Strife of systems and productive duality; an essay in philosophy

(5ortteU Ilmu8t0its ffiibratg

Stljata, 5fetB larfe

BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE

SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND

THE GIFT OF

HENRY W. SAGE

1891

Cornell University Library
B791 .S54

Strife of systems and productive duality

olin

3 1924 028 992 613

Cornell University
Library

The original of tiiis book is in
tine Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028992613

STRIFE OF SYSTEMS AND
PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

AN ESSAY IN PHILOSOPHY

BY

WILMON HENRY SHELDON

STONE PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY
IN DARTMOUTH COLLEGE

CAMBRIDGE
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD

OxEOBD University Press

I918

A.4546,2.7

COPYRIGHT, 1918
HAKVAED TTNIVERSITY PRESS

PREFACE

NOTWITHSTANDING the length of the investigation
which occupies them, the following pages ofEer a simple
enough result. Their burden is but one idea, albeit an idea
with a positive and a negative side. The positive side we
discover when we learn that throughout the range of human
thought and deed there recurs, in a million different shapes,
one and the same problem, viz., to maintain the integrity
of a given thing, person, principle, institution, in the modi-
fications which the environment imposes upon it. In the
dialect of technical philosophy this is called the problem of
harmonizing the principle of external relations with that of
internal relations; it might with equal truth be styled the
reconcihation of Platonism and pragmatism, of idealism and
realism, of " static " and " dynamic " views, or a dozen
other names. For it is at the bottom of all those contro-
versies waged by philosophers in the long history of their
discipline. Speaking most broadly, the difficulties of think-
ing and Hving do not lie in the creation of novel forms, in
discovery and invention; these arise spontaneously yet
inevitably if they are allowed to do so. Reality creates with-
out trouble or effort; what prevents man from understand-
ing this and from doing the like himself, is his perennial
tendency to oppose the old to the new, the static to the
dynamic, abstract to concrete, system to opportunity. To
see the independent right of each, as well as their mutual
consistency and support, is in fact to know the creative
principle itself. Without such knowledge, every fertile dis-
covery, every new plan of Hfe, is but a prick to further strife;
with it, one may understand how the parts of the universe
deploy into one another and give rise to ever-increasing

IV PREFACE

novelties. The deepest trait of reality, in short, that which
makes it the moving, productive thing it is, is just this mar-
riage of two principles whose apparent hostility has con-
stituted the continual frustration of man's effort to map the
universe.

But though the knowledge of the creative principle is
reqmsite for an understanding of the specific structure of
reality, and though it will explain more of that structure
than the present volume can show, such knowledge is not
enough for the purposes of hiunan thought and practice.
Herein Hes the negative side of the above. Another sort of
knowledge must be added; it is afforded by the special
sciences and by practical experience. While the human
mind remains liable to mistakes in reasoning and to pre-
conceived opinion, men can operate successfully with the
fundamental principle only after they have empirically
ascertained the details to which it is to apply. Without
such acquaintance, the general rule is as likely to mislead as
to enlighten. The particular working of the rule cannot
usually be known before the occasion presents itself; and
when it does so, we need both an open-minded empiricism
and a resolute will to ensure the desirable application. The
rival claims of individual and society, of reUgion and science,
of dogma and free thought, of discipline and Uberty, must
indeed be adjusted by the aid of the first principle — caimot
otherwise be adjusted; but the adjustment may not be
carried through without expert knowledge also of the
conditions in each particular issue.

The writer expresses his thanks to the Editors of the
Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods for
permission to reprint in Chapter I, parts of an article in that
Journal, vol. xii, pp. 5-16.

W. H. S.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

Page

The Great Problem 3

The natural task of every one, to find the best means of lifting the
whole load of man — how discover such means ? — needs of man
considered — grouped into cognitive and practical, long-run and
immediate — long-run cognitive the most inclusive needs, nearest
to initial task — attempt to satisfy these is philosophy — phi-
losophy would map the universe on broad lines, both for the sake
of knowledge and as a practical guide — its choice imperative
upon those who are free — why so often rejected — material and
method of philosophical inquiry.

CHAPTER n

The Philosophic Disease, and Restatement of the
Problem 23

We turn for results to present-day philosophy — but it has no
consensus of experts — attempts to explain away the failure —
some radical fallacy or malady in the human mind is indicated,
to remove which must be our utmost endeavour — studying the
chief types of system we must seek the source of opposition —
the diagnosis and cure of the disease would automatically furnish
the solution of our initial task.

CHAPTER HI
The Type Subjectivism 38

No types unmixed, but all influential — subjectivism defined —
emotional and practical grounds for it — the logical basis: phi-
losophy's puzzles vanish when aU is reduced to mind — differ-
entia of subjectivism from idealism and absolutism — it does not

VI CONTENTS

make objects identical with minds nor created by them — rtiuclio
ad absurdum of realism a verbal anathema — subjectivity no
better explanation of law than objectivity — the subject no more
self-evident than the object — real case rests on internal relations
and is irrefutable — soundness of the two premises — the type
quite true and barren.

CHAPTER IV

Objectivism . . 67

Distinguished from other forms of realism — practical and emo-
tional motives — redttctio ad absurdum of subjectivism a verbal
anathema — justice of solipsism — critical point of type i found
in actually unperceived objects and the percipient brain — sub-
jectivism forced to resort to potentialities but not refuted by
realism — objectivism's positive argument equally irrefutable
and fruitless.

CHAPTER V

The Solvent: Pure Experience 84

The above reforms have not banished the old puzzles, but added
a new source of dispute, epistemology — ensuing deadlock or
endless tilt — representative and presentative theories — both
sides thin and infertile — attempt to break the deadlock by
'' pure experience " — distinguished from radical empiricism —
a negative view — too pure to solve problems — timid, more
inane than the first two, yet logically irreproachable — more
fertile, perhaps, will be a combining view, as in the next type.

CHAPTER VI

Great Subjectivism . . .... 105

Distinguished from the wider term idealism — alleged fertility
and real asymmetry — powerful emotional and practical needs
involved — personality, society, art. Deity — traits of the Great
Subject — the three kinds of this type — argument from fertility
and deduction of categories — Natorp's, Miinsterberg's, and
Baldwin's systems — infertility of the hjrpothesis of mind —
formality of the categories deduced — the Great Self is a Great

CONTENTS Vll

Eunuch — objection to all transcendentalism — psychological
evidence for a Great Self — Psychologismus and theory of judg-
ment — truth and barrenness of the psychological argument —
socipsism as true and futile as solipsism — services and defects of
idealism — revolt to the opposite extreme.

CHAPTER VII

Great Objectivism . . 172

Dethronement of mind and reversal of subjectivism's argument
to give objective monism — motive of science: exactness, empir-
icism and independence — deduction of mind — fission into three
types, analogous to the last three — antinomy of consciousness —
epistemological monism solves no problems — introspection not
ruined — idealism partly to blame here — positive definitions of
Tpind -:— Montague's "potentiality" does not account for its
actuality — Holt's cross-section view — representation defined

— unity of consciousness not explained — error also a crux, and
memory and foresight — same critical points for djTiamic or
biological definitions — materialism a narrower form of the type.

CHAPTER VIII

Intellectualism, Pragmatism, Intuitionism . 222

Motives of the first — argument for permanent terms and beings

— external relations — endless tilt with internal relations —
neither demonstrable, both true — individual vs. universal the
same sort of issue — change and freedom vs. the universals — re-
action to radical empiricism — democracy vs. aristocracy —
universals vs. changing particulars — utility and reality of
abstractions — modern superstitious dislike of forces, faculties,
etc. — truth of poetry — critical point of the djmamic view —
transition to pragmatism — its theses and critical point — its
defect and its unique service — abandon the study of instru-
ments and consider reahty directly — intuitionism and mysti-
cism do so — their broad human appeal — kinds of intuition

— its objective attitude and concreteness — Bergson on time,
novelty, freedom — his dialectic and exclusions — mysticism on
the inscrutability of God — needlessness of the exclusions — why
the ecstasy is called indescribable — futility of the argument
from dialectic, and barrenness of all partisan types.

VlU CONTENTS

CHAPTER IX

The Rationalistic Synthesis 31?

A type of higher dimension now demanded — instinctive motives
leading to synthesis — appearance of finality — how there come
to be different sorts of S3mthesis — absolutism — rationalistic in
no abstract sense — evidence for it seemingly empirical, really
a priori — union of external and internal relations — consequent
dualism — internal rupture of the system — the dialectic un-
solved — truth, critical point, and significance of the system.

CHAPTER X
The Practical Synthesis — Thomism 346

Common sense and practical judgment as ultimate authority —
not excluding reason, but guiding it — a broad, virile attitude —
religious dogma the highest form of it — old categories respected
— historic cases: partial. Eclecticism, Scottish school, and Kant;
full, the system of Thomism — Kant not a synthetist but a com-
promiser — Thomism's manifoldness and asymmetry — central
place of causation, the great practical category — significant
structure of articles in the Summa Theologica — particular
sjTitheses accomplished — kernel of whole position, authority —
credentials of authority examined — it is necessary to living —
has it rational ground ? Yes, but reason has its own dogmas, as
have also sense and memory — but is religious dogma to be ac-
cepted on authority ? — credentials of faith — the ipse dixit
form of authority — personal testimony always of some weight —
but not usually of enough to be infallible — the Catholics give a
long array of reasons for accepting the Faith — yet the wiU must
supervene upon these, and the grace of God upon the will — thus
authority, vouchsafed to a practical attitude, stands alone at the
end — yet dogmas, however true, need explanation — as indeed
do all the categories of common sense — herein Thomism contains
a fundamental and needless exclusion.

CONTENTS IX

CHAPTER XI

The Diagnosis of the Disease . 407

Remarks on further types — Leibnitz's aesthetic synthesis — the
general trouble with the types, exclusiveness — grounded in a
misunderstanding — apparent contradiction of counterpart
categories while yet both are true — due to opposition of two
basal principles, externality and intemality of relations — inter-
nality has appeared unverifiable : may it be denied ? — pluralism
considered — indeiinables must be rejected, for we cannot rest
in mysteries — intemality an axiom — understanding rests on
intemality, belief on externality — conflict of these is the germ
of the malady — absolutism alone has seen this — " isolation of
problems " offers no escape — old issues cannot be dismissed, as
they revive in a new form — why not skepticism then ? — only
way is to take up the dialectic — old antinomies aU tum upon
the conflict of independence and interdependence — true in the
field of action as well as theory — practical forms of externality
and intemality in politics, art, morals, religion, science, etc.

CHAPTER XII

The Remedy 453

To solve the contradictions is to know the very nature of reality

— root of the conflict lies in that smallest of notions, the negative

— the germ is the subtlest possible — • issue reduced to alleged
inconsistency of sameness and difference — these do not deny
each other — the error is arbitrary — yet it pervades most
fields of life — being a negative judgment it should have a
ground, but it has none ■ — externality and intemality true, each
by itself and both together — dualism and monism both correct,
but duality the deeper trait of reality — reality is freely dual —
solution of the theoretical antinomies — the practical need
another principle.

X CONTENTS

CHAPTER XIII

The Creative Principle . . . . 493

Our dualism implies a second principle besides free duality — the
counterpart, uniting what the other divides — explaining creation
and necessary connection — the self-repeater produces genuine
novelty — this is the type of all explanation and productiveness

— a reductio ad absurdum met — how one fact may imply others

— explanation proceeds from two, never from one — deduction
of the category of universal — of infinite — of number — of cer-
tain attributes of space — solution of certain practical issues —
depends partly on human will — two chief sources of ill, perverse
will and niggardly reality — the solutions have two requisites,
expert knowledge of particular fields, and philosophy — need of
both aristocracy and democracy — consequences to particular
social issues today — to moral issues — definition of moral con-
duct— morality may be social or individual — fertility the
criterion — summary characterization of our whole doctrine —
the duality of reality is an asymmetrical one: independence
prior to, though not more real or necessary than, interdependence;
individual character must precede social usefulness.

STRIFE OF SYSTEMS AND
PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

CHAPTER I

THE GREAT PROBLEM

THE modern man prides himseK upon the progress
achieved by the race; and perhaps justly. Material
progress — that is obvious: intellectual and moral progress
also are not hard to verify. Instead of praying for rain, we
irrigate; instead of the ascetic in his cell we see the social-
settlement worker; the foreign rehef committee replaces the
theological disputant; education is thrown open to aU.
Despite occasional backshding, science is ousting super-
stition; practical reform succeeds the heU-fire sermon;
democracy overcomes special privilege and oppression of
the poor. The thoughtful citizen, reflecting upon these
things, is inchned to self-congratulation and confidence in
the future.

But of course there is another side of the picture, and
before its contemplation the congratulatory mood evapo-
rates. Men have plenty of unsatisfied needs ; how bitter and
desperate some of those needs are, their possessors well
know. Sickness still preys upon the race; insanity and
crime do not decrease; sex-moraUty is scarcely well-defined;
education if more universal is less hberal; dire poverty dogs
excessive wealth; and for even those who succeed, the pace
of living is terribly fast. Compare the actual with the ideal,
and you find disease widespread, society corrupt, and
ignorance dense. It needed no European war to shock the
smug optimism which had come to pervade our thought and
speech; a httle realization of the facts of human existence

4 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

would have sufficed. Come war, come peace, come bank-
ruptcy or prosperity, German victory or defeat, the ills of
the common lot are grave enough to preclude all compla-
cency. As long as they sting and threaten humanity, how
shall any inteUigent man be contented or idle ?

If he but raises his head to see it, then, a problem, a task,
confronts every one that is born into the world; no less a
task than the liftuig, so far as he is able, of man's whole
load. It is more clearly visible today than ever before —
which is perhaps the truest indication of our advance. In
the old days, when caste and strife were the accepted rule,
such a task had hardly emerged into the hght; but in this
era of altruism, failure to feel its caU may fairly be con-
sidered blameworthy. To the humanitarian spirit, when
once aroused, every deed and every thought must find in
such a goal its ultimate ground. How, declares that spirit,
can anybody for a moment rest satisfied when he is not con-
tributing, directly or indirectly, toward the diminution of
the great sum-total of human suffering ? Vague and general
as is this mighty task of amehoration, in imperativeness it
has no equal. It is our first commandment, our initial
problem; the natural calling of every man. It is the source
from which springs every particular duty, from which must
be defined and adjudged every special end or aim of each
one of us.

How should the individual set about so colossal a work ?
First, of course, he must know what it comprises. What,
then, are the needs of men ? Here one's zeal suffers a check;
for they are legion, and more than legion. Food, clothes,
money, health, repute, law and order, education, sight and
sound of beauty, religion — how many more ? And each
of these covers a thousand different wants. No one has the
power to embrace all of these ends. Is there not some way

THE GREAT PROBLEM 5

of ordering them, that we may see and make the highest or
most inclusive choice possible ? For we must approximate
the whole task if we can. Most men, to be sure, will select
but one of the list, according to personal preference, native
endowment, or even chance — and this is good; but it is
better, if one can do so, to base the choice on the relative
importance or comprehensiveness of the various needs. Let
us then ask if there is not some supreme choice, some one
deepest need; perhaps one whose fulfilment wiU help to
fulfil the rest.

Many would agree that there is, but they differ as to its
identity. In fact, each reformer has his panacea. In our
age, " social reform " is probably the most insistent cry;
though it is not easy to be certain amid so many voices.
" Christian Science " is a call which to a growing circle
names the one thing needful; and it is more influential
among us than its despisers like to admit. A few decades
ago, natural science was hailed as the sure path of progress;
to a large minority, it is so yet. To a goodly number, the
cure of all ills is still, as it was in earher centuries, the
Christian Church. And so on, from the single tax to Hindu
mysticism. At different times the panaceas are different;
they vary also according to the temper of the race. The
founder of Christianity said " Seek ye first the kingdom of
God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be
added unto you "; yes, all will agree to this, but each
interprets " the kingdom " by his own formula.

Now it is clear that most of these cure-alls have a re-
stricted efl&cacy. If the social order were perfected, bodily
health would not be ensured; for medical science depends
upon medical research. Nor would scientific progress be
guaranteed, nor toleration of new ideas, or of old ones. Or
would socialism foster the religious sense? True, these

6 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

things are not by social adjustment hindered; they are even
encouraged, since the energy men now spend in wresting a
Hving from others would be set free. But that only means
that a perfected social order is a very desirable, even a neces-
sary, end. The same is true of bodily health. If we never
needed the doctors, we should be well off indeed; as well off,
perhaps, as if we never needed the lawyers or the poHce.
Nevertheless bodily health will scarcely be regarded as that
single end which, being attained, entails the remainder.
May we not even say the like of rehgion ? For religion —
at least, as the term is usually interpreted — is disconnected
with bodily welfare and the conduct of the State. Herein,
no doubt, the " Christian Scientists " are a partial excep-
tion. They claim to confer bodily health, mental vigour, even
financial success. Nevertheless, they offer no industrial
program, nor do they stimulate research in natural science,
or artistic production. There is, in fact, a degree of hostility
between the " Christian " and the " natural " species of
scientist. It might of course be that in the end the religious
would satisfy the scientific need; but it would demand so
much reinterpretation, it would have to be so utterly trans-
formed from what it is now conceived to be, that the path of
progress cannot be said to lie in adopting it as our supreme
goal. And this is true likewise of natural science, of social
reform, or any other movement of our time. They display a
mutual exclusion, an inadequacy before one another's prob-
lems. Natural science does little or nothing to gratify the
religious needs or the aesthetic sense; it is rather unfavour-
able to them. Right as it has shown itself in so many ways,
there is no surety that its methods are adapted to the re-
Hgious quest; and it is well known that in its presence the
artistic faculties tend to wither and droop. And who would
allege that art or reUgion can take the place of scientific

THE GREAT PROBLEM 7

investigation ? So we might continue, finding none of the
familiar ends sufficiently comprehensive to render it the one
superlative choice.

Shall we then give up the attempt to systematize these
needs of man, and let each individual choose his task,
specialize in it, exclude the rest ? Surely division of labour
is profitable. And, as we have already said, this is what the
majority of men do. One selects his vocation — if a physi-
cian, perhaps, by temperament, if a banker, by opportunity,
if an undertaker, doubtless by compulsion — and for the
average man, hampered by the need of a living, this is effec-
tive service of the community. At any rate, it is all that he
can do. But there is, for those who can afford to pursue it,
another way, and in itself a better way. One may forget
one's inclination, draw off temporarily from the turmoil of
interests, and study those needs of humanity, analyzing
them, reclassifying, seeking earnestly for some more inclu-
sive project hidden in them, which will by its completeness
proclaim itself man's highest choice. The instinct for a
panacea will hardly be suppressed; and after all, that in-
stinct is but one's sense of obligation to perform the whole
of his appointed task. For it is the utmost possible degree
of advantage to humanity which the initial problem puts
before us as a goal. It would be a grievous folly to fail of
this for lack of trying.

A little scrutiny will show, we believe, that this con-
glomerate of ends which makes up man's original task, can
be reduced to a fairly definite enterprise.

All the things needed of men may be grouped under two
heads, viz., goods of contemplation and goods of practical
well-being. The goods of contemplation are those which
give us the joys of knowledge, of the sight of beaiuty, or other
aesthetic experience; those of practical well-being take the

8 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

form of health, wealth, clothing, reputation, social order,
etc. The distinction between these two is a famiUar one;
it is Uke that between pure and appHed science. To be sure,
we cannot here draw a sharp Une; each involves, perhaps,
something of the other. The practical statesman should not
be ignorant of poHtical history and theory ; nor the architect
of mechanics and geometry. The two kinds of good may
not be separate, but they are distinct. Either may be pur-
sued as a predominant aim, in comparative independence of
the other. The physicist does not usually bmld engines,
nor the merchant prince indulge in economic theory. Such
is the great line of cleavage, running through all our human
needs.

What then is the relation of the two kinds ? Clearly there
is no intrinsic opposition. The value of each would be en-
riched by the addition of the other. It is to the scientist
good for its own sake to know the properties of electricity;
but the utility of that knowledge in no way diminishes, but
rather enhances, the measure of its worth. The organization
of a municipahty is a large practical achievement; but it
loses nothing of excellence if it is found to display artistic
merit. No intolerance is demanded by the pursuit of either
kind of good. However much of exclusive concentration
the one may for a time demand of the pursuer, their duaUty
is not in the end a hostihty. Each calls for supplementation,
so far as possible, by the other. And the very breadth of the
initial problem constrains us to this supplementation.

May we not, indeed, go further ? Is it not the case that
one of these aims tends of itself to provide for the other ?
Let us compare the parts they play in the life of man.

Knowledge and practical welfare, supplementary though
they are, are not quite on the same level. They are not
coordinate; in the technical language of logic, their relation

THE GREAT PROBLEM 9

is an asymmetrical one. In the order of time, practice comes
first; and this is true both of the race and of the individual.
The new-born human being acts instinctively, thinking and
planning but little or not at all. And in history science did
not appear, as a noticeable or predominant aim for its own
sake, until after a period of successful struggle for material
goods. To be sure, there was always with the adult — per-
haps even with the new-born — some thought, some trace
of a contemplative attitude, and with every thought there
is, if you wish, some action; but the difference of emphasis
in the different periods is too marked to be neglected. When-
ever, indeed, we shall speak of knowledge or of practice, we
must be understood to mean not either utterly without the
other, but a condition of life in which one or the other largely
predominates. Now as, in time, practice in the main pre-
cedes contemplation, so in order of value the latter must be
assigned the priority. Does this statement provoke a denial,
on the ground that two so disparate values cannot well be
compared ? Or again, because both being necessary to life,
neither is more valuable than the other ? Let us then
remember that when a man chooses one out of several call-
ings, he compares, and compares intelKgently, the most dis-
similar values. Perhaps there are no two ideals, of however
divergent character, that have not been at some time and
by some one, intelKgently compared. Nor do we cus-
tomarily refuse to consider two equally necessary functions
as of unequal value. The brain is generally regarded as
having more value than the Hver, though both are necessary
to life. But even if such comparisons were not permissible,
we do, nevertheless, find, in the case of knowledge and prac-
tical well-being, a rational manner of adjudging their claims,
in the fact that we can compare the results to which they
lead. The great apparent progress that man has made, has

lO PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

been accomplished largely by the application of science;
and the theoretical side here came first. When it is a ques-
tion of progress, a high degree of satisfaction of the needs of
thought is prereqmsite; practical comfort, beyond a certain
elementary amount, is no conditio sine qua nan. The grati-
fication of intellectual wants does not suffice of itself to
ameliorate the lot of man, beyond a certain degree; but it
achieves something toward that end, and it makes possible
a practical application which is its fitting crown. On the
other hand, practical well-being by itself degenerates into
animal content or stupidity. It is not that its measure of
satisfaction is less than that which comes from pure intel-
lectual cultivation. Many would say so, but we need not
insist upon the point. It is rather that it contains in itself
no stimulus to advance. To know, is to see the desirability
of practice as well as theory; to be well-off is not necessarily
to see anything beyond the immediate satisfactions. Knowl-
edge thus has a twofold value as against practice's onefold.
It provides for, and urges to, if it does not ensure, another
value besides its own. We should then conclude that if we
are forced to choose between a life devoted to knowledge
and one devoted to more directly practical pursuits, the
former is, other things being equal, the better choice. How-
ever incomplete in view of the whole human problem it may
be, it gives a greater prospect for the future. It comes
nearer to being that best, all-inclusive purpose of securing
both the classes of good. Of the two needs into which the
general human problem is divided, it is the higher; for it
tends to include both.

And no doubt each of us must make a choice. Limitation
of time and energy, even in the most favourable cases, pre-
vents our assuming the whole task. Now some can choose
with relative freedom, and on objective grounds, while

THE GREAT PROBLEM 1 1

others cannot choose freely. The majority of men are so
constrained by lack of opportunity in more than one or two
directions, by the immediate necessity of earning a liveli-
hood, or by strong temperamental bent, that they are unable
to take the objective attitude. But some, by grace of for-
tune, can do so; and upon these the choice of the larger
problem, the advance of knowledge, seems incumbent. It is
of course obvious that such a choice cannot be quite exclu-
sive; the purest of mathematicians must to some degree
attend to his practical affairs. Nevertheless, one may make
the cognitive end predominate over the practical to an
extraordinary degree, without serious damage; and on the
whole, when this is possible, it seems the nearest duty. The
absolute need, the general human problem, at first a vague
conglomerate, has thus developed into the need of knowl-
edge, both for its own sake and for the sake of utility; and
this completes the first step in the development whereby the
initial problem is reduced to precision.

But another step is necessary. " Knowledge " and " prac-
tical welfare " are ambiguous terms; each of them is of two
kinds. Of practical welfare, we may distinguish the more
immediate and the more remote. Such are, for instance, the
well-being of the so-called " practical " man who is satisfied
to obtain the material and social comforts of life for himself
and his family, and that of the statesman who plans a future
which he and his may scarcely live to enjoy. No doubt a
union of these is the ideal. But here, as above, human
limitations impose a choice; for every one who seeks prac-
tical welfare in preference to knowledge, the one or the
other of these must be the predominant aim. And if one
must choose, then the more remote ends are, on the whole,
the more desirable ones. For the contrast is roughly that
between far-sightedness and the lack of it. The greater

12 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

practical benefactors of humanity, the moral and rehgious
leaders who have held the passions of men in check, have in
their wisdom preferred the future good to the present
advantage. The relation between these two kinds of well-
being is then an asymmetrical one, analogous to that be-
tween knowledge and practice. While each condition is
admirable, and, if circimistances did but permit, even man-
datory, they are not equally weighted motives; the more
remote inclines the scale. But here, as in the preceding
choice, no complete exclusion is possible; it is a matter of
predominance .

This serves to introduce to us a similar partition within
the sphere of knowledge. The field of intellectual pursuits
comprises two divisions, one of which contains the special
branches which study particular parts or aspects of the
world, while the other includes that discipline which would
group those branches together, correlate them, in order to
know if there be a plan of the universe as a whole. The
former division is that of the sciences, viz., biology, physics,
psychology, economics, etc.; the latter can have no other
name but philosophy. The former furnishes the more
easily accessible knowledge, the latter the larger, less easily
verifiable information. The former is more capable of being
put at once to advantageous use, the latter can be applied
on the practical side perhaps only to aims of the longest
range and the widest bearings. And if mankind were not
sophisticated today by a sense of the difficulty of the latter
problem, the errors and often the intolerance of its past dev-
otees, it would not hesitate to acknowledge that the problem
of philosophy is the higher in value. The very nature of the
problem dictates this conclusion. If the universe were built
upon some well-defined scheme, if there were principles
which, under suitable cooperation, we coxild count upon to

THE GREAT PROBLEM 1 3

retrieve us from our too frequent discomfiture — then it
would be of supreme utility to know that scheme and those
principles. Or, if there be no such planful structure and
behaviour, it is as desirable to know that fact; for then we
may with the better right adopt the easier task of satisf)dng
our immediate wants. But it is not alone in respect to prac-
tical application that philosophical knowledge seems higher
than scientific. From the merely intellectual point of view,
"also, it assumes the greater value. It represents the con-
summation of a progress in which each science is a stage. It
answers an instinctive question which no extent of knowl-
edge in this or that particular science, or in all together, is
adequate to answer; which no amount of "positivism,"
dogmatism, or skepticism can long stifle. Man is so made
that he gets the greater intellectual satisfaction from the
broader view, as one loves to ascend a tower in order to
command a wider horizon. Of the two needs, then, into
which the cognitive need divides, the philosophic is the more
inclusive and the higher.

Now, once more, a choice must be made. Though neither
interest need be excluded, one must predominate. From
what has been said it follows that in view of the great hu-
man problem, philosophical rather than scientific knowledge
must be the chosen end. Its pursuit approximates more
nearly to that problem. As the far-reaching practical aims
are higher than the immediate, so is philosophy, to the con-
templative side of man, more satisfactory than science.
But it is also higher than the farthest-reaching practical
aims. Philosophy, if successful in its endeavour, is knowl-
edge, and knowledge, unlike practice, ministers to more than
its own instinct. It naturally succors the aims of practical
well-being. Were this not the case, philosophy might in-
deed be preferred to the pursuit of such welfare, but it would

14 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

not be objectively a higher aim. It is the self-transcending
quality of knowledge and contemplation, their greater in-
clusiveness, to which the superlative worth of philosophy
is due. And with this we have completed the second, and
for our present purpose final, step in the development of
the initial problem.

There is then one, and only one, of all our himian wants,
whose satisfaction goes far toward satisfying the rest; that
is, the need of a knowledge of the character, on broadest
Hnes, of our universe. Such a knowledge, gratifying most
fully the contemplative instinct, tends also to promote the
deeper sort of gratification of the other great instinct, that
for practical welfare. This end is the most inclusive single
end we know. It is, in fact, but the original problem, the
great human problem from which we started ; but it is that
problem made more precise and accessible to human effort.
Or better, it is the closest approximation thereto which any
one who must make a choice can adopt. And consequently
its place among human problems and needs is very high,
even the highest. It is no subjective whim, but an imperious
and universal requirement — where such a choice is
practically possible.

As we have already said, if men were not sophisticated,
they would quickly admit our contention. But they are so,
in regard to their own most vital interests ; indeed, the mul-
titude have always been so. There is, we believe, a slow
improvement in this regard, but philistinism is still wide-
spread. And there are certain reasons for aversion to the
supreme problem which we must consider frankly; for,
though unsound, they have an appearance of justice. But
before meeting those reasons, it is indispensable that we
appreciate the naturalness, the inevitableness, of the
philosophic problem.

THE GREAT PROBLEM 1 5

Suppose a ship foundered, and the crew struggling to
keep afloat; some go down, some find a bit of plank to cling
to, some keep up by swimming, some perhaps ground on a
shoal, etc. Is it not the plain duty of those who obtain a
respite to look about, to essay some chart, to discover, if
possible, a shore ? Of course this obUgation does not lie
upon those who must struggle or perish at once. But
upon such as have the chance to investigate, it is binding.
Now this case is not unlike the hfe of man, with his struggle
for existence and his ills that flesh is heir to. And more-
over, he is endowed with a natural curiosity for this same
survey. There is no doubt that if we could, with only a
moderate amount of trouble, ascertain the plan of the uni-
verse, such knowledge would be sought and prized before all
other possessions. Those who teach philosophy in our uni-
versities can bear witness that the best of the young minds
have this feeling. It is, indeed, difficult to comprehend how
any thoughtful youth, as yet untaught by man's failures^
can fail to hear the problem's call. It is harder yet to under-
stand how some of our teachers can think to educate their
pupils while ignoring it. Such an attitude is abnormal; it
is a stupor, an apathy toward the concerns of the race. The
animals seek only immediate goods, and the philistine, un-
mindful of the human need, approximates the animal. He
is not quite human. Yet what is the state of affairs among
us ? We are not astonished, when a scientific man, a
preacher, a social reformer, boasts of abjuring metaphysics,
philosophy, theology, or any of these higher and more in-
clusive discipHnes; we do not rebuke him. How dull, then,
has become our sense of humanity's needs ! It should be a
matter of the deepest shame. That we are not amazed
when educated men betray a lack of philosophic interest
reveals a fundamental pessimism ; else why should we expect
so little of our nature ?

1 6 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

But it is not merely sluggishness that ails us. It is also
fear: not physical, but social fear. We are afraid of being
thought eccentric, of differing from the mass of our fellows.
Two causes work together here: first, the present age insists
upon visible and tangible results, and second, our social
sense has of late grown to inunense proportions. Indeed, if
there is one truth which may be called pecuUarly modern,
it is the truth that man is a socius. Hence we are probably
more afraid today than ever before of disagreeing with the
common valuations, of standing apart for the pursuit of
goods which, however fundamental, appear remote. Leader-
ship, independence — these are not the virtues of de-
mocracy. In an age when the noveUst, the poet, the painter,
the poHtical orator, apostrophize the tastes and needs of the
average man, the beauty of the commonplace, it seems pre-
tentious to point out a higher way. " Philosophy," too, is a
rather pompous name; " metaphysics " suggests the aloof
and abstruse. Even the professors of these studies do not
feel quite comfortable when they utter the words. Never-
theless, it is in this case cowardly to seek the easy level; and
the one who, fearing loneliness, prefers the more generally
respected hirnian tasks, is not free from a certain priggish-
ness. For every age has its pet hypocrisies, and our own is
perhaps the self-righteousness of the crowd.

To the sober-minded or the independent ones there is a
graver hindrance. They know of the failures of philosophy.
It has fallen far short of solving its problem — and that,
too, after centuries of labour. Not torpor, but discourage-
ment, is their worm. The mistakes, the shiftings, the dis-
agreements, have taken the heart out of them. They are
brave enough to stand apart from the multitude in their
search for the highest good — if only they could see some
likelihood of attaimnent! But history seems almost to

THE GREAT PROBLEM 1 7

show that the task is beyond human powers. And men,
they go on to persuade themselves, were not meant to obtain
knowledge of the total scheme as yet: they must toil on,
building up bit by bit the sure fabric of science. The whole
is known only by the parts; induction is the one safe method.
Now this pronouncement, to the already wavering mind, is
crushing. It has just truth enough to sound hke the wisdom
of maturity overcoming youth's misdirected zeal. The
inductive process, mounting step by step, is usually safe and
sane; but, as scientists ought to know, it is not the only
method of knowledge. If the whole could not be known
before all the parts were examined, there would be no science
at all; we have not verified our chemistry for every drop of
water or every particle of carbon. We need to have, cer-
tainly, a deal of empirical knowledge before we can phi-
losophize; but no rule of induction forbids prudent gen-
eraKzation. It is not inherently irrational to know the
scheme as a whole before all the parts are known. It is
sometimes better to jump across a ditch than to crawl pa-
tiently through it on hands and knees. No, it is by no means
illogical that we should have a fair acquaintance with the
whole. The real force of the argument Kes in the historical
evidence ; it is the disagreements that pierce the soul of the
aspirant. And no doubt the wound is a serious one. Yet,
sincere as are the motives of those men who suffer it, the
fault Hes in their own lukewarmness. There is possible an
aspiration so intense that nothing but absolute demon-
stration can destroy it — and the very disagreements of
thinking men about such a demonstration prove that it has
not been given. In view of the great human need of prac-
tical salvation, discouragement then become a weakness of
the will. But men continue to arise who are not affected by
it; and in no diminishing number even today. Yet it must

1 8 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

be admitted that, though the philosophic instinct must not,
nay, cannot, wholly be stifled, there is something intolerable
in the perpetual search which never finds. Somehow the
situation must be righted. And in the sequel we shall set
ourselves to that undertaking.

These being — to adopt a Catholic term — the motives
of our faith, we proceed to state more specifically the nature
of that investigation which we feel driven to perform. What
we aim to discover is something of the plan of the whole uni-
verse— some survey, some understanding of its structure
and laws which, desirable as it would be for its own sake,
would possess the additional value of enabling us to adjust
ourselves most successfully to our great environment. Men
have always had this dream: they have conceived answers
also. Some have said that the universe is the work of a per-
sonal God — to make our peace with whom is to ensure
ultimate salvation, to know whose ways and purposes is the
highest intellectual enjoyment and artistic ecstasy. Others,
repudiating this hopeful creed, insist that we are creatures
of the dust, having but one Ufe to Hve. Between these two
extremes are found all varieties of conception. Which of
these is the true view, or failing certainty, the most probable
view ? Such is the general nature of our question. And
what of the method ? What facts have we to build upon ?
Religion, literature, the sciences — these are at hand. In
an undertaking of this magnitude we need them all; we
must profit by all the failures and successes of the past
which are open to us. We must expect then to pay regard
to what the sciences have to say, to the afl&rmations of re-
ligion, the insights of the poet, and to the practical expe-
rience of men. In view however of certain current prejudices,
we must issue some warnings.

THE GREAT PROBLEM 19

We cannot begin, as some philosophers have counselled,
by an unquestioning adhesion to natural science, and natural
science alone. It may be that scientific method has done
more for humanity than any other instrument. And cer-
tainly it would be foolish to neglect facts which science has
brought to light. But exclusive devotion to this one human
discipline, as Spinoza, Comte, Spencer, Avenarius, and in
our own day Mr. Russell, have demanded, savours too much
of a priori dogmatism. The very differences in the results
proffered by these thinkers should make us suspicious. And
in any case, natural science has not won its credentials in the
more interesting fields of inquiry, such as the study of the
human mind and the objects of religion. There it gives
little that can be called the consensus of experts; many
physicists and biologists believe that psychology is but a
physiology of the nervous system, and that religion is super-
stition, while other scientists deny both of these views.
Psychologists differ also as to their own results and methods.
Moreover, the teachings of physical science vary consider-
ably from age to age. The theory of light is a capital
instance; the Newtonian mechanics is by some now con-
sidered inadequate, and the new theory of " relativity "
seems almost to contradict it. There is reason to expect
that the science of 2500 a.d. will regard our own knowledge
as we regard the mediaeval beliefs. On the other hand, the
great works of art retain their value undiminished. We do
not outgrow Homer, Dante, Goethe. And in spite of an
intellectual minority, it is doubtful if religious belief is
wavering or decreasing. One cannot, at the beginning of
the investigation, deny that these branches employ a dis-
tinct organon of truth incommensurable with that employed
in natural science, yet in its own way quite as valid. It
would be stupid to disdain a helping hand simply because

20 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

that hand is not manicured by the latest methods. The
religious experience, with its persuasion of immediate con-
tact with the Deity, is as genuinely an experience as is the
laboratory experiment; and possibly it is attested by as
many independent witnesses. Yet such an experience can
of course be bhndly accepted no more than any other.
Every sort of testimony must be granted a respectful hear-
ing, but none must be allowed to elbow out the others. In
fact the very nature of our problem compels this tolerance;
for we have seen that it is the search for a broader view than
any other human discipHne directly affords. Philosophy,
in the words of a contemporary writer, is " needed in order
to enforce breadth of outlook and catholicity of Judgment.
It stands for the general human values as against excessive
pretensions, whether in science, in religion, or in practical
life, for the past and future as against the present, for com-
prehensiveness and leisure as against narrowness and
haste." (Norman Kemp-Smith, Journal of Philosophy,
1912, p. 703.)

The sentence just quoted suggests a second caution. The
philosopher must, at the beginning of his inquiry, refrain
from exercising certain virtues which appeal most to a
vigorous age and race. He cannot, hke the scientist or the
saint, show forth at the outset his independence. He can-
not start with a message of his own; his aggressiveness must
be postponed. His attitude toward science, art, reUgion,
and practical experience must at first be a passive one. His
is not a rival study among other studies, in which one may
early begin to speciahze, ignoring the rest and outshining
them. As his problem includes the problems of the other
fields, so to a great extent his results depend upon their re-
sults. It is the largest problem just because it waits upon
these others; "metaphysics " is rightly named. Like the

THE GREAT PROBLEM 21

human infant, it is by itself the most helpless of all. Its
function does not appear until it has been led and taught of
others. Only after it has received, correlated, compared,
digested, the products of pious experience, of the laboratory
experiment, of artistic intuition, of practical common sense,
— only then does its turn come, to teach a lesson which no
other study can convey. A philosophical system which has
not built itself upon such facts as the conservation of energy,
wave-motion, the propagation of life, the mystic's intuition
of God, the laws of musical form, would be no adequate
system. As well might a babe try to administer a state.
To be sure, such a summation of knowledge can hardly at the
present time be perfected ; but this is not fatal. We trust
much of our present perception; our present science, our
present practical good sense — imperfect as all these are ;
and on the whole succeed in Kving thereby. Even so our
philosophy, though never finished, might yield a very great
measure of satisfaction and usefulness. The map of the
world was always of some value to men, though it grew more
accurate as men explored further. But that map depends
on the reports brought in by individual travellers, and phi-
losophy is the map-maker who, himself no great traveller,
sits at home plotting quietly with rule and compass. Or
perhaps a biological metaphor better describes the situation,
and we may refer to Menenius Agrippa's fable of the Belly ''
and the Members. When the members rebelled at the in-
action of the belly, which passively received the food they
by their labour secured for it, the organism went wrong:
then only appeared the indispensableness of that recipient
function in digesting the food and giving them their power
to work. Even so it is with philosophy: its function is to
direct, by digesting the knowledge brought to it, the en-
ergies of men in their effort to cope with the demands of the
environment.

22 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

If the scientists, the reformers, the pious souls, appear to
do the work while philosophy lazily absorbs their product,
let us then remember that good digestion is the surest pledge
of health. It is of course difficult to keep one's faith in a
method which moves slowly and gives general rather than
detailed profits. The Ufe which is ultimately the most suc-
cessful is not necessarily at a given moment the most pros-
perous. But while philosophy is not always of avail for the
minor exigencies of conduct — as a man need not be an ath-
lete in order to brush his hair — it does aim to offer, in the
end, the largest utility in directing the whole current of our
lives and of human destiny. And it is a task which we can-
not in honour neglect. To that task we now turn.

CHAPTER II

THE PHILOSOPHIC DISEASE, AND RESTATEMENT
OF THE PROBLEM

THE inevitable and the supreme problem for us men is
the philosophic problem. It is, to be sure, a vast and
difficult one, recording many failures; but we have at our
disposal the wealth of science, rehgion, art, and practical
life, and there seems no reason against eventual solution.
With good hope we may start on our quest. But the inno-
cence and the promise of the start are soon lost, and our
present business is to note the manner of the loss.

At first the prospect is bright enough. For more than two
thousand years, what may fairly be called the pick of human
intellect has worked over this task. Rehgion indeed has
been offering its fruits to man since prehistoric time, Htera-
ture almost as long, science less so, though with accelerating
productiveness; for upwards of twenty centuries, at the
least, men have garnered the treasures which rehgion, or
science, or art, or practical sense, have revealed, and have
laboured to piece them together into some sort of general
scheme. The counsel we adopted in our first chapter is the
one which has been adopted by some of the most illustrious
men who have hved; Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas,
Descartes, Leibnitz, and many others famous and influential
in their day, have toiled, to the utmost of their mighty en-
ergies, in pursuit of the very end we have signahzed. Hereby
our purpose is given aid and comfort. All we have to do,
then, is to peruse the result of their toil. The map of the

23

24 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

universe should be ready at hand. The professional phi-
losophy of the present day, representing the outgrowth and
consummation of the thought of ages, should provide the
object we seek. To be sure, it is not entirely impossible that
certain obsolete views may possess truths which the present
age is temperamentally inclined to overlook. We should not
assume that the only true view is the up-to-date view; such
an attitude savours too much of the idols of the market-
place. But on the whole the later results are likely to be the
truer; so speaks the historical spirit. Our immediate topic,
then, must be the study of the chief modern systems.

Some disappointment, however, will be expected by the
prudent. The problem is so enormous that a complete solu-
tion can hardly have been accomplished as yet. Nor is it
only the multitude of questions to be answered, that pro-
tracts the solution; it is also the quahty of the subject-mat-
ter. That subject-matter is to the last degree evanescent.
The natural sciences have their material, the sense-data of
experiment, before the eye and hand; but the order of the
universe extends far beyond the scope of the tangible. God,
mind, logical principles — these are not for touch or sight.
Mathematics, too, can by aid of visible symbols treat with
cogent demonstration its own abstractions, whereas phi-
losophy occupies itself with the concrete reality, to which
symbolism is perhaps never quite adequate. Philosophic
subject-matter is thus so comprehensive as to appear to lose
the definiteness of the scientific data, and yet so concrete as
to forego the advantages of abstract mathematical treat-
ment. But, on the other hand, philosophy is not permitted
to throw over wholly the methods of exact observation and
reasoning in favor of unthinking faith, religious dogma, or
artistic intuition; for these contemn the very impulse which
gave birth to philosophy itself — the craving to understand.

PHILOSOPHIC DISEASE 25

Such are some of the intrinsic obstacles to the desired solu-
tion: must we not perforce be content with a rather modest
result ? " How should a complete chart of the universe
descend into the twiUght of an animal mind, served by quite
special senses, swayed by profound passions, subject to the
epidemic delusions of the race, and lost in the perhaps
infinite world that bred it?" (Santayana, Journal of Phi-
losophy, xii, p. 565).

Nevertheless, persistent thought does gradually clear up
any field however obscure, as eyes growing accustomed to
the dark discern the outlines of objects. For there is some
light for the mind's eye to profit by; the universe is before
us, and we should be able to find out progressively more and
more about it. There is no reason why the strongest minds,
able to profit by the .work of their predecessors, should not,
however slowly, make some definite advance. And when
we remember that since the days of Socrates, the coopera-
tive method called discussion — oral or written — has been
in vpgue, with its prospect of mutual correction, some degree
of confidence returns. There is no reason for losing heart,
even in face of the heavy handicap by which at the outset
we are penalized.

Expecting not too much, then, but still expecting some-
thing, we ask: what are the main results reached by the
philosophers ? A superficial inspection reveals a goodly
number of them, many displaying remarkable acumen,
many dull and barbarously expressed, many profoundly
interesting. But what is our amazement when, looking a
bit deeper, we find that each system denies the fundamental
principles of the rest! And it must be confessed that a still
more thorough examination does not remove this impres-
sion. Let any professional philosopher be asked to name
one doctrine that is by his compeers generally accepted. If

26 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

he is disingenuous enough to name one, it will be found that
others name a different one. " Each contradicted the other
fundamentally upon matters of universal concern " says a
popular novehst of our time (H. G. Wells, Marriage, pp.
408-409) of two current thinkers; and the remark is of gen-
eral appUcation. The very fact that these statements of
ours may be denied, bears them out. There is no stock of
funded truth in philosophy. Unlike science, unlike practice,
it has no consensus of experts.

This is, if we stop to consider it, a most astonishing thing.
And it is quite natural that it is not so well appreciated by
philosophers as by laymen; for the onlooker best sees the
game, and the metaphysical disputant is too much in earnest
with his own system to perceive the humour and the sadness
of the whole situation. If only he could forget his own inter-
ests, and once get a realizing sense of this thoroughgoing
dissension ! But such a state of affairs is not merely astoimd-
ing; it is terrible. The naive hope of discovering the scheme
of the world withers; skepticism enters, and we sink back
through dismay to despair, and finally to that unconcern
with ultimate things which characterizes the Philistine and
approximates the mental state of the dog or the horse. Such
is the defeat of the great thinkers. It is not simply that they
have failed to keep in touch with our practical welfare; they
have failed to satisfy the impulse to knowledge. The pur-
pose which was in its inception highest and most promising
of all, has proved in its fruits most worthless.

Now the only course open to a sincere mind is to examine
this situation in the utmost endeavour to find a way out.
Can it be true that things are as bad as this ? Surely not,
says our instinct of hope.

That there is a quite unsettled strife is a patent enough
fact; no documents are needed to prove it. But is its signifi-

PHILOSOPHIC DISEASE 27

cance so ominous, after all ? Perhaps disagreement is not
an unmixed evil, or perhaps it is one of those ills which, like
bodily filth, we have always with us and should not mention
— or rather should resolutely explain away, hail as a glory,
or what not. Or, again, perhaps it is a gradually diminishing
evil. Let us examine these consohng suggestions.

To be sure, philosophers do not agree, but is agreement to
be desired at all hazards ? There have been many super-
stitions, dogmas, popular errors, agreed to by all. In fact,
agreement would be stagnation. In one sense of course this
is true. Doubt stimulates discovery; disbelief leads to
stronger proof, or to the abandonment of delusions. But
though disagreement is often of value, even a sine qua non,
it does not follow that there should be no agreement at all.
Such a claim would repeat the old fallacy that because pur-
suit of truth is good, no particular truths ought ever to be
found. As well urge that because exercise is good, one
should never rest. The field of fact is indefinitely large, and
no matter how much is certainly known, there is no motive
for idleness. Room enough remains for further discoveries.
But that nothing of the deeper matters should be known,
that there should be only disagreement, is clearly an evil.
Philosophy then becomes even as James' man who runs to
leap the ditch, and reaching the edge, forever stops and
returns for a fresh run.

Still, it may be answered, other fields beside philosophy
have their quota of dissension, while yet held worthy of our
respect. What of the perennial strife of rehgious sects, or
of political parties in any one nation ? Is there, in fact, any
one form of government that is universally agreed, by men
of experience and cultivation, to be the best ? Is there any
one fairly definite system of morals generally accepted ? Is
there any one religion that commands the assent of mankind

28 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

as a whole ? And men have been working over religion and
government as long as over philosophy — even longer. Yet
the failure to come to a final decision is not taken as ground
for despair, for giving up religion or goverrmient, or as
evidence of any peculiar weakness.

On the one ha;nd, however, the case is quite different from
that in philosophy. In any given nation or community
there is a fairly workable system of government or morals
adopted as at least the one best suited for that community.
Indeed, there must be a certain amount of agreement —
else anarchy follows. Moreover, in what are considered the
more advanced nations — or if you Hke, the larger, more
powerful nations — certain broad principles have gradually
emerged: viz., govermnent by representation of the people,
suffrage, mutual protection, and all the common morality
of " hve and let Hve." Although savages' morality and gov-
ernment differ profoundly from such a resultant, the latter
may fairly be considered the view of the expert, the former
of the inexpert judgment. It is only when men approach
the question of the ultimate ideal government, the ultimate
moraUty, etc., that irreconcilable opposition seems to break
out. In religion, to be sure, it is always present. But this
is just because of the semi-philosophic character of religion.
In short, it is when, and only when, the deepest problems,
the philosophical problems, begin to appear, that strife is
regnant. No : the ills of philosophy are unique, and greater
than we have a right to expect.

But are they as it were a grave disease, or only in the na-
ture of a temporary weakness ? Recall the difficulty of the
problem. How elusive did we find its subject-matter to be !
On this qmcksilver the mind cannot lay its finger; balked of
direct touch, the reason faints and is weary; emotion steps
in, bidding us choose a theory that we like. Perhaps only a

PHILOSOPHIC DISEASE 29

philosopher has the opportunity to appreciate the extent to
which this is the case. It is not so much that each thinker
loves his system because it is his own. Something of this
vainglory lies in all of us, of course; but one who would
choose such a profession is not hkely to be swayed much by
vainglory. No, it is the very seriousness of the problem that
weights the emotional factor. Such and such a doctrine, one
feels, imperils humanity's deepest needs, its dearest convic-
tions: no parley with it! The religious inquisitor, the Puri-
tan witch-hanger, are not without their analogues in the
milder realm of philosophic strife. Caricature of an oppo-
nent's view for purposes of ridicule is one of the commoner
methods; justified indeed to the ridiculer's conscience by
the gravity of the issue. But this, it will be admitted, is
only our present human weakness, and is nothing to cause
a deep discouragement. On the whole the illegitimate in-
fluence of emotion is probably decreasing, and the earnest
efforts that are now being made to define our terms clearly,
to promote mutual understanding and impartiality, augur
well for the future. And if these subjective hindrances were
not enough to account for the dissensions, there remains the
objective one of the infinity of the problem itself. How can
we be certain of anything until we are certain of the Whole
Plan ? Something new might come up to modify our con-
clusions. And while yet the Whole is not known, different
thinkers will emphasize different aspects or parts — and
hence difference of opinion must arise ; though it may cease
to be disagreement when men recognize that truth is
many-sided.

Now we must admit that all these sources of dissension
are only too obviously potent. It is also probably true that
the subjective ones have diminished since the time of Hindu
and Greek philosophy. As thought develops from age to

30 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

age there is less personal animus, there is clearer definition of
terms, and more exact reasoning. But these very arguments
defeat their own purpose. If the causes they allege were the
main causes of strife, then on the whole, strife would have
diminished. For there seems no reasonable doubt that
thinkers have progressed in clarity. Yet we have today not
a whit more precipitate of truth, not a jot more agreement
among the savants, than in the earlier days. They are not
even agreed that truth is many-sided, and is therefore toler-
ant of different views. Some say this (the absolute ideaUsts),
but they are now being attacked on every hand. The strife
has not diminished ; it has if anything increased. Formerly,
materiahsm fought with spirituaHsm; today realism, ideal-
ism, pragmatism, intuitionism, wrestle with one another.
Every new view is a new combatant. It is true that one
school may prevail in numbers for a time. Idealism was the
fashionable philosophy some few years ago; driven from its
German home it grew mighty in England and America. At
the present, however, realism is gaining more adherents;
whether it or pragmatism will command a majority, who
knows ? Such temporary majorities have often arisen; but
refutation soon followed. On the whole, the most dominant
of all has probably been Thomism — both in niunbers and
length of time — for it is still hale and hearty. But Prot-
estant philosophers, with a few exceptions, consider it quite
outworn; in fact, they hardly know it at first hand, as a
glance at the curricula of our universities will show. As
far as any tendency toward agreement goes, we find only
agreement within a school, not between the schools.

Nor is the infinite magnitude of the problem sufficient to
account for the lack of unanimity. Progress may be made
along an infinite line; the equation of such a hne may be
found; the infinite is not as such inaccessible to knowledge.

PHILOSOPHIC DISEASE 3 I

The problem of each science is infinite, yet its solution is
progressively approximated. Just those philosophers, too,
who say that any partial account of the universe is erroneous,
claim that we can know much of the character of the Whole
— viz., it is "experience," it is an "individual," "co-
herent," etc. In truth, no philosopher does beheve that
agreement is impossible or undesirable; for he tries most
strenuously to get others to agree with his own system. The
only one who foregoes unison is the skeptic, and he has given
up the problem. If, in short, the strife were due only to the
weakness of the human mind before its great problem, some
result would almost certainly have taken shape after the
labours of more than two thousand years. The theories
would not all have neutralized one another. The trouble
seems, indeed, to be a very grave one; we cannot invoke our
inadequacy, but are pointed to some mysterious influence
which corrupts our thought.

Yet we should not accept so dark a view until we have
tried every conceivable avenue of escape. One more such
has been pointed out: may not philosophy be properly a
matter of will or temperament ? In a measure perhaps the
universe is subjective, each man's world being what he by
his personal reaction makes it. Should we not therefore ex-
pect disagreement ? This opinion is found in many quarters
and under many disgxiises, from certain of the mind-
cure to the humanistic and Fichtean schools; though prob-
ably no one has ever held it pure. It is too patent a fact that
we must to some degree take account of external conditions,
even though the degree be vanishing. But no doubt there is,
psychologically, a great deal of truth in this view. We do
believe at the dictate of our temperament; we do " beheve
upon instinct, and find reasons afterward " (F. H. Bradley,
Appearance and Reality, Preface, p. ii) ; we do interpret the

32 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

universe after the pattern of what we devoutly wish. The
coldest reasoner, the bitterest enemy of emotion, is as much
the slave of temperament as the reUgious fanatic; he is
driven by a concentrated passion for truthfulness. We need
not be troubled to deny the psychological correctness of the
temperament-theory. For that matter, we beheve, with
Professor Dewey, that when philosophers admit it, the dawn
of a new era will be upon them. But all that does not spell
consolation to us. For, among our many ultimate cravings,
is one for consistency, and that craving will not permit us
to say, " the world is x " with one man, and " the world is
not X " with another. Temperamental interpretations of fact
cannot claim to be truth while they deny one another. Or
let us even suppose this objection overcome ; the fact remains
that other philosophers deny the temperament-view. It is
only one among others, denying them and denied by them.
To resort to it is but to perpetuate the conflict.

But is it not just the very best way of settlement, to enter
the lists and fight for one view ? Why not say that one out
of all these conflicting systems is right — or nearly so —
and the others wrong ? This, as history shows, is the sever-
est temptation of the thinker. It appeals to the vigorous
mind, to ideals derived from long tradition, to the motive of
battle and domination. But let those who adopt this posi-
tion — and they are the majority — pause to reflect on its
import. Is it not almost the same as saying that the greater
number of philosophers are relatively lacking in intelli-
gence ? There appears no reason — except that they do not
agree with the protagonists in question — why any one
school of philosophers should be considered duller than the
others. It is very unlikely that the stupidities which the
refuters wrest from their opponents' views are really com-
mitted by such intelligent men. It is far more probable that

PHILOSOPHIC DISEASE 33

the refuters do not fully understand the views they attack.
And when we observe that the refutees in turn adopt the
same methods, there seems less reason for preference than
ever. There is of course no question but that the difl&culty
of philosophic thinking is responsible for a great deal of mis-
understanding; what is improbable is that the misunder-
standings should lie so exclusively on one side rather than
another. If all schools of thought but one are fundamentally
in error — as nearly everybody thinks in every age — would
it not be a miracle that one should escape the common lot ?
But the most convincing evidence that it is not so is that
today, when philosophic interest is liveKer than ever before,
when discussion is if not keener, at least more widespread
than in any preceding age, the refutations are but increased,
and the fundamental differences emphasized. Indeed, we
ourselves beUeve that philosophical inquiries are more
thorough nowadays than they have ever been; but that
only means that each philosopher cuts under the others with
a sharper sword. The chances of error should be at a mini-
mum, but the mutual refutations are not at a minimum;
rather a maximum.

May we trump up a last desperate excuse out of the rela-
tion of philosophy to science ? It has been alleged (James,
Some Problems in Philosophy, ch. I) that philosophy is but a
name for the unsolved problems of science. Psychology, for
instance, used to be thought a part of philosophy, but when
it learned to verify its theories by experiment it broke away
and became a science. Physics and chemistry had already
found their own methods and done so ; earlier still, mathe-
matics. With Aristotle, all these were still undeveloped,
still branches of the philosophic tree ; and where tradition is
strong the titles " mental " and " natural " philosophy are
even retained today. If philosophy is the residue of unveri-

34 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

fied theories, how could it give established doctrines ? But
the reply is obvious, from what we said in Chapter I. Phi-
losophy is not simply inchoate science. It contains prob-
lems which do not seem open to scientific treatment. The
relation between science and faith, the estimation of artis-
tic judgment, of the validity of reasoning and immediate
experience — these are problems of a different sort. They
make up that very core of philosophy, metaphysics. And
these are some of those which, worked over quite as long and
faithfully as the scientific questions, have not as yet shown
the slightest sign of fixed solution. Philosophy has in fact
ever exhibited a distinction in kind from those disciplines
which once in ignorance took shelter under its wings. And
it is in philosophy alone that we find the undiminishing
controversy.

Not that philosophy has failed to make a certain kind of
progress. Since the days of the early Hindu or the Greek
systems, it has learned much. Old errors have been dis-
lodged, typical views have been better articulated. Even
the beginner in philosophy avoids certain mistakes made by
Plato and Aristotle. Many of the older doctrines have been
revived and more consistently defended — so also have the
opposing doctrines. New views, too, have appeared at fre-
quent intervals — refuting and being refuted. The con-
stituents of the great equation are more numerous and better
factored. But withal they cancel out.

In fine, what is the situation ? After a history of almost
unexampled length, philosophy has less of positive informa-
tion and more of controversy to show, than any other hviman
discipline. Soaring to the greatest heights, it falls below the
level of common knowledge; philosophers are not even sure
that there is an external world. Religious quarrels, intenser
though they may be, are not so manifold or so mutually

PHILOSOPHIC DISEASE 35

undermining. No philosophic schools present as broad
fronts of unanimity as the several Christian churches, as the
Buddhist sects, or the Mohammedans. The lack of results
is, no doubt, partly due to the vastness of the problem,
partly to variety of human temperament, to careless think-
ing, to lack of scientific method, to the intangibility of the
material. But none of these, nor all together, suffice to
account for the extraordinary, indeed the complete, dearth
of established opinion. We do not see how to avoid the con-
clusion that some specific virus is at work, some poison which
prevents philosophy from assimilating its food. Badly off
indeed we are: man's best endeavour to solve the chief
problem of his Hfe has been frustrated.

But that problem presses irresistibly upon those who have
felt its call. We are constrained to seek out the thought-
poison, and finding, to remove it. It would be useless to
begin — as many have tried — by wiping the slate clean
and setting forth some new system. Perhaps that course
would be pleasanter; but unless it revealed some principle
by which the mutual opposition is forestalled it would profit
us little. It is no help to the sick man to eat more food if he
cannot digest what he has. We must for the present defer
the luxury of a positive investigation of reality itself. There
is nothing for it but to examine the chief systems, with a
view to diagnosing the nature of the disease that infects
them all.

This is no novel plan. Philosophers in the past have felt
the disgrace of endless discord and have again and again
essayed reforms. Thus did Protagoras, Socrates, Occam,
Bacon, Descartes, Locke, Kant, and many more. Might not
a cynic even say that philosophy is naught but a series of
New Year's resolutions ? Certainly there are few systems
which are not intended by their authors to be a reform of all

36 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

that has gone before; the one medicine that will cure the
bedridden patient. And for a time convalescence seemed on
the way; then occurred the relapse. What in each reform
renders it the prey of the same malady ?

We are to examine, then, the principal systems of phi-
losophy. Now these are not haphazard or whimsical, but
fall into rather definite types. The types appear qxiite diver-
gent; they recur often, in a dress adapted to the time and
place of their appearance. Minor differences, answers to
some particular puzzle of Uf e or thought, are found to depend
on the acceptance of one or another of such major divaga-
tions. It is the types, accordingly, which we must analyze;
paying especial attention to their mutual refutations.

And at this juncture a tiny ray of hope enters. Unsub-
stantial as the rainbow it may be, but it has its value as a
cheering suggestion. If these typical systems recur so often,
does it not seem as if they were probably in the main true ?
If they are so, then the success of our undertaking would
mean a double service. In removing the virus from the sys-
tems, we should at the same time be restoring them to the
ranks of truth. The medicine we inject into the poisoned
system would be a positive, Hfe-giving principle. With one
stroke the stock of funded truth would be enormously en-
larged, as certain gases at their freezing point are by a slight
knock instantly hquified.* And best of all, the principle —
if there be one — which removes the mutual contradiction
of the systems, would itself probably be an important char-
acter of reahty. How otherwise could we make use of it ?
As the failure of the past to discover that principle would
have been the cause of philosophy's troubles, so the dis-
covery of the principle itself would be a contribution of
supreme value as positive knowledge. By virtue of its func-

* Schopenhauer, I think, somewhere uses this comparison.

PHILOSOPHIC DISEASE 37

tion as uniter of the many sides of the truth, it might claim
to be the crowning principle of the universe — so far, at
least, as our present knowledge can go.

But this is only a hope. For the present our work must
take its place as one more attempt at reform added to the
long, long list, running the gauntlet of the refutations which
ruined them, with all the antecedent probabihty against its
success, and certain to be denied, if indeed it is noticed at
all. But let us remember that we have nothing to lose by
the endeavour, and like Luther, we " cannot do otherwise."

CHAPTER III

THE TYPE SUBJECTIVISM

IN the examination of typical systems which we now begin,
certain cautions are necessary.

First, it is probable that none of those we shall exhibit has
ever been exactly held. A simon-pure idealist, or an empiri-
cist with no taint of a priori dogmatism, may never have
existed. The names that have survived in philosophy —
Berkeley, Leibnitz, Fichte, etc. — are hardly to be considered
as embodiments of only one type. A thinker's greatness
may perhaps be estimated by the rigour of his adherence to a
single one, or by the number of them which he is able to
combine ; but in neither respect do we find any perfect case.
Each system includes something of several types, as every
projectile is acted upon by many forces. Yet the main direc-
tion of a rifle-bullet is forward, and of a falhng apple down-
ward; and even so, in a given system one type is generally
found decidedly outweighing the rest. The views we shall
mention have been, then, no more than approximated in
the history of philosophy. We claim only that they are
influential and representative.

Secondly, a large choice is offered, and many ways of
classifying them are possible. We need only a scheme which
is useful for our project, viz., one which will lay bare the
root of the disagreements. For this reason we shall treat
the types as rivals: each one will be juxtaposed, so far as
possible, with an opponent type. But no exhaustive prin-
ciple of classification seems to be necessary; for we aim at

38

THE TYPE SUBJECTIVISM 39

characteristic instances rather than all instances. Still,
though completeness is not necessary, we do intend to take
up an obvious majority.

Thirdly, it is likely to appear, to the respective devotees of
the system, that their views are not justly stated. In one or
two instances at least the arguments we shall give are not
those used by the originators of the type in question. The
reason for this is that such types seem not always to have
been most favourably presented; they could have been de-
fended better than they were. A type is not always best
understood by its own advocates. It is for our purpose more
important to lay bare the great tendencies or motives which
have worked in human thought, than to pursue historical
accuracy — though of course we must not stray too far
therefrom.

As the modern systems have the presumption of supe-
riority, we choose our first topic from the welter of present-
day doctrines. These are preoccupied with the study of the
human mind; they view the whole universe as it bears upon
that particular corner. The most natural beginning is there-
fore with a type which we shall call subjectivism; a system
whose main thesis, roughly put, is that all the world is a
phase of consciousness. This doctrine is, indeed, bound up
with a rival doctrine, which is built upon the flat denial of
the thesis; and we cannot fully estimate the former in ad-
vance of the latter. But we can judge the arguments in
favour of it, and even certain ones against it, pretty well by
themselves, and that shall be the purpose of this chapter.

In setting forth the motives which urge men toward sub-
jectivism, we must include emotional and practical as well as
intellectual reasons. Temperament, as we have already
seen, is ever a determinant of our tenets. Couched in logical
terms, this means that everyone has at the back of his mind

40 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

a certain major premise, viz., " whatever is in the end good
is in the end true or real " — a premise no more, and no less,
capable of proof than reason's premise " whatever is imphed
in sense-experience and is consistent therewith, is real or
true." No man can free himself from the influence of these
fundamental dogmas; and no man's philosophy can be Jus-
tified or condemned until his dogmas — i. e., his axioms —
are known. " Mankind," said James, " is made on too uni-
form a pattern for any of us to escape successfully from acts
of faith. We have a lively vision of what a certain view of
the universe would mean for us. We kindle or we shudder at
the thought, and our feeling runs through our whole logical
nature and animates its workings. It can't be that, we feel;
it must be this. It must be what it ought to be, and it ought
to be this; and then we seek for every reason, good or bad,
to make this which so deeply ought to be, seem objectively
the probable thing. We show the arguments against it to be
insufficient, so that it may be true ; we represent its appeal
to be to our whole nature's loyalty and not to any emaciated
faculty of syllogistic proof. We reinforce it by remembering
the enlargement of our world by music, by thinking of the
promises of sunsets and the impulses from the vernal woods.
And the essence of the whole experience, when the individual
swept through it says finally ' I beheve,' is the intense con-
creteness of his vision, the individuaUty of the hypothesis
before him, and the complexity of the various concrete
motives and perceptions that issue in his final state." {The
Meaning of Truth, pp. 257-258.)

In fact, we may go further. One's philosophy is inter-
woven specifically — however far beneath the surface —
with the rest of one's Ufe; how completely, we hope to show
ere we finish our task. For we shall learn that the battles of
philosophy reflect, and are reflected by, the nature of the

THE TYPE SUBJECTIVISM 4 1

battles of man against man -and of man against nature. The
instincts of the intellect grow out of and into the impulses of
the will and the insights of the emotional nature.

The practical and affective motives toward subjectivism
are simple. Our impulse to self -expansion, perhaps the most
powerful in our nature, urges us from the practical side. We
all want to grow and be large; even physically, few men
would prefer to be small or middle-sized. Every one has in
him that conative tendency, which carried to its logical
conclusion would make him contain the whole universe. Ac-
quisition of property, of reputation, of learning, are subor-
dinate instances of this. While no subjectivist philosopher
might be aware that he was marshalHng his deductions in
order to gratify this passion of self-extension, it seems hardly
likely that men would have defended so remarkable a view,
did it not coincide with this ineradicable desire. For it is not
an easy or natural view intellectually — witness its late
appearance in history. A considerable development of
reflective power seems to be its prerequisite.

The affective motives are revealed in certain not wholly
uncommon moods Uke the following: "... a curious ex-
perience befell me. It was as if everything that had seemed
to me external and around me were suddenly within me.
The whole world seemed to be within me. It was within me
that the trees waved their green branches, it was within me
that the skylark was singing, it was within me that the hot
sun shone, and that the shade was cool. . . . I felt in all my
being the delicious fragrance of the earth and the grass and
the plants and the rich brown soil " (F. Reid, Following
Darkness, London, 1912, p. 42). Probably almost every one
has had his moments of subjectivism, when Hamlet's dictum,
" there is nothing good or bad in this world, but thinking
makes it so," seems axiomatic of reality at large.

42 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

More obvious, perhaps, and more creditable to subjec-
tivism, is the appearance of giving aid to rehgion. If all is
mind, then all is spirit; and if all is spirit, is it not but a step
to affirm immortality, God, the angels, and the other appara-
tus of religion ? It was none other than Bishop Berkeley
who founded modern subjectivism; and who referred to
himself as " a man who has written something with a design
to promote Useful Knowledge and Religion in the world."
(Letter of dedication, prefixed to Principles of Human Knowl-
edge, Open Court ed., p. i.) To a certain extent, we cannot
doubt, the type has borrowed a garment of sanctity from
religion. Like its big brother ideahsm it has been defended
by men whose philosophy has a spiritual cast. Besides
Berkeley, we may instance the priest Malebranche, Kant,
Schopenhauer, and if we are correctly informed, several of
the Hindu religious systems; and in our own day Professor
Royce, himself not strictly a subjectivist, yet occasionally
using its favourite arguments. It certainly seems probable,
that many of those who hke subjectivism Kke it because it
appears to promote the interests of the spirit.

Intellectual ingenuity would perhaps in the end create
such a type; but in the absence of feelings and desires point-
ing that way would hardly have concocted the elaborate
defence which it has worked out. To this defence we now
turn.

The intellectual motive may thus be formulated: if we
can show that the universe is a phase of ourselves, we escape
the distracting conflicts which have beset man's previous
attempts to construe it. For this is a simple, purifying sort
of view. Being unitary, it gets rid of that dualism of mind
and body which, since Descartes, occasioned so many
puzzles. Reducing matter as it does to a function of mind,
it gives the quietus to those ancient paradoxes of infinite

THE TYPE SUBJECTIVISM 43

divisibility, time's beginning, motion, etc. The issue of
monism vs. pluralism also disappears. In short, subjec-
tivism appears as a reform which breaks up the old quarrels
of philosophy and replaces the endless bickering by an
appeal to the deepest need of man, the spiritual.

What then more precisely is the doctrine which performs
such a service ? We may sharpen its outlines by contrast.
Subjectivism is monistic; but it is to be distinguished from
allied monisms. Idealism, for instance, which is confessedly
monistic, need not be subjective; acknowledged ideaUsts
deny the reduction of the world to a phase of one's own
particular mind. Speaking of bodies, an eminent idealist
writes " their true existence is not that which is present in my
mind, but rather, as perhaps we should say, present to it."
(Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 2d ed., p. 301.) "Hence
the Universe and its objects must not be called states of my
soul " {ibid.). Another famous ideaUst explains that the
world is not " meine Vorstellung " in a subjective sense
(H. Rickert, Der Gegenstand der Erkenntniss, pp. 70, 132).
The differentia of idealism from subjectivism is the belief in
a Great Mind who is more than any one of us, or perhaps all
of us; subjectivism fixes upon the private mind as the last
term of metaphysics. The idealist holds the world to be a
phase of this Great Mind, but not, Uke the subjectivist, of
the particular person's mind ; for the latter has no principle
in his philosophy by which to infer a universal spirit.
Doubtless, ideahsts often speak like subjectivists; but their
view includes more. And of course it is true that the word
ideaKsm is currently used to cover both of the two views
here distinguished; but this is an inaccuracy, and as we
shall see when we come to treat idealism in Chapter IV, one
of consequence. Who has refuted subjectivism has not
thereby refuted idealism as here understood. Historical

44 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

instances approximating the type subjectivism are Berke-
ley's doctrine " esse is percipi," Schopenhauer's " Die Welt
ist meine Vorstellung," and a considerable portion of the
Kantian system. Probably no one holds it very strictly
today, although it must be hovering rather close, to judge
from the number of refutations of it from realistic pens;
refutations which, by the way, seem not to have observed
its distinction from ideahsm. It is a narrow view, to be sure,
because it singles out one element of reahty and states all
the rest as function of that; but the same might be said of
many views which have been deemed respectable. So ma-
terialism did, so nominaUsm and Platonism; and so at this
time is doing the recent school of realism which reduces
mind to a function of objects. Its one-sidedness should not
then deny it a considerate hearing. And even that is per-
haps not so great. Subjectivism, in one sense urging that
consciousness is everything, in another denies it. If external
objects are the contents of mind and nothing more, yet the
contents are not each in and for itself, the mind, and we have
not, after all, pure monism. My purse may contain money,
and money might be defined as that which belongs in purses,
but the money is not the purse. The qualities of the mind's
contents remain what they are^ even though they play in the
field of mind alone. What subjectivism seeks is not the
exclusive reality of just mere mind with nothing in it; but
rather the inclusive reahty of minds as genera, with species,
varieties, and so on, under them. And even though sub-
jectivists now and again in the heat of argument boil over
to this extreme and declare that apples, trees, or stones are
made of mental stuff, they thereby unwittingly exaggerate
their position.

Subjectivism also does not necessarily mean that my
mind, acting upon objects, makes them what they are. The

THE TYPE SUBJECTIVISM 45

phrase " mind creates its object," or something similar, is
occasionally used to describe the doctrine. Even Kant was
guilty of this excess {Critique of Pure Reason, Mtiller's tr., p.
102). Certain individuals may have accepted the phrase ; but
" create " is a very ambiguous word, usually interpreted in
one sense by subjectivism and in another by its opponents.
We cannot rightly take it to mean conjure into existence.
The subjectivist believes that the history of events is part
of the mind's history, but he does not have to beHeve that
the mind causes its contents to exist, any more than the con-
tents cause mind to exist. Nor is the mind conceived to act
upon an already present object so as to change its make-up
and thereby to know it. Certain thinkers, again, might
hold that view, but they could be subjectivists without so
doing. And it may be doubted that any one today does
entertain so unwise a belief, since it renders knowledge an
absurdity. For if the mind alters what it knows in knowing
it, the original object itself is not known. This is the familiar
Kantian dilemma of the thing-in-itself. But it is a quite
gratuitous addition to that doctrine. The core of the type
before us is, we think, that real objects are content of the
mind. In so far as that makes it convenient to say that they
are mental, mental they may be called; but, as already ex-
plained, there is always something irreducible, which indi-
viduates the particular object, making a rock a rock and
a horse a horse, and prevents it from being wholly identical
with the mind itself. What is meant is perhaps best expressed
by the spatial analogy of the word " content " ; a term which
of course is amenable to further definition, Uke the terms of
most types, but which nevertheless has a distinct significa-
tion of its own, not to be confused with the relation of com-
plete identity. We here adopt it because it suggests a
certain intimacy of relation and logical dependence.

46 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

Such is the type we are to examine, conceived as object of
the intellect. The defence of it consists of a negative and a
positive part: the former works by rebuttal of opponents,
concluding that there is naught independent, and therefore
logically outside, of one's mind; the latter endeavours by
analysis to demonstrate that everything is content of the
mind.

The negative argument is based upon a train of thought
dating back at least to Zeno the Eleatic. It reasons that
external objects have properties that are mutually contra-
dictory; hence they cannot have that independent, sub-
stantial reality which we naively ascribe to them. They are
then to be considered subjective alone. Historically, these
contradictions were pointed out in Zeno's paradoxes of
motion, space, number, etc.; in Plato's criticism of par-
ticular objects {Republic, 5. 479), and in many other
authors; culminating in the Hegehan declaration that all
things but the Whole are self-contradictory. Such mode of
argument has been used, now for one purpose, now for an-
other, from the Eleatics to Professor Bergson. The " dia-
lectic," as it is called, marks one of philosophy's perpetual
sores; whoever wishes to discredit an opponent may point
him to that unhealed spot. Many, of course, deny that
there is such a sore; for these the scene of the dialectic is
transferred from the external world to the philosophical
world — inasmuch as their view is disputed. However, this
shall be dwelt upon later; we are now treating only the ap-
plication to subjectivism. The two thinkers who have most
effectively plied the dialectic whip to drive us to this type,
are Berkeley and Kant. Berkeley found that material sub-
stance was an abstraction, containing the most glaring con-
tradictions, and therefore to be discarded {Principles of
Human Knowledge, Introduction, and §§ 5, 9); Kant found

THE TYPE SUBJECTIVISM 47

in the famous " antinomies," that this .external world of
ours implied conflicting attributes — infinite and finite
divisibihty, a first cause and no first cause, etc. — wherefore
its externality must be denied.

In judging the force of this position, we may well enough
admit the truth of the dialectic. Our interest lies in the
question, does it send us to subjectivism ? And we answer
it by asking, of what avail is it to relegate self-contradictory
things to the realm of mind ? The contents of the mind, the
things we see and touch and infer, are just as inevitable to
us, whether called physical or mental, external or internal.
What is the profit in rubbing out the whole external world
when the contradictions are (as Kant himself admitted) due
to our minds, and therefore present in the internal world ?
The disease is but communicated from the victim who is
slain to the victim who slays. Reason in losing objectivity
loses its own integrity. It is as if one tried to cure his indi-
gestion by never eating. And with the discovery that the
contradictions are native to the mind, comes a suspicion of
the reasoning which the mind performs, and of this very
argument itself. It does not, in fact, matter a whit where
the antinomies are put, so long as they are not solved. They
carry their poison wherever they go. Subjectivism may or
may not be true, but it is not demonstrated by this method.
This establishing of itself by convicting its opponent of sin,
this puritanic argument from damnation, we shall find all
too frequent in philosophical society; but it has no logical
force. The first argument for subjectivism then leaves us
where we were before ; the dialectic has proved or disproved
naught, and the balance of the opponents is yet even.

A second attempt to prove subjectivism by denying its
opposite is apparently of Kantian origin, though not far
removed from a well-known Platonic dictum. Seemingly

48 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

positive, it is shown by a little scrutiny to be negative. It
proceeds thus : we accept the truth of laws or general prin-
ciples, such as Newton's laws in mechanics, or the two prin-
ciples of thermodynamics. We believe these laws will hold
in the future; yet we have not observed that future. How
can we be sure thus, in advance of observation ? Now if it
were the case that the very constitution of our minds made
us interpret all we observe under the form of laws, we could
be sure that all events would appear under that form. Let
us then call law a form of the mind. This wiU account for
our abiUty to know in advance, to predict; and nothing else
will do so. For the only other possible explanation is, that
the nature of objects is permanent and law-abiding; and
previous to observation we could not be sure of this.

The idea has seemed very briUiant, and — whether or not
Kant really held it — has probably converted many of his
readers to subjectivism, and through that to idealism. As
here stated, it must not be confused with the ideahsts' argu-
ment, which sometimes includes it; that doctrine accepts a
universal mind, while the above may be held without any-
thing more than our several particular minds. Its emphasis
on the subject, man, cannot fail to be satisfactory to man;
and perhaps this in part accounts for the rapid growth in
favour, of the Kantian philosophy. It looks positive and
constructive, and not at all an argument by exclusion.
What then are its merits and defects ? First, it does not
apply to anything but laws or universals. Particular ob-
jects and events remain outside the mind, under the title
" things-in- themselves." But is it not as far as it goes
sound ? Now notice that its point lies mainly in the nega-
tive part, that nothing else but subjectivity accounts for a
priori knowledge. This was in fact emphasized by Kant
{Critique oj Pure Reason, Transcendental Aesthetic, §1, 3;

THE TYPE SUBJECTIVISM 49

§11, 3; Transcendental Analytic, ch. II, § I). Is it then
shown that the hypothesis of objective laws and univer-
sals will not account for it ? No; it is only urged that
we could not by observation verify that hypothesis. Of
course not by observation, we reply; but would that
hj^othesis not account for the fact of a priori knowledge
just as well as the other hypothesis of subjectivity ?
Neither hj^othesis can be verified by observation; that
the unalterable constitution of our mind makes us think
in terms of space, time, laws, etc., is no more accessible
to observation than are objective universals. How do we
know that the mind may not change ? Kant himself as-
serted that time was a mental form, and thence it would
seem to follow that mind cannot change ; but in fact, this
begs the question. To make time subjective is as much as
to assume outright that mind cannot change. It needs
proof; and there is no evidence given to show that time in
particular is subjective, besides the above argument for sub-
jectivity. In short, the subjectivity-hypothesis is no better
than the objectivity-hypothesis. Kant arbitrarily excluded
the latter. Either would explain the point in question;
neither has an advantage over the other. The balance is
again even; the argument is indifferent.

This indifference to subjectivity has apparently been felt
by many idealists; for they do not seem as a rule to lay
much stress on the above train of reasoning. They tend
rather to interpret Kant as urging that universal principles
are true and valid, yet not commensurable with the partic-
ulars of sense-observation; and hence as able to live only
in a world of reason. But reason is here used, as we shall
later see, in an objective sense, i. e., to mean a Great Reason
rather than one of our private minds. This is the Platonic
argument, which is not relevant to subjectivism. Neverthe-

50 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

less it must be admitted that there is a temptation even to
the idealist, to regard a universal as in some way the creation
of the particular mind (Royce, Encyclopaedia of Philosophi-
cal Sciences, vol. I, p. 107, almost writes thus) . Thus we find
it urged that the concepts of science are limits approximated
by the facts of sense-observation, and consequently never
reaUzed therein (Cassirer, Substanzbegrif und Funktionsbe-
griff, pp. 169, 171,6/ al. ; A. E. Taylor, reviewing the same in
Mind, 191 1, p. 440) : hence, it is argued, they must be differ-
ent in kind and spring from a different source, viz., our rea-
son. Another form of the same view is the semi-popular one
of Pearson and Mach, that concepts are mental shorthand,
subjective formulae, because they are not adequately reaUzed
in the external world. Why that which is non-physical
should be subjective is never explained. In fact, as with any
of the great philosophic types, this whole position is found
to percolate in many directions through the mass of pseudo-
philosophic opinion. But our accusation of irrelevancy re-
mains : subjectivity is no better explanation of the vaUdity
of law than is objectivity, and no more verifiable.

At the same time, subjectivism is not itself refuted by its
failure to refute the opponent. The scales so far are level;
either view might be perfectly correct. Subjectivism's dog-
matic exclusion of the alternative lays it open to attack by
the same method. It rests on no positive proof, but on an
arbitrary denial; and such a negative attitude arouses in the
adversary a temper favourable to an equally negative
dogmatism in the opposite direction.

We pass to the positive argument for subjectivism. There
is, first, a specious reason ; which though not claiming to be
a proof of it inclines one to favour the subjective theory.
This has its prototype in the Cartesian Cogito ergo sum, and
answers to a prevailing inclination in modem philosophy to

THE TYPE SUBJECTIVISM 5 1

regard the thinker's own existence as more certain to him
than anything else. Even the reaUstic Bergson begins his
magnum opus with this doctrine. We say prevailing, be-
cause the present almost exclusive interest in subjective
problems rather implies a conviction of the basal position of
the subject in the universe, as a " bed-rock " of certainty.
However that may be, the argument of Descartes is spe-
cious; it proves something, but not what it pretends to
prove. I doubt, therefore I exist; but of course the only
certainty here is that doubting (whatever that may turn out
to be when analyzed) occurs. Doubting might be — some
say now that it is — a clash of bodily tendencies, forces, or
what not; or it might be a phase of the history of an irre-
ducible mind. Either interpretation, objective or subjec-
tive, is possible. It is not because doubting is a mental or
subjective process that its occurrence is undeniable, but
because its presence is clear and distinct. And indeed we
find Descartes himself later appealing to the quite objective
" lumen naturale " as the best evidence of any truth. If the
subjective as such were more clear and distinct than the
objective, psychology would be farther advanced than it is
today. It is the objective sciences that have made progress.
The real evidence for subjectivism is not based upon
any prerogatives, but begins by granting external objects as
just a title to reality as minds. Its closest approximation is
found in Berkeley and Schopenhauer. But we should not
rest it, as Berkeley did, upon nominalism. For one might
contend — as Kant's doctrine does — that abstract con-
cepts are clearly before the mind, and be a subjectivist still;
and equally might one, like Hobbes, deny abstract ideas and
be a realist. Nor would it refute realism to show that the
abstract concept " material substance " is in itself meaning-
less, unless it were previously shown that things are what

52 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

they mean to us. Some such major premise as this last,
clearly underlies subjectivism's positive argument; we
prefer therefore to state the case in the following form:

Every object or entity identically is — at least in part —
the relations it assumes to something else. But every entity
assumes the relation of being content-of -consciousness;
therefore every object identically is such content. In this
conclusion we drop the " at least in part " because if any part
of the object is left over, that too by the premises becomes
" content," until all is swallowed up.

Generally and abstractly, the first premise means that
whatever enters into a relation is really quaUfied by doing so;
the relation in turn enters into the thing's very soul and
becomes an essential part of it; they are to an extent one.
So the stone, attracted by the earth, becomes a heavy body;
the relation to earth affects the body. This premise is in-
voked and denied again and again by philosophic partisans,
and, as we shall find, plays a fundamental role. We shall
follow usage and call it the principle of internal relations,
or more briefly, of internality; its contrary is called the
principle of external relations or externality.

In the same way the second premise means that every
thing, or object, or entity of any sort can be shown to come
into the net of a subject's consciousness. It may be ob-
ject of sensation, or perception, or mere thought; it may
be present object, or past object, or future object of our
consciousness; but always it stands in some connection
therewith.

