed ' sessions of sweet silent thought ' in the
midst of nature, who has been able to reap 'the harvest of a quiet
eye. * . . . The point is, if once you can teach a child to observe, to be a
seer, he will • keep his weather eye open ' for the rest of his life. That
phrase, ' the weather eye,' must have come from a nature-lover in the first
place, and afterwards been perverted into evil use by a victim of technical
education. . . . The dissatisfaction of the issue of the Board schools
comes from the starving of the primary instincts, and the young men and
women need the town because the love of country with which they were
bom is rooted out of them. ... It must surely be of good omen for the
future that the Board school children of the big factory towns in the
north now escape into the country — play legal truant as it were, along
with their teachers" {The Pilot, August 2, 1902).

There is one passage in the above excellent appeal which may be mis-
understood. There is no need to teach an average sound-minded child
to observe or to be a seer. He is (in greater or lesser degree) that already.
It is only necessary to train and discipline this great natural gift, and to
teach him to analyse and criticise the results gained so as to allow for
the 'personal equation' also. For this brings us back to the central
question : In what sense is what I have just observed real, or a fact ?

^ "The Movements of Plants," Nature, Nov. 14, 1901.

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238 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

But the sensitiveness of Mimosa is crude by comparison
with that of the seedling. A plant with a perception of the
position of the centre of the earth and a power of growing
along the line so perceived, is a much greater miracle than
a leaf that closes its leaflets when burnt or cut or shaken.''
And this "is not explicable mechanically. Gravitation is
nothing more than a sign -post or signal to the plant — a
signal which the plant interprets in the way best suited to
its success in the struggle for life, just as what we see or
hear gives us signals of the changes in the exterior world by
which we regulate our conduct." Further on we find " not
only that the tip of the root is the sense-organ for gravity,
but also that the motile part is not directly sensitive ; in
other words, that gravitation is perceived exclusively in the
tip of the root.'' And in experiments designed to thwart
this * perception ' the horizontally placed tip " continues to
send commands to the stem to go on curving, in a way I
can best explain if I am allowed to make the plant express
its sensations in words. The tip says to the stem, * I am
horizontal, therefore you must bend upwards ' ; and when
this order has been obeyed the tip says, * It is of no use, I
am still horizontal — ^go on bending.' The result is that the
stem curls up into a spiral like a corkscrew or a French
horn." Imagine the typical adult in this relation to the
typical child ! Yet there may be some points of view from
which it would be the natural and most fruitful procedure
thus to set childhood in the midst and interpret its message.
Many years ago in one case this took the form of reminding
children that it was for them to set an example to their
elders.

For there is more yet. "When a group of Setarias is
illuminated from one side, they bend strongly over, with
their little spear-heads all pointing straight at the light

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XXXI WHAT IS MEANING? 239

The spear- heads do not bend; the whole movement is
carried out by the stalk on which the head is supported.
But the remarkable thing is that it is the spear-head and
not the stalk which perceives the light. This is easily
proved by covering the heads of a few Setarias with opaque
caps. For the result is that the blindfolded seedlings
remain vertical while their companions are pointing to the
light."

Now the spear-heads answer to the children : it is they
who, living along their true lines, could bring light to us, the
* stems,' by which we could rightly act. But we carefully
cover them with 'opaque caps'; forcing on them adult
methods unnatural to them.

It may seem to the ordinary reader extravagant to appeal
to the phenomena of plant-life in illustration of the true
relation of the human child to the human adult If such
expressions as these now quoted had not been used by a
strictly scientific thinker, it might seem fanciful to compare
the two and to suggest that the riches of penetrative insight
which in * children's sayings ' are only recorded as amusing
or pathetic curiosities, are steadily blunted by an artificial
system of training entirely unsuited to them. But Mr.
Darwin insists that the process which he has called action
by signal " is of the same type as action by association, and
therefore allied to habit and memory." And nowhere can
we now postulate a complete break in the evolutionary
ascent.

Of course we have not wholly succeeded, either in
rooting our * free swimmers ' or in blindfolding our * seed-
lings.' The school-boy still occasionally plays truant after
having been the nursery rebel ; the average undergraduate
still presents to study the mental hide of a rhinoceros;
nature, that is, gives us the broadest hints that we, in going

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240 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

against her, are defeating ourselves and wasting our own
highest gifts.

But still we do our little best to stupefy our children ; and
then we shake a mournful head before the puzzles, the para-
doxes, the 'insoluble problems* of life — we^ note well; a/^ who
have ourselves had our ' free-swimming ' organs docked and
paralysed and been ourselves imprisoned in a cruel network
whence we once vainly struggled to escape ; we who have
been in our precious springtime set to a treadmill round of

* acquiring ' raw knowledge and packing it away in an over-
loaded ' memory.' Thus, mentally, we never transcend that

* fixed' order; we never become true animals, much less
men at all ; we never reach the stage in which we are free
to swim, to run, to leap, even to fly. Failing to recognise
the inversion of true order which this implies, we never
become fully able to explore, to discover, to interpret—
evolving meanwhile sense after sense — until, as the true end
of our little lives we reach the seer's throne. And if here
and there the evolving tendency is strong enough to defy
the cramping and mechanising training, the fixing and root-
ing and blinding process which we too often call 'education';
to shake it off and soar into the world of greatness; stretch-
ing down hands to draw us also upwards, — then once more
we shake a melancholy head and fear that this is but the

* genius ' which is akin to — insanity 1 Of course it is. We
have not known how, in its tender 'seedling' years, to
direct and organise a living force which, compelled to
develop either in undisciplined ignorance or in spite of
obstructive systems, tends to lose the inestimable sense of
balance and proportion.^

And this is not all. It is proverbially difficult to fix a
true standard of the normal in mind. The alienist has a

1 See Note XXVII., Appendix.

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XXXI WHAT IS MEANING? 241

'borderland' in which he practically feels this difficulty.
But if, for the reasons now suggested, we have misunder-
stood and misinterpreted * genius,' it follows that those of us
who are least suspected, or least suspect themselves of in-
sanity, are all the time victims of, or at any rate liable to,
distorted or * morbid ' views of sanity. However, to follow
up this line of thought would lead us too far at present.

Meanwhile it may freely be granted that there have been
many individual cases of the truer training. There are
* bom teachers ' whose gift survives whatever their own school
experiences may have been.^ But these are merely sporadic;
they are always considered merely as a question of special
personal influence ; there is no systematic recognition of the
supreme value of such training. And thus we have never,
in the way now proposed, suggested to the child that not
only in a religious sense is its true home in heaven:
that * heaven ' has throughout the ages been used for
the ideal home of the race, because Man has always
instinctively felt that his destinies, like his origin, were
what is here called * solar ' and * cosmic* We have never
suggested to him that he belonged, not like other animals
merely to this world as the centre of his natural universe,
but also to the star-world which he animised, to the sky
which roofed him in ; that in however grotesque or inept a
form his race has always reached out to the beyond and
the unknown.

When we do this, it will be easy to show the child that
we have to rise to ever worthier language for expressing this
solar and cosmic relation, and that meanwhile we have to
recognise distinctly what we lose by having to express our
highest ideals in language inherited from ancient animisms
and astrologies. For the child will understand better

1 See Note XXVIII., Appendix.
R

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242 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

than his sophisticated elders that his heritage is at least
as much greater than this world as the sun is greater
than the earth ; that man's very discontent with the order-
ing of this life, and with the place which suffering plajrs
in it, shows this ; and that we are here to ask more and
wiser Whys than we have ever asked yet, and on truer
lines, thus and thus only to earn undreamt-of answers. If
we allow the appeal to a * solar ' centre of life, it is hardly
possible to lay too much stress on the inference that our
only present means of defining what we call the 'heavenly,'
the 'spiritual,' the 'divine,' are 'planetary.' Our greatest
minds (and our own at their best moments) are significantly
discontented with these. We have nothing better, and yet we
see that they tend to dwarf, stunt, blur, even distort our vision
of the home-world of ideals. The very word supernatural,
shown to be self-contradictory by our use of the phrase ' the
Divine nature,' has its value in witnessing to this. So have
phrases like ' the unknowable,' of which the paradox is itself
suggestive.

In one sense the agnostic is quite right : the planetary
mind, absurdly taking itself and its world for solar, actually
knows nothing beyond this life with its floating glimpse of
experience. But the mind which is actually conscious of
being, like its world, planetary and strictly satellitic, is
equally, though indirectly, aware of a world not merely
greater but so much worthier than the mere planet treated
falsely as centre, that its whole figurative vocabulary is
recognised as a mere provisional expedient ; to be treated
as the ox and lion gods of the oxen and lions.

Such a mind recognises the sacred duty of at least
making its expressions of man's highest ideals as worthy as
they can be, and of ever reaching onward and upward. It
sees, for instance, that * high ' is really a good figure for its

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XXXI WHAT IS MEANING? 243

aim, and *base' a good figure for its failure and shame.
But if our ultimate is a mere * foundation ' ; if we can only
build, and never in any sense rise and ascend into a heavenly
status, why should we resent the imputation of baseness ?

Throughout language — though, of course, in very varying
forms — we shall see not only the * solar' but the cosmic
impulses making themselves felt. The children pf the
future will be trained to test and to organise them in the
service of practical and moral life.^ We can see but little
of the solar world and feel but little of the cosmic life
directly, with the naked eye and the bare skin of mind. But
we can indirectly see and feel them as the man of science,
through the instruments which his brain has devised, can
see and feel a world which he only reaches indirectly through
their means. He * sees ' thus the constituents of a nebula
or the events of an eclipse ; he * feels ' thus the tremor of a
distant earthquake or eruption; he is thus sensitive to radia-
tions which excite no direct sense-response.

So we see and feel the world of suns, the world where
God is light, and where light is not merely * cold,* but, as
through our own sun, the very source to us of the life-giving
warmth which we call * love.'

Small wonder that men have worshipped the sun ! They
have, at least, thus recognised the revelation which science
now brings out of that world which mind calls material, and
rightly sees as real.

^ The true value of philosophy might perhaps be usefully illustrated to
a child by means of the pendulum of a clock. First it sees the swing and
hears the ticking ; then it sees a quite different result follow : the clock
hands go round. But the ultimate outcome is yet more ' transcendent '
or • far-fetched ' : the clock measures and tells ' time,'— so we know when
dinner is ready ! Yet there has been no desertion of the simple and direct
perception of the ticking. And we are more and not less ' practical ' in
this widening of inference.

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CHAPTER XXXII

What then have we gained so far by our inquiry ? Have
we reached a point from which, even on a distant horizon
of thought, we can discern a possible answer to the question
why man asks Why, and also a reason why he needs to be
warned of the danger and penalty of asking it where it does
not apply, and therefore cannot be rightly answered ?

Before we can attempt to answer this question it will be
well to review the course which we have followed. We
began by pleading for an extension of the bounds and re-
sources of expression corresponding to a wider range of
experience, both in fact and conception.

In the application of a threefold idea of import to
consciousness and experience, our appeal was to science,
which supplies us, both in astronomy and biology, with the
presumption that this order best * describes and resumes '
natural fact. We saw that this implied fresh views of
the work of analogy, and pointed to a new departure in
philosophy as well as in psychology; that it made for a
true instead of a morbid plasticity in language, and a
revelative instead of a merely plausible lucidity. We con-
sidered a few out of many possible ways of bringing to
bear, in practical method, the recognition of the supreme
importance of clear and ordered ideas about the nature of
sense, meaning, and significance, and the extent of our

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CHAP. XXXII WHAT IS MEANING? 245

power to convey and to appreciate them. We disclaimed
all idea of discarding the acquired habits or traditional
customs of language, seeking rather to enrich and to trans-
figure them, as well as to rectify all which now makes for
hindering instead of fostering our means of expression ;
and we suggested that metaphors like 'binocular mental
vision ' and * thinking in cube ' might be used to indicate
developments in conceptual power for which, on this line of
thought, we might reasonably hope.

But, first, we tried to show that our current ideas, both
psychological and philosophical, were vitiated at the outset
by the bias of an untenable because pre-Copemican view
of the world and of man. This brought us (as indeed in
every case we have been brought) to the question which
ought everywhere to be recognised as vital. In what sense
is any proposition, any statement, any theory, any postulate,
true or valid ; and, in what sense is it here used ?

This led us to the suggestion of a method of Translation
in a sense wider than any in which the word has yet been
appHed. An examination of the implications of this idea
brought us to the definition of man as in one sense the
Expression of the world. And this again suggested an in-
quiry as to the soundness of the accepted modern view of
the primitive mind, of the myths, grotesque or fantastic,
which grow with man's early growth. Thus we reached the
moment of the first human query.

Supposing these broad lines to be accepted, here arose
the question, how then to effect the needed new start ? We
proceeded to show that, in any full sense, a new start could
only be accomplished by a generation which for the first
time had been universally trained to recognise the central
importance of sense, meaning, and significance: to dis-
tinguish and rightly to interpret all three.

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246 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

Such a training of the future is here called Signifies,
because this raises the very idea of Significance to its true
and supreme level; because, taking sign and what it signifies
at their lowest and humblest, it leads us through a fresh
study of sense to a fresh study of meaning which shows us
significance as the key of keys to reality.^

No more can here be added. Some attempt may later
be made to show how the method of inquiry and observation
which in the form of physical science has led to the triumphs
evident to all, but which has apparently never yet been
deliberately and consciously cultivated in childhood, can be
applied to some of our unsolved problems. Among such
problems will be those of space and time as affecting our
conceptions of immortality and divinity, those of personality
as affecting our ethical ideals, and especially those con-
nected with a dynamic view of the universe (and therefore
of all in every sense within it) ; a view which science now
sanctions and enforces, and which, more widely applied,
both accounts for and solves some of our most 'hopeless'
puzzles. This will be but the natural result of concentrat-
ing all the mental and moral energies of man, while yet his
mind is wholly plastic, upon that form of question which
breaks through the surface of things. Such questioning

^ *'To know how to create, to know how to think, to know how to
live, — ^these are knowledges which can only come to those who are well
bom, or have at great price bought the right of human citizenship"
{The Nineteenth Century, Havdock Ellis, 1900, p. 50).

Man as craftsman and as artist can ' create ' on the sense-level ; that is,
without deliberate or reasoned intention ; he may even be surprised at the
result of his own labour. He can only in the full sense think on the
meaning-level. He reflects on what he has made or is going to make.
When he has reached significance he enters that which can only be caUed
Life in a transfigured sense. Again, man can ' create ' on the planet ;
beyond that limit he can make nothing. But he can (and in the highest
sense he must) think in the ' solar ' world. Once more, in the transfigured
sense which to us makes life essentially worth living, he lives in the cosmos.

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XXXII WHAT IS MEANING? 247

wins, or rather earns for the first time, knowledge which
not only stands, but invites the most searching tests avail-
able. This true knowledge sees even the poetry of the
future as bom out of that very science and that very criti-
cism which are now supposed to kill it. At least, let the
experiment be fairly tried ; at least, let us begin by giving
sense, meaning, and significance that central place in our
attention and our interests that, whether we will or no, they
already have in the world of human experience.

This will not, of course, involve an abstruse or abstract
study, still less the search for an impossible 'absolute.'
There is really a common sense of the Why of things, in-
evitably developed up to a certain point by the necessities
of evolution. Man has survived the loss of fangs and claws,
and so on, by enhanced brain power, by the immensely
developed forms of kenning, conning, cunning. By these
he circumvents the danger which he could not avert, and
prevails over the resistance which he could not overcome
by direct muscular force.

The activity which we call mind expresses itself in infancy,
soon after language is acquired, in the form of the question
Why. It gives the secret of knowledge and of mental
and moral domination. This genetic spirit of inquiry, as we
have already seen, is the very spring of science. If it has
seemed on the philosophical side to go astray into regions
where answers are mutually discordant, thus incurring the
scorn or neglect of all but a small section of mankind, this
has surely been because the lack of the training here
pleaded for has tended to deprive the highest thought of a
constantly rising standard of expression; and has thus
earned for * metaphysical speculation ' a deserved bad name.
For the only true metaphysics is the growth-point of the
sense which is common to Man as Man : the sense for

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248 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

real criterions of truth and true criterions of the real ; the
sense (which, alas ! we degrade into superstition), that we are
penetrated through and through with potential knowledge
which only remains in the form of 'insoluble' problem and
* baffling ' mystery, or of vague irrational mysticism, because
we have not learnt how to approach and deal with it through
the encouragement and cultivation of the child's Divine giit
of the Why. And from this point of view the true philo-
sophy does not yet exist.