The meaning of the premises and conclusion becomes
clearer when we seek their justification.

The principle of internal relations is a very frequent as-
sumption, in the conduct of life and in certain sciences. In
life, we judge a man's personality by his conduct towards

THE TYPE SUBJECTIVISM 53

other men, animals, and even inanimate things. His rela-
tions of friendship or enmity, cooperation or indifference or
frustration, his disposal of his goods — all these, we say,
constitute his character; and that means that they are him-
self. The latest school of psychological theory considers an
animal's individual consciousness to be the behaviour of its
body — which is to say, the relationships that body takes
on, toward physical things — of grasping, arranging, de-
vouring, rejecting, and so on through the complex history of
an animal's Kfe. An electron is defined by the physicist,
or an element by the chemist, by the spatial and temporal
relations it assumes to other bodies. In fact all description
of things, or judgment about them, really identifies those
things with their relations toward other things. Put ab-
stractly, we may express it thus : when an object A assumes
relation R to another object B, we say A is R to B, as in
" the pen is on the table " or " the paper is seen by me,"
and it seems unnatural not to interpret " is " to mean a
degree of identity between subject and predicate. If I say
" I am John Jones " I am understood to identify the subject
and predicate ; and the refusal to interpret other predication
likewise looks artificial and strained.

This is perhaps only an inductive generalization, based
upon observation of the actual thought-process; but it seems
so general and compelling that we may well judge it to fore-
stall any investigation of the particular field concerned. It
is however met by a strong opposition. The universality of
the principle of internal relations is denied. We are told
that not all statements take the form " something is so and
so "; but rather that some at least if not all should be ex-
pressed " something has the relation R to so and so." The
latter view we may call the relational theory of judgment,
the former the predicative ; they stand upon, and defend, the

54 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

internal and external theories respectively. The relational
theory claims that the form " A has RtoB"is not reducible
to the form " ^ is C " ; that there is not identity between A
and RB; that the relation is not " internal " to .4 but ex-
ternal to it, added to it without changing it or becoming
part of it. It supports this claim by analysis of certain
scientific ideals (those of the more abstract side, e. g., math-
ematics), finding that they demand ultimate elements or
indefinahles which are constant and which, entering un-
changed into certain relations to one another, generate the
subject-matter of the science. This Herbartian view —
which at present pays little respect to its German protagonist
— must however be based, not on the emulation of any
science, however successful that science may be in its own
limited domain, but on philosophical analysis; and such
analysis is provided. Those who deny the principle of inter-
nal relations usually allege that there are propositions to
whose meaning the predicative theory is inadequate. " A
shilling is less than a pound." The relation " less than "
cannot be adequately described as a quality residing in the
shilling; for it refers to " a pound " which is (conceptually)
outside the shilling. What is (logically speaking) outside
caimot be considered identical with, or a part of the latter.
Now this argument — Kke Kant's dictum with regard to
time — really assmnes what it wants to prove. Why can-
not the f uU nature of the shilling involve the pound as a part
of itself ? Why caimot the full nature of each thing in the
world imply everything else ? The internalist declares that
it does so; the externalist denies it, misled, it would seem,
by the spatial connotations of " outside " and " part of."
In doing this, the externalist has begged his point. There is
no reason whatever, urges the internalist, why one thing
should not be in part identical with things other than itself

THE TYPE SUBJECTIVISM 55

or with relations including those things. Certainly we often
speak of two objects of the same identical colour. But of
course the externalist will not admit that there is any
identity between two distinct things. The red of two
roses is not to him (however ahke be the shades) identical;
they only have the relation of similarity. Yet who has the
better of this dispute ? What necessity can be urged, by
which we should choose either description and reject the
other ?

The externalist, however, has other strings to his bow. He
can show that predication itself is a relation; that an attri-
bute, even if considered in part identical with its substance,
only has the relation " identity " to that substance. He
translates even identity itself into relational terms. He calls
to his aid modern logic, which treats " is " as the " illative
relation " rather than as an indication that the predicate
and the subject are partially one. Now there could be no
argument better suited for the internalist's position. Ob-
viously, identity, sameness, oneness, may be called relations
if we wish. Every instance of predication can be stated in
accord with the relational view. " The rose is red " can be
put " the rose has a certain relation (partial identity) to
red." No internalist need deny that; but he can also turn
it the other way. He can translate the relational-termi-
nology back into the original identity-terminology. And
one way of stating it may be useful for one purpose, the other
way for another. But the fact that we can use propositions
with " is " in logical inference is due as much to the rela-
tion's being that of identity, as it is to its being a relation at
all. Indeed, there is no proposition that cannot be stated
in the " A{?,B " form. That does not mean, of course, that
we do not often infer by other relations than identity. " A
implies B " and " B implies C " give, in the calculus of re-

56 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

lations, " A implies C." But " A implies C " serves its pur-
pose in this chain only because the relation of implying C is
true of A; and the being true of A may for aught yet seen
to the contrary be expressed by the form " ^ is impKer of
B," i. e., there is a degree of identity between these two.
The identity-form is never ruled out. To be sure there are
many kinds of reasoning which cannot adequately be put
into syllogistic form. But they must all sooner or later be
put in propositional form; and this restores the applica-
bility of the internalist view at the end. What comes in at
the end of a process may be important after all; is not the
reading and understanding of the sentences we write as im-
portant as the writing ? The indispensabihty of relations
need not lead the externalist to deny the identity-view. We
cannot then, so far, agree that the externalist is able to
refute his opponent, or vice versa.

A reductio ad absurdum of the internaHstic view has also
been used. If X's relation to Y is truly part of X, then X
when related to Y has grown by that part and is different
from X when not so related. In the case of some one becom-
ing aware of a tree, the tree, entering into the relation of
being known, is thereby changed. Hence the tree which is
known is not the original tree but a new one! This reductio
seems to be simply a mistake. Denote the relation called
" being known " by R, " tree " by A, " some one " by B.
Then A, becoming known, assumes the relation R to B.
Before, it did not have that relation, and was only A . When
known, it is enriched by the attribute RB as well. Some-
thing has been added; the former A was a part only, the
later A joins on a new part, RB. A, fully understood, in-
cludes all the relations into which it enters. The original A
does not cease to be itself when it becomes a part of the
whole, of which the RB is another part. What is known —

THE TYPE SUBJECTIVISM 57

i. e., what enters into the relation R, is that original, and
that original only; it is not the RB that is known, though
RB is for a later reflective judgment to be identified with
A. RB is the knowing of A; an element in the total situa-
tion ARB. Now there are dialectical objections to these
statements, and we confess that they are very serious ones,
and shall hereafter occupy ourselves with them; but they
are not accepted by externalists, and consequently the latter
should not, it appears, allege the above reductio.

These considerations, if they are correct, show that the
principle of internal relations has strong reasons in its favour
and as yet none against it. The full bearing of the principle
cannot now be seen; it will engage our attention in the ex-
amination of some later types. But no ground has been
forthcoming, in the arguments usually directed against it,
from which to deny it. The relational view of propositions
has simply looked like another reading of the same material,
no truer or falser than the internalist view. Neither refutes
the other. The first premise of subjectivism may then pass
for the present as sound, though liable of course to correc-
tion from future discussion concerned with other tj^es.

The second premise of subjectivism's positive argument
claims that every object in the universe is object for a sub-
ject; i. e., is, in the last analysis, really related to some par-
ticular mind by what is called the cognitive relation.

Notice that this premise alone would not suffice — though
often it is taken by hostile critics to be the whole of the type
in question. Every object under the sun might always be
known by some one great man, or dog, or cat, without being
definable as essentially known by him or it. It is the first
premise that justifies that definition; for it says that things
are the relations into which they enter. If we had not the
first premise, subjectivism would be a tautology, however

58 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

universally the second premise held. It would say only,
" everything is known, and being known, is related to
mind "; but objects need not then be what they are known
as. Hence subjectivism needs the principle of internal rela-
tions. But whereas absolute ideaKsm uses that principle too
(up to a certain point) it does not in propria persona add the
second premise, that aU things are most fundamentally
viewed as related to a mind. It does not lay superlative
stress on that particular relation, the cognitive one, and in-
cline the centre of gravity to the subjective side. It gets its
" Absolute Mind," as will later be seen, by a different
method. Subjectivism renders the universe asymmetrical,
absolute idealism renders it symmetrical. Subjectivism
moves the universe over into the particular mind; absolu-
tism, letting it stand where it is, equates the universe to an
absolute mind. Subjectivism is allied to ideaUsm through
its first premise, but its differentia lies in the second. For it
is that differentia which enables it to claim that reaUty is
content of the mind, not external to it. If A (the object) is
related by R (cognition) to B (my mind) then A is definable
as RB, and A appears as function, phase, or content of B;
and thus everything that is appears as B or content of B.
The word " content " signifies that the independent external
object A has disappeared and all that is left in the world is
that mind and functions of it. Of course the relation R re-
mains irreducible to B, and thus subjectivism is not a blank
monism. A universal mouth might regard all the world as
its food, but that food is not the mouth. Or again we may
think of a pedestal and its base; the support is the base but
the base is not the column. And equally of course, the word
" content " involves a spatial metaphor which is not to be
taken literally. This we mentioned at the outset, in com-
menting upon the monism of the type. There never was a

THE TYPE SUBJECTIVISM 59

mere monism since Parmenides, except in the minds of
pluraKsts, and such a type would not be worth studying.
The unique feature of subjectivism is the reduction of reaKty
not merely to mental tissue and substance, but to that and its
functions or contents as well.

Most arguments that have been used to prove the theory
have dwelt upon this second premise; as it is the more
specific premise, that is natural enough. We now give the
main positive ones. But we must give warning that their
validity cannot be fully appraised until we state the at-
tempts of the next type (objectivism) to refute them.

All the qualities of perceived objects which we treat as
external, size, colour, hardness, etc., may be regarded as
sense-quaUties, and all the properties, utility, beauty, effi-
cacy, etc., as essentially thought-objects; and both kinds as
subjective. We consider (i) secondary quahties, (2) primary
qualities, (3) other properties.

(i) Much has been written of late in defence of the objec-
tive reality of colours, tastes, etc. ; this for the present we
defer, promising to consider under the next type the chief
arguments proffered thereupon. Our immediate concern is
the argument for subjectivity. Physical science seems to
have shown that colours, sounds, etc., depend upon the
reception of certain impacts or wave-motions in the bodily
organism. The effect of these wave-motions on eye, ear,
etc., seems somehow to determine the appearance and char-
acter of the sense-quality, the colour or sound. That quality
may be " psychical " while the effect in the sense-organ is
"physical," or the two may be identical in essence; in
either case the quale of the red, the sweet, or the cool is in
some way determined by, or a function of, the organism. It
does not matter how inscrutable or irreducible we may be-
lieve such a quality to be ; it is still to some degree dependent

6o PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

upon the external stimuli being received in our own bodies.
And further there is no scientific evidence, so far as we know,
that the atomic particles or the media of Hght, heat, etc., are
coloured or sweet or warm; whereas those quahties are
sometimes felt without external stimuli and merely from the
the activity of our sense-organs — as when we press the
eyeball or have auditory hallucinations. The conclusion
seems beyond a reasonable doubt that the secondary quali-
ties reside in our bodies alone. A great deal of what we see
and feel of the outer world is then, a datum of our own
bodies.

This, however, is not enough to prove the case, for the
body is not the mind; and therefore the colours, sounds,
etc., of our environment are not yet shown to be mental con-
tent. But it does so strikingly suggest it — so close is the
intimacy of mind and body — that these considerations
have been deemed the " entering wedge " of subjectivism.
And no doubt many have been persuaded by them to be
subjectivists. Nevertheless the argument is not sufficient.
The body is to the mind just as much physical external
reality as anything else; it is no more " psychical matter of
fact " than a stone. A further step is needed, viz., the ad-
mission that the bodily data are essentially in the cognitive
relation, are known, are objects of awareness. That step we
may of course take; for a colour that does not look coloured
is no colour. This is indeed the gist of the matter; subjec-
tivism does not truly need the doctrine that secondary quali-
ties depend on the body. Nevertheless, men might not
easily have noticed that all perceived objects are thus de-
pendent upon mind, had not the sense-organs, with their
suggestion of subjectivity, seemed to affect the very char-
acter of the objects. For men do not commonly notice a
factor's presence unless it initiates some change. We

THE TYPE SUBJECTIVISM 6 1

should not notice the presence of Hght, did it not by im-
pinging upon bodies give forth effects or colours not seen in
free space ; nor is a gas visible unless it changes the hue of
the visual field. It is then not necessary to the truth of
subjectivism that the objective motions be endowed by the
perceiving sense-organ when they appear before it, with dis-
tinctive secondary quahties. The mind may very well be
essential to objects without contributing some positive
quahty to their constitution; mind, in short, need not be
conceived as in any way creating the objects. This we al-
ready saw in our definition of the present type. If the
objects appear unaltered to the mind, they appear just as
much, and the mind is just as essential. The proof, then, of
the subjectivity of the secondary qualities, is drawn from
the fact that they are objects of consciousness; and that it is
meaningless to think of them as outside that relation. To
be red is to look the way a red object looks, to be loud is to
sound the way a loud noise sounds, to be cool is to feel the
way a cool body feels. The subjective imphcation is
inevitable.

(2) Primary qualities, as Berkeley saw, are open to the
same treatment as secondary. Size, shape, motion are, when
seen, related to consciousness, and if we try to define them,
we must do so in terms of their appearance to us. It may be
that Berkeley himself was too much inclined to dwell on the
alterability of these data by the subject's point of view; but
in the beginning, and in the light of his purpose to persuade
the vulgar, this would be natural. Berkeley's theory of
vision is not necessary to subjectivism.

(3) The same reasoning holds of all properties of objects
of which we are aware by thought. Consider a tree. Its
size, shape, colour, texture, etc., are percepta; its past
growth is object of necessary inference; the laws which it

62 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

obeys are necessities of thought based upon sense-observa-
tion; and so on. There is not a namable characteristic
that is not definable as a function of thought or sense. The
various qualia of these characteristics, their specific dif-
ferences, are indeed not accounted for by such definition;
but that objection raises a very different issue. Subjec-
tivism may be quite true without accounting for every de-
tail. Its realistic opponents believe that their own realism
is true, but they do not claim that it alone accounts for the
manifold details of the world. In fact, we shall later see
that it is not of the slightest assistance in that regard. Only
a thoroughgoing pragmatist, if anybody at all, is entitled to
urge that such an inadequacy implies untruth; and prag-
matism is a type to be later examined. The one thing need-
ful is that aU objects and all phases of objects are when
defined, or described, stated wholly in terms of sense-data
or thought-data.

The gravamen of Berkeley's position has been said to lie
in the question, what is the meaning of the term existence
itself ? If you say what it means, you will say what it
signifies to you. Now an adversary might not allow that
question: he might say that it tacitly begs the issue, that its
appearance of rigorous logic, its analysis of imphed meaning,
contains the assumption that things are what they are to
me. This assumption was made, and should have been
acknowledged; it is nothing less than our first premise
above. But the applicability of that premise consists in the
fact that existence does have a significance for me. As there
is no shade of meaning in the English language which could
not be expressed, however circuitously, in the French, so
there is nothing about existence, or externality, or inde-
pendence which cannot be stated in the language of sub-
jectivism. Existence means some sort of presentation;

THE TYPE SUBJECTIVISM 63

independence may mean permanence through the changes of
the subject, or being a surd irreducible to, but felt by, the
subject, or being the cause of the subject's states, according
to one's view; but all of these signify some relation whose
formality does not prohibit its truth. So far as we know
these abstract considerations have never been met by the
enemy, unless, as we shall soon see, with the argmnent of
damnation. But the positive case for subjectivism is not
maledictory; it follows a simple, impersonal logic. In its
abstractness and its simpUcity lies its strength.

But does this positive argument yet cover all cases ?
There were objects before I was born, there are objects I
shall never see, nor perhaps even dream of; yes, even the
sKp of paper before me really contains a great deal more
than I shall ever know. Subjectivism meets all these doubts
with the same query. How do you know there were objects
before I was born ? By certain compulsory reasonings.
But these reasonings are none the less present to a subject,
for all their compulsoriness. Is the past event then naught
but a mental construction ? Now here the enemy seeks to
damn subjectivism; for " mental construction " savours of
blasphemy. We have said that the present type does not
assert that mind creates anything. The past event is object
of an inference forced upon mind. But did it not exist before
that inference was made ? Quite so. But still the old
question comes; what does that past existence mean ? It
is that which we have to take account of, that which makes
the present what it is, and is thereby related to our present
experience. " Related " is here used as vaguely, abstractly,
as you please, but none the less truly. Or put the objection
thus: what was the past event then when it had no " mean-
ing " ? We can still follow Berkeley in answering: " It was
that which if known would be known as so and so " — which

64 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

answer is relative to some intelligence. The objector will
always retaliate by pointing out something more in the
object than our definition has yet included; but every defi-
nite more can be included as fast as it is named. This pro-
cedure appHes to every object that can be distinguished, and
to every phase, state, or property of every object. All the
objections of this class, in fact, may be reduced to the one
characteristic objection that there is something of a non-
mental nature, something numerically distinct from any
mind. The enemy raise up instances, such as past time, or
hitherto unknown attributes of things, whose very essence
seems to place them beyond relation to the mind. No such
extreme cases are needed; the simplest present thing has
the same remoteness. It is never seen just at the moment
when the Hght-rays left it, and the message of those rays is
Uable to a thousand distorting influences. But all this
passes subjectivism by. All this does not deny that these
external things are definable as in relation to some mind.
Nimierical distinction between object and subject is quite
irrelevant; for it is no more requisite that objects should
themselves be miads than that the food in a man's mouth
should consist of teeth and tongues.

Yet these considerations are, to many thinkers, uncon-
vincing. So far as one may judge from the written word,
this is due to either or both of two reasons: — when, that is,
it is not due simply to temperamental bhndness. The first
reason is the inability of the subjectivist platform, by itself,
to suggest a solution of specific problems; the second is, the
presence of a correlative and opposing type, which has good
argmnents in its favour. This second reason constitutes a
distinct chapter in hmnan thought, and shall presently be
discussed; the first affords us an opportunity to point out
something of the defect of the type, which we now take.

THE TYPE SUBJECTIVISM 65

Subjectivism does not provide a means of distinguishing
between what is real and what is imaginary. It subsumes all
under the utterly general rubric " related to some mind."
The scheme would seem to be too simple and abstract to
explain the complexities of the world. Subjectivism de-
livers a truth, but at the cost of fertility and interest. We
have sought a plan of the universe, which shall mark out
differences, the distinctions of high and low, better and
worse, true and false; and we are told " all is related to
mind." Has this information any substance ? Are we not
asking for bread and given a stone ? It is hardly possible
to deny it. Indignation is the natural outcome, and we
revolt to the other side; the opposing type, realism, is now
in order. But indignation, even when righteous, may pre-
vent a man from seeing certain real merits of the sinner.
Subjectivism may well be true, without accounting for
everything. An abstract view is a false view, say the abso-
lute idealists; yet even they do not claim to account for the
concrete detail of reality. But, as they also urge, it is
enough that a view be on the whole true and consistent with
the known details. And this is the case with subjectivism.
There is no generally admitted distinction, such as that be-
tween real and unreal, which is inconsistent with it. The
difference between fact and fancy may be formulated as
that between a large consistent body of experience and a
momentary datum, out of harmony with the rest. Or it
might be put as the difference between God's thoughts and
our thoughts — or in any of a hundred ways. The nature of
the distinction is to be decided by a separate investigation;
it is quite irrelevant to the truth of subjectivism. This in-
difference is at once the type's merit and defect; it is true
but fruitless.

In alleging the infertiHty of subjectivism, we have singled
out for mention this particular pair of categories — real and

66 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

imaginary — for an important reason. It will appear as we
proceed that each type of philosophy, like each individual
man, has its pet vice. There is a critical point, up to which
it is palpably true, and beyond which it is palpably unprof-
itable, though no less true. We here get our first glimpse
of this curious phenomenon. The crux of subjectivism is
the differentiation of reaHty into two fields, the mental and
the objective. Or, since subjectivism originally possesses the
mental field, we may designate the objective side as the
critical point. It does not deny the reality of the objects,
but it cannot account for that reality from subjective
motives alone. The recalcitrant category can always, with
suitable additions, be defined in the language of the type —
as a rope will lend itself to the shape of any body. Never-
theless, the rope would give small clew to the composition
of that body and its internal diversity; nor does the formula
" content of the mind " explain how it is that some contents
are fact and others imaginary. More of this later: we but
hint at a trait whose significance will grow as we proceed.

The objections which are today being hurled with crush-
ing force against the type, are best understood in connection
with the type opposed and correlative to it. For there is a
system so coimected with subjectivism that, it would seem,
the truth of either impUes the falsity of the other. Already,
in fact, we have found our first tj^e supporting itself upon
the denial of this second; it now behooves us to see the
second supporting itseK upon the denial of the first. Only
after we have considered the positive theses of both, and
their mutual rebuttals, shall we be in a position to assess
their claims to truth, and to the satisfaction of the practical
and affective needs which have confirmed them in the hearts
of men. To this second type, then, the opposite of the first,
we turn.

CHAPTER IV

OBJECTIVISM

AT our title one may feel surprise; we adopt it in the
interest of truthfulness. This second type — as often
occurs in human history — has been misnamed, and the
misnomer is prejudicial to a fair estimation. " Realism,"
it is commonly called; but the term covers, as we shall see,
at least three quite distinct philosophies,* besides its mis-
leading connotation. As used in modern times, " realism "
is not characterized by standing for the reality of anything
denied by other views. Taken as it frequently is, to aver
the reality of the external world, it involves a gross absurd-
ity. Imagine our debt of gratitude to a system which, after
twenty centuries of unremitting investigation of reality, at
last demonstrated that there is a reality to investigate!
What the doctrine in question really defends is, that those
external objects are not reducible to subjective terms; it
is the character and the definition, not the actuality of
them, that is under discussion. Since the whole point of
the present type is that it is correlative and hostile to
subjectivism, it is better dubbed objectivism.

At the same time, the correlation is not symmetrical. The
first type puts the centre of gravity of the universe far over
on one side — the mental; the second repKes, not by put-
ting it equally far on the other side, but by striving to main-
tain an even balance between two ultimate and independent
terms, subject and object. It is dualistic or common-sense

* Platonic realism, dualistic realism, and " new " realism.
67

68 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

reaKsm that we are here discussing, and not the extreme
realism of the present day, which would reduce the conscious
subject itself wholly to objective terms. It may be a little
unsatisfactory to the symmetry-loving intellect to find the
issue thus askew; but the lop-sidedness is due to the fact
that the modern interests of man centre about himself. In
another age and another race, the skewness might be in
another direction, or might be supplanted by an even
balance. The particular bone about which the contention
rages is, however, relatively indifferent; it is the nature of
the controversy itself that concerns us. We pass then to
the examination of objectivism, or duaUstic reaHsm; the
doctrine that there are objects which are other than contents
of mind.

First come practical and emotional motives. If we all
desire self-expansion, as subjectivism impHed, it is no less
true that we grow by humbHng ourselves. We obediently
adapt ourselves to the weather, to the demands of society,
to the laws of bodily health; we study the apparent caprice
of Nature; in short, we adopt a realistic attitude. Knowl-
edge is power; and the one who gets knowledge must for the
moment suppress the aggressive instincts and passively
observe Nature's ways. This is only common sense; for
common sense is reahstic. The scientific impulse, too, works
in the same direction. The experimenter has been called a
questioner of Nature; and a questioner questions not him-
self but another. The scientific discoverer does not draw
forth from his mind what he discovers, nor deduce it from
his inner consciousness; he waits to see. He treats reality
as if it were independent of himself; that is why realists are
fond of appeahng to science. There is also a profound emo-
tional reason for dualistic realism: the reHgious one. To
worship something, is the craving of most men; and worship

OBJECTIVISM 69

is of a power not ourselves. Even if we identify this power
with our own deeper self, we must assume a realistic disposi-
tion towards it; we must in humiUty ascertain what it
imposes upon our conduct and regulate our Hves by the
standards it sets. If subjectivism seems to exalt the spiritual
above the material, objectivism at least may claim to pro-
mote more effectively the true rehgious attitude. When the
two foes, religion and science, unite with common sense to
urge a doctrine, that doctrine must be precious indeed to the
heart of man.

The reasoned defence of objectivism is analogous to that
of its counterpart. We shall then give it under two heads :
the negative, or refutation of subjectivism, and the positive
argument.

The negative case is a series of reductiones ad absurda.
In the first place, it is alleged that subjectivism would make
perceived objects numerically identical with the content of
perception. Objectivism here brings up the familiar in-
stances of the straight stick which in water looks crooked,
the rails which converge in the distance, and the vision of the
defunct star. In these cases the content of our perception is
obviously quite other than the object which is perceived.
Subjectivism has an answer ready: viz., that the evidence
which leads us to beheve that we do not see the object cor-
rectly, as well as that real object itself, is content of the
mind. For the most part that content is gained by infer-
ence, memory, and other experience than direct perception,
but it is just as subjective. Here appears what we already
urged: anything whatever can be put in subjective terms.
This first rebuttal is as if one said " It is not true that every
object on earth has a northerly portion, for the southerly
portion is not northerly." But even the southerly portion
has its own northerly side. The real force of the objection

70 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

lies not in the argument for a different thing external to the
mind, but in the inadequacy of subjectivism to account for
the distinction between a real object and an imaginary or
erroneous one. The seen crooked stick is other than the
inferred straight stick. All may be considered subjective;
but the formula is so general as not to explain the two kinds
of subjectivity which are named real and unreal.

An objection which looks more fimdamental is based
upon certain logical motives. (Cf. E. B. Holt, Concept of
Consciousness, p. lo). Definitions, it is asserted, must
always proceed by reduction of the complex to the simple.
E. g., water is 2H + O, sulphuric acid is 2H + S + 4O,
and so on. Herein is revealed a deep-lying asymmetry of
thought; for definition cannot work in the reverse direction.
We do not say, hydrogen is that which makes up water,
sulphuric acid, air, alcohol, etc. Now consciousness is a
very complex thing; much more so than the objects it is
aware of, stones, animals, clouds, the sea, et al. These
objects then should not be defined in terms of the subject;
the converse rather is true.

This claim raises certain questions which can only later
be discussed. The relative complexity of consciousness and
its objects is no easy matter to decide. But the truth of
subjectivism does not depend on the decision. There has
been some misunderstanding here. The recent foes of
idealism have asserted that that view (which they have
identified with subjectivism) regards a mind as a simple
" end-term " — a sort of unanalyzable substance or tertium
quid, nje ne sais quoi, as Descartes used to say, etc. This
may or may not be a just accusation. Certainly idealists
have written many volumes in describing this tertium quid.
But even if it were true, that mind is more complex than its
objects, that doctrine is not so ruinous as it appears. Let

OBJECTIVISM 71

mind be regarded as a certain very intricate grouping, or
" polyadic " relation, of objects and bodily reactions. The
uniqueness, the irreducibility, of that relation itself which
combines the terms and makes them aU into the one cate-
gory, consciousness, is quite unaffected. The relation itself
is as simple and ultimate as anything in the world. If the
polyad of consciousness be itself split up into other polyads,
the combination of the latter relations which constitutes
the former is still unique. This particularity cannot be re-
moved; as indeed we shall later see again, in discussing the
problem of individuality. There is always a legitimate
sense in which a complex entity may be called simple. Now
it is enough for the purpose of subjectivism that every object
be proved related to that simple uniting relation. And this
proof, of course, we regard as having been given already.
The asjonmetry of definitions, then, and the complexity of
consciousness, cannot deny our right to define objects in
terms of that entity.

Other well-known strictures are more severe. They take
the form of fixing absurd consequences upon subjectivism;
being caricatures, they are truly not argiiments but ana-
themas. Arranging them in what seems to us the order of
severity, we shall begin with one which would bring out the
absurdity by accepting the first premise but denying the
exclusive propriety of the second. Admitting that every-
thing may be identified with its relations, it suggests that we
substitute some other relation, in the second premise, than
the cognitive one. Thus: every horse walks on the ground.
Or at least a colt born on shipboard which dies ere it reaches
land would walk on the ground if it continued ahve and welL
Therefore horse is essentially related to the ground, a function
of the ground, or, to use the same terms as we use of mind,
the content of the ground. But this is nonsense, hence, etc.

72 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

The subjectivist need not be abashed. One hates to be
ridiculed; yet what is considered ridiculous in one age is not
always so deemed in another. If progress consists in learn-
ing that certain serious dogmas of the past are foohsh, it also
teaches us that what was once laughed at may become sober
truth: witness certain episodes in the history of science.
For our part, we unhesitatingly admit that anything can be
regarded as a function of anything else, provided " func-
tion " is taken broadly enough. Here Hes no question of
truth or error, but one of utiHty. And it is the imper-
tinence rather than the falsity of most of these relational
definitions that renders them absurd. Their truth is not
impugned.

The same confusion lurks in those " refutations " which
appeal to common sense. These have many forms, but their
substance is Httle more than the protest of Dr. Johnson,
when he kicked the stone to refute Berkeley. Subjectivism,
they declare, paints everything the colour of dreams; if it is
true we can never get out of our own skins; etc., etc. This
is of course but caricature. It would not be taken seriously
if the emotions were not engaged. For it simply pronounces
a formal curse upon subjectivism's ways. The curse is not
injurious; for when everything is called dream, dream is not
stigma, and our inability to pass beyond our own (mental)
skins need not limit the perambulation of our (mental)
organisms. As well say that man, shut up behind eyes,
ears, etc., can never travel abroad.

The criticism usually most dreaded is what is called
solipsism. If all is a function of my mind, other persons are
fimctions of it; yes, God himself (to a believer) is a function
of me. So great is the fear of this consequence that the sub-
jectivist here generally renounces his position. Even the
conscientious Berkeley in substance did so; Schopenhauer,

OBJECTIVISM 73

frank enough to admit that solipsism is an impregnable
fortress, spoke niysteriously of passing around it {World as
Will and Idea, bk. 2 (tr. Haldane and Kemp), p. 136). It is
obvious that considerations of value here come into play:
the whole criticism is really an appeal to emotion. We love
other persons, we need them, and we do as a matter of fact
act upon the assumption of their reahty. And the present
age is probably more alive to this than any other. The
spread of democratic feeling renders the very word solus as
much feared, as exconamunication in the pahny days of the
Church. But we may easily imagine some Asiatic despot of
olden times to whose habit of mind soHpsism would be suit-
able. And in any case we must not unquestioningly take
the prevaiHng temper of the age for the truth; for though a
presumption in favour of truth is undeniable, we must re-
member that every time has its pet superstitions as well as
its favourite insights. And further, it is just possible that
solipsism itself has been misunderstood. We must examine
the doctrine before we allow it to intimidate us; for if
subjectivism is correct and if solipsism is a consequence of
it, solipsism cannot be rejected. It constitutes a test of the
good faith of subjectivism.

We have seen that it does not take away the reality of
physical objects, to consider them dependent upon a per-
ceiving mind. In what way that is relevant, now, do persons
differ from such objects ? Are they any more outside the
mind ? It must be here remembered that " outside " means
" irreducible to, or other than, the content of." " Outside "
cannot then have degrees. Physical objects are no more,
and no less, other than my mind, than are my fellows. It
is not by greater externaUty to me that the latter are dif-
ferentiated from physical objects, but by the comprehensive-
ness of their nature, their qualities, their value. These

74 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

attributes, however, are quite irrelevant to the question of
externality. A friend may be conceived as dependent upon
my mind in a certain way without thereby having less value
or dignity or richness of content than my mind has. A very
weighty matter may hang from a small hook. As realistic
critics are wont to urge, the same logic applies to the rela-
tion of other persons with my mind, that holds of external
physical things in the same connection. And it is this very
fact that renders solipsism quite unobjectionable. Such de-
pendence as subjectivism urges, militates in no way against
the reality, the value, or the character of the dependent
object. As the world of Nature is no less subHme for being
hooked on to my mind, so is the social world no less what
it is, for being encircled by the mental net. Nor would the
Deity himself lose one whit in value if thus attached to the
smallest of his creatures.

It seems as if we must venture to consider the attempts to
refute solipsism as misconceived. And among the refuters,
idealists perhaps outnumber all others; the denial of this
view being indeed one of the differentiae of idealism from
subjectivism. They have of course a perfect right to try to
demonstrate the existence of other selves than one's own.
It does not, to be sure, seem conclusive on this point to say
that we directly experience other minds in the felt struggle
of wills, or in social cooperation. For if direct experience is
made the ground, there appears no reason why we are not
immediately aware of another self in an automatic mannikin
which, clumsily managed, kicks us. No doubt the carefully
articulated doctrines of Royce and Baldwin, based on the
psychological genesis of the consciousness of self, deserve
thorough study; but at present they must be shelved until
later. Meanwhile, they do not in the least refute solipsism.
For that doctrine admits all the other selves you please, but

OBJECTIVISM 75

adds that all can be read as content of one single subject, my
own self.

Another attempt to refute solipsism avows that it should
go further, and narrow down my own mind to the present
momentary experience. For we live in time ; the past is not,
nor the future; the only actual thing is the present event,
and I am truly but my present conscious state. How then
could the great universe hang from this tiny eyelet ? But
we might as well ask, how can the Kttle human eye embrace
the sidereal distances ? It is not the smallness of the mind
that would deny its supporting power. It may be cut down
as far as you please ; to a " specious present " of two seconds
or to an infinitesimal instant — whatever that may be. It
is as big as it is, and it is really here; an iron hook holds a
twenty-ton mass as well, if the hook is written down a com-
pound of invisible atoms. This argument holds no real
penalty; Kke subjectivism's own arguments from damnation,
it has no terrors when firmly grasped.

Nor need we fear the objection that replies to solipsism by
asking: which self do you choose on which to hang the
world ? One self is just as good as any other. If one is
chosen, the choice must be arbitrary, and therefore an op-
ponent may choose a different instance, and join issue; for
both cannot be true. This argument is at bottom an appeal
to Hegelian dialectic. For if A is described in terms of a
relation to B and at the same time B in terms of a relation to
A, each description may be true,, and there need be no in-
consistency short of that dialectic upon which absolute
idealism impales everything. Such dialectic must later be
met; the point here is that for any thinker who does not
resort to it the mutual relativity of the diverse selves is not
an obstacle to solipsism. Any material structure whose
parts support one another offers an analogy: e. g., an arch or

76 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

catenary. The truth of no one description interferes with
the truth of another. With this we may leave the topic of
reducing subjectivism to the absurd.

The last criticism of type i which we shall mention, forms
a transition to the positive case for objectivism. The sub-
jective account seems rather strained, when we try to fit it
to past events, unperceived objects, and the like. The ten-
milHonth decimal of ir, the emotions of a castaway dying
alone, can scarcely be equated to any content of my mind.
Impressively remote as such instances are, does not sub-
jectivism fail to touch their centre, with its formula " they
are what you would experience if you were situated thus and
so " ? These inaccessible contents now are, or have been;
hypothetical phrases, however skillful, never succeed in
indicating actual existence. This is true, indeed, urges the
reahst, with regard to present perceived objects; for this
table before me contains much that I shall never know.
But the inadequacy of the subjective formula is more ob-
vious with instances which our immediate experience does
not compass. The crucial example of this sort, is perhaps,
at the other extreme of remoteness, viz., the brain itself.
Who has perceived his own brain ? Least of all himself;
yet he credits it with reality. But, repHes the subjectivist,
he has thought of it; it is object-of-his-thought. Yes, but
his thought depends upon the processes of that very brain;
the brain determines the thought. The brain's reality must
then consist in more than being a thought-object. The ex-
ternal, independent being of such things must surely be
granted. And therewith subjectivism seems at last to
break down.

The objection is, we beUeve, the gravest which type i has
to meet. In fact, the type here reaches that critical point of
which we spoke in Chapter III. The conditional " would-if "

OBJECTIVISM T]

may be tru^, so far as it goes, but how can it go far enough ?
There appears to be a definite, positive character about
things which does not take the subjective paint. To Berke-
ley's question about the meaning of existence, objectivism
now answers " existence means that which is beyond the
relation to my mind." If subjectivism is to meet this new
turn it must be transformed. As water heated to 512°
Fahrenheit preserves it existence by adopting a new form,
so subjectivism at this its critical point must resort to a
novel point of view. And as the Hquid becomes a gas, so the
substance of subjectivism at this juncture assumes an airier
texture. By what device is it enabled to do this ? By re-
sorting to a new and subtler category: potentiality. Recall
Mill's definition of matter as the " permanent possibihty of
sensation." Subjectivism says that an actual past event,
when not really related to the mind by knowledge, is an in-
stance of the potentiality of such relationship; a specific
potentiality, too, such that the knowledge, if it comes, must
be of a certain definite character. The lonely sailor's pangs,
and the uncomputed decimal of ir, are to me definite poten-
tial objects. And potentiality, as here used, we must re-
member, is a positive concept. It means that certain terms
await being known to my mind. They may never be known ;
just so the pull of gravitation makes the slate tend to fall
from the roof, though it may never actually fall. Perhaps
we are told that this possibihty would have no sense unless
there were minds in whom it might be fulfilled, and there-
fore the past existence of this earth as a molten mass could
not, when there were no minds, be such a potentiality. That
is a misunderstanding of the term " potentiality." The
word designates a positive attribute: when certain condi-
tions — the presence of attentive minds — are fulfilled, the
cognitive relation will supervene. Such, at least, seems to

78 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

be a usage of the category common enough to justify our
appropriation of it for this occasion. Now the actuality of
the past event may always be truly described by this attri-
bute. To be beyond relation to the mind, is to have poten-
tial relation, rather than actual, to the mind. If there is
anything about " existence " which " potential " does not
plumb, that remainder in turn must be given an intelligible
meaning; and that meaning must be stated in terms of
actual or possible himian experience. The molten earth of a
million miUion years ago, and my own brain-cells now, are
truly influences, potent in the stream of our present Kfe,
which would guide us, did we seek the information, up to the
goal of beHef in these objects of thought. Subjectivism
does not deny the reality of them. It admits it, but straight-
way adds, that they all have the attribute, potential relation
to a mind. And let them determine the course of our
thought never so stringently, they will hardly by that means
escape relationship to our thought. The transcendent, the
external, the independent, the remote — all these are by
the device of " potentiaUty " attached to the mind. How-
ever thin be the thread which binds, it is as genuine a bond
as the direct contact of observation. Thus subjectivism pre-
serves its truth, as physical energy accomphshes its con-
servation, by turning to the potential when threatened with
destruction.

Subjectivism, then, is not refuted by the case of the actual
and unknown object. It is hit, and hit hard; but though it
staggers, it does not fall. Yet it keeps its feet only by cling-
ing to an external support. Hereafter it must use the
category of potentiaUty as its crutch; not a convenient
instrument of progress, perhaps, but usable for purposes of
locomotion. And if the foe says that potentiaUty is but a
lame substitute for actuaUty, let us remember that since

OBJECTIVISM 79

everything that reality means can be expressed by its aid,
however awkwardly, subjectivism never fails to meet the
demands of the real world for description. It may not — to
vary the figure — always have its cash on hand, but the
cheque on the bank of actual sense-experience is good
enough. Nevertheless, subjectivism has reached its critical
point in that it has to treat with these unknown objects in-
directly and by a medium. Another possible way of treating
reality has appeared, and a more economical way; for the
objectivist need not trouble himself with the clumsy for-
mula " possibility of experience." That phrase of course
would not be clumsy if it aided us in understanding the
character of past history, of our brain-cells, et al.; it is not
its length but its infertility, that renders it void. Where
we are concerned with objects which we can see and touch,
the formula " reality is content of my mind " is in its way
useful; for it tells us to get directly in touch with reality.
But where the subject-matter of inquiry is beyond vision or
thought, " potential " sight and inference is unprofitable.
We do not wish to dwell upon a relationship to mind which
does not reveal the character of those objects. Subjectivism,
in fine, is unable to give any clew to the character of that
world which extends far beyond human experience. Really
subjective though that world is — for subjectivism is true
and irrefutable — it is not its subjectivity that explains its
make-up and behaviour. Another factor has intruded it-
self, which must be invoked if we are to do that, viz., the
character of the objects as they are in themselves, and
neglecting though not denying their relation to minds.

To insist upon this other factor is the positive contribu-
tion of objectivism. Unable to slay its opponent, it may
disentangle itself from the deadly struggle, get upon its own
legs, and utter its message. We have now to hear what it
says.

8o PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

The affirmative argument has been used by many, viz.,
Kant (Refutation of Idealism, Critique of Pure Reason, tr.
Mtiller, Supp. 21), G. E. Moore {Mind, 1903, 433-453), G.
S. Fullerton {Introduction to Philosophy, ch. Ill), H. Liide-
mann {Das Erkennen und die Welturtheile, pp. 88-89) ^^^
others. It has two parts: (i) the object is other than the
subject, (2) the object is independent of the subject.

The first thesis is proved by adoption of the enemy's tac-
tics. Give the subjectivist free play; offer no objection
when he says that " every object is for a subject." Then
reply: a relation may be read in either direction. If, in
knowledge, object is a function of the subject, that truth
implies the converse: the subject is a function of the object.
All cannot be put within the subject, for the subject would
then have no relation to anything and there could be no
knowledge. Knowledge is of something. " If there is
knowledge there must first be something to be known."
(H. A. Prichard, Kant's Theory of Knowledge, p. 118).
Hence the distinction, the otherness, between subject and
object, is patent; the one term is as ultimate as the other.
This first argument turns the tables on Berkeley, but it
must be noticed that it is a moderate position. It does not
overturn them, reducing all to a function of the object. It is
not an attempt at monism, as subjectivism was; it meets
the extreme by a temperate attitude. Two irreducible kinds
of being, it insists there are: minds and objects or things.
Being no radical position, it does not have to resort to so
elaborate a defence as the two premises of subjectivism;
it does not need to raise the question of " internal " or
" external " relations. For if relations are internal, then
subject is as much dependent on object, as object upon sub-
ject, and if they are external, then object and subject are
independent. The whole point of the plea is for dualism;

OBJECTIVISM 8 1

it insists upon numerical distinction between subject and
object.

The second purpose is to prove the independence of the
object — which has generally been understood to mean that
objects exist when or where there is no subject aware of
them. That this is so, seems clear enough: science and
common sense are based upon the belief in past history of
the earth, unknown stars, and all such instances as we
noticed under the last objection to subjectivism. Objects
were before we knew them, and they endure through the
interstices of our consciousness. It is not so much that this
unknown existence is demonstrated, as that we dare not
doubt it. It cannot be proved that the tree in the forest
remains when no one sees it; that it does not remain, is not
self-contradictory. It does not contradict anything that we
observe, that the tree should vanish when we cease to be
aware of it. It is simply that it would do violence to our
assumption of the uniformity of Nature, the regularity of
causation, and other fundamental axioms dear to the heart
of reason. These axioms are, as our logic text-books teach
us, incapable of demonstration, and consequently the falsity
of what goes against them is incapable of demonstration.
And as they are in this sense dogmatic, so is our belief in the
reality of unknown objects dogmatic. Of course this does
not mean that it is mistaken, or even doubtful. Objectivism
is quite right in declaring the independence of many objects
upon mind, in the sense that the former exist in the absence
of any actual cognitive relation to the latter.

But this sort of independence is not inconsistent with the
truth of subjectivism : that we have already seen. The les-
son which it really reads to its rival is that we cannot tell by
means of the subjectivist formula what objects do perdure,
or did precede our minds, and what the character of those

82 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

objects is or was. This is not a matter of independence, but
of inability to answer a certain question, to satisfy search for
information. When, then, the objectivist speaks of the
independence of external things upon my consciousness, he
cannot, if he is correctly interpreted, be refuted. And here
we must notice an attempted rebuttal of his thesis which
really shows the unassailable nature of that thesis.

It runs somewhat as follows: — objects cannot be inde-
pendent of the subject, or the subject's idea. For if they
could, then the relation between the nature of the object and
the content of our idea of it would be one of indifference.
The " mental state " that would go with the perception of a
wild bull might just as well be the same as the one appro-
priate to a glass of milk. If the object does not depend upon
the idea, then the idea is never a sure indication of the
object. But it is. Hence, etc. (Royce, World and Individuai,
I, pp. 134-136).

Of course the argument proves only that in correct knowl-
edge, and granting already two things, object and idea, the
former is determined by the latter. This assumption of
correct knowledge however is equivalent to the assumption
of an instance where object and idea correspond {whatever
that may mean). Given correspondence, then each must
determine the other. But the reahst's position is that there
need not be correct knowledge wherever there is an object.
There may be error, or ignorance, or total absence of aware-
ness. The alleged refutation of realism assumes the one
particular instance where alone reaHsm would grant the
point, and argues from this to other instances where it
would not grant the assumption. The fallacy here seems to
be the converse fallacy of accident.

Such in outhne is the case for objectivism. It is now our
task to appraise the respective merits of the two first types.

OBJECTIVISM 83

It has so far seemed that they may very well both be true, if
properly defined; but the battle between them has been,
and today is, severe, and carried out with exquisite refine-
ments not yet mentioned. Not easily could our brief adjudi-
cation of their claims, as above set forth, be accepted by the
present-day partisan. We must make up our minds to a
more penetrating analysis of the quarrel. And this will
repay us the more, because out of the bitter antagonism has
grown a third type, whose function as peacemaker entitles
it to a distinct place among the ever-recurring philosophical
reforms. Our next topic is then the balancing of the first
two and the consequent third type.

CHAPTER V

THE SOLVENT: PURE EXPERIENCE

THE revolt of objectivism against the subjective phi-
losophy leads to a reaction on the part of the latter, and
this to a new reaction against the subjectivist, and so on
indefinitely. The motives of revolt and reaction are both
emotional and intellectual.

ReaHsm sees perfectly well that its rival's claim to reduce
all to spirit is inconsequential. The kind of spirit into
which the world turns when it is seen to be " content of
mind " has as little of the spirituality for which religion
yearns, as has that fine matter into which the materialist
analyzes the soul. Nor does subjectivism gratify the in-
stinct for self -expansion; am I any the greater because the
world is content of my consciousness ? As well say that an
angle of 30° becomes greater when it includes within its
sides the sun and moon. And as for those fleeting moments
of reverie when all the world is felt to be within me, they dis-
solve before the activities of Uving and the scientific atti-
tude; they may well be pathological. Subjectivism has not
fulfilled its promise to the instincts of man. Nor has it done
better for philosophy's age-long quarrels. We have seen
that it solves no antinomies. On the contrary, it has added
new difficulties. It has unearthed a new realm within phi-
losophy; a reahn whose dissensions are no less than those of
the other parts — viz., theory of knowledge; and one ap-
parently disconnected with the outer world, the universe
which religion contemplates and science investigates. Away

84

THE SOLVENT: PURE EXPERIENCE 85

with this specious and self-centred attitude ! Let us betake
ourselves to the open air where reside the real external
objects. ReaHsm studies not the self but the world. Sub-
jectivism's map is but a thin line drawn across the paper;
realism will fill in specific outHnes, colours, contours, details
that make it profitable. Such we may suppose are the
objectivist's feehngs.

On the other hand, subjectivism sees quite as clearly that
objectivism has garnered no more than itself, for the re-
hgious needs. Where is the realistic proof (or even disproof)
of God, or of any potent spirit ? ExternaHty is not good
enough to worship. Does realism's formula " independent
and external to mind " contain a single germ of fruitfulness
more than subjectivism's ? As the latter gave us no spirit
that was worth taking, so this new phrase reveals no char-
acter of that external world worth knowing. Is the external
more fitted for scientific investigation than the internal
object ? More interesting ? More stimulating to the spirit
of research ? Not in the sUghtest degree. One may be a
good scientist and at the same time a subjectivist: of
Poincare, Pearson, Mach, and other philosophical scientists
of our day, how many are reahsts ? And why is not the
history of a mind's contents as interesting as the history of
an external world ? In truth, it is not the question " of
what is it the history ? " but " what are the events of that
history ? " that furnishes the interest. And reahsm gives
no clew to these events; it is every whit as formal and
unproductive as its correlative type.

In respect to such motives and needs, the balance seems
to be pretty even. And indeed the same is true of the intel-
lectual grounds of these types: there is a perfect deadlock
between the arguments. This we have now to make plain.

86 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

Objectivism forever repeats the accusation that subjec-
tivism overlooks the distinction between the mental and the
external; subjectivism forever rephes that there is a deeper
unity beneath the distinction. The one distinguishes within
an identity, the other identifies through the distinction.

Granting, perhaps, that all is at last reduced to mental
content, reaUsm points out that this content still implies an
objective reference. To distinguish illusion or fancy from
reality, we must admit that some contents, subjective
though they are, at least refer to an external object, while
others have no such reference. This object as it is in itself
is the reahty; it must be distinguished from the object as it
appears to us, i. e., the content-of-the-mind. Our knowl-
edge, then, does not directly touch objects as they are in
themselves ; we have before us only mental content. Things
themselves are not presented but represented; and thus
arise the " representative " theory of knowledge and the
doctrine of the thing-in-itself . That theory is but the con-
sequence of the distinction between content-of-mind and
external reahty. And encouraged by this creation, objec-
tivism seeks out new arguments from those ambiguous
phenomena, the secondary quahties, from colour-bHndness,
from memory, from illusions, etc. These all emphasize the
difference between subject and object. Smells, tastes,
sounds and colours are not in the objects themselves. They
might be; there is no contradiction in it, but the evidence of
science makes the supposition unnecessary. The colour-
blind man sees gray where there is red. We remember the
date of our graduation from school — but the event is no
longer, like the memory, a present fact. Sometimes too we
remember what never was. And we see the moon colossal
on the horizon, the fly on the window as a bird in the dis-
tance, and in many other ways falsely perceive. All these

THE SOLVENT: PURE EXPERIENCE 87

cases point to the disparity of our mental state with the
reality. Perhaps a more striking one is that suggested by
Professor Pearson's note {Grammar of Science, 3d ed., p.
394) . If a man per impossible flew away from the earth with
a velocity exceeding that of Hght, he would see events on
earth transpiring backward. This picture certainly would
not be his own imagination, but a deliverance of vision. Yet
it could not be called anything but subjective; for time is
irrevocable. Must the subjectivist not then admit that
the representative theory of knowledge is correct, and
objectivism justified?

Subjectivism, however, finds it easy to reduce this differ-
ence to the absurd. If the mind and its object are really
distinct, you have two ultimate substances, even as had the
Cartesians and the OccasionaKsts, and the other schools of
the seventeenth-century philosophy; and we know what per-
plexities, disagreements, insoluble problems they got into.
(This is rather a favourite argument today, by the way,
with non-sub jectivists; abolish the Cartesian duaUsm!)
How can two so disparate things as res cogitans and res
extensa affect each other — as in voluntary movement of the
arm — or if they do not so, how is it they happen to be
parallel ? The efforts of Spinoza and Leibnitz and their
successors up to the present time, to solve these difl&cult
questions, have not resulted in any consensus. Above all,
how can we explain knowledge, if objects are never directly
present to consciousness ? Sooner or later we must attain
the objects, or skepticism results. If we never have the
objects themselves, how should we know that what we do
have — our thoughts, our sense-data — are different from
the objects ? Reason at least must be capable of knowing
the things as they are in themselves. If we do not admit
this, then the " thing-in-itself " becomes a meaningless

88 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

form of words. No : it is fatal to knowledge, to insist on
thoroughgoing distinction between the content of my mind
and the object it knows. Sometimes at least the two must
coincide. The distinction must not exclude identity. All
the distinctions, in fact, urged by dualism may be admitted;
but along with them must go that immediate union of mind
and its object without which there could be no knowledge
at all.

But do not the divergences preclude the identity between
subjective state and objective fact ? No, we answer: the
same colour — so far as we can see — may be found in two
oranges, the same name may belong to two different men.
There is nothing, short of dialectical arguments which we
shall later consider, to show a priori that two things may not
be identical in some ways and at the same time different in
other ways. As two circles can intersect in part, so may the
tree which I see be in part coincident with the image of it
which I entertain. The shape of it may be identical in both
instances, while the estimated distance from me is not the
true distance, and while the colour of the leaves is but a
product of my sense-organs. The duaUties which the repre-
sentative theory insists upon need not rule out the identity
for which a direct, presentative theory stands. And even
the duahties may be brought under the subjective formula.
We need only to distinguish between one kind of mental
content and another kind. In correct perception or thought
or memory, we may say that the object is the content pres-
ent here and now in the mind; in illusions, imaginations,
and the like, we may say that the real object is a species of
potential content of the mind: that which we should see if
we but patiently awaited evidence. How this last is put,
depends upon one's theory of error. Subjectivism may
always return to its original device of employing potential-

THE SOLVENT: PURE EXPERIENCE 89

ity. The distinction between object and mental state, upon
which objectivism justly insists, becomes only a distinction
between kinds of mental content. It may be described as
that between what we perceive and what we infer — for the
inferred is what would be perceived by a perfect observer;
or it may be straightway put in terms of actual and poten-
tial. But ever the distinction is brought within the mind,
and the exclusion of objects from mind is annulled.

If the advantage does not, from the epistemological point
of view, incline to either, no more does it from the meta-
physical side. Subjectivism could not give any indication
as to the contours of reality; it found its critical point in that
very conception, reality, which it would define. For sub-
jectivism, reducing external objects always to potentially
mental objects, left untouched just that element of actuality
upon which its opponent most insisted. Taxed with doing
so, the subjectivist returned to the charge with the same
weapoiis, and reduced this residue in turn to a further poten-
tial object-of-mind; and indeed, however often he was
taxed with inadequacy, he would once more make up the
deficit in the same way. Ever something more lies before
him, and as fast as he puts his net over it, still something
more arises. Yet never is anything precisely named which
cannot be brought under his formula. And the objectivist
is in a like situation. He cannot explain how the two dif-
ferent ultimate entities, object and idea, res extensa and res
cogitans, come to fuse in direct knowledge. He must always
find some distinction between idea and object — else it will
not be true that the one knows the other. If knowledge is
bare identity of the two, it is no relation at all; it will not be
I-knowing-the-object, but just I or just the object. And he
can always find some distinction, for doubtless perfect union
of idea and thing is never by man obtained. Yet he will

90 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

again be pointed to the identity of idea and object — with-
out which there could be no knowledge. As the subjec-
tivist's critical point was the difference between idea and
fact, so the objectivist's is the fusion, the identity, of them.
Either when confronted with the critical attribute can de-
clare that his own description may be added; but he can-
not make his description destroy the truth of the other or
account for it.

Again the balance remains even between these deadly
rivals. The issue, at bottom, centres around the sameness
and the difference of the mind's contents and the real object.
Both attributes are correct descriptions. But if the advocate
of either one would deny the positive contention of the other,
he is open to refutation. And it is because, owing to the in-
herent partisanship of human nature, each antagonist does
just this, that his doctrine must be followed by a revolt to
the other side, which revolt must for the same reason lead to
a counter-revolt, and so on. Thus the quarrel becomes self-
perpetuating: it leads to an endless tilt. The resulting
deadlock is exactly what we find in the philosophical
discussions of our time.

But this deadlock is not the whole of the phenomenon.
Each view, however right in its positive contention, is, as
James used to say, " thin "; it is infertile to explain any
specific fact of the universe. At its critical point it becomes
gaseous. Neither sheds any light upon those problems
which concern man's more lasting interests; neither min-
isters to those practical and emotional motives which
secretly urge its advocate to espouse its cause. As we shall
learn, when all the evidence from the study of the various
types is in, these two traits of infertility and exclusive-
ness are closely related; at present we only note their
influence.

THE SOLVENT: PURE EXPERIENCE 9 1

Our diagnosis is confirmed by the fact that no one, so far
as we know, whether subjectivist or objectivist, has ever got
beyond that issue itself to tell us anything that it involves
about the structure and functioning of the real world. The
original philosophical problem, which alone gave justifica-
tion and significance to our whole inquiry, has disappeared
from view.

But this analysis will of course hardly be convincing to
those who have staked their philosophical Ufe upon one side
of this issue. Probably the hardened epistemologist will
accuse us of treating the whole affair too flippantly. We
have made it a formal a priori sort of thing, whereas he will
declare it to be an empirical question, soluble only by the
" Uving detail " of fact. Of course neither side has yet
triumphed, for there is no general consensus; but wait until
more empirical evidence is collected! Unfortunately, we
reply, we have waited some two thousand years; from the
time of Protagoras until now. And as for empirical argu-
ments, we admit that we know of none that have not been
already mentioned. But further, according to the very
nature of the problem, it seems that no evidence drawn from
the specific properties of objects could be decisive. For it is
not the question whether objects are long, or short, round,
permanent, effective, or otherwise concretely qualified, but
whether any of these attributes imply externality or inter-
nality to the mind. The issue itself is, we must conclude,
quite formal and barren.

To those who are sincerely interested in the philosophical
problem, the situation cannot be other than intolerable. Of
course we may get used to anything — as we are used to dis-
ease and death; and one may say, why fret about the
inevitable ? But men do endeavour to diminish the death-
rate and to prevent sickness; and we are confronted by a

92 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

somewhat analogous task. We need not rehearse the
motives which have led to our undertaking. Enough that
some outlet must be discovered.

Short of skepticism, there seem to be two possible escapes.
One might either combine these two views or reject both,
adopting some third view which has no duahsm. The syn-
thetic method we shall take up later; we now consider the
simplifying mode of solution. It has been offered, not many
decades since, as the one way out of the modern impasse.
It goes by the name of the " Philosophy of Pure Expe-
rience." This type is quite modern, for it is essentially a
reform wherein philosophy has become self-conscious. It
was offered by Avenarius and others with the avowed object
of abohshing the above epistemological controversies (cf.
Der Menschliche Weltbegriff, p. i). To the whole system of
this difi&cult writer we do not attempt to be just; a certain
influential current which is found in it is our sole concern.
This current has spread rapidly, combining in other writers
with other currents, yet retaining a dominant r61e: as for
instance in the writings of Professors Ward, James, Dewey,
Petzoldt, and Mach. Roughly, it is the doctrine that the
dualism of iimer-outer, or subject-object, is philosophi-
cally unjustified. Ultimately, reaUty is neither; it is
" experience."

Practical and emotional motives for this view are not
obvious. The reason is that it tends, as we shall see, to
obliterate distinctions. The self, matter, past history of a
planet, men's thoughts — all these are melted down, fused,
into the one broth of " experience." The difficulties of
dualism are to be avoided by our denying that the duahsm
is real; all is of one substance, " experience." Now practi-
cal and affective motives use distinctions of good and bad;
they seek specific gains and are directed towards specific

THE SOLVENT: PURE EXPERIENCE 93

objects. The concept " pure experience " furnishes by its
own power no clews to guide our discrimination; it does not
indicate the relative advantage of this or that part of reahty.
It leaves that to the unfolding of experience in our particular
lives; and doubtless rightly. But in thus leaving it, the
concept shows its indifference to all particular instincts. It
holds out no promise to the rehgious impulse, to the search
for happiness, the instinct for self-expansion, the spirit of
scientific research; whatever we find we find, and all ahke
are to be dubbed experience. It is as if it said " Experience
is what you find when you consult your experience ";
which amounts to no more than the command " Search! "
The grounds of this third type are, as far as we can ascertain,
wholly theoretical.

We proceed, then, to define and examine those grounds.
In the title " pure experience," the word " pure " indicates
that reahty in the last analysis is neither subjective nor
objective. "Pure" is an eliminating term. However posi-
tive reahty still may be, its material is not to be described
by any other universal characteristic than just " expe-
rience." Its reaUstic opponents are wont to say that this
last word carries a subjective sense; adherents of the view
deny it. The doctrine resembles subjectivism, however, in
one respect; it accepts imphcitly what we have called the
principle of internal relations. A thing, a mind, a quahty, is
to be estimated in the hght of the context in which it Ues;
according to a rather favourite phrase, in the " warp and
woof of experience." Since all the parts and particulars of
this great garment of experience are thus thoroughly inter-
penetrating, there can be no reahties which are not some-
how essentially related to that section of experience which is
called mind. In this sense, to be sure, everything is subjec-
tive. But the experience-type does not deem this statement

94 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

any more fundamental than its converse, that minds are
essentially related to their objects; it would be as true to
call it an objective as a subjective type. In point of fact
neither appellation is true, for it regards each of our first two
systems as one-sided and therefore /a/^e. Since all things are
interrelated, any part or element is as such unreal; an
abstraction from the continuous mass, not more actual than
is the exact cubic foot of water in the rushing stream.
Neither alternative then is correct; the present view, in-
stead of combining both, tends to look exclusively at their
mutual rebuttals and therefore cuts under both. Reality
is not so much an amalgam of subject and object, preserving
both, as a tertium quid, a matrix out of which either may be
carved. And the matrix is neither one nor the other, but
"nur ein drittes" (Avenarius, Der Menschliche Weltbegriff,
p. 2). Or we may say that subject and object are knots in
the tree of reality, not separable, not independent, not ulti-
mate:— who can take the knot out of the living tree?
(Cf. Avenarius, op. cit., p. 65, fine print; also p. 79, and
p. 84.

The type is then emphatically monistic; a pantheism
wherein God is replaced by Experience. The monism is con-
sciously adopted as a preventive of the Cartesian dualism
and its attendant difficulties. (Cf. Ward's Naturalism and
Agnosticism, ist ed., vol. II, part IV, lect. 14.) Its motive
is thus an exclusive one. It does not allow the bifurcation of
experience into object and subject to develop freely, and
then find a means of synthesizing them. It precludes the
bifurcation. Resembling absolute idealism in its organic
conception of reality, it differs therefrom in not accepting
this particular differentiation or including its two products.
Hereby it tends to look like a blank, colourless affair, a
negation, a worship of some mystical entity. But let us see.

THE SOLVENT: PURE EXPERIENCE 95

Perhaps the initial difficulty of comprehending the position
Kes in our inveterate tendency to interpret the word " expe-
rience " straightway into either " somebody's mental state "
or " objects," physical or conceptual. Such meaning is
however read in, not actually present in the facts. The
interpreter is like a real estate agent who looks upon a piece
of land as of so much financial value and cannot naively see
it as just land. One of the defenders of the experience-
philosophy thus meets the difficulty. "First of all, it will
be asked: 'If experience has not conscious existence, if it
be not partly made of " consciousness," of what then is it
made ? Matter we know, and thought we know, but neutral
and simple "pure experience" is something we know not at
all. Say what it consists of, for it must consist of something
— or be willing to give it up ! '

" To this challenge the reply is easy. Although for
fluency's sake I myself spoke early in this article of a stuff
of pure experience, I have now to say that there is no general
stuff of which experience at large is made. There are as
many stuffs as there are ' natures ' in the things experienced.
If you ask what any one bit of pure experience is made of,
the answer is always the same : ' it is made of that, of just
what appears, of space, of intensity, of flatness, brownness,
heaviness, or what not.' Shadworth Hodgson's analysis
here leaves nothing to be desired. Experience is only a col-
lective name for all these sensible natures, and save for time
and space (and, if you hke, for ' being ') there appears no
universal element of which all things are made." (James,
Essays in Radical Empiricisjhjppi 26-27.)

As described by the above extract, the philosophy of ex-
perience seems to mean two things, a negative and a posi-
tive. The positive part consists of the inculcation of
empiricism. To find out what reaKty is, consult it; and

96 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

describe it as it offers itself in experience. This is that part
of the doctrine which is contributed by the second word of
its title. On this side, the doctrine is fitly named Radical
Empiricism; it is not directed primarily against objectivism
or subjectivism, but is a general plan or method of phi-
losophizing. Such a plan, chronologically associated with
the remainder of the present type, is from a logical, analyti-
cal point of view quite distinct therefrom. The negative
side, which bears upon the problems raised by our first two
types, is alone here pertinent. Consequently we dismiss the
radical-empiricism motive for the present, promising to take
it up in a later chapter (Ch. VIII) . Our sole concern now is
with the first word of the title; the meaning of " pure."

As to that, the case seems clear. " Inner " experience is
a fiction. The hypothesis of " introjection," which beheves
in the inner feehng as over against the outer world, is a
fallacious addition of philosophers. Not both inner and
outer, but neither — that is the supposition we are to make,
which will purge away the corruptions of philosophy. " The
term ' introjection ' we owe to a brilHant thinker but re-
cently taken from us, the late Richard Avenarius of Zurich.
The h)^othesis to which it refers is familiar enough and as
old apparently as human speech; it is substantially what
Professor Tylor has called animism. But to Avenarius be-
longs the merit of making the epistemological bearings of
the primitive doctrine clearer than they were before. The
essence of introjection consists in applying to the immediate
experience of my fellow creatures conceptions which have
no counterpart in my own. I find myself in direct relation
with my environment and only what I find for myself can I
logically assume for another. But of another, common
thought and language lead me to assume not merely that
his experience is distinct from mine, but that it is in him in

THE SOLVENT: PURE EXPERIENCE 97

the form of sensations, perceptions, and other ' internal
states.' Of the seen in my environment I say there is a per-
ception in him. Thus while my environment is an external
world for me, his experience is for me an internal world in
him. This is introjection. And since I am led to apply this
conception to all my fellow creatures and it is applied by all
my fellow men to me, I naturally apply it also to myself.
Thus it comes about that instead of construing others'
experience exactly and precisely on lines of our own — the
duaUty of subject and object — we are induced to miscon-
strue our own experience on the Unes of a false but highly
plausible assumption as to others' experience, which actually
contradicts our own. To this contradiction, latent in com-
mon thought and language, we may fairly attribute the
impasse to which the problem of external perception has
been reduced." (J. Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, ist
ed., vol. II, p. 172).

As this passage illustrates, the type in question directs
most of its effort against subjectivism; but that is probably
due to the conditions of the present day. Any external
object unexperienced and in no way connected with expe-
rience would doubtless be denied as sternly as the shut-in
feehng of our fellow men. For if this were not so, there
would be no justice in their use of the word " experience "
rather than the word " object " or " thing " or " reahty."
And we have now to see that this exclusion of introjection
does not in the least solve the epistemological puzzle, nor
even provide a guiding thread for the discovery of a solu-
tion of that or any other philosophical problem. It does not
succeed in abolishing the dualism of inner vs. outer, and has
no more fertihty than subjectivism or objectivism had.
Like them it has its critical point, viz., the duaUty: Uke
them it is perfectly true and unfruitful.

98 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

As regards the " fallacy of introjection," it is easy to see
that however neutrally we define " feeling " or " idea " or
other alleged mental state, it remains distinct in kind from
an apple, or a stick, or other object. Experience itself leads
us to distinguish objects into two classes. When James sg.ys
that consciousness is but " a kind of external relation (be-
tween objects) and does not denote a special stuff or way of
being " (ibid., p. 25), he admits the duahty. The " external
relation " is unique, and cannot be reduced to the objects.
They are not this relation; the two are forever distinct; of
what use to call the distinction one of relation rather than
one of stuff ? It leads only to a rephrasing of all the episte-
mological queries. The " soul " of animism, the " inner
state " of introjection, are no more different from bodies
than the " external relation " of the empiricist. Here is the
same oversight that attended subjectivism, when it thought
to reduce all matter to spirit. The puzzle remains, how this
sort of external relation can do the things which conscious-
ness does, and suffer the incursions of physical forces — in
short, the old problems of interaction and parallelism come
up once more. Monism cannot wipe out duahsm; it can do
no more than provide a comprehensive rubric. Did Spi-
noza answer the puzzles about body and mind by calling
them two aspects of one substance ? Have Avenarius,
Ward, James, et ah, accounted for the differentiation by
saying that the species belong to one genus ?

" Pure experience " if it is to have philosophic value, must
either explain how the primitive reality gets split up into
two sorts, or must show that there are not really two sorts.
It does, and can do, neither of these. It can only say " don't
ask and you won't get into trouble." Sometimes indeed it
appears to be trying to justify this negative attitude. " Let
the reader arrest himself in the act of reading this article

THE SOLVENT: PURE EXPERIENCE 99

now. Now this is a pure experience, or datum, a mere that
or content of fact. ' Reading ' simply is, is there; and
whether there for some one's consciousness, or there for
physical nature, is a question not yet put. At the moment
it is there for neither ..." (James, Essays in Radical Em-
piricism, pp. 145-146). If this is meant to defend the
monism of " pure experience " against the dualism of
subject-object, is it not the old mistake, committed in such
slogans as " back to nature " or " the simple life " ? Of
all men, philosophers ought to know better, for none have
tried so often to return to naivete, and have so often re-
traced the same weary round. More honest, it seems, is
either subjectivism or objectivism, with its frank accept-
ance of a difl&cult task.

As to the fertility, it is no more suggestive of the outlines
of reality to call it pure experience, than to call it mental or
external. Not merely this, moreover; it works positively
against the search for such an outline. For " experience "
is a concept in unstable equilibrium. It tries to avoid the
tilt by balancing in the centre; but its point is too minute.
It inevitably falls over to one side or the other; it is inter-
preted in an objective or subjective sense — as the recent
discussions show. Professor Ward tends to the idealistic
side, James and Dewey on the whole to the realistic. The
controversy between subjectivism and objectivism will then
break out anew. It is the ancient moral lesson: if you
abstain from doing evil by mere inaction, your last state
will be worse than your first. Historically the inefficacy of
the doctrine is rather obvious. So far as we know, no advo-
cate of this type (excepting the theist. Professor Ward) has
gone beyond it to map out the universe, to indicate. the
specific structure of the real world. The irony of life is evi-
dent here; the philosophy which talks loudest of experience

lOO PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

and empiricism, has presented to us the abstractest and
vaguest of all terms; most devoted to experience, it has
learned less from experience than either subjectivism or
objectivism. For experience is speciiic, and the philosophy
of experience, so far as it keeps its purity, gives no specific
information about the universe.

Its critical point, consequently, is sooner reached than
that of the first two types. Subjectivism's formula applied
categorically to a large portion of reaUty, and hypothetically
to the remainder; and its meaning, though limited, was
definite. Objectivism's principle applied everywhere; but
it was impotent to account for the contact of subject and
object in knowledge. If less precise than the first tjrpe —
because it reduced the world to no one particular kind of
being — it was at least more precise than our third type
with its lack of any particular formula. There can be no
term more limitless in scope than " experience "; there can
be no term less suggestive of the characters of reahty. The
critical point of the experience-philosophy is the concretions,
subject and object. It is, no doubt, a wiser philosophy than
the other two, for it has learned to stand outside the combat
and see more broadly; but its wisdom is only that of dis-
illusionment, since it does not lead to any positive con-
clusion. Abjuring epistemology, it is itself concerned with
nothing else. And, with its rigorous diet of pure experience,
it has reduced philosophy to the skinniest possible outline.

Need we point out that this extreme of unproductiveness
is due to the same faults which ruined the other two types ?
The experience-system is, in spite of good resolutions toward
empiricism, actually more exclusive than either of them.
For fear of insoluble puzzles, it will not admit either subject
or object to ultimate reality. And in order to escape the
one-sidedness of these two, it adopts a watchword so exhaus-

THE SOLVENT: PURE EXPERIENCE lOI

tive as to have lost clear meaning, and with it the power of
imparting information. We have nowhere said that the
experience- view utters a He. There is perhaps not a word of
untruth in all its writings, except where it denies its rivals.
But it is the very certainty of its message that renders it
futile; for its pronouncement that all is experience is irrel-
evant to any description whatsoever of the constitution of
that experience. Be it understood, however, that we are
here appraising the type as regards its contribution to
the solution of our first issue; as an empirical attitude
toward reahty in general we shall consider it in Chapter
VIII.

At this point we must meet an accusation which we have
perhaps put off too long; a formal one, we think, but a
favourite with workers upon these topics. What we have
written concerning " pure experience " will presumably
arouse the criticism, that we have not defined our terms with
sufficient care. Of our treatment of subjectivism, indeed,
and of objectivism as well, the same indictment is only too
easy. We have deferred it until now, because it is so much
more obvious with that term of infinite connotation " expe-
rience." One who agrees with the views here defended — if
there be one — is contented, and will not wish to burrow
into niceties of meaning; but to a hostile critic in the field
of philosophy the objection always Hes at hand, that a
deeper analysis of the terms used would reverse the deci-
sion. This is peculiarly the case in that territory, because
the object-matter is not a hard material thing that stays
for confirmation of one's testimony: reexamination will
almost always add something new, or push the old into the
background of attention. And consequently the objection
is sound enough as far as it goes. It is likely that no one has
examined any philosophical concept with adequate rigour;

I02 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

that is, in fact, one of the reasons mentioned in Chapter II
for the disagreements of investigators. Yet it is often need-
less to carry analysis beyond a certain point; for we believe
what we seem clearly to see. That 2 + 3 = 5 we do not
doubt; but no one probably has traced all the foundations
of this truth, and it is precisely when the mathematicians
begin to do so that the hue of uncertainty and disagreement
first appears on their clear-cut horizon. So simple a truth —
simple because abstract — is its own guarantee; and the
most we can hope for, in the philosophical field, is to ap-
proach the directness and simphcity of elementary arith-
metic. So it is with subjectivism, objectivism, " experience "
and all other t)^es yet to be examined. We give as much
elucidation of their concepts as seems suflicient to our pur-
pose of understanding their main drift. Many refinements
might be added; some of them, no doubt, suggestive and
fundamental, and they would lend a certain weight to our
argument. But when we seem to ourselves to see certain
truths about these t)^es so clearly that no refinements,
within a reasonable doubt, would refute them — even as no
analysis is likely to give the he to my vision of this paper
or addition of 2 and 3 — then we cannot but forego the im-
pressiveness of the spUtting-up process, and exhibit those
truths. Of course this does not mean that we should never
pursue analysis further than is convenient. On the contrary,
we should do so as much as possible. But we cannot refuse,
of course, to beUeve at all, because mistakes may later be
detected. It is very good to wish to " get down to funda-
mentals," but that desire should not lead us to deny the
verities we feel compelled to accept. One must draw the
line somewhere in the process of analysis; and we have
drawn it where it seemed to us reasonable, knowing that
indisputable proof is practically impossible.

THE SOLVENT: PURE EXPERIENCE 1 03

But to return : many thinkers have felt the barrenness of
the subjective-objective issue, and have judged the solution
offered by this third type to be negative. To such the other
alternative we mentioned above is all that remains. They
must choose a more synthetic way; a doctrine which in-
cludes both sides. At the same time, the spirit of partisan-
ship, dissatisfied with the negative result of the impartial
experience-theory, is likely to revive. Let them then
espouse a philosophy which will combine the truths of sub-
jectivism and its rival, yet will define one of these in a more
fertile way, so as to give it a more fundamental part than the
other. Which one ? we may ask. There is likely to occur,
historically, a choice first of one and then of the other; viz.,
first a philosophy which enlarges its conception of the sub-
ject to include the elements claimed by objectivism, and
second, one which does the same for the object. We shall
follow this order; for reasons expounded in the " histories
of philosophy " events did in fact so transpire.

The subjectively weighted combination would naturally
proceed as follows :

(i) A genuine distinction must be evolved out of subjec-
tivism whereby to differentiate the real from the illusory;
that is, the self of that view must be enlarged. It wiU con-
sequently not be the private self of some particular mind,
but a Great or Universal Self. The real object will here be
the presentation to the Great Mind; the illusory, the pre-
sentation merely to the private mind. Thus the enlarg-
ment or fertilization of subjectivism by objectivism leads to
a new concept. And in this type, the object must, as we
just said, be really included, in order to prevent the endless
seesaw. This means that the characters of objects must
really be accounted for, deduced out of the necessary attri-
butes of the Great Self. That is, the principal categories of

104 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

the objective •world must be derived by immanent logic
from the concept of that Self.

(2) The dualism of objective reahsm is thus retained; the
difference between object and subject is permitted along-
side the sameness, in that it is grounded in the difference
between the private self and the Great Self. Whereas
objectivism's critical point was the cognitive relation, this
new type defines that relation by sameness between the con-
tents of this Great Mind and the object.

(3) The positive doctrine of " pure experience " is also
retained, inasmuch as it is alleged that there is nothing in
the whole universe which is not object of sentience — i. e.,
some function of experience. But as the term " experience "
has been already seen to be one of the vaguest in the phil-
osophical vocabulary, there is httle importance in this third
trait. By virtue of its logical inheritance, we may fitly call
this view Great Subjectivism ; it is today usually known as
idealism. It forms a much more complicated and interesting
type than any of the above three, and must be examined in a
separate chapter.

CHAPTER VI

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM

THE type here presented is usually called idealism : we
have already stated why the heading of this chapter
seems an apter title. But there are other reasons also.
" Ideahsm " has been apphed to many kinds of system,
differing as fundamentally as Plato's, Berkeley's, Kant's,
Herbart's, and Hegel's. We are to set forth a doctrine which
approximates the Kantian and post-Kantian ones, before
Hegel; a doctrine whose unique and unmistakable influence
upon thought, and whose intrinsic beauty, render it deserv-
ing of a distinguishing name. Since it differs down to its
very roots — in spite of surface resemblances — from the
objective rationalism of Plato, the subjectivism of Berkeley,
the psychological reaUsm of Herbart, and the absolutism of
Hegel, it is hardly just to use an official designation whose
connotations are shared by all of these. Occasionally, how-
ever, for brevity, we may be permitted to retain the older
usage.

In a sense this type is subjective, but so transformed and
augmented as to be upon a level of its own. It would re-
form the procedure of philosophy by denying reality to
objects independent of mind; it alleges that reality, con-
sidered as something complete by itself and apart from a
mind that knows it, is full of insoluble puzzles and contra-
dictions, but that these disappear when reahty is treated as
not something by itself, but solely for mind. So far it goes
with subjectivism; but it has learned the lesson read to that

105

I06 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

view by objectivism, and has forged a new weapon unknown
to the subjectivist. If the latter could not pass beyond the
line between present data and unknown objects, without the
help of the crutch potentiality, idealism has longer and
stronger legs. It needs no such adventitious concept as
" permanent possibihty "; it walks about naturally among
the remotest actualities. For it uses mind to mean not only
the private self but the Great Self or Subject; a Universal
Mind to whom all things are present, and whose content
they are. External real objects, while beyond the private
consciousness, yours or mine, are the content of that uni-
versal one. To be content of that mind is indeed to be real;
to be content of a private mind alone, is to be only idea.
IdeaUsm is therefore truly a synthesis of the first two types.
It keeps the mind of subjectivism and provides for the ex-
ternal reality of objectivism by the adjective " universal."
The hostility of the two is overcome by peaceful wedlock;
but the subjectivist factor is the male, for it is his name that
is legally adopted, and he bears, as a rule, the brunt of the
attacks. Great subjectivism escapes the danger of one-
sidedness to which subjectivism seemed liable, since it can-
not be accused of soHpsism, or of denying duahstic realism;
and ideaHsts are fond of refuting solipsism as well as mere
subjectivism. Herein, to be sure, they are wrong, for we
have seen neither view to be erroneous; yet ideaHsm is no
doubt a more adequate view than either of them. Whereas
subjectivism seemed to deny its counterpart, objectivism,
idealism does not even seem to do so. It rather guarantees
its truth. From the attribute of universality which it
bestows upon mind, idealism deduces the concept of the ex-
ternal object. Thus it passes uninjured that point where
subjectivism was maimed, and had to resort to a crutch.
Idealism may be likened to the chemical formula of a sub-

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 107

stance, which explains the substance's properties, even when
it has passed its critical point. More than this, however,
idealism deduces the principal relations which objects bear
to one another, i. e., the categories. In short, it claims to
be & fertile view. It furnishes, as neither subjectivism nor
objectivism did, a conception which accounts for something
of the character of the world; space, time, causation, num-
ber, quantity, etc. In this it is altogether upon a higher
plane. It is no longer merely formal, like those simpler
types. If they are one-dimensional, with their simple hnear
attributes of the subjective or the objective, idealism is two-
dimensional, with its double characterization of mentality
and universality. And being two-dimensional it makes
possible a plan or map of the world, a philosophic system
with some wealth of content; which neither subjectivism
nor duahstic realism were able of themselves to furnish.
In fact this productiveness is the keynote of idealism, its
test and proof. It is precisely upon its ability to account for
objects and their chief relations, that idealism bases its
claim of truth. Such was the spirit of Kant's Transcenden-
tal Deduction; such is the soul of the deductions of cate-
gories presented today by the ideahsts Natorp, Miinsterberg,
Royce, Baldwin, and others. And in examining the creden-
tials of this system, consequently, it is upon this aspect that
we must fix our attention.

The same peculiarity of idealism stands out when we com-
pare it with another and allied system, that of absolutism
(often called absolute idealism). TMs latter view, of which
the Hegelian and certain recent EngUsh systems are ex-
amples, certainly agrees with idealism as regards the su-
premacy of mind; but not only does it reach that mind by
a diflFerent route, but also the function of mind differs widely
in the two systems. For absolutism, mind is the single

Io8 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

all-inclusive whole; for idealism, mind is not the whole so
much as the head of the universe. It is one factor among
others, dominating the rest, ordering and arranging it,
creating out of it a cosmos; but it is not the whole which
shines through and is identically each and every part. The
absolutist has his Universal Mind, but he does not generate
out of it the special characters and relations that appear in
the world. And that is just what the idealist does. For
him the universal is an asymmetrical affair: the centre of
gravity lies on one side of it, the side of mind. For the
absolutist the whole is symmetrical. No one aspect or part
is intrinsically more significant than any other; it becomes
so only by being more inclusive. Degree of reality is degree
of approximation to the whole. Idealism is subjectivism
with the subject no longer a passive recipient or container,
but transformed into an active orderer, a creator of laws and
forms, by its own inherent productiveness. That is why for
the idealist the categories are developed out of the activity
of the Universal Mind, for absolutism — as with Hegel — out
of one another in ever increasing breadth until the whole is
attained. Thus idealism, though a synthesis of subjectivism
and objectivism, remains only a partial synthesis, for its
material, the content of its mind, is still other than that
mind itself: something which it works upon; while ab-
solutism is a complete synthesis, identifying mind with the
unity of content and form. The correctness of our descrip-
tion may be seen by comparison of recent ideahstic systems
(those of Cohen, Natorp, Cassirer, Rickert, Windelband,
Miinsterberg, Royce *) with the absolutism of Bosanquet
and Bradley. For the former group would — with the pos-
sible exception of Royce — refuse to accept the system of the

* In his later volumes, The World and the Indimdual, and Encyclopaedia
of Philosophical Sciences, vol. I, pp. 67-135.

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 109

latter pair; and conversely. And accordingly we shall have
to treat absolute idealism as a different type.

Some of our deepest emotions and practical needs lead to
idealism. Strongest, perhaps, is what we might call the wor-
ship of personality. A person, even a shallow or debased one,
is doubtless a marvellous affair. It is conscious, and creates ;
it shows its superiority over Nature by dominating it in
some small degree; and to man the person must always be
the most interesting object of his environment. For the ide-
ahst Kant a person is always to be treated as an end, never
as a means. So wonderful an entity, we feel, must possess a
metaphysical rank appropriate to its worth and interest.
The overwhelming conviction of value thus urges us toward
idealistic theory. For the more scientifically minded this
admiration of personality counts less; hence we find that
the reaUsm of our own day appeals to scientific standards.
Yet so strong is the modern personahty-motive, that even
the reaUstic foes of idealism study exclusively the problems of
mind, consciousness, or knowledge. Though they repudiate
idealism, they are not free of its influence; the tenacious
grip of that doctrine is but slightly loosened by the intel-
lectual refutations. But why does not this personal motive
lead to subjectivism ra their than to ideahsm ? Because of
another note that is peculiarly modern; the social one. The
single person is no longer conceived as a complete individual.
Isolation, anti-social behaviour, these we detest today above
all things; the persob is now wholly a socius. The great
movement toward democracy drives in this direction. The
person is thus enlarged, and its enlargement cannot stop
with the commonwealth, the nation, the race, the whole of
humanity. It becomes the Universal Person. Such a con-
cept is the cumulation of two of the strongest motives in
modem life.

no PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

Upon art and religion also the idealistic attitude leans.
It is the essence of art to be creative; the artist — according
to the usual view — makes more than Nature can make;
he does not copy Nature, but creates a new entity out of the
materials which Nature provides. He gives to Nature its
values; indeed value and worth are so bound up with per-
sonality that idealism and value-philosophy tend to coalesce.
Whosoever esteems fundamentally the artist's point of view
will then be inclined to idealism. Indeed, idealism is the
artist's philosophy par excellence; for ideahsm's greatest
apparent triumph is that which it wins over its arch-enemy,
realistic science, when it shows that the body of science's
laws is itself a work of art, a chef d'ceuvre in which thousands
of collaborators participate. For science is to this attitude
not a passive contemplation of facts as they are, but a pro-
ductive ordering of brute data in a rational system of laws,
where the laws are the creatures of the mind. The disci-
pline in which mind appears most subservient to nature is
the one in which its mastery is most triumphant; fact be-
comes artifact. This aspect of ideahsm appeals to the
romantic side of human nature; it is a form of the Wille zur
Macht; it is an impassioned view, an agressive view. Its
home is in the temper of modern Germany and, in part, of the
United States of America; no idealistic systems have arisen
from the less romantic EngUsh, or more impersonally logical
French temperament. Both art and artisanship unite in the
motive of creative efficiency which is the essence of KuUur.

To the rehgious it appears a quick and easy step into
ideahsm. For if God is spirit and if God is supreme, then
the Universal creative Mind is straightway established. To
such a view any form of hostile realism seems antitheistic;
it Kmits the power of God, it places something outside him
to which he must perforce acquiesce. Yet it is not the

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 1 1 1

pantheistic God which idealism worships. Its chord com-
bines the three tones of personaHty, art, and religion; and
of these the dominant is personality. Its God will then be a
personal God and a poet or maker. The real objects, the
brute matter of the world, are just and only the material
which he orders; the Anstoss of his creative power. For
absolutism, which is pantheistic, real objects are constitutive
of God; for ideahsm they are other than but wholly subject
to God. And as religion — organized, proselyting religion —
has always rejected pantheism, so it rejects absolutism and
fosters idealism. To be sure, there are reahstic motives in
religion, as we have already seen, and shall again see in
Chapter X; but enough that there are idealistic ones too.
Now there appears to be no reasonable ground for doubting
that all these motives unite to give an overpowering per-
suasiveness to ideahsm. The system may or may not be
true; its value may or may not constitute its truth; but
were it not for its significance — to which, it is to be feared,
opponents are often congenitaUy blind — it seems clear
that it would not be so persistently proffered as the only
rational account of things. As culture is better than bar-
barism, the arts of refinement than bare eating and drinking,
so idealism from the point of view of worth towers above
objectivism. It would indeed be a strange contradiction
if the simple logic of the business pointed in the opposite
direction from that indicated by all the humanities. So
thinks the ideahst; and we shall find, perhaps, that he is
justified, though not exactly in the manner he claims.

A Httle in exposition of the character of the Great Subject,
and we may go to the proofs of idealism. The hero of this
particular drama is quite unique. Just because he is so great
he forfeits the concreteness, the immediacy, which the in-
dividual subject of our first type possessed. He is tran-

112 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

scendental, ideal. Whether we consider the "Transcenden-
tal Ego" of Kant, the "Universal Ego" of Fichte or
Schelhng, the " Self " of Royce, the " SoUen " of Rickert,
the " Over-will " of Miinsterberg, we find the same hyper-
empirical quality. Rickert assures us that the consciousness
of which he is treating is " keine ReaHtat, sondern ein
Begrifl." {Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis, 2te. Aufgabe,
pp. 67, 149.) Royce regards the Self as not a datum but an
ethical ideal (World and Individual, I, p. 287) . So too Miin-
sterberg, very emphatically {The Eternal Values, p. 90). The
rationaHstic "school" of modern Germany, with its "reines
Denken " deals with a similarly impKcative affair, tran-
scending partiqdlar eixperiences. Indeed, the traditional
proof of this Great Subject is by implication. The corner-
stone of idealism is thus not itself an observable fact, though
it may be a fact and founded upon fact. It has an inferential
character. From the very beginning ideaUsm has the pale
cast of thought, of rationahsm as opposed to empiricism. It
is not, as we have already seen in another respect, a genuine
synthesis of the two; it is an asymmetrical construction.
The universe's centre of gravity lies on the side of thought.
The form is more than the matter; though the matter is real
enough, it is real as secondary to, or dependent upon, the
form. Whatever categories ideahsm deKvers to us it derives
not by induction from the empirically verified contents of
experience but by deduction from the forms of ideal thought.
CausaUty, to take an example, is treated as a Knkage by
which the mind as it were joins events externally, rather
than anything proceeding out of the nature of the events
themselves. So the table of categories offered by ideaUsm is
not based upon the specific detail of fact and event but upon
the imphcation drawn from certain intellectual ideals. For
mind, the artist, orders the data and hence the categories are

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 1 1 3

due to mind alone. Like the bridegroom at a wedding, the
specific data must be present, but their appearance is of no
particular interest. Idealism is herein rightly named; it is
the doctrine of certain intellectual, moral, and aesthetic
ideals.

And yet this is but half the truth. The hero of our present
tjT^e may be " sicklied o'er " with transcendental attributes,
but he is neither ghost nor skeleton. More recent ideahsm,
such as that of Royce, has endowed him with a goodly share
of flesh and blood; by means of a diet drawn from psy-
chological products. For there is an empirical side of the
whole matter — indeed, there has been, from the very birth
of idealism in Kant; though it is much thickened today.
The Universal Mind is a Subject and that usually means a
Self. Now a Self is after all something we believe to partici-
pate in our concrete life, and its habits and constitution have
long been studied in the empirical discipline of psychology.
Much of idealism's doctrine about the Great Subject will
then, of necessity, be empirically based. The categories will
be, not merely ideals, but human ideals, the ideals men have
actually felt and worked towards and are constantly em-
ploying. The table of categories will be discovered by analy-
sis of the human mind. Even so Kant found his table in
the kinds of Judgment made by men; and though this
psychological tendency is repudiated by some later idealists,
they nevertheless, as we shall see, follow it. If the idealist is
not empirically minded with respect to the objective world
— he is not greatly concerned, whether matter is reduced to
electrons or a continuous ether — he nevertheless is em-
pirically minded with regard to the subjective world. He is
interested in psychology above all other sciences. He
scrutinizes, hard and long, the operations of the human, or
even the animal, mind. Psychology has become the " key

114 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

to the scriptures." The worid-knot is most promisingly
attacked from the point of view of the internal meaning of an
idea. (Royce, World and Individual, I, p. i.) Psychology
is the one science which the philosopher must know. (Alas,
that the psychologists do not respond to these overtures
with the converse declaration!)

In this empirical aspect, whose manifold consequences will
soon appear, there is gain as well as loss to idealism. That
there is gain appears when we contrast idealism with ab-
solutism. The latter is, as we have said, a doctrine of
symmetry. No one part or aspect of the universe is by itself
more fertile for the understanding of the rest, than any
other. The result is that distinctions of high and low,
ground and consequent, better and worse, tend to vanish.
True, absolutism admits them; yet in the end it is so equally
tolerant of everything as to emphasize nothing. Idealism,
however, avowedly selects for study as the most efficient
member of the universe, the self or person, and thereby has
been able to furnish much information about at least one
particular topic. There is a concreteness about recent
ideaHstic doctrines which absolutism, with all its verbal
insistence upon the concrete, does not display. The narrow-
ness of ideahsm, like that of human attention, renders pos-
sible a concentration upon one problem which has effected a
definite addition to our knowledge. What this addition is
will appear as we proceed in the discussion.

The loss to idealism which its preoccupation with mind
occasions is not only that its treatment of scientific cate-
gories is quite formal, but also that it confines itself to a field
in which results are none too certain. Psychology as an
independent science with a clear-cut method did not exist
when idealism was launched; it has even now, perhaps,
hardly got a precipitate of truth outside the realm of sensa-

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 1 1 5

tion. Any alleged facts about the self on which idealism
may build are therefore probably open to question for some
time to come. Indeed, individual idealists, not being con-
strained by a generally accepted psychological doctrine, are
at liberty to emphasize this or that side of mind almost at
pleasure. Consequently we find that idealism splits into
factions. One " school " views mind as fundamentally
thought, another as will, another as feeling. Upon these
different bases are erected the philosophic structures known
as rationaUstic ideaUsm, voluntarism, and aesthetic idealism.
This fission into three began with Kant, but his strong hand
prevented it from developing into an internecine strife.
Later philosophy has not been so fortunate. Today we find
the rationalistic party of Cohen, Natorp, Cassirer; the
voluntaristic one of Wundt, Windelband, Rickert,* Royce,
with Miinsterberg's system shading through value-idealism
into the third division, the aesthetic, which Baldwin's "Pan-
calism " has occupied. This tripartition appeared earher,
in the divergencies of Kant, Fichte, the " romantic school "
and much of Schelling. And one hardly sees how, in view of
the present dissensions of psychology, the spirit of strife is
to be laid.

The plot, then, has thickened. We have on our hands not
only the rupture between idealism and its external foe,
realism, but also a war within the ideahsts' camp. Let us
proceed without dfelay to exhibit in detail, and to judge, the
various idealistic theses.

The Case for the Great Subject

The Universal Mind or Self, differentia of the type as a
whole, is founded upon two argxmients and two only. The

* Of course Rickert does not fit this scheme any too well: his " Sollen"
is so impersonal as to place him almost on the edge of reahsm.

Il6 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

first has been many times stated and restated, from Kant on,
and if we once more restate it in our own way, it is with the
hope that it will not go unrecognized for the true tran-
scendental argument. We may refer to it as the argument
from fertility. The second, as the above analysis would
lead us to expect, is the counterpart of the first, and is based
on psychology. It offers empirical evidence of the reality of
the Great Self. There are in idealism proper, apart from
subjectivism, no rebuttals of the external enemy; because
ideahsm's method is the positive one of justif)ang itself by
its fertility and by psychological testimony. Its hypothesis
of the Great Self is accepted on the ground that it accounts
for the well-ordered world of objects (Kant called it the hst
of vahd synthetic judgments a priori) ; and also because our
inner consciousness bears witness to the presence of that
Being.

Before proceeding, however, to this argument, we must
notice a certain way of putting its case which has, we think,
tended to obUterate the distinction between Great and
ordinary subjectivism. It runs as follows (Royce, World
and Individual, vol. I, p. 398). " Are these many knowers
related or not ? Answer as you will. . . . Then this, the
fact about their relations, exists, but exists only as a known
fact. For our theory asserts universally that all which has
Being exists only as a known object." And (p. 399) "But
this assertion . . . implies that one final knower knows all
the knowing processes in one inclusive act. " In short, what-
ever is real is present to a mind. But many things are real
that are not present to any finite mind, viz., remote stars,
the beginnings of the earth, etc. Hence there must be a
mind to which these things are present, i. e., a Big Mind.
Now this seems to be a patent fallacy. It is not proved that
all objects are for a mind until these distant ones are shown

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 1 1 7

to be such. They can be shown to be, as we saw in Chapter
III, but the mind for which they are objects was there found
to be one's own — or some one's else — particular mind,
which is thinking of them during the argument. Or perhaps
even the mind of some astronomer or geologist — but in any
case some one, or some finite number of human minds.
These things were recognized to be its potential, if not its
actual, objects. Here lies no road to a Universal Mind. The
argument tries to get idealism from subjectivism alone;
whereas it must be drawn from the marriage of subjectivism
with objectivism. It is unfortunate for the cause of Great
Subjectivism that such a plea has been presented.

The argument from fertility we now restate. How is it that
the Self, impregnating the object, fathers the categories ?
To learn this we had best turn to the group of midwives who
have delivered them: from Kant to Natorp, Miinsterberg,
Cassirer, Royce, and Baldwin. We find common to them
all something like the following train of thought.

Subjectivism could not account for the distinction be-
tween real and imaginary objects. Subjectivists have had
to resort to some haphazard attribute of the mind's contents
in order to distinguish the two; viz., intensity, liveliness,
resistance, space-occupancy, commonness, etc. But what
constitutes objective reality ? This: that an object out-
lasts my momentary perception, or that of any one. It
stands always ready to be perceived by any one at any mo-
ment of its continuous existence; it is, as contrasted with
the particular perceptions, a universal. Its reahty in fact
consists in just this universaHty. As a universal tran-
scends any particular, so the real object transcends the
particular perception of the particular subject. But if we
suppose a subject to whom all the momentary states of the
object are always present, the real object will not transcend

Il8 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

his mind but may be adequately described as the content
thereof. Such a subject could not truly be said to be quite
timeless, for it includes all the particular elements in iLny
process of change; Royce's ascription to it of an indefi-
nitely long "specious present" is fairer. Now such a sup-
position is very fertile; it accounts for much more than
the object in general. For it entertains universals; and a
universal is a rule, capable of exemplification in many in-
stances. Every object that is real is such a rule; viz., a cow
may be characterized as that object which can be counted
on to appear and behave in certain definite ways. Unless
that regularity of appearance and behaviour were traceable,
there would for us be no such object as a cow. A real object
then is that which obeys laws — the laws of its own make-up.
Law is " das letzte erreichbare Kriterium der ' Objekti-
vitat.' " (Cassirer, Substanztheorie und Funktionstheorie,
p. 248.) And a subject whose mental content is a real object
is by that very fact one whose mental content is a number of
laws. The laws of nature, or the assemblage of the ways in
which objects behave, are the content of that mind. And
since " object " is here perfectly general, it follows that all
reality, and its laws, form the content of the mind in ques-
tion. Hence it is seen to be no less than a Universal Mind.
Since also the real objects are no longer transcendent of the
Universal Mind as they were of the particular subject, the
Universal Mind does not passively receive those objects as it
were from an external agency, but, arranging them by its
laws, helps to determine them. In Kantian words, its
knowledge is constitutive. As there is no longer anything
outside it, the Great Mind may now be conceived as con-
trolling its own content. It does not create it ex nihilo but,
finding the content as it were within its own mind, it confers
objectivity upon it. Objectivity, as distinguished from

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 1 1 9

mere being-other-than-mind, is the work, the artifact of
mind, the result of its labour. " Wirklichkeit selbst, Gege-
benheit ist Denkbestimmung, und zuletzt Leistung reinea
Denkens." (Natorp, Die Logischen Grundlagen der Exakten
Wissenschaften, p. 66.) Now from the concept of the uni-
versal the main categories which describe objectivity can be
deduced. For the universal offers a series of instances
grouped into a class; whence are drawn the notions of unity,
plurality, totality, etc. As to the detail of the categories,
there has been some difference between the lists offered by
different philosophers. The finished deduction is not found
in the pioneer Kant, but only in quite recent times, chiefly
in the elaborate and painstaking systems of Natorp and
Mtinsterberg. Kant in the " Schematism " just missed
deducing the particular categories. He started from the
notion of time, which is of intuitive origin, rather than from
the universal. Fichte did better, by starting from process
as the essence of mind; and that dynamic basis is now fairly
well accepted by idealists. (Cf. Natorp, op. cit., p. 15.)
But the development of the scientific categories out of the
bare concept of object — i. e., out of the universal mind —
had been consummated by Natorp. On the practical side,
the extraordinarily detailed labours of Miinsterberg far
exceed any previous work; and on the aesthetic side, nearly
the same is true of Baldwin. In these finished products, the
ripest fruit of ideaKsm, the earlier errors are corrected,
minute hnks strengthened, and the whole system perfected
almost, it would seem, to the limit of human capability. We
therefore select them as examples of idealistic deduction;
they are the great outstanding instances of idealism's argu-
ment from fertility. And hereby we are led from the parent
stem to the three branches of idealism.

I20 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

In summing up his standpoint at the outset Natorp re-
marks " So kann also von keinem ' gegebenen ' Gegenstande
mehr die Rede sein; also auch nicht von Erkenntnis als
blosser Analyse dieses Gegebenen. Gerade der Gegenstand
viehmehr ist Aufgabe, ist Problem ins Unendliche. Und also
ist Erkenntnis, als auf den Gegenstand gerichtet, not-
wendig Synthesis in Kants Sinne, d. h. Erweiterung,
bestandiger Fortgang " (op. cit., p. i8). It is an endless
task which the creative mind has, that of constituting the
object; in this progress new qualifications of that object
appear, new categories. Indeed the object itself is that
task: " Das Objekt der Erkenntnis wird Projekt, der
Gegenwurf Vorwurf " (p. 33). (The similarity between this
definition of " object " and Royce's definition of it as fulfil-
ment of a plan of action is striking; indeed both say much
the same thing. The former says it in intellectualistic, the
latter in voluntaristic, phrasing; a fact whose significance
shall engage us later.) To the solution, endless in its detail,
of this problem of determining the object, we now pass.
From the synthetic unity of the manifold, by which the
mind generates objectivity, is derived the category of
quantity (the many, the totaUty, etc.). This includes the
concept of the unit; a purely formal entity, for " Was in
jedem Falle als Fines gelte, ist hierfiir gleichgiiltig " (p. 54).
The content of it is anything you please, and is not deduced
or explained. But there is more than one unit. A second
unit is impHed — else no collection or group to embody the
universal (p. 55) ; but this too must be followed by another,
for the same reason, and so on. Here we have the series.
" Wohl der bezeichnendste Ausdruck dafiir ist die Reihe
oder Reihung, Auf- und Aneinanderreihung " (p. 55). This
notion of series replaces, indeed, the older notion of the
static concept; a fact constantly emphasized by Cassirer.

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 121

That thinker is never weary of insisting upon the difference
between the two. (Cf. Substanztkeorie und Funktions-
theorie, pp. 7-9, n, 15, 22-23, 27, 33-34, 247, 249, 297,
305.) But to proceed with the deduction: since the mind
unites as well as differentiates, there is at each step an
awareness of the whole result. At the third step in a series,
for instance, there is present a sense of the totaUty already
attained. Hence arises the concept of the " how much "
(" Das bestimmte Soviel " p. 56). This is a novel creation
of the thought: three is quite distinct from " one-and-one-
and-one."

But now the universal, the synthesis of the many in one,
is not exhausted by any total number of instances. It is
something more, something yet to be determined. This
discrepancy shows that the categories of extensive quantity
are inadequate. The mind has not yet solved its own prob-
lem of determining a real object. Not in extent, but in con-
tent; not by external addition of one case to another, but
by looking inward to the nature of the instances, shall mind
define that object. The successive instances (not neces-
sarily successive in time, of course: we might be comparing
various perspectives of one object as seen by you, by me, by
some one else, etc., all at one moment) — the successive
instances are now viewed as presenting identity with one
another. A tree is the same tree, and has much the same
perceptual content, throughout the variety of particular
presentations in which it appears. This gives rise to the
qualitative categories of identity and difference. These
categories, like those of quantity, are indifferent to the
specific characters of the objects; " Was in jedem Fall als
Identisches gesetzt wird, ist hierbei so gleichgiiltig, wie bei
der ersten Stufe der Quantitat . . ." (p. 60). And identity
and difference are mutually involved. Now precisely as in

122 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

quantity the unit and the multiplicity united to form the
concept of totality, so here the series of Hke instances, with
their individuating differences, combine to give the notion
of the class or species (" Gattung," p. 62). Here we find, by
the way, a decided improvement over Kant's artificial triad
of positive, negative, and infinite.

Yet if an object is to be real it is more than quantity and
quahty; it has a regular, identifiable behaviour. A definite
object is a synthesis of the manifold; but to be identifiable
as itself it must be distinguished from other syntheses of the
manifold, other objects. Hence arise the categories of rela-
tion, or the " syntheses of syntheses " (p. 66). These must
comprise the relations which objects bear to one another —
their behaviour. As this is to be determined beforehand (for
objects must be identifiable) it must obey causal laws — 'in
mathematical language, functional relations. The different
instances of each object and of the relations between objects,
must then form a series whose members display an orderly
functional relation; they form, that is, an ordered series.
The later members of the series are determinable, calculable,
from the earlier members — or vice versa. And since there
are many objects, we may regard the several series of in-
stances each of which comprises a particular thing, as
parallel series. That being the case, there will be a strict
one-one-correspondence between the instances of various
series, such that from one of them another may be deter-
mined. We then have not merely the regular behaviour of
each object, but, going with that, the mutual dependence of
objects. The world of nature is " eine Ordnung, die sich
von Glied zu GUed verschiedener, aber unter sich in Ver-
kniipfung stehender paralleler Reihen muss durchfiihren
lassen " (p. 69). Now such an order implies a permanent or
standard series, by comparison with which the changes alone

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 1 23

become apparent. This demand of science for a persisting
somewhat (mass, energy) is again indifferent to the content
of fact; for no permanent entities appear in sense-experience.
The category of substance is a creation of reason, not a
given percept. " Dass eine solche empirisch gegebenen
weder ist noch je werden konnte, macht es nur um so
fiihlbarer, dass diese Ansetzung eine reine Denkleistung ist
und kein Datum " (p. 72).

Here arises the concept of time, as the single fundamental
order common to all that occurs. " Sie (time) bedeutet also
eben dies: dass eine gemeinsam zugrunde liegende gleich-
formige Ordungsfolge sein miisse, welche in den sich ent-
sprechenden Stellziffern der Einzelreihen: XiX^ X3 ■ ■ ■ ,
Ji ya ^3 . . . , Zi Z2 23 . . . und so fort sich ausdriicken
wiirde; durch deren Identitat dann alle diese verschiedenen
Reihen zugleich aufeinander in einer gemeinsamen Ordnung
bezogen sein wiirden " (p. 73). If three objects x, y, and 2,
have each the states denoted by the subscript numerals,
then the order 1,2,2, etc., of those numerals, demanded as
a common fundamental order, the same in all, is nothing less
than time. The relation of coexistence (" Miteinander,"
p. 73) between x, y, and 2, with the added qualification that
they are individually distinct and separate facts, forms the
category of space. Natorp characterizes space as " Ordnung
des Miteinander " (pp. 73-74). The reason for the pluraUty
of dimensions in space is not given at this point, but in a
later chapter; for convenience we omit it. This will later
be seen not to affect our criticism. Now when the mind re-
gards objects as following in a definite time-order, such that
earlier determines later, it is employing the category of
causality. When it regards contemporaneous objects in space
as in the fixed order of space, determining one another
by their positions in that order, it uses the category of red-

124 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

procity (" Wechselwirkung ") . In causality, the earlier state
is followed, in accordance with the law of behaviour of that
particular object, by the later. And this holds also of more
than one object; it holds of the relations between objects.
But it too, like the other categories, is indifferent to the
specific detail of things. If it happens to be a law of nature
that the sun warms a stone, then the placing of the stone in
the sun's rays is followed by the stone's increased tempera-
ture: but causaHty alone carmot determine that the law
should be that particular sequence. The law might have
been that the sun cooled the stone, or disintegrated it, or
anything you please.

Let the above suffice as an example of the ideaUstic
method in the field of intellect or science. Nine — no,
eleven — categories have been deduced ; and deduced from
the concept of the universal mind — i. e., the mind which
has the universal as its content. Two things stand out
clearly: first, that the deduction derives its force from the
side of the universal, not in the least from that of mind, and
second, that the categories deduced are not in general those
which science actually employs.

The categories of one, many, total, identity, difference,
series, are simply read off from the definition of a universal.
A universal is understood at the outset to mean a series of
instances as numerous as you please, which are different
instances of the same. The categories of time, space, sub-
stance, cause, reciprocity, are read off from the concept of
several universals (objects) present together before the mind.
Whether there is a novelty produced at each stage of the
reading-off process or not, we do not ask; but if there is, it
is not due to the mind. Once granted the universal, or the
group of universals, the categories that follow are compelled
to follow by the nature of the universal. They could not be

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 1 25

other than what they are. The mind may be there to read
them ofif, but that is a very different thing from its deter-
mining them to be what they are. It is simply present, and
they become its objects; but it is as passive and inert as the
particular self in subjectivism. The " problem " which the
object offers to mind is simply that of ascertaining what it
contains. There is, we venture to say, no authority what-
soever for calling this an active ordering on the part of the
mind, or for asserting that mind helps to account for any-
thing present. The apparent justification for such an asser-
tion lies, perhaps, in that a universal is supposed itself to be a
mental product. This, however, we have in our examination
of subjectivism found quite unproved. Indeed, we found it
to be a matter of indifference. So here : the Great Mind is a
true faineant king; its presence or absence makes no differ-
ence to the deductive fecundity of the starting point. The
universal happens to be a very rich concept, and therefore
Natorp is able to draw from it many categories; but one
can scarcely read his treatise without feeling that the
" Denken " might just as well be called " Realitat " or any
other objective term.

The categories which Natorp deduces are not in general,
we have said, those which science uses. As to what science
uses, indeed, there appears to be an ambiguity. Consider,
for instance, the science of physics. This has two aspects:
the experimental and the mathematical. The one is just as
necessary to it as the other. The laws of physics are verified
in the laboratory as true within the limits of probable error.
They apply to particular real events. But philosophers un-
fortunately tend nowadays to study almost exclusively the
mathematical side. In stating the concepts which science
uses, they look to the implications of the mathematical
calculations which the physicists make. Time, as used by

126 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

physics, then appears to be a certain ordinal relation, and
no more. Space suffers the same ravishment. Force is a
numerical ratio simply; in fact, everything tends to be-
come number or quantity or function. But on the experi-
mental side, physics appeals to the senses; and the concepts
force, time, space, cause, etc., are no longer mere numbers,
but properties of events, visible, or verifiable, resident in
sense-data. The full meaning of the scientific categories
cannot be learned from their numerical values alone; they
are concepts which apply to the sense-data, and their mean-
ing must be learned also from their manifestation in those
data. Natorp, we found, insisted frequently that his cate-
gories were indifferent to their sensuous content. But no
true scientific category is thus indifferent. Time, for ex-
ample, cannot be predicated of any content; only of con-
tents which change. Space as such is not in time, numbers
are not in time. So of space: not every " Miteinander " is
spatial, but only those which have certain relations to
(actual or possible) vision and touch. The space and time
that are used in experiment are sense-data; but Natorp's
space and time are not sense-data at all. They have no ex-
tensity or pastness or futurity. The causaUty by virtue of
which one body warms another body is of such a kind that
the warmed body could not, under the circumstances, have
become cool; the content of the effect is here by no means
" gleichgiiltig." Why certain effects and not others follow
certain causes, is not even suggested by ideaUsm. Why
" Miteinander " takes on the appearance of length, or
position, or extension, why time means the passing into non-
existence and rising into existence, of things — these are left
quite out of account. All that the ideaHst does is to develop
from his starting point a Kst of ideals which in one aspect of
its work science does approximate; but these ideals do not.

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 1 27

beyond a very slight extent, define the concrete actuality
with which the scientist experiments. In short, rationalistic
idealism does not account for the specific characters found in
the world of objects. Like subjectivism, it is philosophically
barren.

This is no denial of its truth. The Universal Mind, such
as it is, may be admitted to be. An object undoubtedly is a
universal, and hence it contains a series whose instances are
numerable. And the mind which entertains these various
concepts is no doubt an object of possible interest. But that
that mind is Great in the sense of ruling nature, directing her
courses, setting the stars in their places, guiding human des-
tiny, etc. — this has nothing whatever to do with the logical
starting point or with the result of rationalistic idealism.
The practical and emotional motives of the type remain
unfulfilled.

This has been felt, one may opine, by the voluntaristic
idealists; and they have believed that the abstractness of the
category-maker's results would be filled out if they could
show that the Universal Mind is a Will. For will is active
and creative (so the common man thinks) ; and if the world
be object of a Great Will then it may be truly said to be no
abstraction. No other human faculty so appeals to our sense
of the concrete as will. Let us then examine the deduction
given by a voluntaristic idealist of the main characters of
reality. Surely a system which is based on will, must satisfy
the deeper yearnings of our practical and emotional nature.
We are here so fortunate as to possess a most elaborate
deduction of this sort: Professor Miinsterberg's book " The
Eternal Values." True, his fundamental concept, value, is
not merely volitional, but contains a tincture of feeling also.
But so much the better, for then we may expect the greater
wealth of results.

128 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

Everything is to be determined by deduction from a will-
attitude, yet not from a bare will-attitude, but from one that
seeks and makes its own satisfaction, i. e., determines valines.
(Often Miinsterberg speaks of will alone, but it is to be
understood as will which in fulfilling its purposes creates
values.) That the will rather than passion or contemplation
is fundamental, is thus signified: " Especially in the modern
German philosophy the conviction is growing that the con-
ception of being itself is founded on the conception of obliga-
tion. The existence of reality is given to us in judgments,
and their affirmation ultimately has no other reason than
the fact that our thought faces a rule, an ' ought,' which
obHges our will to judge. There is no positive judgment of
existence in which the will is not affirming, no negative
judgment in which the will is not denying " {Op. cit., p. 54).
But obligation is not all. The will gets satisfaction in ful-
filling the obligation; the attitude becomes a value-attitude.
" We stand before the fundamental fact that there exists a
will the fulfilment of which satisfies us, and that means is
valuable for us, and which yet is without reference to any
individual pleasure or displeasure, necessary for every pos-
sible subject and therefore absolutely valid" (p. 65). Thus
value alone is the fundamentum. It is more ultimate than
the category of fact itself. " The evaluation precedes the
existence " (p. 55). But this evaluation is not, in the last
analysis, an affair of any private, finite self. It is performed
by a Great Self, an " over-will," or " over-self "; its per-
formance or " self-realization," is the " over-deed." This
" over-will " is the fons et origo of all reality and all special
values; it is the generator of the outer material world, of the
many selves or " fellow- world," and of the inner world of
each self. A true philosophy, according to our author,
deduces from it space, time, and these three worlds, as well
as the main categories (or values) in each of these worlds.

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 1 29

Value is then the irov arw ; existence is simply one kind of
value. " The existence of the world, its reality and its con-
nection, means to us a certain evaluation of life-experiences "
(p. 3 5 1 ) . And that kind of evaluation is not more important
or more certain than the other kinds of evaluation which we
shall later meet. Hence, the absolute will, the " over-self,"
"is thus certainly not a thing which has existence; the
fundamental reality is life-activity, deed " (p. 399). And
there is nothing besides this over-self. " We know further
that the over-self does not find any material outside of
itself " (p. 399). "... the will of the over-self finds as
material only its own willing " (p. 404). This will is not a
temporal process. " In the beginning there was a deed, but
the beginning does not lie in time, as time is only the form-
thought of that object-world which is created by the pri-
mary deed " (p. 405). " The world as absolute reality is
the unresolved unity of this eternal deed " (p. 407).

How then does this timeless valuation, this will or deed,
give rise to the differentiations which constitute the world of
tilings, of selves, and of special values ? Thus : " in every
will-act of ours the resolving analysis may find the starting
point of the striving, the striving itself, and finally the goal
of the striving which becomes realized " (p. 407). (Again,
we must not yet think of this as a process occurring in time.)
Now, " the same must hold true for the fundamental will of
the over-self " (ibid.). Analysis then finds in the over-will
the same three points. " The starting point is that which
the will no longer wills when it seeks the goal; the goal is
that which the striving has not yet reached " (ibid.). " In
the deed itself the not-yet and the no-longer are one. . . .
But from the standpoint of the detached striving factor of
the deed, the no-longer and the not-yet stand separated
against each other " (ibid.). Between them lies the striving

130 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

itself, a " relation-point." This relation-point we call the
now. From the standpoint of such now the no-longer be-
comes the past and the not-yet becomes the future. " With
the resolution of the striving from the atemporal [sic] will-
totality the time is posited as a relation between starting
point and goal " (ibid.). Here ends the deduction of the
category of time.

Next is evolved space. " When the striving separates
itself from its content, still a further antithesis is posited.
Just because the striving maintains the content in the tran-
sition from the past to the future, this content is acknowl-
edged as something independent. It is now not a part of the
striving itself, is therefore outside of the striving effort, and
in this way the not-here arises as against the here " (pp. 407-
408). The passage is obscure, for we are not told what the
" content " may be. Why, too, does the acknowledgment
that something is independent, other than my striving, in-
volve the acknowledgment that it is outside me in space ?
Professor Miinsterberg's deduction is here no clearer than
its prototype in Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre. (We remember
how many times Fichte tried to make this clear, in succes-
sive editions.) Why the will-deed gets a content at all is a
mystery. Why, also, the content is manifold and simul-
taneous, is equally so. " The space at first knows only one
opposition, here and without. But that without refers to
the whole manifoldness of the simultaneous contents "
(p. 408). And also " with every single content the the char-
acter of the without shades itself and becomes a particular
space-direction. In this way arises the endless manifoldness
of space-directions as soon as the striving detaches itself from
the totality of the deed " (ibid.). From the manifoldness
of this space-and-time world follows the variety of strivings,
the individual selves. Here then we have the outer world,

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 13I

the fellow-world, and the world of each self in puris, or the
inner world.

Now an empirically educated scientist may snort in dis-
gust — we have heard such emotional responses — with this
a priori and (too often) obscure mode of explanation. Nev-
ertheless we believe it to have its rights. It does explain,
granted its starting point, certain relations which are some-
thing like our space and time manifolds. " Something
like "we say; we cannot say more. For the space and time,
the many objects and selves, of this deduction, are the palest
ghosts of the actual space, time, objects, and persons we
know. All specific qualities have disappeared from them:
space and time are, as with Natorp's deduction, mere order
and " Miteinander." Extension is not reached by Miinster-
berg's account, nor process of change: — provided, that is,
there was no time imported, at the beginning, into the over-
deed of the over-self. If, as he says, analysis discovers a
" no-longer " and a " not-yet " in that deed, then it is diffi-
cult to see with what justice the analysis may claim to be
true, unless those temporal attributes were existentially
present in the original deed. If not, they are certainly not
accounted for by the character of the deed. All our actual
deeds in this world are temporal processes, and do contain
such temporal distinctions; therefore it seems easy to say
that the original deed is the source of time. But the deed
has no priority over the time; either is meaningless without
the other.

And if concrete time and space are not accounted for by
his deduction, neither is the division into the outer world,
social world, and inner world. For that division hangs from
the manifoldness which time and space introduced. The
Great Self (over-self, or over-deed) does indeed account
as we shall see, for objectivity; and if value means the

132 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

identity of the end with the original intention, for value also;
and, granting the three worlds, even for the different kinds
of value in general. But it does not explain why any value
whatever comes to reside in just the specific instances in
which it is seen.

We may now specify the stages by which the valuation
becomes a definite world. " The one fundamental act which
secures for us a world " is this: " We demand that there be
a world; that means that our experience be more than just
the passing experience, that it assert itself in its identity in
new experiences " (p. 75). (Note here in this " identity "
the universal, which Natorp also started from, couched in
terms of a will-object.) " We will that our experience is a
world " (p. 76). And this is an act of choice. " No one can
be forced to perform that deciding deed " (p. 76) ; we may
be skeptics if we prefer. When identities throughout dif-
ferences — permanent recognizable objects — are found to
exist in the world, our will-attitude is satisfied and reaKty
becomes a value. From this one fundamental value all the
others are deduced. " The system of values must then be
recognized as soon as we ask what has been really posited by
this act of world-assertion. It will be the topic of all the
following inquiries " (p. 78).

Four principal categories are impHed. " First, every part
must remain identical with itself in the changing events [the
category of the universal and the other categories of intel-
lect belong here] ; secondly, the various parts must show in
a certain sense identity among themselves, and thus show
that they agree with one another and that no one part of the
world is entirely isolated [here come the categories of feeling:
harmony, beauty, etc.]; thirdly, that which changes itself
in the experience must still present an identity in its change
by showing that the change belongs to its own meaning and

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 1 33

is only its own realization [the categories of action, life,
morality] " (ibid.). These three are called " the value of
conservation, the value of agreement, the value of realiza-
tion. But if the world is completely to assert itself, that is,
to hold its own identity, these three values must ultimately
be identical with one another, one must realize itself in the
other. Then only the pure will gains its absolute satisfac-
tion; and then we gain the fourth value of completion [the
categories uniting the world in one whole, i. e., those of
rehgion and philosophy] " (ibid.). But now each of these
four values may be realized naively and unconsciously, or
consciously as the " labour of civilization." " In each of
these two large groups, the hfe-values and the culture-
values, we then have the four heads ..." above named
(p. 80). But further, each of these eight must be divided
into three, " inasmuch as experiences which are to assert
themselves can belong to three different fields, either to the
experience of the outer world, or to the experience of our
fellow world, or to the experience of our inner world. Hence
we have a system of eight times three groups of values, and
yet all thesie twenty-four values are only ramifications of the
one value which fulfills our will that our experience is to
belong to a self-dependent, self-asserting (i. e., real and
valuable) world " (p. 80). And the whole world is here
conceived, not as a finished given reality, but as a task set
to the mind, a creation of it, not arbitrary, but systematic
and planful. "We make the world" (p. 81) in the ideaHstic
sense.

The first group of values, that of " conservation" contains
the categories which belong to recognizable (because rela-
tively permanent and regular in their behaviour) objects.
These categories, as already stated, fall into two groups:
those employed by common life and those employed by the

134 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

conscious endeavour to establish identity-in-difference be-
yond the region of superficial observation. This last sub-
group comprises the field of science. Then each of these
subgroups contains three compartments: identity-in-
difference as it appears in external nature, as it appears in
the social world, and as it appears in the inner immediate
life of the private self. Hence we may expect six categories
under the heading of " conservation." These are called by
Miinsterberg the logical values. First, in the ordinary prac-
tical deahng with reahty, identity-in-difference gives us the
real object, or thing. This is demanded: something which is
one and the same possible object for every possible subject
(p. 96). In the social world — which is found, by the way,
in the experience of will-attitudes, my will meeting other
wills directly in sympathy or antipathy, agreement or
rejection — this permanent-through-change is found in the
concept of the person. The person is a will which takes atti-
tudes toward different objects; it continues to be the same
will, with changing attitudes in changing circumstances.
" A really existing person must have the possibihty of main-
taining himself in every new act of will " (p. 112). In the
third reahn, that of the inner hfe, " the world of the over-
personal will " (p. 113) the permanent will-attitude is that
which wills what it wills because that alone is the condition
that there be a world at all. This is nothing else but the
fact that there is value, the most fundamental category of
all; most fundamental, because all the world and all that is
in it, is value.

The development which these three categories undergo
when they are posited by mind in thoroughgoing fashion,
carried out in details where their application is not to com-
mon observation immediately evident, gives rise to the cate-
gories of science, history, and reason. Of science the chief

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 135

category is causality; which means identity of the cause,
preserved in the effect. In the field of social Hfe, enduring
identity of will is the goal sought by historical science.
" The task of the historian is to understand the subjects
(persons) in such a way that a closer cormection of all beings
by identity of will becomes possible " (p. 141). In a nation,
for instance, all the members of that nation will the same
thing — the existence of that particular commonwealth.
In the field of the inner life, i. e., of the values, the identity
of the four kinds of value is posited. For all four proceed
by deduction from the original value with which we started,
and by induction from all four we reach the one value of
which they are the species. But all deduction and induction
proceed by our viewing one and the same content in new
ways or in varying situations. And the same holds of the
more particular values within each of the four species, as
the rest of the book aims to show.

" All the aesthetic values refer to the self -agreement of the
world " (p. 165). That is, the different parts are in har-
mony. This harmony, perceived merely by common sense
and where it is obvious, he calls unity; where it is the prod-
uct of conscious elaboration, it is the beautiful work of art.
" Our thesis is that whenever in our experience a manifold-
ness of wills approaches us, their agreement, their volition
of mutual support, is to us absolutely valuable " (p. 174).
Here things are seen to have their wills — "Is this will of the
outer world real ? For the one whose soul understands it
and feels it, it has exactly the same immediate reality which
the own life-experience may have " (pp. 175-176); though
the reality is not objective existence as of motion or matter.
This agreement as found in Nature is harmony; in our fel-
lows, love — " that your will is to become my will and my
will your will " (p. 189) ; in the inner life, happiness. Hap-

136 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

piness is not pleasure, for that belongs to the merely in-
dividual will; it is the harmony of one's own inner life as a
demand of the universal will; " the height of completed
unity in which our over-personal self finds complete satis-
faction " (p. 198). The harmony or agreement in the world,
found as the result of trained effort, gives beauty. It is here
not agreement with our own will — which would give to the
beautiful an existential value — but with itself, with its
elements and parts. Hence the beautiful object must be
unreal; the work of art. Art as concerned with the subject-
matter of external Nature is called Fine Art; with our fel-
lows, Hterature; with the inner Hfe, music. (We neglect
perforce the rich suggestiveness in his treatment of detail —
particularly in regard to music; no other book on meta-
physics that we know has so fully covered the aesthetic
categories.)

But experience, he continues, is not only full of finished
facts; it is in a state of constant becoming. Hence values
also take on the form of ideals to be striven for. To the
" immediate life-experience " these are the kinds of " de-
velopment "; their later stages being identical with, or the
fulfilment of, the earlier. Yet more than the category of
development is provided. In each group, we must remem-
ber, there are two subgroups. The values of this group wiU
first be of the more obvious kind, which need no painstaking
effort for their realization; secondly, they will be the prod-
uct of civilization, of Kultur. The first class Miinsterberg
calls values of development; in the second class, " the valu-
able deed may subordinate itself to a conscious purpose; it
then becomes an achievement " (p. 257). Hence the second
class is called " values of achievement." In accordance
with the general plan, we find that the values of develop-
ment contain three members. These are respectively the

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 1 37

forms which development assumes in external nature, in the
social world, and in the inner life. They are: in nature,
growth; in society, progress; in the inner world, self-
development. Growth is change such that " the other which
comes is a reaKzation of the first which has gone " (p. 260)
..." the flower is identical with that which the seed-corn
willed " (p. 261). Progress is never merely the establish-
ment of this or that particular institution, but the " transi-
tion towards a standpoint at which every individual wills in
accordance with the over-personal will, that is, with the
pure valuation. Whatever moves toward this goal is pure
progress; whatever moves away from this goal is regress "
(p. 288). What specific forms this transition takes we are
not told. Self-development is that development in which
" the self wills to develop its own willing, wills to unfold and
strengthen its own volitions, and yet always remain in unity
with itself " (p. 296). The three corresponding values when
consciously elaborated, the three values of achievement, are
those of industry, law, and morality. Industry is nature ful-
filling its task (through the cooperation of man) in conserv-
ing and adding to the values of life. The production,
distribution, and consumption of material goods thus take
a high place among the pure values. Not because they
minister to our comforts, but because they fulfill the poten-
tialities of Nature itself, do they attain the rank of over-
personal values. (Is this not a slight distortion ? Nature
here appears not so much to be fulfilling its own potencies,
as to be transformed by an external agency, man, to satisfy
his desires. It is not easy to see in industry the " task to
awaken the sliunbering desire in the outer world, to lead
nature's faint will by helpful human work to fuller and
fuller success" (pp. 311-312). It is well-nigh impossible
to regard the publishing, advertising and selling of a new

138 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

dictionary as such an affair.) The second value of achieve-
ment, whereby the community consciously realizes itself, is
" law and the state as far as it serves the law " (p. 317).
" The content of that common will, on the other hand, has
nothing to do with the value of the law as such " (p. 326).
The third value of achievement, moraUty, is conscious, in-
tentional self-reaHzation. Here as with law, the content of
the act is indifferent. " Every ethics which deals with re-
sults and effects necessarily remains at the standpoint of the
pre-moral " (p. 333). When we speak the truth or save
a life, as true moral agents, " We will ourselves as truth-
speakers or as life-savers only on account of the action itself,
not on account of the desirable results. When the self which
is willed in such a way becomes realized, a pure over-personal
demand is fulfilled " (p. 337).

These various threads are brought together in the final
series of values. This series contains two groups; religion
and philosophy. ReKgion sees, in immediate fashion, the
unity of all the values in God; philosophy consciously
elaborates this, proves it, finds their only source in a one
Over-self, or absolute will. This will is, as we have already
seen, the/<?w5 et origo of outer world, with its multiplicity of
objects, of the fellow-world and of the many inner lives.
From it they are deduced.

How shall we estimate this most stupendous of idealism's
deductions ? It gives indeed a rich haul of categories.
Besides the initial state, containing space, time, and the
three sorts of world, we have: thing, person, value [sic],
causality, history, systematic reason, harmony, love, happi-
ness, beauty in fine art, in literature, and in music, growth
(of Kving things), progress (of mankind), self-realization or
morality, industry, law and the State, reUgion. Perhaps
these overlap a bit, perhaps they are not all of the categories

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 1 39

of experience. But the achievement of idealism seems
superb. It shows that a Great Will which regards a world
like our own as object of its will, and as itself will, somehow
obtains all these categories. It is of course much to know
this. But much in what way ? The character of the knowl-
edge must not be overrated. Is the information which is
vouchsafed, truly drawn from the initial will-attitude ?

The will and its satisfaction are really two distinct mat-
ters. The former does not generate the latter. The world
may be defined as object of my will-to-attend; but that will
does not decide what attention shall find. There must be
things, yes; but what things ? Why grass and flowers,
water and air ? There must be persons, but of what sort ?
Why stupid, or tender, or brilliant ? There will be causal
connections, but why may not anything cause anything
else ? There will be music, but why not of smells rather
than of sounds ? It is the old difficulty, found in all tran-
scendentalism from Plato down, of accounting for the par-
ticular from the universal alone. But that reality which it
is philosophy's purpose to map contains particulars as well
as universals — even if it contains them only under the guise
of appearance or unreality — and the Great Self, in faiHng
to account for the particulars, has to that extent met its
critical point. It cannot suffice as a basis for a satisfactory
philosophical system. Notwithstanding the tremendous
impression created by this vast system of categories, we
cannot forget that all the categories are ideals, indifferent
to their appUcation, not explaining their particular dress on
particular occasions — in short, so far divorced from the
reality. We must even go further. Not only do the cate-
gories fail to account for the particulars; the Great Will
does not account for the categories. Miinsterberg would
never get those 2X3X4 divisions from the one notion of a

140 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

will willing its own willing and finding its satisfaction. Such
willing and satisfaction we are perfectly ready to grant — as
shall later be duly acknowledged — but they start no fertile
process; from them emanates nothing. Why should there
be the three worlds of self, fellows, and the inner life ? Why
the immediate value and the consciously elaborated value ?
Why the " starting point, the striving, and the goal " ? We
simply find these subdivisions of our life, in experience.
Are we answered that ideahsm does not pretend to deduce
a priori all these primitive elements ? Then, we reply,
ideahsm does not justify itself; for its claim to our accept-
ance was to be based upon the fertility of the Great Will in
accounting for the make-up of the world. Let voluntarism
condemn the static Reason of the rationalists as it may, the
dynamic Thiitigkeit of the Will accomphshes but Httle more.
It looked more promising, because it connoted movement
and life; but it does not fulfill the promise. All along the
Hne we find this inability of the monarch Will to guarantee
the performance of his commands: the irony cannot but
strike us, of a will which is powerless to execute. And this
is but the same indifference of form to content, as we found
in the rationahst Natorp. It was shown by the Kantian
prototype, and how should the children not inherit the
paternal traits ? Kant never claimed to account by his
transcendental formula for the detail of the world, either in
the scientific or the moral domain. How from the precept of
right for right's sake could we drive the maxim of honesty ?
Kant did so, avowedly, only by appealing to the empirically
taught lesson of life, that society perishes without mutual
confidence. And this indifference is no accidental incom-
pleteness of Great Subjectivism, but is ingrained in the
Great Subject. He does not originate any distinctions. His
will is not productive of its end: it is simply so defined at

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 141

the beginning as to include it. In fact, the very nature of the
will-concept used by Miinsterberg and other voluntarists
rules out productiveness; for their will has no causal ef-
ficacy. Causality is but a minor aspect of the world; a
relation which the contents of the will-world display toward
one another; this single instance of effectiveness, which it
would seem the ideaHsts ought above all to profit by, in their
attempt to show how the Great Self rules over his world, is
thrown aside. Royce, for example, says {World and Indi-
vidual, vol. I, p. 326) " I speak not here of will as of any
causally efficacious entity whatever." Can we then expect
this emasculated being, this Great Eunuch, to generate
anything, to account for anything, even the thinnest of
categories, outside his own self ? We cannot; and hereby
voluntaristic ideaHsm is convicted of a formality as vicious,
though not as extensive, as that of subjectivism.

And by the same token, voluntarism fails to satisfy the
practical needs, and the emotional cravings, which it was
especially designed to, meet. Of what use to call the world
valuable, when the value of it is quite disconnected with all
that makes values good ? The result is secured, not by
showing that the world contains what we want, but by rede-
fining value. The kind of value which all facts have, merely
because they are facts, is not a kind from which any signifi-
cance of those facts for our future destiny or for the coloured
detail of reality can be traced. The kind of knowledge we
get, when we know that the world is object of an Over-
individual Will, is not such as to afford us any guidance in
our conduct of Hfe, or any explanation of the world's con-
tents. Once more, the original philosophical problem has
been forgotten. In our eagerness for a map of the universe,
we have with rule and compass marked out a beautiful
figure with twenty-four compartments, radiating from an

142 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

empty circle in the centre. A certain pleasure there may be
in gazing at this work of art; but it fulfills no lofty motive,
and detracts rather from our ability to adapt ourselves to
the particular traits of our environment. The immortality
of a timeless attitude may be possessed by everybody, but
it is of the least possible interest and significance; the
Great Will may be a fact, but He will do whatever the blind
forces of nature or our own free choices make Him do, and
He can command Kttle reverence from us mortals. The
Great Will is as barren as the Great Reason.

As regards barrermess, it must be admitted that idealists
have felt the accusation and honestly endeavoured to meet
it. ThusRoyce: " I have tried to show that the idealist is
not obliged either to ignore or to make fight of physical
facts " {World and Individual, vol. II, Pref ., pp. x-xi). But
neither he nor, so far as we know, any other ideaUst makes
definite connection of those facts with the Great Self. Be
the values and the scientific categories which this Being wills
or sees what they may, they do not tell us why bodies gravi-
tate, why entropy increases, why men love women. Nor do
idealists on the other hand employ very significant char-
acteristics of our universe in their delineation of the Self.
Of course idealism must respect the positive contents of the
world as they pass before us in experience, for that system
needs them to fill in the blank forms it offers. But beyond
stating this general need of the particulars, it has naught to
say. Remember the criticism which idealism used to make,
when it was winning its way to the front, upon the older
empiricism. No amount of summing up of particulars will
prove a necessary law, we were told. True, of course.
Idealism has never been able to see the equally true con-
verse. No amount of a priori necessities, however real or
valid they may be, will account for the existence and the

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 1 43

specialty of a single instance. For this Aristotle criticized
Plato; but idealism has forgotten the lesson. Kant himself,
even, knew that the particular was a surd to the universal.
Perhaps we should, not blame idealism more than any other
system for failing to deduce one from the other; for no sys-
tem has yet done this. We ourselves shall later endeavour
to do so, because we believe that until it is done, civil war
in philosophy's camp is inevitable. But we need not re-
quire even so much of idealism. It should at least, if it is
fertile, proceed from genus to species, in ever increasing con-
notation, until it comes at any rate close to our particulars.
It need not reach them. But at present, even in Miinster-
berg's elaborate product, it remains quite bare of character
and of determination. The universal we found able to gen-
erate many categories; Mind and the Great Will were able
to generate Kttle or nothing. How much Professor Miinster-
berg had to assume at the outset, and how empirically did
he obtain it! Yet despite the extraordinary interest of his
detailed account of the categories, we must confess that it is
not as the work of a Great Subject, that it is interesting.

Against our criticism it may be objected that we have
failed to get the point of view of voluntarism. Our judg-
ment has been couched, we may be told, in static, logical, or
existential terms : but volition is a Thathandlung, as Fichte
said. Or as Miinsterberg and others put it, existence is a
value. Perhaps the deductive point of view which we have
maintained misses this value-side.

Now we do not here raise the whole question of the mean-
ing of value. We are discussing idealism, and consequently
we are concerned only with value in the personal sense : —
value as a category of consciousness. Some thinkers have
maintained that good and bad may reside in objects by
themselves; that, if there were no men living, to a flower the

144 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

sun would be a good. Such a view seems antagonistic to
common sense : but it matters not to us now, whether it is
right or wrong. Even if we admit that value is dependent
upon a subject and is indefinable — that " there is nothing
good or bad in the world but thinking makes it so " — what
we shall say retains its force.

Should the value-attitude, then, replace the scientific or
theoretical one ? Do we get a better understanding of the
world when we put it all into terms of willed end, frustrated
or fulfilled purpose, yes, even an impersonal Sollen ? We
may indeed do this. To be a blade of grass is doubtless to be
an object which fulfills my purpose of finding out what com-
poses the lawn in front of my house. It is, however, just as
correct to say that the satisfaction thus afforded to my
curiosity is an existing fact, a real occurrence. The reduc-
tion of existence to value does not forestall the converse
reduction. If reahty is what we ought to believe, then what
we ought to believe is reality, and the fact that we ought to
believe it is a real attribute of the universe. The only
justification for our preferring either reduction lies in its
fertihty. Does it help us to see more of the make-up of the
universe, to regard it in value-terms rather than in the cold
impersonal way of the rationalist ? And we have found that
it does not. The value-attitude, however interesting an
object of study for itself, has not cast more light upon the
scene before us, than the contemplative one. It gives a cor-
rect, though inadequate, formulation of the panorama; so
does the existential rendering. As far as results go, there
is no ground for asserting the primacy of either value or
fact.

A third sort of idealism remains to be considered. As the
human person has been thought to have three " faculties,"
viz., intellect, will, and feehng — the modern fashion pre-

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 1 45

fers the word " processes " or " functions " — so the Great
Self has been alleged to be Reason, or Will, or Feeling.
Having expounded the performances of the Great Reason
and the Great Will, we ought now to set forth the system of
aesthetic idealism or the doctrine of the Great Feeling. This
system has not indeed been so prominent as the other two.
Shall we be wrong if we assign as the reason the predom-
inantly practical and scientific colour of modern civilization?
The ideas of the Romantic School, and the philosophy of
Schelling, could hardly flourish long in a scientific and indus-
trial epoch. Nevertheless, we have today a reappearance
of this affective idealism, as we might call it, and in a more
thoroughly organized form than Schelling was able to give it.
We refer to the system of Professor Baldwin. This magnum
opus, begun in the three volumes of Thought and Things and
culminating in the Genetic Theory of Reality, could hardly be
expected to receive its meed of attention and appreciation
so soon after its birth (1905-15) as the present date; but it
would seem to represent along with the above systems one of
the chief types of human thought. Let us then expound it
and estimate its metaphysical significance.

The author thus resumes his position: "It remains,
finally, to characterize our result from the historical point of
view. We have seen that the interpretations of reality, since
the introduction of the subjective point of view into modern
philosophy, have vibrated between various rationalisms and
various voluntarisms, apart from tendencies of a 'positive'
character, which have recognized certain limitations of
method and so have denied the possibility of a philosophy
of reality. In speculative thought systems of rationalism
and voluntarism have contested the field.

"A third point of view, making appeal to feeHng, has per-
sisted, however, more or less desultorily, its presentation

146 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

growing more and more articulate. Its clear formulation is
today most urgently needed." (Genetic Theory of Reality,
pp. 308-309.)

Such a formulation is his own system, the metaphysical
theory of "Pancalism" or the beautiful whole (to koKov wav).
The title sufficiently indicates the aesthetic trend of the doc-
trine. The interpretation of reaHty, now in one way, now
in another, by individual and race, reaches its goal in a con-
ception which synthesizes the positive elements of previous
views: that of aesthetic experience. Such experience, and
such alone, is ultimate reahty. In order to appreciate it, we
must consider how it has evolved from earher modes of
thought. The development of human thinking about
reahty has passed, according to Baldwin, through three
stages, viz., the prelogical, logical, and h3^erlogical.
Though not strictly necessary to our purpose, we beheve
it will conduce to a better reahzation of the system's im-
portance if we recount some of the details of this progress.
In the prelogical stage reahty is, to man, a social institu-
tion. The tribe, not the individual, is the primary thing;
the individual is not, except as a member of the tribe. What-
ever the tribe endorses is real, and whatever is real is what
the tribe endorses. " If this be true, we should expect, the
farther back we trace human culture, the more emphatic,
dominant, and irresistible we should find the social means of
organization and control to be. . . . We are accustomed to
think of the ' natural man ' as a sort of primitive ' in-
dividualist,' free from our social conventions, and roaming
at his own sweet will in the broad fields of hfe. But the
very reverse is the case. Primitive man is a slave, subject to
unheard-of severities, brutaUties, terrors, sanctions, per-
secutions, all represented by detailed rites and ceremonies
that make his Hfe a perpetual shiver of dread, and a night-

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 1 47

mare full of spectres. Nothing is so slight, not even his
shadow or his dream, as to escape the regulation of the
mystic powers, speaking in the social code ; and nothing is
grave enough to secure him a moment's respite or exemption
from the penalties socially decreed. The savage is never
gay; gayety is the product of civilization " (p. 46). " We
may say, without hesitation, that primitive interpretation
(of reality) considered as common meaning or representation
collective, is ' syndoxic ': that is, it is apprehended by the
indiAddual as being the common possession of the group,
accepted by others as by himself. He makes no claim to
have discovered or even to have confirmed it. It is a body
of commonly accepted teachings ..." (p. 46). This
interpretation of reality is not dualistic: self and other, sub-
ject and object, actual and ideal, are not yet distinguished.
It confuses the two sides; facts are not, as we now view
them, physical facts merely, but emotionally interpreted
physical facts. " It is as in the case of the child who refuses
to admit that the doll is merely a thing of wood and paint,
seeing in it the identity of a loved and cherished compan-
ion " (p. 56). There is lacking " the distinction of persons
from things, and the distinction of persons as individuals,
from one another — especially of the personal self from
other selves, of ego from alter " (p. 59). " This appears in
the mass of evidence collected by the ethnologists, which
shows that the primitive individual does not and cannot
consider himself, even physically, a separate, distinct, self-
identical being " (p. 62). This primitive monism is signifi-
cant, for to it we return at the end, though in an enriched
and ripened form, which has profited by the dualism of the
later stages. And finally, we note that it is a rehgious inter-
pretation; the physical object is identified with its mystical
meaning. "... the animism of primitive life is that of the

148 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

affective type " (p. 79). "... things are intermediaries,
agents, instruments of good or ill, of fate or fortune, or they
are ends, beings to be propitiated, avoided, welcomed, ap-
pealed to, defended. In both cases they are values " (p. 81).
This is a rehgious attitude, because " there is the recognition
in this object of a presence or force worthy of respect and
capable of giving aid " (p. 88). It is a personal affair, for
" All the great rehgions of the world have personal gods "
(p. 93). To this rehgious and affective character of reahty,
so prominent in the view of primitive man, we return in the
theory of " PancaKsm."

" In the passage from the prelogical to the logical type of
knowledge, the imagination is the constant instrument. . . .
By the schematizing imagination, the materials of knowl-
edge are released from the grasp of external and social con-
trol, and made available for reconstruction in experimental
hypotheses and aesthetic unities " (p. 140). With increased
play of fancy, grows up the pure contemplative impulse, the
impulse " toward the explanation of things, in the whole
range of nature and mind " (p. 142). But we must not
believe that the scientific method which follows is the only
organon of truth. It is but one among others; to select it
out as alone worthy of respect is to worship an abstraction.
Fancy, too, has its insights ; myths have their truth- value.
" It is not only true that the imagination serves as an in-
strument to knowledge . . . , it is equally true that its
constructions may not have such ends in view, but may con-
stitute a mode of interpretation having independent mean-
ing " (p. 144). "And this semblant picture [drawn by
rehgious myth], presented to faith and contemplation, is not
merely a temporary substitute for a fully rational account;
it is a permanent rendering of ideals in forms with which the
logical dispenses, but which nevertheless hold their own in

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 1 49

human thought " (p. 145). After these warnings, we may
proceed with the logical stages. Imagination soon reveals
the dualism of fact and value; and hence reality is seen in
either of two guises. It may be viewed as a group of " facts,
truths, principles " or a group of " ends, values, norms "
{cf. the table, p. 151). These give respectively rationalisms
and voluntarisms. We must admit that Professor Baldwin
here rather lightly brushes aside the " reahstic " types of
thought, as if the ideaHsms (rationalistic or voluntaristic)
were the only ones worth considering. He says, " It would
seem, then, that, historically considered, speculative thought
has allowed, tacitly or avowedly, the presupposition that it
is in a mode of experience, or through consciousness, that
reality reveals itself. We may say that this is true without
doubt. The subjective point of view . . . has remained
the starting point of the theory of reality, as it is the pre-
supposition of the judgment of existence. A theory may
refuse to admit this . . . but in that case it must still
postulate a principle . . . the meaning of which can be
determined only in human experience " (ibid.). It is a con-
sequence of his inadequate treatment of this issue — surely
as patently unsolved today as any in philosophy — that his
final synthesis includes only idealistic motives, and in so far
faUs to be as complete a philosophical synthesis as the
author believes it is. But — to proceed. Both intellec-
tualism (rationalism) and voluntarism are convicted of
one-sidedness, in twenty pages of searching analysis. We
give two examples : " Every experience of exclusive interest,
— the child's kiss, the drunkard's cup, the image present to
the gaze of the devotee — gives a sense of reality more
intimate than all the proofs of logic " (p. 156). "... all
the ideals (of voluntarism) become intelligible, continuous,
and coordinated goods only by reason of the function of

150 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

knowledge, which not only discovers the ideals, but enforces
them by finding them true " (p. 169).

Having thus escaped from the exclusions of the logical
period, we pass to the hyperlogical. Here we find the
beginnings of the attempt to sjnithesize the various opposing
views of the logical period. They are indeed hardly at all
synthetic at first; rather a return from the oppositions of
that period to the directness and simplicity of immediacy.
They are, therefore, called " immediacy theories "; of the
more primitive type, there are mysticism of the naive sort,
and subjectivism; of the more sophisticated kind, intuition-
ism, transcendentahsm and the " higher mysticism." The
second group of hyperlogical theories contains "those based
on the immediacy of synthesis ": i. e., those which make
a more serious attempt to combine opposing motives in the
history of thought. Here are grouped — perhaps rather
arbitrarily — such different men as Plotinus, Fichte, Hegel,
Bradley, Plato, Jacobi, and at the highest point of the
progress, Aristotle, Kant, and Schelhng. The relationship
of our author's view to that of Schelling is, as we should
expect, close ; and one is glad to see the merit of Schelling,
too long obscured by his great contemporary Hegel, receiv-
ing something of its due recognition. The one trouble with
ScheUing was that in his system " The art consciousness is
not shown to have the requisite content" (p. 214, italics
mine). " What SchelUng's resort to the aesthetic really
lacked, then, was an analysis of the art consciousness and
its products, which would show that it really fulfilled the
role of reconciliation which he assigned to it " (p. 215).

The synthesis of " PancaUsm " follows. " The aesthetic
experience is so rich in meaning that we are able to recog-
nize no less than four suggestions of duahstic meaning
[taken up from the logical stage] whenever it is experienced,

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 15 1

each contributing, however, to the immediacy of the whole
effect. There is, in the aesthetic object, first, the character
of imaginative semblance, which suggests the ordinary
duahsm between idea and fact ; there is, second, the char-
acter of idealization, which suggests the dualism between
fact and end; there is, third, the character of self -embodi-
ment or personahzation, suggesting the duahsm between the
self and the not-self; and finally, fourth, there is the char-
acter of singularity, suggesting the dualism between singular
and universal. It remains to show, however, that . . .
these strains of dualism lose themselves in the rich synthesis
of immediate contemplation. With all its varied sugges-
tions, no state of mind is more fully one and undivided than
that of aesthetic enjoyment, when once it is fully entered
into" (pp. 231-232). "The distinguishing thing . . .
about the aesthetic interest is its end; it seeks the intrinsic
meaning of the object, not a meaning foreign to or beyond
the object " (p. 236). It seeks and finds the reahty itself.
"In aesthetic appreciation, the object is read as possessed
of the very mental and moral life of the observer . . ."
(p. 239). "What we are justified in taking the real to be is
that with which the full and free aesthetic and artistic con-
sciousness finds itself satisfied. We realize the real in achieving
and enjoying the beautiful " (p. 277). " The conclusions we
have reached allow us to suppose that reality is just all the
contents of consciousness so far as organized or capable of
organization in aesthetic or artistic form. . . . The whole
of reality would be the entire experience of a consciousness
capable of grasping and contemplating it as an aesthetic
whole. The whole is an organized experience, and this
experience has the form of a self " (p. 303) : This is aesthetic
idealism. It differs from absolute ideahsm such as Mr.
Bradley's in this, that it does not construe the partial aspects

152 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

as appearance over against reality. " As to these special
modes of reality, they are not to be considered invalid or
unreal. . . . The aesthetic reveals something new, some-
thing peculiar; but it accepts and reinstates, in its own way,
the realities and even the contrasts of the partial modes. . . .
Each is therefore a valid, though, genetically considered, a
modal and incomplete aspect of the real " (p. 304). Nor is
this aesthetic whole a " static absolute." " It is just the
quality of the aesthetic ideal to reach finality in every state-
ment of its results; but to say that reality is itself finished,
in this intent of finality, is to deny the continued efficacy of
the motives themselves upon which this very intent is
based " (p. 305). "... the whole is continually and
progressively moving on ..." (ibid.).

Professor Baldwin's achievement is, we believe, unique.
He has the breadth of motive of the true philosopher. On
the ideahstic side, he has gathered up the partial views into
a synthesis which adds to the merit of comprehensiveness
that of a specific verification in experience which rationalistic
and voluntaristic idealism have seemed unable to attain.
And he has raised into prominence an invaluable human
experience — the aesthetic — whose significance for knowl-
edge the modern workaday consciousness is all too inclined
to overlook.

How then shall we adjudicate the metaphysical claims of
the system ? Professor Baldwin's method is genetic; and
this means that he does not attempt to dedtice from the
Great ^Esthete's experience the various parts and the de-
tailed outline of the universe. Such a Being is conceived as
the goal toward which we human beings are progressing,
which indeed some of us occasionally touch. We believe the
conception to be a just one. If, however, that is the goal, we
have yet to understand how it happens to realize itself so

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 1 53

gradually, through partial stages, one at a time, each suffer-
ing from the exclusions and bitter oppositions found in
human history. This is always the difficulty for an ideaHz-
ing view, as for a synthetic view; granted its truth, does it
account for the happenings of this nether world, with its
imperfections which cannot be explained away ? It maps
the better side of reality, if you will; but the worse side —
the side, that is, to which we most need to adapt ourselves —
is not understood. The value of a philosophical system,
i. e., the extent to which it satisfies our instinctive curiosity
to know the universe and to adapt ourselves to it, is meas-
ured by its power of explaining just those characters of the
universe which offer difficulty to us: the particular things,
the forces that frustrate one another, the real as opposed to
the ideal. The aesthetic system is too good to be wholly sat-
isfactory, just as the rationalistic was too logical to be wholly
true. A perfectly correct picture of one side it certainly
gives. The aesthetic experience " when once it is fully
entered into " (p. 232), has all the soul-satisfying quaUties
attributed to it by our author. At the same time it is but
one point of view of the universe, even though it were the
broadest possible. It may include everything in its net,
just as subjectivism did; but it finds a surd in the other all-
inclusive points of view already studied — those of the will
and the intellect. The aesthetic experience itself may be
analyzed — nay, must be analyzed; and by this means it
becomes in turn less fundamental than the logical. As
subjectivism and objectivism tilted interminably, so there is
here the occasion for another endless seesaw; viz., between
the three kinds of ideahsm. The logical, the voHtional, the
affective, may each be defined in concepts of the others, and
any sort of ideahsm is thereby " cut under " by any other.
If the aesthetic type had been able to deduce the fundamental

154 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

categories of the other types, it would have remained su-
preme : biit because the reaUty it lays before us is end rather
than source, it cannot do so. The genetic method is more
concrete, more personal, more empirical; but it has thereby
foregone the explaining power which the more a priori de-
ductions, in however abstract a fashion, might claim. The
balance remains pretty nearly equal, between the three
views. All are, in their positive teaching, about equally
true; none refutes the others, none cuts deeper under the
others than they under it, and none can accoimt for the pres-
ence of its rivals. They are simply cross-sections of the
universe from three distinct angles; they miss the thickness
of fact, for they have discovered no productive principle.

Herewith we finish our study of the first argument of
Great Subjectivism, viz., the argument from the fecundity
of the hypothesis of a Great Subject. The second ground,
as we have already said, is of a less transcendental nature.
Its evidence is not drawn from conceptual deduction but (at
least in the intention of its defenders) from the empirical
results of psychology. It is not, to be sure, employed by all
idealists. Some of them — e. g.. Professor Rickert {Gegen-
stand der Erkenntnis, pp. 57, 69, and 107) — claim that the
transcendental deduction of categories is the only proper
justification of so ideal a being as the Great Subject; these
thinkers insist upon the inadequacy of particular psychologi-
cal fact, even its irrelevancy, to any so imiversal problem.
We believe that they are open to some charge of incon-
sistency; as, for example, we find Rickert himself bviilding
upon Brentano's theory of judgment (op. cit., p. 106)
which is a wholly empirical matter. We wish however to
take idealism at its broadest, and to neglect no one of the
pleas made for it by the experts; accordingly, we shall, in
spite of these disclaimers, proceed to the psychological
evidence for the Head of the universe.

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 1 55

But alas ! as so often in these baflBing currents, we must
first dear the jutting rocks laid bare by the objections just
raised. Characteristically enough, another issue has here
arisen to cleave the ideaUstic party in twain : the issue be-
tween " Psychologismus " and " Anti-psychologismus," as
the Germans call it. This dispute we witness in the writing
of the " neo-Friesians " on the one side (a leading work of
their camp is Leonard Nelson's Die kritische Metkode und das
Verhdltnis der Psyckologie zur Philosophic, Gottingen, 1904),
and on the other the work of such logicians as Schiippe
{Erkenntnistheoretike Logik), Husserl {Logische Unter-
suchungen) , Cohen {Reine Logik) and others. The defenders
of " Psychologismus " argue that whatever is, is accessible
to direct verifying observation or describable in terms of such
observation; hence the transcendental self, the universal
mind, and other " pure " concepts are either nothing or are
part and parcel of the concrete stream of human thought
and feehng. The latter deny this accessibility to experience,
and instance many entities which we credit with reaUty,
such as IT, V2, the infinite, or indeed any "universal," con-
cept or law. For these are by definition incapable of ade-
quate presentation in any finite series of cases, such as
human Hfe offers. The controversy waxes hottest about the
nature of judgment; for idealism has agreed to define
reality as the object of a vaUd judgment. We find the one
faction urging that judgment is a psychosis, a mental event,
and should be investigated quite empirically; the other
that because it apprehends an external reahty judgment is
more than a mental occurrence, and has aspects not redu-
cible to psychical terms. It seemed, not long ago, as if the
latter opinion were correct; for an enterprising psychologist,
Karl Marbe, undertook an examination of the psychical
content of the judging process (Marbe, Untersuchung uber

156 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

die Denkthdtigkeit) and found no contents that seemed con-
stant to all his subjects and relevant to the process. Accord-
ingly, Marbe decided that judgment was not intrinsically a
psychosis. Contradictory though this seemed to common
sense, the result commended itself to the " anti-psychologis-
mus " people. But not long afterwards, certain experi-
menters (Narziss Ach, H. J. Watt, August Messer, Alfred
Binet, and others) deciding that Marbe's experiments were
not sufficiently thorough, instigated a long series of labora-
tory studies with the object of digging out psychological
material from this elusive phenomenon. And they claimed
to find a number of hitherto uimamed states. At the same
time, Benno Erdmann's Umrisse zur Psychologie des Den-
kens (Sigwart Festschrift, Tubingen, 1900), an equally
painstaking investigation, came to the conclusion that the
material discovered by such methods is irrelevant to the
real nature of thought. It is not our purpose to retail these
various and conflicting deliverances; the reader will find a
resume in Titchener's Experimental Psychology of the
Thought-Processes (19 10) which certainly as far as a layman
may decide, leaves little or nothing to be desired in the way
of completeness. The residuum of accepted result is, to be
sure, small. However confident we may be that future ex-
periments will reveal new subject-matter in the cognitive
states of mind, it must be admitted that as yet the " antis "
are not definitely refuted. In this matter we can simply
look to the experts to decide. When, indeed, we remember
that many psychologists nowadays (among them no less an
authority than the experimentalist Wundt) deny the pos-
sibihty of introspective study of thought, we are not too
sanguine of a decision. But who can tell what new argu-
ments may be discovered ? Meanwhile we can but em-
phasize the fact that there are almost as many different and

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 1 57

conflicting theories of judgment within the " anti " faction
as within the other. The reader may, if he thinks the labour
worth while, look up the theories of Wundt, B. Erdmann,
Marbe, Bradley, and others, and see whether they show
more or less disagreement than those of Sigwart, Jerusalem,
Brentano, Mill, Schrader, and their " psychologistic "
allies. The philosophical issue is, in truth, not one which
may be settled by appeal to particular facts of the mental
Ifie. There is clearly something about such concepts as ir,
V2, the infinite, the self, which is not attained by any sum-
mation of particulars, while at the same time these entities
are reahzed only in the particulars. The analogy with the
subjective-objective issue is perfect. Real objects may
always be described in subjective terms, but those terms
never contain all that is meant by " real " as over against
" mental." Yet whatever more is meant, can in turn be
stated in subjective phraseology — only to serve as an
indication once more of something not yet reached ; and so
on indefinitely. This we saw in Chapter IV. It is the same
with the concept and the psychical symbol or the particular
image, or case of the concept. The irrationals, ir, etc., can
never be summed, yet every decimal place that can be named
may be calculated with exactness. It is the relation of
more-to-come, of further possible cases, that is not repre-
sented by any one value or instance. But is not this relation,
this possibihty, a definite content present here and now
before the mind ? Is it not in a psychical process that we
apprehend it ? How else indeed could we apprehend it but
in an act of apprehension ? And is it not thereby the con-
tent of the particular state in which it is apprehended, as
truly as for subjectivism the object is content of the subject ?
Undoubtedly we must acknowledge that it is. All that
is, as subjectivism showed, is content of the mind —

158 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

whether actual or possible content. For even the possi-
bility-of-further-instances is itself something thought of.
The upholders of " Psychologismus " are correct. But
their opponents also are correct when they insist upon the
inadequacy of the present instance to express the whole
series, and upon the inability of the formula "more-to-
come " to tell what that more will be. The never-ending tilt
follows the denial of either side. It is not the subjectivity
of the concept, or its extension beyond the present content,
that determines what the future cases are to be, but the
nature of the concept itself. The concept tt has a different
second decimal from that of the concept V3, because of its
own intrinsic quahties. In the controversy over " Psycho-
logismus," then, neither side gives a clue to the nature of
concept or real object; and neither side can deny the cor-
rectness of the other except when that other denies its op-
ponent. Meanwhile, what we are interested in is not the
psychical or conceptual character of the Great Self, but its
reaUty and its make-up. With this we pass to the specific
evidence for ideahsm which is drawn from the psychological
field.

Genetic psychology, it is alleged, shows that one's own
self is a social product. It grows with and by its fellow-
selves. The child's self develops by imitation of, and re-
action to, the acts of already formed selves (adults) ; he does
not know he has a self until he is aware of other selves. The
mature self is nothing but a socius. The work of Baldwin
and Royce in this field (c/. in particular, Royce, World and
Individual, II, lect. 4, " Physical and Social Reality ") is well
known; its importance for ideahsm is not sufficiently recog-
nized by realistic foes. So indispensable is the position for a
just appreciation of ideahsm's endeavour to be concrete that
we venture to give it a distinct title. In contrast with the

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 1 59

isolated-self-doctrine of subjectivism, viz., solipsism, the
social-self-doctrine of idealism may fitly be named socip-
sism. It is the doctrine of the Great Self as the organic unity
and identity of the little human selves ; a unity involved in
the structure of each self, and verifiable in daily experience.
It obeys not a transcendental, but an empirical motive ; and
the two props of idealism, abstract logic and concrete psy-
chology, here meet to give mutual aid and comfort. In
modern life, powerful influences confirm this empirical
prop. All our emphasis upon " social service," the spirit of
society, altruism as the chief virtue, democracy, all our dread
of loneliness and our contempt of obscurity, combine to
render the distinction between the socius and the solus into
that between the good and bad, the true and false. The
rapid rise into favour of the " social sciences " is but a sign
of this. Here, as with other philosophical doctrines, many
motives besides the intellectual bring about the current
view. And those who oppose the claims of idealism, built
as it is largely upon this empirical organic theory of society,
would do well to remember that they are opposing the
favourite virtues of their own time. Not that this is a refu-
tation of their position, for each age no doubt exaggerates
certain aspects of Hfe and neglects otners ; but it is well to
see where the arguments lead. And at any rate it seems
difficult to find other rational ground for the preferred vir-
tues of present-day ethics, than this one of the mutual
immanence of private selves.

This doctrine of the veridical Great Self cUnches the nail
driven by the other line of reasoning about the object as a
universal. The real external things in Nature, trees, houses,
and rocks, are, in the teaching of ideaUsm, content universal,
common to many minds. They are also defined as the con-
tent of the Great Mind. The latter thus appears as the

l6o PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

unity of the various particular minds. So we find Royce
speaking of matter as object of the social mind {op. cit.,
vol. II, p. 197). A scientific truth is one which is capable of
confirmation by many expert witnesses. Such unity, how-
ever, must be carefully conceived; it does not intend to
contradict a diversity of the little selves. The tree which
you and I see is undoubtedly in part the same ; but it would
be very difficult, if not impossible, to point out exactly those
elements of it which carry the identity. The colour, the
shape, the position, vary with the place and the sense-
organs of each observer. It is rather the conceptual limit,
the object of inference toward which the sensuous messages
point, that forms the identical content in the diverse minds.
This is expressed by every-day language in the phrase
" that particular tree which we all mean "; that is the com-
mon element. And while this limit is more than the content
of any one mind, it is the content of that unity of all minds
which constitutes the Great Self. The ideahst may of
course be asked where he will put these outstanding diver-
sities between your presentation of the tree and mine; but
the reply is at hand. He may put them in either of two
regions. In so far as they are erroneous, he may relegate
them to the particular mind of the observer alone. If I am
red-blind, the tint of the autumn leaves as seen by me will
not be identical with that hue which delights your eye : my
visual content lies in that realm of fancy, the merely private.
It is true that this gives rise to grave objections connected
with the problem of error. But that problem, as will even-
tually appear, is a difficulty to every philosophic type alike,
and it is therefore not open to the opponent to condemn
idealism for not squaring with the real presence of illusory
objects. Hence for the present we may disregard this criti-
cism. The other alternative before idealism has to do with

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM l6l

the data before my mind when they are correct but diver-
. gent from the correct data of your mind. The fir tree as I
see it may have a general conical figure, while to you who
look from a different angle, it is shaped more like an egg on
end. Now neither of these is incorrect: the outline of the
tree is really such that from one angle it looks a cone, from
another, an egg. Both are to be included in the true nature
of the object, each admitting the truth of the other. The
differences are due to each observer abstracting from the
point of view of the other. The identity is found by each
including the ignored aspect and arriving at the same total
as the other. In this way, then, may idealism show the
numerical sameness of the many minds.

But not alone on its theory of Nature and self-conscious-
ness does the present argument of idealism lean. A similar
chain of reasoning is drawn from the doctrine of interest.
And this turn of reflection, though not more coercive, is
perhaps more persuasive. My own self is best realized when
I identify my own interests with those of the social group,
and the greatest self is he whose interests have the greatest
social intension. The argument may easily be enlarged by
ethical and psychological detail. Its appeal to the sympa-
thetic instincts is powerful: to many minds, the coincidence
of warm sentiment with the cold constraint of reason forms
irresistible circumstantial evidence. That these considera-
tions are exact or exhaustive, however, would be too much
to claim. Psychology is hardly in so established a state that
we can base philosophy very firmly upon it. Yet there seems
to be a great loose body of evidence which goes to show that
the self is in high degree social. For accuracy's sake we had
better say that a large part of the content of the self, whether
on its cognitive, active, or sensible aspects, is of social origin.
On the other hand, it does seem clear that idealists have

1 62 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

underestimated certain instincts which extol solitude and
independence, and have neglected a considerable body of
evidence which would argue against the social-fusion view.
At best, the idealists have hardly done more than to point
out the actuality and the importance of the social side of
human nature.

Some amount of unity and mutual impHcation between
our various private selves, then, undoubtedly exists. The
empirical plea of our type has a measure of truth. But is
there enough truth in it for the purposes of ideaUsm ? It
seems fair to answer that the common part of all the mem-
bers of our race, taken together with their interpenetration,
is sufficient to intimate a Head of the universe, in the sense of
a rough unity of their minds' contents and their interests.
So far as their objects and interests are one, doubtless the
many minds are also one. But for aught that is yet shown,
this unity may be of a sort that mankind finds no special
satisfaction in discovering.

The Great Self has present to it all those objects which are
verified by many witnesses. How many witnesses ? We
are never certain as to the required number; and in practice
this uncertainty cuts the muscle of the social argument.
What seems almost universally confirmed in one age may be
discarded in the next — so testifies the history of science, of
ethics, of pontics. All we can say is, that what eventually is
agreed upon by the experts, working independently, will be
the truth. The One Mind which sees all things gives us no
clew to what those things will be. After all, is any more
knowledge afforded by the statement that the truth is
object of One Mind, than by the proposition that the truth
is the agreement between many minds ? The One Mind has
nothing uniquely its own, nothing from which we can infer
the character of what is present to it, or the map of reality.

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 1 63

It remains a purely formal unity; a large circumference
which is bound to include all within the map. It is not the
mental quality of it, that helps our knowledge; it is the
unity and the agreement between all men which it holds
out as a final criterion of the truth, or goal — it is that alone
which is helpful to the seeker after knowledge. But this
unity may quite as well be put in realistic as in idealistic
terms. We grant, then, that there is, actually, concretely,
in each of us, a consciousness big enough to include what
others are conscious of; and this may be true even though
we do not know just what in particular and exactly is this
common stock of truth. Nevertheless such a great con-
sciousness gives no indication of the structure, the laws, the
behaviour, of the contents before it. True, but nugatory,
must be the verdict.

The like is to be said of that approximate unity of interests
which constitutes the emotional and practical tissue of this
large Self. My self is social, yes ; my interests are indeed
bound up with yours; but what will be the true realization
of that self and those interests ? The fact that the Great
Unity identifies them all, does not help us to know, of any
particular desire, whether its fulfilment would promote
your interests as well as my own. It is the specific nature of
each end which alone decides that. Is it for your best in-
terest and mine, for the fullest realization of your self and
my own, that the government should take over the rail-
ways ? that children should be brought up by the state ?
Psychological ideahsm pretty generally has come to admit
that there is no deduction of particular institutions such as
the family, this or that kind of state, or system of education.
Certainly, if there is, it cannot be based upon the empirical
fact that we are in the main social beings. All that socipsism
teaches is that we must in general live with others, learn

164 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

from them and instruct them, work with them in coopera-
tion and competition (both ? or only one ?) — in short, that
whatever we do we are in large measure mutually dependent.
For the tracing of consequences from this dependence, we
must go back to those deductions of categories which made
up the transcendental argimient of idealism. That argu-
ment we have already dealt with. From the empirical de-
fence we gain a Great Self whose unity is no more significant
for knowledge, than is the string which we use to tie up a
bundle of sticks significant of their shape, weight, or number.
Ideahsm, Hke subjectivism and objectivism, views the
world from one corner, albeit a fascinating one. Charmed
with the concept of personal individuality, it resolves to
envisage all reaHty from that coign of vantage. It would re-
duce everything to a function of some Immense Person.
And it has succeeded in doing so. Indeed any corner in the
universe affords a unique perspective of the whole scene,
and all within the panorama may be truly defined from that
perspective. But such projection is bound to distort the
vision; certain jutting points will stand out magnified,
others will be diminished, still others cast into shadow.
Idealism has proved its case at the cost of specific informa-
tion. It has secured truth but it has lost pertinence. Its
adversaries, feehng the barrenness of the net result, have
straightway endeavoured to disprove it. Failure in this
endeavour leads to a reaction in which idealism again proves
its case. For it is futile to try to break down the chain of
reasoning. It is, in our opinion, unbreakable. At the same
time, we must acknowledge the force of the reasons which
have led to revolt: namely, its unsatisfactoriness to the
instinct which seeks a map of the universe for purpose
either of practical advantage or contemplation.

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 1 65

As a matter of history, idealism's thinness has reacted
upon idealism itself; the philosophic disease has in these
latter days of the system broken out in an aggravated form.
The particular projection of reality which it has affected
conceals the contours and indentations of reality's map; it
gives a bare circumference with no filHng. The evanescent
reality takes revenge; in true Hegelian fashion, ideahsm
gradually takes on the colour of a doctrine which gives no
acquaintance with reahty. This was foreshadowed in
Kant's doctrine of the things-in- themselves. They were the
real things, and we could never know them. All that we
know is unavoidable illusion. Later thinkers, beginning with
Fichte, expunged this germ which infected human knowl-
edge with error. But since idealism had no principle for
discovering the empirical contents, it could not provide a
guarantee of the reahty of what we see in our experience.
If now there are no " things-in- themselves," everything we
can know remains, not merely illusion, but illusion about
nothing; for there is nothing in the background of phenom-
ena. It is but as if things were what they seem to be. The
Great Person is a form without content; he works in vacuo
— if even he can be said actually to work. This result has
been reached by that most faithful of Kantian students.
Professor Vaihinger, in the Philosophic des Als Ob. Here
we find the reductio ad absurdum of that method which would
derive reahty from the subject — however colossal the
frame of that subject may be. Nothing is ; we can only say,
it is as if it were. Of course it is not merely the unsatis-
factoriness of the consummation that we condemn; it is its
patent falsity. Everybody docs believe that reahty is
somewhere and somehow known — if only the real fact that
doubting occurs. This Descartes pointed out; and if he
presumed to interpret it in the subjective sense of the Cogito

1 66 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

ergo sum, introducing a point of view whose pleasantness to
man obscured its barrenness, the objective correctness
of his discovery remains to rebuke this last product of the
subjective interpretation.