For we do not yet fully realise that the youngest child is
himself in a true sense a * metaphysician.' From his earliest
speaking days he assimilates and freely uses abstract terms,
— like ' other,' etc. Is it not, then, a cruel pity that if his
natural interests are what are called practical, he should be
allowed to grow up in the idea that 'thinking over and
working at whys ' — investigating causes or reasons, express-
ing the meaning and value of reality, or its knowledge,
interpreting himself or his world, — is either hopeless or mere
dexterous thought-spinning and word-weaving ? ^ If, on the
other hand, he is a born thinker, the result of such bringing
up too often is that he tries to model the world of reality
on his own special pattern. He becomes the victim of his
own powers and his own knowledge. He does his fellows
the grave disservice of providing them with a thought-cage
wherein they may safely play. He founds a school of
philosophy which at best appeals in a good sense only to
a certain type of mind, while in a bad sense it either makes
for confusion or for petrifaction. Such a system causes,
e,g,f the scientific Man to insist upon a rigid confinement
of attention to what are for him the only demonstrable and
therefore the only real or valuable facts, t.e. those capable
of being proved by actual experiment ; while the * practical '

^ See Note XXIX., Appendix.

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XXXII WHAT IS MEANING? 249

man remains serenely content to muddle on through inter-
minable and quite avoidable blunder, the product of his own
fallacious theory that he has and need have no theory at
all ! ^ But if we can ' inaugurate ' an era of Signifies, and
substitute that idea for what is now the misleading idea of
metaphysics (properly, if anything, concerned with con-
sciousness or what we now mean by psychology); if in
every intelligent man alike we can appeal to the sense of
meaning, and beyond that to the sense of significance
which is also the sense of value, and thus disentangle the
vital worth from the endless perplexities of question, of
problem, of experience in every form, then what is there
that we may not hope for?^

Surely it will provide a fresh stimulus ; it will transfigure
language and interpret history ; it will not merely ' harmonise
science and religion ' ; it will rather show that every form of
truth is potential in every other, and that thought is merely
' out of tune,' because we persist in applying to present needs
a traditional rate of mental vibration which falsifies its very
pitch, and produces a discord so intolerable that most of us
have to deafen ourselves to the resulting din. But assuming

^ One is reminded here of the great Sir Robert Peel's well-known
dictum that nothing is so misleading as facts, except figures. This
paradox is literally true imless we can analyse, discount, interpret them ;
approach them, that is, in the spirit of Signifies.

' One thing we must, in such event, be on our guard against. As
Huxley said, in his pregnant way (in the essay delivered twenty-one years
after the publication of the Origin of Species), " History warns us that it
is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as
superstitions ; and, as the matter now stands, it is hardly rash to anti-
cipate that, in another twenty years, the new generation, educated under
the influences of the present day, will be in danger of accepting the main
doctrines of the Origin of Species with as little reflection, and it may be with
as little justification, as so many of our contemporaries, twenty years ago,
rejected them. " However, it would be premature to take such a collapse
as in this case more than a remote even if a possible contingency.

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250 WHAT IS MEANING? chap.

that the line of thought here suggested is on the whole a
sound one, we must begin in the broadest sense with
Expression, and reach this through language. We must
appeal to the ' educated man ' to see that his children are
really * given their chance to speak.* We must, at least, look
forward to the substitution of the Significian for the Meta-
physician, since the former has all the range of the latter to
choose from, while he is also free of those very domains of
thought which are supposed to be shut off from the meta-
physical thinker, or he from them.

Of course, as now, we shall be drawn to or have to
choose some special line of thought and action, and it is
imperative that this should not be confounded with others.
But as we shall be consciously and deliberately concentrat-
ing ourselves on that which connects our subject with every
other,— on that which constitutes its human value, and
contributes its quota to the general treasure-house of human
achievement, — the era of mutually sterilising controversy
will be succeeded, not by one of general apathy and in-
difference, or of paralysing pessimism, but by one of mutual
stimulus and of a mental symbiosis. We shall attain to
what has here been called binocular thinking ; we shall not
merely adopt or expound, we shall not even be content
merely to develop, we shall account for the great systems
or the typical formulas of ancient or modem philosophy.
And this result the really practical and the really scientific
man will be the very first to welcome. For even the
engineer, yes, even the soldier and the ploughman, will
work the better for it; while science will for the first
time find itself appreciated and assisted by those who now
stand aloof, or appear to the scientific eye to be pursuing
unrealities : will indeed be enabled to express itself « as
never before. We shall in the fullest sense acquire a

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XXXII WHAT IS MEANING? 251

new power of intertranslation with new possibilities of
interpretation.

Science is self-confined to the method of measurement.
Philosophy is free to use all sane and rational methods.
Now science constrains its votaries each to welcome
another's re-statement or correction for the development of
his thesis. Even as this is written, we find Sir W. Crookes
witnessing both to this noble example set us by science and
to the power of change in expression. Referring to Dr.
Johnstone Stoney's term * electron/ he says, " thus my early
hypotheses fall into order by the substitution of one expres-
sion for the other " ^ (* electron ' for * radiant matter ').

The true philosophy, like the true science, appeals to
intelligence as intelligence ; and this appeal embraces the
utmost conceivable variety and difference always on the
basis, not of separation (except in some cases with a
temporary or special object), but of distinction, which, how-
ever sharp, is always compatible with unity. The true
philosophy comes not to abstract, but to interpret ; not to
destroy, but to fulfil ; not to give mere passive reflection,
but to prove itself the creative energy of mind, — a ray of
that Light whereby we learn what beauty, what goodness,
what love, in brief, what life in its highest sense may be.

^ Nature, February 20, 1902.

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APPENDIX

Note I. (A), p. i. — There are abundant witnesses to this
state of things, and to its consequences on the practical side.
They are to be found everywhere, and happily testify to an
awakening sense of the prevailing failure in the educated
world to perceive the principle and point of social and other
problems. Among them we may cite a quotation (in a review in
the Times Literary Supplement^ July 4, 1902) from Dr. Shad-
welPs recent work on Drink^ Temperance^ and Legislation : —
"No question, except finance, has so long, so generally,
and so persistently engaged the attention of legislatures ; none
has been the subject of more experiments ; none has been
more discussed and investigated. One would have expected
some generalisations to have been made about it ere this ; but
the very latest official investigation, devised upon the largest
scale, and entrusted with an inquiry of the broadest scope,
spent some three years on it without even betraying the slightest
consciousness that there might be any such thing as a principle
involved. It is not for lack of material. . . . Surely some
general lessons can be drawn from all this mass of material
which would raise the question a little out of the chaotic con-
fusion surrounding it, and keep it from being so often the
sport of theory, assumption, sentiment, passion, prejudice, and
self-interest. The Peel Commission gave no help. It merely
took up one question after another, without any plan or order,
found them all in an unsatisfactory state, and proposed a long
and promiscuous list of amendments, based on no principle
and sometimes inconsistent. There is nothing to show that

253

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2 54 WHAT IS MEANING? appen.

these proposals would not repeat past blunders, or would
produce any more satisfactory results. What we want to know
is, How far and why measures have succeeded or failed ; what
makes the difference between good and bad legislation ; what
law can do and what it cannot/'

Well may the reviewer add that " it is the method here
which is of moment, not its particular application; and we may
commend Dr. ShadwelPs book specially for its firm grasp and
lucid presentation of a sound and rational method." But how
often, under the name of * theory,' this is confounded with
mere fad or craze !

Npte I. (B), p. 3. — Philology, as dealing with mean-
ings, not roots, has " rich instruction in store for the psycho-
logical investigator. ** * "Psychologists seem to be aware of
no confusion when they talk indifferently of states of mind,
contents of mind, acts of mind ; treat the same fact now as a
process, now as a product ; and range on one level feelings
which presuppose presentations and acts which presuppose
feelings. . . . Probably all psychological writing, even the
clearest, is marked by this varying use of terms, involving
incompatible complications, and by surreptitious changes of
standpoint." 2 . . . And "process, material, and product are
continually confused, because all alike are styled states of
consciousness." Everywhere there is "the same inevitable
confusion due to an infexact terminology, and an imperfect
analysis of the leading term consciousness." ^ And "the
wavering and uncertain connotations of such terms as con-
sciousness, feeling, will, volition, state, act, activity, and the
like, have rendered any clear issue impossible." * After going
a little way in amassing facts. Psychology " should revise its
fundamental assumptions and improve its language and defini-
tions." ... It " imperatively demands a well-defined vocabu-
lary." ^ Impression, sensation, idea, image, etc., must all

^ Jacobs, Mind, No. xli. p. 49. ^ J. Ward, No. xlv. p. 48.

' Ibid, p. 50. * Ibid. p. 54. ^ Bain, No. xlvi. p. 168-9.

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APPEN. WHAT IS MEANING? 255

be rendered free from ambiguity before we know what we
mean by association, etc. The reply to attack on the use of
terms is that ambiguity cannot be prevented. It is out of the
frying-pan and into the fire. It is an old story that " the word
* idea,' as commonly used, is about as ambiguous a term as
could well be invented." ^ In our anxiety to get at meaning,
to find out "what is symbolised, we actually neglect utterly
that which is the symbol, the psychical existence. What is
perceived is, in short, significance, meaning. The amount of
perception one has, whether as a babe or adult, as layman, or
as chemist, is precisely the meaning that one finds signified by
one's sensations ; the sensations, as such, may be precisely
alike in the four cases. Perceiving, to restate a psychological
commonplace, is interpreting. The content of the perception
is what is signified." " The meaning constitutes for us the
whole value of the experience. . . . Even the fact that there
is an experience, aside from what it is, is not the sensation
itself; it is the interpretation of the sensation. It is part of
the meaning." ^ Here, at least, we find an instalment of the
inquiry suggested, and the whole article would from this point
of view repay full and searching analysis. " By what process
do we interpret sensations so that they become significant to
us of objects and events in space and time ? These questions
are simply the fundamental questions of psychology, and can
be answered only by a complete treatise on psychology." ^
Mr. Romanes is reproached for never really defining, when he
maintains that animals use * intentional signs,' what he means
by a sign. "He is liberal with his divisions and subdivisions
of signs, but he never tells us what he is dividing. He never
explains how in the mind of the sign-maker the sign is related
to the thing signified, so as to supply a criterion by which to
distinguish this relation from other relations, e.g, that of means
to end. Now it is precisely such a criterion which is needed in

^ Dewey, No. xlvii. p. 382.
384. » Ibid. 1

2 Ibid. p. 384. • Ibid. p. 391.

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2S6 WHAT IS MEANING? appen.

order to estimate the value and import of the evidence adduced
in this book to prove that animals use language." ^ I should
like to annex this protest on behalf of < sense and meaning.'

" Philosophy has no nomenclature and no terminology. Every
giant and every pigmy states and misstates and restates much
as he wills ; even babes and sucklings rush abroad brandishing
the Infinite and the Absolute with infinite ignorance and ab-
solute conceit If there is anything fixable why do we not fix
it ? If any of our conceptions admit of definition, why are
they not defined ? Such axiomaia media of philosophy might
gain or lose in comparative importance as time went on ; but
that is true equally of science, which still insists on precision
as far as it goes."^ But ** metaphor, and the secret habits of
language, are graven upon thought, and have there written
vain questions, and false doctrines." ^ In fact " it fells a prey
to the sensuous symbolism of itself in language." And " the
fictitious clearness which sense holds out, and the ancient
associations which bind thought to it, deceive thought as to
its own nature." * We must distinguish Expressive, Suggestive,
and Substitute Signs. A suggestive sign is used '< not as a
means of expressing a meaning^ but only as a mnemonic help f
whereas ** an expressive sign ... is a means of attending to
its signification." The meaning of a word is not an image,
and therefore not an immediate object of attention ; but " Ex-
pressive Signs invest the meanings which they express with a
peculiar kind of salience." They "differ from substitute
signs in a manner exactly the inverse of that in which they
differ from suggestive signs. ... A substitute sign is a counter
which takes the place of its meaning." That is, "a word is
an instrument for thinking about the meaning which it ex-
presses ; a substitute sign is a means of not thinking about
the meaning which it symbolises." It is perhaps not necessary

' G. F. Stout, No. liv. pp. 263-64.

'^ J. Ward, Mind, No. Iviii. p. 226. ^ Shand, No. lix. p. 372.

4 Ibid.

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APPEN. WHAT IS MEANING? 257

that *' there should be an identical element of meaning per-
vading all the applications of a word. Moreover, this conmion
element, in so far as it does exist, cannot be called a meaning
of the word in the same sense as the occasional signification."
And " the * usual ' or * general * signification is not in itself one
of the significations borne by a word. It is a condition which
circumscribes within more or less vague and shifting limits the
divergence of occasional meanings." Would not this repay
more extended treatment? E.g.,^ if a general and usual
signification is not a meaning, is it ever a sense f " In order
to fix the occasional meaning of words " we need a cue ; but
permanent change of meaning arises from a gradual shifting
of limits.! " Nine-tenths of the psychological treatises in vogue
— and they are a bewildering multitude — after a most jejune
and beggarly pretence at the analysis of mind in the concrete,
as the reader knows it, plunge at once into what they are
pleased to call their scientific exposition. The notorious result
is that the whole subject is turned topsy-turvy ; an utterly false
conception is given of the nature of sensations and ideas ; and
the essential unity and continuity of conscious life is regarded
as something mysteriously superinduced upon its elements. . . .
It is fearfiilly hard to define what we mean by Subject, Object,
Presentation, Feeling, Judgment, Belief, Memory, Volition;
but, till these and cognate conceptions are clear and distinct,
psychology must be at a standstill, let psychophysics advance as
much as it may. The true position of affairs, indeed, at the pre-
sent time seems rather to be that psychology proper is stranded
altogether, while psychophysics carries her flag." 2 And " there
must be some vagueness in the use of the word * know ' when
sane and reputable thinkers make such opposite statements." .
Moreover, "we cannot further clear the ground without
dislodging whatever is fixed and definite in that sand-heap of

1 G. F. Stout, No. brii. p. i86, etc

'■* J. Ward, No. 4 (N.S.), pp. 532-37.

S

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a term — consciousness.''^ It has a di£ferent meaning as
Content and as State: which makes confusion. We are
dominated by mechanical metaphor. The distinction between
conscious and self-conscious as a source of confusion <Ms
perhaps without a parallel in the history of knowledge." Thus
we realise " the fatal clumsiness of our terminology." * " All
such terms as object, presentation, intuition, apprehension,
impression, attention, involve, literally taken, a spatial im-
mediacy, so to say. Why a relation that is actually more
fundamental than spatial relations should so invariably be
conceived by the help of spatial metaphor is in itself an inter-
esting enough inquiry. . . . After the term consciousness,
sensation is perhaps the most hopeless in all our psychological
vocabulary." » " I do not, of course, want to cut Psychology
to fit a terminology ; and if it be the general opinion that the
science is not yet ripe for exact definitions, I shalL be content
to wait. But though premature rigidity is bad, the present
fluidity seems worse. Secondly, it may be argued that the
separation of elements from concrete processes involves a
waste of good terms. But this separation is of very great
educational importance ; students tend constantly to confuse
the two things. And if we go on working at Psychology
synthetically — a course which, pau Professor James, seems
just nowthe most promising — it becomes a matter of necessity."*
"All philosophical criticism concerns itself with the implica-
tions or legitimate consequences of a statement rather than
with the meaning which the statement presumably bore to the
thinker who gave it currency. This is why philosophical
polemic bandies about so freely the charge of * absurdity.'
. . . What was qualified in the mind of the original thinker
by a multitude of unspoken considerations, comes to be taken
by his less intelligent followers in its bare, unqualified literal-

1 J. Ward, Mind, No. 5 (N.S.), pp. 61, 62.
• Ibid. pp. 63, 64. » Ibid. p. 66. * Titchener, No. 6, pp. 286-87.

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ness as an absolute verity." ^ Perhaps the time may not be
distant when only the follower who is too stupid and too
ignorant to be worth notice will be likely to make such a
mistake. For surely it is in part at least owing to the absence
in education of any definite warning as to the true nature of
* meaning * and the futility of ideas of this kind.

Note II., p. 6. — After pointing out that combinations of
numbers, such as 5 minus 9, are " wholly destitute of meaning "
— or rather of sense — Hermann Schubert {Mathematical
Essays and Recreations^ ?• 12) asks, "What, then, is to be
done ? Shall we banish entirely from arithmetic such meaning-
less combinations of numbers ; or, since they have no meaning,
shall we rather invest them with one ? If we do the first,
arithmetic will still be confined in the strait-jacket into which
it was forced by the original definition of number as the result
of counting. If we adopt the latter alternative we are forced
to extend our notion of number. But in doing this we sow the
first seeds of the science of pure arithmetic, an organic body
of knowledge which fructifies all other provinces of science."

So now we are extending our notion of meaning by recog-
nising it as the universal fructifier. And what is meaningless
(or senseless) on a narrower basis is often highly significant
on a broader one. We have to consider the sense in which
e,g, we use number, the meaning of nvunber operations, and
the signification of numeration. When a new sign was needed,
instead of remaining, as we now do, helpless, the Hindoos
provided (and accepted) the symbol tsiphra^ empty, whence
our 'cipher.' But the o has now become the international
symbol. Thus the province of numbers is widened. But here
we see an instance of the absurd defects of usage. We use
this very sign for zero, null, to express, in long cumbrous rows,
additions by ten, which itself is symbolised by 10! The
following taken at random may illustrate this absurdity : —

1 Seth, No. 9, pp. 5, 6.

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The Thirty-Six Problem. — " Mr. William Schooling writes :

* It is scarcely kind to your readers to propound to them
such a problem as this. You might at least have warned
them that the thirty- six officers can be arranged in about
372,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000, 000, 000, 000
diflferent ways, out of which we are expected — or not expected
— to find one way which meets the conditions of the problem.
If each man, woman, and child in the world worked out a
diflferent arrangement every second, it would take nearly
8,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years of unceasing labonr
to exhaust the possible combinations " ( Westminster Gazette^
March 25, 1902).

Note III., p. 1 5. — " In Spenser and in Surrey we find the
useful word * revested' — *The pleasant spot revested green,'
but how few modem authors have availed themselves of it.
It is still, however, a recognised word. This can hardly be
said of 'fromward,' which is also used by Surrey. We have

* toward,' * hitherward,' and so on ; why not * fromward * ? In
bidding us prepare for disappointment of our hopes, old
Thomas Fuller warns us to ' forethink what may come here-
after.' We still 'foresee'; why should we not * forethink'?
If in want of a synonym for * sorrowful ' why should we not
remember the 'grieful pains' of Tubervile's lover, who, in
another poem, speaks of his bed as once a *• restful,' but now
a * careful ' place I Here are two antithetical words, one of
which we have retained while discarding the other, except in
its sense of wary or cautious. I think it is Mill who says that
it may be good to alter the meaning of a word, but that it is
bad to let any part of the meaning drop " ("A Few Words
about Words," W. Cairns, Literature^ September 8, 1900).

Note IV., p. 19. — It may be well here to quote from a
striking illustration of what may be thus hoped for, given in
an article on ** Naturalism and Musical ^Esthetic," by Matthew
Shirlaw, Monthly Review^ February, 1901 :—

" With the growth of thought and, consequently, of feeling.

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came the demand for a fuller means of expression ; this was
obtained by the discovery of Harmony, without which it is
difficult to imagine how the Art of Music could have been
developed to any appreciable extent. The manner in which
Harmony was evolved is particularly interesting and note-
worthy. . . . But all the above intervals, which form the entire
basis of the modem system of harmony, really existed in the
Jirst musical tone produced by the human voice, ^^

" I^ then, we find in the art of music all the evidences of
an organic growth, if from the two elements of sound and
rhythm there has been slowly evolved through the course of
the centuries a musical creation, bewildering in the variety and
multiplicity of the forms in which full, rich life is pulsating,
a parallel growth must also be looked for in the mental con-
ditions from which such a variety of phenomena originated.

" New and larger means of expression were the necessary
outcome of a greater scope and complexity of thought and
feeling. The old bottles no longer sufficed for the new wine,
and technique grew, not because it was an end in itself, but
because it was the means to an end."

" Mr. A. J. Balfour compares music in its psychological devel-
opment to the ever-increasing flood of the Amazon, and speaks
of the * gathered waters ' of numberless tributaries which have
helped to swell * the tide of music's golden sea, setting towards
eternity.' This is the very simile we want. Let us apply it
to the argument. Mr. Balfour makes clear in the context that
by * gathered waters' he means new experiences, and asks
where in music such experiences are to be found. The answer
is, that the same forces, the same experiences which have
borne and are bearing on the development of man, have also
borne and are bearing on the development of music. From
the time that man was first enabled to attach aesthetic value
to sound, up to the latest creations of musical genius, there
has been a constant growth in the technique of the art of
music, because, with the growth of experience came a growth

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262 WHAT IS MEANING? appen.

of thought and feeling, and the consequent necessity for a new
and fuller means of expression."

Note v., p. 21. — "An isolated fact may merely arouse the
inquisitiveness of a modem child, for his conduct is controlled
by the care of those who are more experienced; but to the
man who has to face the consequences of his own actions it
means danger, for it may at any moment result in injury or
death. His position may be compared to that of some
stranger who has wandered into a gigantic foundry and
workshop. He can hardly touch anything without a risk of
being burnt : he does not know where he can stand without
being knocked down : at any moment he may be crushed
by a steam-hanuner, blinded by a spark, or swept away
by a revolving band " {Empirical Logic^ Venn, pp. 492-93 ;
1889). (I)

"Some persons hear low sounds more easily than high
ones, and vice versd. This may be so pronounced as to justify
the subjects being spoken of as deaf to low or high tones
respectively, a condition which may be compared in a general
way to colour blindness" {Text-Book of Physiology^ Sir M.
Foster, part iv. p. 1363; 1891). (2)

"Notice only that the relation of clear to obscure ideas
furnishes an obvious analogy to that of objects distinctly or
indistinctly seen in the field of vision ; and that it is therefore
natural to refer the distinction of perception and apperception
to consciousness itself, just as in external vision we account
for the different degrees of distinctness by reference to differ-
ences in acuteness of vision in different portions of the visual
field" {Human and Animal Psychology^ Wundt, pp. 244-45 ; I
trans. 1894). (2)

" What present defects have we here and now^ and to what
dangers are we exposed ? is the form which the practical
question must take with us. To illustrate, I would say that
one of our chief dangers in these days is the over-instruction
of willing and ingenuous boys. We are in the very midst of \

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what will afterwards be designated the information and examina-
tion epoch of Education. We are in danger of confounding
the faculty for swallowing with the faculty for digesting. To
borrow words from biological science, we sometimes proceed
as if the mind of man grew by accretion and not by intussus-
ception" {The Training of Tectchers^ S. S. Laurie, p. 22;
1901). (2)

" If a simile may be allowed, the difference between Semitic
and Aryan writing is very much that between the more bony
framework of the skull and the living human face, with its
infinite power of expressing the most varied emotions "...
(and with all its ambiguity) {The Alphabet y Isaac Taylor,
voL i. p. 166; 1883). (2)

" If once more we consider the whole process of natural
selection, how it operates through the complicated interaction
of the different laws of Inheritance and Adaptation, we shall
recognise not only divergence of character, but also the per-
fecting of structure to be the direct and necessary result of it.
We can trace the same thing in the history of the human
race. ... If man wishes to understand his position in nature,
and to comprehend as natural facts his relations to the phenomena
of the world cognizable by him, it is absolutely necessary that
he should compare human with extra-human phenomena, and,
above all, with animal phenomena " (The History of Creation^
Haeckel, vol i. pp. 318-19 ; 1892). (3)

"The analogy between the systole and diastole of the
heart, and the waking and sleeping of the brain, may be pro-
fitably pushed to a very considerable extent" (Text-Book of
Physiology y Sir M. Foster, part iv. p. 1552 ; 1891). (4)

" The vital statistics of a population are those of a vast
army marching rank behind rank, across the treacherous
table-land of life. Some of its members drop out of sight at
every step, and a new rank is ever rising up to take the place
vacated by the rank that preceded it, and which has already
moved on. The population retains its peculiarities, although

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264 WHAT IS MEANING? appen.

the elements of which it is composed are never stationary,
neither are the same individuals present at any two successive
epochs. In these respects a population may be compared to
a cloud that seems to repose in calm upon a mountain plateau
while a gale of wind is blowing over it. The outline of the
cloud remains unchanged, although its elements are in violent
movement and in a condition of perpetual destruction and
renewal The well -understood cause of such clouds is the
deflection of a wind laden with invisible vapour, by means of
the sloping flanks of the mountain, up to a level at which the
atmosphere is much colder and rarer than below. Part of the
invisible vapour with which the wind was charged becomes
thereby condensed into the minute particles of water of which
clouds are formed. After a while the process is reversed.
The particles of cloud having been carried by the wind across
the plateau, are swept down the other side of it again to a
lower level, and during their descent they return into invisible
vapour. Both in the cloud and in the population there is, on
the one hand, a continual supply and inrush of new individuals
from the unseen ; they remain a while as visible objects, and
then disappear. The cloud and the population are composed
of elements that resemble each other in the brevity of their
existence, while the general features of the cloud and of the
population are alike in that they abide " {Natural Inheritance^
Francis Galton, pp. 164-65; 1889). (4)

" Suppose that you have a clock whose movement can at
any moment be arrested or started by the throwing in or out
of gear of some mechanical appliance, say a spring, which
stops the works or not according as it is tightened or relaxed.
So long as it is tightened the weight which moves the clock
will be exerting a pressure against it. This represents the
stresses to which the mechanism is subject. As soon as it is
relaxed these are transformed into energy of motion. To effect
the relaxation some small sum of work must be expended.
Its magnitude will be proportional to the resilience of the

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elastic spring, and it can very easily be increased or decreased
by varying the tension of the spring.

" The movement of the clock in this illustration is the reflex
movement, the relaxation of the spring is the operation of a
sense-stimulus, and the greater or less tension represents the
influence of the substances which are exerting a specific action
upon the mechanism of transformation of energy. Just as a
g^reater tension of the spring increases the difficulty of starting
the clock, so the alteration produced by opium in the nervous
system makes against the release of a reflex movement ; and
just as a less degree of tension facilitates the starting of the
clock, so strychnine facilitates reflex movement. Every clock
goes for a certain period, at the expiration of which it nms
down and requires to be rewound ; in other words, there is in
it a certain amoimt of potential energy which it takes a definite
time to use up and transform into energy of motion, and which
then requires renewal. Without this renewal the clock cannot
go any more. Here again there is a complete analogy with
the mechanics of the nervous system " (Human and Animal
Psychology^ Wundt, p. 123 ; 1894). (4)

"It was necessary, in order to be intelligible, to translate
certain processes of what we may call mental mechanics, — cer-
tain association-processes, — into the language of logical thought.
Logical thinking is the form of mental activity with which we
first become directly acquainted in our internal experience.
And so it offers a ready means of making clear the connection
of separate elements in a mental process, although the process
itself may not belong at all to the sphere of logical reflection.
But we must be careful. The logical formulae which we often
find so useful in explaining the connection of mental processes
must not be confused with the processes themselves " (Ibid,
p. 142). (4)

" The removal of smoke is a problem not dissimilar in its
fundamental character from that of the removal of sewage, and
in what I have to say I keep in view the analogy that exists

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266 WHAT IS MEANING? appen.

between the elements of these two problems. I choose the
problem of the removal of sewage for this purpose because it is
a problem in which sanitary reformers have achieved gradual
but conspicuous success during the nmeteenth century, and
even within the memory of the present generation, to the great
advantage of the whole community.

<*In all matters concerning the disposal of refuse, we progress
by slow degrees from an individualist to a socialist point of
view. Occasional illustrations of reckless indulgence of the
extreme individualist view as regards the disposal of other
forms of refuse might be quoted, and at this day it is no great
exaggeration to say that we all act with similar recklessness
with regard to our smoke ; we throw it into the atmosphere
and leave to beneficent chance the question whether or not it
injures our neighbours.

** In large towns we have travelled very far in the path of de-
velopment from the original instinct as regards the problem of
the disposal of sewage-polluted water, but there has been no
corresponding progress in the disposal of smoke-polluted air "
("The Treatment of Smoke,'' Dr. W. N. Shaw, Nature^
October 30, 1902). (4)

"Just as visual impulses can be excited by light only
through the mediation of the retina, so auditory impulses can
be excited by sound only through the mediation of the auditory
epithelium ; but here the analogy between the optic auditory
nerves seems to end " ( Text-Book of Physiology^ Sir M. Foster,
part iv. p. 1314 ; 1891). (5), see also (6)

" It is obvious that a very complete analogy exists between
the taste-buds and the endings of the olfactory nerve " {Ibid.

p. 1395). (5 a)

" For just as the investigation of Nature from Galileo to
Newton directed its energies toward finding out the simple
fundamental form of corporeal motion, to which all complex
structures of outer experience could be reduced, so Descartes
desired to establish the fundamental forms of psychical motion,

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APPBN. WHAT IS MEANING? 267

out of which the multiplicity of inner experiences would become
explicable " (History of Philosophy y Windelband, p. 412, trans.

1893). (5)

" We may infer that (nascent vision) amounts at first to
little more than anticipatory touch ; and that so there is estab-
lished in the organism a general relation between visual and
tactual impressions, corresponding to the general relation
between opacity and solidity in the environment. Be this as
it may, however, it is clear that an incipient faculty of sight,
though the vaguest imaginable in the sensations it gives, and
the most limited that can be conceived in range, implies not
only some extension of the correspondence in space, but a new
order of correspondence " (Principles of Psychology ^ H. Spencer,
vol. i. p. 315, 3rd edit. 1881). (6)

<< In the histons the sociably connected cells are dependent
upon one another and upon the whole organism, and are so
all the more, the more highly developed the organism is, ue,
the more strongly it is centralised. Hence the one-celled
Protist stands in much the same relation to the many-celled
and tissue-forming histon as a single man does to the com-
munity. The many-celled organism is a community of cells,
and its single cells are the members of the community " ( The
History of Creation^ Haeckel, vol. i. p. 294 ; 1892). (6)

Note VI., p. 27. — Words like < consciousness, sensation,
feeling, mind, thought, will,' wander and collide in the endless
cross-currents of * meaning.' Every psychologist deplores this
and recommends his own usage. But there is no consensus and
therefore no consistency or real advance. Meanwhile, surely
* sensation ' — ^varying in degree and in kind — supplies us with
the natural starting-point. Virtually it is already this. For
we begin with a vague < sense ' which is a response to stimulus.
This becomes gradually more conscious, rising to that level which
we may call * feeling,' and involving more and more definitely
that which we call * mind ' ; a word which in its turn suggest-
ively connotes in popular usage will, desire, intention, memory.

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Thus, as the first simplicity of Sense differentiates into < special
senses/ and we gain the widely varying response-types which
we call touch (including smell and taste), hearing, and sight ;
so the first simplicity of * sense ' as the guarantee of sanity, the
individual's right response to the stimuli of the physical world
(resistance, temperatiu'e, etc), differentiates into the special

* senses * in which we apprehend, analyse, act upon what we
learn to call (i) fact, (2) truth, and at last reach, or at least
recognise, as Reality. This is not a mere question of ety-
mology, which indeed would be but a broken reed to lean
upon. It is a question of unconsciously developing mental
habit ; of * instinct ' growing into volitional maturity and
revecUing itself in language. This revelation is, of course, as
yet vague and shifting. But when it is seriously investigated
and properly interpreted : when our usage becomes orderly
and progressive (as, except in this solitary case of language,
all our developed energies passing under the control of
intelligence and reason tend to be), then we shall find many

* impossibilities ' quite feasible, and many things now ' beyond
words ' clearly expressible.

Note VII., p. 36. — It is curious — and perhaps significant
— that in the able and eloquent Presidential Address of Professor
Forsyth to the British Association, August 1897, he almost
exactly describes one aspect of the value of Signifies. " I do
not know of any canonical aggregate of tests which a subject
should satisfy before it is entitled to a separate establishment ;
but, in the absence of a recognised aggregate, some important
tests can be assigned which are necessary, and may, perhaps,
be sufficient A subject must be concerned with a range of
ideas forming a class distinct from all other classes ; it must
deal with them in such a way that new ideas of the same kind
can be associated and assimilated; and it should derive a
growing vigour from a growing increase of its range. For its
progress it must possess methods as varied as its range, ac-
•quiring and constructing new processes in its growth ; and

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new methods on any grand scale should supersede the older
ones, so that increase of ideas and introduction of new principles
should lead both to simplification and to increase of working
power within the subject. As a sign of its vitality it must ever
be adding to knowledge and producing new results, even though
within its own range it propound some questions that have no
answer and other questions that for a time defy solution ; and
results already achieved should be an intrinsic stimulus to
further development in the extension of knowledge. Lastly,
at least among this list, let me quote Sylvester's words : — * It
must unceasingly call forth the faculties of observation and
comparison ; one of its principal methods must be induction ;
it must have frequent recourse to experimental trial and
veriiication ; and it must afford a boundless scope for the
highest efforts of imagination and invention.' I do not add
as a test that it must immediately be capable of practical
application to something outside its own range, though of
course its processes may be also transferable to other subjects,
or, in part, derivable from them. All these tests are satisfied
by pure mathematics ; it can be claimed without hesitation or
exaggeration that they are satisfied with ample generosity."
After illustrating this position by reference to two or three
branches, Professor Forsyth concludes : — " What has been
said may suffice to give some slight indication of the vast and
ever-widening extent of pure mathematics. No less than in any
other science knowledge gathers force as it grows, and each
new step once attained becomes the starting-point for steady
advance in further exploration. Mathematics is one of the
oldest of the sciences ; it is also one of the most active, for its
strength is the vigour of perpetual youth."

But while the ideas summed up in sense, meaning, and
significance (but also expressed as import, purport, signification,
etc.) must in a narrow sense constitute a special subject, in a
wider one, they constitute that very value which is common to all
subjects <' sifted and rationalised — in fact, organised into truth."