The subjective types, both Httle and great, have herewith
exhausted themselves. Whatever other types we find, will
be objective, realistic, or else of a sort which is foreign to this
whole issue. But before we proceed to these types, it will be
instructive, perhaps, to make some comments upon the
general bearings of ideaUsm. The doctrine has, apparently,
had a tremendous influence upon modern history — notably
upon German poHtical ideals and methods (as is beauti-
fully shown in Dewey's German Philosophy and Politics),
and our accusation of barrenness is therefore not easily ad-
mitted in the practical realm. Scientifically impotent
though it is, may it not lead to fundamental modifications
in national policy ? In considering this question, too, we
shall be led to see something of the real influence of phi-
losophy upon, as well as its indifference to, the practical
issues of life.

It is true that the human thinkers who have taken
ideahsm as an absolutely true system, have acted quite dif-
ferently from those who denied it. One who thinks that a
certain group of categories must he, no matter what is the
empirical material filling them up, will naturally stand for
the supremacy of system, at almost any cost to the individual.
He will prefer a rigid national structure to the comfort of the
individuals who compose it; he will tend to condemn poHti-
cal experiment, the fickle popular vote, or other democratic
measures; he will tend to despise that readiness to learn by
experience and to adopt working compromises, which has
characterized pragmatic and realistic Anglo-Saxon com-
munities. These effects are plain, in the efficiency of

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 1 67

modern Germany; the vast difference between the life of
the German private citizen and that of the American, is
obvious enough. The experimental attitude of pragmatism
(a type later to be examined) could not find much sympathy
in Germany; the idealistic system of categories could not
long command wide support among philosophers of England
or the United States. How then shall we say that the Great
Self is but a figure-head ?

We might find similar practical bearings of other systems.
The Platonic realist, as we shall soon see, resembles the
idealist in valuing the continuance of the State above the
welfare of the individual citizen; the nominalist is likely to
do the opposite. In our own civil war, the Republican
and Democratic parties were thus aligned; and even at the
present day, the alignment has not ceased. The former
is roughly the party of the vested interests, the latter the
champion of the rights of the masses. The monist with his
theory of the social organism, is not apt to favour compe-
tition, laissez /aire, individual enterprise; the pluralist and
empiricist is led in that direction. The philosophy of
Catholicism could not be the same as that of Protestantism.
It would, we dare say, be true that no fundamental phil-
osophic doctrine is without its effect upon the political
ideals, the religious attitude, or the moral principles, of its
upholder. Scoffers are fond of illustrating the irrelevancy
of philosophic issues by the mediaeval dispute over the num-
ber of angels who can dance upon the needle's point; but,
as philosophers know, the real question there was, whether
personal individuaUty is indifferent to space-occupancy and
possession of a physical body. The man who holds that it is,
may well believe in immortality, the man who denies it,
generally does not. These two will, in their religion and
ethics, differ profoundly; they will, it may readily be imag-

1 68 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

ined, behave in quite opposite ways upon being faced with
death or bereavement. Certainly they have often, though
by no means universally, done so. Now many writers have
accredited this claim of philosophy to kinship with be-
haviour, but (disliking for some reason to grant efficacy to
the former) have insisted that the philosophical tenets were
effect rather than cause. It does not really matter; the
point is that certain deep-seated reactions upon the environ-
ment have been made by men, and that the main types of
philosophy have at least corresponded with the types of
reaction. There is not mutual indifference ; either may be
taken as on the whole an index of the other.

That behef influences action is today a psychological com-
monplace ; but it may influence it profitably, or again it may
influence it to futile or even injurious results. If one's phi-
losophy induces one to go to church on Sunday, then that
philosophy is not indifferent to his conduct; but if the going
to church on Sunday has no effect upon his behaviour during
the rest of the week and no connection with his understand-
ing of the universe's plan, that conduct may still be called
indifferent to his life. Or if, indeed, going to church makes
him endeavour to refute the creeds of others who go to other
churches, or even to persecute them, and in such a way that
they inevitably do the same to him, while neither has any
greater truth than the other — then his conduct may be
called not only indifferent but injurious. It consumes
energy needed for constructive work, promotes unhappiness,
and makes life poorer because less inclusive than it might
otherwise be. Now, is not the conduct which is in line with
idealism something like this sort of Sunday worship ? The
result (or the cause, if you will) of the idealistic philosophy is
the tendency to a propagandism of systematic, rigorously
ordered political life. Perhaps it goes further, and affects

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 1 69

the conception of home life, social observance, economic dis-
tribution, etc. In fact, there is no doubt that it does. But
this result is a rough, vague affair. It never descends to
detail. It never enables us to deduce a particular institu-
tion: only institution in general. From the beginning
idealism was powerless to do that. The special categories
of industry, the nation, the family, which Miinsterberg's
exhaustive inquiry arrayed before us, were, as we saw, found
in experience, not provided by idealism. Only the spirit of
respect for law and order, in all spheres, is the essence of
idealism's practical contribution. Now if this spirit is in-
tolerant of a fair measure of freedom, and social experiment,
it becomes an evil. In modern civilization it has become an
evil, for it has aided and abetted the intolerance of the
Prussian idea of the state; it has led to war. It has no
patience with the other side, the pragmatic, rough, irregular
side of Hfe, which our own American practice upholds. We
ourselves may be accused, doubtless, of an analogous im-
patience. The narrowness of the pragmatic attitude shall be
later dwelt upon ; at present we are studying idealism. The
spirit of respect for law and order — indispensable as it is —
becomes injurious when it is entertained in too exclusive a
fashion. The same thing happens in the practical field as in
the theoretical. If people refute one another in theory, they
fight one another, in however refined a way, in practice. A
man's personaHty is normally one ; as he thinks, so he acts ;
and as he acts, so he thinks. If the theoretical aspect of
idealism leads to an endless tilt, the practical side leads to an
endless warfare between the state and the individual, the
conservative and the radical, the partisan of order and the
partisan of freedom. Instead of pooling their gains and
cooperating, the factions try to destroy each other, and
thereby they diminish the sum of thought and hfe. Mean-

lyo PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

while, the real problem of government, of economics, of
family life, etc., is: how rmich system and how much free-
dom shall we have ? How much of either is fitting for the
German people, how much for the North American, the
Enghsh, or the French ? And how much for each aspect of
life ? Such a problem is not solved by accepting idealism as
the absolute truth; nor yet by rejecting it in favour of a
practical nominalism or individuaUsm. It is solved by the
study of the special questions in each of these fields; a
study conceived in the spirit of respect for law and for as
much individual freedom to experiment as is consistent with
good social order. Ideahsm, then, if not conceived in ex-
clusion, contributes an indispensable attitude; but, as we
shall find, so does every other type of philosophy. Beyond
this, it has no claim to superior truth or value. It does not
gratify the religious instinct for a personal God, for a Great
Artist or Artificer of the Universe; for its Great Subject is
not a Maker. It does not help the scientific instinct for
comprehension of the scheme of things. And with all this
failure to solve the original problem of man, it remains
irrefutable. It is so thin as to extend its truth everywhere.
Of course these things have all been said before ; notably
by Hegel, who is called an ideaUst. In Chapter IX we shall
find that the title is not discriminating enough; at any rate,
Hegel's idealism is of a fundamentally different kind from
any of the above systems. And we shall also discover that
Hegel himself was guilty of a similar fault to the one just
mentioned. But his warning to humanity against the one-
sidedness to which it is prone, needs reemphasis at every
stage of hfe. " The sort of truth that is in most danger of
getting itself ignored is the whole truth " says even that
arch-antagonist of Hegel, Professor Perry {The Free Man
and the Soldier, p. vii). And if that lesson is itself but one

GREAT SUBJECTIVISM 171

which needs to be counterbalanced by a correlative and
opposite caution, it is none the less sound, and necessary for
a just understanding of the whole problem of Ufe.

But we cannot expect human thinkers to forego the at-
tempt to characterize the universe from one corner, until a
great many corners have been tried. The revolt against
idealism which its exclusiveness is bound to occasion, will
probably go to the other extreme. The next type which we
are to consider will probably reverse idealism's point of
view. Instead of reducing objects to a phase of some Great
Person, it will reduce personality, selfhood, consciousness,
to terms of objects and their relations and functions. It will
claim that the errors of idealism are due to its having
started wrong: to its having been loaded down from the
beginning with an infertile h3T)othesis. That hypothesis —
the Universal Mind — must now be discarded. Interesting
and valuable as personality is, it has no metaphysical supe-
riority, no preeminent philosophical virtue. The world
itself, the objective universe, is what the great initial prob-
lem incites us to study. This new reform, then, erases the
lines drawn on the idealistic chart, and commences a New
Year with high hopes of discovery. A candid empiricism, a
fair field for all hypotheses, a simple recording of the objec-
tive facts as they are — this will be its spirit. Objectivism
is indicated; but not the rather superficial one of the com-
mon-sense dualism, for that was met by idealism. A deeper
objectivism is needed, which describes everything, even the
subject, as one fact among others, and to be defined, as all
others are, by its relations to the rest. The face of this
resolution is steadfastly set towards reality. We have re-
turned to the original naive attitude, but we are equipped
with the wisdom drawn from experience of error. Is not the
promise fairer than it was at the outset ?

CHAPTER VII

GREAT OBJECTIVISM

THE conclusion of the last chapter showed another New
Year dawning in the history of thought, and another set
of resolutions being framed. The troubles of philosophy are
due — so it was thought — to the barren point of view
which the subjective types adopted. Even the Great Self
cannot explain the make-up of the actual world; it is un-
illuminating. Nay more, it is a provoker of controversy;
for idealism has internal dissensions. Let us then lay the
axe to this root of evil ; let us abandon the figment ! But its
fall involves others. If the Great Self is exiled, its kinsman
the private subject is hardly likely to be a court favourite.
Reahstic criticism has shown that the latter cannot so much
as account for the presence of external reahty — to say
nothing of its characters — without the help of the Universal
Mind ; and idealism laid its foundations in accordance with
this criticism. To lose faith in the Great Self is then to take
from the little selves what makes them in any degree fun-
damental. Yet on the other hand, these individuals are
more obviously real than the Universal Self; for every man
seems to know himself in some way immediately present,
while he sees not this vast personality, nor empirically
verifies it. The empirical argument for ideaUsm was found
to vanish into the transcendental argument. The new sys-
tem will therefore not cast out utterly the private person-
aUty or consciousness, as it does the public one ; rather it
will admit it, but rid it of its subjectivity, analyze it into

GREAT OBJECTIVISM 1 73

terms of objects and relations of objects. Resolved, that the
objective side of the universe is the sole reality: — so reads
the first article of the new creed. The novelty lies in treating
the subjects just as subjectivism treated the objects; and
the result is a quite objective metaphysics. " Pan-objec-
tivism " it has been called, in disregard of Hnguistic pro-
priety; the commoner name is " new realism." We have
already seen that " reahsm " is an egregious misnomer, im-
plying as it does an opponent defending " unrealism " who
never existed. It is not the reahty of anything that is here
mooted, but the objectivity of the subject. In consequence
of the thoroughness of the objectivism it would seem fittest
to call the type Great Objectivism. It is correlative to Great
Subjectivism in denying the substantiahty of its counter-
part and in giving a definition of that counterpart in terms
of itself.

Consciousness, then, is to be reduced to a kind of function,
or phase, or process, of objects. Not necessarily physical
objects; concepts, Platonic ideas, "subsisting" relations,
all these may have their share in the constitution of a mind.
The view is broader than materialism. Yet its method is
somewhat analogous : if it has given up the old attempt to
find a stuff-definition of mind — an attempt in which ma-
terialism never succeeded — it is influenced by the modern
predilection for functions, series, relations, behaviour, and
the transeunt generally, and wishes to give a relational defi-
nition. Mind is to be a certain kind of process or combina-
tion of things or concepts: even as more modern materialism
tended to regard thought as a kind of motion, rather than
like the old, as a secretion, juicy or gaseous.

In consequence of the radically objective character of this
reform, the objects of knowledge will be regarded as inde-
pendent of mind. " Independent " is here used to signify

174 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

that objects exist and are what they are, whether minds are
aware of them or not. It connotes the indifference of objects
to our consciousness of them. When minds become aware
of real things, the content of the mind is dependent upon the
existence and character of the objects, but in no other sense
can dependence be alleged. Ordinary or dualistic realism —
which we called objectivism — did not go so far as this; it
was content to show that objects are numerically other than
our mind's contents. But, as we saw, subjectivism could
meet this " otherness " by showing that " otherness " is
itself a relation to the mind. Great Objectivism, however,
would cut under subjectivism; it makes objects too great
to be reducible to such a relation. It will not degrade them
by assigning them a relative status; it therefore abolishes
the relation of otherness entirely. When I am aware of an
object, that object is not other than my mind; my mind
enters into, nay, is the object. Here is a return to the old
view of common-sense that we know reality directly and
immediately; hence the view is sometimes called naive
reahsm. But the motive of it all is independence. Here
stands the object, and it is what it is and needs no mind or
relation to mind to constitute it. If I wish to know it, I
must enter into it. / am in knowing dependent upon it, but
it is not dependent upon me. In fact, my whole mind, in the
cognitive aspect at least, is constituted by the objects, and
the functions of them, with which it identifies itself. Thus
independence leads to a presentational theory of knowledge;
we know objects directly and immediately as they are in
themselves. Even in the case of the secondary quahties,
and of errors, the content of the mind is objective.

Corresponding to the deduction of categories in ideahsm,
we may expect a deduction of the subjective world here. To
some extent this has been carried out, though, owing to the

GREAT OBJECTIVISM 1 75

recency of the movement, not as far as we could wish. There
are a few attempts to account for the origin of the psychical
and of some of its leading characters, such as error, ideas,
hypotheses. But we do not find as yet any clear-cut system
of Great Objectivism, corresponding in patience and detail
with such systems as those of Natorp and Miinsterberg.
Nevertheless we may, perhaps, eventually expect them.

Such a type fascinates us by its novelty, its thoroughgoing
quality, and its independence of tradition. Like every other
philosophic view, it is due to the combination of several mo-
tives besides the rational one. If idealism makes its appeal
largely to the respect we feel for personality and its daughter
art. Great Objectivism rests mainly upon the correlative
feeling of respect for the impersonal facts, the world of
nature and science. Where the accumulated store of human
labour in literature, fine art, institutional religion, and social
convention is large and impressive, the new view will not
easily raise its head; where the worship of these things is
lighter, its growth is more favoured. Hence in the western
world is found the more ardent advocacy of the present type.
In Germany and France it hardly exists; in England, its
chief defenders are found less in the literary centres than in
the traditional home of science, Cambridge, and in the newer
universities. Reverence for science, however, may assume
different forms. Progress in science has depended upon two
factors: the experimental and the mathematical method.
Science has given us an ever fuller knowledge of the detail of
fact; it has also by mathematical refinements been able to
subject our knowledge to a more and more exact deductive
reasoning. Two motives then appear: empiricism, and
exact deduction, or rationalism. No true philosopher can
help following these ideals; they stand for all that is right-
eous in thinking, over against the seductions of hope, fear,

176 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

the will-to-believe, as the essence of intellectual sin. And if
idealism made much of its appeal to the latter side of human
nature, Great Objectivism may claim a higher moral tone,
comparable to the categorical imperative itself, in the wor-
ship of truth for its own sake and of the ideals of rigid logic,
definition, and demonstration. Ideahsm appears to the ex-
tremer devotees of such a reaction as romanticism or mysti-
cism; yes, even at times intellectual dishonesty. Cold fact
and cold reason together are almost irresistible; and if the
ideaUst follows them too in his own way, yet the very fact
that his results claim a certain satisf actoriness prevents the
moral element from standing out as it does in the correlative
type. Independence of comfort is ever an ideal; independ-
ence of any sort indeed; and both empiricism and ration-
aUsm combine, in Great Objectivism, to reveal that ideal in
all its austerity and authority. The fact that we are to
expect no satisfaction for other human needs renders this
particular need more dominating.

Passing to the study of the doctrinal content of modern
reahsm, we note that not only as a whole, but also in its
ramifications, the view is a counterpart of ideahsm. Like
that type, it divides into three. The fission comes about in
the following way. Imbued as modern realism is with the
spirit of objective investigation, it will tend to take science
and the methods of science as its ideal and its model. Now
the reaUst finds two groups of sciences: the biological and
the physical, deahng with organic and with inorganic nature.
In the organic, mathematical methods are less, in the
inorganic more, emphasized; biology is more purely experi-
mental than mechanics, less of a deductive scheme. Accord-
ingly a certain choice seems open. The objectivist may
select as his ideal the less deductive and more empirical
method of biology, or he may prefer the more deductive

GREAT OBJECTIVISM 1 77

processes of physics. He will probably justify the former
choice by asserting that all things are in time, changing,
developing, acting, and reacting with their environment; he
will defend the latter choice by pointing to the assured re-
sults of mathematics and mathematical physics, which
treat things atomically and statically. The former choice
will lead him to an anti-intellectual philosophy, the latter
to a rationalism of a Platonic, or nearly Platonic sort. Con-
sequently we find among recent realists an opposition be-
tween the disciples of pure logic and mathematics, and the
students of change, activity, and growth. But this second
group, again, contains a division. Though its members
agree in regarding the ideal concepts of mathematics and
physics as artifacts, or " hypostasized abstractions," they
are of two minds as to the nature of the flux in the world.
Some of them define it from the point of view of action;
real objects are stimuli of organic behaviour, or goals of in-
quiring thought, the environment to which organisms are
ever seeking to adjust themselves. These thinkers are the
pragmatists. Other empiricists, however, no less enam-
oured of life and time, regard reaHty as something not to be
understood either by discursive intellect or by the needs of
practice, but only by a kind of sympathetic insight, or
intuition. These, led by Professor Bergson, are the intui-
tionists. Now these three cults of Great Objectivism, ra-
tionalist, pragmatist, and intuitionist, all professedly hostile
to ideaUsm, differ among themselves much as the three
divisions of their common enemy. We recall how ideahsm
split into the rationalistic, voluntaristic, and aesthetic fac-
tions. Natorp, Cassirer, and Cohen instituted the first,
Miinsterberg, et al., following Fichte, the second, and Bald-
win, perfecting the earlier work of Schelling and the Ro-
mantic School, the third. Each, building upon the notion of

1 78 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

the human person, diverged from the rest according as the
intellect, or will, or feeling appeared to him the basis of per-
sonaKty. So here we find a similar three respectively pre-
ferred. Though the reaUst is not primarily interested in
mind, he has not wholly shaken off the custom of idealism.
He defines reality as the kind of object which intellect is
peculiarly able to grasp, as made, so to speak, of rational
material, and thereby writes himself down a devotee of exact
logic and the reahty of concepts, i. e., a Platonic realist; or
again, he considers real objects to be essentially stimuh of
action and things to which we must adjust ourselves, and
writes himself a pragmatist; or, finally, he insists with Pro-
fessor Bergson that the only true knowledge of reahty is won
by an intuitive attitude, an immediate feehng of the stream
of events as they bud and grow and wane. The shadow of
ideahsm hovers still in the background; but we must credit
the good intentions of the reahsts, and must remember that
it is, after all, the objective reality upon which their atten-
tion is fixed. The issues between the three camps will not be
decided by examination of the nature of personahty, but by
study of the nature of objects. Indeed, the subjective-
objective controversy will be lost to view, and the campaigns
will be conducted upon new fields. Such questions as
Platonic reahsm vs. nominahsm, determinism vs. freedom,
the static vs. the dynamic, will be puzzled out quite by them-
selves. The philosophy of Great Objectivism becomes a
gateway through which the thinker, hitherto shut within
the confines of the subjectivistic purview, escapes to appre-
ciate, in however inadequate a maimer, the wealth of other
aspects which the universe displays. But the gate itself, Uke
the paddock from which it leads, has three compartments.
These three subtypes of Great Objectivism, however, are
not exactly dehmited among present-day philosophers. For

GREAT OBJECTIVISM 179

one thing, the whole point of view is too new; it has not yet
settled into cut-and-dried systems. Here, as always, we are
speaking of tendencies which seem to be at work; and those
tendencies may never reach fulfilment. The modern phi-
losopher who revolts at idealism is afraid of system ; he has
seen so many systems disappear. To be sure, it would be as
reasonable to be afraid of Hfe, since so many living beings
have died; but the intellect is not always reasonable. It
does not easily distinguish between enjoyment of truth and
unwillingness to learn new truth; and so it fears that enjoy-
ment. This dread of system then is perhaps the reason for
the absence of a consistently worked out Great Objectivism,
in the case of many recent realists, rationaHstic and other-
wise. A leader of the rationalist party, Mr. B. Russell,
argues against pragmatism and intuitionism, but will not
reduce consciousness to an objective complex, though his
philosophic twin, Mr. G. E. Moore, does so. M. Bergson
himself would not go so far; he still treats the mind as a
substantial thing, by no means secondary to the external
world or reducible to some function of it. Yet these thinkers
oppose ideahsm and subjectivism, and their whole attitude
is thoroughly objective. The pragmatists, we shall soon
learn, usually do go the length of Great Objectivism; and
outside their circle are the instances of Professors Holt and
Montague, of whom Holt at least has not been afraid to es-
say something of an objective system. But there is much
hesitation to proceed to extremes. If the conditions of the
enviroimient permit, we may find, not many decades hence,
a crystallization of the three tendencies above noted,
comparable in articulation and mutual exclusion to the
idealistic schools. Nevertheless, for the purpose we have
in view, of considering the opposition between the chief
philosophic tendencies, it will be just to anatomize, as we

,l8o PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

have done, Great Objectivism and its subtypes; precisely
as if such anatomy had been already accepted by living
writers.

The general case for Great Objectivism appears to be
somewhat as follows. Subjectivism and idealism con-
sidered mind as the basis of all reality, i. e., an ultimate
thing, a substance. But substance is here only a name, a
resort of ignorance. If mind, or soul, is to mean anything,
it must become empirically verifiable, a phenomenon rather
than a " noumenon," viz., the " stream of thought " which
appears to introspection. Not a substance will be admitted,
but a complex of terms and relations of a certain structure
and behaviour, i. e., a definable affair. Idealism defined
objects in terms of mind, but left mind indefinable ; we now
define mind. All that is needed to carry us to the extreme
position of Great Objectivism is to make this demand for
definition thoroughgoing. If the soul is abandoned for the
" stream of thought," yet there lurks in the latter the taint
of an irreducible conscious quale; but this also must be de-
fined. As Berkeley kept asking " if there is matter what do
you mean by it ?" so they ask us " if consciousness is any-
thing in itself, what do you mean by it ? Describe it ! "
And when we do so, consciousness as such, sui generis, seems
to go the way of the soul. This might have been predicted
beforehand. If Kant was right in asserting that the soul
lacks verifiable content, then the " steam of thought," the
psychical, has no discernible conscious quality to distinguish
it from the objective data. As the psychologist Wundt has
so carefully explained, the psychical contents do not differ
in their material and composition, from the physical; the
only distinction is one of point of view. And if one accepts
the new-realistic theory of presentative knowledge, this
distinction also disappears.

GREAT OBJECTIVISM l8l

The details of the demolition of consciousness display, as
we might expect, an analogy to the argument of subjectivism
against matter. There is a negative side and a positive. On
the negative side, the concept of consciousness is found to
contain an antinomy and therefore to lack respectable
status /or itself; on the positive side, it is found that all the
attributes of it, all there is about it and in it, can be described
in terms of objects and their relations. Let us begin with
the negative side.

The Antinomy of Consciousness

" Does Consciousness Exist ? " asked James in the title of
one of his later papers. While his own answer was perhaps a
little ambiguous, probably his sympathetic readers under-
stood him to answer : No. But we must not be deluded by
words. Any reduction of a term to lower terms may seem
to deprive it of reality; it does not, of course, do anything of
the kind. Sugar is not unreal for being C+H-f 0, etc. If
consciousness is reduced to a relation or function of some-
thing else, that relation, etc., is still present and influential.
The delusion is simple, and seems easy to avoid. " Psycho-
phobia " as Montague has well called it {The New Realism,
p. 269) is an emotional reaction, not an articulate doc-
trine. Philosophers too often adopt this method of denying
what they believe themselves to have defined; for instance,
idealism has been supposed to deny matter, nominaHsm to
deny universals, etc. Many such needless controversies
might have been avoided by a little care in expression; for
the exclusiveness of either party is quite gratuitous. The
real issue for Great Objectivism is not, whether conscious-
ness exists, but whether it can be exhaustively defined in
terms of physical objects, or conceptual objects, or proposi-
tions, or relations, etc. And the antinomies, if correct, will

1 82 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

at most show that consciousness is not an independent entity.
The demolition of consciousness should be recognized to
mean only the annihilation of the substantive theory of
mind.

The antinomy is not directed against a " transcendental
ego " but against the view that the contents of any one's
experience are irreducibly ' ' psychical. ' ' For if this is proved,
the basis on which rest the transcendental ego, and even
bolder reaffirmations of the soul, is cut from under.

Like most antinomies, the argument is a priori. It has,
however, certain semi-empirical forms. We state first the
a priori formulation.

Consciousness is self -contradictory, (i) It is somehow
an object of consciousness, else we could not even mean it,
still less envisage it, as we do in introspection. (2) It can-
not be object of consciousness, for what is seen must be
other than the seeing of it. The subject must be other than
the object, whereas in self-consciousness the subject is not
other than the object.

The first statement seems undeniable. There is some-
thing, a property, an attribute, anything you please, which
belongs to certain living organisms hke our own, and which
we call consciousness. However elusive it is, this property
is not just nothing at all. Its presence is sometimes verifi-
able : men have it, stones have it not. Even were it iUusory,
it would at least be object of erroneous thought; it is itself
the very thought which entertains the error.

The second statement, if not inevitable, appears to have
so much in its favour that few would dare deny it. Every
case of awareness except the one in question, presents the
two distinguishable sides of subject and object. It matters
not whether we call them substances, or object and function,
relation, or behaviour; there is in any case a difference in

GREAT OBJECTIVISM 1 83

meaning between an object and the consciousness thereof. It
would seem hardyindeed to doubt that so general aproperty
of knowledge should in just this one case be wanting.

The second statement may also be put in a more empirical
form. Consciousness actually never is the object of con-
sciousness; for when we " introspect " we find only bodily
tendencies, bodily states and movements, external objects,
concepts, or other " subsisting " things. I see not my seeing
of the table but the table ; and the most prolonged intro-
spection finds nothing else, unless it be the strain of eye-
muscles and accompanying bodily phenomena, or other
objects called up by " association of ideas." These other
objects are not " images " but external things, however: if
the table leads me to think of JuKus Caesar, it is — for the
realist — Caesar himself, that past being, whom my thought
embraces. There are no " mental images "; all content of
mind is part of some objective world. And what is true of
thought is true of other modes of consciousness. I do not
feel my feeling of the pain ; however much I turn inward my
glance, I find only the pain-quality and the simultaneous
bodily set. Hume declared that he could find, in the stream
of his own experience, no soul or self; it is reserved for the
modern to exhume the agnosticism, in the claim that he finds
no consciousness as such at all. And even the idealist
Schopenhauer said much the same: " as soon as we turn
into ourselves . . . and seek for once to know ourselves
fully by means of introspective reflection, we are lost in a
bottomless void, — we find ourselves like the hollow glass
globe, from out of which a voice speaks whose cause is not
to be found in it, and whereas we desired to comprehend
ourselves, we find, with a shudder, nothing but a vanishing
spectre." (Schopenhauer, World as Will and Idea, Bk. 3,
Eng. tr., p. 358, footnote.)

184 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

If the antithesis, when couched in this empirical language,
is closely studied, a certain arbitrariness appears. It pur-
ports to deny consciousness, but it might just as well be
turned about and made to deny objectivity. If we say the
consciousness of the tree is naught besides the tree, why
not as truly say with Berkeley that the tree is naught be-
sides the consciousness of it ? If we show that there is
nothing more about the knowledge of a tree than the tree
and what is known thereof, might we not as rightfully de-
clare that there is naught in the tree besides our knowledge
of it, and the content of that knowledge ? If there is no
special conscious quale over and above the objects of which
we are conscious, there is equally no special objective quale
over and above the mind's contents. Did not Kant point
out that there is no describable difference between an idea
and the reality of it ? It would seem as if the antithesis
proved that consciousness and its object are through and
through identical; and this surely does not militate against
self-consciousness, but rather shows its plausibility. What is
needed, to enforce the contradiction, is a proof that we must
prefer the objective rendering rather than the Berkeleyan
rendering of this identity. Now Great Objectivism does
attempt to do this in its second and positive argument,
wherein it would reduce the subject to objective terms and
account for all of its properties thereby. That argument we
have soon to consider; without it however, the antithesis is
quashed and the antinomy-argument seems to evaporate.
As subjectivism was unable to justify itself without appeal-
ing to a Great Self which would account for the properties of
objective reaHty, so objectivism is unable to justify itself
until it can furnish an objective definition of consciousness
which will explain the properties of mind. Not by a reductio
ad absurdum of consciousness, but by a fertile objective

GREAT OBJECTIVISM 185

metaphysics, able to generate mind and its attributes, can
Great Objectivism alone succeed. Reductiones of this sort
are, indeed, only the argument from damnation, employed
by subjectivism, over again. If we are conscious of our own
consciousness and at the same time cannot be, no amount of
reduction of consciousness to something else will solve the
difficulty. For, suppose consciousness were defined as a
certain relationship among objects: call it/(o). Where
this peculiar / is found, there we have consciousness, and
where it is not found there we have it not. From the point of
view of non-conscious objects, this/ is as unique as an ulti-
mate substance would be. Its relational or functional char-
acter will not save the differentia of consciousness from being
just as irreducible and opaque as an old-fashioned soul . And
it will still have the property of being its own object. If to
be conscious of a certain thing is/ (o) then to be conscious of
that consciousness is / (/ (o) ) ; and if / (/) is an impossi-
bility we are no better off than before. Let us not be de-
ceived into thinking relation, ox function, a magic talisman.
These terms are useful in analysis, and necessary to enlarge
our information; but they simply restate in the above case
under relational form the same old contradiction as the sub-
stantial form presented. We saw a similar thing in Chapter
III when we considered the Kantian antinomies as evidence
for subjectivism; we there learned that subjectivism does
not at all remove their force. In general, it is true that no
contradiction is solved unless it is solved directly and as it
stands, in just the aspect and environment in which it arises.
The endeavour to solve it by resorting to a new point of
view, or a new sort of description, relational, synthetic, or
whatever you please, is futile.

Of course, one may try to escape the above antinomy by
denying the thesis. One may say that we are not conscious

1 86 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

of consciousness. In that case we ask, " how can you at-
tempt to define something that you are not thinking of ? "
For that is what Great Objectivism does attempt.

But such considerations as we have been urging, though
we believe them to be fundamental and at bottom the really
decisive ones, seem to many thinkers too formal; the advo-
cates of Great Objectivism insist that they offer us empirical
and specific evidence. Let us then pass to the more concrete
and special cases of the above antinomy. So far as we know,
all reduce to one typical case, the criticism of introspection.
Introspection, it is claimed, is self-contradictory. For it im-
plies unconscious consciousness (B. H. Bode, Journal of
Philosophy, 1912, p. 509). Looking back upon my mental
state just past, I find that I was aware of the clock ticking,
though I did not at the time know that I heard it. Now,
how could that auditory datum have been in my conscious-
ness if I was not aware of it ? Can I be conscious of some-
thing of which I am not aware ? It seems a clear reductio ad
absurdum. The " fringe " of consciousness is a delusion, if it
is imderstood as a reservoir of these unconscious-conscious
contents ; it must be reinterpreted as a sort of physical be-
haviour — or something else. Introspection is not really
employed at all; it is, in a case Hke this, a memory of a
just past bodily " set " or tendency to react in a certain
way, etc.

Notice that this argument does not merely claim that
every psychosis has its characteristic bodily behaviour, and
that the best means of describing it is to study that be-
haviour. It goes further; it would ruin introspection be-
yond saving. And it seems to depend upon a confusion. I
was aware, perhaps, of the tick of the clock, but I was not
aware that I was aware. Introspection a moment later
furnishes the knowledge that I was aware of the tick. In-

GREAT OBJECTIVISM 1 87

trospection is a judgment upon a judgment. The alleged
antinomy confuses awareness with awareness of awareness,
consciousness with self-consciousness. To assume outright
that what introspection discovers in consciousness must
have been there without our being aware of it, is unqualified
dogmatism. And we could hardly help mistrusting the
whole plea, if only because psychologists have by intro-
spection discovered some unquestionable facts. Professor
Holt, indeed, one of the extremest of Great Objectivists,
and no friend of introspection, has himself answered the
objection in a similar way to this (Concept of Consciousness,
p. 192).

Probably the road was prepared for such antipathy to-
ward the psychical by certain doctrines of idealists. They
have occasionally declared mind to be non-quantitative, not
open to scientific description, private, beyond the province
of discursive knowledge. We here recall Royce's doctrine
of personal individuality as indescribable, a volitional rather
than an intellectual category; Miinsterberg's thesis that a
person is a will-attitude and that sensations have no quan-
tity; in fact, the whole idealistic tendency to put mind
above rather than alongside the realm of objects. The tend-
ency has even permeated the details of psychological de-
scription. We may instance James' claim that similarity is
not reducible to partial identity, that the taste of lemonade
is not the taste of lemon plus the taste of sugar, that the
description, given by a friend, of a certain family as having
" blotting-paper voices " " though immediately felt to be
apposite, defies the utmost power of analysis," etc. Of the
same tenor is the general view that every conscious quality
is simple, unanalysable. Such a position owes its plausi-
bility to an appearance of having made a distinction which
its deniers overlook. Lemonade, it says, as physical is

1 88 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

lemon-juice plus sugar, but we must distinguish the sensa-
tion of lemonade from the liquid itself. So too the conscious-
ness of similarity must be distinguished from the similar
objects, etc., etc. But the advantage — as often with those
who deny an assertion by making a distinction — is only
apparent. In making the distinction, they overlook a
deeper identity. If the taste of the lemonade does not reveal
the composition of the lemonade, how is it a guide to the
truth ? Consciousness of an object is in fact by the realists
asserted to be that very object itself. In the whole position,
their opponents have displayed an enmity toward analysis
which has no grounds whatsoever, and which is now justly
reacting upon them. The dictum of irreducibihty is a
brutumfulmen, a " Thou shalt not " from the skies, an order
to suppress the instinct of inquiry. Sooner or later it must
have been questioned, and as soon as questioned, dem'ed;
for we cannot stop anywhere in the effort to analyze. The
reaHst, then, takes a fair revenge when he says that this
mysterious quahty of consciousness, which puts it and its
states beyond the pale of analysis and definition, renders it,
for intelligence, nil. What cannot be described or explained
or understood, plays no part in the world of reason; no
satisfaction can be afforded by it to that instinct which
would comprehend the scheme of things. " If this occult
thing, consciousness, means anything," they say, " whereby
it is distinguished from nothing at all, tell us what it means;
do not say only that you feel it, intuit it, will it." But if it
cannot be analyzed, it might just as well be dropped. The
scientific attitude which the realist has adopted, urges him
to abohsh this enemy of understanding. And when it occurs
to him that with the disappearance of this indissoluble surd,
there disappear also those vexed problems of paralleHsm,
interaction, automatism, and other issues which centre

GREAT OBJECTIVISM 1 89

about the relation of mind to body, we shall find it easy not
to blame him for rejecting the belief in mind sui generis.

All this hostility might have been avoided, had certain
idealists and ideahstic psychologists not placed mind on a
pedestal and crowned it with a halo. Not that the idealists
have consistently done that; they have vouchsafed to us
incidentally plenty of traits wherewith to define mind. But
the human tendency to prefer one to another, to cut off the
low from the high, to put the Ultimate beyond the reach of
humble intelligence, will crop out here and there; and its
dominance leads to revolt, and the overthrow of idealism's
excessive pretensions. Herein we see once more how great a
part emotion plays in the philosophical world.

But to return : the negative case for Great Objectivism is
by itself indecisive. All its force turns upon the success of
the positive side, just as with idealism all turned upon the
fertihty of the Great Self to account for the specific nature
of objects. What then does our present type have to say
about the existence and the character of those affairs which
we call minds ? Can it account for them ? Upon its ability
to do this rests whatever justice there is in its claim to be a
genuine philosophical theory.

The objective formula for consciousness, from which
should be deduced the attributes of that state, is not a mat-
ter of general consensus among recent reahsts. Thiswas also
the case with idealism. The Great Self was here a will,
there an intellect, or again an evaluator. We may however
consider each realistic formula on its own merits. So far as
I know, the following include all that has been furnished up
to the present time (19 15).

Consciousness is the real potentiaHty of an event or fact
(physical or conceptual) (Montague, The New Realism,
p. 281). " Consciousness is the potential or implicative presence

igo PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

of a thing at a space or time in which that thing is not actually
present." For instance, in the case of memory : I recall my
first day at school, and thereby that past event becomes
present here and now to my mind. Yet it is not present in
the space-and-time world; it long since departed from that
region. The brain-state in my head is not itself that past
event, but is an effect of it, indicates it as effect implies
cause. To say that that past event is implicatively or poten-
tially present is to say, then, that my brain is thinking of
and remembering it. What is physically an impossibility —
the recurrence of that first school-day — is enabled to be-
come actual because a new and unique point of view, quite
foreign to the physical, is introduced, viz., that of potential
or implicative reality. And the new point of view enables
this peculiar sort of presence-through-absence which dis-
tinguishes consciousness to be realized. Thus by means of
a combination of the category of potentiality or implication
with that of physical existence, we define consciousness.
The same method may be illustrated in the case of percep-
tion. A distant object, say a star, is perceived by me. But
the star is not here, not in my brain or my body or the
near-by space, and it may be even non-existent by the time
its hght reaches me; yet in consciousness, we say, it is some-
how here. How can this be ? Apply the category of impli-
cation. My brain-state is the effect of the light radiating
from the star; i. e., it implies the latter as its source. Now
regard that latter as implicatively or potentially present in
my brain. This enables us to solve the contradiction be-
tween the absence of the star in my brain and the presence
of it; it does so by generating a new standpoint which is
defined by the union of " potential " and " physical," viz.,
consciousness. From a logical point of view this is as elegant
as anything in the Hegelian deduction of categories. (We

GREAT OBJECTIVISM 191

regard this as a commendation, not an aspersion.) It is
empirically based, and seems to guarantee the very thing
desired. Does it then account for the fact that there is con-
sciousness and that it has this and that specific property
such as connation, affection, judgment, error, etc. ?

We are not here assessing the truth of the above definition,
but its sufficiency. We may believe that Professor Montague
has laid his finger upon a genuine attribute of consciousness.
It is qtiite another question, whether or not he has succeeded
in undermining the ideahstic system by reversing it and re-
ducing mind wholly to terms of objects. The latter question
only concerns us here.

Notice the way in which the definition was obtained. We
have compared it with the Hegelian method. From an
antinomy by a synthesis a new conception is formed which
will solve the contradiction. We believe that this is no
accident of exposition; for we find the same failing that was
formerly alleged to infect the HegeUan deduction. Suppose
two categories apply to the same subject-matter, and at the
same time contradict each other. This fact does not of itself
compel them to unite in a third or " higher synthesis." Per-
haps they do unite, perhaps there is some discoverable char-
acter of the said subject-matter which actually exemplifies
both aspects in such a light that we can understand how it
is that they do not really conflict. If this is the case, there
is a real " higher synthesis " ; but it is not due to the activity
■of the conflicting categories that this synthesis occurs. It is
simply an ultimate datum, quite unaccounted-for. And
recent Hegelianism accepts this point, no longer regarding
the deduction as a productive affair. In mathematics, when
it is desired to prove that two postulates are not contradic-
tory, the accepted procedure is to show that some entity
exists which satisfies them both. A fact which is to be ac

192 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

cepted, not a deduction from either or both, is the solution.
So here it happens that there is something — consciousness
— which demonstrably contains the two conflicting cate-
gories of presence and absence. But there is nothing in the
nature of objects to imply that this is possible, or to make
clear how it is done. A new creation, as it were a higher
dimension than space-and-time, must first be begged before
the synthesis can be accompKshed. This higher dimension
or synthesis is from the point of view of objects a surd. Of
course we have here been speaking of material objects and
things in space and time; but the same reasoning applies,
mutatis mutandis, to concepts, relations, or other non-ma-
terial objects. In the actual existence of consciousness the
' deduction has reached its critical point. That existence can
indeed be defined in objective terms, just as for subjectivism
all objects could be defined in terms of the subject; but the
definition does not guarantee the actuality of the definitum.
The dualism of object and consciousness remains ultimate ;
the definition, while no doubt true — as true as subjectivism
was — does not account for its appearance in a material
world.

Stating this criticism more formally, we may put it thus.
Granted the objective world, a congeries of things, relations,
categories, etc. Among these are found the following: pres-
ent realities, absent realities, potentialities. When these
three are joined in one conception, we have that unique and
inamaterial thing known as consciousness. But who has
made plain the occasion and manner of the junction ? For
aught that is shown to the contrary, it might be the miracu-
lous act of God that effects it — or it might be a fortuitous
freak of nature, or the birth of the soul; for it is no less
mysterious than these. In any case, something new in
principle is invoked, something not drawn from the original

GREAT OBJECTIVISM 1 93

objective order, viz., the combination itself. " Nil in mente
quod non antea in rebus fuit," we might say, " nisi mens
ipse." Did not Kant himself with his " Synthetic Unity of
Apperception " or power of combining the absent with the
present, have much the same result as Dr. Montague ? Of
course we may be accused here of captiousness. Ought we
to demand at one stroke a full-fledged explanation of the
origin and nature of mind ? Surely it is all we have a right
to expect, to know that consciousness means potential pres-
ence of the absent. Now it is to be remembered that we are
not quarrelling with the truth, or the interest, of the defini-
tion in hand. It is its service to Great Objectivism, its
abihty to refute subjectivism and dualism, that concerns us.
And on this point we cannot hesitate to say that its descrip-
tion of mind leaves us with as ultimate a dualism as any that
could be conceived. It simply redefines the old dualism, as
Spinoza redefined the dualism of matter and mind by dub-
bing them two aspects of one substance. The one thing that
would make Great Objectivism a fruitful view would be, an
explanation of that combination of objective entities which
makes up consciousness. As subjectivism failed to throw
light on the fact of external reahty, as idealism was unable
to generate the specific properties of the world, so this new
system has no solvent for the surd of mind. It is able to
bring mind successfully under its formula, but not to state
why there should be such an unique being as can confer
presence upon the absent and reality upon the unreal. For
Great Objectivism, mind remains a miracle.

Or the same point may be expressed in a concreter way.
If consciousness is the potential presence of something not
really present, how does it differ from potential energy as
usually employed, say, in physics ? The potential energy
of a weight resting on a table is treated by that science as

194 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

something which would under suitable conditions turn
into a downward motion. It is not at the moment such
motion, for that motion does not exist. But in conscious-
ness there is a certain real presence about the perceived
object, or the remembered event, which the term potenti-
ality does not sufficiently convey. Professor Montague
indeed characterizes his own view as " the theory that — The
potentiality of the physical is the actuality of the psychical ..."
{op. cit., p. 281). Yet that actuality remains unexplained
and undefined upon objective grounds. How should there
arise an entity, mind, which is able to confer actuality upon
what is physically only potential ?

The crux of this difficulty is found in that which from the
point of view of physical objects is the subjective thing par
excellence, viz., error. There is, on the whole, agreement be-
tween two of the joint authors of the volume entitled The
New Realism (Professors Montague and Pitkin), that errors
arise because the brain-state may be the effect of any one of
many external causes. Thus, the visual star, the one that I
see — the disturbance of the visual tract in the brain —
may be due to a material star that has since " gone out " or
a star that still blazes, or to a diseased cornea, or pressure
upon the optic nerve. Any one of these is, in Montague's
use of the term, implied by the disturbance of the visual
area. Now "when . . . the cerebral implicate . . . happens
not to have been the actual cause, or happens not to exist,
then we shall have apprehension of what is unreal, which
is false knowledge, or error" {The New Realism, p. 287).
Error involves the selection of one impUcate and exclusion
of the rest. But we are not told why any one implicate
must be chosen and the others rejected. To be sure, con-
sciousness is selective : but that is one of its specific proper-
ties which the above definition has not accoimted for. Why

GREAT OBJECTIVISM 1 95.

should not consciousness be content with having all, or at
least several, implicates present at once, with no choice made
between them ? It is the actuality of error as a conscious
state, the particular fact that one potentiality of the many
somehow becomes present while the rest do not, that is the
real thing to be explained. To explain this we need to be
provided already with the psychical field; for therein, it
seems, alone can errors reside. If we have not accounted
for the fact of this field, how shall we explain then the fact
of error ? We are left with the dualism as before.

Dr. Montague's contribution to the definition of mind
we beheve to be valuable. It is verifiable and therefore ir-
refutable. In particular, its revival of the now unfashion-
able notion potentiality seems to be a piece of common
justice to that neglected concept. (Cf. Ch. X.) Perhaps
the use of " implication " to cover both the relation between
effect and cause, and potentiality, is a little vague; perhaps
it would have been better to define implication more care-
fully or even to show that it is indefinable (as some realists
claim). But these are at most faults of detail. Meanwhile,
we must admit that his essay points not toward objective
monism but toward dualism; and there seems to be some
reason for thinking that he is himself consciously a dualist —
which result would be a confirmation of our criticism.

More consistently true to Great Objectivism is the work
of Professor Holt. This author unequivocally announces
his objectivism: "it is not that we have two contrasted
worlds, the ' objective ' and the ' subjective ' ; there is
but one world, the objective, and that which we have
hitherto not understood, have dubbed therefore the ' sub-
jective ' are the subtler workings of integrated objective
mechanisms" {The Freudian Wish, p. 93). And in his more
extensive treatment of the topic {Concept of Conscious-

196 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

ness, p. 57) he brings out the greatness of his objectivism:
"... this volume, in spite of its apparent digressiveness,
aims at nothing but a deductive account of the concept of
consciousness."

In his essay, The Place of Illusory Experience in a Realistic
World {The New Realism, pp. 303-373), Holt shows how all
conscious contents are quite objective. Errors, viewed in a
broad sense, are not the prerogative of mind. The physical
world also errs: photographs are not true to the object,
images projected through a lens or a stereoscope distort the
thing imaged; and a wealth of similar discrepancies is im-
pressively catalogued. Secondary qualities, likewise, are
not the deHverances of some subjective factor, such as the
" specific energy " of the nerve-fibers; they are groupings
and form-qualities of physical stimuli, more or less dense
fusions of objectively given data. That is, they are not in
any way due to activity of mind. They arise from the fact
that the sense-organ cannot register with sufficient distinct-
ness the many small stimuh which come from the object;
the succession of Hght-waves or sound-waves or heat-waves
is too rapid for our organs to adapt themselves thereto. The
result is that the stimuh come into the nervous system fused
into a unity which has a Gestaltqualitat quite different from
that of the physical succession of them. The secondary
quaUties " are all form-qualities in which the temporal sub-
divisions are so small that the time-sense cannot discrimi-
nate them, whereas the frequency-magnitude or the density
still remains perceivable." {NewRealism,-p.2,4S.) Now these
densities or fusions are simply functions of the objective
physical facts; functions which depend upon the receptive
capacity of the bodily nerve-endings. Notice the inductive
character of this description; it is more apparent than in
the one given above. The supposedly subjective states.

GREAT OBJECTIVISM 1 97

viz., the secondary qualities, are examined in the environ-
ment in which they occur — the body and the objective
stimuh — and then the reason why they appear to be
" subjective," why they differ from the other stimuli which
are given as they are, is empirically explained. Thus a large
part of what we call the subjective is accounted for upon a
physical basis.

But what of our perception of several primary qualities
together ? It is surely a subjective event. Yes, but the
subjectivity lies only in the fact that these qualities are at
one and the same moment selected out by the nervous sys-
tem as objects to which it will respond. The subjective
aspect, or consciousness, here appears to be nothing but the
fact that a cross-section is carved from out the matrix of all
objective reality. " Any class that is formed from the mem-
bers of a given manifold by some selective principle which is
independent of the principles which have organized the
manifold may be called a cross-section. And such a thing is
consciousness or mind, — a cross-section of the universe,
selected by the nervous system. The elements or parts of
the universe selected, and thus included in the class mind,
are all elements or parts to which the nervous system makes
a specific response. It responds thus specifically to a spatial
object if it brings the body to touch that object, to point
toward it, to copy it, and so forth ..." (Concept of Con-
sciousness, p. 353). But the cross-sections are not limited to
the physical universe. In fact. Holt considers that universe
to be only a part of the total complex of objects. He calls
this total complex "neutral" because it is in itself the ulti-
mate material out of which all things are made; all things
real or unreal, particular or universal, true or false, good or
bad, physical or conceptual. These neutral objects subsist
rather than exist; to be real is a qualification of to be. "A

198 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

mind or consciousness is a class or group of [neutral] entities
within the subsisting universe, as a physical object is an-
other class or group " (p. 373). Thus his Great Objectivism
is not materialism.

How then is that peculiarly subjective thing, human
error, explained ? Thus : error is simply a case of contradic-
tion. In the physical world, we find contradiction when two
bodies moving in opposite directions collide. In the realm
of consciousness, we find it when two assertions deny each
other. The assertions subsist together; they are objective
facts which do not exist but none the less are, and which be-
have toward each other in a way quite analogous to the
behaviour of clashing bodies. In a world where many things
conflict, we should expect to find, under the head of con-
scious states, errors.

Any namable, distinguishable sense-element, any affec-
tive tone, however private it seems to be, is not merely pri-
vate; the same intensity of pain felt by you and me is one
and the same intensity, common to both; the pleasantness of
a surmy landscape is in the landscape, for it is true of it.
" Pleasure and pain are neutral entities and, both in theory
and practice, are as amenable to communication and logical
handling as are the concepts of acceleration and tt." (Con-
cept of Consciousness, p. in.) And of the emotions: "in
so far as we know about them at all they are in the same
way neutral " (ibid.).

In fact, the whole theory of " representative " perception,
which allows a distinctly subjective state to exist beside the
thing perceived, must in this view be replaced by a " pre-
sentative " theory. " Nothing can represent a thing but
that thing itself. And if anybody has ever assented to the
representative theory of knowledge it is only because he has

GREAT OBJECTIVISM 1 99

not examined the concept of representation. The theory
plays altogether fast and loose with this concept. Typical
and indisputable cases of representation are readily found.
A photograph represents a landscape : a sample represents a
web of cloth: a statesman represents a borough. But the
photograph does not represent the landscape in all respects;
it leaves out, for instance, the features of colour and size.
The photograph of a distant mountain top gives no clue to
the size of the mountain. It represents the landscape in the
one respect of contour, and does so by being in that one re-
spect identical with the thing it represents. If with a per-
fectly just lens a photograph were taken of a carefully
constructed ellipse, the photograph would have exactly the
same shape, but not the same size, while that the two shapes
are identical is proved because the analytical equation for
one will be found identical with that for the other. Only the
constants which define the size will be different. The same
is true mutatis mutandis for a photograph of the most com-
plicated object. In so far as it truly represents the object
it is just so far identical with it. Likewise the sample of
cloth represents the web in so far as it has the exact colour,
texture, and thickness of the rest of the web. If it has not
these identical, it is not a fair sample or a true representa-
tion. As to the number of yards, be it noted, the sample
does not profess to be a representation. Just so the states-
man represents the voters who elected him in so far as he
does precisely what a majority of them, in the same situa-
tion, would do. If he does not do this he does not truly
represent them, although he may do better or worse than
they would do.

"A representation is always partially identical with that
which it represents, and completely identical in aU those fea-

200 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

tures and respects in which it is a representation . . .
every case of representation is a case of partial or complete
identity ..." (p. 142-143).

Pausing now to estimate this interesting and admirably
worked out account of the universe, we ask, how far has it
deduced consciousness from objects ? Certainly it has been
able, to an extent hitherto unequalled, to find in the pecul-
iarly conscious states, objective material. Yet we must
recall a significant phrase of Professor Holt, in his definition
of mind as a cross-section of neutral objects. He said : ' ' Any
class that is formed from the members of a given manifold
by some selective principle which is independent of the prin-
ciples which have organized the manifold may be called a
cross-section. And such a thing is consciousness or mind "
(quoted above p. 197). We have itaKcized the words which
suggest our criticism. Is not that selective principle which
marks out the mental from the total matrix of things, inde-
pendent of that matrix ? If the objective deduction is to be
carried through, it must be shown that the power of the
nervous system to select, to make specific response, to carve
out its objects from the rest, is itself exphcable upon quite
objective grounds. This is, for aught yet seen, a doubtful
matter. The structure and functions of the nervous system
have not yet been proved capable of explanation upon phys-
ical or neutral grounds alone. We do not now wish to deny
that that may sometime be done; but until it is done, the
case for Great Objectivism is at any rate incomplete. Does
there not remain, then, something irreducible about mind,
namely, the fact that there is a selective, responsive prin-
ciple ? This is the same point that we made against Mon-
tague's theory. We said then that it was not explained,
how the potentiality which we call consciousness can, in
consequence of objective laws, actually come into being.

GREAT OBJECTIVISM 20I

That mysterious presence-in-absence of the past event
which constitutes memory, so impossible from the point of
view of the physical order, remained as mysterious, as inex-
plicable as ever. And has Professor Holt come any nearer
to showing how the world of objects can of itself so function
as to separate out a part of itself in the manner designated
as a conscious cross-section ? Materialism has ever been
unable to explain the origin of consciousness. Though Holt
is no materialist, his task is analogous to materialism's task.
His Platonic realism does not lighten it; for is it any easier
to show how subsisting relations, concepts, and principles
give rise to a selecting mind, than it was for the materialist
to show how the concourse of atoms developed into a con-
scious organism ? And failure of materialism seems to
augur a like failure of Great Objectivism; indeed we shall
shortly learn that the latter type is inherently unable to
give the ratio existendi of mind. The great merit of Holt's
work, as (in the reverse direction) of Berkeley's, Natorp's,
Miinsterberg's, and others', lies in the extent to which he
has reduced all conscious contents to objective terms. None
has done so much as he, in this regard. He has made clear
the general principle, that every phase of mind, every con-
scious state and content, can be objectively defined. Yet
the fact that there is something to be defined is not itself
accounted for. The situation is in every respect analogous
with the earher one of subjectivism. Everything about the
object can be reduced to subjective terms, but the presence
of objects, as distinct from the subject, cannot be grounded.
So here, everything about mind can be expressed in objec-
tive phraseology, but the presence of mind as a specific
kind of behaviour among objects, cannot be explained. The
conclusion is strongly suggested that here as in Montague's
essay. Great Objectivism has met its critical point. It is

202 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

true, but it is infertile to generate that very notion which it
was designed to produce.

Coming now to details, we find that the existence of errors,
as events in the history of minds, is not elucidated. We may
admit that errors are a kind of contradiction found in con-
scious cross-sections; we may acquiesce in the statement
that contradiction is also a physical fact of frequent occur-
rence; as when opposing forces act upon a body. Yet there
is a difference between the two kinds of contradiction. In
the material world, the opposition is in a sense instantly re-
solved — as Satan like Hghtning fell from heaven. When
the dropping ball hits the ground it stops or rebounds. The
motion which " contradicts " the resistance of the earth
does not continue. The opposing forces may somehow be
working against each other, but their effects do not exist in
contradiction; the ball is not at the same time moving
through the earth's surface and being pushed outward by
the earth's resistance. In the physical world the law of
contradiction is still valid; two conflicting results cannot
hold of the same body. In human errors on the other hand,
both members of the contradiction do exist together; the
opposition persists without the least hint of solution. I see
in the dusk a shape, which I consider that of a man; it
really is a post. The judgment that it is a man contradicts
the physical presence there of the post, yet neither side of
this contradiction is annulled. The erroneous judgment con-
tinues unabated, and so does the post; whereas the motion
of the ball ceases. The error persists, of course, because it is
in a distinct field, that of consciousness; if it were an object
of the same sort as the post, both the error and the truth
could not remain. For this reason, then, errors are extant
unresolved; and that is not to be expected in an instance of
contradiction. Once more, note the similarity of our criti-

GREAT OBJECTIVISM 203

dsm here to the one we passed upon Dr. Montague; for
thereby is suggested an intrinsic infertihty on the part of
Great Objectivism. As Montague could not account for the
actual presence of what is physically not present but only
potential, so Holt is, we think, unable to justify the real
occurrence, unmitigated by the contradicting fact, of er-
roneous opinions. The actuality of the subjective is again
found to be an unsolved mystery.

Professor Holt, we remember, does indeed at the begin-
ning of the essay, Illusory Experience, indicate that errors
are not necessarily subjective things; they occur in the phys-
ical order, in such cases as bad photographs, faulty ma-
chine-made products, etc. Be it so then; they are no less
denials of the actual fact, and their occurrence undissolved
is no less an impossibility. He may now designate their
habitat by another name than mind, viz., the realm of " sub-
sistence " ; and yet this is but a title for a limbo of mysteries.
It is precisely the task of the philosopher to account for this
limbo. The history of metaphysics, says James in effect
somewhere, is but the writing down of so many solving
names; men think they have explained a group of facts
when they have invented a new name for it. We condemn
the " faculty-psychology " for trying to account for, say,
the activity of intellect, by invoking an occult thing called
Reason; but is not the new-reahst guilty of the same fault
when he thinks to throw light on the problem of error by con-
signing error to the class of " subsistents " ? The method is
quite unfruitful. We are not led to understand how real
things can give off this vapour of unreal subsistence, or why,
in the terms of our present system, being should come to
divide into the two realms of being real and being unreal. In
any case, the dualism between errors and facts (or truths)
persists and will not be explained away.

204 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

But to return to the problem of consciousness. The same
failure to ground the presence of minds is found in that
"very holy of holies of the subjective" {Concept of Con-
sciousness, p. 282), volition. Professor Holt urges — and, we
grant, rightly urges — that volitions, being purposes, are
comparable to laws of nature, to generative formulae, as
of an algebraic series, etc. " Now if we examine candidly
any human purpose, we shall see that it is nothing other
than just such a generative law. ... It is, for instance,
my desire to walk along the edge of a cliff, keeping near
enough to the edge so as to see the surf below and far
enough from it so as to run no danger of falling over. . . .
This purpose is at once then the law of my movements;
it generates them and is itself their sole unity." And this
law is " absolutely all that I can discover about it in my
own most ' subjective ' recesses of consciousness " {Con-
cept of Consciousness, p. 287). "A purpose or volition is
then nothing at all mysteriously subjective, and it is a law of
the same type as is found in the neutral realm logically ante-
cedent to either matter or mind" {ibid., p. 288). Of course
the law may not be manifested in overt deeds, just as the
law of falling bodies is not realized when the bodies are sup-
ported — or may not be present to consciousness, as in the
sleepwalker's skillful perambulations — but when it is pres-
ent it is that sort of objective logical entity. And that is
why we speak of the purpose or will of a race, a nation, a
social group. It may or may not be clear to the conscious-
ness of any member of the group; but it is none the less a
real influence, a law of the behaviour of those members. Yet,
acknowledge though we must the truth of his description, we
are obliged to pass the same judgment here as before upon
Professor Holt's view. The essentially " subjective " aspect
of a purpose lies in the presence of the end at which I aim, to

GREAT OBJECTIVISM 205

my mind before that end is objectively realized. This pres-
ence of the not yet realized is the counterpart of memory,
which is the presence of the no longer realized, or past,
event. What then accounts for that odd presence of the
future which is not yet present ? As with Montague, so
with Holt: there is a sort of actuaUty which mind seems to
confer upon that not-present end; a temporal, not a Pla-
tonic actuaHty, which it is the very essence of mind to con-
fer. It is more than a mere potentiality: it is more than the
mere law of the series of purposive acts : it is rather the im-
mediate presence here and now of the particular end aimed
at or event remembered, res ipsissima. (So, at least, say
these reaHsts.) And there is nothing in the documents of
Great Objectivism which informs us why this presence
occurs. Why do I now think of the purpose which defines
the course of my deeds ? A stone presumably does not think
of the law of gravitation which governs its various positions
during the fall; but I am conscious of the motive which
directs my steps along the edge of the cUff.

Such then is our estimate of two new-realistic attempts to
reduce mind to objective terms. There are other endeavours
also in the philosophic field today, but none — with one
exception — have been carried through in the same sys-
tematic spirit, or with the same appreciation of the Great
Objectivism which is their moving power. We therefore
merely mention the view of S. Alexander {Mind, 191 2, p.
315) which defines knowledge as a certain kind of " together-
ness " of objects, and the definition of G. E. Moore {Mind,
1903, p. 450 fl.) which reduces consciousness to a sort of
" diaphanousness " of objects. It seems obvious that our
criticism will apply to these, however fully they are worked
out; for these relations of " togetherness " and " dia-
phanousness " are themselves as unique as anything in the

2o6 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

world. The category of relation, indeed, useful as it often
is in affording description, is not of itself a guarantee of
scientific fertility; it may often simply rename an old mys-
tery, and one may doubt if, for the purposes of a map of the
world-order, it is able to replace wholly the older notion of
substance. But we have said this before.

We spoke just now of an exception. There is a most im-
portant one, fully informed with the spirit of Great Objec-
tivism, and yet in sharp contrast with the above views. If
those views have not been quite able to account for mind's
appearance in the scheme of the universe, perhaps it is
because they treated it as a ready-made affair, a thing, a
static entity. But surely it is rather a process or function.
Would it not then be better to define it by its behaviour
than by its inner constitution ? So think those who share
the view which we now proceed to expound. It is a dynamic
view; it treats consciousness as a mode of behaviour of the
organism. On the whole it is the view suggested by the
doctrines of the " pragmatic " school; those who adopt the
biological point of view as the more ultimate one for meta-
physics. The treatment of pragmatism as a whole shall be
given later, when we discuss the subtypes of Great Objec-
tivism; at present we are concerned only with its great-
objectivism, its reduction of consciousness to terms of the
behaviour of those objects which we call living organisms.

On this view, we start with the supposition that thought,
consciousness, the " psychical," occurs in Uving organisms
only. Now obviously the only proper way of learning its
nature is to study it in concreto, in the actual situations in
which it is found; i. e., as a process occurring in living
beings. But all hving processes are reactions of one sort or
another to stimulation by some part of the environment.
Such is, e. g., the grasping reflex, by which the fingers of the

GREAT OBJECTIVISM 207

babe involuntarily close about an object touching the hand's
inner surface; such, equally, is the deliberate choice of a
cigar by a mature smoker — a choice based upon the stimuli
of touch, of smell, and of suggestions afforded by the mem-
ory of other cigars. The psychologists have pretty well
shown that all our mental life, even of the most refined intel-
lectual sort, such as solving a problem of higher mathe-
matics, or deciding upon our religious beliefs, can be brought
under this same rubric. In these cases the stimuli are simply
of a more ideal sort and the full reactions may be deferred
for a longer or shorter period. For the stimulus of a bodily
reaction may be of the most varied kind: a hght ray, a
bodily pain, a memory; and the reaction may be a percep-
tible movement of eye, hand, vocal apparatus, or it may be a
brain-current (thought) whose muscular expression in
speech, writing, or other act is temporarily suppressed. All
conscious states, be they never so quiet, are active. Even
in so passive a state as listening to the wind when it moans
in the trees, we unconsciously adjust the ear and set the
muscles of the throat, perhaps, as if to sing to the pitch
heard, while the brain's activity, in the shape of fancy,
travels far and fast along the road suggested by the mem-
ories which the sound calls up. And so on; it would be
tedious to detail the familiar teachings of modern psy-
chology (cf. e. g., Angell, Psychology, ch. 3). Great
Objectivism, building upon this biologically coloured science
of mind, finds a definition of consciousness almost ready to
take for the asking, viz., a certain tj^e of reaction to stimu-
lation. What type then ? Everything in a sense reacts
upon its environment : the stone reflects back the heat-rays
which come to it from the sun. But it does not redirect the
energy so as to further its own existence. This conscious
beings do. But conscious beings, even when they are not

2o8 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

acting consciously, as in reflex or instinctive action, may
also react in ways unfavourable to their preservation. Con-
sciousness must evidently be further differentiated. Now
we learn from genetic psychology that it appears first in the
early fife of the human being on occasions where the instinct
or reflex does not produce the desirable end, or when its
action is blocked, and some new sort of conduct is needed.
Upon such an occasion thought, rudimentary though it may
be, arises. The child, the beast, the adult, who has lost his
way, knows not by instinct which direction to take; he
wakes up to the difiiculty, casts about in his mind, starts to
respond to the situation by turning this way or that. The
cat, finding the door closed through which he usually passes,
in perplexity paws about here and there until by accident he
hits the latch, thus undoing it, and goes out. By the method
of trial and error he has found the proper response. The
child learns in the same way; but his growing power of
thought enables him to avoid the trouble of going through
many of the possible responses. In his brain the nerve-
current arises which would lead out through the motor
nerves to a certain action. But he has learned by experience
that that action would not be a success, and the current is
checked. This nipping of the current, this holding up of the
action, marks the distinction between thought and deed:
thought, the essence of consciousness, is then incipient or
tentative response. When the incipient immediately be-
comes the completed act, as in an instinctive reaction or
reflex action, like grasping or sucking the breast, thought
and consciousness are at a minimum; where the response is
delayed and there is hesitation, plans of action arise, i. e.,
tendencies to act which are frustrated by other tendencies
vmtil finally some stronger one prevails and action results.
This is equally the case in the child finding his way home and

GREAT OBJECTIVISM 209

the statesman outlining his policy for years to come. The
brain is the instrument of thought because the brain is the
theatre of these incipient nerve-currents which may or may
not get to their end-organs, the muscles, and give rise to
specific behaviour. Thinking then appears as a labour-
saving device, whose usefulness has rendered its possessor
more likely to survive in the struggle for existence. Thus an
evolutionary point of view enables Great Objectivism to
fulfill its purpose of defining consciousness. " The brain, the
last physical organ of thought," says Professor Dewey, " is
a part of the same practical machinery for bringing about
adaptation of the environment to the Ufe requirements of the
organism, to which belong legs and hand and eye. That the
brain frees organic behaviour from complete servitude to
immediate physical conditions, that it makes possible the
liberation of energy for remote and ever expanding ends is,
indeed, a precious fact, but not one which removes the brain
from the category of organic devices of behaviour." (J.
Dewey, Does Reality Possess Practical Character ? in Essays
in Honor of William James, etc., pp. 64-65.) And again in
justification of this dynamic description: " It is interesting
to note how the metaphysical puzzles regarding ' parallel-
ism,' ' interaction,' ' automatism,' the relation of ' con-
sciousness ' to ' body,' evaporate when one ceases isolating
the brain into a pecuhar physical substrate of mind at large,
and treats it simply as one portion of the body, as the in-
strumentality of adaptive behaviour " (p. 65, footnote). We
may quote also the words of Royce, who has accepted much
of the view: " Your intelligent ideas of things never consist
of mere imagery of the thing, but always involve a con-
sciousness of how you propose to act toward the thing of
which you have ideas" {World and Individual, vol. I, p. 22).
Hear also this statement of Dewey's : " Awareness means

2IO PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

attention, and attention means a crisis of some sort in an
existent situation. ... It represents something the mat-
ter, something out of gear, or in some way menaced, inse-
cure, problematical, or strained. This state of tension . . .
is not merely in the ' mind,' it is nothing merely emotional.
It is in the facts of the situation as transitive facts ..."
(Dewey, op. cit., p. 73). " If this be true, then awareness
. . . means things entering, via the particular thing known
as an organism, into a pecuHar condition of differential —
or additive — change " (p. 74). This marks the disappear-
ance of the old " sublimated gaseous consciousness " (foot-
note p. 74) and the substitution for it of the process-view.
Or again: " If knowing is so quaHtatively and functionally
different from alterative action, how do we make the transi-
tion from it to efficient action ? ' ' (Moore, Pragmatism and its
Critics, p. 106). If knowledge is passive contemplation, how
comes it that the knower ever acts ? The new view makes
this clear by showing that knowledge is a kind of action.
Professor Dewey has also said, in a discussion of Bergson:
" In words of Bergson's own which cannot be bettered:
' That which constitutes perception is our dawning action,
in so far as it is prefigured in those images (namely, objects).
The actuality of our perception thus lies in its activity, in the
movements which prolong it.' Take this passage seriously
and literally, and you have the precise view of perception
here contended for. It is ... a process of choosing. The
possible responses involved are not merely postponed, but
are operative in the quality of present sensori-motor re-
sponses. The perceived subject-matter is not simply a
manifestation of conditions antecedent to the organic
responses, but is their transformation in the direction of
further action" {Journal of Philosophy, 1912, p. 663). Or
as Moore says "... for the pragmatist the distinction of

GREAT OBJECTIVISM 211

' fact ' and ' idea ' is a distinction of ways in which a con-
tent functions." {Pragmatism, etc., p. 169, footnote.)

Moreover, if we do not adopt behaviour as the essence of
consciousness, what else have we ? A mere entity behind
the scenes, whose presence will make no difference whatever
to conduct; a mind which does nothing and, pragmatically
considered, might as well not be ; a mere zero point. Con-
sciousness must at least lead to behaviour of a specific type :
if a thing is what it does — is its relations — then what does
nothing is nothing. (This is also the argument of E. A.
Singer, Journal of Philosophy, 1911, on pp. 181-183 of a
paper entitled Mind as an Observable Object) And that argu-
ment loses no force if we do not yet know even what type
of behaviour consciousness essentially consists in. " But
thoughV I don't know what Hfe means, nor what conscious-
ness means, I feel that I know how we may go to work to
find out these things, if once we see that neither stands for
an eject forever veiled and hidden in the land beyond ex-
perience " (Singer, op. cit., p. 184).

Finally, there is the argument of scientific utiUty. It
seems probable — though it has never been absolutely
proved — that every " thought " or " state " of mind has
its uniquely corresponding brain-event and bodily event.
But if so, why is not the mental state the same thing as the
latter ? The latter is verifiably present, the former elusive
at best; the correspondence between the two alleged by
" parallelism " would be explained by identifying the former
with the latter. Wundt, to be sure, has enumerated certain
" states " that have no brain-correlative, viz., self-conscious-
ness, valuation, etc. Yet these must have their appropriate
bodily set or tendencies — hard though they may be to dis-
cover; and it is surely more economical to retain these last
alone in our system and discard the " veiled and hidden "
mental states.

212 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

Let us now adjudge the merits of this position. The
dynamic theory has its critical points. Take for instance,
memory. There is undoubtedly a conscious " state " or
organic response which goes by this name, and it has, by
general consent, the property of referring to (" being aware
of " is the usual phrase) a past event. Now, there can be
nothing in the nature of present behaviour — be it of what-
ever sort — to indicate that its object is past. That the
organism reacts in a certain way, however complicated, is a
present fact, and contains nothing about it which suggests
that the object to which it adjusts itself was, and no longer
is, real. The organism's action thus fails to give an account
of the full significance of the knowledge of past events. Sup-
pose, e. g., we defined memory as a type of organic response
which treated its object as fixed, irrevocable, unchangeable.
This might be a true description, but it would not be ade-
quate to the meaning of the past, as that which was and is
not. Behaviour itself, totally immersed in the stream of
time, for that very reason cannot generate what we may call
a vision of the stream from without. Here must enter, it
would seem, a certain static aspect of consciousness; that
by virtue of which, in consciousness, the past persists rela-
tively unchanged and thus not subject to the wear and tear
of time. The dynamic can define the static no more than
the static can define the dynamic. To be sure, memory is
falHble, and often does change the object: yet if ever there
are true memories there are so far things recalled unchanged.
Difl&cult, impossible though it may be to draw an exact line,
there is yet a line between the true core and the false dis-
tortions of the remembered events. Now any view of con-
sciousness, which makes it mere process and no more, omits
this aspect of the matter. And the same remarks apply,
mutatis mutandis, to expectation and prediction. Notice

GREAT OBJECTIVISM 21 3

that we do not deny that consciousness is behaviour; nor
that some of the most interesting or the most illuminating
properties of consciousness are to be discovered in that
attribute of it. We deny only that that attribute is suffi-
cient to account for certain undeniable properties of mind.
When those properties are once granted, indeed, it can truly
predicate of them their own unique sort of behaviour. No
doubt memory has its characteristic response; as also has
expectation, and indeed every conscious state. The case is
analogous with that of previous philosophic types. The
present view meets a surd, a " foreign other " which it can
describe, as knowledge of the details of conscious behaviour
grows, more and more in its own terms, yet whose descrip-
tion never reaches the limit, never quite touches the nerve
of that surd. If the static views erred by not accounting for
the tentative side of mind, its uneasiness, its ever-repeated
efforts toward adjustment, its connection with the active
side of our nature, the dynamic no less errs in failing to ex-
plain the statical aspect, the side of mind which, though
not itself out of time, is yet more or less unaffected by it and
not so much a process as consciousness thereof. But just
because that statical aspect is itself in time, acted-upon,
object of behaviour, the view in question can in turn object
to our assertion of a surd, and proceed to describe it further
and further. The tilt may then become an endless one. It
is like the elastic rubber cord fixed at both ends which can be
stretched more and more toward one without leaving the
other end.

The argument is perhaps more obvious in the case of error.
In the pragmatic account of error, that doctrine is, we think,
seen at its best. Professor James thus distinguished unreal
things from real ones. " . . . as the general chaos of our
experience get sifted, we find that there are some fires that

214 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

will always burn sticks and always warm our bodies, and
that there are some waters that will always put out fires;
while there are other fires and waters that will not act at all.
The general group of experiences that act, that do not only
possess their natures intrinsically, but wear them adjec-
tively and energetically, turning them against one another,
comes inevitably to be contrasted with the group whose
members, having identically the same natures, fail to mani-
fest them in the ' energetic ' way. I make for myself now
an experience of blazing fire; I place it near my body; but
it does not warm me in the least. I lay a stick upon it, and
the stick either burns or remains green as I please. I call up
water, and pour it on the fire, and absolutely no difference
ensues. I account for all such facts by calhng this whole
train of experiences unreal, a mental train. Mental fire is
what won't burn real sticks; mental water is what won't
necessarily (though of course it may) put out even a mental
fire. Mental knives may be sharp but they won't cut real
wood. Mental triangles are pointed, but their points
won't wound. With ' real ' objects, on the contrary,
consequences always accrue ..." {Essays in Radical
Empiricism, pp. 32-33.)

As Professor Dewey says, " A mistake is literally a mis-
handhng " {op. cit., above, p. 69). A tentative reaction of
the organism, designed to enable it to adjust itself to a cer-
tain given situation, which if carried out would fail to pro-
duce such adjustment — that is error. " For if and so far as
an assertion satisfies or forwards the purpose of the inquiry
to which it owes its being, it is so far ' true ' ; if and so far as
it thwarts or baffles it, it is unworkable, unserviceable,
' false ' " (F. C. S. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, p. 154).
The aptness of these definitions is seen by a comparison of
them with the following definition (from the pen of an op-

GREAT OBJECTIVISM 21 5

ponent) : " Thus the judgment that two terms have a cer-
tain relation R is the relation of the mind to the two terms
and the relation R with the appropriate sense : the ' cor-
responding ' complex (the object of the judgment) consists
of the two terms related by the relation R with the same
sense. The judgment is true when there is such a complex,
and false when there is not. The same account, mutatis
mutandis, will apply to any other judgment. This gives the
definition of truth and falsehood" (B. Russell, Philosophical
Essays, p. 184). Now the latter definition simply says, in
technical language, that a judgment is true when it corre-
sponds to fact, false when it does not; an assertion which is
as clear as it is uninforming. Of the meaning of "corre-
spondence" there is no analysis. The pragmatic definition,
however, tells, right or wrongly, what " correspondence "
means. It renders that notion into something capable of
verification, open to test and experiment; it really does
define the terms truth and error.

Is there, then, anything about error which this definition
neglects ? Notice that it speaks of tentative response; the
error is the response which the organism tends to make, and
which if completed would lead to maladjustment. This
reduces the thing to a potential affair, and reminds us of
Montague's definition. We criticized that, on the ground
that it did not do justice to the fact of the actual presence of
the iUusory object to the erring mind. Will not this defini-
tion then probably fail in a similar way ? Is it not likely
that the phrase " tentative response which would lead to
mishandling " will be found to convey to the reader no idea
of the actual presence, at the moment when the error is en-
tertained, of the false object ? For that object is, in some
sense, thought of then and there. You may put this into
words of practical, dynamic import if you like. Say that

21 6 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

the thought of it is the incipient, projected reaction which
would lead to disaster. But that is not an adequate account
of the thought. There is more than incipient response, there
is an intention to respond, an awareness more or less dim of
the completed response, the purpose, which is not yet car-
ried out. What will, if the response is fulfilled, occupy some
time, is present as a plan of action all at once tp the mind that
errs. The phrase " tentative response " does not suggest
this consciousness all at once of what might in the working
out be spread over a considerable interval. Now such con-
sciousness we undoubtedly have, and it, with its anticipation
of the future, shows a certain time-transcending quality
which the dynamic formula is impotent to convey. This is
analogous to the case of memory which, we saw a moment
ago, displayed a time-transcending quality in recalHng the
past. Consider an instance. Suppose I judge a ditch to be
seven feet across when it is ten; then, in pragmatic terms, I
tend to make too short a leap in crossing it and to fall in.
But this meaning, that the ditch requires only a weak jump,
is felt by me all at once; I should not be now in error if my
organism did not at present in some way prefigure this leap.
This presence of a future act, as a purpose now entertained,
when that act is not physically present (and indeed cannot
become so because I am mistaken about the width of the
ditch) — this presence reveals a certain static aspect of the
case; an aspect which the djoiamic account just misses.
Consciousness, however, has both static and dynamic as-
pects, and any attempt to reduce it to terms of one alone
will be unsuccessful. The attempt will meet its critical point
in the other aspect. The error of the idealists was, perhaps,
in treating the mind as if it were out of time and merely
static; the dynamic realists seem to go to the other extreme,
treating it as wholly in time and merely dynamic. But it is

GREAT OBJECTIVISM 217

always in time and yet it has a power of linking the different
parts of the time-stream — as in memory and expectation.

Nevertheless the dynamic account is true on its positive
side, and if excluded will insist upon its rights. The very
consciousness of a purpose, of an act which is to be and is not
yet, involves a bodily set or tendency. It has its character-
istic behaviour. Expectation and purpose will in general
show differently ordered responses from those of memory or
perception. That behaviour and those responses will not of
themselves suggest that their objects are future or past, but
when it is once granted that they are such, then they can be
defined as objects of this and that sort of response. It
is, again, just as in the subjective-objective issue. The
formula of subjectivism cannot guarantee the existence of
objective reality as over against imagination, but when that
reahty is admitted, subjectivism can define it. And the
same we found true, mutatis mutandis, of objectivism. And
as there, when either party tried to rule out the interpreta-
tion of the other, an endless tilt was set up, so here the
denial of the dynamic formula by ideahsm or any static
theory of mind, or the denial of the statical aspect of mind
by dynamic realism, will lead to a similar never-ceasing
controversy.

Of the superior merit which some claim for the " be-
haviouristic " method (to repeat an ugly word) in psy-
chology, we need not judge; nor are we able to do so. It is
for the psychologist alone to decide whether it yields better
results than introspection. But as for the assertion that this
latest definition of mind does away with the vexed problems
of the relation of mind and body, it seems clear that that is a
mistake. The mind is not the body, and the question of
their relationship is not deprived of sense when mind is
viewed as an unique function or kind of bodily response.

21 8 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

As long as mind is not material — and the view does not
consider itself materialistic — so long the problem remains,
how a purpose or plan can influence the brain-currents and
through them the body. Or how can that function which is
able to recall the past, and lay hold of the future in predic-
tion, come to be identified with a material process (response)
which is confined to the present ? In some such way would
the old questions now be put, in view of the dynamic for-
mulae; but they are just as difl&cult of solution as before,
for they are the same questions, translated into a new
terminology. Dynamic reahsm is hardly more fertile for the
explanation of properties of mind, than was idealism for the
understanding of the details of the objective world.

In finding the Umits of Great Objectivism before the task
of defining mind, we have by inclusion discovered the fault
of the old materiahsm. Materialism was a lesser form of
Great Objectivism, since it would reduce mind to a function
of a particular sort of objects, namely, material ones. It
was, indeed, never able to verify any particular reduction;
it tried one after another — fire, gas, phosphorus, fine mat-
ter of almost any kind, motion, vibration, etc., — but all
were so palpably insufficient to account for the properties of
consciousness that it practically gave up the attempt. Pro-
fessional philosophers have for some time ceased to be
materiaHsts, and idealistic doctrines have held possession of
the field, though without having refuted the enemy. For
the fact remains that any thought-process, however subtle
or spiritual, has its characteristic bodily reaction; conse-
quently we can describe the thought in terms of the reaction,
as gold is replaced by bills and checks. It is but a little step
to the belief that consciousness is itself matter or the motion
of matter. But we have seen the critical point beyond which
materialism, and even the broader view, Great Objectivism,

GREAT OBJECTIVISM 219

cannot pass, viz., the fact that in mind, the past and future
are often present — as in memory and foresight. Indeed
until that particular critical point had been brought out, we
do not believe it was possible to parry the materiaUstic blow.
If we look at the history of philosophy we find that mate-
riahsm was met only in the most superficial fashion; so
superficial, indeed, that the materialist usually went away
convinced that he had beaten his opponent. Idealists have
answered his charges by reversing the formula, reducing
matter to terms of perception and thought (as Berkeley did).
But no reason so far appeared, why their reduction was
truer than the other; and meanwhile the materialist re-
flected that our thoughts are utterly dependent upon blood-
supply, nutrition, and other quite physical agents. The
idealist could not dispute this; the most he could do was to
interpret blood-supply, etc., once more in psychical terms.
This left the materiaUst practically master of the situation;
so the ideahst returned to the fray with a counter-affirma-
tion, which made up for its logical weakness by its dogmatic
fervor. " Thought simply is not matter or motion! " (e. g.,
Paulsen, Introduction to Philosophy, Eng. tr. Thilly, p. 83).
Without showing in any specific way how it is not motion
this is no better than saying to one's accuser " you are a
Har." Yet the statement has in effect been repeated again
and again. Here is a recent example : " The brown colour
which I immediately see is simply not a form of wave-
motion, but something quite different, and by no possibility
can we, in the least degree, trace the genesis of the former
from any mode of behaviour of the latter" (G. Dawes
Hicks, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1911-12,
p. 177). Such statements may be true, but they are too
dogmatic to be effective upon a controverted point. What
was always needed was a particular property of mind whose

220 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

appearance could not be explained or accounted for by
material properties. Nevertheless, even when this has been
accomplished, by the instances of memory and prescience,
materiahsm is not annihilated; but only emasculated. For
it can describe that memory and prescience, after having
once admitted them, in terms of bodily response; whereas,
though uniquely indicating it, the bodily response will
never sufl&ciently define that present transcending power
of the mind. And since this unique indication is always
possible, we may expect those thinkers who do not see
the significance of the critical point to return anon to the
charge and to revive materialism. Presmiiably the theory
will be yet many times revived — so desirous is man of an
exclusive monism — before the lesson is learned. Precisely
the same is true of spiritualism. Spiritualism is the kind of
idealism which considers mind to be a substance — im-
material of course — and matter as a phase of that sub-
stance. It keeps the mysterious category of mind-substance,
even as materiahsm keeps the mysterious category of
physical substance.* But as neither subjectivism nor ideal-
ism can account for the existence or the character of real
objects, they are no more final than their opposites. And
as the less is included in the greater, so spirituaUsm is unable
to meet the same contingency. Spiritualism is as one-sided
as materiahsm ; and is as Hable to recrudescence. The battle
between these two is as inevitable as the tilt between ideal-
ism and reahsm. And each is right, but infertile. It is owing
to its being unconscious of its infertihty and conscious of its
truth, that each continues to endeavour to refute the other.
Is it not another instance of the irony of history that these
modern thinkers, who endeavour so sincerely to be empirical
and scientific, afford in their mutual rebuttals and reprisals

* Which is the more unintelligible, inert matter or hidden mind ?

GREAT OBJECTIVISM 221

one of the clearest examples of that Hegelian dialectic for
which they express little but contempt ?

This completes our study of Great Objectivism as a whole.
We now recall that it has divided into three camps, roughly
corresponding to the ideaUstic factions of rationahsm,
voluntarism, and " pancahsm," viz., Platonic realism, prag-
matism, and intuitionism. These three are not directly
concerned with the subjective-objective issue; and for our
own part, we confess to a sense of relief in leaving that pro-
vincial atmosphere. It is reahty that • the philosopher
undertakes to investigate ; the original instinct of curiosity
was turned object-wards. There was always a feehng of
unnaturalness about a doctrine which put the universe's
centre of gravity within a subject. As a protest against such
an inversion came the spirit of Great Objectivism; the ob-
jective study of facts as they are, independent of human val-
uation. If the fruits of this spirit have failed to justify our
expectations, at least the whole attitude inchnes us toward
forgetting for the moment about mind and considering
the structure of reaUty. This is a service which the sub-
jective types, preoccupied with consciousness, could hardly
perform. It is as if Great Objectivism, in getting sufficiently
away from mind to define it, has backed off far enough to
push open the gate which leads to the outer world. Through
that gate we are now to pass. We are to ask about the real
nature of objects: physical objects, or concepts, or laws, or
principles, or what not. True, we shall find too often that
they are conceived once more in subjective terms; for the
subjective bias in modern thought is powerful. We shall not,
however, concern ourselves much with this, deeming it
aheady disposed of. But the issues between the three ways
of describing objective reaUty are complicated enough to
demand a separate chapter.