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Note VIII., p. 39. — A good iOustration of the present
chaotic use of metaphor is found in a letter to the Ptloi
(July 19, 1902), signed E. D. Stone: —

<Mn an obsolete Latin exercise book, full of wit and wisdom
. . . are sentences somewhat to this effect: *As the scum
rises to the surface of the pot, so the worst men take leading
parts in a revolution ' ; * As the cream mounts to the surface of
the milk, so the best men take the lead in the State * ; * One of
these metaphors is as good as the other.' I was reminded of
this by a phrase in the last number of the Pilots vituperative
of Sir W. Anson's amendment ' giving the exclusive support of
the community to a religion which is in principle the residuum
of all religions.' 'Residuum' at once calls up the idea of

* dr^^ ' and < lees,' matter offensive and feculent which sinks
to the bottom. But substitute for it ' quintessence,' regard it
as that which remains solid and insoluble, when the lighter
and less essential elements have evaporated ; look on it as the
refined gold, when all drossy matter has been extracted, and
that at once becomes precious which from the other point of
view was contemptible. Is it certain that that which appeals
to all men alike is not the very essence and soul of religion ?

'< Here is another well-worn metaphor, trotted out invariably
when strong doctrine is assailed. The assailant is said to be

* watering it down.' But how, if the strong liquid, fiery and
intoxicating, is not only unpalatable, but unwholesome and
poisonous without the admixture of water, though with it a
potent and healing medicine ? "

Note IX., p. 42. — Huxley's metaphors almost always
bear scrutiny. Take the passage, "Hume does not really
bring his mature powers to bear upon his early speculations,
in the later work. The crude fruits have not been ripened,
but they have been ruthlessly pruned away, along with
the branches which bore them. The result is a pretty shrub
enough ; but not the tree of knowledge, with its roots firmly
fixed in &ct, its branches perennially budding forth into new

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truths, which Hume might have reared." This is a really
illustrative adoption of one of the most ancient metaphors we
have. But sometimes he too trips — unless, indeed, we may
class his apparent bulls among intentional paradoxes, as when
he speaks of * auditory spectra.' His use of the misleading
metaphor < state' of consciousness betrays its absurdity, and
one wonders that he did not think it worth while to expose its
deceptive influence. After accepting the metaphor of the
anatomy of Mind, he says, " the psychologist dissects mental
phenomena into elementary states of consciousness, as the
anatomist resolves limbs into tissues, and tissues into cells.
The one traces the development of complex organs from
simple rudiments ; the other follows the building up of complex
conceptions out of simpler constituents of thought." But
obviously there are 'states' — healthy and active, congested
or atrophied, etc. — of organs or the muscular system, etc.
And mental states must, to be relevant at all, correspond to
these. Instead of which, even Huxley is content to use
•state' as equivalent to *cell,' or whatever we take as the

* simplest rudiment ' of the body. How curious it is that the
accurate scientific mind should have borne so long with what
is really the popular muddle of calling the analogue of a

* rudiment ' or of a * cell ' a * state ' ! For in this way, be
it noted, we lose the true use of ^ state ' in the mental sphere.
The constituents of Mind, or the Mind as a whole (if we may
use the analogy at all), must be in a healthy or a morbid
' sitate,' in an active or passive ' state,' and so on ; and a
recognition of this could not fail to clear our ideas, so long as
we use the universal analogy between * body ' and * mind.'

Mr. Hanns Oertel is rightly severe on "the ill-advised
and misleading metaphors in which linguistic writers (have)
indulged, borrowing their terms from the dissecting-room and
the physiological and biological laboratories. All language is
so fraught with metaphors that even with constant care a
wrong suggestion cannot at times be avoided. But in scientific

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work the harm of figurative phrases is incalculable, however
much it may serve to brighten the style and impress upon it
the mark of brilliancy. Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous
than the use of figurative terms which seem so apt that they
cause the reader to forget the figure" (Lectures^ etc.y p. 59).
This needs conversely a warning against the use of inapt figure
which sways the reader's mind by calling up the wrong image.
For very few readers have been trained to criticise automatically
the * aptness ' of imagery. Let us see, however, how far the
writer has himself protected us against the incalculable harm
in scientific work of figurative phrases.

On p. 20 of the same work we find "that either the
creative foncy, scorning a solid masonry of facts, builds its
castle in Spain without carpenter and architect, or a
hesitating exactness may become the fetish to which the chil-
dren of the imagination are sacrificed." On p. 81, linguistic
symbols are " used as a supporting trellis around which the
latter (the mental life) grows up." On p. 84, Psychology is a
< clearing-house.' On p. 89, the historical and the judicial
attitudes "run parallel as it were" (clever of the attitudes).
On p. 90, speech is " the raw material from which literature is
hewn." On p. 91, the *rank' of a phrase is determined "by
the company it keeps and the place where it was bom."
Comment is needless. On p. 60, we are told of metaphors
taken ' literally ' and leading to confusion ; being " interesting
instances of the reaction of word upon thought" There is no
doubt that metaphors react much more strongly than we
usually suppose upon thought ; but who ever took metaphor
* literally ' ? What we do is to take it as relevanty as fittings
as descriptive^ as conveying an actual resemblance or corre-
spondence. And when this is really the case, even scientific,
like all other work, only gains by its use.

Note X. (A), p. 51. — The pregnant remarks of Mr.
Schuster at Belfast apply here ; — " There is . .^ a very real
danger that the importance of observation misleads us into

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APPEN. WHAT IS MEANING? 273

mistaking the means for the end, as if observation alone could
add anything to our knowledge. Observation is like the food
supplied to the brain, and knowledge only comes through the
digestion of the food. An observation made for its own sake,
and not for some definite scientific object, is a useless observa-
tion. Science is not a museum for the storage of disconnected
facts and the amusement of the collecting enthusiast. I dis-
like the name * observatory ' for the astronomical workshop,
for the same reason that I should dislike my body to be called
a food receptacle. Your observing dome would be useless
without your computing room and your study. What you want
is an Astronomical Laboratory, a Meteorological or Magnetic
Laboratory, attaching to the word * laboratory ' its true meaning,
which is a workshop in which eyes and hands and brains unite
in producing a combined result'' (Opening Address, Section
A, Brit Assoc, by A. Schuster, F.R.S., etc., 1902).

Mr. L. Ward has some suggestive passages in the
same sense {Outlines of Sociology^ 1898): — ** . . . None of
the more complex and less exact sciences can be properly
understood until after all the simpler and more exact ones
below it have first been acquired. . . . But the important
qualification should be made that this canon does not imply a
mastery of the details of these sciences, but only a compre-
hensive grasp of their principles" (p. 19), for "the environ-
ment transforms the animal, while man transforms the
environment" (p. 81). Apply this to the * submerged tenth'
of science : the ultra-specialists. " It may have a discouraging
sound to say that in order to be properly prepared for the
study of sociology one must first be acquainted with mathe-
matics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and psychology,
but when it is clearly understood what is meant by this it
loses much of its formidableness. For it has never been
maintained that it is necessary to become a specialist in all, or
even in any of these sciences. It is only essential to have
a firm grasp of the leading principles of all of them, and of

T

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274 WHAT IS MEANING? aton.

their relations one to another. It would be £su- better to
devote time to this aspect of each of them than to mastering
the details, as is so largely done in the present syston of
education '^ (pp. ii8, 119).

(B), p. 59. — A curious commentary on the present speciatis-
ing tendency of knowledge may be found in the Times report of
the dinner (Nov. 2i, 1902) to the editors and contributors to
the Encyclopadia Britanmca. Mr. Balfour said : "... With-
out going back to medieval or to ancient times, I think that
everybody will admit that there was a moment ... in which
it was possible to gather within the compass of the knowledge
of one man all that was known, that was worth knowing, in
every branch (^ philosophy, theology, and, I diink, of science
and of politics. ... At present I suppose it is possible for a
man to be a specialist in his own branch of study, and yet to
have some working knowledge of the method and of the
results which have been added in all the other great, or in
many of the other great, departments of human learning.
What will it be in some generations hence? I am almost
glad that I shall not live to see that day — a day at which, I
suppose, the specialist will have an enormous and almost
unutterable contempt for the generaliser . . . who attemf^ to
bring within the compass of one survey and one view the
general results of human knowledge ; and where the generaliser
will himself feel lost in die mass of knowledge, the mass of
detail which will meet the student in every branch of know-
ledge who really intends to master its secrets. I suppose the
futiu'e generations will look after themselves, and that . . .
the problem of the future will be solved by some method at
present unforeseen which will prevent students being wholly
lost in the details of some highly specialist study." Yet a few
minutes earlier the Speaker (Mr. Gully) had remarked that
Mr. Bryce was, " as they all knew, a walking encyclopaedia."
The Times itself went even farther in anticipating the virtual
collapse of knowledge through its own development, and told

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APPEN. WHAT IS MEANING? 275

us that " in the future it will be more and more difficult for
anybody, except a specialist, to say anything about any sub-
ject, while the specialist will have very little chance of know-
ing anything outside his own department. This narrowing
tendency is inevitable, since knowledge is not only enlarged
in its area, . . . but is so microscopically specialised that each
small part of it represents the labours, not of a lifetime only,
but of many lives. There is something sad in this which
quells the pride of human intellect." Poor human intellect !
Happily, Mr. Balfour at least left it a loophole by which to
creep from its gloomy tomb. Every one knows the story of
the man who excused himself from joining in conversation on
the plea that his attention was entirely concentrated on his
life's work, — the study of the hairs on the thirty-eighth left leg
of a particular kind of centipede. Perhaps it is less well
known that he was promptly capped by another specialist
present, who was, as he explained, exclusively devoted to the
study of the wink observed in the right eyelid of the Anopheles
as it dived under the net of a new comer to Sierra Leone.
Let us hope that in the future some one who has with the
same enthusiasm taken up the study of Signifies, may be able
to provide that very method for which Mr. Balfour pines.

Note XL, p. 59. — The following passages in Prof. Cunning-
ham's address to the Anthropological Section of the British
Association at Glasgow, 1901, are here instructive: — "I
have already mentioned that man's special endowment, the
faculty of speech, is associated with striking changes in that
part of the cerebral surface in which the motor centre for
articulate speech is located. It is questionable whether the
acquisition of any other system of associated muscular move-
ments has been accompanied by a more evident cortical
change. . . . During the whole course of his evolution there
is no possession which man has contrived to acquire which has
exercised a stronger influence on his higher development than
the power of articulate speech. This priceless gift, * the most

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276 WHAT IS MEANING? appen.

human manifestation of humanity' — (Huxley) — was not ob-
tained through the exertions of any one individual or group
of individuals. It is the result of a slow process of natural
growth, and there is no race, no matter how low, savage, or
uncultured, which does not possess the power of communicat-
ing its ideas by means of speech. * If in the present state of
the world,' says Charma, < some philosopher were to wonder
how man ever began to build those houses, palaces, and
vessels which we see around us, we should answer that these
were not the things that man began with. The savage who
first tied the branches of shrubs to make himself a shelter was
not an architect, and he who first floated on the trunk c^ a
tree was not the creator of navigation.' And so it is with
speech. Rude and imperfect in its beginnings, it has
gradually been elaborated by the successive generations that
have practised it. ... I think we may conclude that the
acquisition of speech has been a dominant factor in deter-
mining the high development of the human brain. Speech
and mental activity go hand in hand. The one has reacted
on the other. The mental effort required for the coining of a
new word has been immediately followed by an increased
possibility of further intellectual achievement through the
additional range given to the mental powers by the enlarged
vocabulary. The two processes, mutually supporting each
other and leading to progress in the two directions, have un-
questionably yielded the chief stimulus to brain development"
Do we then find, as we should reasonably expect to find, that
the inmiense development of human experience during the last
few centuries has followed this order of rising expressiveness
in speech ?

In Pro£ Clifford Allbutt's admirable Boyle Lecture for 1902,
after citing certain passages from Boyle's writings, he says :
" We are apt, perhaps, to undervalue such reasoning because
of the oddity, to us, of the technical terms used, but we
shall remember that scientific nomenclature was then in an

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APPEN. WHAT IS MEANING? 277

early stage of making, and that many words to which we
are now accustomed are no better, some of them indeed
worse, than those in use two hundred and fifty years ago."
Do we really feel no surprise or shame at such stagnation and
even degeneration, not among the illiterate, not in vulgar
journalism, but in the very strongholds of intellectual advance ?

After using the needed word *neurergic,' Mr. H. R.
Marshall {Mindy October 1902, p. 479) actually apologises in
the footnote and begs the reader to pardon him ! Strange
indeed that we should ask pardon for evolving by volition (not
* coining') a fresh means of distinctive expression. The
apology should rather be for not doing it where needed.

A striking example of the despair of language is found in
the last paragraph of A. de Morgan's Study of Mathematics :
" These algebraic relations between the sides and content of
a rectangle or parallelepiped were observed by the Greek
geometers ; but as they had no distinct science of algebra, and
a very imperfect system of arithmetic, while, with them,
geometry was in an advanced state ; instead of applying
algebra to geometry, what they knew of the first was by
deduction from the last : hence the names which, to this day,
are given to oa, cuza^ ab^ which are called the square of a, the
cube of ay the rectangle of a and b. The student is thus led to
imagine that he has proved that' square described on the line
whose number of units is ^, to contain aa square units, because
he calls the latter the square of a. He must, however,
recollect that squares in algebra and geometry mean distinct
things. It would be much better if he would accustom him-
self to call aa and aaa the second and third powers of 2l^ by
'which means the confusion would be avoided. It is, never-
theless, too much to expect that a method of speaking so
commonly received should ever be changed^ (italics mine :
V. W.) ; " all that can be done is, to point out the real con-
nection of the geometrical and algebraical signification. This,
if once thoroughly understood, will prevent any future mis-

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278 WHAT IS MEANING? appbn.

conception." Yes ; but think at what needless cost ! Suppose
we used ' milk ' to mean also cream and butter. No doubt a
knowledge of the facts, a study of context, etc., would prevent
any future misconception. But it would be a senseless waste
of attention.

Note XII., p. 66. — A curious instance of the lack of
what Signifies applied to education would supply, that is, an
almost unerring mental scent for the true sense of things, may
be found in the following extracts : —

" Mr. Mark Pattison, one of the acutest minds of modem
Oxford, rather oddly says that the idea of Deity has now been

* defecated to a pure transparency.' The evolution philosophy
goes a step farther, and defecates the idea of cause to a pure
transparency. Theology and ontology alike end in the ever-
lasting No with which science confronts all their assertions.
But how whimsical is it to tell us that rdigion, which cannot
find any resting-place in theology or ontology, is to find its
true home in the Everlasting No ! That which is defecated to
a pure transparency can never supply a religion to any human
being but a philosopher constructing a system. ... A
religion . . . which is sunmied up in one dogma — the Un-
knowable is everywhere, and Evolution is its prophet — this is
indeed * to defecate religion to a pure transparency.' . . . They
are so terribly afraid of an anthropomorphic GOD that they have
sublimated Him into a metaphorical expression — * defecated
the idea to a pure transparency,' as one of the most eminent
of them puts it. . . . You may rout a logician by a 'pure
transparency,' but you cannot check vice, crime, and war by
it, nor train up men and women in holiness and truth " (" Ghost
of Religion," Nineteenth Century^ March 1884, pp. 496-97,

504-5).

** One luminary of the Church declares that the idea of God
must be < defecated to a pure transparency.' Imagine the
apostles going out into all lands to preach the name of One

* defecated to a pure transparency ' " ! (Frederic Harrison,

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APPEN. WHAT IS MEANING? 279

" Apologia pro Fide Nostra," Fortnightly Review^ November
1888). An even more curious case occurs in A. W. Benn's
Philosophy of Greece (1898): "If, like Hegel, he * defecated
the universe to a pure transparency,' he left it* transparent :
his world is luminous through its entire extent" (p. 87).

The phrase, attributed by F. Harrison to Mark Pattison,
" the idea of Deity is defecated to a pure transparency," has
been repeated endlessly in the monthly reviews, in Times
articles, etc. Whereas, as Dr. Shadworth Hodgson kindly
informed me in a private letter, Coleridge, who originally used
it, meant something entirely different: "Finally, what is
Reason ? You have often asked me ; and this is my answer: —

Whene'er the mist, that stands 'twixt God and thee
Defecates to a pure transparency,
That intercepts no light and adds no stain —
There Reason is, and then b^ns her reign ' " !

(Concluding passage in Appendix to S. Coleridge's
Church and State^ p. 227, ist. ed. 1830. )

Dr. Shadworth Hodgson adds : *< But, alas !

' ' tu stesso ti fai grosso
Col falso immaginar, si che non vedi
Cio che vedresti se I'avessi scosso. "
• (Dante, Paradiso, Canto I. ) "

It may not be out of place to mention here a more
ludicrous blunder of the same kind ; this time due to the
reporter. Everywhere we see that Lord Curzon once spoke of
the * anticipation of events before they occur,' whereas it is well
known that the word used was appreciation. Yet the blunder
goes on, and even starts the introductory essay of the last
Plea for Reformed Education (Essc^s on Education, edit.
by Laurie Magnus; 1901).

Note XIII., p. 80* — To any one who has even begun to
realise the contrast between the present state of language and
that which the cultivation of the child's speech instinct would
bring about, the ordinary popular book on < words ' is painful

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28o WHAT IS MEANING? appen.

reading. For most of them contribute fresh cases of confusion,
and none of them show any sense of regret or indignation when
recording cases of wanton disorder tending to insanity of
thought Insanity of thought : yes, that is really what is fostered
by the incoherence of meaning, the welter of sense which now
prevails. Why does it never occur to us that in no other case
but that of language would such a chaos be tolerated for a
moment ?

In a representative and well-written American book dating
from Harvard ( Wards and their Ways in English Speech^ by
Greenough and Kittredge, 1902), the authors, after saying that
" no phenomenon is more amazing than that of speech " (p. 2)
go on to say, "it is profoundly true that *all language is
poetry,' " (p. 6). Now, it is bad enough that we should not be
rebuked for speaking of poetry when we really mean verse, and
for compelling prose to be prosy and prosaic ; at the same time
for being content with no other word to express some of the
finest poetry in the world, — that of the Old Testament (The
only notice I have seen taken of this absurdity is in an article
by Max Beerbohm in the Academy called ** Wanted a Noun.**)
But it is even worse when throughout the book we find the
metaphor coin and coinage applied to language. Nqw, except in
one well-marked special sense (that of economics), this metaphor
introduces the same kind of confusion as if we were to speak of
founding a word or building one. For the figiure is a clear and
insistently pictorial one. We try to make our ideas of a word
fit those of a coin, and thus go astray and think awry of
language. Our authors speak of the 'marvellous variety'
(p. 8) of the meanings of a word. Is there a similar variety in
the meanings of a shilling ? Again *< the field of language is
strewn with the dry bones of adventurous words which once
started out with the paternal blessing to make their fortune,
but which have met with an untimely end . . ." (p. 78). (See
also Note XVII.) Is this what befiedls coins ? " Counters and
markers" (p. 235) are nearer the coin idea. Once more, it

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APPEN. WHAT IS MEANING? 281

seems that " we owe many words of this class, not to deliberate
borrowing of a learned or literary character, but to the hap-
hazard linguistic processes of conversation and daily life " (p.
100). Do we owe coins to haphazard processes, and are these
comparable to chemical accuracy ? (p. 37). We certainly owe
metaphors of this kind to haphazard processes which ought
to be exposed, and their confusing and balking effects upon
thought emphasised in serious works.

Again, the authors speak (p. 10) of * deeply moved ' etc., as
having " ceased to be a metaphor." Every one I have asked
confesses, on the contrary, that it calls up images like the ' deep
sea,' or a * deep well,' or a deep voice, or < deep foundations.'
The effect of strong emotion on the visceral regions, originat-
ing the common remark * I felt it deeply,' is well known.
And even those who do not consciously associate it thus are
still unconsciously swayed by the original (or literal) meaning,
as they show in many ways, among them in intonation. It is
instructive to ask any one who doubts the subconscious effect
of inherited metaphor to read aloud from any handy book, as
though addressing an audience, and then stop them as soon as
they have shown by the rise or fall of voice, etc., that the
associations which they suppose to be quite obsolete are still
operative. To say that "language picks out with almost a
chemical certainty what is suitable for it, and any language at
any moment is a naturally selected residuum of all which the
human mind has thought or conceived ever since that line of
civilisation began" (p. 37), is contradicted farther on in the
same book. Take the case of the passive and impassive, " in
which we have the curious phenomenon of a word that is
practically synonymous with its contradictory, passive " (p. 40).
Is this ' chemical certainty ' ? Or again ' monk,' really one who
lives alone, used for one who lives in community, and has indeed
resigned individuality so far as this is possible (p. 44).
It is true that " there has never been a time in the history
of our language when * syntactical correctness ' has ruled with

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282 WHAT IS MEANING? appen.

so capricious and tyrannical a sway. The proof-reader has
become a court of last resort for many of us'' (p. 124).
When there is need of latitude we are straitly confined:
spelling is at once despotic and utterly inconsistent and
senseless (especially in English). But where there is pressbg
need of order, that is, in sense and meaning, there all is left to
chance, caprice, accident, although " words, as we know, are
but the signs of thought," and '* no sooner has an idea been
expressed in words than the form of expression reacts on the
speaker and influences his subsequent thought. . . . Every one
knows how a peculiar or striking phrase, embodying a certain
thought, may recur to the memory whenever the thought
comes back to us, and thus, by a kind of haunting persistence,
make it difficult to phrase the thought otherwise" (p. 125).
For * speech - feeling ' "affects every word that we utter,
though we may think that we are speaking as the whim of the
moment dictates " ; language, it is well remarked, insists upon
wridng itself almost in spite of us (p. 126). <<The contest
that is still raging over the nature of a ' liberal education '
affords very pretty examples of the tyranny of words when the
* term is allowed to govern the meaning,' especially when the
term is interpreted awry at the outset Here, as in so many
other wordy combats, the etymon of the Stoics < umpire sits,
and by decision more embroils the fray'" (p. 215), Yet
after all this the writer tells us, apparently with complacent
satisfaction, that "language develops by the felicitous mis-
application of words" (p. 217). Now misapplication can
never be felicitous, except indeed where obviously humorous ;
elsewhere it is always unhappy, like misuse and misunder-
standing and mistake. We ought rather to say. So-and-so
unconsciously translated a phrase which thus revealed the
possible enrichment of speech significance. (It would, be
an excellent exercise for children to do this. But they, and
we, must be guarded against the fatal mistake of transferring
back to the original phrase the translated meaning.)

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APPEN. WHAT IS MEANING? 283

Our writers again declare that " English is full of happy mis-
applications of words. They should serve as warnings to the
puristic pedant) and may, perhaps, encourage aspiring neologists.
One caution, however, must in conscience be added. The only
safe course is to be sure that the misapplication is so happy that
the rest of the world will adopt it " (p. 283). It is a curious
question whether if a whole society, in consequence of some
brain-poison in the air, took to delirious raving and to gibber-
ing, only a small minority remaining sane, it would be possible
to establish the fact at all ; since the sane foreigner, if called
in, would not be able to judge except of the actions and
gestures of the afflicted people. But in fact one could hardly
have the matter put more falsely. What other subject could
possibly be described thus in serious writing? Think of a
lucky hit in ethics, and a happy thought in logic ; a < happy '
misfit in emotion, a blunder in sensation (mistaking a touch
for a colour), or any other haphazard or random * miss ' which
hit nothing but idle fancy. Imagine the musician playing on
an instrument out of time and ending on a false note in another
key ; a painter falsifying his colour and his outline. This
would indeed be the reign of monstrosity.

" We have seen how words grow up and how they change
their forms. We have examined the machinery which makes
new terms by derivation and composition " (p. 219). This does
not fit the ' coin ' idea ! And we are at last told that " the
appearance of chance is due merely to our ignorance of the
causes that have operated in each case. Such causes may be
simple and easily understood, or so complex as never to be
discoverable in their entirety. But so long as thought
proceeds in obedience to definite laws, language, which is the
expression of thought by means of conventional signs, must
^so obey rules which, if we could discover them, would account
for every variation " (pp. 2 19-20). If we could discover them !
Have we ever seriously tried ? '* In the absolute sense of the
term a word has no * essential ' meaning. Words are conven-

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284 WHAT IS MEANING? appen.

tional signs. They mean what they are intended to mean by
the speaker and understood to mean by the hearer. There is
no other sense in which language can be properly said to
signify anything " (p. 220). Therefore it is plain that if we
chose we could acquire complete control over language which
now makes a mock of our helplessness and leaves us dumb
where we most need expressiveness.

** The associations of words are always shifting, even when
the meaning remains unchanged" (p. 225). But it is im-
possible thus to sever the two. Of course " it is only by taking
into account the customs and beliefs that prevailed when a
word was made that we can have any just conception of its
origin" (p. 232). And false ideas of the origin, say of
education and religion, arise from overlooking this. ^* None of
the examples cited has wandered far from its first sense. The
development is still very simple, and the chain of meanings is
easy to follow" (p. 266). "At any stage of the process a
meaning is capable of being treated as if it were the original
sense of the word" (p. 267). 'Meaning' is here dis-
tinguished from * sense,' but as the distinction is nowhere
alluded to it appears to be unconsciously made. "Descent
is easy, and words, like people, show a propensity to fall
away from their better selves" (p. 284). But then we hear
that our language is "fixed by the conservative forces of
literature and education" (p. 285), after which we are given
an "extraordinary instance of verbal degradation" (p. 287).
And yet no one thmks of feeling ashamed of such desecra-
tion of what ought to be to us the sacred gift of language.
^ Nothing is more democratic than language, or conducts one
to more preposterous conclusions " (p. 383). So it appears ;
and we are curiously content with the preposterous conclusions
which duly re-appear in our thought, belief, and conduct For
" words are the signs of thought, and thoughts make history "
(p. 389). Is it not, therefore, time that the speaker assumed
his rightful authority over speech, and turned it from a tangle

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APPEN. WHAT IS MEANING? 285

of scrambling incoherence into the nobly beautiful order of a
great man's thinking ? For even the great man suffers from
being obliged, if he would be understood, to take up the hap-
hazard blunders and figurative falsities which alone pass current
among his hearers or his readers. These falsities react upon and
discount or silence some at least of the highest of his messages.
There is, of course, much of the highest value to be found
in Professor OertePs Lectures on the Study of Language
(1902). But at the same time it supplies remarkable evi-
dence of the need, even among experts, of a more thorough
analysis and a wider and more consistent study and applica-
tion of the * semantic ' principle. Surely the first task of this
should be an inquiry as to the possible gain in a consistent
use of the terms for * meaning ' itself. Instead of this, we find

* meaning ' used with all the vagueness of the * man in the street,'
while the surely valuable distinction now pointed out between
signification and significance is entirely ignored, as also is the
extraordinary width and richness of the connotations of * sense.'

It is true that such an inquiry, if followed out, would soon
transcend the limits both of the Lectures and of English to
which my own inquiry is limited. Still, as examples of the
chequered history and the varied use of words are given, it
seems a pity that words in a true sense the most important
of all, should in so able a work receive no attention. One
distinction made — that between the * schematic ' and the

* semantic ' aspect of grammar — answers to the distinction in
Signifies between the verbal and the sensal. There is an
interesting passage on pp. 280-81: — "How to enable the
hearer to recompose the elements in exactly the same manner
as the speaker saw them is the chief problem with which all
languages have to grapple. When a man speaks he is not
stringing one percept to another, he is doing exactly the
reverse ; he is analysing a compound idea, moulding it, so
that it will be articulate (in the true sense of this word, ue,
become jointed), and he does this because he cannot transmit

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286 WHAT IS MEANING? appen.

a compound idea to his neighbour, but can only pass it on to
him joint after joint, and leave it to him to put them together."
Here again we have the use of an insistent metaphor borrowed
from physiology. The hope of producing a mechanically
accurate reflection in the hearer's mind of the * compound idea '
in the speaker's is of course and really futile. For in every
case there will be a * personal equation ' to reckon with. " The
simultaneous presence in mind of the symbols is necessary
to obtain the word-picture . . ." (p. 282). Here we see the
inevitable drawback of the successiveness of language. We
cannot apply this canon in the cases where it is most needed.
Thus the peroration of a speech, usually the most rhetorical
and least trustworthy part of it, obliterates or weakens its
earlier passages ; and this can only be corrected by a careful
after-study, which too often it does not get

On pp. 293-4 there is a short discussion of the difference
in technical value between * meaning' and 'function.' But this
begins thus : " It is customary to distinguish between the mean-
ing of sound-complexes which stand for names and the meaning
of those devfces by which the attitude of the speaker and the
relations of members of an utterance to each other are indi-
cated. Of the former we use the word * meaning,' of the
latter the word * function.' " Surely it would have made for
clearness if some neutral word like value had here been used.
Professor Oertel continues: "The term * meaning' has thus
acquired a narrower semantic sphere, being attached to the
treatment of entire words and the domain of lexicography, while
the term *• function ' has assumed a distinctly grammatical and
syntactical value. It may, however, be questioned if such a
distinction, which necessarily tends towards separation, is
altogether advantageous." Would it not be worth while here
to point out that < meaning ' is mainly intention ; and that to
speak of the * meaning ' of a word or phrase is really a * short-
hand form ' for * what the speaker means, tie, intends to convey '
by it ? For from this point of view the distinction between

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APPEN. WHAT IS MEANING? 287

the two terms becomes intelligible and useful and in no way
"necessarily tends towards separation." We miss also any
allusion to the 'sense of a word' — i.e. that in which it is
used ; yet this too would help to put the question of the rela-
tion of ' meaning ' to * function ' on a clearer basis.

On p. 298 we read that " various senses contribute to our
percept of an object" And the name denoting that object
may likewise be used in various senses j a fact often of capital
importance in controversial statements, and yet almost uni-
versally ignored. To say that a word has many * meanings '
is by no means the same thing. It is true that the " merely
injudicious choice of words often prejudices a case, and the
emotions stirred up by them rise like a veil between the object
and the observer. The ethical valuation of the object is thus
predetermined by the name applied to it, a fact which popular
philosophy expresses by the proverb : Give a dog a bad
name" (p. 302), while the exact opposite is so also. It is
likewise true that << a word does not really become a symbol
for an idea until it ceases to describe." But would it not be
well to remind us here of the difference between sign — which
may be, like an inn sign, an actual picture — ^and symbol ?
Etymology may indeed be '' the weakest and most unreliable
staff upon which the lexicographer can lean" (p. 307). But
the meaning of a context is as often gathered from a key (or
leader) word as that of a word from context. For in no sense
do words and phrases " stand isolated in a language." Thus
" any change in the meaning of one word frequently disturbs
other words which are in some way connected with it, either
by encroaching upon their territory or by leaving certain mean-
ings uncovered " (p. 329), and most of all in key words. But
these subjects cannot of course be here pursued.

Note XIV. (A), p. 84.— A paper called "Mental Biology,"
written a good many years ago, but too long for insertion, may
perhaps usefully be summarised here. Its object was to call
attention to the fact which seems never to have been noticed.

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that the practically universal (because only workable) analogy
between * body ' and * mind ' (whether this is, as usual, static^
or as the signiiic view would make it, dynamic) has one £aital
defect. This is that whereas on the side of the physical organ-
ism we arrive (in its most developed form) at a * brain ' which
is somehow the condition of an activity or state called in its
lowest forms sense, mind, consciousness, and in its highest
rational thought, on the mental side we postulate nothing as
corresponding to the brain in its capacity of means or condition
of the knowledge of body and brain.

On the contrary, we make the iigtirative * mind-body' —
< know ' itself ! Now, just as the eye cannot see itself so the
mind cannot ' see ' itself any more than matter (qua matter)
can move itself. Therefore, wherever we speak of * spiritual
phenomena we are inevitably implying an analogue of the
material * brain' with all its implications. Only there is no
word for what is not merely *mind,' as at least the ac-
companiment of brain-process, but as much more than the
mind which is figured as body, as the actual mind is more (in
any sense you like) than the actual body. And, unfortunately,
(i) the word * spiritual ' has been widely used in superstitious or
unsound senses, while (2), as we have already seen, it refers
properly to the life or breath, not to that of vision, speech,
thought. There is much yet to be said on this subject ; but
its further treatment must be reserved for the present

Where is that which is as much greater than consciousness
or thought (as we understand them) as the ^ conscious ' activities
of the brain are greater than the mere reflex action of muscle ?
To make the conception clear we must acquire a word. Mean-
while it would be something to recognise the need.

Note XIV. (B), p. 85. — A good illustration of the physio-
logical field which may well turn out, as knowledge increases, to
contain a mine of illuminative expression, is found in vol. 3 1 of
Encyc. Brit (loth edit.), Art. " Pathology," in a note to Fig. 3.
"A diagram to indicate afferent, efferent, and association systems

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WHAT IS MEANING?

289

of neurones. It will be observed that there are three nervous
circles indicated by the arrows — spinal, cerebellar, and
cerebral In every perfect co-ordinate movement impulses
properly adjusted are flowing along these three systems of
neurones."

Note XV., p. 89. " Well, now, think what a tremendous
chasm there is between the 100 million millions per second,
which is about the gravest note, hitherto discovered, of
invisible radiant heat, and the 10,000 per second, the
greatest number of vibrations perceptible as sound. This is

an unknown province of science; the investigation of vibra-
tions between these two limits is, perhaps, one of the most
promising provinces of science for the future investigator"
(Popular Lectures and Addresses^ Sir W. Thomson (Lord
Kelvin), pp. 289-90; 1889. The above is now partly
abridged, 1890).

Let the curve A A represent the vibration -series which
affects our circulatory and nervous systems and our senses of
hearing and sight.^

Let B represent the range of temperature within which

^ This might, of course, be represented in many ways : e.g. as straight,
or pyramidal, like Sir Norman Lockyer's star-temperature diagram, etc. ;
but the curve is to me the most suggestive.

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WHAT IS MEANING?

APPBN.

alone we (popolarly) sui^>ose life and experience to be pos-
sible.

Let C represent the physicist's and physiologist's * chasm'
within which the human organism makes no response to sound
or light.