CHAPTER VIII

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM

THE names in our title subserve brevity rather than
exactness. Intellectualism is often understood today
to refer to certain rationalistic tendencies shown by ideal-
ists; we denote by it the rationalism of the realists, though
indeed rationalism, as we shall soon define it, is common to
both parties. But it appears purer among the objective
schools, because it contains no admixture of Thought or a
Great Thinker. As to Pragmatism, we do not pretend to
discuss the whole of it, but only some influential doctrines
for which it seems to be the sponsor. And we shall be mani-
festly unjust to many details of that very concrete and sug-
gestive system of Professor Bergson which is inevitably
designated intuitionism, as well as to its twin sister, mysti-
cism, for we aim to study either only as a competitor with
other systems, i. e., in that aspect of it in which it rebuts,
and is rebutted by, the rest of them. As we have repeatedly
indicated, each thinker and each system is as little of a strict
adherent to one type, as is a falling body to the unmixed
tendency to gravitate.

Intellectualism

This t)^e's main thesis seems to be, that universals, those
entities with which par excellence the intellect concerns itself,
are the real things; particular or individual (we do not here
distingmsh these adjectives) things, events, persons, are not
real, or if they are so, then only by participating in the
universals whose essence they dimly body forth. These

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 223

universals are quite objective, depending in no way upon the
conscious minds who think them. Like the types previously
discussed, this view envisages the whole scheme of things
from the angle of a special problem; the problem of the
relation between general principles or laws and the partic-
ular events or things in which those laws are exemplified.
Also like other types, it answers to a certain temper, to a
certain group of human insights and needs. Let us for a
moment look at intellectualism in this broader light.

That it is congenital in human nature was witnessed by
Kant, when he wrote of reason's tendency to ascribe reality
to its " noumena " God, freedom, and immortahty; yes,
even while he himself hoped that his own system would sup-
plant the tendency. But though no one had recognized its
inevitableness, we could scarcely find better evidence than
its reappearance today. Of all ages in history the present
seems the least Platonic: democracy, individualism, human-
ism, the practical, all these motives are prominent now as
never before. Yet in this gravelly soil — even in the British
Isles and the United States of America — the tender flower
has once more bloomed. The Platonism of Holt, Russell,
and Spaulding {The Concept of Consciousness, The Principles
of Mathematics, The New Rationalism) affords illustration.
One reason for its persistence, indeed, lies in the versatility
of the type. It can join itself to so many interests, even
to the most opposite. Once it fostered religion: Plotinus, the
Gnostic Sects, Augustine, Eriugena, Anselm, used it to help
the beUef in God. Today it disclaims any such religious
trend; it cultivates instead the impersonalities of formal
logic. Once the doctrine of the mystics, now it is the foe of
romanticism, the devotee of cold analysis and exact defi-
nition. Nevertheless in both extremes it is one and the same
motive, the original motive of its great protagonist Plato,

224 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

viz., aspiration for that which is lofty, higher than the indi-
vidual and imperfect, more enduring than the changing par-
ticular, above and beyond the immediate empirically verified
content of the moment. For those who love personality, it
leads to a transcendent God; for those who worship the
exactness of science, it leads to the modern "logistic." But
God and the rigid concepts are equally far from the " con-
crete change and hurly-burly of hfe," and it is this aloofness,
and consequent stability, of the Ideas, that gives them their
worth and distinction:

It is a " static " or non-temporal world, cut off from
transeunt detail and to be investigated for its own sake, that
we are asked to believe in. Not the application to concrete
problems — why empirical space has three dimensions,
time but one, why there is life, etc., — nor to any material
utility : these would degrade philosophy. It is the adoration
of the ideal, unmovedness, arapa^ia. Says a prominent de-
fender of the universals : " Philosophy is a study apart from
the other sciences: its results cannot be estabHshed by the
other sciences, and conversely must not be such as some
other science might conceivably contradict. Prophecies as
to the future of the universe, for instance, are not the busi-
ness of philosophy: whether the universe is progressive,
retrograde, or stationary, it is not for the philosopher to
say " (B. Russell, Scientific Method in Philosophy, pp. 236-
237). "Between philosophy and pure mathematics there
is a certain aflSnity, in the fact that both are general and a
priori. Neither of them asserts propositions which, like
those of history and geography, depend upon the actual con-
crete facts being justwhat they are " {op. cit.,-p. 186). Utterly
dogmatic are these statements, to be sure; for they answer
but to an ideal which is felt, which has stirred the hearts of
austere thinkers here and there; a Plato, a Spinoza, a Rus-

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 225

sell. The earnestness of the feeling is evinced in the moral
tone which the doctrine assumes: truth is a duty (cf. the
almost reahstic Sollen of Rickert). The method of search,
too, is laid down: " from the complex and relatively con-
crete we proceed towards the simple and abstract by means
of analysis; seeking, in the process, to eliminate the partic-
ularity of the original subject-matter, and to confine our
attention entirely to the logical /orm of the facts concerned "
{op. cit.jp. 185). This is from the pen of a " realist," but since
we are now treating an issue which is unconcerned with the
distinction of subject and object, we find that " absolutists "
also share in intellectuaUsm. " The way of philosophy is
not the way of life " says Mr. Bradley. " Philosophy is as
unable to formulate a thesis in the realms properly belong-
ing to physics or to biology, as it is to build a steam-engine "
(Royce, World and Individual, vol. II, p. 7). And Mr.
Bosanquet, though not an intellectualist, leans toward this
abstractness of intellectuahsm when he says: " We should
not expect metaphysics to predict terrestrial history."
(Principles of Individuality and Value, p. 268.) But we
need not, of course, confime ourselves to the present: in
earher philosophy since Plato the clearest case is that of
Stoicism. If we abstract from Spinoza's concern with the
problem of mind and body and look at his general plan of
the universe, we find it to be suffused with the emotions of
the intellectualist. In the field of psychology, Herbart is the
protagonist of the type. As to the doctrine of scientific cate-
gories, the " reines Denken " of Cohen and Natorp is as
inteUectualistic as anything in Russell. The present type
seems also fairly close to what Royce has called the third
conception of being, though not, of course, possessing the
subjective cast he has given it. (World and Individual,
vol. I, ch. 6.)

226 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

The essence of the universal is that it is unchangeable. It
may " enter into the stream of time from an eternal world
outside " (Russell, op. ciL, p. 167), but it is not thereby-
affected. It is the prototype of independence. Whatever is
universal is independent of change and of the destiny of the
particular instance; and whatever is independent is so far
a universal. But it is not enough to grant that there are
such independent entities; intellectuaUsm goes further. It
shows a decided preference for them, over and above the
particulars. Upon what then is this preference based ? It is
not simply for a logical reason that the universal is honored.
Independence is not demonstrably a sign of greater reality.
Why is not the dependent as real as that upon which it de-
pends ? Is not the chain as real as the hook from which it
hangs, or the child as actual as its parents ? Or is it that the
universal endures while the particular changes, vanishes ?
But there is no assigned reason why that which survives to
a later date is of a higher metaphysical rank than the tran-
sitory. If to be later were to be more real, then 1900 A. D. is
today more real than 1800 A. D., a,nd so on ad absurdum. No:
we want to be sure of something in the future, something at
once good and enduring, and the superior gratification which
future certainty provides over future uncertainty, we easily
read into the universal as a title to higher reality. Desire of
peace, rest, security: that is the great motive of intellectu-
alism. We might expect such an irony: the view which
makes greatest parade of cold reason is nourished by a
semi-reHgious desire. James has called this view " tender-
minded "; presumably because it is wounded by the dis-
agreeable concrete world and sadly longs to attain the rest
of the Platonic heaven. In this aspect the motive becomes
an " other-worldliness."

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 22/

But intellectualism contains a further motive, and here
intellect comes to its rights. A world of universals has one
peculiar property; it loses much of its dignity if it is not
well-knit. Not mere persistence, but a persistence of prin-
ciples and laws which in their order and system manifest
logical beauty. If it were not for this aspect the name intel-
lectuahsm would be undeserved; we should have, instead,
mysticism, or idealism in the artistic sense of the word. The
parts, the various universals, must either themselves imply
one another, or some must imply others, or they must in
permutation and combination account for the categories of
science. Not induction, but deduction, is in order. Implica-
tion and other logical relations are at a premium. Platonism
led, as the mind of its founder matured, to Pythagoreanism :
intellectuahsm in a like manner leads to mathematism.
Exact logic (i. e., presumably symbolic logic) is the key to
philosophy, nay, is philosophy. The discovery of the inde-
finable terms, the relations they take on, the deduction
therefrom of the categories of pure science — that is the
subject-matter of philosophy: the method is the method of
rigid demonstration, of pure logic.

These emotional preferences for the enduring, the sure,
the well-knit, are then some of the pillars of intellectualism.
Other preferences we should expect it to misjudge. The
interest in change and in humanity displayed by the prag-
matist would be interpreted as giving pragmatism a whimsi-
cal or subjective cast. (Cf . James' View of Truth, in Russell,
Philosophical Essays.) Intuitionism would be taken to be
romantic; idealism considered to be subjectivism. This is
actually the case, and is a confirmation of our diagnosis;
for a view based upon a certain value-attitude will always
misunderstand and belittle a view based upon a dififerent
value-attitude.

228 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

We now pass to the arguments in favour of this t)7pe.
Inasmuch as the universal is that which is unvarying
throughout varying circumstances, the main argument for
Platonism usually takes some such form as the following: —

On the one hand the very fact of change itself imphes an
underlying permanent subject of the change. Just as you
cannot have motion without something that moves, so you
cannot have change unless in something which changes.
" This man has changed " we say; but that could not be
true unless the man himself were still in some way the same
man. Otherwise the change could not be attributed to Mm
(compare here the argument of Kant's First Analogy in the
Critique of Pure Reason). On the other hand, the very
nature of description and analysis likewise imphes changeless
terms of discourse, concepts with fixed meam'ng, as it were
permanent logical atoms out of which judgments are com-
pounded. These two statements are but the objective and
subjective sides of one and the same fact, viz., that change
and complexity, if they are to be understood at all, must be
explained as the permutation and combination of simple,
ultimate elements. In chemistry, this thesis has occasioned
the atomic theory; in modern logic and mathematics, it is
exempUfied in the indefinables, axioms, and postulates; in
modern physics, in the theory of electrons. In fact, every
mature science, which has grown far enough to assume
rigorous deductive form, has taken the shape of a logical
atomism. But the atoms, whether physical bodies or con-
cepts, are the universals, the terms which enter now into one
relation, now into another, without being altered thereby.

In recent parlance, this thesis is called the principle of the
externahty of relations ; and it has appeared to be the deadly
foe of that principle which we found in subjectivism, viz.,
the internahty of relations (Ch. III). Mr. Russell, one of its

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 229

chief defenders, thus sums up the case for the former prin-
ciple and against the latter: " In short, no relation ever
modifies either of its terms. For if it holds between A and
B, then it is between A and B that it holds, and to say that
it modifies A and B is to say that it really holds between
different terms C and D. To say that two terms which are
related would be different if they were not related, is to say
something perfectly barren; for if they were different, they
would be other, and it would not be the terms in question,
but a different pair, that would be unrelated. The notion
that a term can be modified arises from neglect to observe
the eternal self-identity of all terms and all logical concepts,
which alone form the constituents of propositions. What is
called modification consists merely in having at one time,
but not at another, some specific relation to some other
specific term; but the term which sometimes has and some-
times has not the relation in question must be unchanged,
otherwise it would not be that term which had ceased to have
the relation." (B. Russell, Principles of Mathematics, vol. I,
p. 448.)

This is the same line of reasoning, be it noted, which may
be used to prove a first cause or an irreducible substance, —
in short, any last thing or permanent standard, anything
which is independent of other things in the sense of not
changing when they change. (Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics,
I. lesser, ch. 2 (Bohn's tr., p. 49.) As apphed to the
problem of knowledge, it leads to the doctrine of independent
real objects, unchanged by our seeing, thinking or otherwise
knowing them. Hence the realists are likely to be better
intellectuahsts than the idealists. But Platonism has many
forms, as universals are of various kinds. Common to them
all is the logical need of a irov a-rS); their distinctness lies in
the purpose for which that irov aru) is needed. How much
does the argxmient weigh ?

230 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

It proceeds by a reductio ad absurdum. If you admit that
A and B, when related, are changed to C and D, then you
eventually get into an endless regress : for no longer A and
B, but C and D, are related, and then since C and D are
modified by their relation, no longer C and D are related,
but E and F, and so on forever. Now this must he avoided —
hence A and B when related are unchanged. But whence
this certainty that the infinite regress must be avoided ?
Skepticism, it seems, is the alternative. Well, why not be
skeptics ? Here no ground can be assigned except that we
are not. Whether this is ascribed to an immediate objective
revelation, to a Fichtean act of choice, or a Kantian postu-
late for purposes of action — or anything you please — one
and all of these descriptions amount just to the fact that we
do accept last terms, fixed concepts, entities entering un-
changed into relations. The above argument then proves
nothing: it simply brings to Ught that we do think in a cer-
tain way. It would seem better to acknowledge this out-
right than to dress it up in the form of a demonstration. The
force of the position does not he in its logical cogency, but in
its actual credibiHty. It might become the foundation of
voluntarism (does indeed so, with Fichte and Miinsterberg)
or of intuitionism, or what not. There is here no ground for
emphasizing the authority of logic or reason over any other
human faculty; condemning, for example, a pragmatic
basis for Platonism, or an intuitive one. " Universals we
believe in because we need them for our thought " so might
a pragmatist speak — so too proceeds the argmnent of Mr.
Russell. And we might as properly say with Descartes that
we accept universals because they appear before us clear
and distinct in lumine naturali.

That there are universals, then, we cannot help admitting,
but it is not impKed in anything else unless we decide to

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 23 I

imply it, nor is it demonstrable by reason's laws. It simply
is true, as a sort of ultimate datum. It rests upon no reductio
ad absurdum of an opponent who insists that there is nothing
permanent. And as its truth does not depend upon the
suicide of the opposing view, we may well ask, is there not
really an even balance between the belief in universals and
the behef that all things change ? May not the permanent
indefinables themselves take on changes, superimposed
upon their unchanging cores, as they pass through the vicis-
situdes of their concrete milieu ? May not the principle of
externality be true at the same time with the principle of the
internaUty of the relations ?

If we acknowledged that an atom A , when brought into a
certain relation R to another atom B, was thereby modified
so as to become C, what would result ? We should say, B
is no longer related to A, but to C instead. Now we could
just as well say, B is still related to the old ^, but that A has
taken on a new qualification, in addition to its former prop-
erties, while remaining otherwise the same as before. "A
has changed into C " means, " A is what it was before, plus
a new quality x," where a; is a resultant of the relation be-
tween the old A and B. And this new C {= A-\-x) is not
such as to replace the relation originally asserted of A and
B, by one between B and C. Once admit that the modifica-
tion may be an enlargement of A without modification of A
throughout, and A is not threatened by the infinite process;
for the original relation is not annulled. Hence the infinite
process has lost its sting. And the defender of ' ' externality ' '
might well admit this, for he can grant that one part of any
entity might remain unchanged. Of course, the advocate of
" internality " may reply, " but my principle, which you
profess to accept, says that the original properties of A must
also be modified by the relation. You have not modified

232 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

them; you have only placed a new content, x, in external
juxtaposition to them. But the x must in turn affect the
original^." We answer "All right; let it be so. Let the ^
be modified by the addition of x into A+y." All we need
to do is to admit the modification, and write it down as the
original plus some new attributes. Then the " internahst "
will once more protest that the original remains still un-
modified, and we shall once more admit a modification,
writing it down as A+z, etc. At every ste,pwe can admit his
claim; as fast as he urges that it is not satisfied, we can
satisfy it. The similarity of this logical situation to the old
issue of subjectivism with objectivism is apparent. Either
side may grant the claims of the other and then proceed to
interpret the whole thing in its own way. Neither side can
ever quench the desire of the other for further conquest, but
on the other hand neither side can deny the justice of the
other's principle. Both internahty and externality may be
granted, to any extent that is wished; and at no stage of the
process does one side rule out the claim of the other. But
just as soon as the internahst would prohibit the demand for
an unchanged substratum persisting through the changes, he
goes against that ultimate datum we spoke of above; and
just as soon as the externahst denies the influence of relations
upon their terms he runs counter to that principle of in-
ternahty whose soundness we bore witness to in Chapter III.
The attempted rediictio ad absurdum of internahty is a
failure. Internahty of relations may be admitted at every
step of the analysis, but it caimot rule out externahty. The
penalty has lost its force. IntellectuaHsm surreptitiously
understands internahty in such a way as to forbid permanent
terms, and then goes on to condemn it for not admitting
permanence. But such understanding is quite gratuitous,
and only makes the trouble which intellectuahsm finds. It

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 233

reminds us of the proverb " Give a dog a bad name and hang
him " and is, in fact, but the old argument from damnation
once more.

And we might have suspected the Platonist's anathema,
if only because it appears to prove too much. If it were
true, there would be no " internal " relations at all. Bring-
ing an object — say a chair — into a new situation, as for
instance a fire — would not alter it. Now perhaps the
ultimate atoms of the chair do persist unaltered: but are
they alone to be considered as real ? Must we condemn as
unreal whatever suffers change ? It would seem that we
ought to do so, and in fact that is just what Platonism
always tends to do. It slights the vanishing, the particular;
it dubs it appearance, unreal. But this condemnation can be
logically justified only if the particular instance is wholly
defined in terms of universals.

This definition of individuahty in conceptual terms is the
task which now confronts intellectualism. As Great Objec-
tivism accounts for conscious minds by defiiung them in
terms of objects; as ideaHsm reduces objects and laws to
terms of the social mind; so Platonism, if it be true to itself,
must define the individual as a certain function of universals.
Thus, a particular oak tree in a certain field is itself and no
other because it is a certain combination or " logical prod-
uct " of quaKties or universals. Other trees are different
combinations or products. The first tree is the logical prod-
uct of green and oaken and 150 years old and owned by X, and
so forth; the second tree is the product of green, oaken, 12^
years old, owned by X, etc. ; a third tree is the product of a
different group of adjectives. The individual is a mode of
the universal (as with Spinoza), a function or relation of
concepts: individuals which have no distinction between
their quahties are mutually indiscernible and identical.

234 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

But as Great Objectivism found its surd in mind, may we
not expect a similar fate to meet Platonism in the individ-
uals ? For notice: no finite mmiber of universals combined
win provide that there shall be only one case of the combina-
tion. Why not two, three, or more, just exactly alike ?
Perhaps the difference might be incommunicable, just bare
position, " thisness " — as many thinkers have said. Plato-
nism cannot disprove this alternative. And as it cannot re-
fute an indescribable difference, so it cannot generate the
one out of the class. It suffers from the fault analogous to its
rival, mysticism's, which caimot get the many from the one.
The universal is that which permits an indefinite number of
instances, and out of universals can be generated no prin-
ciple which limits the number. Of course, in a given world,
where the nxmiber of existing objects is finite and unchange-
able, the product of two universals would have fewer
instances than one of those vmiversals. In a given navy
which can be neither increased nor diminished, there will be
a certain number of steamships: there will be a smaller
niunber of steamships which have a certain added property
— say, of mounting seventeen-inch guns — fewer still which
in addition to this property have that of carrying the com-
mander of a fleet — etc., etc. And so we tend to believe
that as universals are combined more and more, there is a
gradual approach to, and final attainment of, individuality.
And there is, provided we are dealing with a finite number of
individuals and universals. But the concept of the universal,
that of which there may be any number of instances, cannot
by shaking be made to precipitate the notion of a certain
munber of instances, still less of one instance. As no finite
sum makes infinity, so no logical product of infinites makes a
finite number. The individual must be considered as unat-
tainable by any finite combination of universals: the limit

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 235

rather, approached by such combination as it increases in
complexity. The combination can be made ever greater by
discovery of more and more properties of the individual;
and it can thus differ from the real individual's nature by a
difference less than any assigned difference. For such a
difference can be added to the combination and then the
combination no longer differs to that extent from the real
individual. Hence the individual may fitly be called the
limit, or the surd, of the combined universals.

Platonism knows that it caimot account for the fact that
there are particulars; hence it does not like to admit them
into its purview, and we find statements like those quoted
from Messrs. Russell, Bradley, et al. Nevertheless Plato-
nism is not refuted by this inadequacy. Individuals are its
true critical points, and it becomes emasculated at those
points; but it still lives. Everything about an individual
can be defined in universals; yes, even the phrase " this and
no other " is itself a group of universals (to borrow from
Hegel). The paint of universahty can be daubed over
everything — as was the case with subjectivity too. Name
something, if you can, about the individual which eludes
conceptual description, i. e., the universal. You can do
nothing but repeat " individuahty " which is a name for the
fact that what we have asked for is unknown. Or, again,
will, desire, caprice, or other terms with which Royce's
studies of individuahty {The Conception of God, pp. 217-271)
have made us famihar — these are describable criteria, and
thus reducible to terms of universals — except for the ever
outstanding " individuahty." This however is from the
point of view of conceptual definition a true ding an sich.
The logic of the present issue is exactly the same as that of
our previous issues. The very minute when something is
discovered about individuality which has not yet been

236 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

brought within our definition, that something is described
and thus brought within. Yet always something more is
left. Which side then has the advantage ? Neither : it is an
endless seesaw. But that means that both sides are cor-
rect. Individuahty is forever beyond universals in the sense
that they are not adequate to account for it: but as long as
it is taken to have any meaning, that meaning lies in univer-
sals. Here intellectualism meets its opposite extreme, nom-
inaHsm; and it cannot refute it and reduce the individuals
to unreaHty per se.

Before bringing up a second critical point from which the
type suffers, we ought to square ourselves with the old ques-
tion, whether the universals are ante rem or only in re.
Granted that there are real universals, are they so to say
in a separate world, as Plato thought, or wholly knotted in
with the concrete particulars of this world, or neither, but
only in our minds ? Strictly logical intellectualism, standing
as it does for independence, should accept the first, the
ante rem view. And if our analysis of the principle of
external relations is correct, independence is the fact. For
we found no reason for thinking that the opposed principle
of " internaUty " could refute it; and it meets a certain
ultimate intellectual ideal. Hence we should be willing to
admit that the universals are separate existences. But it
must be borne in mind that our present findings are sub-
ject to modification by the results we may gain from later
types. This is, indeed, a general remark which should not
be forgotten throughout our whole investigation.

Another critical point of this view is the fact of change.
If universals cannot generate the individual, neither can the
permanent, which is the universal in its temporal aspect,
generate change. To be sure, every state of the changing
thing can be abstracted out and put into terms of universals.

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 237

The successive positions of the moving object are static posi-
tions, defined in spatial terms, and motion itself may be
defined as the occupation by one and the same body of a cer-
tain position at one time and of another position at a later
time. This conceptual definition of motion is quite like the
definition of the object proffered by idealism, or that of con-
sciousness furnished by Great Objectivism. It is true
enough, but it is inadequate. It does not explain how it can
be that there is such a thing as time at all, and time means
change. It means that a certain moment or brief duration
now is and now no longer is — and thus has changed in re-
spect to its existence. But universals always exist (or if you
prefer " subsist " or " are ") and no shadow of differentia-
tion of this property into two such categories as " are " and
" are not " is discernible in such blank monotony of being.
To say that motion or change are relations between earlier
and later positions or states of one thing, is not to define the
nature of such a relation, but to beg the very quale we wish
to understand. What relations are they ? Precisely the
transeunt ones that have occasioned all the trouble. It is
not explained how they can be found in a Platonic world.
The actual world is simply an additional, unintelHgible ex-
crescence. Of course it is open to anyone to say that phi-
losophy does not care about the particular facts of the world
or the changes that occur in it; but is interested only in the
star-like ideas. Such a choice of subject remains arbitrary,
and there is no reason why a man might not declare that
philosophy is interested only in the particulars and the
changes that occur. Why is not philosophy just as much
concerned with the actual as with the ideal and purely ra-
tional ? Meanwhile the original problem of philosophy —
as we saw it in Chapter I — is forgotten; no map of the
universe as a whole is provided, for half of it is left out; and

238 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

there is no explanation of the more or less rough, irregular,
inexact things which confront us at every turn. These
actualities are the rocks against which intellectuaHsm breaks
into froth and foam. But, as ardent anti-inteUectualists
like James have failed to see, intellectuaHsm is not refuted
thereby. It passes into a vaporous stage beyond its critical
point; but it never is annulled. As all objects can formally be
brought under the shadow of the subject, so all change, suc-
cession, particularity, can be analyzed into momentary static
states; even as any moving thing may be photographed.
It is those states, but it is also something more. If you ask
" What more ? " you can be answered by the interpolation
of further connecting states — and so on forever. As often
as you claim to have dissected motion, so often you will be
told that the relation between the successive states has eluded
you; and as often as you analyze that relation between into
further successive states, the objection will be repeated.
Both sides are correct enough. The relation can always be
analyzed into transition-states, just as a Une joining two
points can be analyzed into points — and so on forever.
And the states always imply a relation between them, as the
points are connected by a Une. The tilt is endless, because
the analysis is never adequate, yet always true. So it is,
then, as regards the issue between the Platonic universals
and the concrete changes. The former can be used to de-
scribe the latter, but they cannot fully succeed in the
endeavour; they are infertile.

On the scientific side of intellectuaHsm another critical
point appears. That type views the world of universals as
a well-knit one. The various properties, etc., are deduced
by logical necessity (i. e., by the axioms and principles of
reasoning) from the indefinables and their relations. Hence
all is determined to be what it is, and there seems no loop-

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 239

hole for letting in alternative possibilities, chance, the unde-
termined and free — for example, the free human act. We
recall Spinoza's mechanical universe. Freedom of will in
such a view has to be reinterpreted to mean action which
follows necessarily from one's own inner nature. Now in the
world of sense-observation we do not wholly verify this
strict and well-knit character. No event perfectly mani-
fests obedience to the universals of science, the " laws of
Nature." Bodies do not fall in quite straight lines, measure-
ments do not fully bear out the law of pressure in gases, etc.,
etc. How then does our type adjust itself to this awkward
situation ? Well enough, indeed. It declares that the uni-
versals which are present in Nature are so many and so
complex that every particular event is a compound of a vast
number, a resultant of indefinitely many laws. If the laws
we know do not suffice to account for the behaviour of a
living body, a dog or a man, then we say there are other laws
acting undiscovered. But what if determinism thus adapts
itself to the apparent irregularity of the concrete world ?
It is quite formal; it has become so abstract as to be utterly
infertile for prediction.

The issue of freedom (or chance) vs. determinism is not
treated as an empirical one. It is not that we demonstrate
the laws by observing uniformity in events — day following
day, year, year, the same conditions in the laboratory
producing the same results again and again. However ir-
regular the sequence of events might be, one could still be-
lieve them governed by laws at bottom. One's own thoughts
are often chaotic enough, yet one may beheve them subject
to law. It is always open to us to say that the laws are so
many and the conditions so complex as to necessitate ap-
parent irregularity in the resultant events. It is true that
we should not notice the presence of law but for fairly evident

240 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

uniformities; but an intellectualist might accept the pres-
ence of law where he could not observe it. The real ground
upon which determinists beheve that all events are necessary-
is, that that appears to be a postulate of reason. It seems
to go against all the nature of our intellect, to believe that
an event can happen without a cause. An a priori " prin-
ciple of sufficient reason " is invoked, and being dignified
with the title of principle, at once assumes sway over our
minds. To be sure, determinists appeal to the progress
science has made, in explaining one by one events which
used to be regarded as inexplicable. The plagues which were
once unaccountable divine visitations have been traced to
germs; the caprices of man's thought have been accounted
for by laws of association; dreams are explained by the
state of the organism or the " suppressed-wish " of Freud;
and the man who thinks that he freely chooses to vote for a
candidate finds that his choice was dictated by invincible
prejudices. The cumulative weight of all this causal ex-
planation, increasing in geometrical ratio as it does with the
advance of science, is indeed most impressive. But though
the argument is convincing, it is not sound. It works by
overpowering the reason, not by dissuading it. It is quite
possible that we discover an ever greater number of causes
operating in the world, while yet in the operation of each
cause there be a sHght divergence from law. In a line an inch
long we may discover by subdivision more and more parts
— yet never do we succeed in reducing the Une to points and
nothing but points. The case of causal explanation is quite
analogous. For a single fact such as the path of a falling
raindrop we may bring to light one cause after another —
gravitation, air pressure, wind, evaporation, etc., yet each
of these particular causes itself might exhibit a sHght devi-
ation from perfect law — for it is well known that no perfect

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 24 1

case of law has ever been found. It is quite possible, nay it is
probable, to judge from past observations, that every par-
ticular cause that is acting on the raindrop, no matter how
carefully isolated and measured, would be found to vary
slightly from exact obedience to law. There is no empirical
guarantee whatever that in the last analysis the same cause
always produces the same effect. Nearly the same, we grant,
of course, and more nearly the same the more the cause is
isolated; but there is no proof that the deviation from law
approaches zero as its limit.' It only approaches something
very small as its Kmit. But for clear thinking nearly t\it same
is quite other than exactly the same, and determinism claims
a regularity which in the last analysis is perfectly exact. The
cumulative argument for determinism can no more rule out
chance variations than shortening a Hne can make it into a
point. If we based our opinion on empirical grounds, in-
deed, we should say that every one of the infinite causes
which combine to produce a certain event is itself a little
bit irregular and unaccountable — for that is always the
case with the causes we know and measure. But we do not
wish here to settle this fascinating question; merely to
point out that determinism has given no more than an a
priori solution; correct, perhaps, but indemonstrable. It
appeals to a feeling of reverence for law, an a priori postulate
which is not only unprovable, but by some serious thinkers
denied. And since this law, being so a priori, can be made to
fit any sort of irregularity that might be found in human
hfe, it is indifferent to particular occurrences. The knowl-
edge that all my deeds are determined does not tell me which
way I am going to decide in a given alternative. In other
words, determinism never accounts for any particular event.
Every specific act of a human will, every event in inorganic
nature, is as a complete individual quite unexplained; each

242 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

forms a critical point, and the relation of determinism
toward these critical points is similar to the relation of the
preceding types to their critical points. The theory can be
so extended as to fit them, but in doing so it exhibits its
infertility to account for them. It fails to do that which it
set out to do, viz., to propound a universal working theory
of the order of the real world.

It is a consequence of the formaHsm of the deterministic
view, that it cannot refute its opponent. If one waxes indig-
nant over determinism's inability to explain the particulars,
it is quite possible to retort to the whole position, that aU
law is at bottom a chance coincidence, a fortuitous recur-
rence of similarities. For just as irregularities are explained
by determinism as due to the enormously complex combina-
tion of laws, so the reverse procedure is logically open, viz.,
to declare that the seeming regularity of causal sequences is
due to an extraordinarily compUcated heaping together of
chance events. No one, to our knowledge, has done this,*
because we love law and order; but there would be nothing
in it which would contradict our experience or our science.
Such chance would of course not explain our world. It could
not show any ground for our scientific predictions, in which
we believe more or less absolutely. It would find its critical
point, in turn, in those innumerable cases where we are
justifiably certain of the future — as in foretelling an eclipse,
or calculating upon a man's defending himself when at-
tacked, etc. But though it could not account for such in-
stances, it could reiterate its position concerning them, and
declare that they are simply odd coincidences. And since
there is no limit to oddity, it could always stretch its elastic

* Mr. C. S. Peirce came nearest of all men to doing it, perhaps {The
Monist, vol. 2, pp. 32 1-323), but even he assumed a " habit-taking tendency "
among things — which is equivalent to assuming an irreducible element of
law.

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 243

concept of chance to cover any coincidence, however incred-
ible. For intellectualistic methods, the issue between
determinism and chance is without end.

In the Platonic world all can be deductively arranged from
the indefinables and axioms; but that has no bearing what-
ever upon the stream of particular and irregular events in
time, and it leaves — deUberately with some thinkers,
unwittingly with others — one half of the world a mystery.

Must we repeat that we do not say there is no such Pla-
tonic world ? On the contrary, we have seen that the argu-
ment for the universals is sound. It is not a demonstration
in the sense of discursive proof, but it is a valid appeal to
inspection. But as a reform of philosophy's perennial diffi-
culties, the type is analogous to the procedure of one who
would reform human society by fleeing to the desert. It is
an escape rather than a solution. It discovers a new world,
but neither tells how that world is related to the old one nor
sheds any light upon the old one. It cannot explain in-
dividuaUty, or change, or motion; it cannot from its doc-
trine of detemainism enable us to foretell the future, and it
carmot account for the fact that the universals are always
imperfectly manifested in the concrete, that laws are only
approximately verified. It appears to define motion and
change by redefining motion and change so as to leave out
the element of transeuncy, that is, by treating instead their
pale Platonic analogues. And by this one-sided procedure
it is sure to produce, in true Hegehan fashion, a reaction in
favour of the dynamic, the concrete, the immediately felt,
the practical. Such a reaction forms our next t3^e.

Anti-Intellectualism, or Radical Empiricism

This is a broad stream, and it flows closer to the pubhc
places than any other; it has democratic affiliations, being

244 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

of quite opposite temper to the aristocratic instincts of the
Platonist. Such empiricists as Bergson, James, and Dewey
may ahnost be said to be popularly known; one hears of
them in the novels of the day, and they are, for philosophers,
very widely read. The banks of the stream are, perhaps, not
so clearly defined as some we have followed. We might say
it is swampy at the edges ; but swampy ground may be fer-
tile, and what the stream lacks of clear-cut boundary will,
it is hoped, be compensated by the fertihty it contributes to
the valleys which it irrigates.

We said there were three subdivisions under Great Objec-
tivism, to be sure, and it now looks as if there were only two:
intellectualism and empiricism. But the latter has two
forms, distinct and hostile except in their treatment of the
common enemy, viz., pragmatism and intuitionism. These
share the antipathy to such transcendental entities as the
universals, to the remote Platonic heaven and the static
generally; " static " becomes with them a term of reproach
— as when they characterize the Absolute of Hegel by that
adjective. They also share the acceptance of time, change,
and the concrete particulars of the world as ultimately real.
These two points are their common root, radical empiricism:
the way in which they branch off from that root shall be
later described. We begin with the root and then take up
the branches.

On the negative side, the type opposes the pure concepts
of Plato and Mr. Russell, the mathematically constructed
universe of Spinoza, the transcendental Ego of Kant, and
all such entities which are above or beneath the temporal
flow of events. The Great Self of the ideahsts, uniting and
relating the sense-data, and itself outside those data; the
ding-an-sich; the external objects of the representative
theory of knowledge which are never in but always implied

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 245

by our sense-impressions — all these transcendent things are
per se not real — or if they are, they may be neglected. To
all intents and purposes, they are not. Such reality as these
great principles have can be rendered wholly into terms
of our every-day experience. This type is, in truth, that
positive side of the "Pure-Experience" doctrine mentioned
in Chapter IV.

" In point of fact " said James of the conceptual realm
" it is far less an account of this actual world than a clear
addition built upon it, a classic sanctuary in which the
rationahst fancy may take refuge from the intolerably
confused and Gothic character which mere facts present.
It is no explanation of our concrete universe, it is another
thing altogether, a substitute for it, a remedy, a way of
escape.

" Its temperament, if I may use the word temperament
here, is utterly alien to the temperament of existence in the
concrete " {Meaning of Truth, p. 22). IntellectuaHsm, then,
can scarcely furnish a valuable map of reality. " Rational-
ism tends to emphasize universals and to make wholes prior
to parts in the order of logic as well as in that of being. Em-
piricism, on the contrary, lays the explanatory stress upon
the part, the element, the individual, and treats the whole as
a collection and the universal as an abstraction. ... To
be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its con-
structions any element that is not directly experienced, nor
exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.
For such a philosophy, the relations that connect experiences
{viz., the universals, the transcendental ego, etc.) must them-
selves be experienced relations, and any kind of relation ex-
perienced must be accounted as ' real ' as anything else in the
system. . . . Now, ordinary empiricism, in spite of the fact
that conjunctive and disjunctive relations present them-

246 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

selves as being fully coordinate parts of experience, has
always shown a tendency to do away with the connections
of things, and to insist most on the disjunctions. Berkeley's
nominaHsm, Hume's statement that whatever things we dis-
tinguish are as ' loose and separate ' as if they had ' no
manner of connection,' James Mill's denial that similars
have anything ' really ' in common, the resolution of the
causal tie into habitual sequence . . . and the general
pulverization of all Experience by association and the
mind-dust theory, are examples of what I mean.

" The natural result of such a world-picture has been the
efforts of rationaHsm to correct its incoherencies by the ad-
dition of transexperiential agents of unification, substances,
intellectual categories and powers, or Selves; whereas, if
empiricism had only been radical and taken everything that
comes without disfavour, conjunction as well as separation,
each at its face value, the results would have called for no
such artificial correction: Radical empiricism, as I under-
stand it, (ioe5/M/ZyM.s/fce to co«yMWc/iz;e reZaiiows . . ." (James,
Essays in Radical Empiricism, pp. 42-44) .

If then there are for us no objects transcending all possible
experience, what are we to say of physical things ? For
they are surely outside of our own thoughts of them. So
simple a thing as a pebble comprises many attributes which
I do not ever think of or apprehend. Its chemical properties
I may not know; even the greatest scientist does not know
all of them. Are not these really transcendent of human
experience ? In short, our perceptions seem to have a cer-
tain objective reference, to point to a reaUty transcending
them. But this reference, according to our present type, is
sufiiciently described as a " feeling of tendency " in the pres-
ent experience, toward some future possible experience.
The pebble's externality to my mind means that there is

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 247

more about the pebble than I compass now; that if I ex-
amine it further I shall have more perceptions and thoughts.
" Objective reference, I say then, is an incident of the fact
that so much of our experience comes as an insufl&cient [sic]
and consists of process and transition. Our fields of expe-
rience have no more definite boundaries than have our fields
of view. Both are fringed by a more that continuously de-
velops, and that continuously supersedes them as Hfe
proceeds " {Essays in Radical Empiricism, p. 71).

This definition of the object by " further possible expe-
rience " suggests subjectivism, but we must remember that
James is a Great Objectivist. His essay " Does Conscious-
ness Exist ? " referred to in Chapter III, favours a reduction
of mind to objective, though concrete terms. Summarizing,
he says: " Radical Empiricism consists first of a postulate,
next of a statement of fact, and finally of a generaHzed
conclusion.

" The postulate is that the only things that shall be debat-
able among philosophers shall be things definable in terms
drawn from experience. (Things of an unexperienceable
nature may exist ad libitum, but they form no part of the
material for philosophic debate.)

" The statement of fact is that the relations between
things, conjunctive as well as disjunctive, are just as much
matters of direct particular experience, neither more so nor
less so, than the things themselves.

" The generaHzed conclusion is that therefore the parts of
experience hold together from next to next by relations that
are themselves parts of experience. The directly appre-
hended universe needs, in short, no extraneous transempiri-
cal connective support, but possesses in its own right a
concatenated or continuous structure." (James, The
Meaning of Truth, Preface, pp. xii-xiii.)

248 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

But the negative side is not all of radical empiricism. It
is not content with denying the universals ante rem; it pur-
ports to do justice to all that they really mean to us. This is
its positive side. As Great Objectivism did not mean to ex-
clude mind, but to define it in objective terms, and as Great
Subjectivism intended to recognize the external objects, but
by reducing them to a phase of the Universal Mind, so radi-
cal empiricism would include the alleged transcendent
beings, redefining them by means of experienced relations,
functions, tendencies, etc. It does not so much rule out the
static as restate it in dynamic terms. " For rationalism "
wrote James, " concept-stuff is primordial and perceptual
things are secondary in nature. The present book, which
treats concrete percepts as primordial and concepts as of
secondary origin, may be regarded as somewhat eccentric
in its attempt to combine logical realism with an otherwise
empiricist mode of thought " (Some Problems of Philosophy,
p. 106). NominaHsm the present type would be, with its
primacy of individuals, did it like Hobbes and the rest deny
the universals; but by virtue of its definition of them as the
possibility of further similar instances it should rather be
entitled Great Nominalism.

Such a Weltanschauung, which is probably more influen-
tial among Protestants today than any type we have yet
studied, owes its attractiveness in the main to congruity
with so much of our modem attitude toward Ufe. If
Platonism rests largely upon emotion, even more obviously
does Radical Empiricism — especially as presented by the
charmingly temperamental James. And the emotions it
calls into play are just those dearest to the twentieth-cen-
tury mind; for they are democratic emotions. James gives
us the apotheosis of the commonplace, the imperfect, and
these form the masses, the majority, of our experience.

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 249

Human beings, looking upon their actual environment, do
not find things clear-cut, exact or pure. There are no perfect
circles, no straight lines, no rigid bodies in Nature; no man
is wholly selfish, wholly sensual, absolutely rational or gener-
ous. Instead of being " simple, clean, and noble " Uke the
Platonic world, our life is for the most part " tangled,
muddy, painful and perplexed " {Pragmatism, p. 21). We
" muddle along somehow." Instead of being ordered from
top to bottom by unalterable law, we find Ufe full of hazard,
risk, alternative possibilities. We like nowadays to think
that we make our own future; and the doctrine pleases us
by its appeal to action and free choice, favourite categories
of a vigorous, bustling age. Chance, which to the well-
regulated Platonic mind appears distasteful or even vulgar,
and which seems so patent in common experience, is allowed
a place — for it makes our work and play more zestful.
Even Grod, the supremely real one, is not the immaculate
ideal of perfection: " in this world of sweat and dirt, what-
ever the God of earth and heaven is, he can surely be no
gentleman " (Pragmatism, p. 72). There is no other-
worldliness here, but rather a glorying in the struggle of this
one. God himself, in James' view, struggles with evil, and
grows thereby; and this success is helped or hindered by our
own choices. The Platonic idea, aristocrat of metaphysics,
is replaced by the shifting scene of ordinary human expe-
rience, where all the elements of the stream have equal
opportunity to prove their value and truth. The cold and
classic universe gives way to the romance of daily work,
industry, the common needs of life. Dignity, austerity,
asceticism, those virtues of a by-gone age, are likely to be
interpreted as pomposity and self-centredness. The leaders
of the movement are unpretentious, simple-minded; such
as Professor Dewey, social democrat and organizer, the
humane James, and the fun-poking Schiller.

250 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

But realism is devoted to science; and these men are not
idealists. In contrast, however, to the Platonist's devotion
to exact science, which works with the artificial conditions
of the laboratory and the abstractions of higher mathe-
matics, we may expect the empiricist to select as ideal the
sciences which deal with Hving, growing things and which
observe them as they work in their natural environment.
For Hving things possess all the traits which this type loves
to contemplate; their very essence is to change, to struggle,
to disappear; they show none of the fixed immobihty of the
intellectuaHst's types. The true method of approach should
be the temporal one, i. e., the evolutionary; and the sciences
which are taken as the fount and model of truth will be the
biological sciences. This tendency to base philosophy upon
biology finds aid and comfort, too, from recent critics of the
inorganic sciences such as Rey, E. Boutroux, Ravaisson,
Renouvier, Poincare, Enriques, Pearson, Ward, and many
others; as well as from the ideaUstic interest in human
personahty. But it is time that we examined the detail of
the argument which has been offered against the abstract
universals.

Whereas change, relations, and individual things are
directly presented and therefore real, concepts as such are
never seen, touched or otherwise observed. They are, at
best, only Hmits, ideals, which are more or less imperfectly
approximated in our experience. For concepts are exact;
and nothing we observe is exactly anything. Whiteness is
never seen, for it means just white, pure white — and all the
whiteness we know has admixture of something else, be it a
little darkness, or other quality. A horse is not just a pure
horse, but a nervous horse, a sorrel horse, etc. Most evi-
dently is this sort of assertion verified in the physical
sciences. There is no mere water or mere carbon; you can-

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 25 1

not get them unalloyed, no matter how careful you are;
there are no perfectly elastic bodies; no lines that are just
length without thickness, but only long thin objects such as
strings, wires or threads; no mere planes, but oidy fairly
smooth tops of tables, etc., etc. Nor are pure cases ever
found, of one law of science; the action of one law is always
interfered with by some other. The pendulum in the labora-
tory swings a little slower than it should, owing to friction;
the ball falling in a vacuum is attracted by other bodies from
the straight path; and so on. Universals, pure concepts,
are then not given in experience. Experience does not come
to us in generalities, but is specific and complex. " To at-
tribute a superior degree of glory to it (the concept) seems
little more than a piece of perverse abstraction-worship "
says James. " As well might a pencil insist that the outline
is the essential thing in all pictorial representation, and chide
the paintbrush and the camera for omitting it, forgetting
that their pictures not only contain the whole outline, but a
hundred other things in addition." (James, Meaning of
Truth, pp. 204-205.) The particulars contain " a hundred
other things in addition " to any of the universals they re-
veal. In so far as the universals get embodied at all, it is in
the form of particulars teeming with qualities. It is the
thinness, meagreness, poverty of universals, that make
them less real than the particulars. The reason why no law
is exactly fulfilled, no concept found pure, is that they would
be too colourless to be noticeable. They would not be in
concrete contexts, they would not be available to more than
one sense-organ or mode of apprehension. Who could ever
identify a mere horse ? How point him out to others, how
recognize him but by his colour, size, behaviour, etc. ? No,
the universal is no more real than the skeleton is aKve.
The particular, which is never simple or abstract, is alone
" verifiable."

252 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

But poverty and meagreness are no good reason why we
should call the universals less real. Less interesting, less
fruitful, less profitable, yes: but when it is a question of
existence, we might as well say a hillock is not as real as a
mountain. It is by mistakes analogous to this that social
injustice originates. We overlook the poor and uninterest-
ing people. We are more considerate of a genius's feelings
than of a nonentity's, we slight a child for an adult. The
small has its wants as well as the large, and there is enough
of reality " to go around." The quantitative argument —
as we might call the above — is not a logical one; it is a
statement of our interests merely. It must be supplanted
by another if it is to have objective significance. And other
arguments we find.

The universals have certain metaphysical defects. Thus,
it is a sine qua non of reality to be individual; and the uni-
versals do not meet the demand. Perhaps the case has been
best stated by Royce. The argument was used by him, we
know, not to justify radical empiricism, but to support the
ultimacy of individuals; but it is of perfect appUcation here.
By that beautiful inversion which is so frequently seen in
philosophical reasoning, the same train of thought which
led the intellectualist to condemn the individuals is here
employed by the individualist to condemn the universals.
As the particulars could not measure up to the standard of
the concept, so now the latter is found to fall short of the
converse requirement. The argument runs as follows.

IndividuaKty = reahty; the concept is not an individual,
therefore, etc. Now it is clear enough, perhaps, from what
we have already said, that individual and universal are ir-
reducible one to the other. The real force of the argument
lies then in the assumption that individuality is of the
essence of reality. Long ago Aristotle said, "Primary sub-

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 253

stance to be sure in everything is that which does not be-
long to another thing." {Metaphysics, 6. ch. 13: Bohn's
Library tr., p. 199.) What are the grounds of this unhesi-
tating acceptance of the individuals ?

It seems that Being is taken to signify a certain complete-
ness. What is real is " all there." This pen could not be,
unless it were a finished article. " An entire instance of
Being . . . permits your ideas to seek no other " said
Royce. (J¥orld and Individual, vol. I, p. 347.) However
infinite in number be the points on the surface of a five-cent
piece, they must all be present, none lacking, in the surface.
But the universal, by its very definition, is never complete,
never " all there " — for there may always be further in-
stances of it. It is like infinity in this regard. Men have
difficulty in granting the actuality of the infinite, because
it is something which cannot be compassed. It is forever
unattained, unreaKzed. Universals, then, lack the finished
character which is a requisite of reality; hence they must be
unreal.

Now of course in a sense whatever is real is individual.
But does it follow that it cannot also be a universal ? May
there not be another aspect of every stick, stone, or person,
in which they show an unfinished character, a suggestion of
more to come ? Time seems to display this very property.
The present moment is all here ; everything up to it has been
completed, and yet that completeness is no bar to a tend-
ency toward further experience. Space also : a given volume,
say the area included by Neptune's orbit, is all completed
and present, but it implies a region outside and beyond.
This potentiality of further regions and future events is a
very real attribute of space and of time. Any account of
them which omitted it would be clearly inadequate. And
if time and space possess this unfinished quality, why not

254 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

horses, dogs, trees, and other individual things ? As a
matter of fact, they all do suggest to us that there may be
further instances, more horses, more dogs; and that feehng,
that there may be more Hke them, is just the gist of our
consciousness of the concept. From this point of view, the
concept is not poorer than the individual thing, but richer;
for it leads on to more individuals than we have already
found. This leading-on is a positive addition to our appre-
hension of the present. Professor Royce somewhere asked,
" What is a mere possibiHty unrealized ? " On the practical
side, at all events, it is a good deal, for in daily Kfe we have
to take account of possibihties which are not yet fact, and
which may never become so. My house may burn down, or
it may not; but I take out insurance against the bare chance
that it will. We shall enlarge on the importance of this
category of the potential in Chapter X; but it seems evident
to the most superficial reflection that a view which would
denude reaUty of its aspect of incompleteness is a priori,
narrow, and against all empirical results. We conclude that
so far the universal is not shown unworthy of being real.

The incompleteness of the universal, it must be noticed,
is simply its property of being inexpressible completely in
individual terms. Starting from individuals, and nothing
else, we could not define the universal. The relation " ever
more and more to come " must be introduced; but the
" ever " already contains implicitly the essence of the uni-
versal. And no finite array of individual cases can exhaust
this notion of " ever more and more." We have here then
two elements, such that one can never be reduced to a phase
of the other. The alleged proof of the unreaHty of concepts
is only the demonstration that they can never be translated
into individual terms; the error lies in the conclusion that
since completed beings (individuals) are real, incomplete ones

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 255

(universals) cannot be so. In elementary logic this is called
false obversion.

But, it will perhaps be said, the concept as we have here
used the term, is no abstract entity, but only a property of
the individuals, viz., their suggestion of further similar
instances. The thing which radical empiricism objects to is
not this functional relational thing, but the transcendent
universal, supposed by Platonism to exist complete, by itself,
apart from all particulars. Surely all the arguments above
adduced against the concept, will apply to that sort of
abstraction.

We must reply in the negative. The abstract universal is
no more to be condemned than the concrete. To be sure, it
is not fully reahzed in the stream of events that make up
human history, or terrestrial or solar history. But did it
ever pretend to be so realized ? Why should it be ? It is
aloof from them, independent of them; " a clear addition,"
as James said, not an explaining principle. But this is no
denial of its reality. It is not its reaUty that is impugned
by this remoteness, but its concreteness, its presence in the
earthly milieu; and there is no known ground for arguing
that what is not so present is not real. All that is concrete is
real; but it does not follow that what is not concrete is not
real. Here lurks the same fallacy as with the individuaUst.
To show that abstractions are unreal one must appeal to
very different reasons. As far as we can ascertain, these are
just two in number; the " principle of parsimony " is one,
and the Hegelian doctrine that the abstract leads to dialecti-
cal contradiction is the other. Now the former, so far from
tending, as is usually thought, to rule out the abstract uni-
versal, is perhaps its strongest support. For we could not
manage our daily life, our rehgion, our science, if we were
not constantly setting up abstractions, thinking of them as

256 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

pure and unmixed, and guiding our behaviour by their light.
If I wish for selfish reasons to make a friend of a certain vain
man, I flatter him rather grossly. For the moment I ab-
stract entirely from his being a person of common sense, a
reputable artisan, a sound business man, etc. I treat him as
just vanity and nothing more. I make progress in his affec-
tions by reacting toward him as if he were the Platonic idea.
Vanity. In point of fact, this abstractness is the funda-
mental trait of human conduct. As psychologists and phi-
losophers do not cease to emphasize, we live by selection; we
advance against the hostile forces of the environment by
tacking, by meeting one at a time — that is, in abstraction
— the problems of life. Consciousness itself is through and
through selective. We attend to one part of our surround-
ings at once; experience itself comes to us in abstracto.
And what is true of the layman's mind is equally true of the
priest's or the scientist's. The preacher addresses a tran-
scendent God in his prayer; and the worshippers are invited
to contemplate moral virtues which, however good men may
be, are practically never completely realized. Even the
practical ethical-culturist must think of the virtues one by
one, and realize them one by one. And in science, as is so
well known today, abstractions such as inertia, velocity,
straight lines, perfect ellipses, etc., are simply indispensable.
It is astonishing that radical empiricists of the pragmatic
cast, who define the true as that belief which enables us to
adapt ourselves to the environment, should not hold up as
true all these acknowledged abstractions. They are not
only helpful, they are prerequisites of success in every walk
of life. Take an instance from one of the least intellectual of
human experiences — the mass meeting, the political rally.
Does not the orator who sways the crowd, do so by the
reiteration of abstract terms such as " republicanism," " the

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 257

democratic spirit," " social justice," " Americanism," " the
British Empire," and so on — concepts the brilliance of
whose emotional halo is directly proportional to the degree
in which they fall short of concreteness ? No, the principle
of parsimony would rather incUne us to acknowledge the
reality of abstractions per se; so far from being praeter ne-
cessitatem they are quite indispensable to human progress.
And it is per se that they are to be invoked; if we could
not for the moment abstract from all else and envisage the
virtue, the ideal, the quality we wish to gain or to suppress,
all alone, it would lose its power. Humanity is, and must
always be, dominated by abstractions; concrete success
comes through that road, as a man has to step back in
order to jump the ditch. Let him then not scorn the means
by which he succeeds.

For that matter, individual things are just as abstract as
generahties. A person no more exists alone, apart from his
environment, than does selfishness apart from selfish per-
sons. Yet we say he is real enough; at least radical empiri-
cism says so. The only consistent denial of the abstract
universal would seem to be the Hegelian doctrine that
nothing cut off from its context is real. This doctrine is
based, apparently, on two foundations; the fact that aU our
experience forms a sort of continuum, every part and aspect
being more or less tied up with every other, and the principle
that the abstract is, for ultimate analysis, self-contradictory.
Now as to the fact, we should not think of disputing it. The
radical empiricist admits it: James and Ward and Dewey
and other empiricist leaders insist upon it. But here as
above we ask, is that the whole truth about our experience ?
Is there not another side, the side which we have just been
dwelling upon, the side of partiaUty, selective attention,
limitation ? Objects come to us in an environment, but

258 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

they also go out of that environment before us ; they manage
to get off alone as it were, to be contemplated in vacuo — a
process whose subjective description is called our abstracting.
Do you say this is subjective only, while the objective fact is
the continuum alone ? In answer we may refer back to what
we said about subjectivism in Chapters III and IV. There is
no particular reason why the abstract should be considered
more subjective than the concrete. Kant thought it should
be so considered; but we have examined his argument in
Chapter III. The abstracting process is unavoidable, it is
useful for extending knowledge, for enabHng us to cope with
life, it is similar in all of us and pretty much the same con-
tents are abstracted out by everyone — colour, tone, etc. ;
in short it has all the marks by which we judge any subject-
matter to be objectively real. There is indeed no good
ground why we should select the side of our experience called
individual and ascribe to it a reality we are unwilling to give
to the universal side. It is an arbitrary preference, a dog-
matic exclusion. It is bound to lead to a sense of injustice
and thus to generate a revolt in favour of the concepts —
and so to prolong the tilt between nominalism and Platonic
realism.

There remains the other reason assigned by the Hegelians,
to wit, the principle that all partial things are self-contradic-
tory. This argument depends upon certain presuppositions
which radical empiricism has not been willing to make, and
which for that matter none of the t)7pes we have yet studied
would admit. In Chapter IX we shall examine those pre-
suppositions. They go along with an entirely new point of
view in philosophy and cannot be properly treated until
that point of view has been expounded. For the present,
then, we must content ourselves with a promise to study the
principle later. With the proviso, however, that we there

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 259

find no just cause for the denial of abstract universals, we
seem able to conclude that they have as good a title to reality
as the individuals, the shifting temporal scene, or the rela-
tions and functions that hold between its parts. Radical
empiricism, at any rate, shows no suflB.cient reason for
cutting them out.

It seems worth while now to state our results in more posi-
tive terms; for we beheve they supply a much needed cor-
rection of certain pet superstitions in modern philosophy.
If we have argued rightly, any abstraction which is set up
with due regard to the rules of evidence, ought to be judged
real. Of course, it must be properly based: not every gen-
eral idea should have our credence, but only those whose
contents are drawn, with vaHd inference, from sensuous or
other accepted data. The abstract concept witch does not
seem to have any justification, because it is of no help for
scientific description or for conduct. The abstract concept
gravitation is quite different. It is of the greatest help in
scientific description, and it is in practice a necessity, for we
reahze by its aid a property of the things we Hft and let go,
which we must always take into account. It is therefore
quite correct to say that there is an actual entity, called the
force of gravitation. Those apparently prudent, but reaUy
prudish, admonitions given by certain semi-philosophical
physicists against the belief in real forces, are needless. It
would not do the shghtest harm to anybody to admit a force
of gravitation, a power of the electric current, or any other
" metaphysical " principle behind the scenes. Of course we
must not abuse these forces and powers. Let us not think
that they explain the particulars, in the sense of accounting
for their existence. They do no such thing ; they afi'ord only
a convenient description. But explanation is not the only
ground for belief; description is as genuine a need of science

26o PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

as explanation, and what furthers description best in the
long run should be respected and accredited. Nor should we
be so narrow-minded as to deny the forces because their
names do not of themselves stimulate us to analyze them.
The force of gravitation is doubtless in need of analysis;
but suppose that it were analyzed as successfully as chemical
attraction, Ught, heat, and other powers of nature have been,
even then the actuality of the force would not be dissipated.
Who ever said that analysis takes away the reality of what
is analyzed ? Is John Jones the less a man for the results of
biology ? Must we say that water is unreal because it is a
compound ? Do either of these lose anything of their unity
by being shown complex ? They lose neither unity nor
actuahty, and the names (one of which is capitalized in
EngUsh, both in German) are no bar to the analysis. No
more is the beHef in a force of gravitation an inducement, to
the sincere investigator, to forego the examination of the
nature of that force. It is one thing to deify forces, to use
their names as an injunction against inspection; it is quite
dififerent to believe in them and to proceed to elucidate their
meaning. In fact, reason as he may about the matter, man
will always have to speak, and think, and act, toward forces
and powers as if he beheved them real. To stigmatize them
as " hypostasized abstractions " is another instance of that
one-sidedness, intolerance, and needless exclusion which so
frequently appears in history.

What we have said of forces and powers applies also to
institutions. Pohtical nominalism, which is the same phi-
losophy as the nominaUsm so despised by those who sneer at
the subtleties of the Middle Ages, denies the reahty of the
state, the commonwealth, the municipahty, in and for itself.
It declares that they are nothing over and above the in-
dividuals who compose them. But this is not borne out by

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 26 1

the behaviour of the public-spirited citizen. He labours for
an abstract universal: abstract in the sense that it is one
single object of his devotion and thought, not then " pul-
verized " into its members. (However rare this devotion is
in modern poUtics, it is certainly not entirely wanting.) Of
course it must not be conceived as hostile to the needs of
individual members: it then assumes an exclusiveness which
we have all along condemned. But it is distinct ; the welfare
of the state does not mean the immediate welfare of every
citizen, and so far the state is a different thing from the
mere group of citizens. We often see public oflScials caught
up by the spirit of the institution which they serve; display-
ing a zeal, a tireless energy, which before entering upon
office they had never shown. One may observe the same in
the young athletes who strive for the glory of the college
they represent, in the voter's otherwise unintelHgible ad-
herence to a political party; yes, even in the positivistic
(and passionately anti-Platonic) devqtion of Comte and the
ethical-culturists to " humanity." The United States of
America, in the Civil War, declared itself a Platonic realist
when it put down by force the attempt of individual states
to deny the permanence of the whole nation. So far from
these political abstractions being non-empirical, a pragmatic
consideration shows that their efficacy upon men's conduct
is too real for us to refuse them all the actuality that we
ascribe to individuals.

It follows that not only forces, powers, and institutions,
but all scientific Hulfsbegriffe, are quite real: real, that is, for
aught that radical empiricism has to say. Chemical atoms,
molecules, ions, electrons, the ether — provided they are
truly serviceable for description or explanation — are as
real as the things which they explain. Indeed, how could a
compound be understood as made of such parts, unless the

262 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

parts were truly present ? The explanation is cut from
under if its terms are not admitted to be actual. These
auxiliary concepts, in which science abounds, are often
likened to the scaffolding by which we build the edifice of
knowledge. But the scaffolding is as real as the building;
else it could not be employed. The electrons, in fact, are
alleged to be visible — at least, the explosions of them
against the screen when they are given off by raditmi may
be detected through the microscope. But the chemical
atoms (provided, of course, chemistry and physics con-
tinue to find them of use in accounting for the observed
facts of multiple proportion, etc.) are bodies that would be
seen if we could have vision fine enough. So, too, the other
side of the moon would be seen if we could, per impossibile,
get off in space beyond the moon. Nobody thinks that the
present invisibihty of that surface is a bar to its actuaHty;
nobody calls it a mere conceptual device to round out the
moon. Should the smallness of the atoms enjoin them from
the privilege of being ? The attempt of the Energetiker
philosophy to disquahfy all entities that are not directly
observed, is wholly misconceived, and if consistently carried
out would lead to a positivism narrower than Comte ever
thought of. And we may add that the " faculties " of the
older psychology must also be admitted to good existential
standing. It is qiute correct to speak of a faculty of reason,
of will, of memory, and so on. Of course, these faculties ex-
plain no concrete acts of thought, or voHtion, or recall; but
their names denote real entities, common to many partic-
ular cases of reasoning, or wilhng, or remembering. It is no
more helpful to progress in psychology to deny such ab-
stractions than it is to invoke them as explaining principles.
It is simply a confusion of thought to conclude that because
they do not account for the particular phenomena subsumed

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 263

under them, they have no existential status. We admit that
they are not fertile for a genetic account; we have, for that
matter, accused the whole intellectualist program of infer-
tihty. But that is no denial of its truth. Denial of its truth
will inevitably lead to a revolt which in turn denies the
truth of the particulars. For neither the universal nor the
particular has been explained in terms of the other. And
this revolt will therefore lead to an opposite revolt, and so on
forever.

These reflections on the reality of certain abstractions
may justify to the intellect the attitude of the poet or the
mystic. When the poet speaks of the spirit of the forest, the
mood of Nature, the lament of the waves, etc., his fancy is
not misled to error. Such entities are of value to his appre-
ciation of nature ; they foster his Ufe and the life of humanity
in general. Pragmatically they should be judged real, there-
fore. It is not that they explain, nor even that they furnish
a more orderly scheme of description for the real world ; it is
rather that they are ways of reacting to our environment,
which render our life deeper and richer. When we come to
see, as it is hoped we shall shortly do, that pragmatism is cor-
rect in dubbing as true the conception which best enables
us to live in nature, we must admit that the insight of the
poet, the artist, the devotee, may give us a direct knowledge
of objective reahty. The scientific attitude should not deny
the poetic, condemning it as play of fancy; there need be no
war between the views of either — provided, of course, that
the artistic concepts are not taken to be what they are not
fitted for, viz., causal explanations or logical deductions.
There may be other organs of truth than the intellect, even
though there can be none which gives results contradicting
the fundamental principles of reasoning. And this serves to
validate our method of giving, in each of the philosophic

264 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

types, the emotional and practical motives as well as the
intellectual ones. Poetic insight, when the artistic faculty
pronounces it genuinely inspired, reveals objective truth.
" I do not know " says Mr. Bradley " whether this in my
case is a mark of senility, but I find myself now taking more
and more as literal fact what I used in my youth to admire
and love as poetry " {Essays, p. 468, footnote i). And
radical empiricism should not hesitate to do the same.

If we have reasoned correctly up to this point, radical
empiricism is wrong in thinking that it can refute extreme
Platonism. There is in the abstract universals nothing self-
destructive. But the present type goes further. It has a
positive aspect, wherein it claims that all the universals
mean to us can be put in terms of the changing particulars.
If this is true, and if there is nothing about the concept which
caimot be satisfactorily expressed in these empirical terms,
then the principle of Occam would seem to be in order,
and the abstractions must be shaved off. Let us then
examine the way in which empirical nominalism defines the
universals.

We must confess that here we are badly stumped; for
there seems to be no extant passage in the empiricist writers
where the problem is faced in detail. Very frequently they
declare that the thing can be done. Express warnings are
given that they do not intend to deny the actuality of the
universal. " Lest I be charged," writes Professor Dewey
" with intimating that concepts are unreal and unempirical,
I say forthwith that I believe meanings may be and are im-
mediately experienced as conceptual ' ' {Journal of Philosophy,
vol. 2, p. 599, footnote). But unfortunately the difficulty is
to see how, from observation of particular stones, or sticks, or
other objects, one gets the sense of something general, of
which there may be any number of instances. Ideahsts here

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 265

appeal to mind as the manufacturer of the concept; but
they do not attempt to build it up by mere summation or
comparison of instances. And empiricism, abjuring the
transcendental maker, has not yet put any agent in its place.
Must it content itself then with remarking that we simply
find the universal persisting through the changes — that we
see the common elements of many cats, or dogs, or men
directly and so observe the universal ? No doubt the remark
is a true one. But it does not account for the feeling that
there may be further cases; and this feeling touches the
centre of the universal. Of course it will not do to say that
we get this feeUng by generalizing from our past experience:
we saw three dogs one day, and the next day saw a fourth,
whence we conclude that today we may see a fifth. The
very power to generalize is what we wish explained. To
generalize is to be aware of the universal. The property
that there may be more is not itself an individual datum
among the concrete cats and dogs. It is doubtless somehow
a datum, but its meaning cannot be exhausted by any num-
ber of instances. Radical empiricism is forever right in
asserting that this property is a direct object of human
experience; for we do become aware of it, and awareness is
experience. But its significance cannot be fully expressed
by a series of particular cases in time. It is eternally for-
ward-looking, suggestive of more to come than has yet come.
We repeat that this very suggestiveness is itself something
which we experience in the temporal flow of our daily life.
But it means always something more than our present
experience of it; it means that our present experience of it
may come again. That meaning also is no doubt a present
object of my experience; but immediately it goes beyond
the present, suggesting another appearance of this same
object to me. There is always something more about the

266 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

universal, in short, than the dynamic formula can grasp.
Again and again the " more " may be reduced to a present
experience; as often it slips the leash. The issue is exactly
parallel to the other issues we have examined. Radical
empiricism can define the universal in its own terms, as the
felt object " further possible similars "; but intellectualism
can always come back with the objection that it is more than
that particular felt object in the particular context where it
lay when it was felt. So realism always reiterated its chal-
lenge to idealism, so idealism to realism, so radical empir-
icism to Platonism, and so, finally, Platonism to radical
empiricism. The upshot of the matter is that we have here
two irreducible things, viz., universal and individual or
change; and no monistic scheme is applicable. The at-
tempt to put all in terms of one aspect must lead to an
endless seesaw.

All this battle of dynamic vs. static, individual vs. uni-
versal, is very wearisome to one who seeks information about
the make-up of the world. What advantage hes in knowing
whether concepts are more or less real than changing partic-
ulars, so long as we are not told what concepts are the fun-
damental ones, or what particular things are the important
ones ? With all its insistence upon the concrete, radical
empiricism has provided little but another series of New
Year's resolutions. What it needs is some specific affirma-
tion about the nature of the concrete particulars. Are they
for instance, all material, all doomed to vanish and leave not
a wrack behind, or do they indicate certain principles which
the still Platonic world does not hint of ? And it is as if radi-
cal empiricism were sensible of this defect; for it has, at
least with the majority of its adherents, crystallized into a
more precise description of the nature of reality. Reality,
they tell us, is not merely experiences, but in particular,

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 267

practical experiences. The fault of previous philosophy lay-
in this: it treated of issues whose solution had no conse-
quences for human conduct. Reality is not an indifferent,
inert thing, but is something which affects, and is affected
by, the Hfe of man. When " man " is emphasized, the doc-
trine becomes humanism; otherwise it is, speaking generally,
what is called pragmatism. It claims to be a more specific
philosophy than any of the above, in that it abjures all
abstract indifferent subject-matter and considers that alone
to be real which is concerned with living, doing, working,
and satisfying our vital needs. This view, the first of
the two forms into which the opposition to Platonism
divides, constitutes the second realistic type under Great
Objectivism.

The pragmatic current, being radically empirical, is not
clear-cut at the edges. It contains this according to one
critic, that according to another. Professor Dewey speaks
of " that vital but still unformed movement variously termed
radical empiricism, pragmatism, humanism, functionahsm,
according as one or another aspect of it is uppermost " {Jour-
nal of Philosophy, vol. 2, p. 393). Professor James had to
write an article entitled " The Pragmatic Account of Truth
and its Misunderstanders "; elsewhere, too, he complained
grievously of misinterpretations at the hands of pragma-
tism's enemies (cf. Pragmatism, passim). Unjust interpreta-
tion is all too frequent in philosophy, we know; yet there
seems to have been a maximum of it in this controversy, if we
may take the words of the defendant. Can we hope to escape
the imputation of unfairness then? And no doubt, also, the
thing is too near us to be judged equitably. But our desire
is at present not so much for accurate attribution of views
as for the appreciation of certain characteristic and major
tendencies of this broad stream.

268 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

The system is here treated as radical empiricism qualified
by the selection of the practical aspect as that in terms of
which all things are to be understood. The genus is radical
empiricism, and the specific difference is the point of view
of the needs of life. The following will, we hope, bear out
our interpretation.

(i) The doctrine is realistic in its metaphysics. Dewey
writes " Speaking of the matter only for myself, the pre-
suppositions and tendencies of pragmatism are distinctly
realistic " {op. cit., above, p. 234). James, repudiating cer-
tain theses laid at pragmatism's door, insisted upon this
point in the article just mentioned, " Fourth misunderstand-
ing: No pragmatist can be a realist in his epistemology. . . .
It is diflicult to excuse such a parody of the pragmatist's
opinion, ignoring as it does every element but one of his
universe of discourse. The terms of which that universe
consists positively forbid any non-realistic interpretation of
the function of knowledge defined there. The pragmatizing
epistemologist posits there a reality and a mind with ideas "
(Meaning of Truth, pp. 190-191). And " To begin with,
when the pragmatist says ' indispensable ' it (the misunder-
standing) confounds this with ' sufficient.' The pragmatist
calls satisfactions indispensable for truth-building, but I
have everywhere called them insufficient unless reality be
also incidentally led to. If the reality assumed were can-
celled from the pragmatist's universe of discourse, he would
straightway give the name of falsehoods to the beliefs re-
maining, in spite of all their satisfactoriness. For him, as
for his critics, there can be no truth if there is nothing to be
true about " (op. cit., p. 195). It is in accord with such
words that we have placed pragmatism among the objective
types. Indeed, when we remember the dynamic theory of
consciousness which it fathers, we cannot but classify it

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONI^M 269

under Great Objectivism. " To the thoroughgoing empiri-
cist," writes Dewey, " the self, the ego, consciousness, needs,
and utility, are all alike in terms of functions, contexts, or
contents in and of the things experienced" {Journal of Philos-
ophy, vol. 2, p. 656). Many critics, however, have selected
other and contradictory statements, and from their imphca-
tions have called it a subjective tjrpe. Now perhaps they too
are correct; perhaps pragmatism contains opposing ele-
ments. Yet it seems that in such a case more weight should
be assigned to the express avowals of the pragmatists than
to the subtle and perhaps unmeant implication of their
phrases. Should any one quarrel with our interpretation, it
is no great matter; we are interested now in certain ideas
which do not depend directly upon the subjective-objective
issue.

(2) Though reaUstic as regards objects before they
are known, however, pragmatism seems to be more Uke
subjective idealism as regards objects when they become
known.

"The pragmatist agrees with the realist: (i) that the
* world ' or ' experience ' (the term does not matter here)
does not consist of ' a system of ideas ' ; (2) that ideas do
not aim or ' desire ' to absorb, or be absorbed by, the rest
of the ' world ' (or ' experience ') ; (3) that at any given
time some of the world (or experience) may be ' independ-
ent ' of knowledge in the sense that it is not then ' being
known,' that is, it is not in the knowledge mode or stage of
action. But at the next step, where the ' unknown ' part of
the world (or experience) passes into knowledge, the prag-
matist and reahst part company. For the realist this pas-
sage occurs with no ' essential ' alteration in the material
which enters into knowledge; while the pragmatist beheves
knowing to be a part of the process in which the world of

270 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

' things ' or ' events ' or ' experience ' brings forth new
' things ' or ' events ' or ' experiences.'

" Between pragmatism and idealism there would be a vital
point of agreement in the conception of the ' active,' ' con-
stitutive ' character of thinking if it did not turn out that
for most ideaHsts this character does not belong to * our '
thinking, but only to the absolute thought." (A. W. Moore,
Pragmatism and its Critics, pp. 108-109.) Our minds, then,
are conceived by the pragmatist to be essentially active : they
are not blank tablets which he still under the imprints of
reahty, but they react immediately, even in apprehending;
they affect reality. Knowing is a way of acting. Here the
qualification of their empirical reaUsm by the practical point
of view appears.

(3) It is not a static, but a dynamic view, treating reahty
as a process yet unfinished, growing; it is in hne with the
view of HeracUtus. " The alternative between pragmatism
and rationaUsm, in the shape in which we now have it before
us, is no longer a question in the theory of knowledge, it
concerns the structure of the universe itself.

" On the pragmatist side, we have only one edition of the
universe, unfinished, growing in all sorts of places, especially
in the places where thinking beings are at work." (James,
Pragmatism, pp. 258-259.) " Here (in pragmatism) all is
process; that world (rationahsm's) is timeless. Possibili-
ties obtain in our world; in the absolute world, where all
that is not is from eternity impossible, and all that is is neces-
sary, the category of possibiHty has no appUcation." {Prag-
matism, p. 266.) In its dynamic or functional aspect, then,
pragmatism belongs under the genus radical empiricism.

(4) It contains a principle which may be apphed to the
solution of philosophy's perennial issues. By employing
that solvent, we can distinguish real and important issues

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 27 1

from verbal ones. And further: the solvent itself has
implications as to the character of reality.

Every issue is a real one, whose decision would have con-
crete consequences for human hfe; and that side is correct
whose acceptance by us would in the long run enable us
to live our lives more, successfully. Materialism-spirit-
uahsm is a real issue, because if materialism is right, there
seems no hope of a hfe after bodily death, and reUgion would
be radically altered. Subjectivism-objectivism, by the
results of Chapters IV and V, is no real issue, because the
settlement would make no difference beyond itself. If all
the world is proved subjective, no information is gained,
no specific addition to our stock of scientific truth, or our
maxims of conduct. And the same is true if realism tri-
umphs over its foe. (The pragmatists themselves have
not used this illustration; had they done so, much of their
own controversial matter would not have been written.)

This appears at first to be solely a method. But men do
not cook up methods in abstracio. A method is but a fruitful
way of approaching reaHty, fruitful because reahty has cer-
tain traits which that method is adapted to reveal. The
pragmatist beheves reahty to be a web of details wherein
each thread and knot is tied up with the others. Hence the
true description of each will show how its presence makes a
difference to those others. A description which lays bare no
such influence does not touch the essence of the object. As
the lady in Domhey and Son says we are put into the world
" to make an effort " so for the pragmatist things are here
only " to make a difference." Things are their consequences.
" To attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of an object,
then, we need only consider what conceivable effects of a
practical kind the object may involve — what sensations we
are to expect from it, and what reactions we must prepare.

272 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

Our conception of these effects, whether immediate or re-
mote, is then for us the whole of our conception of the object,
so far as that conception has positive significance at all."
(Pragmatism, pp. 46-47.) Its method is " looking towards
last things, fruits, consequences, facts " {ibid., p. 55). The
resemblance of this to subjectivism's major premise (above.
Chapter III), viz., the principle of internal relations, is
evident: it differs from the subjectivist premise in being
more specific. It is not that a thing is all its relations to
other things, but only those relations which display its
eflScacy, its influence in working changes, determining posi-
tive and specific characters of other things; in particular, of
human experiences. An apple or pear is not, in any meta-
physically valuable sense, that which is related to a stone by
bare otherness, but that which, eaten by me, produces cer-
tain digestive processes, change of tissue, in my body, etc.
The Absolute of the Hegelians is not for pragmatism the
implied whole, real in itself, so much as the entity which
gives me the feeling of security in the midst of daily struggle.
And so on. Things are their effects upon our action as well
as partly the products of our action and thought. Here is
perhaps the primary specific difference of pragmatism from
radical empiricism.

(s) As a doctrine of truth and error. It follows from the
above that the true idea is the idea which enables us to
adjust ourselves successfully to the real environment; the
erroneous one is the one that does not do so. This doctrine
is in line with the biological doctrine of natural selection.
Man's mind is an object in a temporal world, and its con-
tents must be treated accordingly. They are functions of
living organisms and subject to the laws of those organisms.
Ideas, as we saw earlier in this chapter, are tentative re-
sponses; they are confirmed or rejected by trial. It is a

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 273

case of hypothesis and verification. The categories which
today seem so a priori to us — space, time, causality, num-
ber, and so on, are but happy ways of coordinating objects,
which long ago chanced to arise in some ancestor's mind,
and by their helpfulness enabled him to survive, were in-
herited through the ages, and now seem " necessary and
universally valid." This view of the origin of our chief
categories, stated in Pragmatism, chapter VI, was first
sketched in the last chapter of James' Psychology, vol. 2, on
" Necessary Truths — Effects of Experience."

Points (4) and (5) are, we think, the most significant part
of the pragmatic position. They announce its attitude as
the experimental one; the method of trial and error. Not
blind acceptance, or a priori deduction, but testing by
results, is the criterion of truth.

(6) As a doctrine of social cooperation. In reply to a
criticism by Royce, Dewey has insisted on the social char-
acter of truth {Philosophical Review, vol. 2 1 , pp. 69-8 1 ) . Not
what you find it satisfactory to assume, in your reaction to
the enviromnent; what you find it satisfactory to assume in
consistency and agreement with other men; that alone is the
truth. Truth is a social result. This is the case in the lab-
oratory, where the various experimenters must confirm one
another's results, and in daily life, where we must verify one
another's statements, and the lessons taught by the expe-
rience of our predecessors. No transcendental " Absolute "
is needed, to give fixity to an otherwise fluctuating mass of
opinion. The verdict of society corrects the errors of the
private judgment. Here pragmatism draws near to ideal-
ism's doctrine of the veridical Great Self (as we called it in
Chapter VI) — both being democratic views. But of course
it conceives that Self in terms of particular action and
reaction between environment and man.

274 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

We must be careful in interpreting the words " practical "
and " consequences." Mistakes have undoubtedly been
made here by critics; they have insisted upon taking them
in a more narrowly utilitarian sense than the leaders of the
movement would countenance. We read that pragmatism
" agrees with nominalism, for instance, in always appealing
to particulars; with utilitarianism in emphasizing practical
aspects; with positivism in its disdain for . . . metaphysi-
cal abstractions." (Pragmatism, pp. 53-54.) Now the
views referred to have, as a matter of historical fact, been
one-sided, condemning positions which pragmatism would
not condemn. Pragmatism is broader than they, as any
sympathetic reader can see. And a hostile reader will fix
upon these phrases, take them in abstracto, and as a result
accuse this type of having no care for righteousness, truth,
or science. But consider the following:

" And we hold all this (pragmatic view) without believing
that we are in the least invading the tradition of wissen-
sckaftlicke Freiheit, or that we are substituting ' a philistine
opportunism' for 'the scientific spirit.' We insist that this
doctrine does not call upon the scientist to turn out every
week a new flying machine or a new breakfast food. It has
nothing but approval for the investigator who shuts himself
up with his 'biophors,' his 'ions' and 'electrons,' provided
only he finally emerge with some connection established
between these 'idols of the den' and the problems of life and
death, of growth and decay, and of social interaction.

" Furthermore, it asserts that if we follow the scientist ,
into his laboratory we shall find that this connection is not
something outside but a part of the method of science itself;
that 'biophors,' 'ions,' etc., have no scientific meaning or
value, no scientific truth, except in their relation to an actual
efficient control of these experiences. This doctrine recog-

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 275

nizes that science should indeed be free from the pressure of
immediate response to current wants and problems, but only
in the belief that its response may be larger and more ef-
fective. It freely concedes the ' impersonal ' character of
the scientist's work. But again, it is with the understanding
that this is only an immediate impersonalism, for the sake
of a larger personahsm in the end. Like the impersonahsm
of the just judge, it takes the impersonal standpoint in order
the better to serve all persons." (Moore, Pragmatism, pp.
lo-i I .) With this defence of the theoretical interest we may
associate Dewey's description of it as " a practice that is
genuinely free, social, and intelligent." (Journal of Phi-
losophy, vol. 9, p. 648.) And finally, hear what James says:

" Seventh misunderstanding: Pragmatism ignores the theo-
retic interest. . . . When we spoke of the meaning of ideas
consisting in their ' working ' value, etc., our language
evidently was too careless, for by ' practical ' we were held
to mean opposed to theoretical or genuinely cognitive, and
the conclusion was punctually drawn that a truth in our
eyes could have no relation to any independent reality, or
to any truth, or to anything whatever but the acts which we
might ground on it or the satisfactions they might bring. . . .
Having used the phrase ' cash-value ' of an idea, I am im-
plored by one correspondent to alter it, ' for every one
thinks you mean only pecuniary profit and loss.' Having
said that the true is ' the expedient in our thinking ' I am
rebuked in this wise by another learned correspondent.
' The word expedient has no other meaning than that of
self-interest. The pursuit of this has ended by landing a
number of officers of national banks in penitentiaries. A
philosophy that leads to such results must be unsound.'

" But the word ' practical ' is so habitually loosely used
that more indulgence might have been expected. When one

276 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

says that a sick man has now practically recovered, or that
an enterprise has practically failed, one usually means just
the opposite of ' practically ' in the Hteral sense. One
means that, although untrue in strict practice, what one
says is true in theory, true virtually, certain to be true.
Again, by the practical one often means the distinctively
concrete, the individual, particular, and effective, as op-
posed to the abstract, general, and inert. To speak for my-
self, whenever I have emphasized the practical nature of
truth, this is mainly what has been in my mind. ' Prag-
mata ' are things in their plurality; ... in that early
California address, when I described pragmatism ... I
expressly added the quahfying words : ' the point l)ang
rather in the fact that the experience must be particular
than in the fact that it must be active,' — by ' active '
meaning here ' practical ' in the narrow literal sen-se. But
particular consequences can perfectly well be of a theoretical
nature. ... It is therefore simply idiotic to repeat that
pragmatism takes no account of purely theoretical interests.
All it insists on is that verity in act means verifications,
and that these are always particulars." {Meaning of Truth,
pp. 206-212, passim.) And this author gives in another
place some account of the origin of the pure theoretic in-
terest. " It is obvious that although interests strictly prac-
tical have been the original starting point of our search for
true phenomenal descriptions, yet an intrinsic interest in the
bare describing function has grown up. We wish accounts
that shall be true, whether they bring collateral profit or
not. The primitive function has developed its demand for
more exercise. This theoretic curiosity seems to be the
characteristically human differentia, and humanism recog-
nizes its enormous scope " {ibid., p. 86).

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 277

We find no other doctrine under pragmatism which seems
to deserve mention here, unless it be the position defended
by James in the title-essay of The Will to Believe, and Other
Essays. In that paper, the author asserts our right, in case
of equally probable alternatives upon which decisive evi-
dence is not available, to choose the one which best har-
monizes with the needs of human nature as a whole. If
James' qualifications are not omitted the view is justifiable
enough. It is pretty generally adopted in practice, quite
apart from any pragmatic theories. It simply tells us that
in case of doubt we have a right to adopt as a working hy-
pothesis to which pro tern, we assent, the one we like better.
Such choice is preferable to the eternal suspense of judg-
ment which would lead to inaction ; is indeed the only means
of getting fresh evidence. It is simply and solely the
method of trial and error. Yet this view easily lends itself
to caricature. By dropping out the clause " equally prob-
able alternatives for which decisive evidence is not avail-
able " we reach the interpretation, that it is right to accept
any view which best harmonizes with our desires. Such a
rendering of pragmatism has been made by Mr. B. Russell
among others; but it seems to be so clear a case of exaggera-
tion with a view to condemnation as to merit no serious
consideration. How long shall it be the custom of thinkers
to abstract out from its qualifications a given statement of
the opponent and therewith to damn his view ?

It is possible, however, that these critics are thinking of
Kant's practical postulates; according to which we have a
right to posit the otherwise indemonstrable existence of God
in order that we may lead moral Hves. So far as we remem-
ber, however, James, or any other pragmatist, has nowhere
acknowledged that Kantian doctrine; and the opponents of
pragmatism have not mentioned it. In any event it forms

278 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

a different type of theory which we shall later consider (in
Chapter X) : therefore we now dismiss it. We do not then
ascribe to pragmatism the view that our wish or will to have
reality this or that makes it so, except in case of material
changes worked by our muscles.