But as Mower' animals see, hear (as well as smell, taste,
feel) further into the experience-matrix than we do, and also
have a greater range of life on the temperature-curve {e.g.
rotifers and ice -fleas and plant-germ, etc) ; and further, as
animal life in the spore (and larval ?) stage can stand much
greater heat and cold than in the adult stage, ought we not to
take the outside known range of animal life, to add that of the
plant, and to draw the lines as overlapping ? ^

This suggests the question —

(i) Is there any chasm at all except that caused by ignor-
ance or lack of observation and attention, by failure to call up
reactive power from lower strata in consciousness, or strata
below what we call 'consciousness' itself; or by the actual
lapse, it may be temporary, of inherent forms of reaction — in
short, by lack of life ?

The relation between the two vibration-series is twofold.
One is the fact of its being a question of vibration — whether
in *air' or * ether.' The other is the organic meeting-point:
both series affect * organic life and sensation.'

Why then are the two conditions of response exactly
opposite? In the one case (taking Mife' as a question of
reaction or < answer ' to stimulus) you find life at the two ends
of a given line, and not at the centre ; in the other you find

White

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APPEN. WHAT IS MEANING? 291

life at the centre, and not at the two ends. On what does this
contrast depend, and what is its fiill bearing and sigpiificance ?
E.g.y is it purely a question of level in evolution and stage in
adjustment ? How does * degeneration ' touch it ? Have we
vestigial process as well as structure carried on within us and
reproducing itself in marked forms at every fresh start of mental
development, — that is, in every child and every child-like
(young, fresh, plastic, adaptive, assimilative) mind as well as
in every case of the child/^^i, that is, of arrested development
(either among modem savages or imbeciles, or even idiots) ?

Is process and not structure in fact the link between biogeny
and psychogeny in this matter? Should the * kinetic' (for
interpretative or translative purposes) here precede the
< static ' ? . . . Are we to abandon the morphological and
adopt the strictly physiological method in such an inquiry
as this?

To return to our first question.

Is our * dying ' of cold and of heat merely owing to our
inability to live slowly enough for the one or quickly enough
for the other ? Is there any other reason than this for inability
to < live ' in actual ice or flame ?

Again, is the </i>sociating power of heat stronger than any
known or conceivable associating power? And what is the
relation to this, if fact it be, of the spin power which gives
rigidity, elasticity, stability, etc. ? Further, is our deafness to
deep or shrill notes beyond our narrow compass, and our
blindness to the infra-red and ultra-violet rays likewise in the
end a question of * velocity ' or * intensity ' in our responsive
thrill-power ?

Again, how do we definitely limit the action of cohesion by
distance ? How does the theory of * action (or non-action) at
a distance' come in here? Is there any kind of link known
or imaginable to which distance is irrelevant ? If so, is gravity
this link, and the only one ? These questions have already
suggested to a sci^ce student one line of inquiry ; but it must

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WHAT IS MEANING?

APPEN.

be understood that the writer is quite aware of the crudeness
of their form, arising from lack of mathematical training.

Note XVI., p. 139.

Let A be the speaker or writer.

Let Bj be the simply Actual or Literal, and its direct ex-
pression.

Let Bg be the simply Figurative or Metaphorical, and its
indirect or reflective expression.

Then let C stand for a central point in expression, and
let C^ and C^ respectively stand for the points where it is

A diagnin of meaning.

supposed to become obvious that a given form or mode of
expression is to be classed under the literal or the meta-
phorical. The central region then becomes one which
combines the literal and metaphorical, actual and figurative.
Where should its limits be placed ? And what should it be
called ? .

Any word with accepted variations of meaning may be
written (with necessary context) at the various points on the
arc, so as to test the question, — Is there or is there not a
gradation, in every case, from the literal to the metaphorical,
and vice versd, and can this generally be traced ?

Note XVII., p. 140. — One of the worst of these cases is

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APPEN. WHAT IS MEANING? 293

the use, even by good writers, of the ' current coin ' metaphor
for words. Notice has elsewhere been taken of this {e.g. Mindy
No. z^y N.S.). It is, of course, quite defensible as used by
the economist (who admittedly deals with language under one
aspect only), as a means of exchange. But the following
contrasted extracts speak for themselves : —

" Where is all this to end, and what are we to do with a
language which is having its choicest and most precious coins
passed daily backwards and forwards from hand to hand, until
every trace of their clean-cut brightness is being worn off
them, and they are becoming as lustreless and as edgeless as
so many old shillings " (" The Age of Superlatives," Literature^
December 4, 1897).

" . . . As I look at the picture my thoughts go back in-
voluntarily to the reading-book that we used at school. At
the head of one of the earlier chapters was a quotation from
some mysterious 'Austin' which wonderfully impressed me.
* The words,' it said, * are to be delivered from the lips as
beautiful coins newly issued from the Mint, deeply and
accurately impressed, perfectly finished, neatly struck by the
proper organs, distinct, sharp, etc' Perhaps it was the refer-
ence to the new money that appealed to me ; but whatever the
reason for these words sticking in my memory, they certainly
seem appropriate enough to the painting of many popular
Academicians" (A. J. Finberg \n National Review ^ June 1902,
p. 642).

" Words are not coins which have an interchangeable value.
A scientific term is capable of international exchange. The
idea that it conveys can be passed from land to land, un-
coloured by emotion, untouched by association. Each people
can express it in exactly equivalent form. A cube root is the
same thing to an Englishman as to a Russian. But the
language of literature is totally distinct. The words stand
rooted in the soil of national life, they are nourished from a
people's history. Around them have gathered the accretions

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of thought of successive generaticms. The associaticms of
poetry and eloquence cling about them. Words whose nearest
equivalents are for us dead and prosaic stirred the pulses of a
Greek and vibrated with memories of Troy and Salamis. How
different, again, is the same word when it meets us in Homer
and in the New Testament I To the student of language one
such word is in itself the epitome of a vast chapter in the
history of thought, or represents, it may be, a revolution in our
ideas of morals and religion '' (Butcher's Greek Genius^ pp.
225-26).

Note XVni., p. 153. — ^The whole passage is worth quoting
as an unbiassed plea for that translation which is but an exten-
sion of the process there described. " We know of only one
source <rf immediate revelation of scientific facts — our senses.
Restricted to this source alone, thrown wholly upon our own
resources, obliged to start always anew, what could the isolated
individual accomplish ? Of a stock of knowledge so acquired
the science of a distant negro hamlet in darkest Africa could
hardly give us a sufficiently humiliating concepticm. For there
that veritable miracle of thought-transference has already begun
its work, compared with which the miracles of the spiritualists
are rank monstrosities — communication by language. Reflect,
too, that by means of the magical characters which our libraries
contain we can raise the spirits of the * sovereign dead of old,'
from Faraday to Galileo and Archimedes, through ages of
time — spirits who do not dismiss us with ambiguous and
derisive oracles, but tell us the best they know; then shall
we feel what a stupendous and indispensable factor in the
formation of science communication is. Not the dim, half-
conscious surmises of the acute observer of nature or critic of
humanity belong to science, but only that which they possess
clearly enough to communicate to others.

But how, now, do we go about this communication of a
newly acquired experience, of a newly observed feet ? As the
different calls and battle-cries of gregarious animals are

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APPEN. WHAT IS MEANING? 295

unconsciously formed signs for a common observation or
action, irrespective of the causes which produce such action —
a fact that already involves the germ of the concept ; so also
the words of human language, which is only more highly
specialised, are names or signs for universally known facts,
which all can observe or have observed. If the mental
representation, accordingly, follows the new fact at once and
passively^ then that new fact must, of itself, be immediately
constituted and represented in thought by facts already
universally known and commonly observed. Memory is
always ready to put forward for comparison known facts
which resemble the new event, or agree with it in certain
features, and so renders possible that elementary internal
judgment which the nature and definitively formulated judg-
ment soon follows.

Comparison, as the fundamental condition of communi-
cation, is the most powerful vital element of science. The
zoologist sees in the bones of the wing-membranes of bats,
fingers ; he compares the bones of the cranium with the
vertebrae, the embryos of different organisms with one another,
and the different stages of development of the same organism
with one another. The geographer sees in Lake Garda a
fjord, in the sea of Aral a lake in process of drying-up. The
philologist compares different languages with one another, and
the formations of the same language as well If it is not
customary to speak of comparative physics in the same sense
that we speak of comparative anatomy, the reason is that in a
science of such great experimental activity the attention is
turned away too much from the contemplative element. But
like all other sciences, physics lives and grows by comparison "
(Professor Ernst Mach's Lecture at Vienna, quoted in Open
Courts November 8, 1894).

Note XIX., p. 171. — -" So far as the myth is simply a rough
statement of observed facts, we may admit that its disappear-
ance is a clear gain. We may admit, too, that ultimately its

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296 WHAT IS MEANING? appin.

disappearance will not be even a loss to the imagination.
When the imaginative synthesis has overtaken the logical,
when the bare framework of formulae has gathered round it
the necessary associations, we may be able to express our
emotions directly as well as by the intervention of a crude
hypothesis. . . . The evil is not that a charm has departed,
but that we have lost a mode of expressing our emotions.
The old symbols have ceased to be interesting, and we have
not gained a new set of symbols. . . . We invert the t-elation
of cause and effect when we consider that our emotions are
determined by our imaginative creeds. . . . And thus the loss
which Wordsworth might feirly lament was not the loss of
a mistaken theory about facts, nor the loss of a consoling
prospect for the future, but the loss of a system of symbols
which could enable him to express readily and vigorously
every mood produced by the vicissitudes of human life. In
time the loss may be replaced, the new language may be
learnt; we may be content with direct vision, instead of
mixing facts with dreams ; but the process is slow, and, till it
is completed, the new belief will not have the old power over
the mind. The symbols which have been associated with the
hopes and fears, with the loftiest aspirations and warmest
affections of so many generations, may be proved to be only
symbols ; but they long retain their power over the imagination.
Not only respect for the feelings of our neighbours, but our
spontaneous impulses, will tempt us to worship at the shrines
in whose gods we no longer believe. The idol may be but a
log of wood ; yet, if it has been for ages the tutelary deity of
a race, they will be slow in discovering that it is possible to
express their natural sentiment in any form but that of homage
to the old god. The importance of some outward and visible
symbol of an emotion is evident in all religious and political
history — so evident, that many people hold the symbol to be
everything, and the symbolised nothing. Some day patriotism
may justify itself, but it cannot yet be expressed except in the

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form of devotion to some traditional fetish, or to a particular
flag. The flag you say is but a bit of coloured cloth. Why not
manufacture one as it is wanted ? Unluckily, or luckily, it is
as hard to create a new symbol as to obtain currency for a
new word" (English Thought in the Eighteenth Century y
Leslie Stephen, vol. i. pp. 15-16; 1881).

Note XX., p. 198. — As in almost all cases, I had written
this long before seeing it expressed by recognised authorities.
See, for instance. Professor Ramsay's admirable address on
" The Functions of a University " (quoted in Nature^ August
15, 1 901), from which the following is extracted: "... the
human race is diflerentiated from the lower animals by the
desire which it has to know *why.* You may have noticed,
as I have, that one of the first words uttered by that profound
philosopher, a small child, is *why.' Indeed, it becomes
wearisome by its iteration. We are the superiors of the
brutes in that we can hand down our knowledge. It may be
that some animals also seek for knowledge ; but at best it is
of use to themselves alone ; they cannot transmit it to their
posterity, except, possibly, by the way of hereditary faculties.
We, on the contrary, can write and read ; and this places us,
if we like, in the possession of the accumulated wisdom of the
ages.

" Now the most important function, I hold, of a University
is to attempt to answer that question, * why ? ' The ancients
tried to do so ; but they had not learned that its answer must
be preceded by the answer to the question, * how ? ' and that
in most cases — indeed in all — we must learn to be contented
with the answer to * how ? ' The better we can tell how things
are, the more nearly shall we be able to say why they are.

" Such a question is applicable to all kinds of subjects ; to
what our forerunners on this earth did ; how they lived ; if we
go even ftirther back, what preceded them on the earth. The
history of these inquiries is the function of geology, palaeont-
ology, and palaeontological botany; it is continued through

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archaeology, Egyptian and Assyrian, Greek and Roman ; it
evolves into history, and lights are thrown on it by languages
and philology ; it dovetails with literature and econoinics. In
all these, research is possible; and a University should be
equipped for the successful prosecution of inquiries in aU such
branches.

** Another class of inquiries relates to what we think and how
we reason; and here we have philosophy and logic. A
different branch of the same inquiry leads us to mathematics,
which deals with spatial and numerical concepts of the human
mind, geometry and algebra. By an easy transition we have
the natural sciences ; those less closely connected with our-
selves as persons, but intimately related to our surroundings.
Zoology and botany, anatomy, physiology, and patholc^y deal
with living organisms as structural machines, and they are
based on physics and chemistry, which are themselves de-
pendent on mathematics.

*<Such inquiries are worth making for their own sakes.
They interest a large part of the human race, and not to
feel interested in them is to lack intelligence. The man who
is content to live from day to day, glad if each day will but
produce him food to eat and a roof to sleep under, is but little
removed from an uncivilised being. For the test of civilisation
is prevision; care to look forward ; to provide for to-morrow ;
the to-morrow of the race, as well as the to-morrow of the
individual ; and he who looks furthest ahead is best able to
cope with nature, and to conquer her."

Note XXL, p. 211. — "The construction of a universal
language seems to possess an extraordinary fascination for a
certain order of mind. During the last 200 years no less than
150 attempts have been made to bridge over that gulf which
lies between any two members of different nations who can
only conmiunicate their more elementary wants by gesture.
Among the more recent, our readers will remember Volapuk,
which was invented by a Gennan Catholic priest in 1879. But

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in Paris alone the * Langue Blue,' or * Bolak,' brought out in
1899, was followed in 1900 by *Spokil.' And now, in 1901,
the attention of the Acad^mie des Sciences has been drawn by
General S^bert to the striking advantages to the scientific
world Qi Esperanto ^^ (Westminster Gazette^ April 29, 1901).

Note XXI I., p. 214.— As Mr. G. F. Watts has admir-
ably put it : " the education of the people — that is the great
question. Why do you not concentrate attention upon that ?
To educate your people, to draw out of them that which is
latent in them, to teach them the faculties which they them-
selves possess, to tell them how to use their senses and to
make themselves at home with nature and with their surround-
ings — ^who teaches them that ? Your elementary schools don't
do it No ; nor your public schools. Your Eton and your
Harrow arc just as much to blame, perhaps even more so.
What is the first object which a real education should aim
at ? To develop observation in the person educated, to teach
him to use his eyes and his ears, to be keenly alive to all that
surrounds him, to teach him to see, to observe — in short,
everything is in that And then, after you have taught him
to observe, the next great duty which lies immediately after
observation is reflection — to teach him to reflect, to ponder,
to think over things, to find out the cause, the reason, the
why and the wherefore ; to put this and that together, to
understand something of the world in which he lives, and so
prepare him for all the circumstances of the life in which he
may be found" (The Review of Reviews^ June 1902).

In this connection I may cite Mr. R. H. Quick's valuable
Essays on Educational Reformers (1898). Writing before the
current of interest in educational questions had reached its
present force, his witness still remains pertinent For instance,
" Young teachers are mostly required to fulfil their daily tasks
without the smallest preparation for them ; so they have to get
through as best they can, and have no time to think of any high
ideal, or of any way of doing their work except that which gives

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them least trouble. . . . Thus it is that the tradition of the
schoolroom settles down for the most part into a deadly routine,
and teachers who have long been engaged in carrying it on
seem to lose their powers of vision like horses who turn mills
in the dark" (p. 182). No wonder their pupils' vision is
darkened too.

Again, " All the higher powers can be exercised only when
the pupils are interested, or, as Mr. Thring puts it, 'care for
what they are about.' The memory that depends on associat-
ing sounds is independent of interest and can be secured by
simple repetition. Now it is very hard to awaken interest,
and still harder to maintain it" (p. 193, footnote). Here we
have the secret Except in certain forms of imbecility or
dementia, it is never hard to awaken interest in the young.
Failure simply means that the springs of interest are not
touched, — or are so touched as to be dried up.

" It is the characteristic of a young student in the mathe-
matical sciences, that he sees, or fancies that he sees, the truth
of every result which can be stated in a few words, or arrived
at by few and simple operations, while that which is long is
always considered by him as abstruse. . . . This arises, in our
opinion, from the manner in which his previous studies are
usually conducted. From his earliest infancy, he learns no fact
from his own observation, he deduces no truth by the exercise
of his own reason. Even the tables of arithmetic, which, with
a little thought and calculation, he might construct for himself,
are presented to him ready made, and it is considered sufficient
to commit them to memory. Thus a habit of examination is
not formed, and the student comes to the science of algebra
fully prepared to believe in the truth of any rule which is set
before him, without other authority than the fact of finding it
in the book to which he is recommended. It is no wonder,
then, that he considers the difficulty of a process as propor-
tional to that of remembering and applying the rule which is
given, without taking into consideration the nature of the

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reasoning on which the rule was founded" {The Study of
Mathematics^ A. de Morgan (1831), pp. 182-3).