In the above survey we have found pragmatism to contain
(i) a realistic element, (2) a dynamic element, i. e., ac-
ceptance of process as relatively fundamental, (3) the
definition of things by their particular consequences to
other things and par excellence to the satisfaction of our
needs, (4) the definition of truth and error as those tentative
reactions by organisms which will or will not adjust them to
the environment, (5) insistence upon social cooperation, in
the determination of truth and error.

Now we have already estimated the first under the type
" Realism." One aspect of the second we considered in
connection with the type " Intellectuahsm," where we urged
that the transeunt element contains a surd which eludes
adequate description in terms of concepts. The counter-
claim of the pragmatist, that the static universal has no
metaphysical rights, we noticed under the discussion of radi-
cal empiricism. We there saw that as individuals cannot
serve to define universals, so the transeunt cannot generate
the notion of the permanent. Now we have the latter no-
tion: we use it in our sciences (i. e., in the shape of the
" logical constants ") and on pragmatic grounds it should be
ascribed to reahty as much as any other which leads to
fruitful consequences. The particulars lose all significance,
practical or theoretical, unless the fixed universals be also
accepted. And equally the changing loses all significance
unless certain permanent characters of the universe — and
so far as we can see, forever permanent — such as certain
properties of space, of time, and of number, are admitted.

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 279

If James " as a good pragmatist " accepts the unalterable
Absolute for the help it gives to life, so ought all pragmatists
to accept as objectively true the rigid laws of number and
quantity which enable us to count vibrations, predict veloci-
ties, estimate the strength of bridges, and otherwise adapt
ourselves to our environment. Change may be ultimately
real, but rigidity accompanies it; and each becomes mean-
ingless alone. Pragmatism is irrefutable, but it does not
refute its alleged adversary, the " static " type; it rather
confirms it.

The next aspect of pragmatism, in which it defines things
by their relations and par excellence by their consequences to
our living, depends on a principle which we have called the
principle of internal relations. This we discussed under sub-
jectivism (Chapter III), finding no reason to deny it. The
turn which the pragmatist gives it is as just as any other
turn; for the principle works in all directions. A hat may
with propriety be defined as that which I put on my head; a
tiger as a beast I should run from; water as that which I
can with suitable apparatus decompose into 2H+O, or use
to revive a wilting flower, or drink. Yet there are cases
where the object must be defined as that to which we react
merely by attending or contemplation. These are limiting
cases, where the consequences to Hfe are so utterly remote
that they are not discernible, or — if one wishes to go to the
other extreme — they are so very immediate that they can
hardly be called consequences. They are by no means rare;
in fact, they are found in almost every moment of waking
life. They are present as another aspect of the matter than
the consequential or practical aspect, present along with it
continually. When for instance I take up my pen to write,
I treat " pen " as meaning " that with which I write "; yet
also I see and apprehend it as a black object, and the black-

28o PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

ness is entirely irrelevant to the uses of my behaviour. So
far as we can learn, it has not at this moment any practical
bearings. It would have, did I take particular interest in the
colour, or feel a desire to change the colour; but actually,
while I feel no noticeable interest or desire, I nevertheless am
aware of the blackness as a still objective fact. Such aware-
ness is quite contemplative, for however short a time; and
it is states Uke this which constitute what is known as the
theoretic attitude. There is an attitude which would know
for the sake of the knowing: it is practical, of course, in the
sense that it seeks to satisfy an instinctive human need, but
that need is not only felt as indifferent to the maintenance
of life, sometimes it even works against it. This self-con-
tained state of beholding, pragmatism does certainly tend to
neglect. " Organic functions " writes Professor Dewey
" deal with things as things in course, in operation, in a
state of affairs not yet given or completed. What is done
with, what is just ' there,' is of concern only in the poten-
tialities which it may indicate. ^4^ ended, as wholly given, it
is of no account." {Creative Intelligence, p. 20.) (We have
italicized the words which seem to us to exclude pure cogni-
tion.) Now we assert that such an independent need is to
the other needs, the " practical " ones, however broadly
conceived, much as the abstract universal is to the concrete
particulars, or the external world to subjectivism; in short,
it is a surd, a critical point at which the pragmatic formula
becomes a formality. That formula can embrace it, to be
sure; the principle of pragmatism is never false. But it
cannot in any way help us to understand this phenomenon,
so curious from the practical point of view. How from the
fact that we seek knowledge in order to get on better with
our environment, could one ever suspect that we should
come to seek it pure ? Or how by examining the objects of

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 28 1

theoretic curiosity in the light of the fact that they satisfy
an instinctive need, can we ascertain anything about the
make-up of those objects which would not come to ordinary
observation ? Consider my seeing of black as the satisfac-
tion of the instinct of curiosity. Is that a fertile way of
looking at the matter ? Does it suggest in any measure the
nature of what I shall see ? In the case of practical knowl-
edge, the stimulus-response formula is indeed suggestive:
for it enables us to bring knowledge, even consciousness, into
the category of organic activities, and aboUshes the mys-
terious dualism of intellect and will. But the duahsm
breaks out when we come to those thousand and one
instances of negHgent awareness which accompany our
attempts to adjust ourselves to the environment. The
object black is not significantly defined when it is considered
a stage in an organic process.

Professor Moore in a passage already quoted has likened
the disinterested curiosity of contemplation to the imper-
sonality of the judge; both being designed to secure greater
benefit to human life in the end. No doubt both do secure
it; but the theoretic attitude is not conceived in that spirit.
It sometimes does not work for practical benefits at all.
Naturally, it does not refuse them; but it is in itself indif-
ferent to them; it is self-sufl&dent, like the universals upon
which it sometimes fixes its gaze. Such self-containedness
and independence of the other needs of life can hardly be ac-
counted for by our saying that its utility is a very remote
one. As no addition of distances can make up infinity, so no
putting off of the practical benefits to a remoter and remoter
period can reach the Umit of pure dtoipla. The limit is be-
yond the series. It is, once more, from the point of view
of the series, a " foreign other," a surd which must be recog-
nized but cannot be explained in terms of the members of

282 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

that series. It can even, if you insist, be defined by reference
to the series — i. e., as its limit; but such definition is barren,
since it does not guarantee the actual existence of that limit.
Here then we seem to find the critical point of pragmatism,
in the independent theoretic need and in the character of the
reality which satisfies that need. The pragmatic rule can
neither account for the presence of such an instinct, nor give
any information as to the specific content of the real world
of objects and events.

In our waking moments, disinterested contemplation and
interested practice accompany each other at every turn. If
you like, each implies the other. But neither is more fun-
damental than the other, for neither can be adequately
reduced to an instance of the other.

If pragmatism were true then by its own criterion it
should be a profitable doctrine; it should aid us in under-
standing the nature of reality. We have granted that it is
true, though we have accused it of throwing no light, at least
directly, upon the general scheme and plan of the universe.
How can we reconcile these statements ? Thus: pragma-
tism is of great intellectual profit, but in a negative sense.
It has dissolved many of those old knots which philosophers
have been unable to untie. If we accept its principle that
"there is no difference which doesn't make a difference,"
the ancient quarrels about subjectivism, Platonism, ideal-
ism, etc., disappear. For, as we have tried to show, those
issues have no bearing upon the details of science or life;
they make no difference to any view but their own, they
furnish no specific information. Our whole treatment thus
far has itself been pragmatic ( if we understand the term
rightly) ; and we might have been expected to concede the
truth of pragmatism itself. Not that, so far as we know, any
pragmatist has applied his method to these time-honoured

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 283

controversies. On the contrary, present-day devotees of the
doctrine have confined themselves almost wholly to extolling
their method; they have scarcely employed it upon a single
problem connected with reality. But we believe that it
could easily be done, and have endeavoured to some extent
to do it. And thereby we claim to have shown that the prag-
matic solvent justifies itself by dissipating certain issues and
releasing a large store of human energy, formerly penned up
in those fields, for more profitable inquiries. But it does not
seem to show itself fertile to account for the specific con-
tours of reality, or of the human mind on its contemplative
side.

The two remaining theses are the definition of truth and
error and the doctrine of social cooperation. No new critical
points can be discovered, it seems, from an investigation of
them., The former has been perhaps sufficiently discussed
under the dynamic definition of consciousness, and the latter
in what we said in Chapter VII about the veridical Great
Self of idealism.

So much for the individual theses of pragmatism. But if
we said no more, we should be unfair to it; for beneath the
surface runs an undercurrent, in which they swim, and
which undoubtedly sets in a forward direction. We have
not as yet singled this out; for it is pervasive rather than
explicit in the pragmatic writings. We refer to the fact that
pragmatism upholds a method of investigation which is in-
valuable to man, yes, indispensable; viz., the experimental
or trial-and-error method. The pragmatist does not believe,
for example, that we could be satisfied with an a priori proof
of God, however infallible. God's existence could not really
mean God's existence, unless in the details of life we found
by actual trial, that we could somehow draw upon Him with
profit. Profit, of course, not necessarily material or sensual,

284 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

nevertheless /e// as profit; whether as enlargement of mental
horizon, or increase of energy in social work, or as immediate
joy and peace. This experimental mode of truth is con-
ceived by pragmatism to be of universal appHcation. In
the sphere of government, for instance: it is of no use to
deduce beforehand the nature of the ideal state; one must
test one institution after another, learning by failures, find-
ing at last the kind best adapted to the particular nation.
Equal opportunity for all forms, as for all men, is its social-
istic watchword. It finds in the democratic common-
wealths of the Anglo-Saxon peoples such a possibility for
experiment; in contrast with the rigid monarchical system
of Germany, where social experiments are not permitted.
(See Dewey, German Philosophy and Politics, pp. 125-126.)
Readers of Professor Dewey's book, German Philosophy and
Politics, which is nothing but pragmatism applied to the
science of government, will perhaps learn more of the work-
ing spirit of this tj^e than students who confine their atten-
tion to the philosophical treatises from which we have
quoted. Of course this method is not new, as indeed the
pragmatists recognize. But it needs to be emphasized; for
it is indisputably sound. Just as in science an hypothesis is
not true unless it explains the particular details of fact, so
in rehgion a creed is not worthy of acceptance unless it
makes men's daily hves better, and in poHtics a platform is
not justified unless it is tried and found to lead toward
ultimate prosperity. Too long have the philosophers over-
looked this truth, with their controversies over universals,
ideahsm, realism, determinism, and all the long fist of issues
whose decision admits of no experimental test. It is, we
think, the one great contribution of pragmatism, to insist
upon such verification; and it would seem petty and mean
to overlook its value and to confine ourselves only to the

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 285

somewhat one-sided metaphysics which accompanies the
gift. We do not say, as perhaps some pragmatists would,
that experiment can reveal nothing absolute and eternal,
which would never need retesting; but we do say that veri-
fication of a principle by its concrete effects in the particulars
is a sine qua non of any proper philosophy. And herein
pragmatism offers a just criticism of many systems which
have gone before.

Meanwhile, we must once more regret that pragmatists
have contented themselves with urging their method, rather
than going on to use it for the solution of such specific ques-
tions as we have named above. The formahty and barren-
ness which have afiUcted the other types, have not failed to
infect the present occasion also. What social institutions
will experiment justify ? What metaphysical truths will the
pragmatic inquiry give us ? What religious truth ? We are
not told. So long as these questions remain unanswered, so
long will the pragmatic defence of the experimental method
be controverted by the static types, and the internecine
strife of metaphysics be perpetuated. For, besides the
method of concrete testing, there is another one, viz., the
thinking out of things beforehand. There are many plans
which a little common reflection is able to approve or con-
demn without the trouble of testing. In contrast with the
empirical method, is the method of reason. The whole func-
tion of reason is to provide short-cuts, to obviate the toil and
trouble of experience, to anticipate the results of experi-
ment. Now, is it right to discount this faculty wholly ? Of
course the pragmatist is too intelligent to do so; but there
can be httle doubt that he neglects the a priori side. If an
ontological proof of God were some day worked out, should
it not have weight merely of itself ? We acknowledge that
it should also be tested, to see if it meets the demands of

286 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

daily life; but if reason is not allowed to perform its own
functions, more or less in abstracto, experiments cannot well
be conducted. Doubtless the pragmatist would admit this;
but he does not perhaps emphasize it enough. In particular,
in the fields of politics and social reform, it would seem that
some check is needed against a too great freedom of experi-
ment. Though we want to learn by experience, some expe-
riences cost too dear. And the danger in pragmatism is
that by over-emphasizing an undoubtedly sound method
we undervalue, if not entirely neglect, an equally sound yet
contrasting method. The eternal tendency toward needless
exclusion is as active here as it is everywhere else.

Perhaps, however, the failure of pragmatism to provide
specific truth about the universe is due to its too great con-
cern with the himian side, the epistemological problem, and
other gateways to knowledge. How could it furnish a map
of the world when it is occupied with the construction of
compasses, pencils, and other instruments ? Should we not
do better to adopt a method which is so simple as to involve
no technical apparatus, no laborious defence before it can
be admitted, much less employed ? Let us then once more
essay a reform of philosophy, by discarding the intricacies
of exact logic and of biological theory, and adopting a
method that is no method, because it goes straight to the
heart of reality itself. Such reflections as this lead to the
next piece on our program, the philosophy of intuition.
Feeling, insight, the mystical rather than the rational or
practical attitudes, make up the platform from which the
philosopher is now to view the world. We pass then to the
third of the great modern types of reahsm; the system of
immediacy.

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 287

Intuitionism and Mysticism

The way which philosophy enters when it adopts the
method of immediate insight, seems to be as transparent as
light and as simple as a straight line. But there are no
straight lines in nature; and it is as impossible for man as
for nature to pursue a goal undeviatingly. The mysticism
of human thinkers has been of many sorts, according to the
idios3mcracy and the environment of the thinker. And be-
cause the method is a very old one, variations are the more
numerous. It has been employed by the Vedanta, by Bud-
dhism, by the Pythagoreans, at times by Plato, fundamen-
tally by Plotinus and the Neo-Platonists, by the mediaeval
mystics, by Jakob Boehme, Schopenhauer, Swedenborg,
Schleiermacher, and in our own day by Bergson — to men-
tion only a few. To cover the vast area of these systems is,
of course, beyond our powers. Yet we find in all alike a
condemnation of reason and apotheosis of intuition. And
there is a special reason why we may neglect the great mass
of doctrinal result and confine our attention to this common
method. We are asking after the causes of the never-
ceasing disagreement in philosophy; and the controversies
of other philosophers with the mystics have not been con-
cerned with their results, but with their method. A ration-
alist, a pragmatist, a materialist, does not discuss Boehme's
vision in the Aurora, or Swedenborg's Arcana Coelestia; he
limits himself to refuting the claims of the intuitive method.
Professional philosophers have, for the most part, ceased to
show interest in the structure of the universe itself; they
have seemed to believe that their powers were circum-
scribed by the task of finding out how to find out that struc-
ture. And in the case of M. Bergson, criticism has directed
itself httle to his specific description of the real world, and

288 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

much to his defence of intuition. The controversy over
method is the real bone of contention. Let us, then, try only
to understand and estimate the claims of immediate insight
as a method.

Describing it first in general, we may note that it makes a
fairly broad appeal. It is not confined, as so many ra-
tionalists would have us beheve, to the realm of feeling or
emotion. Certain mystics have laid stress upon feeling as
the guide to the ultimate verities; to wit, Plotinus and
Schleierma,cher. No doubt, if all the mystics could vote
upon the matter, some emotional experience or other would
win by a large majority. But Schopenhauer interpreted
insight as a phenomenon of the will, and Bergson's descrip-
tion, though giving it an affective nature, yet adds certain
qualities which are not usually associated with feeling. Hear
him: " by intuition I mean instinct that has become dis-
interested, self-conscious, capable of reflecting upon its
object and of enlarging it indefinitely." {Creative Evolution,
Eng. tr., Mitchell, p. 176.) He also speaks of the continuity
between two kinds of intuition — sensuous and supra-
intellectual, adding " if there are thus two intuitions of
different order . . . there is no essential difference between
the intellect and this intuition itself " (op. cit., p. 360).
Again he refers to intuition as " a vague nebulosity, made of
the very substance out of which has been formed the lumi-
nous nucleus that we call the intellect " (p. xii) ; and once
more " pure intellect is a contraction, by condensation, of a
more extended power " [intuition] (p. 46) ; but we must
remember that " This nucleus does not differ radically from
the fluid surrounding it " (p. 193). And Bergson, like Kant,
has spoken of sensuous intxiition. In fact, sensation pro-
vides a direct insight into the real world, and is thus a true
form of intuition. But the intellect too has its intuitive

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 289

powers: for instance, it sees, without the necessity of a
demonstration, the truth of certain axioms. If A implies B,
and B implies C, then A implies C; if .4 is the same as B,
what is true of A is true of B; and so on. Such principles,
which it is the task of logic to bring to light rather than to
prove, derive their authority from the mere vision. Des-
cartes knew this; when he said " all that is very clearly and
distinctly apprehended is true" {Medit. 3, tr. Veitch, p.
116), he stated the basis of intuitionism. The founder of
French philosophy, indeed, opened the path which his
latest successor has trod. The well-known clarity of the
Gallic, over against the form-loving Teutonic and the prag-
matic Anglo-Saxon mind, is but the sign of this same in-
tuitive spirit; a spirit we might expect to find in a people
with so exquisite an artistic sense as the French. In fine,
intuition is of the widest possible application. When it
obtains a view of the Whole, or of the highest values, we call
it mysticism; when it is directed toward material objects,
sensation; when toward the analysis of some specific field,
insight or genius. It means being immediately aware, so
immediately that there is no room for error. It applies so
widely just because it is utterly simple. It is the natural
light that lights everything that comes clearly before the
mind. " Comes clearly " we say; for what is not clearly
seen is so far not seen, as darkness is absence of Hght. In-
tuitionism's principle is nothing more than the maxim " see-
ing is believing." And as a matter of fact, the pragmatist,
the intellectualist, the realist, the idealist, and every other
type, of thinker does homage in his own way to the dictum.
Each has his major premise, which he accepts because it
seems to him so clear and evident. We found the sub-
jectivist's major premise to be the principle of internal
relations; the Platonist built upon that of external rela-

290 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

tions; the idealist upon the primacy of personality; the
pragma tist upon the biological " situation " — there is no
one who does not take his irov aTU by intuition. The coldest
rationalist, and the most fervent mystic communing with
God, alike believe what they see.

It is true that these schools seem to see very different
sorts of reality; yes, in the opinion of each, conflicting sorts.
The one cannot admit the truth of the other's vision; ra-
tionalist quarrels with pragmatist, reahst with idealist, and
so forth. And since X's results contradict Y's, and Y's
major premise cannot be demonstrated, X denies that
premise and ascribes Y's view to temperament. He forgets
that his own premise is equally unprovable, and wonders
that Y accords the same treatment in turn to him. What
they do not understand is that temperament is but a name
for a natural ability to see one major premise so much more
clearly than the rest, as to endow it with exclusive authority.
Yet, as we have been discovering in every controversy, the
exclusion looks gratuitous; the premises do not disprove one
another. Temperament, if stripped of its animosities, is a
valid source of knowledge, and the intuitive method is
hereby justified. Or at any rate the objection is removed
which says that on the whole it gives contradictory results.

But we must confess that few mystics, and least of all the
famous intuitionist, M. Bergson, have conceived their one
instrument of knowledge so broadly. As a rule they have
drawn a line around it, separated it off from the methods of
reason, of empirical science, or of practical common sense,
to the disparagement of these. They have urged a disuse
of reason, science, and practical motives, or a use of them
only up to a certain point. In fact, intuitionism and mys-
ticism are partisan views; and with this statement there
appears before us the duty of a more detailed description.

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 29 1

To begin with, they are reahstic: a point we must insist
upon, since their spiritualism has led many to call them
idealistic. Intuition is directed upon reality. It is not crea-
tive, as idealism and pragmatism deem cognition creative;
it is recipient. Bergson likens it to " the artist . . . placing
himself back within the object by a kind of sympathy " {op.
cit., p. 177). To be sure, the. mystic, seeking to commune
with God, turns the gaze inward, away from the material
things, but this is no directing of attention upon his own
processes. " To ascend to God " says Hugo of Saint Victor
" is to enter into ourselves, and not only so, but in our in-
most selves to transcend ourselves." (Quoted from Hocking,
Meaning of God in Human Experience, p. 379, footnote.)
This transcending, now, is the essence of the matter. No
doubt, too, the God of the Christian, or the Life of the Berg-
sonian, are identical with our deeper self, Atman; but this is
not, so to speak, our peculiar individuality: the One is
greater than the particular subject. And the immediacy of
the vision of Deity does not mean that He is our own feeling,
but that He is seen without intermediaries. God is not re-
duced to me, but I am raised up to Him. We do not deny,
of course, that some mystics have been subjectivists; but
many certainly have not, and on the whole ideahsm is hostile
to the objective attitude of the devotee. While he is, as
Royce well says, a consistent empiricist — perhaps even the
only one — he is so in the reahstic sense of radical empir-
icism: he beheves that ultimate reahty can be directly wit-
nessed. His reahsm is not that of our second type — the
dualistic sort: God is no inference, beyond observation,
transcending our experience; rather our consciousness is
swallowed up in Him. In fact, this total immersion of the
private self in God or the elan vital brings the type into hne
with Great Objectivism. But it is not, Uke the two previous

292 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

forms, anxious to define consciousness by means of the Great
Object; for its interest is contemplative and practical rather
than scientific. Yet occasionally we hear the mystic speak of
consciousness as the spUt-off section of the One; Bergson
writes of the great current of life being shattered into bits
which are our individual selves. {Creative Evolution, pp. 26,
269, et al.)

The intuitional creed is not materialistic — that is ob-
vious. Nor is it, Hke the system of Holt, neutral; it is un-
equivocally spiritualistic. ReaHty is an assemblage of
spiritual beings; matter is to be explained away — an illu-
sion, a negation, a foil to the spirit, frozen mind, a secretion
of sin or the source of it, and so on. If these spiritual beings
are at bottom one, as the mystic in ecstasy reahzes, then
they are numerically and substantially one. The supreme
unity is no network of logical impUcations. The whole atti-
tude is diametrically opposed to the formahty which has
so pervaded the types already discussed. It does not seek
to prove that the world is mental, or independent object,
or throughout determined, irrespective of its particular
make-up; it would show that reality offers the gifts of the
spirit, that it is in a practical, concrete way spiritual, con-
ferring on us peace, joy, and strength. Historically, the
mystic's revelations abound in statements about the con-
stitution of the universe. God is person, one and three, the
kingdom of Heaven is ordered thus and thus, the plan of
salvation is so and so, in this manner did the world originate
from God, by such and such discipUne may we return to
God. So far from being speechless or negative, as Royce
(World and Individual, vol. I, chapters 2 and 4, especially
pp. 180, 181, T95) and others put it, the system is richer than
all the rest in specific information. If it reduces all the world
to the unity of one spirit, that is not a blank monotony of

INTELLECTUALIS*M, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 293

being, but an identity running through, supported by and
supporting, all the distinct individuals. The Parmenidean
" Being is, and not-Being is not " gives no idea of the wealth
of content in the mystic datum. " True Vedanta does not
make one sink to the level of the beast or the stone, but see
one mighty unity in all nature and work more efficiently in
the world for the very light it throws on the problems of
life." (Homo Leone, The Vedantic Absolute, Mind, 191 2,
p. 63.) The oneness upon which mystics love to dwell is not
exclusive but inclusive; not a zero-point but a substance
displajdng the same attributes (love, productivity, order,
etc.) in infinitely diverse situations. The vision of it is
simple and unmediated; the content which is seen need not
be simple or without form. (Cf . ofi this matter Hocking's
similar view; in Mind, 1912, p. 42.) And Royce himself
says " It has determined, directly or indirectly, more than
half of the technical theology of the Church." {World and
Individual, vol. I, p. 85.) Of modern philosophies, none is so
replete with evidence drawn from specific facts and experi-
mental results as that of M. Bergson. His message is inter-
esting; being also brilliantly expounded, it commands even a
degree of publicity. As James used to say, other types are
"thin"; the intuitionist's is "thick." It is beside the
point for these others to declare that the mystic deliverances
are mostly false, for they pay no serious attention to the
evidence; true to their unconcern with reaUty, they limit
themselves to the method. They would not credit the
traveller's tale of the far country, since they have proved
travelling impossible. But at any rate, mysticism's tale is
positive and specific; and it would seem a decided recom-
mendation of its procedure, that it is able so far to excel the
meagre information afforded by the other types.

294 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

Objective-minded, even near to the confines of Great
Objectivism, empirical, spiritualistic, full of concrete in-
formation : such is the character of mystical systems. But
of course there are differences, even in method; and we shall
now bring out what seems to us the greatest, in fact, the
one important difference. The Bergsonian system is dis-
tinguished from the general run of mysticisms by its pre-
occupation with time, and by certain corollaries consequent
thereupon. Most of the mystics reveal the Eternal; to the
French philosopher of our fast-moving age, the eternal, the
resting — all quietistic tendencies indeed — are miscon-
ceptions. For this reason we shall divide our discussion,
first characterizing the Bergsonian doctrine, then passing to
the larger group.

For Professor Bergson, time or change is above all things
intuition-stuff. It is the very opposite of the intellectual
objects, the universals, the logical constants, etc. ; it is non-
conceptual, fluid, dynamic. As Heraclitus conceived the
soul to be made out of that quintessence of the changing
fire, so for Bergson life and consciousness are made of time.
Mental states contain no repetition; they are ever new. He
described his view, in fact, as " a philosophy which sees in
duration the very stuff of reality." {Creative Evolution, tr.
Mitchell, p. 272.) " Change," he declares, " is far more
radical than we are at first incHned to suppose " {op. cit.,
p. i) . " There is no feeling, no idea, no volition which is not
undergoing change every moment." " My mental state, as
it advances on the road of time, is continually swelling with
the duration which it accumulates . . . as a snowball on the
snow " (p. 2). Even if five minutes from now I have the
same thought as at this moment, it cannot be exactly the
same, for it has recurred. " The circumstances may still be
the same, but they will act no longer on the same person "

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 295

(p. 5). And by time, of course, we do not mean that steady
uniform flow of which Newton spoke, but change. " Real
duration is that duration which gnaws on things, and leaves
on them the mark of its tooth. If everything is in time,
everything changes inwardly, and the same concrete reahty
never recurs " (p. 46). Finally, this duree reelle is not object
of thought, but of immediate experience. " We do not
think real time. But we Uve it, because it transcends intel-
lect " (p. 46). Thus reality, which is time par excellence, is
object of intuition.

From this dynamic source springs the next feature of
the system: reahty is unpredictable. M. Bergson declares
that " to foresee consists of projecting into the future what
has been perceived in the past, or of imagining for a later
time a new grouping, in a new order, of elements aheady
perceived. But that which has never been perceived, and
which is at the same time simple, is necessarily unforesee-
able. Now such is the case with each of our states, regarded
as a moment in a history that is gradually unfolding: it is
simple, and it cannot have been already perceived, since it
concentrates in its indivisibility all that has been perceived
and what the present is adding to it besides. It is an orig-
inal moment of a no less original history " (p. 6). Thus
temporal things cannot be predetermined. Exact science,
which is the work of the reason, treats all things as if they
were determined by an inexorable necessity. But exact
science deals with a false abstraction from the real world.
It does not employ the notion of duration, but only of mo-
ments that correspond — of simultaneity rather than length
of succession. The sun will rise tomorrow at the instant
when the hands of the clock are in a certain position: "...
the flow of time might assume an infinite rapidity, the entire
past, present, and future of material objects or of isolated

296 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

systems might be spread out all at once in space, without
there being anything to change either in the formulae of the
scientist or even in the language of common sense " (p. 9).
But this series of coinciding events that science studies is not
real time at all, for time is succession and duration. It is
given alone to my inner experience: " it is no longer some-
thing thought, it is something lived. It is no longer a relation,
it is an absolute {ibid.)." And this absolute is irrational, for
" the more we study the nature of time, the more we shall
comprehend that duration means invention, the creation of
forms, the continual elaboration of the absolutely new "

(p-ii).

Diametrically opposed to science, to causal explanation,
to reason and understanding, are time, indetermination,
real change, and intuition. Our intuition feels time, feels
the unpredictable already budding out of the present (par-
ticularly in our free acts) ; reason always tries to explain by
referring to a cause. Its motto is, the present contains nothing
more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already
in the cause (p. 14). The intellect does not admit real
novelty; it forever reduces the new to the old. " Same-
ness " would be its characteristic comment upon the variety
of the world in space and time. The Platonic method,
which places the concept in and behind all the particulars,
is the true intellectual method and the essence of all ra-
tionalism; it is the polar opposite of intuitionism, which
sees only novelty, growth, creation.

As a part of the anti-intellectual program we should
expect a condemnation of analysis. A conscious state,
indeed any reaHty at all, is one and indissoluble; it is not
composed of distinct parts. " As soon as we try to give an
account of a conscious state, to analyze it, this state, which
is above all personal, will be resolved into impersonal ele-

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 297

ments external to one another, each of which calls up the
idea of a genus and is expressed by a word. But because our
reason, equipped with the idea of space and the power of
creating symbols, draws these multiple elements out of the
whole, it does not follow that they were contained in it. For
within the whole . . . they permeated and melted into one
another." (Les donnees immediates de la conscience, tr.
Pogson, p. 163.)

Indeterminism of course means freedom. " Freedom is
the relation of the concrete self to the act which it performs.
This relation is undefinable, just because we are free. For
we can analyze a thing, but not a process; we can break up
extensity, but not duration " {Creative Evolution, p. 209).
Professor Bergson is careful to explain in this same Chapter
III that freedom is not to be taken as implying a choice be-
tween alternatives. He said earlier " This does not mean
that free action is capricious, unreasonable action. To be-
have according to caprice is to oscillate mechanically "
{op. cit., p. 47) . Nor is the free act still undetermined, when
all the events preceding it are completed : freedom consists
not in discontinuity with the past but in qualitative inde-
finability. It, like time, reality, the self, and the other
ultimates, is solely object of intuition.

Such is the positive side of the doctrine; there is a nega-
tive side also, designed to cut off escape to any other type.
It consists in the revival of the old antinomies of reason.
This dialectic has been a favourite thesis of other mysti-
cisms also, and their use of it is a phenomenon of significance.

In pointing to these paradoxes, they show an advance over
all the previous types. Each of these types, intent on its
own positive truth, failed to see that itself was occupying
but one small corner of the universe. It was so possessed
with the zeal of its doctrine that it could not see beyond its

298 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

own critical point to the equally just claims of its opponents.
It could not realize that the whole situation of philosophy
was one of never-ending tilts, of mutual refutations all
equally right and equally wrong, none being based upon
specific information about reality — in short, a thoroughly
dialectical conflict. The more modern types have usually
heaped scorn upon the dialectic of Kant and Hegel; and it
is not wholly without justice that they themselves, in their
ceaseless and barren strife, are but living examples of it.
Now the intuitionist, using as he does a quite objective
method, attains an impersonality, an objective-mindedness
which tends to lift him above the plane of the warring fac-
tions. No longer an advocate of a special, sectarian creed,
he is able to see the spectacle of the dialectic as the par-
ticipants cannot. The partisan types of course appealed to
the antinomies, but for their own purposes; they never
ascribed them to the intellect itself, to the nature of the
whole situation. But the mystic does so, and thereby shows
that he is one step above his predecessors, and on the road
to an entirely different type of philosophy; a type which
abandons the exclusive spirit and takes for its watchword
" synthesis." Yet after all he is only on the road, for he
does not complete the journey he has begun. As if ex-
hausted by the unwonted effort to be impartial, he straight-
way sinks back into a new partisanship. He uses the dialec-
tic, not to show that all are equally correct, but to show that
aU are equally wrong. He chooses the negative interpreta-
tion, and thereby, as we shall see, in his turn occasions one
more endless controversy.

To the dialectic of mysticism, then, we proceed. Reason
has two sources of its corruption; we may perhaps call them
the negative and the positive sources. The former has been
emphasized by M. Bergson, the latter is common to all

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 299

mystics. The first is a sort of spectre or death's head, pres-
ent at every intellectual feast, reminding us that we are
tottering on the edge of an infinite abyss: this is the " Mys-
tery of Being." Why is there Being rather than nothing
at all ? Why any one kind rather than another ? Why
any sort of a world at all ? It is the child's question,
" who made God ? " This alternative always obtrudes
itself; this emptiest of all notions, the naught, flouts the
profoundest reasoning with the taunt " why the laws of
logic rather than nothing at all ? " " From the first awaken-
ing of reflection, it is this that pushes to the fore, right under
the eyes of consciousness, the torturing problems, the ques-
tions that we cannot gaze at without feeling giddy and
bewildered. I have no sooner commenced to philosophize
than I ask myself why I exist; and when I take account of
the intimate connection in which I stand to the rest of the
universe, the difiiculty is only pushed back, for I want to
know why the universe exists; and if I refer the universe to
a principle immanent or transcendent that supports it or
creates it, my thought rests on this principle only a few
moments, for the same problem recurs, this time in its full
breadth and generality. Whence comes it, and how can it
be understood, that anything exists ? . . . How — why
does this principle exist rather than nothing ? " {Creative
Evolution, p. 215.) This " Mystery of Being " has been
acknowledged, of course, by many thinkers. Generally
they try to put a good face upon it, resignedly saying that
we can know only the how, not the why, of things, and
leaving perhaps to religion the insoluble problem of the
why. (Cf. Paulsen, Introduction to Philosophy, Eng. tr.,
p. 10.) (In the same way science hands over the problems it
cannot solve to philosophy.) James, more candid than
others, marches the mystery out before us, that we may

300 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

know the worst at once. {Some Problems, ch. III.) But one
might as well confess that intellect is fundamentally bank-
rupt, argues the mystic, for it fails to solve its own problem.
Itself conjures up this idea of the pure naught, and then
finds that it cannot discover any ground why there should
be anything else than just this same naught. Is it not a
pure, unalloyed self-contradiction ? Does not the reason by
its own secretion poison itself ? The cure lies in abandon-
ing this artificial procedure of reason. Take experience as
intuition reveals it, and there are no gaps, zeros, naughts, no
arrests, no empty space, none of these negations — and
hence the idea of the naught is a " pseudo-idea." {Creative
Evolution, pp. 277 ff.) " The image, then, properly so called,
of a suppression of everything is never formed by thought "
(p. 279). So the question "Why something rather than
nothing ? " is a meaningless question.

To have spotted this ghost is the unique merit of M. Berg-
son; few philosophers have had the acumen to see the im-
portant role of this least of reason's entities. And if he has
laid him, he has indeed ridden philosophy of a terrible
spectre.

But now come to the second taint of reason. It is, of
course, as old as the Eleatics; yet Professor Bergson has
presented it in a novel manner. The intellect gives only
static views of reality. Like the cinematograph, it repre-
sents the changing scenes of the world by a series of in-
stantaneous pictures {op. cit., pp. 305 ff.). When, then, it
would define motion, change, or continuity of any sort, it
must split them into static positions with ever more positions
between them. It can never convey the idea of transition.
Hence arise the paradoxes. " The arguments of Zeno of
Elea, although formulated with a very different intention,
have no other meaning.

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 301

" Take the flying arrow. . . . Motionless in each point
of its course, it is motionless during all the time that it
is moving.

" Yes, if we suppose that the arrow can ever he in a point
of its course. [Which is just what scientific calculation says it
is.] ... To suppose that the moving body is at a point of
its course is to cut the course in two by a snip of the scissors
at this point ..." and so on (pp. 308-309).

The contradiction might be appUed in other directions.
The single positions, being static, can never convey the idea
of motion; in order to do this we must show how they are
connected, how the passage comes about from one to an-
other. This leads to the putting of positions in between a
given two, and when those positions also are found to be
distinct, to putting more still between these last, and so on
forever. The transition thus appears as a completion of an
infinite series of steps — but as infinite means endless, there
can be no such completion. The source of the trouble is,
of course, that we are trying to put the fluent into rigid
terms, while retaining the fluidity. But it is the very nature
of intellect, with its fixed concepts, to do this — hence the
reductio ad absurdum. The solution, to be sure, lies in the
dynamic view, which denies that the static really exists.
" All is obscure, all is contradictory when we try, with states,
to build up a transition " (p. 313).

Professor Bergson applies the dialectic to the cases of
quahtative change and growth; he might apply it univer-
sally. It is not merely in, the description of the dynamic
that thought has been accused of inconsistency. The dialec-
tic of the absolute ideaUsts has found all the categories of
science and of practice to be infected. While we shall take
these up more fully later (Chapter XII) we may here mention
the one antinomy in addition to the well-known Kantian

302 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

Kst, which would seem by itself enough to condemn all intel-
lectual truth. We refer to the antinomy of the judgment.
" The very act of attribution," said Plotinus, " involves a
distinction between subject and predicate, which is impos-
sible in the case of what is absolutely simple " (Enneads,
VI, IX, 3) — and we might substitute for the " absolutely
simple " the individual of any sort; since oneness is equally
oneness, whether of the simple or the complex. Formal as
you please is this mode of argument; but it is only the
rational method carried out to the bitter end. To renounce
it is to play into the hands of the mystic. For while the
analyzing intellect never reaches a point at which the diver-
sity of subject and predicate does not conflict with their
identity, our immediate intuition shows us that they do not
conflict. Thus by the dialectic the intuitionist triumphs.

Mysticism, or the rehgious side of intuitionism, has also a
plea of its own ; and here we pass from the Bergsonian to the
wider form of our present type. Even if none of the above
dialectic be accepted, the mystic will claim that when we
come to the ultimate reality, to God, thought is radically
incapable. " Who by searching can find out God ? " And
what description is, not so much adequate, as even indica-
tive of what the notion of God means at all ? If we define
Him as person, then we leave out the infinity, omnipotence,
etc., which no person that we know possesses. If we define
Him as infinite, then infinity is a negative idea — the end-
less, the unbounded, etc. Or if you try to make it a positive
idea, to wit, the self-containing, that of which the part cor-
responds to the whole, as in infinite number — then the
unity of God seems to be lost and He becomes a collection.
Did not Plotinus say of the One that it is not quantitative,
or numerical, or indeed the possessor of any predicates or
properties or qualities; for all these imply, to the human

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 303

reason, something other than the One itself, which is exter-
nally joined to it ? There can however be nothing besides
the One. So, too, the One is not efficient cause, which would
have to be other than its effect; nor is it thinker as over
against its thought-object; nor will, which involves the dis-
tinction of intention and performance. All these categories
drawn from our finite experience — and what other cate-
gories have we ? — imply too much limitation; they are too
narrow, they cut off the One from something outside it —
but there is nothing outside it. " The One, whose nature is
to generate all things, cannot be any of those things itself.
Therefore it is neither substance, nor quality, nor reason,
nor soul; neither moving nor at rest, not in place, not in
time, but unique of its kind, or rather kindless, being before
all kind, before motion and before rest," . . . {Enneads,
VII, IX, 3: quoted from the translation in Benn, Greek
Philosophers, II, p. 311).

Such is the second form of the dialectic of the intuitionist
and the mystic: reason renders what we immediately see
into terms which either contradict the vision itself, or con-
tradict those very terms. And this is particularly shown
forth in the case of time, of all intellectual description, and
of God, the ultimately real. When we couple the spectre of
the naught which vitiates all explanation, has reason any-
thing left, except the uses of the finite, practical life ?
Nothing, says the mystic.

What then are we to say of the truth of this extraordinary
view ? We shall try to show, on the positive side, that the
method of intuition is justified ; that it gives unquestionable
truth when it feels the temporal flow, the free and novel
creations of psychical life, the supreme unity of God. Into
the specific detail of its picture of the great universe we can-
not enter; for the correctness of such detail must be judged

304 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

by evidence which philosophers have not thought it worth
while to consider. We are now concerned only with the
issues which have been fought out by the historical systems.
As to the negations which the mystics are alleged to have
insisted upon, to wit, the unreaKty of the permanent, the
exact, the repeated event, and the vanity of intellectual
explanation and description, we shall endeavour to prove
that mysticism, hke the other types, has its arbitrary ex-
clusions and its critical point, which renders its method true
but insufficient to meet the just demands of the inquiring
mind; that, consequently, the controversy between it and
rationalism is another of those interminable but needless
tilts which have hitherto confronted us in all the types of
human thought.

As to the positive value of the method, there lies an oppor-
tunity for a gifted writer: an opportunity which three of our
philosophers have seized. Royce, James, and Hocking have
treated the subject, as no American could be expected to
do, with convincing eloquence; and after their words, any
praises of intuition on our part would be a sad anticUmax.
Our task is to be the less stirring, but perhaps indispensable
one, of showing up its logical soundness.

Time penetrates our affairs, yes: but this penetration has
two aspects. It is now an acid, now the germ-plasm of new
life. It eats into — Bergson says " gnaws " or " bites " —
and destroys the old; but also it provides the novel, it
ensures advance. According as we look at one side or the
other, are we likely to rebel at, or to approve, the doctrine of
time as ultimate reality. But these are emotional reactions :
impartial scrutiny shows the almost if not quite universal
influence of this destroyer and creator. So far we can easily
go with the author of Creative Evolution. His view, how-
ever, demands a more extreme admission. Everything real

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 305

without exception is temporal, changing. Does this not go
too far ?

He said that even if the same circumstances were re-
peated, they would act no longer on the same person; my
thought of blue colour is not the same as it just now was.
At most it is very like. Now this universal negative is not
an empirical position; it is not based, as the thesis of spirit's
descent into matter, the three orders of life, etc., are based,
upon concrete evidence. It is founded upon an a priori
axiom. It would not be possible to prove by observation
that all our mental states, when they recur, recur modified.
So far as inspection goes, I may not detect the least shade of
difference — often I do not — between my present image of
the letter A and the image of it which I just now entertained.
An absolute dictum, like that upon which M. Bergson bases
his philosophy of time, could not be empirically established;
the exhaustive induction which is requisite could not be
carried through. The most that one would be able to say,
would be, that a majority of our thoughts and feelings are
modified as they reappear; that there is not much monotony
in our mental life; that blank sameness in the field of atten-
tion soon leads to sleep. But we must not let the majority
rule, in philosophy as in politics; for in politics we compro-
mise in order to get something done, but in philosophy we
seek the truth. And the time-philosophy could not utter its
universal negation of sameness, did it not employ a certain
axiom; which is, that all later states must be modified,
whether we detect it or not, by the changes that have oc-
curred elsewhere, i. e., the changes in the context or environ-
ment. This is none other than the principle of internal
relations. We have already discussed it ; our result was that
it is sound, but does not preclude the correlative principle of
externality. (Cf. the treatment of Platonism in this Chap-

3o6 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

ter.) My present image of the letter A may be the same
through and through with my past image, while the novel
circumstances add overlying differences without number. I
may think of A as blue, of exactly the same shade as in the
former case, and of exactly the same shape; but it may be
larger, or in a different word, or what not. How does that
alter the shape or shade ? To be sure, M. Bergson says that
since the present mental state is one and indivisible, any dif-
ference in the parts of it makes it wholly a new state. But
this " one and indivisible " is only the principle of internal
relations once more. His reiterated declaration that my
state cannot be divided into parts is again the same a priori
principle. For why should it not be divided in thought
without falsification ? Only because then the influence of
each part on the others would be neglected — an influence
which is attested by the internality of relations alone.
Everything in mental life modifies everything else, inter-
penetrates it, forms with it an " indissoluble unity ": this
is his fundamental assumption. We do not need to deny the
presupposition. What we do deny is, that this modification
of the present image A by its new context, does anything
more than make the whole present state different on the
whole. There is no possible way of ruHng out the description
of the matter in terms of its parts; equally, there is no pos-
sible way of ruling out the description of it as a whole.
There is, in short, no genuine issue here. The extreme
formula of Professor Bergson is, in so far as it is true, a
formahty. It does not rule out exact repetition: it only
insists on interpreting recurrence as not mere recurrence of
parts but as recurrence in a changing whole. It does not tell
us anything concrete; it does not tell us that we cannot get
the same shade, or the same shape, or the same anything,
before the mind twice. There is as much repetition in life

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 307

as there is, and as much novelty, and no a priori principle
can inform us beforehand how much there is going to be.

Is it necessary to add that the change-philosophy has had
all along to appeal to the very things it has contemned ?
What meaning is there in change, unless in something which
suffers the change ? Is there not always in our mind some
standard by comparison with which we estimate change ?
Does not Professor Bergson himself use more or less fixed
concepts and meanings in setting forth to us his arguments ?
He does so, of course. The point is a very old one, but it
seems to be still true. One cannot by reason invalidate
reason. Professor Bergson himself has made much of
memory, as a criterion of consciousness, in the Matiere et
memoire; and memory is a meaningless word if it does not
imply some sort of repetition — whether it is we who go
back to the past or the past that revives in us. In general,
it is impossible to reduce all the static to the dynamic, for
the dynamic alone could not even account for the illusion
of the static.

In conceding the truth of the time-doctrine, then, we have
had to concede also its one-sidedness. It carmot be refuted
unless it denies that the same parts recur, in themselves indis-
tinguishable from their earlier form. In fact, we have in
essence discussed this issue in our treatment of the concept-
philosophy (first part of this Chapter). The static universal
was there seen to be, for the dynamic view, a critical point;
which is perhaps the reason why the radical dynamist wishes
to extirpate it from reality. There is a perfect balance
between the Platonism which denies the changing and the
dynamism which denies the permanent; neither has the
slightest advantage over the other.

It is perhaps something of an accident that the latest
intuitive philosophy should have selected time as its fa-

308 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

vourite category. More sympathetic to the usual habit of
mysticism is the doctrine of indetermination or freedom.
Yet the kind of freedom which the intuitionist champions
is one that the determinist need not fear to admit, for it does
not break any of the accepted laws of science, annul the
" Conservation of Energy " or the like. The raindrop's fall
is not sufficiently explained by gravitation, to be sure: then
add the resistance of the air. But this is not enough; then
add the attraction of other raindrops. This too is not enough :
then add other causes indefinitely. Of the person's deed the
same holds. My writing of this sentence is determined by
my desire to express a certain belief, by my past philosoph-
ical education, my personal preferences, and so on. In each
case ahke, the whole event, the complete deed, is a resultant
to which no finite sum of causes is adequate. But the
determinist may retort — if you had infinite knowledge, you
could make an infinite sum of causes which would be ade-
quate. What would then be left unexplained would be only
the form of individuality. My so-called free act — can you
name any specific detail of it which is not, had you fuU
information of my past history, quite foreseeable ? Its
freedom lies only in the fact that it is a unique, individual
event, whereas individuality is not wholly reducible to con-
ceptual terms. The Bergsonian freedom is not true in-
determination: " this " he said " does not mean that free
action is capricious, unreasonable action; to behave accord-
ing to caprice is to oscillate mechanically." It is not the
freedom which James defended, of genuine alternatives in
conduct, and real possibilities. The intuitionistic freedom
might be admitted by the veriest fatahst as far as the con-
tents of his future deeds are concerned — provided only he
acknowledge that what happens constitutes an unanalyzable
whole. And while such barren freedom does not preclude

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 309

its opposite, it cannot possibly help to account for what
must seem very singular: that we can come so near to pre-
dicting what a given man whom we know will do in a given
case. Approximate regularity is its critical point. Always
it can reformulate itself after being shattered on this point
— for it insists that the determination was due to analysis
which is, metaphysically, falsification. But its ability to
reformulate itself is secured at the cost of fertility; its free-
dom of individuality is so general that it covers the fated
deed of passion as truly as the deliberate moral choice.

Turn we now to the mystic's vision of God. Is it not from
its very purity and immediacy, incoherent ? Have not the
mystics themselves denied every predicate of the ineffable
One ? Recall the quotation from Plotinus. Yet careful
interpretation is needed here. The ecstasy is a private ex-
perience; herein it stands out in contrast with sense-in-
tuition, which is social and communicable. Both ecstasy
and sensation are direct experience of reality — so at any
rate the experient is convinced. But because man is so made
that what one senses, his fellows also sense, he can com-
municate, that is, describe, his sensations. Because you and
I both see the round yellow moon, we can use the same word
for it; and on the basis of a large group of these same-for-all
objects we can estabhsh a system of communication —
language — by which to convey to one another our own
experiences. In the sphere of sense-intuition, this com-
monness of the data is the usual, normal thing. But the
mystic's ecstasy is rare; it is not the normal thing. It has
little or no sensation-content. Consequently the mystic
cannot point with his finger, as at the moon, and expect
others to see what he sees, and invent a name to refer to
their common object of vision. To the majority of men his
experience becomes incommunicable. The most he can say

3IO PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

in the way of description is " what you see when you come
into such and such a psychical state — fasting, prayer,
humility, etc. — "or perhaps he may speak by analogy and
parable. It is as if one of us were born with the faculty of
seeing a new colour. He could not communicate it, de-
scribe it, except to another who had the same sense-datum.
That however does not in the least mean that what he sees
is inherently indescribable, a mere zero for analysis, incap-
able of definition. The difficulty is subjective, not objective.
The inteUectuaHsts have seized upon this human weakness
and distorted it into an objective irrationality. There is no
more reason for condemning the revelations of mysticism as
essentially incoherent than for declaring my perception of
red colour incoherent. The one, as the other, is an imme-
diate datum, but that is no reason why it should rule out
mediation by comparison, analysis, or other conceptual ac-
tivity. When Royce defined mysticism as the doctrine that
"to be real means to be felt as the absolute goal and conse-
quent quietus of all thinking and so of striving" (World
and Individual, vol. I, p. 83), his statement would force
upon the view a needless exclusion; and an exclusion which
enables him to refute the type. For the mystic, to be real
does mean " to be felt as the absolute goal of all thinking
and striving " but it by no means follows that it is the " con-
sequent quietus." If I am looking to ascertain what is the
colour of the horse in yonder field, the goal of my thought
and striving is attained when I get a sense-intuition of the
white horse; but this is not, in any pertinent sense, the
quietus of all thought. I may go on to think about the white
colour. Because the mystic attains a state of intellectual
peace and rest, is he never to tldak further about God ? As
well say that because after a walk I sit down, I can never
get up.

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 3 1 1

But what reason have we for trusting the revelation of the
mystic ? Grant that sometime, perhaps, the human race
will have so developed its religious sense that men can be
assured of common revelations, of visions shared by all, so
that they may institute a mystical vocabulary, even as now
we have a sense-vocabulary — grant all this, we say; but
what guarantee is there of the truth of these revelations ?
Have they any authority in themselves ? To which we must
reply, yes. They would possess all the authority that our
impressions of the material world now possess; and prob-
ably no one would think of questioning their validity. It is
now, when the vision of God is rare, that it is suspect. Yet
it should not be so. " Whatever is very clearly and dis-
tinctly apprehended is true " said Descartes; and we have
tried to show that all thinkers impHcitly follow the dictum.
What I alone see, if I see it clearly, I must believe. Of
course there is always Kability to error; but error is present
only where the various intuita are inconsistent, or are con-
tradicted by some other accredited fact. The only mark of
error which the intellect knows is contradiction. In so far,
then, as the mystic's deliverances are not contrary to estab-
lished facts, he must (and does) believe them. On its
positive side, the method of intuitionism is irrefutable.

It must be admitted that many mystics have gone be-
yond this point, and insisted upon ruhng out the intellect.
If Plotinus did it, what wonder that the lesser lights have
done it too ? Now it is just this exclusion that has oc-
casioned the revolt of intellect and the endless warfare of
religion and reason, of faith and science. Not that the
mystic alone is to blame; the rationaUst would no doubt in
any case have tried to proscribe every method of attaining
truth but his own: such is human nature. But the mystics
have made a very thoroughgoing attempt to discredit

312 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

reason's methods; and we must now consider the question,
whether they are right in accusing the latter of the dialectical
contradictions.

The alleged suicide of reason was presented in two ways:
(i) reason, creating a fictitious concept — the Naught —
has hereby conjured up the great mystery of Being which it
cannot solve: it has laid upon its own shoulders a burden
which it cannot hft. (2) AU thought leads to antinomies —
particularly thought about the supreme reality, God. Let
us take these in order.

It will be enough to show that mysticism offers no escape
from the toils. Now first a general reflection: suppose
reason does fashion this " pseudo-idea " of blank nothing-
ness; how can we say that it is no true idea ? Is not that
saying that it is nothing ? — no great paradox, surely. That
was all it pretended to be — and it is enough to make us
wonder why there is anything " positive." It seems as if
this little germ of disease were too small to be caught. But
more specifically: M. Bergson devoted several pages to the
demolition of the idea; but the demolition amounts to this,
that what we are really thinking of when we think we are
thinking of nothing, is the absence of some expected or
desired thing, which we find replaced by something else.
Have we then no concept of the limit which we approach,
as one thing after another is removed ? Bergson, who does
not favour the pure concept, cannot admit such a limiting
notion. But it is a genuine notion, for it can be defined. For
instance, take Schroeder's definition of the " null-class ":
that which is a member of all classes. It belongs at the same
time to mutually exclusive classes — to the class of white
things and the class of things that are not white. This is,
perhaps, self -contradictory; but " nothing " is the one
privileged concept which may be inconsistent with itself.

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 313

" Nothing is self-contradictory " would not break the law
of contradiction. That the definition has sense, may be
seen if we remember that one often says : " that class is
composed of so and so, and nothing else besides." Ordinary
usage, then, would seem to agree with Schroeder's definition.
The concept of nothing is a perfectly good static concept.
Of course Professor Bergson is unable to give it a place in
his universe, because his universe is a dynamic one. But we
have tried to show that the dynamic view sees only one side
of reality.

If then the concept of the naught is a ghost that cannot be
laid, the mystery of being returns upon us. The mystic
does not abolish it; he only turns away from it. He solves
no difficulty; he ignores it. And the intellectualist takes a
just revenge when he accuses the mystic of himself explain-
ing nothing. Mysticism has become a synonym for mystery.
But the great human problem is not answered by such
means. Ever more we have the ignominious spectacle of
mutual accusation, a perpetually reiterated tu quoqiie. So
long as the mystery of being is not dissolved by reason,
so long mysticism shares the guilt of its counterpart,
rationahsm.

The situation is not very different as regards the dialectic.
The fluid, we are told, cannot be defined in terms of the solid.
The flight of the arrow is not a series of momentary posi-
tions. Well, then, we ask, what else is it ? It is the trans-
eunt fact of passing through those positions. But intellect
always comes back and inquires, what does this " passing
through " mean ? It means being now in one position, then
in another, and so on. The only way to avoid this static
interpretation is to forbid the question. But we have no
right to choke off the reason. The only satisfactory out-
come will be one which admits the right to analyze motion

314 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

into static terms, as well as the right to intuit those terms
together into a process. To insist upon the claims of in-
tuition to the exclusion of analysis, is again but to ignore the
difficulty. And the same is true of the dialectic of predica-
tion. If it is, in the last analysis, a self-contradiction to say
"A is B " then we do not help matters by refusing to de-
scribe anything. That refusal would indeed render the
intuitionist speechless. Professor Bergson would not be
entitled to say " reality is fluent, is life, time, creation, etc."
To be sure, the opponents of mysticism, and too often the
mystics themselves, urge that the vision of reaUty leads
only to silence. But we have seen that this is no necessary
consequence of the intuitive attitude. The alleged incom-
municabiUty of the mystical message is only the difficulty of
suitably expressing an unusual experience. And the mystics
have written volumes, and believe themselves therein to
have written the truth, in descriptions and predications con-
cerning the Divine attributes. All this they could not have
done, were their dialectic just. Whoso condemns thought,
thereby condemns intuition also. Whoso says that God
transcends all adjectives, makes God not richer but poorer.
We do not at present urge that the dialectic is unsound, that
God is fitly defined as person, as love, as infinitely mighty,
omniscient, etc. ; we urge only that if these, or other attri-
butes, may not be predicated of Him, then the mystic has
nothing to teach and indeed has himself learned nothing.
On the other hand, we do insist that the dialectic is a sign
of some grave disease in human thought; and we have said
that those who refuse to pay attention to it are themselves
living instances of it — for they war with one another pre-
cisely as thought is supposed to war with intuition and with
itself. The mystic is eternally right in pointing out this
disease, and in doing this he soars above any other partisan

INTELLECTUALISM, PRAGMATISM, INTUITIONISM 315

type; but he does not heal the malady. He simply tries to
forget it. And this is good so far; it helps him to new and
positive information about the universe, which he would
forego if he remained immersed in the problem of the
antinomies. This releasing of attention is beneficial; it is
necessary if the patient would not die of skeptical despair.
The mystic, the intuitionist, let in fresh air into the sick-
room; they raise the blinds, that we may gaze out upon
reality. But with all this positive good that they do, they
do not touch that secret source of philosophy's perennial
quarrels, that debilitating malady which always prevents
man from going forth to chart the world of reality. And as
their attitude is broader than that of any preceding type, so
their critical point is broader : it is all thought, all description.
The knot of the dialectic they cannot untie.

Whoever has learned the lesson of mysticism, knows that
human thought is saturated with hostilities and that there-
fore any type of philosophy which makes one aspect of
reality alone fundamental is bound to be opposed by another
which selects a contrasting aspect as its base. All partisan
types are hereby condemned — including mysticism itself.
It is true that we have not gone through every one of those
types which have appeared in history. Still less have we
exhausted the count of all possible partial types. Many
possible ones, doubtless, would never become actual; for
the angles from which they are conceived would not seem
interesting enough to men. Human beings, finding them-
selves attractive objects of study, have thought it worth
while to characterize the universe as function-of-human-
thought (subjectivism) ; but it is hardly to be expected that
any one would undertake to define the system of reality in
terms of the ludicrous, or as a complex function of plane
surfaces. Innumerable world-views of this sort might be

3l6 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

elaborated, but thiir critical points are too obvious to re-
quire pointing out. And after what we have said, it seems
that we scarcely need take up the further partisan types
which have appeared. Such one-sided philosophies as the
positivism of August Comte, the naturalism of the nine-
teenth century, the " Energetics " of Professor Ostwald, and
others equally narrow, fail so clearly to account for facts
like consciousness, value, etc., that it is not necessary to con-
sider them in detail. Under this head, of course, comes that
system of optimism known as Christian Science; a system
which, however practically useful, is unable to account for
the illusions that we suffer of bodily pain and weakness,
and for evil generally. Once for all, it seems, we must give
up hope of constructing a chart of reaUty which is to satisfy
the innate craving for knowledge, in terms of any one
element or part of the whole.

CHAPTER IX

THE RATIONALISTIC SYNTHESIS

THEjabove failures are no bar to a new reform. But
this one will differ as it were in kind; it is not to be a
rival on the same plane with them, but in a higher dimen-
sion. The preceding reforms erred by one-sidedness. All
the promising angles from which the world might be viewed
were tried, one after another: subject, object, individual,
universal, static, dynamic, mind, matter, biological adjust-
ment, pure theory, will, reason, feeling — yet each, however
interesting in itself, failed to fulfill its promise. And the
failure was always due to the same vice : the vice of so con-
ceiving each base as to exclude at least one-half the universe.
The penalty immediately followed, that the maps furnished
by each system, traced but a little way from the point of
departure, ended in a blank sheet. Does not the remedy at
once suggest itself, of putting together all these fragments ?
Combination or synthesis, then, will be the watchword from
now on. This lesson has, to be sure, been learned again and
again in the history of thought. In each successive epoch we
find men running through the partial types of interest to
them, ever refuting one another, until at last a harmonizer
appears. Such was Aristotle at the end of Greek phi-
losophy, Aquinas at the close of the mediaeval epoch,
Leibnitz for the Renaissance, Hegel for the modern period.
These thinkers believed themselves to have healed the phil-
osophic disease by the device of breadth or aU-inclusiveness.
This notion of all-inclusiveness attracts the human thinker
not only on logical, but also on emotional and practical

317

31 8 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

grounds. For instance, there is what we may call the quanti-
tative instinct. If the partial types make unacknowledged
appeal to the quaUtative instinct — as when mind is deemed
fundamental because it is better thanmatter, or person because
it is higher than thing, or universal because more independent
than particular — equally does the synthetic motive gratify
our love of immensity. Quantity is no slight factor in our
estimation of values. We naturally desire to increase our
circle of friends, our height, our progeny, our strength, our
material possessions. If great riches appear an end to many,
it is largely the magnitude of the end that attracts them.
Cities pride themselves upon a doubled population, nations
upon expansion of territory, authors upon the number of
their readers, and so on. The adjectives great! grand!
magnificent! bear witness to our admiration of mere quan-
tity. Who, if he could help it, would be diminutive, or thin,
or poorly-informed, or for that matter limited in any way ?
So in our thinking we do homage to a hidden major premise,
which declares that the comprehensive view is the true
view. We value massiveness and extensiveness for them-
selves. Intensity is a sign of superiority, but extensity is the
pecuUar mark of genius. The poet has expressed the same
motive in his eulogy of our great American leader. President
Lincoln:

His was no mountain-peak of mind
Thrusting to thin air through our cloudy bars,
A sea-mark now, now lost in vapours blind,
Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined,
Fruitful and friendly for all humankind.

Yet, just because largeness is an attribute of powerful
brutes, of dead matter, even of empty space, its appeal lacks
to the cultivated mind a certain effectiveness. A less naive
motive is that of balance, impartiality, justice. We like to

THE RATIONALISTIC SYNTHESIS 319

see everything get its rights; we feel that even the smallest
details of reality should have their place. In a sense, every
distinct fact should count as one, and none as more than one.
A person should not be more real than a gnat, a nation
than the least of its citizens. This is akin to what we call
the objective-mindedness or impersonality of science; but
equally do the sporting instincts testify to it in the phrase
" a fair field and no favour." One might also quote Scrip-
ture: " The very hairs of your head are all numbered,"
" Not a sparrow falleth," etc. Not that this impartiality
would overlook distinctions of quaUty and value; it is
rather that it would reduce them to distinctions of inclusive-
ness. If a man does somehow count for more in the scheme
of things than a dog, it is because he feels and thinks and
wills all that the dog can, and much besides. The winner in
the metaphysical race is he who brings the greatest number
of contestants to victory. Cooperation, not competition;
a balanced unity in which aU play their appointed parts:
such is the mark of reality as the synthetic type sees it. To
the partisan types, this attitude is related as classic to ro-
mantic art. Those types persuade by their positiveness and
virility; this one by its rounded completeness. There will
always be in the human mind a presupposition which reads
" the account that gives a place to every fact and motive is
the true account."

As the rain descends upon the good and the evil alike, and
the just judge gives ear to the pleas of all, so the present
type accepts every contribution to knowledge. To speak in
ethical terms, it gains by yielding; its spirit is not aggressive,
but meek; it rules by love rather than fear. Its code is that
of non-resistance. To the fighting spirit which imbues the
philosophic partisan, such a method is almost contemptible^
Yet we found that ideaUsm attempted to synthesize sub-

320 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

jectivism and objectivism; and Great Objectivism in its
own way strove for the same end. Harmony is, at any rate,
unavoidably a good for us; and it would seem that the syn-
thetic spirit is nearer than the competitive to that appre-
ciation of peace, mutual forbearance, and kindness which
distinguishes the modem western consciousness. Indeed,
synthesis, with its motto of equal opportunity for all views,
is close to the ideal of social democracy.

But unlike sociahstic enterprises, it is not " radical " as
that word is commonly used; it is conservative. The har-
monizing systems do not wash everything off the slate and
draw the picture entirely anew. They would not destroy,
but fulfill; they countenance no revolts. Upon them, in
consequence, is thrust the thankless role of orthodoxy.
They uphold the main tradition of religion, morahty, gov-
ernment, culture in general; they are eminently respectable;
humanity's right wing. Hegel was always a model boy, and
to his contemporaries his mature intellect must have seemed
flawless. Caird, Bradley, Green, Bosanquet and that ilk:
what an air of finish they have, of having already considered
everything that a finite critic could urge, what a quiet supe-
riority! It is this rectitude that secretly aggravates the
reader. The school does not arouse sympathy; there is no
romance, as of the elan vital, or the Great Self, or the starry
Ideas. One feels himself shamed by the type's perfection.
This of itself would render the synthetic attitude unpopular
today, when men feel more for the under than the upper dog,
and admire the virtues of dash and brilUancy more than
those of patience, subtlety and breadth. Certain free spirits
find a well-appointed scheme constraining, and dub the syn-
thetic system " closed." And they in their turn pride them-
selves on their freedom and openness of mind. How often
have we heard the opponents of " absolutism " speak thus:

THE RATIONALISTIC SYNTHESIS 3 21

" I have no closed system, I want only the facts! " This is
much as if a starving man should boast of his empty belly.
What is there to be proud of in having no chart of the uni-
verse ? System, provided it is true, can be no bar to further
investigation, and the obstinacy which refuses it is the more
dangerous because it assumes the cloak of modesty. The
satisfaction of the absolutist in his system is not more vicious
than the priggishness of the blatant empiricist, be he
" radical " or " positivist."

The conservatism of the synthetic point of view is perhaps
the source of that impression of finaHty which it alone seems
to convey. A federation of all the states in the world is not
open to aggression from without. When every enemy is wel-
comed and incorporated, there seems to be no possibiUty of
overthrow. The partial types had avowed hostilities, and
each kept its place by a burdensome militarism; the syn-
thetic attitude is a sort of universal disarmament. Each
partial type was in unstable equihbrium; the synthetic ap-
pears to possess a stable equihbrium. As a ball in a hollow,
pushed aside, is brought back by gravitation, so any new
reflections are attracted, by force of the synthetic motive,
and assimilated into the system. The system guarantees
its own permanence as a clock perpetuates its own motion.
It is not easy to resist the suggestion that we are now in a
higher dimension, which enables us to reconcile the factions
as an area unites hues of various direction. With a click
the mechanism settles into place; the circle is completed.

Such are some of the motives which urge philosophers to
a synthetic type of view. Combined, they offer a front of
dignity and majesty; any partial type feels, before them, as
a rebellious child rebuked by a wise parent. When it de-
fends itself, it is told that its reasons have already been con-
sidered, and as much as is good in them embodied in the

322 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

counsel of the elder. It is not a case of strife between chil-
dren, but between maturity and immaturity. The adult has
lived through and absorbed the experience of the child; let
the child be docile ! No, the system cannot easily be attacked
from without. Like the ocean, it yields to the striking body
only to swallow it up in the end. There is just one way of
testing it: by its own method. Give it rope, let it develop
unchecked; if it brings to light no internal discrepancies, it
is the final system that men have sought.

Well! it has developed unchecked. The synthetic motive
has produced its fruits — for they are more than one. We
have already mentioned Aristotle, Aquinas, Leibnitz,
Hegel: these are the greater figures. There are also lesser
ones, synthesizers who did not proffer an all-inclusive com-
bination, but carried the harmonizing process up to a cer-
tain point and excluded the remainder. The latter however
are not the simon-pure instances; we confine our attention
to those instances. Yet, as is well known, they too differ;
they deny one another. Can there be then a flaw in the
synthetic attitude ?

Let us ask how divergencies might arise. The parts of the
world cohere; now in what way do they cohere, by what
principle are they united ? For the whole is not a mere con-
glomerate, but an ordered system. We wish then to see
explicitly the mark of the combination on each article. As
the stock-breeder brands his animals, so the whole should
brand each part. Select some particular object: a rock on
the mountain-side. Examine it carefully: do you not see
that its internal structure implies that certain external
agents have been at work ? So, perhaps, with every object;
yes, even the mental ones. A's character could not be what
it is, were not the village where he lives a quiet hamlet —
which again depends on the pohtical situation, etc., etc.

THE RATIONALISTIC SYNTHESIS 323

Such connectedness between one thing and another we call
logical. A philosophic system which declares that every
single thing and part thus implies every other, is a logical or
rational synthesis. But it is not the only possible kind of
synthesis. The things and persons and forces that constitute
the universe might not logically imply one another; each
and all might have been created by fiat of some Higher
Being so as to make a harmony, a total of beauty and order.
In that case the principle of connection would be called not
a logical but an aesthetic one. And perhaps there are other
kinds of synthesis. It is possible, then, that the synthetic
philosophers will differ as to the kind of synthesis which
governs the world. The principle which combines may not
be the same for all. Each owner may have his own brand.
And we find, historically, at least three types : the Hegehan
or logical, the Leibnitzian or aesthetic, and the Thomistic-
Aristotelian, which we shall later characterize as the practi-
cal type. Each of these wars with the others, to say nothing
of conflict with the partial types.

A full-blooded synthetist will, to be sure, not like to admit
that this split is possible. He will say that the real nature of
each particular thing caimot be distinguished from its con-
nectedness with all the rest. The mode of synthesis is to
him nothing apart from the things connected. The com-
bining principle is not something over and above the parts;
it is the parts, for each part, truly understood, is the whole.
An alleged principle of Good is not to be contrasted with a
principle of logical implication, for in the last analysis
neither one has any sense without the other. This attempt,
he will say, to single out and define the principle of combina-
tion is but a recurrence of the old partisan attitude; for it
attempts to render the whole into terms of some one aspect,
that of intellect, or value, or practical need.

324 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

But we must remember that the synthetic view by itself
and with no admixture of anything else simply tells us that
the whole alone is real. While this may turn out to be
true, and to be as far as it goes a source of gratification, it
is not the only sort of gratification which we seek. The
philosophic instinct will never be content with a dogmatic
statement that everything implies the whole. It must see
that it does so; and to see that is to see how. Unless this con-
nectedness is made articulate, we shall have nothing but an
unintelligent mysticism, such as the synthetists themselves
do not love. The penalty of refusing to make clear the
mode of synthesis is that we are limited to assertions like
" aU is one," " all is experience," " experience is individual,"
etc., which, positive though they are verbally, are no more
illuminating than the Eleatic, " Being is." And, historically,
the harmonizers have always tried to ascribe some precise
character to the mode of connection.

Here, accordingly, in the fact that synthesis itself admits
different interpretations, we may find a little rift where
strife enters. At any rate, suspicion is aroused, and we must
examine with care each form of the general type.. Moreover,
when we recall that even after the synthetic systems are
known, men have gone back to the partisan ones, there is the
more reason for doubt. To the study of the several forms,
then, we proceed. We begin with that which arose nearest
to our own time, viz., the Hegelian synthesis.

The Hegelian Type: Absolutism

Here we treat of certain tendencies which are perhaps less
emphasized by Hegel than by the " neo-Hegelians "; on the
whole we prefer the later form in which the Master's doc-
trine has appeared, as it is the more likely to have pruned
away the extravagancies and to have developed the funda-

THE RATIONALISTIC SYNTHESIS 325

mental points to their logical conclusion; in short, to have
realized the type in its essentials. We do not, of course,
attempt to be just to the historical Hegel, or to the whole
systems of such modern thinkers as Bradley, Bosanquet,
et al. As we have so often said, the types we portray are
scarcely ever found naked, but they are none the less
influential.

Hegel said " Whatever is real is rational, and whatever is
rational is real." He left no such motto about the good or
the beautiful being real. And rationality means mutual
implication between the parts or aspects of the universe,
such that all together form an organic unity or " absolute
spirit." Everything depends upon and impUes everything
else. The rationahsm of the view, however, is not exclusive
of empiricism. His ground for this belief — or at least the
modern Hegelian's ground — is no a priori axiom, or set of
them, but empirical investigation. Philosophy, he alleges,
starts with no presuppositions. It has no " intellectuaHst "
principles valid in abstracto, coining reahty out of them-
selves. Reason is rather the crown of the whole, than the
creator of the whole. Opponents have often failed to see
this and have characterized the view as abstract intellec-
tuaUsm, or transcendentaHsm, or pure rationalism. But
that is unjust to the breadth of the system. Whatever rules
of reason hold, are discovered in the materials of reality, in
the course of human history, in the flowers, the earth's
crust, the clouds, the stars. In the deduction of the cate-
gories it may be convenient to start with a certain one (e. g..
Being), but that is for purposes of exposition. If we con-
sidered any fact — e. g., a lead-pencil — we should find that
its lead and wood and their properties impUed all others in
the universe; but the inquiry would be more complicated
than if arranged in the order of Hegel's Logic. The system

326 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

is thus — according to its defenders — in no sense arbitrary,
but forced upon one by a frank and empirical investigation.
It is plain matter of fact, they tell us, that every part or
aspect of this universe is interwoven with every other. Each
is so dependent upon the rest that it cannot be understood
without that rest. This is true at once of facts and of phil-
osophical systems. Consider, for instance, some fact: the
present political situation in the United States of America.
It obviously could not be fully understood without a knowl-
edge of the history of Protestantism, of Roman Catholicism,
of Roman law, of Anglo-Saxon law, of economic history, of
the Celtic, Teutonic, Scandinavian, English and other races
— and so on indefinitely. Or take a less complicated in-
stance. The character of my friend A. B . — could it be com-
prehended from a study of his private life alone ? His
character is to be described by what he does; and what he
does reaches far beyond himself. If he starts a revolution
leading to the birth of a new sect, party or nation, where is
the limit of his personaUty ? Or can I explain his nature
without a knowledge of his forbears and his enviroimient ?
But we need not confine ourselves to human examples.
A stone is dependent on so much of the rest of the universe
that we cannot draw a line beyond which that dependence
ceases. Gravitation, probably ubiquitous, ties all bodies
together by an unbreakable cord. Alter the position of a
speck of dust, and you have altered, however shghtly, the
position of every other body in the universe. How many
other cases might we not add ? The more our empirical
knowledge grows, the more illustrations we discover of this
interdependence. Ponder it, and the weight of the evidence
grows overwhelming. It becomes as hard to resist the im-
pression of a great organic unity in things, as to find an
event without a cause. Indeed, we beheve that, on the

THE RATIONALISTIC SYNTHESIS 327

empirical side at least, the cumulation of instances, which
modern science — especially biology and history — offers,
is the prime occasion of the rationalistic synthesis.

Or consider the mutual dependence of the partial types of
philosophy. Our whole treatment of them should have
made clear that each involved one or more counterparts;
for each fails just because it refuses to acknowledge that
counterpart. Subjectivism failed because it could not give
any clew to the facts of objectivity; idealism because it
refused to explain the real detail of the world; voluntarism
because it gave no place to the claims of rationaHsm and
romanticism. Determinism likewise would have given a
fair map of reality if it had been able to account for the
actual variations and irregularities which our experience
everywhere meets. Each of these systems would have been
satisfactory, could it have generated the truths which its
opposite stood for. And so we might speak, it would seem,
of every possible partisan view. Does not this mean that in
truth each of them implies that other half of the universe
which it fails to notice ? Does not the very fact that the
perennial controversy between the factions is due to their
exclusiveness suggest that the quarrel could cease only if
each side implicitly included the other ? And must we not
conclude that each category which serves as the basis of
such a partisan view implies the rest of the universe ? Every
partial system is but the glorification of a certain special
category; and if that system truly involves a counter-sys-
tem, then each category involves the counter-category. The
dialectic of the historical systems is but the dialectic of the
categories, and Hegel in his deduction of categories has given
the deduction of the philosophic types.

Of course, science has never said its last word, and it could
never have proved that all there is about every least speck is

328 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

dependent upon all else. Let the impressiveness be as great
as it may, we know in our hearts that universal interdepend-
ence is not empirically demonstrated. Gravitation may not
be ubiquitous, my friend's character might contain some
truly spontaneous variations; observation gives of itself no
absolute denial of these. Still less do we know that one kind
of dependence carries with it every other kind. My char-
acter may depend upon yours, but does my hking for red
meat depend upon your dislike of pepper ? The position of
the earth hangs upon the position of Sirius, but does the
chemical composition of the former depend upon the chemi-
cal composition of the latter ? No : these have not been
scientifically established; in upholding such claims the syn-
thetists, like all philosophers, go beyond experience. Their
behef in organic unity rests upon another, if you will a
deeper, source. They appeal to a logical postulate, a de-
mand which, they urge, it would be irrational to deny,
whose denial cuts at the very root of thought itself. Even
if we have not seen how every particular in the universe is
tied up with every other, we are, they say, justified in having
a faith that it must be so. For the description, the defini-
tion, of anything is never in terms of that thing alone, but in
terms of its relations with other things; yes, even if those
relations amount only to bare distinction. That is a fun-
damental trait of knowledge. Things are to be understood
only in their connection with other things. And if to under-
stand a thing is to behold the very essence of the thing, then
the very essence of a thing is its connections with other
things. And you cannot draw a hne where this connected-
ness stops. Hence ultimately everything is its relations to
everything else. " For logic at all events, it is a postulate
that the truth is the whole " (Bosanquet, Logic, 2d ed.,
I, p. 2).

THE RATIONALISTIC SYNTHESIS 329

The appeal here is not to practical needs or to an aesthetic
demand, but to the nature of thought, of intelligibility.
And that is why we have characterized the type as a
rationalistic synthesis. The mortar which cements the
bricks into the building is a logical one. In the Thomistic
system we shall see that this is not the case. And it is neces-
sary to realize this logical nature of our present view in
order justly to estimate it. Much of the persuasiveness of
writers Hke Bosanquet is due to the empirical illustrations
of dependence, which, with the skill of the artist, they inter-
weave in the metaphysical structure; yet the nerve of the
argument is not this concrete evidence, but the postu; of late-
rationality. For the system would be true even if many
things did not show material interdependence. Even if
gravitation, say, were found not to hold within intramo-
lecular distances, that would only mean that a motion of
atom A did not tend to effect a change of position in atom
B. The ultimate nature of A would still involve the fact
that it could with B constitute a molecule while B remained
stationary and A moved; and this describes A by its rela-
tion to B. Such relationships, formal though they seem,
would be real enough, and would bear out the postulate that
everything involved its environment. The absolutist
admits, indeed, that in many cases the connectedness of
things is hardly traceable in concreto. Says Mr. Bradley:
" I believe in a word in the imphcation of all aspects of
reality with one another. But once more I cannot believe
that we can see this implication in detail " {Essays on Truth
and Reality, p. 123). And " Philosophy in my judgment
cannot verify its principle in detail and throughout . . .
it continues still to rest upon faith " (op. cit., p. 27).

The oft-repeated statement that absolute idealism starts
with no presuppositions is thus both true and false. At the

330 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

beginning, to be sure, no axiom is laid down to which reality
must conform; we discover by " an ideal experiment," i. e.,
by reflecting upon what experience offers us, that mutual
implication pervades reality. This universal principle is not
ante rem but in re. Yet it is of logical tissue constituted,
though not in abstracto developed, and its alleged apphcation
is wider than the range of our experience. It is distinct,
though not separate, from that which it binds. We cannot
explore without a hght, and the light is not the same as the
material which it illuminates. It is of a different blood and
of an authority in its own right, and is in this sense a priori.
But of course it would not be visible except it impinge upon
the data of experience.

We must however guard ourselves against the behef that
this principle is capable of an a j^non proof . Thus: deny it
and you find you have already implied it. There is, we shall
suppose, no dependence of A upon B. Then A will have to
be defined as that which is independent of 5 — which is to
define A in terms of its relation toB — which is to make A
depend upon B to express its full nature. But the argument
assumes the principle of internaHty (cf. Chapters III and
VIII), which is the very thing to be proved. We do not
question the justice of that assumption, but the demon-
strabiiity of the principle. We have seen in previous dis-
cussions that it is not demonstrable; it is a postulate, or
object of faith or insight — whichever you wish.

Yet this principle is not the whole logical guide of the
system. It is but the half. If it were the whole, the system
would not be truly synthetic. The counterpart of mutual
dependence is independence; to the principle of internal
relations is opposed that of external relations. Both of these
must be recognized, if we are to have genuine sjTithesis;
neither by itself is final. The principle of internal relations

THE RATIONALISTIC. SYNTHESIS 33 1

alone would give us relativity, which is but one more partial
type, and is subject to the criticisms we have made upon the
other partial types. For absolutism, however, if universal
interdependence is true, it is equally true that everything is
itself a unique point of reaUty, a single and valid way of
viewing the whole, not reducible to any other point. If the
principle of dependence were th'e only basis of the system,
each fact would be dissolved into its environment and lose
its integrity. The counter-principle is needed, that each
fact is what it is immediately and directly seen to be. My
friend A. B . is not just a group of relations to the world, but a
real being in himself. Where would be society if all its mem-
bers were nothing but their relations to one another? There
would be no terms to sustain the relations. Of equal im-
portance with the logical postulate of the organic unity,
then, is that other logical postulate of the parts. Each is
real. The particular stones, trees, birds, men, planets are
all real; as real as are the relations which knit them to-
gether. " Any positive attribution ... to Reality must
be right," says Mr. Bradley, " so long as it abstains from the
denial, impHcit or expHcit, of something more " (Mind,

1911, P- 315)-

But these counterpart-principles seem to contradict each
other. If an object A is the same as its relations to other
things, as the principle of internal relations asserts, it is also
different from those relations, for it is something positive
and concrete in itself. Here arises the famous " dialectic,"
whose only difficulty lies in its extreme simplicity. For how
can two things which are the same be different ? Call the
object as viewed merely by itself, A ; call the total of its
relations to other objects, X; then A and X are and con-
stitute one and the same thing, that particular object, while
yet they are quite distinct. Common sense sees no difficulty

332 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

in this, for common sense is sophisticated by the needs of
practice and of science; it says that nothing is easier, point-
ing us to one case after another of sameness-in-dlfference;
the same piece of paper in two places successively, the same
colour in two oranges, etc. But absolute idealism, with
childKke directness, retorts that this explains nothing. One
still does not understand how two entities that are different
can yet be the same. For if they are different, the one is not
the other; if they are the same, the one is the other — and
that gives unalloyed contradiction. Contradiction " con-
sists in ' differents ' being ascribed to the same term, while
no distinction is alleged within that term such as to make it
capable of receiving them " (Bosanquet, Principles of
Individuality and Value, p. 224).

Into the merits of the dialectic we do not yet enter.
Enough that it is conceived as a logical instrument, not an
aesthetic or practical one. It is used to show that the objects
in the world are not truly understood when they are repre-
sented as a system of terms in relations. True thought, or
as Hegel called it, Reason, must solve the contradiction; it
must see the universe as a great organism in which the
union of parts is so intimate as to pass beyond the relational
scheme. Yet this intimacy does not preclude distinctness
of the parts. Ordinary thought isolates its objects and
dwells in abstractions, and it cannot see how the many may
be one, the different terms identical; true thought would
enable us to see the unity-in-difference of the concrete
whole, which alone is. Mr. Bradley, who accepts a nar-
rower definition of thought, regards this higher insight as
above the intellect; Mr. Bosanquet, like Hegel, defines
thought in a broader fashion and considers it as the organon
of reality. (Cf. Bosanquet's Logic, 2d ed., II, pp. 292,
293.) But for all three, the motive which leads to, even if it

THE RATIONALISTIC SYNTHESIS 333

does not consummate, the discovery of this absolute whole,
is a logical one. And the two later Hegelians agree that this
vision cannot be made articulate or explained in detail. We
have analogies for it, as we have for the fourth dimension.
In feeling of a cube with my hand touching all its sides I
get a sense of the many faces and of their unity in one object.
And we may conceive a vision of this sort which would em-
brace the universe in one such immediate group. This
" higher synthesis " or " higher immediacy " would re-
semble the lower immediacy of sense, but would contain
also the distinctions discovered by analytic thought. Yet
it is only analogically that we may speak here. This whole
is not given to us nor explicable in detail. Mr. Bradley's
mode of argument for it in his main work, Appearance and
Reality, is significant. He shows that it can he, and that it
must he, and therefore that it is. He does not straightway
show us that it is. He could not do so, for the Absolute is
approached indirectly and by a logical postulate.

We are not here impugning the truth of the system, but
seeking to characterize it. And the same rationaUstic
quality is revealed from another side. The present syn-
thesis is idealistic, and its idealism, true to the original intent
of Hegel, has always been predominantly logical. For the
proof of ideahsm which the system offers is the proof of an
all-inclusive Knower; it is not a proof of an all-inclusive
desire, or emotion, or will. Not that his will and his feehng
are reduced to a kind of knowing, as was the case in Great
Subjectivism. Great Subjectivism is not a true synthesis
and does not place all aspects of personaUty on a par. The
present view is no asymmetrical one. " We are hence mis-
taken," says Mr. Bradley, " when we attempt to set up any
one aspect of our nature as supreme, and to regard the other
aspects merely as conducive and as subject to its rule "

334 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

(Essays, p. 3). The present type, however, finds that the
logical aspect of the Absolute is the aspect which gives him
his title of all-inclusive spirit. The argument for his reality
is that the universe must logically be a many-in-one,
whereas the only thing that can be a many-in-one is a mind.
For a mind, as we saw in the last chapter, can unite the
temporally and spatially distinct in one present content.
Matter, for instance, cannot display a genuine unity-in-
difiference: two particles are not capable of being the same
particle. So of spaces, or times, or indeed of anything but
mind. This argument for ideaHsm is the exclusive property
of the rationalistic synthesis. It has been, so far as we know,
overlooked by realistic opponents, and is quite foreign to
subjectivism. The whole is a cognitive mind just because
it is a synthesis. " The ' driving force of Idealism,' as I
understand it, is not furnished by the question how mind
and reality can meet in knowledge, but by the theory of
logical stabihty, which makes it plain that nothing can
fulfil the conditions of self-existence except by possessing
the unity which belongs only to mind " (Bosanquet, Logic,
2d ed., II, p. 322).