Note XXIII., p. 214. — Here as usual it is difficult to choose
between the examples which abound on every side. Take the
following : " A gift of diction enables some men to reiterate
with apparent novelty ; but this gift is as rare in the House
as the capacity to articulate so that totally different syllables
shall not be mistaken for one another. There is nothing the
Englishman despises so much as readiness of speech. It is
associated in his mind with shallowness and insincerity. He
likes to pose in the character of the man of few words ; but he
will rarely take the trouble to learn how to speak them with
force and clearness. He will work like a slave at Blue Books,
getting up a case with enormous pains ; but he will give no
fraction of this trouble to such a preparation of his speech as
will compress his matter, and prevent it from wandering at a
loose end through interminable sentences. . . . Any nimble-
ness of mind which" (the young member) "may naturally
possess is crushed by his Parliamentary manner, which compels
him to plough through solemn verbiage round a commonplace
idea long after the company have passed to something else.
This melancholy habit is hardened by platform oratory, the
art of which is to say as little as possible in the greatest
number of words" ("The Loquacity of Parliament," Speaker ^
May 15, 1897). But the mischief has been started in his early
boyhood.

Note XXIV. p. 216. — ^To quote Julian Corbett (in the
Monthly Review for March 1902) on "Education in the
Navy " : " Signalling appears to be the only subject of which
the average boy knows anything when he leaves. It is highly
significant that this subject happens also to be one that can
only be taught practically. It is the only one that cannot be
poisoned with the old taint of the schoolmaster, and thus the
natural instinct for a boy to acquire new capabilities is left as
free to grow as it is in his games. But over all the rest is

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the nauseous trail of the pedagogue — even it might be said of
the scrappy curriculum of a young ladies' finishing academy
fifty years ago. Every subject in turn is presented to a boy
in the old repellent way, and he is given enough of it to dull
the edge of his appetite for a new food without imparting to
him an appreciable amount of nourishment Boys, we repeat,
are naturally keen to learn new things, and remain keen till the
fEire is made stale. It is even doubtful whether the greediest
child would really enjoy a cake if he were kept a year or
two learning recipes before he was allowed to taste one. It is
neither instruction nor education that he gets in the Britannia^
but rather a mere deadening of the appetite for what concerns
his profession and a voracious interest in various things that
do not." The present system of teaching grammar as the
introduction to a language dead or living, may well be com-
pared to learning recipes before you are allowed to eat !

Professor Perry's admirable and much -needed crusade
(see Report of British Association Meeting, letters in Nature^
and elsewhere) is directly concerned only with mathematical
teaching ; Dr. Lodge's takes somewhat wider grotmd.

The following extracts are from articles in the Times
which tend to show that there is some real hope of a reforming
movement which shall cover the whole ground of education : —
" Education in the truest sense of the word, the education
of the judgment on which Faraday was wont to dwell as the
greatest of modem necessities, the education of the senses to
perceive the tones and harmonies of nature, and, perhaps,
above all, that kind of education in language which confers
the power of saying exactly what is meant, and of knowing
exactly the meaning of what is said, are the essential bases
of the only kind of culture which can confer happiness upon
those who are so fortunate as to obtain it, and which can
confer, it may be, not only happiness, but also time in which
the happiness may be enjoyed. . . . The open eye, the
thinking mind, the ever- receptive ^ faculties, the ever- busy

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brain, these are the things which, if not overdone, at once
produce and adorn old age. It is not given to every one to
possess or to exercise them in full measure ; but every one
may exercise them in some measure, and may do something
towards their cultivation" {TimeSy August 4, 1896).

"... Underlying Dr. Lodge's remarks are truths relating to
education at least as important as many of the theories which
have in the contest ending yesterday been advocated in the
speeches of candidates for election to the School Board
Read some of the addresses of even the most intelligent of
them, and compare them with the catholic remarks of Dr,
Lodge, and it will strike one how, in the heated atmosphere
of controversy over primary education the great objects are
apt to be obscured, if not lost sight of. . . .

•« < Real education was not an affair of the memory only ; the
mind was a live thing, which not only received and incorpor-
ated, but by brooding and experience enlarged and increased
the store of facts, and recognised or forged links which
connected them with each other.' Here we have got far
away from the region of the schools and education depart-
ments. Here we are in view of the fact that the true educative
hours have been some seasons in which the mind lying fallow
has been the receptive soil for seed carried to it by accident ;
the conversation, it may be, of some helpful friend, some novel
experience in life as illuminating and enlarging as a journey to
a far country, the sudden perception of a new truth clothed in
old words — to the scholar, for example, the discernment of a
new meaning in, say, some line of Horace come down to him
from school days ; to the philosopher a sudden insight into
some ancient adage of, say, Heraclitus, no longer * the obscure '
in that lucid hour ; to the man of science a flash which forms
a connection between two mental currents hitherto apart ; to
the man of affairs a clear road presented in what had seemed
a pathless jungle of details. Mischievous must be the educa-
tion, and maimed its recipient, if it does not permit and even

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encourage those seasons of rest which are the seasons of
growth. . . . Perhaps the curriculum in schools and elsewhere
will be g^reatly modified. Professor Perry thinks that in
schools should be given some elementary instruction in the
calculus. Some persons are of opinion that at early age the
pen should be less used by youth than the rifle. We have
among us many who would model the course of instruction on
that given in the workshops of the best medieval craftsmen.
A series of experiments, true leaps in the dark, is before us ;
and, however fantastic many of them, they must be tried, even
if only in order to be rejected, to the satisfaction of those who
now recommend them. What is missed in the majority of the
reconmiendations and in the copious literature of the last six
weeks on education is a clear perception of the truth that in
most concerns of life character counts for everything. 'Science
is organised common sense ' according to a formula now much
in vogue. Unfortunately, the common sense to be organised
is rare; the capacity to see facts as they are, to mark the
consequences of certain action, to be under no delusion that
next time in like circumstances Nature will act differently, and
to order one's life on that assumption, is almost as unique as
genius itself" (TimeSy November 30, 1900).

" * I am convinced,'" said Edmund Burke, " *that the method
of teaching which approaches most nearly to the methods of
investigation is incomparably the best, since, not content with
serving up a few barren and lifeless truths, it leads to the
stock on which they grew ; it tends to set the learner himself
on the track of invention, and to direct him into those paths
in which the author has made his own discoveries.' . . .

"Our public and private schoolmasters are just returning
from their summer holiday to the practical work of education.
It is for them to give effect to whatever is sound in the
conclusions of those who approach it from the theoretical or
scientific side. But what proportion of them have received
any previous training in the principles or methods of teaching ?

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Solvitur ambulando is the accepted principle in regard to
pedagogic practice. The young graduate goes straight from
his University examinations, or from the cricket or football
field, to the exercise of a profession for which some knowledge
of sound principles and right methods ought surely to be
essential ; but very little attempt is as yet made to initiate
him into such principles and methods before he comes to the
delicate and responsible task of dealing with young minds.
At first, and for some time, he is an experimenter, and too
often a blundering experimenter, upon the boys committed to
his charge. His method is * heuristic* enough, so far as
concerns himself; for he has to find out for himself what no
one has tried to tell him. He has no chance of coming to his
work as well equipped as the elementary school teacher, after
the course at a training college, comes to his. A young doctor
is, very properly, not allowed to experiment upon the bodies
of his fellow- creatures till he has received a thorough pro-
fessional training ; but the young schoolmaster may experiment
upon their minds without any previous training at all. The
Universities, to do them justice, and the lieadmasters of the
leading public schools are trying to remedy this ; but they
are not yet enough supported by the public opinion of the
teaching profession itself, not to mention the general public.
The establishment of more scientific views upon education, for
which we look to the British Association, may do something
to promote right methods of training teachers, no less than of
teaching itself. Whatever be the result of its discussions, it is
something to have a platform upon which educational matters
can be discussed from an educational, and not from a political
or personal standpoint" {Times ^ September 25, 1901).

Professor Postgate's timely article in the Fortnightly
Review for Nov. 1902 supplies needed witness from a some-
what different point of view. He considers that Greek and
Latin "may continue to confer in the future, as they have
done in the past, priceless benefits upon all higher human

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education." But he insists that *' those who believe that a
due recognition of the claims of Greek and Latin is vital to
our intellectual welfare ** must " know what they want" His
own solution does not here concern us. But he quotes with
approval the words, " * A classic text to me both was, and is, a
thing of verbs and adjectives, of the grammar and the lexicon ;
and the study of it had no more to do with poetry than it had
with chemistry ' " ; and speaks of his painful sense of the
"mental apathy and inattention with which men read the
Classics by themselves." Can we wonder, when to most of
them a classical text is merely a question of grammatical
mechanism and of verbal memory? Then he tells us that
" for the elementary Latin grammar most widely used in this
country," he has "never heard a good word spoken. A
practical schoolmaster declares of it that < practically the whole
Latin education of the country is based upon a work, for which
* unsatisfactory ' is a euphemism." The pronunciation of Latin,
also, " has never been in a worse condition than at the present
time," yet the advantages of the reformed pronunciation,
"literary, philological, and practical, need no demonstration
now." But " the cardinal point of all " is this : " A number
of years ago, the living languages and literatures were studied
as if they were dead. We have changed all that, and now,
if the ^dead^ languages and literatures are not to retire into
the background^ they must be taught as if they were alive^^ (sic).
And this applies in education everywhere, at all times, and
to all.

Note XXV., p. 228. — The following extracts are from a
series of twelve familiar lessons on * Sign and Sense * given by a
grandmother to a boy eight years old, and reported verbatim.
They gave much delight, not because of any aptitude on the
part of the teacher, but obviously from the natural affinity of
the subject and the fascination of its problems to the young
mind.

The lessons, however, had to be discontinued from the time

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the boy went to school. It is to be hoped that the time is
not fiar off when such lessons in worthier form will become
the recognised introduction to the school course.

Lesson I. — (Drawing big A on the black-board). — G.
What's that? Z>. First letter of the alphabet. (Drawing
big B on the black-board).

G, What's that? D, Second letter of the alphabet. G,
What's the alphabet ? D. All the marks we use when we
write. G, Now, D, what does * alphabet * mean ? and when I
ask that, what do I mean ? because you have just told me one
meaning, but does the word mean anything? D, I forget.
G, Then, what's Alpha ? i>. Oh ! (with smile) the first letter
of the Greek. G, And what's Beta ? i>. The second.

G. Now you see alphabet means two things, and the second
is what the word means. Some day we will talk about the
other thing which isn't a word, and yet means something.
But that must be kept for a treat Well now, D., supposing
you wanted to talk to me, to tell me something about Toss
and of the animals like him, and suppose you knocked at the
door and ran into the room, what would you do ? D, I should
begin telling you, Grannie. G, Well, and how do you tell?
Isn't it by making funny noises in your throat? D, Yes.
G. And what particular funny noise would you try to make
if you wanted to tell me about little or big four-legged things
which said Bow-wow? D, DOG. G. Now D., look here,
suppose I was somewhere else, in Scotland perhaps, or
suppose you wanted to tell your mother all about it, and she
was out of hearing, what's the good of making funny noises
then ; wouldn't you try something else ? D. Yes, I should.
G, What would you do ? D. \ would write a letter. G,
What is writing a letter, D. ? D, Why, putting black marks
on white paper. G. And so I suppose (writing ' dog ' on the
black-board) you would write this to make mother or me think
the same thing as if you made a funny noise? D, Yes, I
should.

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G. Now, D., how do you think people began to choose all
the great lot of ditferent funny noises I am making now, and
how do you think other people began to see what all the funny
noises meant^ and how do you think they began the black
marks? Do you think they said to each other, When I do
this (making various sounds, letters, syllables, words), when I
do this you are to remember to think about dog or cat ? and
do you think they said to each other. When I make dots or
scratches (making them on the black-board) or crooked marks,
and put them together, you are to think of dog or cat just the
same ? D., just think a minute, how could they get all these
other funny noises to explain the first ones by f D, Well, I
am sure I don't know. Grannie. G. Well, D., I am not sure if
any of us do, quite, but we are all trying to learn all about it,
and I will tell you a little of what we do know.

You know about the wonderful people who lived on the
banks of the Nile thousands of years ago and built pyramids,
and so on. D. Oh, yes. Grannie, these were the people in
Egypt. G. Well, this book is all about them, and this red
book is all about their alphabet, and yet do you know it was
not an alphabet like ours, for what we call the letters were all
little pictures of men, and all sorts of animals and things, like
an eye, a mouth, or a hand, a door, a chair-back, a nest with
birds in it, and so on. But you know, D., they made funny
noises as well as pictures in those days, and how they began
to choose this one and that one and the other one, and all to
agree about them, is just what many people are trying to find
out. But now I want to ask you one thing. Look at the big
A we began by drawing. What's the use of it ? D, To tell
us something. G, And how does it do it ? Does it sit for it,

or walk for it, or swim for it, or fly for it, or D, Stand

for it, that's it. Grannie ! G, Now, D., do you know

what a thing is called, no matter what it is, if it stands for
something else ? D. No, I don't G, It is called a sign.
Now if you call a thing a sign, and it stands for something

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else, what are you quite sure it has got ? I will tell you. It
has got something very wonderful, which just makes all the
difference no matter what we want to do, to talk or to think
about ; and that something is what we generally call the
meaning; only there are other words for that, and what the
sign has which is so precious and so useful is not always quite
the same thing, but that I can't tell you about now. And are
there no other * signs ' except funny noises or marks ? nothing

that makes you think, why that's something ? Suppose I

am a stranger, and am ill, and can't talk, and I can't use my
hand, and I come to your house and suddenly begin to pretend
to yawn and nod, and shut my eyes, and lean back, and drop
my book out of my hands, what would you think that a sign
of? D, Why, you're sleepy. G, Yes. And if I pretend to
lie down, and then look at you in an asking way as Toss does
when he wants something? D, Why, you want me to take
you to a so£bI or bed. G, So you see that again is a sign.

Would you like to know more about the little pictures, and
how we got our letter T from an owl's head ? And what it
is that makes it worth learning the alphabet, and spelling, and
grammar, and making dictionaries with thousands of words,
and arranging them in a million ways? D, Yes, that I
should.

Lesson IL — ^Wcnt over first lesson ; this took about twenty
minutes. D. remembered most of it, but forgot the word
* sign ' until reminded, when the cue set him off, showing he
only wanted that to remind him of it all. (His attention was
afterwards called to this, and he was surprised to remember
what the sound * sign ' had been able to do for him.)

G, A sign has both meaning and sense ; and so a word,
which is a particular kind of sign, has both meaning and
sense. Now, D., could anything have meaning and no sense ?
(He was puzzled at first, first said Yes, and then No). G.
Suppose I wanted to make flowers grow, and then I planted
them among the coals in the grate and lighted the fire to light

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them and warm them like a sun, and then took a jug of water
and poured it over them to make them grow, so that it put the
fire out, would there be any sense in that ? D, No, not one
bit. G. But would there be any meaning in it ? Yes, because
I tnecmt to make the flowers grow, only I took a very silly way
of doing it. D, Yes, I see.

G, In our next lesson we will see what ^meaning' means ;
for that is the secret of learning anything. One great reason
for doing these lessons is to save you trouble when you are a
man. What do I mean by that ? Now, let's think of two ways
of saving trouble, (i) Letting things slide (here let pencil slide
to the ground). (2) Numbers from the Egyptian alphabet.
At first they made a lot of little pictures to express 100, etc.,
then they made fewer, till at last one simple figure was enough
for 10,000,000. So, our own alphabet saves lots of trouble, and
yet lets nothing slide and loses nothing. Yet don't you think
it is very stupid of us to go on writing all these tiresome round
O's, when even the Egyptians thousands of years ago knew
better ? It is a waste of paper, of ink, of time, and of trouble.
And we could easily invent a better way than even theirs. The
alphabet, then, has the sense which is reasonable. When we
speak of a sensible man we mean a reasonable man, don't we,
though that's not all we mean ? D, Yes, and what is reason.
Grannie? G, Well, look in your Latin dictionary and see
what * ratio' means. Next time when we see what meaning
means we will see also what sense and reason mean, and you
will see why many things are like this and not like that. For
you want to know reasons^ don't you, D., and often ask Why ?

Lesson II L — G, (Acted getting out of train.) What does
that mean ? (D. understood at once.)

(7. (Acted * first sight of the sea.') What does that mean ?
D, You can see the sea now.

G, (Acted getting on board the steamer.) What does that
mean ? D, That's getting on the steamer.

G, All these things we have just been doing, getting

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out of the train, seeing the sea, getting on the steamer,
all mean going on a journey. Now, what do we think before
starting ; don't we mean to go ? D, Yes, we do. G, Well,
D., there is another way of saying I mean to go, and that is I
intend to go ; so you see that I intend to go is the same as I
mean to go. Now, you and I saw the other day that a sign
always stands for something^ and that to * mean * is to stand
for something. D. Yes, I remember. G, Then if I mean to
go, am I a sign^ and do I stand for going on a journey ? D,
No. G, You see, ^ to mean ' has two meanings, and we must
always remember that. Many people forget it. . . . G, So
you see that * to go * is what I intend^ and if I like to be very
solemn I might say, " It is my intention to go upstairs " (this
pompously and in a gruff voice). So you see * going on a
journey ' is what I intended to do just as the sense is what
the word is intended to — give. And you see that meaning

sometimes * means ' intend and sometimes also ' means ' ?

D, Sense.

Lesson V,^ — G, Another question I want you to give me a
lesson about. What would the world be like if there was no
meaning in it ? D. Oh, TU tell you. Grannie, it would be dull
and stupid, and no good at all. G, And what are things which
have no sense in them ? D, Why, they are just silly and
stupid. G. So you wouldn't like to live in such a world, would
you? And the more meaning and sense there is in it the
better worth living in ? D, Yes, Grannie, there is nothing in
the world like Meaning. G, Then don't you think, D., we
ought to be very careful how we use that wonderful thing
Meaning, and that still more wonderful thing Sense ? Wise
people don't waste and throw away their precious things, do
they ? D, No, they don't. They put them in their pockets
or they lock them up. G, Yes, or better still, they make the
best use of them. . . .

^ Lesson IV, omitted.

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312 WHAT IS MEANING? appkn.

G, Now Icx^ at this enormous book (showing him the first
volume of Murray). Now, look at this tiny little book (showing
him the Unicode). In the big book there is an immense lot
of words, and there are always more and more to add to it —
many of no particular use. We go on heaping up word after
word anyhow, and after all, with all the thousands of words
you see in this book, many things which we all of us want to
say we can't say.

This tiny book is what we used when your father and
mother were in India. They had one copy and we had one
copy, and so when we looked in this book we knew how to say,
for instance, Do-not-come-until-you-get-my-letter, in one word
* Ascribo.* And, Some-letters-and-telegrams-lying-here-for-you-
what-shall-be-done-with-them in one word * Immugio.' So you
see that for some purposes we might put a great deal more
into our letters, and they would take up much less room and
much less time, and yet they would have as much meaning as
if they were quite long, and that is the same improvement, isn't
it, as it is to be able to say what you want with only twenty-six
letters in the alphabet, instead of having to use thousands of
different marks as in the Chinese, or having to make a picture
of every single thing you want to say ? You see we want to
have less waste, and also we want to be able to say more things
and say them better.

Lesson VI. — G, You see that when anything happens to
you, and you feel it or see it, etc, it is like a translation, you
are really in a sense translating all day long. But do you
think that men and women and boys and girls do this, but that
animals don't do it in any way ? i>. I think they do, Grannie.
G. Yes, in a sense they do. Never forget how useful it is to
remember the words < in a sense.' We will talk more about
that presently.

Now about translating. Suppose there are crowds and
crowds of small green points growing out of the ground, and
suppose there was a cow stadng at these green points, not

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going close to them or touching them, but still looking at
them, what would happen after a time ? First she would
feel weak and tired, and would lie down, then she would feel
worse still, and put her head down ; and then at last she
would roll over and die; all because she had not * trans-
lated ' the green points she saw out of her eyes. The little
points of grass go crowding on, and growing and growing as
if they said they would like to be cropped, because it would
make them grow quicker; but suppose the cow instead of
staring at the green points, and never translating them as we
do when we use words like grass, food, good to eat, and so on,
did translate them in her own way, what would she do ?

D, She would put her leg forward. Grannie, and her nose
out. G, Yes, and open her mouth and begin to crop and
so on. So you see even if you are only a cow, you need to
see what some things mean, and act upon your seeing or your
smelling, or you would starve and die. . . .

(Here a number of objects were taken, distinctions in
character pointed out, named, etc.)

Cr. If we were to tell Baby about all these distinctions
would they mean much to her ? Z>. No. G. But as she
grows older they will. The more differences you see and the
more distinctions you can make the more of a man you are.
You can already make a distinction between all these letters
and all these words, and every year you will learn to make
more. So when you hear people wasting distinctions and
saying. Oh, this will do as well as that, and calling different
things by the same name, and saying that words don't matter,
ril tell you something to say to them : * Very well, if this
word will do as well as that, then the spout of the boiling
kettle will do as well as the handle to hold it by ! '

(D. went into a fit of laughing and said, * That I will.')

Note XXVI., p. 235. — Parts of Major MacMahon's
Opening Address (Section A, Mathematics and Physics, Brit.
Assoc. 1 901) might almost be used to describe the position

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claimed for Signifies : " A subject of study may acquire the re-
putation of being narrow either because it has for some reason
or other not attracted workers and is in reality virgin soil, only
awaiting the arrival of a husbandman with the necessary skill,
or because it is an extremely difficult subject which has resisted
previous attempts to elucidate it . . . When the subject is
narrow merely because it has been overlooked, the specialist has
a grand opportunity for widening it and freeing it from the
reproach of being narrow ; when it is narrow from its inherent
difficulty, he has the opportunity of exerting his full strength to
pierce the barriers which close the way to discoveries. ... I
will instance the Theory of Numbers, which, in comparatively
recent times, was a subject of small extent and of restricted
application to other branches of science. The problems that
presented themselves naturally, or were brought into prominence
by the imaginations of great intellects, were fraught with diffi-
culty. There seemed to be an absence, partial or complete,
of the law and order that investigators had been accustomed
to find in the wide realm of continuous quantity. The country
to be explored was found to be full of pitfalls for the unwary. . . .
The province of the Theory of Numbers was forbidding. Many
a man returned empty-handed and baffled from the pursuit, or
else was drawn into the vortex of a kind of maelstrom and had
his heart crushed out of him. But early in the last century
the dawn of a brighter day was breaking. . . . The point I
wish to urge is that these specialists in the Theory of Numbers
were successful for the reason that they were not specialists at
all in any narrow meaning of the word. Success was only
possible because of the wide learning of the investigator ;
because of his accurate knowledge of the instruments that had
been made effective in particular cases. I am confident that
many a worker who has been the mark of sneer and of sarcasm
from the supposed extremely special character of his researches
would be found to have devoted the larger portion of his time
to the study of methods which had been available in other

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branches, perhaps remote from the one which was particularly
attracting his attention. He would be found to have realised
that analogy is often the finger-post that points the way to
useful advance ; that his mind had been trained and his work
assisted by studying exhaustively the successes and failures of
his fellow-workers. . . . The theory of invariants . . . involves
a principle which is of wide significance in all the subject-
matters of inorganic science, of organic science, and of mental,
moral, and political philosophy. In any subject of inquiry
there are certain entities, the mutual relations of which under
various conditions it is desirable to ascertain. A certain
combination of these entities may be found to have an unalter-
able value when the entities are submitted to certain processes
or are made the subjects of certain operations. The theory of
invariants in its widest scientific meaning determines these
combinations, elucidates their properties, and expresses results
when possible in terms of them. Many of the general principles
of political science and economics can be expressed by means
of invariantive relations connecting the factors which enter as
entities into the special problems. ... It is the principle
which is so valuable. It is the idea of in variance 'that
pervades to-day all branches of mathematics. It is found
that in investigations the invariantive fractions are those which
persist in presenting themselves, even when the processes
involved are not such as to ensure the invariance of those
functions. Guided by analogy, may we not anticipate similar
phenomena in other fields of work 1 " Major MacMahon
continues : " The chief problem " (of the combinatorial
analysis) "is the formation of connecting roads between the
sciences of discontinuous and continuous quantity." And he
further declares that he does not " believe in any branch of
science or subject of scientific work being destitute of connec-
tion with other branches. If it appears to be so, it is especially
marked out for investigation by the very unity of science.
There is no necessarily pathless desert separating different

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regions." This advocates throughout what I would call the
true because the significant type of specialism. And the
conclusion of this suggestive address would from the point of
view of Signifies apply to every form of knowledge and work
accessible to man : '* What we require is not the disparagement
of the specialist but the stamping out of narrow-mindedness
and of ignorance of the nature of the scientific spirit and of
the life-work of those who devote their lives to scientific
research. The specialist who wishes to accomplish work of
the highest excellence must be learned in the resources of
science and have constantly in mind its grandeur and its
unity" (Nature^ Sept 12, 1901).

Note XXVII., p. 240. — In this little parable, (me form
of the evolutionary witness is emphasised because it seems to
be entirely ignored. But to press it in isolation must of course
lead to absurdity. If we have in many forms of the young
organism the scout and even the explorer and the discoverer —
and in spore form, the coloniser — on the other hand we have
the uniquely slow development of the highest of young
organisms, the < human.' So that if we overwork the
* ancestral * lesson we shall be insisting on the new-bom baby
running about to seek its food or else surrounding the food
like an amoeba ! And then we shall not know how to fit in
the development from t%% through larva to fly — it may be to
a gorgeous Butterfly ! Of course also the. higher we rise the
more the Parent has to teach the Offspring. All here pleaded
is that we should carry on, and thus become able to evoke,
the fresh responsiveness of the young, by dealing with them
on their own ground.

A careful study from this point of view of CMldreris Sayings
(by W. Canton, 1900) throws a really distressing light on
our present methods of dealing with the candid and logical
as well as with the penetrative and prophetic mind of the
typical child. The absurdities and blunders are of course
partly the result of the child's elementary and narrowly limited

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APPEN. WHAT IS MEANING? 317

experience of the world around it. But too many of them are
demonstrably caused by the confusions both of language and
thought, as well as the sophistry and conventional equivocations,
of its elders. We have not yet learnt to * set the little child
in the midst,' and have ourselves been subjected to this per-
verting process even by those who loved us tenderly and had
no suspicion of the cruel harm they themselves had suffered,
and were in their turn doing. The very idea of the * enfant
terrible ' and the endless jokes in Punchy etc., witness to this.
And yet how easy to explain to the child the difference between
the unselfish conventions of courtesy and the pretences oi the
social hypocrite and schemer ! As the cases cited are all more
or less illustrative, it is impossible to choose between them,
and collections like this really call for separate treatment.
Meanwhile, in the book above named there are comments
which show the author's sense of some at least of our failures.

" Ten-tenths of a child's waking life is spent in observation.
Those sharp, frank, innocent eyes are constantly on the watch.
He may be talking, he may be playing, he may be day-dream-
ing, but he is observing and speculating all the time . . ."
(p. 58). "It is often at a very early age that we find the
little people tackling the mysteries of time and space, the
enigmas of birth and death, the marvels of heaven, and a
crowd of other questions to which we ourselves shall find no
answer on this side of the grassy gate and the dusty way. In
all these matters the children's views take the colour of the
parents' teaching " (p. 80). That as we are is the sad thing.

"Children are often more logical than grown-ups. The
little son of bible-loving parents had a great dislike and fear
of being alone in the dark. They tried to reason him out of
it both on common-sense and religious grounds. The child
listened with puckering brow.

" When they had finished he asked : * Do you wish me to
do evil, then ? '

" * Why do you ask that ? ' questioned his father.

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31 8 WHAT IS MEANING? appen.

^ ' It says in the bible people '* loved darkness because their
deeds were evil,"' argued the puzzled boy" (p. 117). When
will the parent learn here from the child that the horror of
darkness is an instinct which has made for survival in days
where pitfalls yawned and enemies lurked in darkness, and
which is even now an important safeguard in early youth ?

Since writing the above I have been glad to find Dr. James
Ward speaking (in an Inaugural Address at the University
College of Wales) as follows ; discussing Imitation (as re-
petition and association) he says : ^* Through it men are
tamed and taught at first, but it is liable to enslave and blind-
fold them afterwards : it promotes social stability and discipline
at the outset, in the end it is apt to beget social stagnation
and bigotry. . . . The child, open-minded, inquisitive, and
original, becomes a man hide-bound with prejudice, a mere
< bundle of habits,' when only his propensity to imitation is
encouraged and all his latent individuality crushed. Under
such conditions most men are bom and live: evidences of
this most depressing truth lie about us on every hand. . . . The
ordinary man and woman dread to be singular, dread to be
just what they ought and were meant to be. . . . The
customary assuredly can take care of itself: the one thing
needful is to foster and promote the new. To neglect or
retard that is the surest way to corrupt the world, transforming
evolution into revolution, or worse, replacing development by
degeneration and decay. • . . The mistake we have made
in the past is that we have set knowledge in the first place ;
not educating in the strict sense, but imparting useful informa-
tion. The mistake is a very natural one ; most men are prone
enough to admit their lack of knowledge ; they are by no
means so ready to admit their lack of wit. ... So it comes
about that though what young minds especially want is
training, what they get is learning . . . the one point I
would urge is to invert the Baconian axiom : say not that
knowledge gives power, but rather that power gives know-

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APPEN. WHAT IS MEANING? 319

ledge. Have a care that your minds grow and be not anxious
about their possessions." I have to confess that I am no
more an individualist than a coUectivist. I would in most
cases substitute * initiation' for 'individuality.* I even look
forward to an epoch of * group personality ' : when two or
three shall be grouped together for the highest work, each
supplying the lack of the others and thus overcoming the
one-sided and constrictive tendency of the single individual,
and producing a fresh form of genius. We already have an
attempt in this direction in the more intimate examples of
literary collaboration. But of course this is not an idea which
can be casually thrown out : it goes very deep into the con-
ception of personality itself.

Note XXVIII., p. 241. — Edward Bowen of Harrow may
be cited as a notable instance of this. A master of one of the
schools most rigidly attached to the traditional methods, he
could yet trenchantly denounce teaching by means of grammar
as an erroneous path leading to an almost worthless goal,
while wearying the feet of the youthful learner beyond bearing.
" Boys, he said in effect, were prepared to submit to a good
deal of drudgery. They were not, as a rule, wholly idle, or
chiefly sullen ; but the learning of Latin and Greek through
grammars, written in a dead langxiage and consisting of * a set
of clumsy rules, of which a boy will never use the half, and
never understand the quarter,' simply meant that a lad's time,
docility, temper, desire to improve, confidence in his teachers,
were all sacrificed. It was of course the case that a certain
amount of grammar was necessary " ; but he protested against
a " preposterous system which forced upon a boy what was
really so much work at a treadmill Grammar as it was taught
was simply too hard. It tortured a lad without even giving
him the satisfaction of feeling at the termination of his painful
drudgery that he had gained some mite of real knowledge."
Further on he says : " If only it could be regarded as an
established truth that the office of a teacher is, more than any-

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320 WHAT IS MEANING? appen.

thing else, to educate his pupils, to cause their minds to grow
and work, rather than simply to induce them to receive ; to
look to labour rather than to weigh specific results ; to make
sure at the end of a school -half that each one of those
entrusted to him has had something to interest him, quicken
him, cause him to believe in knowledge, rather than simply to
repeat certain pages of a book without a mistake — ^then we
might begin to fancy the golden time was near at hand, when
boys will come up to their lessons, as they surely ought, with
as little hesitation and repugnance as that with which a man sits
down to his work" {Memoirs^ W. E. Bowen, 1902, pp. 99-101).
The foregoing paragraph, though not seen till this book was
virtually finished, might almost have served as a summary of
some of its chapters.

Note XXIX., p. 248. — At the last moment I am glad to
be able to add the witness of Professor Karl Pearson (to whose
Grammar of Science these Studies owe much) that "to-morrow
will be marked by the dominance of intelligence," but that
" all intelligence must not be driven through the same mill."
Pointing out that playing and questioning are the natural
functions of childhood, he pleads for the development of
nascent intelligence on these lines. " Facts are to be second-
ary, methods of the first importance ; the intelligent man
knows where and how to find his facts, but he retains no more
in his head than he finds economical for everyday practice.
His brain is an instrument for work, not a lumber-room.
Hence, when once the barest essentials of elementary knowledge
— the power to read, to write, and to do simple calculations —
have been attained, let us adopt largely heuristic methods . . .
as a means of training intelligence, and not as a store of facts
worth remembering for their own sakes. Let the child come
out of the primary school able to formulate its questions intel-
ligibly ; able to put eye, hand, and leg into co-operative action ;
able to read, write, and count ; and the first stage in the
training of its intelligence to national ends has been attained."

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APPEN. WHAT IS MEANING? 321

And in a footnote he adds : <* < Facts ' change from generation
to generation ; but skill in manipulating facts is the funda-
mental sign of a trained intelligence, of a true education, which
survives all modifications of its material." And this develop-
ment of intelligence, be it noted, "is not for selfish ends."
Man is "lord of all life" because he can carry its social
developments to their highest point. "Education is in no
case to leave the feeling that it is finer to follow one trade
than another, but is to develop the consciousness that it is a
disgrace to follow any craft without intelligent appreciation of
the why of its processes. The victory is to the intelligent
nation ; that nation is intelligent in which each member per-
forms his allotted task with appreciation of how and why it is
done." And this can be attained as well in the garden, the
stable, the field, as in the laboratory. To acquire or rather to
cultivate the true spirit of inquiry " we cannot too often repeat
that . . . what we need is a training in method, and not, in
the first place, a mere knowledge of facts, nor even of the laws
under which these facts may be classified. . . . Treat the
known as unknown, to be re-discovered, or bring the student
rapidly to the real unknown on the confines of the discovered,
then true training in method becomes a possibility" (PrefiEttory
Essay, Encyc, Brit^ vol. xxxii., loth edit.).

THE END

Prinud by K, ic K, Clam:, Limitxi), Edinburgh

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OCT 16 1934

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