Now the course of our reasoning has tended to show that
the above is, at all events in the main, a true account of
reality. As we went through the partial types, we found
that they were, so far as they were positive and not exclu-
sive, sound enough. The principle of internal relations we
had to accept; the principle of external relations also. That
the real world must be consistent, must be able to adjust
these two principles harmoniously, offers no strain upon
one's credulity. Yet we find that the system is rejected, not
only by devotees of the partial types, but by other devotees
(e. g., Thomists) who nevertheless adopt the motive of

THE RATIONALISTIC SYNTHESIS 335

synthesis. How comes this to be so ? Is it their narrowness,
or can we find some excuse for them ?

Let us examine carefully the character of the whole, or
Absolute; both in itself and in its relations to the parts.

First notice that absolute ideahsm is not absolute mon-
ism, but dualistic monism. This is a consequence of the
fact that it is built upon two principles: the externahty and
the internality of relations. The whole is, and ultimately
the whole alone is; but there is something besides what is
ultimate. There is the world of appearance, the parts, the
elements abstracted out by thought, and to some degree
given to our experience as isolated. And the appearances
are not mere illusion or negHgible, but are necessary to make
up the sum of reality in the whole. They are in their own
way integral and real in themselves. " The value of the
Whole is not separable from that of its diverse aspects, and
in the end apart from any one of them it is reduced to
nothing " (Bradley, Essays, p. 68). The two sides, the
Absolute and its appearances, are essential, and neither is
aught without the other. A pure monism would be a nega-
tive mysticism, but this system is positive, recognizing all
specific particulars; yes, implying them. Critics have
sometimes treated the doctrine as if it made the Absolute
transcend its appearances; but the relation is one of im-
manence. " And when I hear, for instance, that in the
Absolute all personal interests are destroyed, I think I
understand on the contrary how this is the only way and the
only power in and by which such interests are really safe "
{op. cit., p. 249). The whole is not a destroyer but a pre-
server. " No finite purpose . . . could have its place taken
by another without a genuine alteration of the whole; . . .
the whole would not be what it is were not precisely this

336 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

finite purpose left in its own uniqueness to speak precisely
its own word. . . . You are in God; but you are not lost
in God." (Royce, The World and the Individual, I, p. 465.)
" I hold that all finite consciousness, just as it is in us, —
ignorance, striving, defeat, error, temporality, narrowness,
— is all present from the Absolute point of view but is also seen
in unity with the solution of problems, the attainment of goals,
the overcoming of defeats . . ." {op. cit., II, p. 320). " Our
sorrows are identically God's sorrows" (p. 408). "The
Absolute knows all that we know, and knows it just as we
know it " (ibid.). " For not one instant can we suppose our
finite experience first ' absorbed ' or ' transmuted ' and
then reduced, in an ineffable fashion, to its unity in the
divine life" (ibid.). Professor Bosanquet would not go
quite so far as this, though adhering to the preservation of
the parts in some sense : " Transmutation, then, must be the
rule in the complete experience. Everything must be there,
as all the artist's failures, and the fact of failure itself, are
there in his success. But they cannot be there as analyzed
into temporal moments and yet drawn out unchanged into a
panorama within a specious present of an immeasurable
span " (Bosanquet, Principles of Individu^ity and Value,
p. 391). At any rate, the Absolute is in no sense exclusive
of the particulars; it makes all the difference in the world
to them and they to it. Neither is in any degree without the
other; and to this extent, both are of equal rank. The
partisan types seem to have no cause of quarrel, for the
parts are fairly admitted.

But the duality of absolute idealism has further conse-
quences. In spite of assertions to the contrary, there is a
certain gulf between the Absolute and its appearances. It
is admitted that we who live in the parts do not see how they
are combined into the whole. We do not see why every fact

THE RATIONALISTIC SYNTHESIS 337

implies every other fact. The Absolute is " inscrutable "
and it is inscrutable because the mode of synthesis, the
logical implication which binds the parts together while
keeping them distinct, is not clear to us. We believe it must
be, perhaps, but we do not see that it is done. With this
behef one need not quarrel; it is not the truth of absolutism
that we shall deny, but its sufficiency. The inability to see
how the whole is made up means that the system cannot
furnish a transition from the parts to the whole. There Ues
a moat which our understanding cannot bridge. And pre-
cisely as we cannot pass from the parts to the whole, do we
fail to discern the nature of the process by which the whole
gives off the parts, generating the realm of appearance.
Given a unity, how can that unity ever come to split itself
up, to give rise to the abstractions, the separations, in which
we live and move and think ? From the one you cannot
explain the many, as from the many you cannot derive the
one. The appearances in their separation really appear, and
their separate appearance is a fact really distinct from the
whole which does not as such in any abstraction appear, but
simply is. How does the ultimate reality come to shatter
itself into the parts which appear ? The way downward is
no clearer than the way upward. This is, of course, but the
modern way of putting the old problem of evil. If God is
perfect, how can he give birth to imperfect creatures, or how
can they aspire to union with Him ?

To be sure, the system insists that we must not thus
separate the absolute and its appearances. Neither side of
the duality would be what it is, were it not for the other;
they " interpenetrate " and " fuse." Our answer is that we
wish to understand the matter : and we cannot see how they
could even interpenetrate unless they were in some way
distinct. If no blank monism, then duality; and if duality,

338 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

then, in spite of formal declarations, as far as our under-
standing can go, we have mutual indifference. Only the
exercise of supreme faith can assure us of the fusion. And
the intellect, of all things, cannot live by faith alone. It
must have sight, and sight is denied it. Whole and parts are
not specifically shown to influence each other; we see only
their indifference. Philosophy demonstrates the Absolute,
and science demonstrates the particular facts of the world;
and each is in its detail irrelevant to the other. " Philosophy
like other things has a business of its own, and like other
things it is bound, and it must be allowed, to go about its
own business in its own way. Except within its own limits
it claims no supremacy " (Bradley, Essays, p. 15). Yes,
even the various sciences are more or less indifferent to one
another. " And hence the main aspects of our being must
be allowed, each for itself, to have a relative independence
. . . every aspect within its own realm is in a certain sense
supreme and is justified in resisting dictation from without "
p. 10). What then has become of the reciprocal implication
of the parts ? Our philosophy, in short, does not so far as
we can see owe anything to the fact that light is an electrical
process rather than a corpuscular one, or that man is more
akin to the apes than to the reptiles; nor does it in any way
contribute to explain these peculiarities. And similarly, the
well-being of the Absolute has no bearing that we can trace,
upon the good or iU-fortune of the human race, or any mem-
ber thereof. " The ' good ' of the universe must be such as
belongs to a world and not to the member of one " (Bosan-
quet. Principles of Individuality and Value, p. 24.) "We
are . . . not fitted to be absolute ends " (p. 25).

Indeed, the rationalistic synthesis does not deny the fis-
sure we have been speaking of. Not only is the understand-
ing of the connection between the two sides of the dualism

THE RATIONALISTIC SYNTHESIS 339

impossible ; it is frankly declared to be undesirable. ' ' Those
for whom philosophy has to explain everything," says Mr.
Bradley when summarizing his doctrine, " need therefore
not trouble themselves with my views " {Essays, p. 246).
It would be unworthy to seek to discover from philosophy
the answer to questions of human welfare. " We put the
whole inquiry in a wrong perspective, and lose its truth and
its significance, if we make some special form of human
destiny the unspoken interest of our arguments; if, one
might say, when we refer to the Absolute we are really
thinking of Heaven. We should not expect metaphysic to
predict terrestrial history; and still less, therefore, that
which lies beyond the grave " (Bosanquet, op. cit., p. 268).
And Professor Royce tells us that " the demand for a direct
sign from heaven is not the abiding expression, either of the
religious or of the philosophical consciousness " {op. cit., II,
p. 6). " What religion practically gives to the faithful is not
the means for predicting what is about to happen to them-
selves, but the strength to endure hardness as good soldiers "
{ibid.). " Rehgious faith involves no direct access to the
special counsels of God " {ibid.). And again " Philosophy is
as unable to formulate a thesis in the realms properly be-
longing to physics or to biology as it is to build a steam-
engine " (p. 7). And there is a certain nobility about these
utterances. They declare the dignity of philosophy, its
austerity, its aloofness from the vulgar. The head of the
house cannot be expected to sweep his own doorstep. Yet,
if we seek analogies, the captain of a ship must have gone
through the training of the foremast hand. For that matter,
philosophy is not held to be quite indifferent to human weak-
ness; the faith in God should give us " strength to endure
hardness as good soldiers " and contemplation of the Abso-
lute restores one's faith. But it does not justify the partic-

340 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

ular pursuits or guarantee the particular ends, any more
than it accoiuits for the specific detail of reality.

The trouble is that absolutism has set a problem which it
cannot solve. If it were a mere blank monism, it would not
do so; but it is duaUstic, offering both whole and parts, and
asserting that they imply each other, whUe yet unable to
explain how. Or if it had these two aspects side by side and
indifferent to each other, then too there would be no un-
solved problem. But it insists that they are not indifferent;
each involves and is the other. Now, to afl&rm that a certain
thing is so and to announce in the same breath that we can
never see how it is so, is to offer to intellect the cup of Tan-
talus. Doubtless it is a noble exercise of faith to retain our
belief in the synthetic unity; but, resolve as we may, faith
cannot endure without some support from sight. Hope
deferred maketh the heart sick ; and it is not just our human
weakness, but the system's refusal to answer the legitimate
call of the universal for its counterpart, the specific, that
must sooner or later lead to a revolt. In the absolutist's
point of view, the philosopher is one whose intellectual life
is forever work, with no rest. Of course we are told that we
ought not to wish for specific explanation. By what author-
ity ? Who can dictate to the fundamental passions ? That
is but an attempt to sanction the incapacity of the system.
We do want to connect the parts in detail and to see how
they are interwoven to make up the whole, and nothing can
erase that want. We do want to see how the whole comes to
have just these particular parts that it has. We do require
that the hght of heaven be used to illuminate the detail of
objects upon earth.

The system itself may be admitted to be true. Many of
the accusations which are today hurled against it — that
the Absolute is static, transcendent, abstract, etc. — are, we

THE RATIONALISTIC SYNTHESIS 341

believe, due to lack of comprehension. The concept of the
Absolute is perhaps the most positive which it has entered
into the mind of man to conceive. It is as dynamic as time
itself, for it includes all time. But it is not fertile. It claims
to synthesize, by force of logic, the parts of the world; yet
when we would see the detailed process of the synthesis, we
are told that we ought, as philosophers, to be indifferent to
the details. How can we be content with such indifference
when we know that the reaHty which we seek to understand
is not indifferent to them ? The absolutists would simply
quench our desires because they have no means of satisfying
them.

Since the reality of the whole gives no clew to the more or
less independent parts, absolutism meets here a critical
point. It is unable, on its principle that the whole is real,
to do justice to the real appearance of the parts, as they
come to our experience in relative isolation. Now the parti-
san systems, as we saw, are based upon the apotheosis of one
or another of these parts. It follows that absolutism does
not truly include those systems; their edges fall within its
circle, but their centres lie outside. Absolutism admits that
the parts are as such real, but it always adds that the part
in its isolation is not actual, the abstract not real. Hence it
does not grant the one point which each partial type con-
tends for, viz., that its own basis is real, ly and for itself
alone, and not by virtue of its connection with something
else. Absolutism, of course, could not grant this: it has no
genuine appreciation of the motive of independence. In a
formal manner it grants the thing but it does not grant it in
the way in which the partisan demands it — as self-sufficient.
Accordingly, we may say that the critical point of the pres-
ent system is the detail, the parts. It caimot account for
their appearance as fragments. The partisan, indignant at

34? PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

being nominally included but really denied, is bound to
revolt from the synthetic point of view. Or, if he still
reveres the largeness of its ideal, he will protest at the inade-
quacy of the logical type of synthesis, and seek another. If
he chooses the first alternative and goes back to some one of
the earlier types, an interminable seesaw threatens between
the part-motive and the whole-motive. If, seeing the
fataUty of this, he chooses the second alternative, he pro-
ceeds to such a form of S3mthesis, probably, as we shall take
up in the next chapter. But in any case the claim of absolut-
ism to be a final, satisfactory answer to the philosophic
question, is seen to be specious.

The above critical point may be called the external one;
there is a second, which we may designate internal to the
type. Absolutism makes much of the dialectic. It finds that
the part-types, and the particular facts of reaUty, contain
ruinous contradictions. In subjectivism, for instance: the
reduction of the object to a phase of the subject is alleged to
contradict the self-existence of the object. And of any fact
it appears that to identify it with its relations contradicts
its own self-sufficient reality. The axiom of internal rela-
tions conflicts with the axiom of external relations. As has
been pointed out, there is an endless tilt between the two —
so far as yet seen they can never, by our reason, be har-
monized. AU the endless tilts which have been brought to
our notice are but manifestations of this same dialectic, this
opposition never peacefully adjusted. Now the synthetic
type claims to be the only one able to effect the adjustment.
It would do so by declaring that each part-type impUes its
opposite, each particular fact its environment. It thus
appears to remove the exclusion which made each conflict
with the other. But we have tried to show that the sjm-
thesis was never made plain in concrete. That every fact

THE RATIONALISTIC SYNTHESIS 343

does imply its environment was not, in general, proved.
Certain obvious instances, taken from social life and gravi-
tation, have been brought forward; but the mutual implica-
tion was never shown to be universal. How the white paper
before me implies the orbit of Saturn, for example, has not
been made clear — and by the candid admission of Mr.
Bradley, cannot be made clear. Consequently, we must
confess that the synthesis which should unite the dialectical
opposites cannot be made clear. The principle of internal
relations cannot be shown consistent with that of external
relations. Having once affirmed that the sameness of sub-
ject and predicate contradicts their difference, the absolutist
cannot show how to supersede the contradiction. He simply
asserts that it must be done, suggesting such analogies as
the unity of immediate feeling, etc. But in all honesty he is
bound to acknowledge that we cannot understand how the
subject involves the predicate without losing its own iden-
tity. He is driven to say, as Mr. Bradley says, that thought
is incapable by itself of attaining reaHty. Or if, with Hegel
and Mr. Bosanquet, he believes that thought can attain
reality, then he is no better off, for he cannot make clear to
our thought how thought does it. The dialectic is not intel-
ligibly overcome. It is an internal knot in the system which
the system cannot untie, a kink which threatens to break its
wire; an internal critical point which we can formally but
not effectively pass. Formally, because we may insist that
the dialectic is solved by reaUty itself — must indeed so
insist; but this is a promise which is never materialized.
The thing is never, so far as we can see, accomplished. Seen
from this point of view, absolutism is confronted by a new
opposite, skepticism; for the breakdown of faith is immi-
nent when it is never rewarded with sight. In this ironic
fashion does the HegeKan dialectic apply to the Hegelian

344 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

system itself. The claim of finality is replaced by the claim
of despair. If we thought to know everything in all its
rounded completeness, we now find that we know, and can
know, nothing. And all this, because we could not solve the
dialectic. The disease of philosophy reappears as before and
the system plays into the hands of its opponents.

But to absolutism belongs the credit of having made the
disease exphcit. Mysticism also did this; but mysticism at
once dodged the issue. It did not try to solve the contradic-
tions; it ran away from them. The rational synthesis is
more manly; it <nei to make clear the mode of solution. It
failed, yes: but it recognized, as no other system had yet
done, the necessity of grappling directly with the malady. It
saw that the solution of the antinomies is the adjustment of
the age-long disagreements of all the philosophic types; that
in no other way could the perennial strife be stiUed. Hence-
forth philosophy must seek a point of view which will show
clearly and specifically how one aspect of reality can be
peacefully fused with its counter-aspect.

At this point the following reflections naturally arise.
Having failed to find a logical cement for the construction of
the synthesis, why not seek another kind ? Perhaps the
mistake of the rational type of synthesis was due to its
starting from a general postulate; for the particulars must
ever be a critical point to the universal. Let us then make a
new start; and this time from the side of the particulars.
The way in which one particular leads to another will now
be not the unverifiable one of rational implication, but the
verifiable ones which are furnished by the concrete expe-
rience of life. No aspirations after the ideals of logic, un-
revealed in fact, will be our guide; rather the dry facts of
daily life and common experience. In short, let us adopt
not a theoretical but a practical point of view. Perhaps the

THE RATIONALISTIC SYNTHESIS 345

practical categories will suggest to us an understanding of
the way in which opposites, counterparts, indeed all facts,
are combined into a perfect whole. Such a synthesis we find
in the oflScial philosophy of Roman Catholicism: a blend,
in the main, of the system of the practical and empirical
Aristotle with the Roman genius of organization.

CHAPTER X

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS — THOMISM

THE way upon which philosophy here enters is one to
which about half the professional thinkers of today —
the Protestant half — pay scant attention. Yet we shall
show that it is, in a rudimentary form at least, commonly
traversed — as commonly, perhaps, and as unconsciously,
as the ether through which the earth passes. But it is not
an outgrowth of science, or of reflection upon science; and
in a scientific age like the present, the vivid hues of ration-
alism and empiricism obscure its prosaic colours and we do
not reaUze that we are using it. To understand its claims,
to estimate impartially their vaHdity, is no easy task for the
Protestant who prides himself on the independence and self-
sufficiency of his thought. Nevertheless, a humbler attitude
on his part might enable him to learn something new; for
in despising the Cathoh'c position he misses large areas of
human experience.

The platform from which we are now to view the world is
so different from those hitherto occupied, that it seems at
first view hostile to the just demands of intellect, yes, even a
remnant of superstition. Such is the usual Protestant belief
about it; and if we would correct the error, it is necessary
to go back to fundamentals.' Let us then begin by recalling
some of the motives which lead to the synthetic attitude.

Some day we learn, if our eyes are open, that there are
more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our
philosophy. The words of the poet might be uttered by a
partisan type, repenting of its narrowness. The world is too

346

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS —' THOMISM 347

large to be comprehended under one formula. The sub-
jective idealist at leilgth sees that the term " human mind "
affords no clew to the understanding of Nature. The
materialist discovers that radio-activity and the electrons
give no prospect of accounting for the laws of consciousness.
The norriinalist comes to acknowledge that if everything
actual is individual, it is impossible to explain the uniformi-
ties in the world. And thus, we may imagine, every partisan
realizes that the true system will be one which combines all
the factions; for nothing else can be adequate to the wealth
of reality.

But the synthesis must go further. The parts which form
this stupendous whole are together. They are more or less
interlaced; they often act upon one another; many of them
betray, in their very make-up, the presence of their fellows.
The ocean's tides show the pull of the moon, and the pohcy
of the United States to Japan indicates the poHcy of Japan
to the United States. How far this mutual implication
reaches, experience does not reveal; certainly the inter-
penetration of all things, after the Hegelian manner, has
not been verified. Yet though we find no clinching proof of
this interpenetration, we cannot wholly strangle a belief
that there is some real bond between all the parts. The
Inonistic impiilse, defeated in the Hegelian campaign, still
agitates our thought. " If we could but find the right point
of departure," it urges, " we should discover the hnkage.
Logic, science, reason, it must be admitted, have not been
able to find it. The principle of internal relations is in
many cases but a formaHty. But the intellectual point of
view is not the only one. The scientific nlood has weight;
and you, living in a scientific age, are so awed by it that you
dare not whisper of any sanctions but those of reason. But
man has entirely different moods, when considerations of

348 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

practice and of value hold sway. Man is more than a
thinker, he is a doer. And the practical moods are in fact
more frequent, and even more dominating; yes, they give
more insight into Hfe." We learn best about the world by
hving in it. To take hold of the lever and run the engine is
to know it better than by the contemplation of a blue-print.
To deal with men in buying, selhng, organizing, teaching, is
to understand men better than by psychologizing. The
difference between the scientific and practical moods is the
difference between theoretical knowledge and wisdom. The
man of practical wisdom will perchance discover connec-
tions in this universe which disinterested observation or
calculation in their aloofness are unable to discern.

Let us then see how a practical attitude might find some
ground for uniting the parts into a whole, which the ra-
tionalist has overlooked.

Make the practical attitude thoroughgoing. Conceive
the world as a theatre, wherein a drama of persons is being
enacted; not as ^ " complex " of sequences and coexistences,
but an arena. Abandon the third-person view; consider the
world in the Ught of the first and second. Struggles, con-
summations, goods sought, attained, prevented, thwarted
by evils, overcome and overcoming : these will be the central
events of the universe, and the nature of every fact will be
estimated by the part it plays in such a drama. The cate-
gories which we must needs use in order to successful dealing
with men and things — these are the true ones. Even if we
do not understand the raison d'etre of these categories, they
are to be accepted. Gkiod judgment, sound common sense,
are more fruitful guides than science. For instance : a rigid
determinism cannot be true, because in our intercourse with
men we have to treat them, to a certain extent, as free
beings. Also, causality will be in its own province meta-

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS — THOMISM 349

physically ultimate, since we adapt ourselves to nature only
by predicting effects. Science, as Hume showed, is unable
logically to derive effect from cause; but practice sees
nevertheless that the connection is a necessary one. So,
too, of our belief in the external world. It is impossible
scientifically to prove, from the subjective phenomena, that
there is a real external world. There is no logical link con-
necting subjective and objective realms. But practically
one must assume the reaUty of both. To common sense it is
evident enough that our states of mind are directed upon an
outer reality. And so, in general, we may say that a practi-
cal attitude sees that one side of Hfe should be supplemented
by another because both are needed, for working purposes,
for the ftUlest realization of life. They minister to the drama.
The platform has, perhaps, but one plank; but it is a very
solid one, for a tremendous structure will be found resting
thereon. That plank is the principle, that whatever min-
isters deeply, or indispensably, to life, is to be believed real.
At once the reader will say " But this is pragmatism over
again! " No: it dififers profoundly from that view. Or, to
avoid a verbal quarrel, let us say that it differs from the
view which above we expounded under the name pragma-
tism. The main difference is that pragmatism is wholly a
scientific position, while this is not. Pragmatism taking its
cue from biology, considers the true to be the hypothesis
which is found to cohere with the rest of our experience. By
acting upon the hypothesis we test this coherence; and its
truth cannot be assumed until the test has been made. The
method is through and through expWimental. But our
type is not one of trial-and-error. It does not wait for
decision by results; it does not hold its decisions subject to
revision. It has none of that hatred of absolutism and
dogmatism with which pragmatism burns. On the contrary,

350 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

it is rather dogmatic; it considers its doctrines to be nlti-:
mate. The practical animus of common sense justifies its
own dogmatic certainty. Certainty must not be delayed
until such time as we can test its coherence; for in coping
with the emergencies of hfe we need knowledge at once.
Indecision means inaction; but action is necessary to our
continued existence. In short, our present view beheves
that the practical attitude has in itself an immediate means
of discovering final truth; it claims to possess a distinct
organ of truth, as eye is distinct from touch. And as we see
beyond the Umits of touch, so this attitude will learn what
it is beyond experimental science to ascertain. Other dif-
ferences there are, consequent upon this one; they will
appear in the sequel. But the above is, we beHeve, the
crucial distinction between it and pragmatism.

When we speak of a distinct organ of truth we do not
mean a kind of mystical insight, contemning reason. The
devotees of practical synthesis use reason; historically, none
have used it more than they. But they use it to subserve
always the demands of practice. Reason renders articulate
and appHcable to life what the practical attitude vouch-
safes to it; it is, in fact, indispensable to a well-ordered life.
But it is secondary rather than primary: it is to be trusted,
because it is one of our normal faculties. No scientific
scheme imderlies the practical philosophy, as biology under-
lies pragmatism, or the transcendental argument underlies
idealism.

The general principle is that the wise philosopher will be
just to all interests, so fa^r as without inconsistency he may.
And consistency is respected, of course, for good pra,ctical
reasons. Life is broad, and one who lives it best must adapt
himself to all sides of it. We may almost understand why
this motto of one who fares forth in the world has become

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS — THOMISM 351

well-nigh extinct among non-Catholic philosophers; for, as
we have so often found, their philosophy has tended to glory
in its separation from the concrete details of life. But the
sojourner through this vale of tears, when he turns phi-
losopher, has a distinct message; and we may expect that
sooner or later the non-religious thinker will rediscover it.
For it has a positive content all its own. It is not to be ex-
plained away as using a lesser degree of reason, but to be
distinguished as showing a greater degree of good judgment.

This counsel of prudence, so vague, so willing to embrace
all as to seem almost colourless, nevertheless becomes the
most virile and uncompromising when it solidifies. For it
does solidify, as we scrutinize it; it congeals, first into the
broad code of common sense and then, in a more mature
philosophic age, into a rehgious dogmatism. To be sure,
these two are not usually considered blood-relatives. Yet
what is common sense but the summary name for the knowl-
edge of the practically-minded, when he reflects upon
mimdane matters ? And what is religious truth but the
embodiment of our practical needs at their greatest depth
and in the longest run ? Religion seeks ultimate salvation,
while common sense looks for worldly welfare — a more
immediate well-being. Thus a religious philosophy is the
maturest form of the practical type. Let us dwell on these
points for a moment.

Common sense is an attitude of mind which believes what
recommends itself immediately to the sane, normal person,
to the person who can " get on " in life. It is based upon
practical rather than scientific or artistic grounds. It does
not in the first instance stand for a clear-cut body of doctrine,
though where it does believe it is very positive. It is not to
be confused with the common stock of knowledge in a given
age. That depends on education, the prevailing bent of that

352 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

age's development, or other accidents; while common sense
has varied but Uttle since the dawn of history. Thus, the
atomic theory is not a matter of common sense, however
universally it be accepted. The Copemican theory and the
Darwinian theory are not decided by common sense; yet
they are almost commonplaces in our age. These things are
not common sense because they are not capable of imme-
diate decision on practical grounds. The eminent scientist,
notoriously, is often lacking in common sense; so too the
great artist. It is the " hard-headed " man of action to
whom we look for the greater degree of that faculty, akin
as it is to the wordly virtue of shrewdness. Hear its de-
scription by a professed defender, and note the prominence
of the practical categories in it. " This inward hght or
sense is given by heaven to different persons in different
degrees. There is a certain degree of it which is necessary to
our being subjects of law and government, capable of manag-
ing our own affairs, and answerable for our conduct towards
others : this is called common sense, because it is common to
all men with whom we can transact business, or call to
account for their conduct " (Thomas Reid, On the Intellect-
ual Powers, Essay 6, ch. 2: edition of Hamilton, I, p. 422).
Common sense does not seek scientific proof of its tenets,
though it is not necessarily hostile to that. It is dogmatic;
it regards what it sees as self-evident to a sane mind. Com-
mon sense asserts the reality of external objects, of our
fellow-men's minds, of the categories we seem to use in daily
life, such as cause, free choice, substance, purpose, individual,
universal, law, possibility, necessity, personality, soul, etc.
It does not feel obHged to deduce these categories from a
single source; they are deemed vahd because they are part
of life. Common sense however respects reason; it believes
that reason, properly used, confirms these assertions. In

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS — THOMISM 353

fact, it often uses the term " reasonable " as the seal of its
approval. It is not radical — for radicaUsm generally con-
notes one-sidedness — but conservative; it is synthetic,
because life is many-sided and it is the great guide of hfe.
It looks pragmatic, but (as above noted) its breadth and
vagueness prevent it from reducing all reahty to one for-
mula, as pragmatism tends to do. It is objective-minded,
and it respects the laws of logic as ends-in- themselves; it
justifies both theory and practice, art, beauty, and reUgion
— all the main roads by which man makes progress. It is
optimistic, yet not unpleasantly so; it does not explain
away evil. In short, it is a genuinely synthetic position,
which points out the many truths and realities of the uni-
verse, sees that they are sufficiently defined, and shows that
reason, while not deducing them out of nothing, or out of one
another, yet reveals their harmony and mutual confirmation.
And its appeal is always, in the last analysis, to that inexact
but indispensable faculty, sane judgment.

Most philosophers and scientists nowadays probably re-
gard common sense as uncritical and below the level of the
serious search for truth. This is a radical misunderstanding.
Common sense is not to be compared quantitatively with
scientific demonstration; the two are incommensurable,
disparate. To ask which is better is like asking " which is
truer, vision or touch ? " The exclusive rationalist, rating
common sense as a lesser degree of thought, stands upon a
dogma as incapable of proof as common sense's dogmas;
upon a dogma, moreover, which his daily life denies. As a
matter of fact, most of the important objects of every-day
belief have never been scientifically tested — often could
not be tested, indeed. Your mind has never been demon-
strated to me; yet I beheve in it with a certainty far exceed-
ing the strength of that argument from analogy by which I

354 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

try to justify the belief. The external world itself cannot be
proved real; but I feel that to doubt it would be insane.
Do not these two categories of reality cover the larger por-
tion of human experience ? Common sense is inevitably
trusted; in comparison with the sum of its deliverances,
science has scarcely more than touched the fringe of our
body of knowledge. But it is no part of common sense to
reciprocate the hostility of reason; it is synthetic. It has a
deep-seated confidence that reason cannot in the end conflict
with its decisions, even as reason cannot disprove the
validity of our sense-experience.

In the history of philosophy, common-sense systems are
not infrequent. One instance appeared during the period of
Graeco-Roman skepticism, under the name eclecticism.
There it was a reaction against the keen refutation proffered
by Pyrrho and others, of the possibility of knowledge. If
Pyrrhonism showed that we cannot demonstrate an ex-
ternal world, our fellows, or God, eclecticism repUed that a
sane practical attitude does not need demonstration of
them, but finds them seK-evident. Much later, the same
tendency appeared in the thinkers of the " Scottish school,"
Reid, Stewart, et al. Unfortunately, neither of these schools
prosecuted their inquiries in a thoroughgoing manner. The
eclectics were, hampered by the material unrest of their
times, and the Scots were bound down by the narrowness of
their interests. Reid and his aUies, Uke most English-
speaking philosophers, were too exclusively occupied with
the problem of knowledge to institute studies of the objec-
tive universe. The Intellectual Powers of Man and the
Active Powers of Man furnish but little evidence on the prob-
lems of causality, possibility, contingency, eternity and
time, God, immortality. A better articulated instance of
the common-sense position is found in a later philosopher,

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS — THOMISM 355

■whose Scottish desctent combined with his Teutonic training
to develop the practical motive into a clear-cut system. At
the same time this philosopher's love of independence and
of scientific demonstratioh prevented hirn from carrying the
common-sense attitude into the second and deeper form of
the practical Inotive, viz., an objective religious synthesis;
for that reason the system of Kant is a transition between
the two forms of the practical motive. It will be instruc-
tive to consider it for a moment in this hght; for by learn-
ing wherein Kant fell short of the latter we may better
comprehend the full-fledged practical synthesis.

A large part, and that too a central part, of the Kantian
philosophy might fairly be characterized by the epithet
sublimated common sense. "Sublimated" we say, because
the common sense of most men would hardly consider
Kant's doctrine self-evident; but it stands for an attenuated
form of what is self-evident. Thus, for instance, did the
doctrine of things-in-themselves. The real objects, inde-
pendent of our perception, correspond to a common sense
motive; but they are refined away to an existence without
character to which the ordinary man's common sense could
attach little significance. Kant's motive for believing in
these things could hardly have been anything but a practical
one; he cannot be said to have offered a serious logical plea
for what " it had never entered his head to doubt." The
" refutation of idealism " can hardly be held to justify the
Dinge an sich. Kant himself felt that Berkeleyanism was
wrong, as we may see from his phrase " a scandal to phi-
losophy." The main stem of his system, however — in an at
least respectable interpretation of that many-faced entity —
was his ethical doctrine; and in that, the practical motive
attains a clear primacy. If the needs of daily conduct form
the basis of most common-sense assumptions, the needs of

356 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

ideal or moral conduct might be said to constitute a sub-
limated practical motive. Common sense here becomes, or
if you please, is transformed into an altogether unworldly
attitude. We say " is transformed into " in order to express
the sublimation, the almost evaporation, we would desig-
nate. Yet the practical element is continuous throughout
the transition. Dogmatically Kant declares that we have
an " ought " which we feel drawn to obey; nor does he care
to deduce or defend this category. It is what any normal
man would admit; it is the practical basis of living, in the
best sense of living, viz., the living of a personal hfe which
distinguishes man from the animals. And on this practical-
dogmatic — we have not said erroneous — base, Kant rears
his argument for God and for immortaUty. Since we need
infinite time in order to realize full moral perfection, im-
mortahty is a practical impUcate of the moral life. It is not
a logical implication of facts. Morality ought to be, indeed,
a verifiable experience, says Kant; but immortality is not,
in any actual sense, entailed by morality. It cannot be
demonstrated, as a scientific certainty for the future. It
enlarges our knowledge, to be certain that we are immortal;
yet Kant repeatedly insists, only in a practical, not in an
ontological sense. And the same is true with regard to God's
existence. That too is a demand of the moral Hfe, in the
sense that without a Just Judge moral efifort, success, or
failure, would be meaningless. Yet God is no fixed fact
which we can by reason demonstrate. We have not on-
tological certainty, but practical certainty — or as we,
unconsciously illustrating the doctrine, say today, moral
certainty of his reality; no scientific use can be made of
it, nothing can be inferred from it. Such is the rarified
common sense, or higher practicahty, of the Kantian
system.

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS — THOMISM 357

But it falls Just short of a genuine practical doctrine. For
it is not truly synthetic; and the practical motive is syn-
thetic. Witness the limitations which Kant imposed on
his own results. He included the supersensuous world,
together with the sense-world, in the kingdom of reaHty —
an apparent synthesis — and he did it by the practical
method; but he was not willing to accept that method un-
reservedly. He comes ever so near to doing so, but he stops
just this side of the full practical synthesis. For in the full
practical synthesis, a moral certainty is of an objective
reality. The reader is only tantalized by Kant's assxirance
that our " practical certainty " of God and immortality is
quite as certain as any scientific certainty can be, for Kant
always adds that it is a different kind of certainty, and does
not have ontological validity. Reason in its practical use is
eternally distinct from reason in its theoretic use; it gives
no knowledge of facts; we cannot use it to learn any further
facts. Herein Kant's system remains, like Plato's, no real
synthesis after all. It fails to take the final step, and tends
to slip back into the class of partisan types. That it did not
quite slip back, is due, one naturally supposes, to the taste
Kant had gotten of the deUghts of synthesis. But the net
result was that Kant offered to the world a system in un-
stable equilibrium; unstable because built on compromises.
A compromise is such a combination of two complementary
views as includes one, or both, emasculated; and the in-
justice of the emasculation is sure to lead to a revolt. Hence,
of course, we were bound to have the exclusive choice of the
practical side, without the objectivity-factor, in Fichte; of
the intellectual side in the rationalistic idealists, as seen in
our third chapter; neither choice retaining the synthetic
motive. And in order to appreciate the equihbration which
the complete practical synthesis will offer us, we had best

3S8 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

pause for a moment and consider the manner of Kant's
compromise, as shown in one of its most important instances.
This is the " solution " of the third antinomy. There is A
deadlock between determinism and freedom and Kant
would combine them in harmony. He decided that they
may be so combined if the freedom and the necessity are
relegated to different aspects. Every deed that a man does
is determined; it must happen just when, where, and as it
does. Yet a deed which is performed as in accord with the
moral law is a free deed. Viewed as expression of man's
rational self, of his true personality, the " noumenon," it is
a free act; viewed as a phenomenon in space and time it is a
determined occurrence. Now it is easy to see — and many
have noticed it — that this putting of freedom over into the
" intelligible aspect " of the matter is an emasculation of
freedom. Kant defines it thus in order to admit it; as if one
should show his friendliness to an enemy by inviting him to
his table bound and gagged. The enemy cannot eat, nor
can the free act show its freedom. The phenomenon had to
appear as and when it did, and there was nothing undeter-
mined about it. It is but a euphemism, a respectable name
to cover impotence; a form of prudery, after all, to which
the compromising temper, and too often the moral as well,
is prone. Doubtless this method will continue as long as
man's native false modesty continues; for it at bottom ex-
presses the same instinct as that which leads men ever to
seek softer words to designate the disreputable and unmen-
tionable. Of this type also is the idealism which defines
matter as object-for-mind, but makes all mind dependent
upon body. It is to all intents and purposes materiaUsm;
for the laws of matter are given the reins, and how should
it avail that the reins are defined in ideal terms ? They
drive as effectually under one definition as tinder another.

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS — THOMISM 359

Such " reconciliation *' of teligioh and science as that of F.
Paulsen belongs in the same pillory. Science is to have the
decision oh all questions of fact, and religion is given per-
mission to interpret those facts optimistically. But since
the very probable destruction of this earth and all that
therein is can hardly be interpreted as a divine consumma-
tion, it seems that reHgion's part is here as void as is free-
dom's in the Kantian programme. We can be optimists
only by forgetting the inevitable end. At bottom, indeed,
these solutions are not honest. It would be better to ac-
knowledge that they are partisan views. And in fact Kant's
successors were, until the grand synthesis of Hegel, frankly
partisan.

When Kant sublimated common sense into the practical
postulates, he forsook the spirit of common sense; for that
faculty would not hesitate to say that what is certain is a
fact, and can be used for scientific, theoretical purposes as
much as for moral ones. The true perfection of the common-
sense synthesis is found in a doctrine which gives ontological
validity to the objects of religion. Yet the name common
sense is hardly adequate to these high flights of the human
mind. The chief guide is not logic, to be sure; it is still of a
practical nature. What then fulfills the requirement of
being a sufficient, though not a logical guide, to answer
man's religious wants ? What alone provides the firmness
which ensures that unanimity necessary to a practical,
working, organized religion, i. e., to a conduct of hfe ad-
justed to the deepest needs of man ? The reply is obvious :
dogma. And dogma, to have a sufficient sanction, must be
called revelation. Yet the revelation, if it is to be a work-
able one, must not be hostile to reason; it must be capable
of clear-cut expression, must be shown consistent with the
facts of science and the methods of logic; yes, even on occa-

360 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

si'on must be susceptible of demonstration by reason. It
belongs to the very nature of a practical synthesis that it
includes reason as well as revelation; for reason is one of our
organs of truth, though not the only organ, and the exclusion
of reason cannot long satisfy the human mind. A body of
religious dogma, authoritative and revealed, clearly artic-
ulated, supported, and sometimes even proved by reason —
such alone is able to constitute the full-fledged type of a
practical synthesis. Only such a corpus religionis can answer
man's fundamental practical need, i. e., his need of adjust-
ing his soul to the environment of eternity. Herein then the
practical synthesis assumes its maturer form, the rehgious
synthesis. In regard to questions of this terrestrial sphere,
common sense is guide enough; in regard to ultimate ques-
tions of life and destiny, revealed religion is the only form
which the practical motive may assume. The complete
practical synthesis will then unite these two. Such a syn-
thesis we find in the system which was the culmination of
scholastic thought, the system of St. Thomas Aquinas.

The aim of philosophy during the mediaeval period was in
the main a practical one. It was slow in showing its dom-
inant motive; it had to pass through many partisan types
before it could come, as Hegel would say, to clear self-
consciousness. Augustine's declaration of self as the original
certainty, Eriugena's pantheism, Abelard's conceptuaUsm,
Anselm's rationalistic proof of God, and many other one-
sided tendencies, had first to be lived through. The partisan
Plato was on the whole the inspiration of its youth; only
toward the period of its ripeness did the more practical and
more synthetic Aristotle begin to assume his sway. It was,
indeed, bound to be so; for Aristotle was the philosopher of
common sense and the adjuster of the quarrel, which Plato
originated and inflamed, between the real and the ideal.

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS — THOMISM 361

Aristotle alone could be the minister of a doctrine which
must be received by a working, organized Church. And
when we remember that the spiritual progenitors of the
Catholic system outside Christianity were Aristotle and
Rome — both preeminent among the ancients for their
practical inclination — we see that the philosophy of the
Church was predestined to the character in question. It
would not have been possible for an organization which
aimed to control the hfe of man to embrace either a partisan
t)^e or a rationalistic synthesis.

The system of Aquinas is, by common consent, the sum-
ming up of the whole period. In one respect it surpasses
even Aristotle; it includes the motive of dogma, or revela-
tion. Aristotle had been trained by Plato, and was but one
remove from that great rationaKst; Aquinas was trained by
both Plato and Aristotle, and in addition got from Chris-
tianity the respect for the revealed Word. To rest in dogma
is, as we shall see, no negative principle, but a positive one;
and is inextricably entwined with thought and action. Con-
sequently the synthesis performed by Aquinas is broader
than Aristotle's, though perhaps not, on the purely logical
side, so tightly concatenated. It was in fact just the super-
lative breadth of the former thinker's philosophy which
enabled it to receive the highest human award which may be
bestowed, viz., adoption as the ofl&cial system of an institu-
tion whose aim is to succour in all ways the life of man. The
Roman CathoKc Church, noted for its practical wisdom,
early discerned the fitness of the Thomistic synthesis for
the needs of men, and it has never found reason to reverse
that decision. It is not, we believe, the subtlety of Thomas
— though subtlety there is in plenty — nor the learning — •
though it is astonishing — but the largeness, the many-
sidedness, and at the same time the practicability, the

362 productive; duality

common-sense reasonableness, that made his system so
acceptable. Contrast it, for instance, with that of Duns
Scotus: the British thinker, though powerful, did not
combine revelation and reason, but tended to separate them
and to give each its own sphere without interference from
the other. Herein the Doctor Subdlis anticipates a little of
the Kantian compromise. He offers no real synthesis.
St. Thomas, on the other hand, allowed to revelation and
reason both distinction and union; they are different
methods, but they often give the same results, and they
directly support each other.

Of course we cannot attempt in a brief account to do jus-
tice to this gigantic product. In characterizing the system
as a practical system, we but call attention to a certaia
eternal motive in philosophy; which motive, however, we
do believe, played a chief part in the structure. For that
matter our characterization is no new one. It is not imcom-
mon to note the practical character of scholasticism's phi-
losophy; James called it " common sense's college- trained
younger sister," and certain of the later scholastics have
spoken in a similar manner. " Realism " said L. J. Walker,
speaking of the Thomistic epistemology " . . . is a phi-
losophy which recognizes the laws of common sense as in the
last analysis the source whence flows all certitude and
truth " {Theories of Knowledge, p. 677). So too J. Balmes:
" I believe the expression common sense to denote a law of
our mind, apparently differing according to the different
cases to which it applies, but in reaHty . . . always the
same, consisting in a natural inclination of our mind to give
its assent to some truths not attested by consciousness nor
demonstrated by reason, necessary to all men in order to
satisfy the wants of sensitive, intellectual, and moral life "
{Fundamental Philosophy, Eng. tr. by 0. Brownson, I,

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS — THOMISM 363

p. 22i). We have itaKcized the last phrase in order to em-
phasize its agreement with our own interpretation. Eyen
if, however, this practical motive played only a small part,
we should feel justified in pointing it out; but we hope to
show, by considering the views of Thomism upon certain of
the chief philosophical issues, that the part is no mean one.
And there is the more need of this; for the accounts of the
system given in most of our histories, yes, even in some of
those of the Catholics themselves, show no ruling idea
throughout the system. The doctrine appears as a patch-
work, a medley, a pudding-stone affair. The only principle
common to aU its parts is by most Protestants said to be the
principle that one must not contradict revelation. But this
would not account for the Thomistic doctrines on the many
points which have no direct connection with religion. Yet
it is the case that there is no one tenet, comparable to the
dialectic of Hegel, running through the whole system, the
same in all the parts. Common sense is not strictly a doc-
trine, but an attitude. Revelation likewise is not one but
manifold. And this is what makes the system unique. The
bond of union varies, and in its variety lies a charm; for the
variety is not haphazard, but animated by a consistent in-
tention. That intention is to accept what furthers the life
of man, here and hereafter; and life as here used includes all
aspects, the contemplative, the scientific, the more narrowly
practical, and the aesthetic.

Facing as it does in so different a direction, the practical
synthesis will travel a very different road from the way of
Hegel. The rational synthesis portrays an organic whole;
the practical, an agglomerative one. For common-sense
dogmas are intent upon possession of truths; not method,
but results, comprise their aim. They are, taken by them-
selves, rather loosely knit. Their categories are not deducedj

364 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

nor are they fused into new unities, " higher syntheses."
Addition rather than evolution describes the transition from
one category to another. " The complexus of common-
sense truths has grown rather by increment than by higher
synthesis," says Mr. Walker {Theories of Knowledge, p. 438).
The result is that the student of Thomism is impressed by a
magnitude, as of the sea. Beside the vast body of doctrine
contained in the Summa, our modern epistemologies seem
tiny indeed. Yet the steps by which we pass forward are
generally simple. The " dialectic " of Hegel is difl&cult to
many ; to know it is to know the system. The step from one
doctrine of Thomism to another is difl&cult to no one, and
counselled only by the desire tb fare onward: this practical
impulse has no logical subtleties, and is no harder than
walking. But it is a very long walk indeed through the
edifice; and one feels that the system can be comprehended
only by a sustained attention such as perhaps no other sys-
tem demands. For, aggregate as it is, it is yet a system.
Doctrines are added, but they are adjusted. To be sure,
they are not " transmuted " or " aufgehoben." Whatever
is incorporated is taken in its positive form. But it is
trimmed and shaved, if need be. Save and include, says
this conservative philosophy, but let it be done in no passive
manner. Certain parts, certain doctrines, must be rejected.
Some truth, to be sure, can always be extracted from them,
but the rest is not " sublated " but is uncompromisingly
rejected. Thomism is not a body of compromises. It is
written in plain black and white. It refutes heresy. It is
virile as any partisan. It has no reahties that are real from
the finite point of view, but not from God's; no distinction
of appearance and reality. Thus in its synthesis it is not
absolutely all-inclusive. True to Aristotle's rule of modera-
tion, it refuses to carry synthesis to the extreme; it adds the

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS — THOMISM 365

dash of partiality needed. And this results in another
divergence from Hegelianism. The latter shows a symmet-
rical universe, as we saw in Chapter VIII; Thomism makes
it asymmetrical. Of two complementary categories, one is
usually more fundamental than the other. The particulars
are weighted more than the universals, the actual more than
the potential, the object more than the subject, substance
more than accident, etc. Thus the system combines, in a
curious and beautiful way, the breadth of synthesis with the
virility of partisanship; it is so synthetic that it includes
more than synthesis.

We now pass to the special doctrines of St. Thomas; our
endeavour shall be to show how they exemplify the above
traits.

The category par excellence of the practical point of view
is causation. To common sense, causing is making; it is the
evidence of that most admirable of all things, power, of the
ability to do. And it is perhaps the central category of
Thomism; for it is the clew to the discovery of the system's
chief entity, God. God is the first cause and unmoved
mover ; the proofs of His existence are the well-known causal
proofs {Summa Theologica, part I, question 2, art. 3). And
God creates the world from nothing, by sheer efl&cacy. "...
creation, which is the emanation of all being, is from the not-
heing which is nothing " (Summa, part I, question 45, art. i ;
Eng. tr. by Dominican Fathers, II, p. 221). It is not rational
necessity which evolves the world out of God; but His
simple fiat which produces it ex nihilo. The Hegelian Ab-
solute, which is the whole, has no efficacious relation toward
its parts; it conceives the situation under the logical rubric
of immanence. Herein is the rationalism of pantheism in
contrast with the practical quality of theism. Moreover, all
that we can understand of God is understood through his

366 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

causal agency. His own iiiner nature we caniiot know ifl
positive terms. " Now, because we cannot know what Gk)d
is, but ratHer what He is not ..." says the Doctor in part I,
question 3 (Eng. tr., I, p. 28). We can predicate of Him, to
be sure, simplicity, perfection, infinity, unity, etc. ; but these
are negative attributes. The property from which so many
propositions about Him are derived by St. Thomas, viz.,
that His essence is His existence — this attribute is to us a
negative matter; for we cannot represent it to ourselves.
God of course understands it, and from His point of view
therefore the ontological proof is sound; but to us human
beings that proof is inconclusive. When we come to fun-
damentals, then, we cannot be rationaHsts; we cannot get
above the practical platform which accepts God as the
Maker, Sustainer, and Worker; we cannot see in Him the
" aseity," the a priori necessity, which Hegel demanded.
Our attitude toward God must be based upon His practical
character.

It is a practical category, then, which ushers us into the
system. And the syntheses of that system are accomphshed
by the employment of this category and others like it; as we
have now to set forth. Let us begin with the Thomistic
doctrine of God's relation to the world.

What are the antitheses which are to be reconciled ?
There are two alternative positions: pantheism and theism.
Pantheism affirms that the whole universe alone is fit to be
God. For only such a whole is supreme, since it is limited
or determined by naught outside itself. Theism, on the
other hand, asserts that God must needs be distinct from
His creation, an active Being to whom we may have per-
sonal relations. St. Thomas chose the latter alternative and
declared pantheism heresy. Yet he accepted something of
pantheism's motive. His God must be supreme; and he

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS— THOMISM 367

eiiables us to ascribe supremacy to God, without treachery
to theism, by his doctrine of God's causality. According to
the Doctor, everything which God creates, while numerically
distinct from Himself, yet is not capable of limiting His
power. God has made all things and God continues to sus-
tain them after creation. They are never let go apart from
Him into an independent existence. They would, indeed,
be independent reahties if they possessed in themselves full
reality. But they do not. Every created thing is afflicted
with some curtailment of being. God alone is completely
actual, actus purus. All else is a compound of act and po-
tency; but potency is incomplete actuality. It is thereby
the mark which distinguishes the made from the maker, and
which reveals the inferiority of the made to the maker. For
a rationalistic view, the effect is the equivalent of the cause:
for a practical one, it is somehow less. It is then once more
the common-sense category of causation which renders pos-
sible the union of the antitheses. Only because God is
conceived as the Maker and Manager of a universe which
is less than Himself, as the effect is less than the cause,
can He possess both the supreniacy which pantheism
demands and the distinct personality for which theism
battles.

Yet God is no merely practical being; He is also intelli-
gence. In fact. He unites these two: He creates the world,
and He contemplates and perfectly understands His creation
and Himself. The rationality of His nature is attested in the
assertion of St. Thomas, that His essence is His existence.
God accepts the ontological proof. And even God's creating
is no irrational thing, for He creates through the Platonic
ideas or " exemplars." In God, we may say, the practical
side, the activity, is absolutely one with the rational aspect.
Yet tve cannot understand how it is so. The synthesis of

368 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

rational and practical motives is not a rationalistic synthesis.
We must perforce accept it, and upon practical grounds.
For it is a demand of the whole causal interpretation of
things, that God be the one First Cause and source of
everything — of power and reason alike.

Having considered the chief entity, we now pass to some
of the lesser elements of the system. In a general way the
manner of the S3mtheses is indicated by the composition of
each article of the Summa Theologica. The question being
stated, the two opposing partisan views are successively
expounded, the second being adopted. But that second
view is then adjusted to the first, in that the first is shown
to be amenable to a distinction; in one sense it is correct,
and is embodied in the second, while in another sense it is
rejected. Thus we are bidden to choose between the two
senses. And the ground of the choice is not logical necessity,
compelling us to adopt as an implication the one we select;
rather we add the measure of truth it contains because a
sound judgment instinctively perceives its value. Often,
indeed, it is dogma which dictates the choice; just as, more
often, it is dogma which has already compelled the adoption
of the second partisan view. But dogma, as we have seen,
is the very acme of the practical motive. The choice be-
tween the alternative senses of the first partisan view is of
course guided by consistency; if it were not so, the motive
of the synthesis would be an irrational one. But the practi-
cal motive never runs counter to reason. It is something
besides reason, and often something including it. A sane
insight, a broad view of Ufe and the needs of hfe, would wish
to include both factions. To do this, of course, a shaving of
one of them is necessary: it must be pruned if it is to be
retained in the vineyard. Thus there results an asymmet-
rical combination, dictated by wise judgment, or by dogma,

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS — THOMISM 369

rather than synthesis due to a mutual implication of the
partial types.

Consider, for instance, the issue between faith and knowl-
edge— in modern terms, between religion and science.
{Summa, part I, question i, art. i ; Eng. tr., I, pp. 1-3.) The
one partisan says, naught is to be beheved but what reason
teaches. For if there were knowledge above and beyond
reason, then we ought not to attempt to possess it — for it is
beyond human powers; and moreover if it is true, it will be
concerned with being, which is object-matter of philosophy
and reason. The other partisan says: but there is revela-
tion! and philosophy, with its reason, is fallible. And he
might add, as St. Thomas forbears to do — witness the dis-
agreement of philosophers. The synthesis of the Angelic
Doctor finds that " Since human reason is fallible it is neces-
sary that there should be a revelation vouchsafed to man,
whereby he may guide his intuitions and acts." Note first
the practical motive. There is no logical demonstration of
the truth of revealed religion. It must be accepted, because
without it we cannot order our lives, in view of the here and
the hereafter. (Cf . also the Encyclical letter of Pope Leo XIII
quoted at beginning of vol. I, op. cit.) As for Kant God
was a postulate of the moral life, so for St. Thomas revela-
tion must simply be assumed as a basis of the whole life of
man. Secondly, note the manner in which each partisan
view is included. The argument of the rationalist, viz., if
revelation is above reason, we ought not to seek to possess
it — this argument is accepted, but a distinction is intro-
duced. We should not seek to possess it by reason, but only
by faith, the organ of revelation. The rationahst view is
not passively incorporated; it is qualified. Revelation is
absolutely certain, reason is open to error. Revelation can
be, without the aid of reason; but it welcomes the aid of

37P PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

reason. We here adopt the rationalist's side in addition to
the side of faith, because reason is a useful organ of truth.
It " generates, nourishes, defends and strengthens " faith.
And reason is not always under suspicion. There are many
coercive demonstrations, and that too quite apart from the
agreement of reason with faith. Thus reason has, in fact,
its own province, as theology has; and each is therein
autonomous. Yet when it is a matter of reHgious dogma,
reason is the handmaid; it waits upon dogma, showing it to
be consistent, and to agree with other truth, but it cannot
always furnish of itself the doctrines. The Trinity, Incarna-
tion, Creation in Time, et al., could not be proved by reason,
though they can be articulated and by analogy compre-
hended. Nothing in the method of reason is rejected, though
it is not considered so fundamental on the gravest questions.
We have then an asymmetrical combination, grounded in
the need of man for knowledge that can be both affirmed
without fear of refutation and articulated by the clearest
logic. " This doctrine " says the CathoHc Turner " of the
continuity and independence of the natural with respect to
the supernatural order of truth, is the core of scholasticism "
{History of Philosophy, p. 420).

Another important issue Hes in the rival claims of con-
templation and activity. Is philosophy — i.e., theology — a
practical or a theoretical science (question i, art. 4) ? The
solution reads thus: "Sacred Doctrine [theology], being
one, extends to things which belong to different philosophi-
cal sciences. . . . Hence, although among the philosophical
sciences one is speculative and another practical, neverthe-
less Sacred Doctrine includes both. . . . Still, it is rather
speculative than practical, because it is more concerned
with Divine things than with human acts; though it does
treat of these latter, inasmuch as man is ordained "by them

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS — THOMISM 371

to the perfect knowledge of God, in which consists eternal
bliss " (Eng. tr., I, p. 6). Here we have the asymmetrical
synthesis, putting contemplation above action, yet based
upon the practical motive. Theology is contemplative, for
contemplation of Gk)d is to man the source of the highest
joys. Yet in order to comprehend the truths of theology,
one must live the good Hfe; hence the practical side of
theology cannot be neglected. But it is in a sense subsidiary.
As God is higher than man, our contemplation of God is
higher than our regulation of our own activity. The latter
is a means to the former. And the motive throughout is the
practical one of attaining beatitude.

The two main categories which apply within the created
world are act and potency (or potentiality). This couple,
transformed to suit the occasion, may be detected throughout
the whole realm of God's work. The other categories are
cases of these. In the words of M. DeWulf " the theory (of
act and potency) was applied universally within the real
order, and pervaded and penetrated every possible composi-
tion of contingent being, of being limited in its reality "
(History of Mediaeval Philosophy, Eng. tr. Coffey, p. 317).
The universe — excluding God — is a vast congeries of
complementary pairs, each pair being an instance of the
act-potency relation. Such pairs are substance and acci-
dent, form and matter, individual and universal, species and
genus, existence and essence, subject and predicate, etc.
Potency herein appears as a device which enables Thomism
to join these complements. Each member of the pairs,
hostile as it becomes, in a partisan tj^e, to its correlate, is
by being treated as a case of the act-potency relation in-
duced to unite peacefully with the enemy. We shall now
examine the nature of this important instrument of syn-
thesis, and then witness its employment in two or three
crucial cases.

372 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

According to its sponsor Aristotle, the use of the cate-
gory " potency " is unavoidable. For without it we should
have no right to call a builder a builder unless he were, at
the time, actually building. We could not truthfully say
that a man has sight, except when he was seeing: " the
same people will be blind many times in the day — and
deaf too " {Metaphysics, g. ch. 3, 1047a; Eng. tr. Ross).
The needs of speech and human intercourse are the warrant
of the concept. And a little reflection confirms this opinion.
Potency has but the slightest intellectual value; it is hardly
more than a name for a practical attitude. It furnishes no
explanation of what happens. To say that the acorn is
potentially the oak does not help us to understand why, or
how, the oak develops out of the acorn. "... it [potency]
is . . . worthless in so far as it throws no Hght on the proc-
ess which it indicates, but does not even describe " (J.
Ward, The Realm of Ends, p. 108). And this lack of value,
from the rationalist's point of view, has led the modern
philosopher to depreciate the idea, to regard it as a mere
name or subjective fiction. " Reality is entirely actuality "
says Professor Ward : " the potential, the possible, the prob-
lematic, on the other hand, belong exclusively to abstract
thought " (ibid.). But explanatory value is not the only
test of truth, for rationalism is not the only way of looking
at the world. The justification of potency lies in its practical
bearing. Aristotle's dictum has been simply forgotten. The
term should be viewed in a forward, not a backward direc-
tion. It illumines the future, not the past. We adjust our-
selves to oncoming events by knowing what they are capable
of doing to us or suffering from us. We adapt ourselves to
the winter climate by realizing its liability to frost and snow;
while it is yet warm we fill our bins with coal. We calculate
the resisting power of a dam, or a bridge; yes, science itself

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS — THOMISM 373

speaks of potential energy, thereby designating what work
we may expect to get out of a given machine. All expecta-
tion employs the category; all taking of precautions, all
measures of safety, all counsels of prudence, would but for
it be neglected. In practical life it is indispensable. It is
the common-sense attitude which justifies respect for po-
tencies. It is just the practical type of philosophy, just
that point of view which considers the needs of action as the
test of truth, which would welcome this notion.

Keeping in mind this peculiarity of the potential, we may
understand its fitness as an instrument of synthesis. If the
reason is unable to cope with the problem, the practical
attitude, by its feehng for potentialities, sees how the deal
may be closed. When the partisan views conflict, how shall
they be harmonized ? The problem is similar to the prob-
lem of living: how shall I adapt myself to the hostile forces
of Nature ? Common sense repHes, " by recognizing what
those forces may do and preparing yourself beforehand."
The same method Thomism carries into its metaphysic.
Adjust the quarrel by accepting the one as true, and the
other as potentially true. Though I Hve easily while the sun
is yet warm, nevertheless sound judgment urges me to lay
in fuel against the future cold. Though the individual is
real enough, yet it must be real in such a way as to allow for
the universal; the universal is potentially present in every
individual. Though the size of any object be finite, yet
that size is, potentially, infinitely divided. To accept the
enemy as a potency is to maintain your fife; and this holds
for categories as for hving things. And is not this address
to the enemy a measure of surpassing tact ? For the potency
is a real thing and influential; yet not real in such a way
as to offend the actual. It possesses the advantages of
reality and of unreality alike. The one partisan is correct,

374 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

the other too is correct, but correct potentially, correct if
a Httle qualification is added, if shaved, bathed, and made
presentable.

But let us instance some of these diplomatic triumphs.

The dispute about the reality, in the material world, of
both finite and infinite multitude, is taken up in the Summa,
question 7, art. 4. St. Thomas, admitting, of course, the
reality of the finite, thus states his solution: "Hence it is
impossible for there to be an actually infinite multitude. . . .
A potential infinite multitude may exist; because the increase
of multitude follows upon the division of magnitude. The
more a thing is divided, the greater number of things result.
Hence, as the infinite is to be found potentially in the divi-
sion of the continuous ... by the same rule the infinite
can be also found potentially in the addition of multitude "
(Eng. tr., I, pp. 78-79).

The doctrine of causation among created things also
shows potency's healing virtue. And naturally enough, too;
since potency is causations's blood-relative; a pseudo-effi-
cacy, a tendency or capacity to be, unable to bring about
its own fulfilment. The acorn, potentially the oak, cannot
become the oak until the agencies of heat, moisture, and
certain chemicals in the soil actually come in contact with
it. To change or to be made is to pass from a state of po-
tency to actuality — so reads the text in question 2, art. 3 —
and this passing is made actual by something which is
already actual, which we denominate the cause. When wood
is made to burn, the wood was combustible and thereby had
the potency of burning, yet it burned not until touched with
the flame. But the potency, though itself ineffective,
bridges that logical gap between cause and effect which
Himie was later to emphasize. The former cold and the
now burning quaUty of the wood are utterly diverse: what

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS — THOMISM 375

permits us to see how the one passes into the other ? This
office is performed by potency. The wood had its later
combustion in poientia; the jolt is smoothed over. And this
in potentia is no mere fiction, but a genuine property of the
wood; for what is not combustible does not bum, though a
thousand torches be applied.

Likewise we find in the scholastic concept of being a syn-
thesis wrought by the same mediation. For being is one,
true, and good. As regards the imion of being and good:
St. Thomas affirms that the perfection of anything is the
actual reahzation of its potencies. " Everything is perfect
so far as it is actual " (question 5, art. i, Eng. tr., I, p. 53). A
perfect apple is one which contains in actu all the tendencies
or capacities proper to being an apple. So far as an apple by
its intrinsic limitations lacks certain attributes — conscious-
ness, virtue, etc. — so far it falls short of perfection and of
full being. To that extent its being is nascent or potential.
The good then is united with being potentially if not always
actually. Of the true, the same holds. As the Rev. Joseph
Rickaby, S.J., succinctly puts it: " every being must stand in
the relation of a possible object for intellectual perception "
{General Metaphysics, p. 117). Of course, not everything is
actually perceived; but whatever is real would under suit-
able conditions be witnessed. And when it is witnessed, it
gives rise to the ideas in our minds. Thirdly, being is the
same as unity; that is, a certain kind of unity. The unity
which is the beginning of number is not the sort of unity
which is everywhere predicable of being: " we must say
that the one which is convertible with being, does not add
anything above being; but that the one which is the prin-
ciple of number, does add something to being, belonging to
the genus of quantity" (Summa, question 11, art. i; Eng. tr.,
I, p. III). Now as regards this qualified concept of unity.

376 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

it indeed is not, like goodness or truth, sometimes a mere
potency. It is wholly actual. There are no cases of being
where the unity (we should say individuality) fails to ap-
pear. This particular synthesis, then, seems to differ from
the two above, in using no device of potency. But we may
see in what manner this is so: it is the exception which
proves the rule. " One does not add anything to being; but
it is only a negation of division: for one means undivided
being. This is the very reason why one is the same as
being ... the being of anything consists in undivision
[sic] ; and hence it is that everything keeps unity as it keeps
being " (ibid.). Unity, so far as in any sense a distinct idea
from being, is negative; the repulsion of division. Pos-
itively considered, it is the same as being. There is then no
true synthesis present. We make the predication, " Being
is one or individual," only in order to deny division. Never-
theless, in so far as the predicate one is distinct from the
subject being, they must for our intellect be two related
terms. And the subject-predicate relation is for St. Thomas
a case of the act-potency relation (question 13, art. 12); so
that even here, there is from the point of view of our intel-
lect, though not objectively, a S3Tithesis under the mode of
potency.

Consider next the combination of determinism with free-
dom. While the modern thinker views determinism as the
acknowledgment of the ubiquity of law, St. Thomas ex-
presses it in religious terms: God's foreknowledge of all
things. He believes, of course, in both God's foreknowledge
and human freedom. The argument for freedom is, as we
should expect, a practical one : " man has free-will " he says
" otherwise counsels, exhortations, commands, prohibitions,
rewards, and punishments would be in vain " (part I, ques-
tion 83, art. I, Respondeo; Eng. tr.. Ill, p. 145). The prob-

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS — THOMISM 377

lem is to reconcile man's freedom with God's foreknowledge.
He performs the synthesis of these apparent opposites in the
tj^ical manner (part I, question 14, art. 13). God is
eternal, and His knowledge sees all at once what to us is
spread out in time and successive. " Although contingent
things become actual successively, nevertheless God knows
contingent things not successively, as they are in them-
selves, as we do; but He knows them all at once; because
His knowledge is measured by eternity, as is also His Exist-
ence ; for eternity existing all at once comprises time (question
I o) . Hence, all temporal things are present to God from eter-
nity . . . astheyareintheirpresentiaUty" (/oc.ct/., Eng.tr.,
I, p. 205). In this way, then, the contingent thing may be
contingent, and yet foreknown; for God's foreknowledge is,
by virtue of His attribute of seeing all things at once, present
knowledge. The contingent event " can be infaUibly the
object of certain knowledge, as for instance to the sense of
sight; as when I see that Socrates is (freely) sitting down."
Or when I am aware of a free choice that at this moment I
am making, the contingency of the event lies in its temporal
aspect: " a contingent thing can be considered as it is in its
cause; and in that sense it is considered as a future thing,
and as a contingent thing not yet determined. . . . Hence,
whoever knows a contingent effect in its cause only, has
merely a conjectural knowledge of it " (pp. 204-205). Ac-
cordingly, our knowledge of future contingencies is uncer-
tain, and of present observed contingencies certain; whereas
God's knowledge, being of the totum simul sort, sees the
future contingencies as present ones, and though certain, is
quite consistent with their indetermination.

Note the mode of this important synthesis. It is quite
contrary to the Hegelian spirit; it is practically grounded,
and it unites the two opposites by a distinction within one

378 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

of them which reduces tiiat one to a quaJified form, as if it
were potentially true rather than quite true. Eternity is
not implied by time, nor necessity by contingency; neither
does the converse impKcation hold. We accept both of the
partisan \-iews for good practical reasons: freedom, as we
have above seen; and Di\'ine foreknowledge as a con-
sequence of God the Maker of all things. But while the
foreknowledge is accredited without qualification, the im-
predictable free act is seen to be such, as it were, only from
a partial or finite point of view. The free act of a man may
be looked at in two ways. " A contingent thing can be
considered in two ways; first, in itself, as actual, in which
sense it is not considered as a future thing, but as a present
thing" (p. 204): in this sense it is the object of God's
eternal \-ision. But " in another way ... as it is in [re-
spect to] its cause " {ibid.) : in this way it is not determined
by a previous event, by anything that has happened in the
man's pre%'ious history, or indeed by anjrthing in the created
universe whatsoever. The contingent event or free act as
seen by God — and His \Tsion is unqualifiedly true — is
wholly actual and permits no alternative; that event seen
as a potentiahty for the future is not actual and leaves c^n
genuine alternatives. It is from the point of \iew of events
in time, where we have potentialities as well as actualities,
that we have freedom. The potentiality which resides in
finite beings is the key of the solution. But whereas the
Hegelian considers this finite point of \iew to be mere
" appearance," and the Kantian declares it to be only
" regulatively true " the Thomist for practical reasons
grants to it full objective truth.

The doctrine of universals is a similar kind of synthesis.
Although St. Thomas, like Aristotie, speaks frequentiy as
if he were refuting Plato, yet it would be vmjust to his doc-

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS— THOMISM 379

trine, as to Aristotle's, to overlook the fact that in a sense he
included the Platonic view of universals. The universal was
believed by St. Thomas, as by Plato, to exist ante rem; yet
it was not in the view of the former a disembodied existence,
outside of every mind. It existed in the mind of God, as
" exemplar cause." " It is necessary to suppose ideas in the
Divine Mind. For the Greek word I5ia is in Latin Forma.
Hence by ideas are understood forms of things, existing
apart from things themselves. ... In all things not gen-
erated by chance, the form must be the end of any genera-
tion whatsoever. The agent does not act on account of the
form, except in so far as the likeness of the form exists in
himself. ... As then the world was not made by chance,
but by God acting by His intellect . . . there must exist in
the Divine Mind that form to the likeness of which the
world was made. And in this the notion of an idea consists."
{Op. cit., part I, question 15, art. i, Respondeo; Eng. tr., I,
p. 215). Such was the qualified acceptance of the ante rem;
how is it with the in re and the post rem ? The universals
exist post rem in our minds, and also are in the individual
things themselves; yet the latter is true with some limita-
tions. He says " the things which belong to the species of a
material thing, such as a stone, or a man, or a horse, can be
thought of apart from the individualizing principles which do
not belong to the notion of the species " (part I, question 85,
art. i; Eng. tr., Ill, p. 181). But " the nature itself (the
species) to which it occurs to be understood, abstracted
or considered as universal is only in individuals; but that
it is understood, abstracted or considered as universal is in
the intellect. We see something similar to this in the senses.
For the sight sees the colour of the apple apart from its
smell. If therefore it be asked where is the colour which is
seen apart from the smell, it is quite clear that the colour

.380 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

which is seen is only in the apple : but that it be perceived
apart from the smell, this is owing to the sight, forasmuch
as the faculty of sight receives the likeness of colour and not
of smell. In Kke manner humanity understood is only in
this or that man; but that humanity be apprehended with-
out conditions of individuality, that is, that it be abstracted
and consequently considered as a universal, occurs to human-
ity inasmuch as it is brought under the consideration of the
intellect, in which there is a likeness of the specific nature,
but not of the principles of individuahty " (part I, question
85, art. 2; Eng. tr., Ill, p. 186). Thus the universal does
exist post rem in the intellect, when the latter abstracts
out the " nature " of the thing; it exists in the thing also,
yet not as pure universal, but as a nature which " considered
as universal is in the intellect "; i. e., in the thing it is a
potential universal. The device of potentiahty once more
enables St. Thomas to combine the opponents. He includes
the Platonic idea ante rem but places it in God's mind ; he
includes the in re, reducing it to a potentiality; the post rem
alone secures full credit. We said, the device of potentiahty;
but to be sure the ante rem view does not speak of potencies.
There is really no difference in method, however. Of course
we could not include the ante rem as a potency, since in God
there are no potencies: it appears instead as a part of the
Divine Nature (the intellect). Plato's ideas are welcomed
but with reservation; they become not potencies, but
nevertheless a factor in God's causation: the " exemplar
cause."

Let one more instance suffice. Our own time has laid
stress upon the conflict of subjectivism with objectivism;
with that conflict, in fact, we ourselves were introduced to
the battlefields of philosophy. Thomism has combined
these with ingenuity. It teaches that we know the sense-

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS — THOMISM 381

impressions made on us by the objects, as subjectivism
claims; we also know, as objectivism urges, the objects
themselves from which the impressions come. But ob-
jectivism (reahsm) is given the higher place. The objects
are known immediately, directly; the sense-impressions are
known mediately, by reflection. When I look at a book,
what I am aware of is the book, not my image of the book.
But the impressions are, in our usual perception of the ex-
ternal world, potentially present. Some of them, indeed,
exist only in the subjective reahn, being in the object mere
potentialities : these are the sensihilia propria or " secondary
qualities." Others are objectively real as well as subjec-
tively real: these are the sensihilia communia or " primary
quaUties." The shape of the book is really in the book, and
when I reflect upon my experience I find also a sense-impres-
sion of shape; that sense-impression is potentially present
in my direct consciousness of the book. But the colour of
the book is not actual but only potential in the book; its
reahty consists in the sense-impression alone. The in-
genuity of this combination of subjectivism and objectivism
lies in the kind of reality which the sense-impressions possess.
They are the transparent medium through which the mind
sees, rather than the copy of the object upon which alone it
looks. " Some," he says, " have asserted that our intellec-
tual faculties know only the impression made on them; as,
for example, that sense is cognizant only of the impression
made on its own organ. According to this theory, the intel-
lect understands only its own impression, namely, the intel-
ligible species which it has received, so that this species is
what is understood. This is, however, manifestly false for
two reasons. Firstly, because the things we understand are
objects of science ; therefore if what we understand is merely
the intelligible species in the soul, it would follow that every

382 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

science would not be concerned with objects outside the
soul, but only with the intelligible species within the soul;
. . . Secondly, it is untrue, because it would lead to the
opinion of the ancients who maintained that whatever seems,
is true, and consequently contradictories are true simul-
taneously. For if the faculty knows its own impression only,
it can judge of that only. . . . Thus every opinion would be
equally true; in fact, every sort of apprehension.

" Therefore it must be said that the intelligible species is
related to the intellect as that by which [itaHcs mine] it
understands. . . . But since the intellect reflects upon
itself, by such reflection it understands both its own act of
intelHgence and the species by which it understands. Thus
the intelligible species is that which is understood second-
arily; but that which is primarily understood is the object,
of which the species is the Hkeness " (part I, question 85,
art. 2, Respondeo; Eng. tr., Ill, pp. 184-185). The practical
method seems fairly evident here. That we should by means
of the sense-impression see the object itself is a simple
straightforward suggestion. It appeals to common sense,
and is happily illustrated by every-day vision; we see light,
and we see, through the light and by it, the objects. Never-
theless, this comparison is only a hint, showing that it is
possible to accept the theory. It does not demonstrate that
we must accept it. It does not prove that we must have
direct access to the objects of vision or of other sense-
experience. To be sure, the Doctor assigns grounds why the
opaqueness of the impressions cannot be admitted. It is
" manifestly false for two reasons," viz. (i) if it were not
false, we should have to believe that science was concerned
" only with the intelHgible species within the soul " and
(2) if it were true, then " whatever seems, is true " and con-
tradictions would hold, i. e., honey would be both bitter and

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS — THOMISM 383

sweet according to the mouth of the taster. (St. Thomas's
own illustration, loc. cit.) Now there is no logical coercive-
ness in these reductiones ad ahsurda. Either alternative
might be accepted; for either alternative is subjectivism
pure and simple. He refutes subjectivism by showing that
it leads to subjectivism. The nerve of the argument, one
must conclude, is the repugnancy of subjectivism to the
common-sense view that science is objective and that objects
have their own permanent, consistent characters. Students
of philosophy will recall that Kant used almost exactly the
same argimient in his " Transcendental Deduction of the
Categories " (in the first edition of the Critique). Kant
urged that objects must have permanent recognizable attri-
butes if there is to be anything deserving the name of knowl-
edge. " If cirmabar were sometimes red and sometimes
black, sometimes light and sometimes heavy, if a man could
be changed into now this, now into another animal shape,
if on the longest day the fields were sometimes covered with
fruit, sometimes with ice and snow, the faculty of my empir-
ical imagination would never be in a position, when repre-
senting red colour, to think of heavy cinnabar " {Critique of
Pure Reason, tr. Max Miiller, p. 84). But while Kant uses
this lever to pry our minds over to the doctrine of an un-
changing ego, St. Thomas uses it to fix the stability of the
external world. It is indeed a matter of choice which way
we turn the lever. But to turn it toward objectivism is
doubtless more in line with common sense. In accord with
his usual way, then, the scholastic finds a distinction within
subjectivism, viz., the sense-impression conceived as opaque,
and conceived as transparent, and freely adopts that one
of the alternatives which coheres with the practical motive.
We now pass to estimation of this great tj^e. We shall
try to show that it is, in the main, true enough; for it is in

384 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

principle inevitable, even though some of its details may
permit a choice. Yet we shall be obliged to confess that it
has about it a certain taint of exclusiveness; it too, like the
other types, has its critical point, and is unjust to some
motives which lie beyond that point.

What is the kernel of the practical attitude — of common
sense and revelation alike ? Whence comes their over-
whelming appeal ? Doubtless the answer must be sought
in some attribute common to both these forms and absent
in all the other types. Now the most outstanding attribute
of this sort seems to be dogma, absolute certainty, authority.
Common sense is dogmatic; it claims authority in its own
right. The value-attitude is dogmatic; if something feels
good it is good and needs no demonstration thereof. Reason
may err and has often done so: witness the changes in
physical science. But common sense is relatively per-
manent; as it were a last court of appeal. And the same is
true of revelation. It knows no change, even as faith is
unshakable certainty. The practical attitude then is the
attitude which accepts authority. And if any one desires a
reason, why it should do so, it is ready to supply one; for it
does not disdain reason, as it admires all human goods. For
successful hving, certainty is necessary. Some hazard,
some risk, may be desirable, if we are not to become soft
creatures; but on the whole and in fundamentals there
must be unshaken certitude. Action is impossible without
it; I cannot essay to jump the narrowest ditch without
trusting my legs. Men cannot treat with one another, unless
they agree as to the words they use, the main facts of Ufe,
the principles of conduct. Organized institutions, so neces-
sary to the safety of society, must have a fund of certainty
in their articles. ReUgion cannot thrive in an atmosphere of
doubt, and as human nature is constituted, morality cannot

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS — THOMISM 385

be kept up without a fixed system of beliefs to support it.
Life needs dogma. " One of the most indispensable elements
of any society intended to last is authority; besides being the
moral bond which holds the members together it presides
over them all, incites, moderates, directs, and reforms,
according as it is necessary for the good of all or the individ-
ual. Thus in every society authority is invested with certain
prerogatives proportioned to the end to be attained by its
subjects " (De Vivier, Christian Apologetics, p. 303). And
we might add the case of military organizations. Thus the
practical attitude, certain of its own claims, yet is willing to
justify them to those who doubt. And those claims are
summed up in four words: the trustworthiness of authority.

But as soon as the phrase is uttered, we are thrown open
to doubt. What authority are we to trust ? Not all, surely;
for they differ. And if we decide which we are to trust, we
decide by comparison, by reflection, by considerations of
origin, or by fruits; aHoi which is reasoning. And the sanc-
tion of the authority is thereby reduced to reason, which sub-
verts authority. So it seems that no authority is sufficient
unto itself.

Nevertheless, the tests which our reason applies are them-
selves based upon authority. Logic has its laws of thought,
and they are not demonstrated. They come to us clothed
with authority — a truth which we found mysticism wit-
nessing in its own way. We cannot but accept them in
actual thinking, however much we may theoretically doubt
them or image a world in which they do not hold. "HA
implies B and B imphes C, then A implies C ": this rule we
cannot doubt. We may justify it by appealing to common
sense or the natural light, or other equivalent phrase; but
that only means that the thing comes to us as true in its own
right. Yes, we must admit that the rationalist bows before

386 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

his special kind of dogma as faithfully, or as slavishly, as
does the religious devotee before his kind. The rationalist
calls his dogma an axiom, the devotee dubs his a revelation.
But the axioms are no more demonstrated than the revela-
tions ; they are accepted as of themselves valid. To be sure,
some say that the rationalist's axioms are on a very different
plane from any others; for they are verifiable, which no
other dogmas are. But let us see. It is true that the former
" work "; they yield conclusions which are useful to science
and to life. But why is that a confirmation of the axioms ?
Only because of another axiom, viz., that the coherence of
our axioms with one another and with experience is a mark
of truth. There is no proof that the test is a sound one; nor
does it need proof, for it has authority. And wherein is one
set of dogmas better than another ?

But not reason only has its dogmas; sense-observation
has, in the eyes of men, an authority of its own. What we
hear, see, or touch appears irresistibly real. It is always
accepted, unless it turns out to conflict with other things
which we hear, see, or touch. That is why the philosophy
of " common sense " is realistic; for common sense is the
name which authority assumes when conversant with every-
day matters. And it is no refutation to urge that because
we are sometimes misled by our senses, their authority is no
authority. We are sometimes misled by our reasonings also ;
perhaps all the illusions of sense are due to the falsity of our
inference from the sense-data. Nevertheless we trust rea-
soning, and we say that the fault hes not in the dogmatic
principles upon which we reason, but in our application of
these principles. So too we believe that the cure for faulty
sense-observation is further sense-observation.

And much the same is true of memory. We trust our
memory, and on the whole we have to trust it. To be sure

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS — THOMISM 387

it is often mistaken, yet we test it in turn by more memory.
I declare that I answered my friend's letter this morning,
and if I would confirm the assertion, I recall the time when
I did it, the things I wrote, the affixing of the stamp, the
posting of the letter. And though we frequently test re-
membrance by its coherence with present facts — as if I
should learn that my friend received the letter — yet many
remembered events are accepted in their own right; and
justly so, so clearly are they recalled to our minds. In
action, too, we accept authority. We take on faith, in order
to act, what is far from being demonstrated to us; we cross
a city street thronged with rushing motor cars, in confidence
that our muscles will not refuse to work; we trust the
plumber not to stuff our drain-pipes and the dentist not to
drill new holes in our teeth. Of course we are sometimes
betrayed; but life necessitates the making of assumptions.
It is impossible, in short, to conduct anything, muscular
action, science, or private meditation, without leaning upon
dogma of one sort or another.

Now the type we are here studying, the " practical syn-
thesis," claims, if our reduction is correct, that the real
force which binds the partisan views together is the author-
itative revelation, given to the man who conducts his life,
that they are so bound. This revelation, as we have seen, is
vouchsafed in ordinary matters under the title " common
sense " or " the requirements of practical life," and in
supramundane matters under the title of Christian dogma.
Our question is, can these particular kinds of authority be
accredited ? On the whole, the former kind has been ac-
cepted by men as vahd. Certain specialists, e. g., phi-
losophers, have been the only ones to demand that common
sense produce its credentials. But it seems that a Uttle
consideration would reveal those credentials; for the author-

388 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

ity of common sense rests on the fact that its dogmas are
part and parcel of the conduct of Hf e. If a doctrine is indis-
pensable to conduct, it must be accepted; for conduct is
unavoidable. We may disagree as to what doctrines are
indispensable, but the method, the criterion, is undeniably
sound. If it were true that I could not act in any way for a
single minute without tacitly supposing that God exists,
then that is a proof of God's existence and no scientific
demonstration or logical impHcation thereof is needed. And
so it is in regard to the causal relation: we do assimie in
practice that the effect must follow the cause. RationaUsm,
speaking through the mouth of Hume, found no justification
of their necessary connection. Yet all men assume it, for
they treat effects as inevitable: they avoid poisons, ex-
plosives, and fire because they feel that disaster is certain to
follow such. Whatever they may write on paper about this
necessity, they do practically believe in it, because it is in-
volved in conduct. And thus the authority of most of the
categories of common sense is in general valid. But the
vahdity of the other kind, that of Christian dogma, is not so
directly evident. Its appeal is at any rate less immediate;
so many men have seemed to conduct their Uves success-
fully while doubting or disbeUeving it. Such dogmas as the
Trinity, the Incarnation, the Creation, do not at once appear
indispensable to our hving. Accordingly, it becomes our
duty to ask for the credentials of rehgious dogma. Or we
may say, for the credentials of religious faith; for faith and
dogma are correlative. But further: since dogmas cannot
be wavering and uncertain pronouncements, or admit of any
vacillation in their interpretation, the authority of dogma
implies some organ which states and interprets the dogma
with authority; and this means with infaUibihty, since
authority is no longer authority if it be open to question.

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS — THOMISM 389

Such an organ cannot be anything but an infallible Church
— infallible, that is, in matters of religious belief. Our
problem then is, to ask for the credentials of an infallible
Church. If we could but find them and be assured of their
sufl&ciency, then the " practical synthesis " which has been
effected under its guidance would be to all intents and pur-
poses the final philosophic system, and our quest would be
ended.

We say, our quest would be ended; for there is no doubt
that the present type of philosophy has that connection with
the detail of life, the specific appUcabihty, which in Chapter
I we found to be the original intention of philosophy. In
this respect it towers head and shoulders above every other
type we have studied. Not one of them presented anything
but the meagrest of outhnes. See, for example, the con-
trast between the absolutist synthesis and the practical.
The Absolute, present everj^where, makes all the difference
in the world to each particular experience of ours, and since
extremes meet thereby makes no difference. By its utter
generality it lacks the specific quahty which would make it
count. On the other hand, the practical system influences,
in directly verifiable ways, the minutest detail of its votary's
life. He gets on his knees to pray, he goes to church, he
gives his money, he feels a steady flame of faith, he organizes
his fellows in rehgious bands, ministers to the poor, etc. Of
course, the rehgious frequently fall from grace; but often
they remain true, and that is enough to save the system.
The system is efl&cacious; it is open to utilization, it is
turned to practical apphcation, it is the explanation, even,
of certain events (the creation, etc.). In Hegelianism, the
whole is divorced from the other aspects; in Thomism, it is
wedded to them. In examining its credentials, then, we
have a very great deal at stake. So full and concrete a map

390 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

of the universe was never before offered; and if we cannot
adhere to it we may indeed despair of philosophic truth.

There is, first, an antecedent probabiUty that there are
such credentials. For if it is the case that authority is
welded into the very structure of knowledge itself, does it
not seem probable that in every distinct field of inquiry it
will be found at work, furnishing as it were the matter
which our reason is to arrange in systematic logical form ?
In the material world we find the sense-data coming before
us clothed with self -evidence; these we work over and refine
upon until we have constituted science. In the abstract
world of ideal forms, we find certain ultimate propositions
invested with certainty, viz., the axioms of all reasoning;
upon these we build the structure known as logic. In the
moral sphere, also, we discover some principles which must
be assumed as the basis of all moral precepts, viz., that ful-
ness of life is desirable, truth-telling required, justice an
end. Is it not then probable that there are open to man
certain fixed truths in the field of religious inquiry ? Why
may there not be a power of insight adapted to see truths in
this region, just as the sense-organs are adapted to see
truths in the material world, the intellect to see them in the
world of abstract forms, etc. ? The rehgious devotee asserts
that there is such a power; that the founder of his religion
possessed it. That founder's declarations are hence clothed
with authority; and the Church, which hands them on at
his command, in so far claims a Uke authority.

The particular kind of authority which should give out
rehgious truth, or philosophic truth, in anything Uke a com-
plete or systematic form, is certainly not found within the
consciousness of the average human being. However the
democratic ideal may insist that each man should judge for
himself in religion, it is still the plain fact that most men

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS — THOMISM 391

have neither the time nor the incKnation to do so. The
dogmas of common sense are within the reach of all, and
after some reflection the dogmas of reason also; any one can
verify them for himself by a little training. But for informa-
tion in religious matters we have always had to look to
exceptional persons; to some one or more who were in-
dividuals of surpassing personal force. Whether we like it
or not, this is the fact. Are we not justified in so doing ? Is
it not natural and right that there be individuals whose
utterances and teachings come from their lips with a certain
power, compelling in their hearers belief ? It is said that
Jesus spoke with authority, and not as the scribes. Should
we then accept his sayings just because they are his sayings,
without first verifying them by our own independent re-
flection ? Can the credentials of the Church be the ipse
dixit of its first teacher ?

Now the ipse dixit form of authority is undoubtedly very
widely accredited; more widely perhaps than a Protestant
likes to admit. We all do assign more weight to the casual
assertions of some people, than to the most earnest assevera-
tions of others. Often it is because we know the former to
be experts. The guess of a famous scientist, in regard to the
cause of some new natural phenomenon, is to be preferred
to the conviction of the untrained. But this authority has
its source in our reason only. We know the expert to be
competent; his competence has been tested again and
again. On the other hand, we cannot deny that mere con-
viction itself is convincing. A man may state his beliefs so
commandingly that we dare not question them, even in our
thoughts. Thus the orator sweeps us off our feet; thus the
preacher makes converts. There is httle if any reason in it;
belief is immediate and irresistible. Such belief, however,
seldom persists long unless corroborated by reflection. We

392 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

do not speak here of mystical experiences, where the devotee
has some independent personal data which determine his
behef, but only of beHefs which are fixed by the words of
another.

But there is a further way in which personal authority is
found. The mere testimony of a common man is of some
weight, however shght. In the law-courts we call witnesses
to the stand, and the presumption is in favour of their truth;
cross-examination is required if it is to be impugned. Like
the primitive creduUty of the child, is the ultimate pre-
sumption of the truth of a person's assertion. And even in
science, that lair of reason, the ipse dixit is never wholly
reduced to reason. For one savant's results must be con-
firmed by others. Why should this social motive influence us,
if not because each man's testimony is of independent value
in itself ? Could a sum of nothings make up a positive
quantum of confirmation ? It is true that all testimony is
subject to revision; but to deny that it has any authority
of its own is hke denying that a bilhard-ball moves because
its motion can be stopped. Of course one person's assertions
may be demoHshed by reasons; but these reasons them-
selves gain authority in that all, or most, men agree upon
them. The social motive, so prominent in all that we think
and do today, is a clear instance of the ipse dixit form of
authority.* But nevertheless this kind is in any particular
case liable to refutation. The sort of authority we are seek-
ing is irrefutable. It is not found in the scientific expert's
judgment, in the zealot's impressive utterance, in the social
verdict. Each and all of these is Hable to error. They must
be validated by reflection, or their power is lost. Is there
then any sort of ipse dixit left, which possesses finahty,

* Thomas Reid explicitly states this, Hamilton's ed. I, p. 440, Intellectual
Powers, Essay 6, ch. 4.

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS — THOMISM 393

independent of subsequent confirmation by thought ? When
we look more closely at the foundations of Catholicism, it
seems at first as if there were none. For the Church does
not rest content with pointing to the Scriptures and its own
decrees. It gives a long array of reasoned evidence. Never-
theless, if we look more closely still, we shall find the ipse
dixit standing fully armed and alone, within the citadel of
its elaborate fortress.

The Church, we say, has built up a body of rational argu-
ment in favour of its authority : the words of Jesus are taken
to be divine revelation, i. e., infalUble, because Jesus himself
showed evidences of His supernatural and divine character
— to wit, his miracles. " The Christian religion stands or
falls with miracles. They formed an integral part of our
Lord's ministry; they are the sureties of His stupendous
claims ..." {Miracles and Modern Thought, by the Very
Rev. Humphrey Moynihan, S.T.D., in The Ecclesiastical
Review, 54, p. 292. Italics mine). And "if they (the
miracles) are torn from that story and eliminated from that
life, the Gospels become a heap of ruins and Christ Himself
almost a mythical personage " {ibid.). Reason is then, so
far, in a general way the foundation of religious authority;
where by reason we mean observation of the consequences,
the working, the attendant circumstances, of a belief in
dogma. The New Testament itself advocates such a use of
reason. " Believe not every spirit, but try the spirits if they
be of God; because many false prophets are gone out into
the world " (I John, IV. i). And CathoKdsm emphasizes
the r61e of reason as " demonstrating the truth of the Gospel,
that is, estabUshing with certainty the foundations of faith
by demonstrating that it is perfectly rational, legitimate,
and indispensable to believe " (Rev. W. De Vivier, S.J.,
Christian Apologetics (ed. by Rt. Rev. S. G. Messmer),

394 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

p. 41). Thus". . . suppose men of irreproachable probity
assure me that they have heard these propositions [dogmas]
from the mouth of God, suppose I am certain that they
speak without any personal interest whatever; nay, more,
for the truth which they proclaim they suffer insults, per-
secution and death itself, while, on the other hand, their
teaching is confirmed by striking and incontestable miracles.
Would it not be unreasonable, imder these circumstances,
to refuse my assent to their doctrines ? . . . Revelation
... is a fact removed from us by many centuries. Hence
it is . . . testimony which enables us to attain certain
knowledge of revelation and, consequently, to demonstrate
the foundations of faith" {op. cit., pp. 48-49). But testi-
mony is, after all, to be judged by scientific standards; the
basis is a rational one. It would seem that a character so
lofty, so powerful, so consistent, as that of Jesus could hardly
have been invented, either by one man or by a group of
men: antecedent probability is against the falsity of the
testimony. The magnitude of his personality, the unusual
character of his doctrine, and the degree of concurrence of
the witnesses, combine to render fraud or mistake on the
main points extremely unlikely. " To invent a Newton,
one would have to be a Newton himself. What man could
invent a person like Jesus ? Jesus alone could do it."
(Parker, quoted in op. cit., p. 149.) It is of course possible
to doubt; but if the same testimony were offered in regard
to any other allegation, the doubt would be deemed an un-
reasonable one. And the testimony gains in weight from the
fact that it is, in a sense, indirect. Things have happened
which constitute circumstantial evidence that Jesus was
superhimian. Such, it is said, are the miracles, the earlier
prophecies of his coming, his own prophecies of his fate and
the success of his religion, his own character, his resurrection,

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS — THOMISM 395

the establishment and duration of Christianity itself, and in
particular of the Catholic Church, which has outlasted any-
other institution of similar magnitude and is in essentials
unchanged, the fortitude and endurance of the martyrs
themselves, the practical fruits of Christianity in promoting
order, morahty, peace, and other factors of civilization.
Moreover, no other religion, such as Buddhism, Moham-
medanism, etc., presents such a massive array of arguments.
Each one may allege something, viz., miracles, duration;
but none has anything like the above summation of distinct
evidences, giving mutual corroboration. And each of the
great religions is no doubt to a large extent true; though
lacking the perfection to which the evidences of Christianity
point. So reasons the Catholic. "... we believe in Him
because the Divinity He claimed rests upon the concurrent
testimony of His miracles. His prophecies. His personal
character, the nature of His doctrine, the marvellous propa-
gation of His teaching in spite of its running counter to
flesh and blood, the united testimony of thousands of mar-
tyrs, the stories of countless saints who for His sake have led
heroic lives, the history of the Church herself since the
Crucifixion, and, perhaps more remarkable than any, the
Bstory of the papacy from St. Peter to Pius X. These
testimonies are unanimous; they all point in one direc-
tion, they are of every age, they are clear and simple,
and are within the grasp of the humblest intelligence."
{The Catholic Encyclopedia, 5, art. Faith, IV, Motives of
Credibility.)

Does the principle of authority then vanish into reason,
even for the Cathohc ? No : further search discloses some-
thing more than these arguments. The reasons above given
may incline one to trust the authority in question, but of
themselves they are not enough to give certitude. No prob-

396 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

ability based upon reasoning, however strong, has the con-,
vincing force of sight or touch; one may even demonstrate
most perfectly that the planet is there in the heavens, but
unless he consents to look in the telescope and sees the planet,
he has not the highest degree of certainty. Hence it is that
science insists upon experimental confirmation of its reason-
ings. And so it is here. The conviction of the infallibility
of revealed religion is gained only when we by a free act of
will assent to the dogmas. And even this act of will is not
sufficient of itself. But, owing to Divine grace, it is fol-
lowed by a faith, a " certitude " as Newman calls it, of the
absolute truth of the revelation; just as the consent to look
in the telescope is followed by the indubitable sight of the
heavenly body. "... in the minds of many, faith is re-
garded as a more or less necessary consequence of a careful
study of the motives of credibility [reasonings], a view which
the Vatican council condemns expressly . . ." " The
Church has twice condemned the view that faith ultimately
rests on accumulation of probabilities." " It is the free gift
of God." {Op. cit., V, Analysis of the Act of Faith from the
Subjective Standpoint.) Faith is, in St. Thomas' words, " an
act of the intellect assenting to a Divine truth owing to a
movement of the will, which is itself moved by the grace of
God " (Summa Theologica, part II, question 2, art. 2).

But this " free gift of God " to him who wills to assent,
this " Divine supernatural faith " is not rational insight.
The dogma to which we assent is not necessarily made
clear and intelligible to the light of reason, by our faith in
it. If that were so, the whole matter would once more be
reduced to reason. " Supernatural grace moves the will,
which, having now a supernatural good put before it,
moves the intellect to assent to what it does not understand"
{Encyclopedia, art. Faith, ibid.).

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS — THOMISM 397

The practical motive then, the pure ipse dixit, reappears
at the end. "... the proposition [dogma] itself does not
compel our assent, since it is not intrinsically evident, but
there remains the fact that ottly on condition of our assent to
it shall we have what the human soul naturally yearns for, viz.,
the possession of God, Who is, as both reason and authority
declare, our ultimate end; ' He that believeth and is bap-
tized, shall be saved. . . .' But . . . the will needs a special
grace from God, in order that it may tend to that supernatural
good which is eternal life " {ibid.; the italics are my own).
Yet the practical motive is conceived throughout in no
subjective sense; it gives insight into reality. Faith is not
arbitrary, but the way is prepared most carefully by reasons.
There is no question of a leap in the dark. No subjective
afi&rmation decides, as with Kant. The assent of the will
does not end the story. We cannot believe merely at will.
Supernatural grace is needed to show us, to reveal the truth
of the dogma, even though not to explain that truth. So the
planet reveals itself to him who consents to look in the tele-
scope, though the gazer may or may not understand how
the planet can be there — for it may contradict all his pre-
vious theories. "... supernatural grace . . . moves the
intellect to assent to what it does not understand " (quoted
above).

In the end, then, authority is authority from a delicately
balanced complex of motives, of which the chnching force
lies in the last step; — a step taken by will and by will alone.
The will is free to yield or not to yield to the inducements of
reason. Reason is not strong enough to compel it. If it
decides to yield, revelation crowns its act; but this is a
matter of values, of practical considerations: " Super-
natural grace moves the will, which, having now a super-
natural good put before it, moves the intellect to assent ..."

398 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

(italics mine). Religious dogma convinces the head by-
working upon the heart and the hand. The practical mo-
tive stands upon its own feet, unaided, in the crucial moment
when the ipse dixit, the word of Jesus or the Church, is
accepted.

What then shall we say of the justice of its claim ? We
do not hesitate to afl5rm that it is in principle sound. From
the point of view of pure theory, it would not seem so; but
life is not pure theory. If conduct is three-fourths of it, and
feehng some fraction also, it would seem that in our trans-
actions with reality the intellect plays a minor r61e. And
how then should the message of these other organs be
denied ? It is not that practical needs urge us to believe
certain things because we wish to believe them; rather
because we cannot, if we squarely face the practical situa-
tion — as the theorist does not — help believing them. As
human nature actually is, we cannot, in the majority of
life's exigencies, wait for the verdict of science or of reason.
Much as we should like to do so, a time far beyond what we
have at our disposal would be required. The demands of
conduct are insistent; control of the passions of men must
be firmly estabUshed in some organized system; science,
extending but Httle beyond the bounds of the physical, and
even varying from age to age within those bounds, would be
but a futile guide in questions of the ultimate values. We
must perforce appeal, in the common conduct of Hfe, to
some immediate authority. And as we have already suffi-
ciently seen, we do so. Men abide by common sense in
mundane matters; and on the whole, in the ultimate ques-
tions, men accept some religious dogma or other, whether
dictated by the heart's claims or by some potent person-
ality; and in neither realm have men stopped to demon-
strate. The Catholic Church is simply the strictly logical

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS — THOMISM 399

conclusion in matters of religion, of the common human atti-
tude; and that is to say, of the inevitable attitude. Faith
we must have, and do have. If hfe is a war upon evil, and
the church life's army, the soldiers must implicitly obey
their commanders.

But with all this, there is no ground for excliiding reason
at the end. There will always be something unsatisfactory
about dogmas which are not explained, deduced, or seen to
cohere with the structure of the world as a whole. It may
be necessary for us to beheve them, and they may be most
unquestionably known to be true; but that is the case with
the phenomena of electricity and gravitation, which yet we
strive to account for. The practical attitude iias its own way
of going straight to truth, and it is simply narrow-minded
to deny this, or to undervalue it. In fact, no man can live
long without some use of it. But we cannot rest satisfied to
register a collection of truths. We desire to understand
them; and dogma, however indispensable, does not meet
that desire. This is as true of the dogmas of common sense
as of rehgious creeds; it is as true of the revelations of sense-
observation and memory as of the insights of the artist. All
these authorities must be trusted, but the goal is not reached
until authority joins hands with reason, and they are seen to
be intrinsically self-evident or implied in what is so. The
aspiration to explain why there is a solar system, why there
is gravitation, why God is three Persons, why Jesus com-
manded non-resistance — this aspiration is as much a need
of life as the needs of faith and of conduct. It is not so im-
portunate, for it is not a prerequisite of living; it is patient
rather, and enduring. Indeed, no other need surpasses it in
endurance. And as long as any rehgious dogma remains
mysterious, so long will our reason protest at being excluded,
and the sense of injustice will lead to indignation and revolt.

400 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

We shall then leap to the other extreme, Unitarianism; the
assertion of the exclusive right of private Judgment. For
Unitarianism is only pure and consistent rationahsm in
religion.

Not only in the dogmatic part of the practical philosophy
do we trace this fissure; the crack runs into the reasoned
portions. The proof of God, the pivot on which it might be
said the whole system turns, involves a leap across this
breach between proof and faith. The arguments for Gk)d as
given in part I of the Summa Theologica (question 2, art 3,
Eng. tr., pp. 24-27) are reducible to the argument for a
first cause. But we do not understand the nature of causa-
tion. How the potential passes into the actual, or why it
does, neither AristoteKan, nor Thomist, nor any one else,
has explained to man. The match touches the powder and
the explosion follows, the ball hits the ground and rebounds;
but the necessary connection, which we all practically be-
lieve in, is not accounted for. Hume's criticism is not fore-
stalled. (Cf . the view of Jaime Balmes on this point, which
agrees with our own: Fundamental Philosophy, pp. 481, 482,
483.) Yet suppose the nature of the causal connection were
understood; even then the crack would not be healed. The
demand for a first cause is, doubtless, a just demand. But
there is a counter-demand, viz., the demand for a cause of
that cause, and so on indefinitely. The Thomistic proof
does no more than insist on the validity of the former claim.
It was reserved for Kant to show that the one of these de-
mands is no more valid than the other. Has St. Thomas
given a sufficient reason for choosing the thesis rather than
the antitheses in this antinomy ? Not overtly at any rate.
To be sure, a Thomist might offer a further defence. He
might urge that St. Thomas really did justice to both sides
of the antinomy; for the Doctor did answer the question (in

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS — THOMISM 4OI

question 4) after the cause of the first cause. God is causa
sui; His essence is His existence. This is, of course, the
ontological proof, and it justifies the comment of Kant, that
the causal proof really involves the ontological one. But
St. Thomas has already told us (question 2, art. i) that the
ontological proof is unintelligible for man. God can under-
stand it, but not we. Hence St. Thomas does not reveal to
our understanding the grounds for belief in God. The first
cause's self-causation remains a mystery, and thereby the
antithesis of Kant's antinomy is not truly included; and the
proof of God is not rationally defended from the child's
objection, " who made God ? " We may resort to faith,
indeed: but the cleft has opened before us, and reason must
leap across if it is to accept the argument; but this it has
no means of doing.

We subjoin certain other failures of reason in the system.
As to the creation: why and how God created the world
must remain a mystery. Nor can we understand generation
(as of the Son from the Father). " And Ambrose says {De
Fide, I), ' It is impossible to know the secret of generation ' "
{Summa Theologica, part I, question 32, art. i; Eng. tr., II,
p. 58). Also potency, a chief category of the system, has no
explanatory value (cf. p. 372 above). These four are not
minor points, but foundation stones. But even if none of
these logical gaps were there, the principle of not needing to
understand all the dogmas would remain, rendering the
system inadequate.

The breach between faith and reason reacts, too, upon the
dogmas themselves. The Cathohc prepares the way for
faith by a long chain of reasons. Faith is at the top of a
ladder; we cannot easily mount if the rungs of that ladder
are not absolutely firm. But reason, however careful, is
liable to error. " The mind of man," said Pope Leo XIII,

402 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

" is shut up and held in certain bounds, and narrow enough
those boundaries are " (Encyclical letter, prefixed to trans-
lation of the Summa). Now a chain is as strong as its
weakest link; and many of the links are matters of historical
evidence, which is proverbially difl&cult. The words of
Jesus might easily not have been exactly quoted when He
identified himself with the Father. All the testimony of the
martyrs, the miracles, and other circxmistantial evidence
would then go to show that He was a supernatural person,
of an order of greatness far above the rest of mankind, but
yet not God. And so with other crucial passages; viz., the
address to Peter, et al. As long as the dogmas themselves
are not intrinsically evident, it can never be absolutely cer-
tain which dogmas of Scripture are the ones revealed. A
section of the human race, whose temperament emphasizes
reason's claims more than faith's, will find herein a loophole
for dissent.

The rupture thus started leads to the same endless and
futile tilt that we found between previous t3rpes of phi-
losophy. The Unitarian, revolting against authority in toto,
undertakes to work out a rehgious system by the light of
reason alone. But he soon finds hfe too short for the task.
Oi", what is the same thing, the problem appears too difficult
for men, thinking independently, to attain a solution ac-
ceptable to all. The result is that one grows weary and' turns
his rehgion into a cult of morality. Unitarians have no
theology; most other Protestants have a diminishing one.
" Behave yourself properly," they say, " and your theology
may be anything or nothing." Such is the gist of a recent
typical book. The Religion of the Future. But sooner or
later, we beheve, this eats out the heart of morality. Auguste
Comte, the classical instance of all such " ethical culture "
tendencies, at last endowed his polity with the title " Re-

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS — THOMISM 403

ligion of Humanity " and in place of the Madonna and
infant Jesus adopted the symbol of the young woman with
a male child. As we have already remarked, a working
religion needs tenets. We cannot act for action's sake alone.
We cannot expect men to practice long the difficult arts of
self-sacrifice, tolerance, or forgiveness of injuries, unless
they beheve that those arts are justified by some Principle
of the universe, which will ensure them well-being to com-
pensate their present losses. What we seek, we seek sub
specie boni; we cannot put heart into what brings no gain in
the end. The reaction from Unitarianism to some form of
Catholicism is but a question of time. Of course, one may
at this juncture become a skeptic ; that alternative we shall
later consider. Provided, however, one retains a genuine
religious interest, he will tend to waver between the ex-
tremes of dogma without understanding and reason without
doctrine. In either event, the philosophical problem is not
solved. We have not discovered a plan of the universe
satisfactory to the reason and sufficient for the conduct of
Ufe.

The cure hes of course not in discarding dogma, but in
improving it; by which we mean, rationalizing it. The
mysteries must be studied until they become either self-
evident, or implicates of what is self-evident. The causal
connection, which the criticism of Hume has never pre-
vented us from treating as if it were necessary, must be
shown to be such. We must with all our powers seek to
illuminate the arcana of creation and generation. We must
strive to ascertain how one aspect of the world implies
another. The practical synthesis has shown, by most skill-
ful reasoning, how the partisans may become consistent with
one another; and this reconciliation is a great achievement.
But it has given no reasons why both sides must be accepted

404 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

rather than one only. It has given no rationale of the bind-
ing principle. It proves that we may accept both, and a
broad common sense, as well as the religious need, counsels
the acceptance of both; but we do not see the logic of it.
Such logic we ought to seek. Not that we shall ever be able
to stop seeking it! No exhortations are necessary, for there
is here an instinct which cannot be stifled. But it behooves
man to realize this, that he may not continue to fight against
a foe which sooner or later must conquer him. Naturam
expellas furca, etc. Rationalism, pitching out dogmatism,
will sometime yield to that enemy: of dogmatism the
correlative statement is true.

For there is, naturally, no necessary hostility between the
two methods. It is common for Protestants to urge that
acceptance of dogma violates reason. Since you are for-
bidden to deny the dogmas, you cannot inquire about them;
lest your inquiry should result in a disproof of them. One
might as well say we should never study the nature of Hght,
since the investigation might disclose the fact that there was
no light. We accept the evidences of sense-observation; and
all our knowledge of this world comes from that observation
and what it impHes; yet no one would say that the dogmas
of sense are endangered by the study of physical science. We
know that the plain facts of sense must not in general be de-
nied; but that knowledge is no hindrance to our attempt to
understand them, or to make them systematic and clear. " It
is absurd," said Reid, " to conceive that there can be any
opposition between reason and common sense " (Works,
Hamilton's ed., I, p. 425). The certainty of the latter does
not rule out the investigations of the former. No more does
rehgious certainty imply a prohibition of rational inquiry.
Yet it remains true that the method of authority does not
actually inquire into all the " mysteries of the Faith," and

THE PRACTICAL SYNTHESIS — THOMISM 405

does not counsel the inquiry; rather, in its official human
form, it discourages such inquiry {Summa Theologica, part I,
question 32, art. i, Respondeo; Eng. tr., II, pp. 58-59). It is
this discouragement, which practically amounts to exclu-
sion, that provokes the rationalist to his protest. But the
exclusion is not necessarily a consequence of dogma.

Thus, once more, we find a pretty even balance between
the rivals. Each party stands for a motive which is eter-
nally sound. Scientific method, deduction, induction, all the
processes of the intellect must be exercised; the dogmatic
attitude, while admitting this, yet tends to belittle it. On
the other hand, practical certainties abound in hfe, and
religious dogma, in spite of many accompanying mischiefs,
has on the whole proved its validity by its services to man.
Some form of it indeed must always be held among the sober-
minded. The one-sided partisan of rationalism believes it
to be not yet intellectually grown up ; the one-sided reHgious
devotee considers his opponent spiritually decadent. But
as far as we can see, life would be as dreary, even as impos-
sible, without the one as without the other. The present
age emphasizes the rationalist side, the Middle Ages the
dogmatic; but a philosophical survey should not lay too
much stress on the present. The scientific spirit has been
ascendant less than five hundred years, and while it has
greatly altered the material side of Ufa, has perhaps not
affected the hearts of men so much as did the religious
period. The pendulum swings back and forth, and the
course of wisdom is to remember that it is bound to return
from every extreme. Everything seems to indicate that
Cathohcism, in one form or another — Roman, Greek, or
Episcopal, or some new form — is as permanent as science.
But neither party solves the original philosophical problem.
Protestantism has sharpened an indispensable tool, and

406 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

essays no use of it; Catholicism gives us answers to medi-
tate upon, but does not help us to meditate. The one will
not demonstrate its results; the other has no results to
demonstrate. Each condemns the other, while both are
necessary.

CHAPTER XI

THE DIAGNOSIS OF THE DISEASE

IF any reader has had the patience to follow thus far, it
would seem a pity to make him wade through another
chapter like the last before coming to our main question.
To round out the historical scheme, no doubt, we ought at
least to take up the massive structure into which Leibnitz
welded the many factions. But our general Hne of criticism
ought to be pretty clear by this time, and we shall content
ourselves with suggesting how it would apply to that great
system.

We have in Chapter VIII characterized Leibnitz's syn-
thesis as on the whole an aesthetic one: meaning that it was
based upon such ideals as peace, mutual complaisance, and
accord. Probably aesthetic is too strong a word ; for though
the idea of the universe as a beautiful chord may have in-
fluenced him, yet in critical conceptions like the " preestab-
lished harmony " and " compossibility " it is not so much
positive concord as absence of discord that Leibnitz empha-
sizes. His world is more like the unison of octaves than the
thrilling quahty of the tonic or diminished seventh. This
notion of reciprocal sufferance, or non-contradiction, be-
tween the parts of reality, was certainly the precipitate of
Leibnitz's teaching in the mind of his disciple Christian
Wolff. We beheve, then, that it would not be difficult to
demonstrate that Leibnitz's main doctrines were animated
by no motive of mutual implication, nor by our need of
conducting ourselves in the enviroimient, but by the desire

407

408 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

to show how the parts of the universe fit smoothly together.
Such an attitude we should expect from the man who was
at once diplomatist and polymath. Says Hoffding "...
the main thought of his philosophy was that existence is
continuous and consists of a multitude of individual beings,
each with its own idiosyncracy, in reciprocal harmony with
one another " {History of Modern Philosophy, I, Eng. tr.,
P- 337)- Not only these individual beings (monads) but
their states or phases, apparently so diverse and contrary,
are mutually adjusted. Rest and motion are not the diamet-
rical opposites they look to be; rest is a tendency to move,
a real infinitesimal motion. Potentiality is dawning actu-
ahty; whatever is possible, incipiently and sHghtly is.
Sensation is but dark, confused thought. Matter and mind
are not as disparate as they seem; matter is mind with its
activity repressed and latent. The parts of the universe,
however, do not form an organism, for the monads do not
influence one another. They correspond, they are mutually
representative, and their differences do not contradict their
similarity, because those differences are not qualitative, but
only reside in the degree of clearness, or of development of
the monad's potencies. Such is, very roughly, the doctrine
of the " preestablished harmony." The real world has
ruled out aU things that are not " compossible," that is, are
mutually contradictory. Its members do not cohere in the
sense of the rationalistic synthesis; they stand side by side
without conflict. In particular we should notice the very
characteristic reconcihation of freedom and necessity:
every individual thing or event is free, in that it is unique
and not reducible to terms of law, while at the same time it
is caused by the Divine fiat: a fiat which chooses what it
chooses in accord with the greatest possible good of all
creation (the principle of suflicient reason). Many other

THE DIAGNOSIS OF THE DISEASE 409

universes than this one would have been possible, but this
has the least amount of evil consistent with the fact that it
contains finite beings. The motive clearly is to secure a
harmony between the good and the necessary: but in this
adjustment each works independently, trimming itself so as
not to interfere with the other.

The system, one would think, ought to be the most satis-
factory of all systems. Perhaps too satisfactory; it is per-
vaded by an almost saccharine flavour, which alone would
lead to a revolt. But even were this not so, we must ac-
quiesce in the criticism made by Kant, that the harmonizing
principles themselves are not independently verified. The
whole edifice seems to be of pure speculative tissue con-
structed. Brilliancy, suggestiveness, almost inconceivable
breadth we have ; but detailed verification is lacking. The
system rests alone on its appeal to our sense of harmony.
Perhaps this desire to please all sides accounts for the fact
that while we of today admire more and more Leibnitz's
powers, we do not become his disciples. Hegelians and
Thomists there are; there are few if any Leibnitzians. He
has no one virile principle, like that of rational impUcation
or practical need. The role of the peacemaker is unprofit-
able. Mere good intention, without fulfilment, is so ineffec-
tive. He does not show why one monad happens to be
accompanied by other monads, how the cause leads to the
effect, how God's perfection could possibly come to find
itself limited by the necessity of some evil. In this way he
fails to meet our instinctive desire to understand. Nor on
the other hand does he offer anything positive to fill this
gap, as the Thomist does by pointing to the practical need
of infallible certainty, satisfied by dogma. These gaps must
lead to a protest, and philosophy will return once more to the
" solid ground " of experience and the implications of ex-

4IO PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

perience (as it did with Kant when he reacted against the
Leibnitz- WoMan doctrine).

The criticism, then, which we proffer upon the system of
Leibnitz will be of the same sort as in the cases of Thomism
and Hegelianism; it does not seem necessary that we estab-
lish it point by point. Of all the synthetic types it seems to
be true, that they are in their own way as exclusive as the
partisan types; for they find their critical points in one
another's methods of combining the parts, as well as in the
independent partisan types themselves.

To those who specially admire some one philosopher out
of those we have passed in review, it will naturally look as
if we had been quite unjust to his system. And so we have:
for every thinker of note is broader than his main tendency.
Moreover, the formality of which we have accused each in
turn does not apply to all his tenets. There may be no
thinker who has not supplied concrete data out of which a
pretty full portrayal of reality might, by the pooling of all
such contributions, be afforded. In the very map which we
ourselves intend to offer, indeed, there will be no one idea
which has not been at least suggested before. What is lack-
ing, however, throughout all the scattered truths of this
sort, is some vitalizing principle which shall be seen to
unite them. But even such a principle has been already
thought of, though it has not been seriously employed by the
professionals.

One may also object that some very influential systems
have not been treated at all. Thus, Schopenhauer's doc-
trine of the Will as thing-in-itself ; the synthesis of Lotze;
the coincidentia oppositorum of Nicolaus Cusanus; the
nxmaber-philosophy of the Pythagoreans; the metaphysics
of Mrs. Eddy; and many others. Also certain hoary issues
have passed unmentioned, to wit: theism vs. pantheism,

THE DIAGNOSIS OF THE DISEASE 4II

continuity vs. discreteness, naturalism vs. supernaturalism,
and so on. It may be that these systems and issues are
more important than the ones we have taken up. Never-
theless we claim to have dealt with most of them in prin-
ciple. For instance: Schopenhauer's explanation of, say, a
man's traits by reference to Will (World as Will and Idea,
bk. II) cannot quite give satisfaction to our desire to under-
stand why that man has those traits. The Will is outside
the sphere of understanding, and is indifferent to the or-
dinary scientific account which ascribes the man's personal
make-up to heredity, environment, and perhaps some
chance " mutation " or spontaneous variation. Like so
many ideaHsts, the genial pessimist regards it as a weakness
to seek to account for the course of events. Of course he
says that it belongs to science to do this, but in his view
science cannot do it, since causality is but a subjective order-
ing of phenomena and does not tell us why this particular
kind of cause leads to that particular kind of effect and no
other — as it does lead. Schopenhauer's pessimism itself,
however, is not such a formahty; it is drawn from the detail
of fact. Our wills are ever seeking what they cannot get;
and too often they bUndly dictate our beUefs, so that we
become intolerant and prejudiced. Meanwhile his remedy
is not, to show us a way of getting what our wills seek, or of
accepting the truths for which our opponents contend, but
— renunciation. This negative result, which had been
partly foreshadowed in the Stoic teaching, cannot long be
accepted by a humanity whose instinct irresistibly seeks
life, and ever fuller Ufe. As for the other instances above
named, we leave it to the reader to convince himself that
they fail to meet one or both of the two conditions which
are the criterion of philosophic success; either, that is, they
do not ejtplain the actual content of the world, or they do

412 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

not present a doctrine which can be used to guide human
life.

Another respect in which the types here studied fail to
coincide with actual opinions, is that they are seldom en-
tertained singly; almost always in groups. One thinker is
at the same time, say, a subjectivist, a determinist, a dyna-
mist, a nominalist; another is a realistj a staticist, a deter-
minist, a Platonist; another an ideahst, a libertarian, a
Platonist; and so on. This is because each type usually
bases itself upon a single category, or upon a group of
closely related ones; and such a point of view is obviously
too narrow to cover all the faces of reality. With respect to
one another, these points of view seem disparate and rela-
tively indifferent; hence, if one chooses the side of sub-
jectivism in the subjective-objective issue, he may or may
not choose that of freedom in the determinism-freedom
issue; and so for the rest. Actually, then, philosophers tend
to be eclectic; and the history of philosophy is a morpho-
logical account, listing the compartments occupied by the
men in turn. Not that there is no connection between the
disparate points of view; but it does not concern us now to
trace it. Yet with all this permutation and combination of
them, our main thesis is not vitiated; for the controversies
between the parts continue and are motivated as above
appeared.

We have now gotten fairly before us the data of our
problem. We have set forth the grounds of most of the in-
fluential philosophic types; we have learned how each one
not only fails to provide sustenance for the instinct that sug-
gested it, but also provokes the human mind to rebel
against it and to adopt some one of the others. All revolve
in a circle about that centre which our original problem
urges us to penetrate; if we do not like one place on that

THE DIAGNOSIS OF THE DISEASE 413

circle we may choose another, but the whole spectacle of
human philosophic endeavour offers, in the main, nothing
more than this ceaseless revolution. It becomes, then, our
task to survey the data, to discern the source of the trouble,
and if possible to find a remedy.

It looks simple enough at first. Each system, we found,
had a critical point; it described a portion of reality, and
so far was true and illuminating, but beyond a certain place
the illumination died away. There was always an outlying
field wherein its description, though still true, gave no ade-
quate notion of the facts. This did not render the system
false; and it was still easy to persuade one's self that the
system was final, provided one did not think that outlying
field very important, or provided one did not feel the need
of a principle which should explain all the specific depart-
ments of reahty. On the other hand, it seemed pretty clear
that since all were true, it was an arbitrary exclusion which
brought about their perennial opposition. The germ of the
philosophic disease would then appear to be a whim, an
unreasonable desire to triumph over others; just sheer
unwillingness to admit that one's adversary may have
as good a truth as one's own. And this unwillingness is
not to be laid at the door of the partisan systems only;
the synthetic types excluded one another and the partisan
as well.

To a superficial glance, this may seem sufficient; but it is
hard to believe that mere lust of victory is the cause of so
deep-seated an evil. No doubt it is a factor — for human
selfishness is not easily dislodged; but surely not the only
factor. There is probably some excuse for this exclusion;
something in the objective situation to make exclusion
seem necessary. We believe that this is the case.

414 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

A more careful inspection than we have hitherto made
shows that the types appear constrained to contradict one
another.

For every type, there is a critical point; but the critical
point has a pecuhar property. It Hes between opposites. It
marks off, for each t)^e, an outer region which is something
like the contrary of the region in which that type is at
home. Running through the hst, we see individuals marked
off over against universals, mind over against matter, con-
sciousness over against objects, law over against freedom,
the will over against knowledge and feeHng, the whole over
against the parts, dogma over against understanding, static
over against dynamic, and so on. Each system starts from
one side of this hne of cleavage, selects one of these cate-
gories as its basis, declares it ultimate, independent, irre-
ducible, and reduces the contrary category to a function of
it. The whole point of the system is in attempting this
reduction: if it did not, it would not envisage the broad
field of reahty, it would not be philosophy but a special
science. Is not this bound to lead to conflict between the
systems ? If matter is that-which-is-not-mind, and if mind
is that-which-is-not-matter, how can spirituahsm and
materiahsm help conflicting ? If law is that which is not
freedom, and freedom that which is not law, how can the
determinist and the libertarian possibly agree ? And it is
no arbitrary assertion, to say that these correlative cate-
gories, law and freedom, mind and matter, etc., are op-
posites. We found in our study of each type that however
much one type tried to reduce its opponent to terms of
itself, it never succeeded. There was always something ex-
clusive about consciousness; something which the great-
objective formula never quite reached, always something
about universals which no heaping together of individuals

THE DIAGNOSIS OF THE DISEASE 415

could attain, etc. The lesson of history would seem to
be that these categories are mutually exclusive. Is not the
quarrel between each system and its correlate then un-
avoidable ?

To be sure we have said, in every chapter, that the cor-
relative systems need not contradict each other. We have
said of each pair that neither alternative could refute the
other, and neither interfered with the truth of the other.
But now we must face the possibiUty that we judged too
hastily. Did we really see that the antagonists did not con-
tradict each other ? No : what we did see was that both
were true, that neither could refute the other. But what if
farther analysis should disclose that at the same time each
by implication denied the other, even while both were true ?
In fact, the more we scrutinize the situation, the more we
shall feel compelled to admit the inevitableness of the strife.
For there are two very fundamental principles at work here,
as it were generating out of each system an opposite with
which it must fight: and while no doubt both are sound,
they do appear incompatible. The one assures us of the
ultimacy of those categories upon which the several systems
are built; the other justifies every system in trying to reduce
the counter-categories to terms of its own category. These
two principles are old friendfe of ours — or shall we say
enemies ? They are the externality and the internality of
relations.

The doctrine of externality says that there are entities
which are the same in all environments, independent of the
relations into which they enter, and ultimate. We have
already argued that this is true; we did not think that its
truth could be demonstrated, however, but only witnessed;
in actual intellectual work one constantly appeals to it, as
to a self-evident axiom (cf. Chapter VIII on Platonism).

41 6 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

The partisan systems all start from it, in that each takes
some one category as metaphysically ultimate. Subjec-
tivism took the conscious mind as thus ultimate, ideaUsm
the Great Self, voluntarism the Great Will, Platonism the
universals, pragmatism the " biological situation," and so
on. The synthetic systems in their own way also started
from it. Thomism takes the practical criterion as ultimate
in itself; no rational confirmation of dogma, whether in
religion or in common sense, beyond what is necessary to
make it appear reasonable and consistent, is necessary.
Leibnitz regarded the criterion of harmonious adjustment
as self-sufficient. The rational synthesis, building con-
sciously upon both the principles, externahty and inter-
nahty, accepts them as self-supporting, independently of
practical need or verifiable harmony. Any declaration of
truth whatsoever, indeed, which is uttered and believed
without the examination of aU its possible bearings, is an
example of the principle of externality. And inasmuch as
we have to beheve certain things true — even if it be that
the whole alone is real — and at the same time can never
examine all their bearings, we thereby testify to the justice
of the principle. And so every system does but do homage
to it, when it insists upon the ultimacy of its basal category.
On the other hand, the particular systems, having selected
their ttoO (ttu), immediately proceed to exploit the remainder
by the other principle, that of internality. And they are
driven to do this by a fatal logic; they will not be phil-
osophical at all unless they explain the rest of the world in
terms of their own base. Unless the universe is reduced,
analyzed, exhibited as a function of some principle or prin-
ciples, the universe is not understood. Unless, by material-
ism, mind were shown to be not ultimate, but constituted
wholly by its material relationships, materialism would not

THE DIAGNOSIS OF THE DISEASE 417

be a doctrine at all. If freedom were not explained as a
complex kind of determination by law, determinism would
not be a doctrine. Each system must then endeavour to
analyze its counter-category down into relations toward,
or of, its own category. As all belief here and now, in ad-
vance of infinite investigation, depends upon the principle
of externality, so all understanding depends upon the prin-
ciple of internaHty. We do not wish to prove the latter
principle any more than the former; we have already said
(Chapter III) that it cannot be proved, but only obeyed.

The conflict of the philosophic systems with one another,
in fine, is due to the fact that all accept both these principles.
While each system saves itself from internal contradiction
by applying externahty to its own basal category, inter-
naHty to its counter-category; as a whole, the field offers
the spectacle of a contest between these two antagonists.

If now, all these pairs of categories were not mutually
exclusive, but amenable to reduction in both directions,
there would perhaps be no ground of controversy. But it is
just the principle of externahty which says that they are not
amenable; and our own investigation has borne out the
assertion. No category has been reduced to its counter-
category; nor have we seen any way of doing it. They are
logical opposites. On the other hand, if the principle of
externahty were the only sound one, controversy might
cease. The various systems would stand peacefully side by
side, and the true philosophy be their sum. But the prin-
ciple of internaUty gives the he to any such external addition.
Viewing the matter collectively, it is as if each category said
to its counterpart, " I am ultimate and you are not, for you
are only a relation in me ": a state of affairs which, accord-
ing as our mood is Hght, heavy, or strenuous, will appear
ridiculous, or tragic, or intolerable.

41 8 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

So pessimistic a description of philosophy will not easily
be admitted by the professionals — though we may con-
ceive the laity taking a certain maKcious delight in it; and
we have to assure ourselves that there is no escape from our
characterization. It would seem as if there must be some
way out of this war of all against all. The principle of ex-
ternality our own account has verified; if our tale has been
convincing, we can hardly believe that categories are re-
ducible to terms of their opposites. Why not urge, then,
that the principle of intemality has been unduly extended ?
Our results point that way; we granted, to be sure, that that
principle was formally vaUd, but we decried it as barren,
given no real understanding of what it defined. The in-
dividuals were not truly accounted for by their reduction to
a phase of the universal; the theoretic interest was not
genuinely explained as an indefinitely remote practical
interest; and so in other cases. Is not this admission that
the principle of internality applies only in a formal manner
tantamount to a denial of it ? Merely a saving of its face,
so to speak, itself as formal as it makes out the principle to
be ? Perhaps, then, the situation may be relieved by a
partial denial of intemaUty; perhaps by that means we may
be persuaded of the needlessness of the warfare; and the
various types may be permitted to lie peacefully together.

Such a denial, indeed, is current today: it goes by the
name of pluralism. It would cure the philosophic disease
by a remedy quite the opposite of synthesis: by partition.
It is a time-honoured method of settling quarrels: separate
the antagonists. It has often appeared in the history of
thought; generally in conjunction with other types — as
in the Herbartian spiritualism, or Professor Ward's theism
— because of itself it gives no systematic plan of the uni-
verse, and no understanding of one part from another. This

THE DIAGNOSIS OF THE DISEASE 419

does not, of course, render it false; but it is so far negative
and a step in the direction of skepticism, however short that
step may be. Its negativity in fact explains our omission
of so important a tendency from the previous list.

Pluralism need not deny the principle of internality in
Mo; for that matter, no doctrine could do so. But it does
usually deny it as regards the chief categories known to
man. The various finite selves, it teaches, are ultimately
more or less independent; universals and individuals are
both real and irreducible to each other; subject and object
also; spirit and matter, theoretical and practical needs, God
and ourselves, etc. ; all these do not form an organic system
but a collection, an aggregate. Two notable books of our
time have stood powerfully for this position: Professor
Ward's The Realm of Ends and Professor James' A Plural-
istic Universe. The new-reahsts and the pragmatists tend
in the same direction. Those numerous revolters against
the Hegelian system revolt perhaps primarily at its mon-
ism; discarding its idealism because of its internal-relation
attribute and its closed unity.

The pluralist, then, believes that there are certain things,
or categories, or what not, which are mutually indefinable:
true last terms, beyond which a perfect knowledge could
not go. But the word " indefinable " is, after all, only a
more dignified name for a mystery. If there should turn
out to be, say, just seven indefinables in the whole universe,
that is but a way of saying that there are seven ultimate
mysteries; all the rest of the universe may be understood,
these seven once granted, but they cannot be understood.
Now it is simply impossible to admit, if we reflect seriously
upon the matter, that we are to be forever confronted by
mysteries — even if there are only seven of them. It is
impossible for the same reason that it is impossible even to

420 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

Iry to jump a ditch without taking for granted that our legs
will not fail at the take-off. When we are brought face to
face with this question of mystery we cannot allow that
there are mysteries: it means the snuflBing out of that un-
quenchable desire to understand; it means resignation
before we have tried. It is nothing more or less than an
exclusive dogmatism such as the Protestant condemns in
Catholicism, and we ourselves in Chapter X condemned.
It is, if you like, an act of faith to accept the interpenetra-
tion which internahty implies ^ — as long as faith is not
understood to connote uncertainty. We use the term to
signify that we are quite certain, but yet have not every-
where verified in the particulars. As the rehgious man feels
his dogma necessary to the good life, so the thinker feels this
dogma necessary to the enterprise of philosophy. Of course
nothing is more obvious than that many men do not so feel,
for they deny the dogma; but when they deny it they stop
inquiring and cease to be thinkers. They no longer ask,
" Why this particular indefinable ? " They say, " Let us
rest content at last in a mystery." It is however quite im-
possible now to prove that this faith is well grounded; we
can only point to its actual employment so far as one seeks
to understand, and to the infinity of that seeking. The
absolute idealists know this well, and that is their reason for
accepting the principle: for they are the most thorough-
going rationalists of history. They believe, with Hegel, that
everything should be understood, and so they declare that
everything is subject to the principle of internahty. But,,
no doubt, one who does not take up the original problem of
philosophy with uncompromising sincerity cannot be made
to have this faith. It is possible to live without it; it is
possible to exercise the intellect a very great deal without
granting the universal vaUdity of internality. But, as the

THE DIAGNOSIS OF THE DISEASE 421

absolutists say, if you decide to play the game, you must
follow its rules to the bitter end — and the great rule of the
game of explanation is internality. We have said that those
same absolutists have not succeeded in applying the rule,
for their Whole is not fertile to generate an understanding
of the parts; but at any rate they recognize it. In short, we
have in the principle of internal relations an axiom.

That axiom is however not treated properly when it is
announced by a fuhnination and not verified in rebus. It is
just the fact that it has not been so verified that has given
the pluraUsts their chance. But even had we no desire to
understand, and no faith that we can understand, the large
amount of empirical corroboration that hes before us should
cast suspicion on the pluraHst's solution. In any case, how
could he prove his universal negative ? How could we be
assured that mind can never be defined, or matter, or free-
dom, or any of the type-categories ? Who knows what new
light might in future generations be shed upon these topics ?
And it is plain enough that the partisans have in their own
way put faith in the principle of internality, for they have
all used it; the trouble is that they have used it in opposite
directions; so that the clash between it and its counter-
principle, externality, has turned into a battle between
particular systems.

The plurahstic type, then, carmot be accepted in so far as
we are thinkers. It is but a word for the fact that so far we
have not solved our problem. It is not, after all, properly
speaking, a philosophic type, for it has no positive scheme to
offer, no map of reaHty, not even the merest outline. It
does not locate the parts of the world by reference to one
another, as a map should do; it gives to the un travelled no
clew to the character of this or that region, no chart of sailing
directions to the voyager in unfamiliar seas. Instead, it

422 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

prescribes an abstinence from thought in which the thinker
cannot acquiesce. Its empiricism is commendable, but its
dogmatism is an arbitrary prohibition of thinking.

But if this universal interconnection is true, what becomes
of that principle of extemahty to which we have already
agreed ? It looks now as if that could not be true. We
thought that mind and body, consciousness and objects,
law and freedom, universal and individual, etc., could not
be defined respectively in terms of each other; but it looks
as if that result were only provisional, only the registration
of our present ignorance. Nevertheless externality is a
sound principle; it is, in fact, an axiom quite on a par with
internality. It is as much an indispensable object of faith
as its counterpart. If we caimot understand without the
latter, we caimot believe without the former. Internality
alone gives only relativity: everything is so far everything
else that it is nothing in particular; the objects of our cre-
dence forever vanish into something other than themselves.
Each part must however stand on its own feet — upon
whose feet else shaU it stand, if the feet of all the others in
turn rest upon its own ? The argument for a ttoO (ttS> is
eternally valid, and those philosophers who defend exter-
nality have always given it, in one form or another — and
they have given no other plea. So, even though the cate-
gories may severally be reduced to terms of their counter-
parts, they must remain intact, real by themselves, in some
way independent of each other. No, externality cannot be
refuted by internality; it is as firmly lodged in the credo of
the rational inquirer as is its opposite.

This then is the whole trouble, and the source of it, viz.,
our thought cannot help being governed by two principles
which appear to contradict each other. The principles are
sound in themselves, and each supplements the other; all

THE DIAGNOSIS OF THE DISEASE 423

thinkers use them both, though with differing emphasis.
Even the pluralist uses internality somewhere; when for
instance he is occupied in reducing the real world to the
list of indefinables. But since they do not seem to be con-
sistent with each other, and since the principle of internaUty
is not fully verified in concreto, the latter comes to be denied,
now in one quarter, now in another. The materiaKst denies
it of matter, the subjectivist of mind, the realist of objects,
the Platonist of universals — each justifying his denial by
appealing to the independence (i. e., the externality) of his
base. The occasion of stumbling is the formahty of the
internal principle; but the stumbling is made possible by
the apparent hostihty between it and the external. This
then is nothing less than the disease-germ which has poi-
soned all human philosophy. This it is which lies at the
root of the perennial controversies, the endless reforms and
as endless refutations. If the universe appears to contain
two principles which are at war, how shaU we, who wait
upon it for our knowledge, escape contention ?

Absolute idealism has seen this, of course. Lacking
specific deliverances about reality, it compensates by its
understanding of the philosophic situation. It is woven out
of the two strands of internality and externahty — that has
been shown in Chapter IX. It finds between them an un-
avoidable dialectic; and if our estimate of it was correct, it
cannot solve that dialectic. Herein the system self-sacri-
ficingly takes up into itself all the controversies which the
rest of the philosophic world eternally wages. And in as-
suming this burden it is the most honest and the justest
system which professional philosophy has to show. If those
others condemn it, therefore, they only condemn them-
selves, since they in their quarrels are examples of that same
dialectic. It is, as Hegel would say, the philosophic situa-
tion come to self-consciousness.

424 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

The result of the inquiry so far is certainly not encourag-
ing; in fact we are at the darkest point of our whole journey.
Looking back over the reforms, we can see this opposition
of self to other always at work; first it drove us from one
partisan over to its correlate, then, transferring the battle
to a higher plane, it vitiated every attempt at synthesis.
The practical synthesis, not yet fuUy conscious of the seat
of the trouble, glossed it over (following Aristotle) by reduc-
ing one member to the status of a mere potency, and con-
tented itself with insisting — correctly enough — upon the
satisfaction of our mind's thirst by dogma. The harmoniz-
ing synthesis, too, in the eagerness of its desire for peaceful
adjustment, did not realize the latent hostility of the mem-
bers it joined with its saccharine paste. The rational syn-
thesis, most intelligent of all, has in effect brought to us the
realization, how impossible is the marriage of the antag-
onists. Not only has every reform fallen through; we see
why it must have fallen through. Would it not have been
better to fail of the diagnosis ? Then at least we could have
continued in the respectable treadmill of philosophic custom,
espousing some one side, refuting all the others, and with
practice developing, perhaps, enough skill to command a
certain attention, or even repute.

At this point rises a reflection highly esteemed by the
scientific wing; dismissed too Hghtly, perhaps, in our ac-
count above. It is this : the whole argimient creates its own
difficulties. Don't make those sweeping generalizations,
the principles of internality and externality. Be scientific
rather; examine each problem, each department of the
universe, or each category, by itself. " Isolation of prob-
lems " is the suggestion. The account given in these pages
may be quite true of the history of human thought, but that
history is mainly a record of errors. Men have hitherto

THE DIAGNOSIS OF THE DISEASE 425

adopted a wrong method. The only right one is slow but
sure induction, in the manner of Darwin, or the physicists,
taking up each on its own merits problem after problem and
seeking a total system only when the cumulative evidence
points emphatically toward one. Why try once more for a
short-cut to knowledge ? Patient investigation alone will
do the task, there is no royal road — etc., etc. The atti-
tude here inculcated is not pluraHsm, but just open-minded-
ness, scientific deliberation.

The objection has a fine appearance of wisdom. And
though it is one part wrong, it is three parts right. It lays
down for the philosopher a requirement with which he can-
not dispense. That empirical method, hewing every step as
we climb up the slippery face of reality, was championed by
no less than Aristotle; if he did not perfect a system accept-
able to every expert, it was because the science of his time
was but infantile. We, however, have vastly more material
at our disposal; let us then see if we may not attain a more
stable system than Aristotle could reach. Or if not we —
for the task is too great to be quickly done — then our
heirs. At any rate, there is no other way; for what has not
been scientifically tested is not final. Philosophy should be
the empirical study of fundamental problems each by itself:
the meaning of the chief categories of the universe, viz.,
mind, Ufe, space, cause, value, time, personality, etc.

All very well: but no sooner do we investigate, say, the
meaning of personahty, than the doubt arises as to what
fads are the significant ones for the definition. Is a man his
" inner " thoughts, feeUngs, desires, and their concatena-
tion — or is he his overt relationships with men and with
nature, his social status, his works, his wealth or poverty —
or is he both of these ? Is causality an external relation
between all temporal happenings, to be understood by the

426 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

a priori analyses of Russell and Royce, or is its meaning to
be divulged only from the particular modes in which partic-
ular causes give rise to their effects ? Is mind best elu-
cidated by the introspective psychologist, or should the
latter turn biologist ? Such issues are settled by no amount
of empirical inquiry; they are, in fact, but the clash of
the same two principles which such investigation was
designed to supersede, but which dictate the manner of the
investigation itself.

It is just because those two principles, interrelation and
independence, are so ubiquitous, so indubitable, in a word
so a priori, that the isolated-problem method will never
suffice to heal the philosophic disease. The controversies of
philosophy have not been controversies about the partic-
ulars — is the world made of hydrogen, or is mind able to
outlast the body ? Such are not the casus belli; it is the
universal trait of reahty, that double-faced quality which
appears to give the lie to itself, that stirs up trouble. And
as the quarrels are not concerned with particulars revealed
by empirical methods,, so they cannot be settled by those
methods. And we might have known that beforehand. To
repeat something of Chapter II: if the problems could be
solved by objective inquiry, there would gradually have
consolidated, as there has in the sciences consolidated, a
dej&nite corpus philosophiae. It is that a certain positive
character of reality vitiates, and will vitiate, whatever
results we gain. Until that devitalizing character is
reckoned with, the empirical method is like a dyspeptic who
would restore his strength by eating more.

No: it is of no use to revive the ancient device of wiping
the slate clean and essaying a fresh start. With our new
reform of thoroughgoing empiricism, we may think that the
old issues are forgotten and outgrown. But they reappear

THE DIAGNOSIS OF THE DISEASE 427

in a modern dress. We cannot get rid of them until we
have solved them. For instance, the modern problems of
social adjustment, as we hope to show, are but the old ones
in a guise suited to the fashions and interests of today. So
it is, indeed, with all our chief modern problems. The
dualism of externahty and internality is bound to confront
us wherever we turn; we cannot settle the conflict of these
two in their present-day shapes until we have discovered
the principle which settles the controversy in the old issues
of individual and universal, static and dynamic, and all the
other warring pairs. We must resist the temptation to
beheve that our own empirical, experimenting age is the
uniquely gifted one of all history, whose ways of approach-
ing the philosophic problem are exclusively fitted for suc-
cess. We cannot lastingly solve our own problems before
we know the general principle of reconciling opposites : else
the clash, removed from one sphere, breaks out in another.

Here we have turned our last corner and stand before the
lair of a monster whose growls may have been heard anon,
amid the din and clamour of rebuttal; to wit, the monster
of skepticism. Hitherto this view — if it may be called a
view — has been dismissed as giving up the problem, as
intellectual cowardice. But it is not cowardice to know
when you are beaten, and skepticism now appears to be
something very like that knowledge. How shall we say
that skepticism is weakness when the skeptics, from Zeno
to Hume, have been the keenest of human thinkers ? And
we are not talking of partial skepticism — such as rehgious
agnosticism, or doubt of the external world — but of the
thoroughgoing denial of any certainty whatsoever.

That denial cannot be forestalled by argument drawn
from any one t3T)e — for it depends upon the inevitable
conflict of tjTJes. It is often urged, for instance, against the

428 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

skeptic that he refutes himself when he declares knowledge
forever impossible; for how could he know that reality
eludes our grasp unless he knew enough about reality to be
sure that it is not what we have got ? Or does he doubt the
truth of his own assertion that there is no truth ? But this
sort of reductio ad absurdum, like the others that we have
met in the several types, does no harm. The full-blooded
skeptic does not base his denial on the distinction between
reality and our minds, or on any assumed principles. He
argues by giving his enemy rope to hang himself. He allows
the philosophers to develop their theories to the utmost and
then quietly points to the fact that they contradict one
another and their results cancel out. This is the dialectic of
thought made expHcit: given time enough and thinkers
enough, thought ruins itself. It is not an a priori argument,
but a posteriori.

If now it is true that skepticism — which is but the sense
of despair that overwhelms one who looks upon his disease
— turns upon the dialectic of views, it devolves upon us to
take up that unpleasant topic. This of course includes the
problem of the antinomies which we have met in Kant, in
mysticism, and in absolute idealism. A moment ago we
characterized the difficulty by the opposition between the
principles of internal and of external relations. That how-
ever is but the more fundamental way of stating it; for aU
the famous old contradictions of Zeno, of Kant, of Hegel, or
of the mystics reaUy depend upon the hostility of these two
principles. Consider, for instance, the flying arrow. Ac-
cording to Zeno the tip is at each instant of its flight at rest,
for it is in just one position. On the other hand the tip is
never at rest, because it moves, and motion cannot be
analyzed away into a sum of immobiHties. Now the single
instant of rest is but the element of the whole continuous

THE DIAGNOSIS OF THE DISEASE 429

motion abstracted out and considered by itself, apart from
all relation to the succeeding instants. This element must
be really present in the flight; it stands there for itself and
is real by itself. The principle of external relations tells us
that we ought not to say it is nothing apart from its relation
to the succeeding instants; it is a fact, really present as non-
motion. On the other hand, the principle of internal rela-
tions says that such an instantaneous position is nothing
by itself, a false abstraction, only an aspect of the contin-
uous flight, not an entity out of which the whole is summed,
as out of independent parts. In reality, both these prin-
ciples are true, and there hes the contradiction. And we
do not hesitate to say that this contradiction has never yet
been solved. A common device nowadays is to reject the
principle of externality (cf. Bergson, Creative Evolution,
ch. 4, pp. 308 f., Eng. tr. by Mitchell). That is, we are told
that the instant is not real; the arrow's tip is never truly at
a certain point in a single time, but is passing through the
point. But who does not see that this is an evasion ? How
can you pass through anything without being for a moment
in it ? This way of escape simply denies the right of analy-
sis. But to deny that is to deny thought. Bergson does
this, to be sure, but we have already seen with what con-
sequences to his own position (Chapter VIII). The point
has also been made that the tip is not at rest in any of these
instants, because rest means remaining in one position for a
finite length of time. That is perhaps true, but it is irrele-
vant. In any case the tip is not moving; and the puzzle is,
how the motion can come to be analyzed at all points into
those non-mobile states.

What is true of the rest-motion antinomy is true of the
others. For instance, take the Kantian argument as to the
beginning of time. Suppose a moment when time began.

430 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

Then this moment presupposes an earlier one, when there
was no time: a patent self-contradiction. It is nothing else
than the principle of internal relations which dictates the
eternal regress. Why does the said moment presuppose an
earlier one ? Because every moment of time must be de-
fined by its place in the time-series — i. e., by its relation to
other moments. The principle of externahty, on the other
hand, assures us that that way lies no possibility of getting
a real sequence. If every moment is but its relations to the
remainder, what happens when the remainder is likewise
analyzed away ? There must be some solid basis for these
interminable relations to rest upon, some actually given irov
arCi. Each moment must have in itself something ultimate
and temporal, if it is not to vanish into a set of relations
without terms; hence the first moment may exist independ-
ent of any previous moments. Mr. Russell has used this
last argument in his plea for absolute position in space and
time; and it is as old as Aristotle. Neither of the principles
can be denied, and there lies the inconsistency.

That the same holds of the first-cause antinomy, and of
the necessary Being in the Kantian list, is we think obvious
enough to need no further comment. And the kind of
antinomy which is stated in the form of the " infinite
regress " permits the same reduction. Consider it, for in-
stance, in space. A line an inch long is one finite completed
quantity. Yet, our thought assures us, it contains an
infinite number of points; a number so great that if we
began at one end of the line and proceeded toward the other
we could never traverse them all — since infinite means
endless. But, again, since the line is finite, we do traverse
them all. It is the contradiction of the completed infinite.
It may not be avoided by the modem mathematical de-
finition of infinity, as that which can be put into one-one

THE DIAGNOSIS OF THE DISEASE 43 1

correspondence with its own part. Great achievement
though that definition is, it does not reach the present issue.
The difl&culty is to see how there can be, without incon-
sistency, as many elements in the part as in the whole.
That there are, is obvious enough. In the number series, for
example: the first odd number corresponds to number one,
the second odd number, three, to number two, the third odd
number, five, to number three, the fourth, seven, to four,
nine to five, and so on forever. Thus for each number in the
odd-nvunber-series we find one and only one in the whole-
number-series, and conversely. At the same time there are
more numbers in the latter series than in the former, because
the former leaves out the even numbers. The number-
series then has been put into one-one correspondence with
its own part. Obviously, this would not be possible with a
finite series, and it is possible with an infinite one. The
fact, naturally, we do not question; its inteUigibiHty we
deny. The only reason why the part has always enough in
it to furnish a correspondent for every new element dis-
covered in the whole is that the part itself has an endless
(i. e., infinite) number of elements. The very possibihty of
the one-one correspondence rests upon a tacit assumption
of infinity. The notion of endless number, of ever new ele-
ments to draw upon in order to eke out the correspondence,
is not deduced from the notion of correspondence. What the
definition really tells us is that only where we have an in-
finite collection is one-one correspondence possible between
whole and part. From a logical point of view, it is a vicious
circle. From a mathematical point of view, it appears, it
is useful, because it brings out a certain positive property of
the infinite which it substitutes for the old and negative idea
of mere endlessness. But it does not in the least abolish
that negative attribute out of infinity; on the contrary it

432 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

surreptitiously employs it. And the puzzle remains, how
the endless number of elements can all be gathered together
into one whole.

Nor is the contradiction avoided by the denial of points
(or elements) ; i. e., by the assertion that they are ideal
hmits of division, not real parts: fictions, hj^ostasized
abstractions, etc. This is bound to be a mistake, since it is
the doctrine of a partisan type become exclusive (the anti-
intellectualist; cf. Chapter VIII). Even if we had not the
principle of external relations to fall back upon, we could
see the error; for one line cuts another in a point, and if
there were no real point, the line would not reaUy be cut.
The points must then be as real as the line, and indeed both
are quite real. Or if with absolute idealism we would con-
demn both as abstractions, we should recall that that view
at any rate admits the contradiction and — as we judged —
does not solve it.

No, the contradiction cannot be dodged: and we may see
why. The endlessness of the collection of points in the inch
depends upon the principle of internality; the completeness
of the line upon externality, (i) The problem is, what is
the true nature of the line ? Internality says it is relative
to its points and constituted wholly by them as terms; a
line is just a certain peculiar relation between points (two
at least). But this relation is of course not a sort of mental
comparison in the mind of an onlooker, but an objective
fact, and it is to be distinguished from the terms (points)
which it connects. Now in space the only distinctions are
ultimately differences of position: hence the line must be
different in position from either of the points it connects.
Position being marked by points, it follows that there must
be on the line a point distinct from either of the end-points.
This fact is customarily stated as the postulate that between

THE DIAGNOSIS OF THE DISEASE 433

any two points there is a third; but this so-called postulate
is simply an instance of the principle of internahty as ap-
plied to lines. Well: if we have a new point between the
other two, and if by the axiom of internality it is constituted
by its relations to them, then between it and its original
relata new relations (Unes) crop out, leading to new points
between them, and so on endlessly. That is, a line between
two points contains a third point, the lines between this and
the two end-points contain each one more, and so on with-
out cessation. All this is a consequence of the fact that a
line is conceived as a real objectively existing relation; it
dissolves into terms which again imply relations, which
relations dissolve into new terms, etc., forever and ever.

(2) On the other hand, the principle of externality con-
siders the Hne as no relation but as an independent term.
It has a definite magnitude irrespective of the number of its
elements. Or if one does not believe in absolute magnitudes,
we shall say instead that the Hne is viewed in comparison
with other lines and found to possess a certain length rela-
tive to them. In either case the point of view from which
the hne is estimated is quite indifferent to its own internal-
relational character: it is considered as an indefinable, a
length, a dimension not reducible to lower terms (number of
points). If reduced at all, as in measurement, it is reduced
to lines as its parts.

Now both these principles apply strictly to the nature of
the hne itself, and hence they give contradictory results.
The relation-view of a hne makes it not a complete collec-
tion; the term-view makes it complete, i. e., finite.

Or the matter may be viewed from the other end; not the
nature of the line, but of its ultimate elements, is now in
question. Kant put it this way in his second antinomy: it
reveals the two principles as exphcitly as the above way.

434 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

The thesis reads: there must be a last point in division, a
wov (7TW. In Kant's words, " Every compound substance in
the world consists of simple parts" {Critique of Pure Reason,
Miiller's tr., p. 352). This simple part, or last term in divi-
sion, is something which is the same whether alone or
simimed with others into a whole; it obeys the principle of
externahty. The antithesis reads: there can be no last
point in division, or as Kant said " there is nowhere in the
world anything simple " {op. ciL, p. 353). Here the alleged
last stage in the division of the line is asserted to be as rela-
tive to its parts as every other stage was. There is no rea-
son for ceasing to apply the principle of internal relations at
one stage more than another; apply it then, and you have
the result that the supposed simple part is a relation of
further parts, a compound. The analogy between division,
recession in time, procession in time or in space, is perfect;
in all of these categories, the axiom of externahty wars with
that of internality.

If we leave the field of space and time and consider the
constitution of a thing with quaHties, we find the same
situation. A leaf is green; there is then a certain relation
between the colour and the leaf, which if made clear would
explain how that particular colour happened to belong to
that leaf. Perhaps that relation would be this: the leaf
contains chlorophyll, and chlorophyll is green. But this
relation is a distinct entity from the green colour and from
the leaf, and we have to ask how it came to apply to them.
How does chlorophyll happen to be green, and how does
chlorophyll happen to be in the leaf ? As the line joining
two points is a distinct entity from either of the points, and
therefore contains a third point which must be joined with
each of them, so here the relation of leaf and green through
chlorophyll itself needs to have its junction with the leaf and

THE DIAGNOSIS OF THE DISEASE 435

the colour explained. Chlorophyll is green because its
chemical constitution is such as to absorb every kind of
wave-length except that of green light; and chlorophyll
is in the leaf because by capillary attraction the sap has
risen from the trunk to the leaves. Then new problems
arise, to be answered by new relations. How does chlo-
rophyll come to be able to absorb all other light-waves
besides green ? How does capillary attraction come to
occur in the tree ? And so on without end. The amount of
scientific knowledge required to explain a single fact hke a
green leaf is infinite; an infinite number of material situa-
tions must have transpired right then and there in order to
produce that one completed result. It is the finished sum of
an endless collection of factors.

It is the principle of internaUty which says to us at every
stage: the fact you have named is not final by itself, but
must be understood, and the only way to understand it is to
see it in its relations to the other facts. It is the principle of
externahty which says at every stage: here is a fact, com-
pletely determined, standing on its own feet, which you
must believe, independent of its being explained or not. The
internaKty-axiom drives us ever onward, the externaKty-
axiom tells us to be satisfied with what is present. The
former shows its power in the real world, in the infinite inter-
twining at every moment of different laws, causes, and ele-
ments; the latter shows its power in the resultant existence
here and now of finite events and determinate limited things.
But how one limited thing can be the sum of an infinite
number of real elements is not clear.

This situation is often put more technically; and there is
no harm therein, provided we are able to fill in the abstract
scheme with concrete illustration. Thus, the green leaf is
self-contradictory because (i) " green " and " leaf " are

436 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

two — the one being a colour and the other a substance —
yet (2) they are one, because the leaf M green; they occupy
the same space at the same time, and identity is signified by
the very form of the judgment which unites subject and
predicate. But if " green " and " leaf " are two, their unity,
and if one, their duality, needs to be accounted for; hence
a new relation must be sought, grounding each in the other.
And so without end. Or, once more : A and B the subject
and predicate, are the same yet different; this is a plain
contradiction, and must be harmonized. Let them be dif-
ferent in one respect, alike in another respect. But we still
have contradiction. Call the aspect in which they are iden-
tical C; call their differences Di and D2. How is that while
C is different from Di, yet they are both the same in that
they constitute A ? And a similar question arises in regard
to C and D2. The fission of the sameness-aspect, and of the
difference-aspect, once begun, will go on ad infinitum.

When the thing is put thus formally — as it too often is
by even so forceful an expositor as Mr. Bradley — the un-
sympathetic reader revolts. He says the whole dialectic is a
formality: not a real contradiction, as when two concrete
assertions oppose each other. When one biologist declares
that acquired characters are inherited, and another that
they are not, there is real contradiction, something to be
concerned about and to be solved by further evidence. But
when we are told that a thing is a finite sum of infinite rela-
tions the contradiction is not significant. It neither adds
information nor is to be solved by information. It is con-
structed out of figments; relation after relation is " cooked
up " in order to create a difficulty when there is no difficulty,
so as to lead to some favoured philosophical doctrine.

Such a view is common in a time when we want to get
results and get them quickly; it serves to excuse us for neg-

THE DIAGNOSIS OF THE DISEASE 437

lecting a topic as uninteresting to most people as morning
prayers and (we regret to say) as ineffective upon daily life.
But the view is quite superficial. Who declares the dialectic
a formality, has not understood it. When it is stated in
symbolic language, we do not see its pertinence. But as we
may see from the instance of the green leaf, it is nothing else
than the two agents of the dialectic that make us seek ever
deeper scientific explanations. Why has a certain substance
the colour it has ? Why does the sap run ? Why are some
wave-lengths taken up by this substance and not by that ?
Why does Hght come in the wave-lengths observed ? Ques-
tions like these are hardly to be regarded as idle figments
" cooked up " by a philosophy which will plead for some
special view. They are the Hfe-blood of science. Of course
if one does not Hke the word " why " in our account —
many have said that science asks not why but how things
happen — he may substitute "how." That is a verbal
matter. But the impulse to see clearly the connections in
nature's events is no verbal matter; it is, as we said in
Chapter I, the root of all science and all philosophy alike.

Need we also repeat that whoever rejects the dialectic is
by the logic of events made an example of ? As a matter of
fact, all the types except the HegeHan, reject it; and they
are sufficiently piUoried for doing so. What results have
they to show ? They do but contradict one another. And
for that matter have they not been found as formal as they
accuse the dialectic of being ? If the Hegelian is hardly
better off, is it not because he has never been able to get
beyond the dialectic ? He only reiterates " We must get
beyond: reahty gets beyond it." Which we also beUeve:
but how can we understand the getting beyond ?

But the dialectic is yet more efficacious. It enters into all
human hfe; into history and politics and art and morality,

438 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

into religion and custom, and in its own way it is not absent
from the intimacies of private life. When we gave account
of the main types of philosophy, we tried to show that they
concerned not man's intellect alone, but his whole person-
ahty. Each tj^e ministers to practical needs and to emo-
tional needs. Subjectivism gave comfort to the egotistic
impulses of man, ideaUsm to his love of personaHty, reaHsm
to his worship of independence, Thomism to his need for
practical certainty, pragmatism to his instinct for experi-
ment, et sic ultra. These systems consciously or uncon-
sciously went along with corresponding attitudes to the
problems of politics, social order, material progress, reHgion.
What if they did not always succeed — as we saw they did
not — in gratifying the impulses which originated them ?
As philosophical systems, they turned out formaHsms; in
practical Hfe they led always to battles with an opposing
school — and battles never finally decided. Catholic and
Protestant must disagree. Unitarian and Trinitarian, Whig
and Tory, Conservative and Liberal, Repubhcan and Dem-
ocrat, classicist and romanticist, rigourist and hedonist,
advocate of laissez-faire and socialist, capital and labour,
all through the long list of parties whose strife has made up
human history. Each of these parties builds upon one of the
two principles whose clash constitutes the dialectic. Has
any of them succeeded in estabhshing itself as the one right
view, satisfying all human needs ? Has it worked out a
scheme which even stood fast on its own feet and grew and
by the consensus expertorum — not to say gentium — bade
fair to be final ? Perhaps so, for a time; every age probably
views its own prevailing doctrines with a hidden conviction
of finahty. But in general, men's poHtical institutions, their
moral codes, their rehgious sects, or their business methods,
have been as exclusive and hostile and as far short of finality

THE DIAGNOSIS OF THE DISEASE 439

as their philosophical schools; and if the former have lasted
longer, it was because their devotees believed them indis-
pensable to Ufe and had to organize them better.

Let us see in more detail how our two principles have
generated these quarrels. When religion champions a fixed
theology, it so far abjures the method of waiting to see all
the bearings of the dogmas. It says, " we cannot wait; we
must have something to go upon." At the dictation of the
need of confidence, of a firm basis for the moral conduct of
Kfe, it accepts the revelation. Its doctrines are held true in
their own right, irrespective of bearings, relations, con-
firmations subsequently to be discovered. This is obedience
to the principle of external relations. Of course, Thomism
did not at all refuse to consider these bearings. It has con-
sidered them to an enormous extent: it has, perhaps, found
strong confirmation. Nevertheless, the citadel of its fortress
does not record that confirmation; as we saw at the end of
Chapter X, dogma needs it not. The virtue of the act of
faith hes in its independence of evidence from other things.
The principle of internahty is excluded. The Protestant,
on the other hand, insists upon confirmation by reason; a
doctrine must not be accepted unless shown to cohere with
the individual's judgment, with the teaching of science and
the best good of human Ufe. Internahty is the fundamental
principle of Protestantism. True, most of the Protestant
sects do not reject dogma entirely. They have their creeds,
their revelation, in one part or another; as with the dogma
of the Trinity, for example. They have seen that man can-
not live by reason alone, and they have accordingly com-
promised between the method of scientific confirmation and
that of unquestioning faith. In some points they accept the
one, in some the other. The Unitarian alone is uncom-
promising: his motto is, to beKeve only what he can see

440 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

squared with the natural reason of man. He cannot under-
stand how God may be one and yet three, or how a just God
could accept a sacrifice from a sinless Christ. Hence he
rejects the Trinity and the Atonement. He is thus forced
into controversy not only with Catholicism, but with the
other Protestant sects who in part retain the Catholic
attitude. Hereby originate those quarrels that have con-
sumed so much of the rehgious fervour of Christianity.

Turning now to a very different field, that of social re-
form, we find that here the issue lies between the individual's
self-sufl&ciency and his dependence upon the whole social
body. " Equal opportunity for all " is the watchword of
most socialistic enterprises: it is an altruistic ideal. The
laws should be so framed that one man cannot by superior
cunning or ingenuity make it harder for others to earn a
fair living; monopoly, cornering the market, crowding out
small dealers by great combinations, all these practices
work against equahty of opportunity. When there is a
fairly large body of men who feel that their wages are insuf-
ficient to give them equal advantages with the rest, and
when at the same time their labour is indispensable to the
community, they declare war, i. e., they strike. This strife
of capital and labour is simply the result of social conditions
which permit individual inequalities to grow unchecked.
It is due to the fact that one part of society forgets that its
own welfare depends upon that of the other parts. Any part
or class or individual, if it has the power, resents this exclu-
sive, self-sufficient attitude, and social order is more or less
destroyed. This is socialism's reductio ad absurdum of
individualism; and in the former's opinion it proves that
man is essentially a member of society. The doctrine of
equal opportunity is at bottom the doctrine of the social
organism; for the organism is that in which each part is

THE DIAGNOSIS OF THE DISEASE 441

both means and end. So it is also with democracy, of which
socialism, generally speaking, is only the logical consequence.
What else does democracy mean but that all individuals
should, as regards the fundamental needs of life, have an
equal chance because they are of equal worth ? All should
vote — women as well as men — all should be educated, all
should have free utterance, no opinion should be condemned
without a hearing, all social experiments should be tried so
far as humanly possible, etc. And what is the motive for
these beliefs unless it be a deep-seated conviction that one
man's welfare depends on that of all others, that a man
" lives not unto himself alone " but unto all the human
race ? In short, that the individual is constituted by his
relations to other men ? In the method by which this ideal
equality is to be secured, also, socialism reveals its basis.
Government management, government ownership: this is
its programme. But government is no individual, it is the
representative of society as a whole. It is (or ought to be)
the tribunal of justice and impartiality; the sign and seal of
the social body. It is to the individual citizen the reminder
of the principle of internal relations; his own interests taken
by themselves, lead him to consider himself external to the
rest. Progress in civilization, to this democratic view, is
only the increased application of the principle of internahty
to the needs of men.

Over against this stands the ideal of individualism. How-
ever fundamental are the social relations, individuals will
always differ in endowment; for each individual is not
simply a social function, but real and unique in himself.
Some will get their wants better satisfied than others.
Equal opportunity will not ensure equal distribution of
goods; the sociaHstic ideal is impractical. Individual dislike
of certain tasks — stoking, cleaning sewers, even preparing

442 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

meals — is too strong to be overcome by the social sense
alone. Government ownership would bring the railroads,
the shipping industry, etc., into a mess of political intrigue,
i. e., individual self-seeking. Successful enterprise can be
carried on only by individual initiative and individual
responsibility. " One-man power " is the watchword of
individualism, as " equal opportunity " of socialism. What
is society but a collection of individuals ? And do not the
greater individuals deserve more than the lesser ? Ought
not those eminent intellects who have founded the modem
gigantic business combinations, with their perfected organ-
ization, to receive the wealth which rewards their superior
skill ? Do they not deserve more than the mediocre citizen
who plods unambitiously through his daily task, or the
poor man who carelessly begets a huge family and then
wonders why he has not a sufficient income ? Should the
vote of the unintelligent count as much as the vote of the
well-informed ? So the argument runs, ramifying into
countless details. In all this, individualism rests upon the
principle that every man has his own pecuHar powers,
quahfications, needs, and should be allowed to have what
they demand. It is the principle of externaHty. From its
point of view, equality of opportunity defeats itself; when
room is made for the small, the great are cramped, and they
need more opportunity than the average. Has not all
progress come through the exceptional opportunities which
chance, or wealth, or patronage, or force, afforded to excep-
tional individuals ? If you don't cultivate the geniuses
to the exclusion of the ordinary ones, where will be scientific
advance ? Such is the reductio ad ahsurdwm of socialism,
at the hands of the individualist. If the former lays stress
upon the sameness of men, so does the latter upon the dis-
tinctions between them. The position leads toward some

THE DIAGNOSIS OF THE DISEASE 443

form of aristocracy, though not necessarily the older forms
based upon family or wealth.

Our actual life, our government in the United States of
America — practically all governments today in fact — are
of course a compromise between these two. The various
governments differ in the degree to which they emphasize
the one or the other. And within our own government, the
distinct departments emphasize the two principles in dif-
ferent degrees. The executive branch is based mainly upon
externality; the power of appointment, of veto, of com-
mander in chief of army and navy, and above all the per-
sonal responsibility of the President, bearing the tremen-
dous burden of criticism — these are externalist ideals.
The legislative bodies on the other hand are supposed to act
only after free discussion and mutual argument; they are
democratic in purpose. But it is well known that the dem-
ocratic aspect gradually recedes into the background; how
many measures are there whose fate is not decided in the
small committee ? To prevent this individualistic reversion
to government by the special few, has been proposed the
" initiative "; and the issue is once more between govern-
ment by the whole social body and government by a few
individuals — i. e., internality vs. externality. In the judi-
ciary branch, the principle of individuahsm is once more
ascendant. The Supreme Court, appointed by the Presi-
dent, is independent of the will of the people; they hand
down the fixed body of doctrine by which the conduct of
the nation — its laws — must be guided. And here again
in recent years the internalists show signs of revolt, in the
cry for the recall of judges by popular vote. Again the
battle is between the same protagonists.

In education also. Most of the civilized nations have
committed themselves to the democratic ideal of universal

444 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

education; but it is not yet possible to carry this programme
into the upper reaches of learning. It is still few, though
not nearly so few as formerly, who obtain the university
training. But the size of our colleges has increased a hun-
dredfold. Now note the two policies in conflict. Not long
ago was introduced the elective system; at first in univer-
sities, then in colleges and high schools. By that system
the pupil is free to choose his studies. It is employed in
different degrees in different schools; in none quite unal-
loyed, in none, or practically none, quite absent. It rests
upon the hypothesis that the pupil's judgment is as good
as the instructor's. Few instructors would accept this
hypothesis without qualification, to be sure, but then the
elective plan is nowhere admitted unmixed. In so far as it
is adopted, however, that hypothesis is made. It is a
thoroughly democratic principle; it places student and
teacher on the same level; it furnishes a democratic cri-
terion for the success of the teacher's work, in the number of
students he is able to attract. The older criterion, the
judgment based on the attainments of the individual pupils
he turns out, their success in getting the higher degrees,
gradually lapses; quantity replaces quality. The instruc-
tor's work is not estimated by unusual results in a few
cases, but by a wider social appeal. The test is not so much
the soundness of what he teaches, its effectiveness in pro-
ducing some rare birds, but the attitude which the many
take towards it. This is clearly the ideal of education which
is governed by the principle of internahty. Teaching is
assessed according to its effect upon the great social body;
according to the numbers taught rather than by its effect
upon individual genius. In the very class-room itself the
issue arises. Shall the teacher labour that the whole class
may understand, or let the dullards go and concentrate

THE DIAGNOSIS OF THE DISEASE 445

upon the brilliant ? The one method lifts the great flat
weight of the majority, the other tries to build up a few
pinnacles of intellect; which raises the level of humanity
the higher ? The more aristocratic European education
has produced by selection the latter kind of result; our own
more democratic way has perhaps diffused a sort of average
intelligence more widely and thus raised that great flat
weight. It would seem foolish to adopt one of these very
much at the expense of the other; but there is always more
or less of an issue between the two.

At present it looks, to a surface inspection, as if the dem-
ocratic ideals were registering one triumph after another on
the sure road to the millennium; not to follow them is to
hark back to the cruelty and ignorance of the Dark Ages.
How fervently are those ideals apostrophized in the utter-
ances of our pubHcists! How patently do we judge our
fellows by their conformance to those ideals! A political
measure, a moral maxim, a man's behaviour in the give and
take of every day life, is characterized as undemocratic:
what more summary condemnation have we ? To every
age, we have said, its own major premises seem final; and
to this age, even to the most intellectual men of it, the dem-
ocratic principle, with its exclusive emphasis upon the social
relations and the principle of intemality, seems the goal of
all human effort and the absolute truth of life. Yet it is
not becoming to the thinker, to be carried off his feet by a
partisan view. He should learn the lesson of history, that
the pendulum is bound to swing from one side to the other,
that a one-sided type must sooner or later be corrected by
its counter-type. It is not possible that the internal prin-
ciple will finally shut out the external. In the latter, the
former meets its critical point; which is to say that certain
natural instincts of man can never be erased nor quenched

446 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

by the doctrine that man is only a member of society. Man
is more than a network of relations. Members differ, and
each is bound to retain a measure of independence. He
must be allowed, if he can, to see further than the public
conscience of his time sees, to develop, perhaps in some
isolation, the fruits of his own personality, whether in the
way of artistic production, or scientific discovery, or reli-
gious insight. The reason why the ideals of democracy,
like those of science, seem to be sweeping away forever the
old individualism and piety is that up to this date they have
not had a fair trial. Their novelty gives them an air of
promise; sick of the one-sidedness of the past, we turn to a
new one-sidedness. Individualistic government, dogmatic
religion, classic art have had their day; the counter-ideals
have not. Let them have it! But much trouble may be
saved if we reflect that individualism cannot be quite extir-
pated from our nature. Any student of philosophical sys-
tems, who has seen human thought try one reform after
another, should know that this oscillation between extremes
only perpetuates the battle. The bitter conflict persists,
and will always persist until some harmonizing principle is
brought to bear. As a matter of fact, the only institutions
that have ever worked are compromises between the two
enemies, modi vivendi, adopted as the best substitute for
solution. But compromises are in unstable equilibrium, in
practice as in theory, in social systems as in philosophic.
They suppress individualism in one place and socialism
(using the word broadly) in another; as our government
more or less suppresses the latter in the judiciary and the
former in the legislative branch. And the result is that
socialism protests and would reform the Supreme Court,
while at the same time the work of Congress tends more and
more to be done in committee, behind the scenes, by the

THE DIAGNOSIS OF THE DISEASE 447

few past masters of the political game, and the President
tends more and more to follow the vox populi. And in fact,
the boss system, the spoils system, and other efforts toward
special privilege, are only individualism returning in a bad
form because no other form is allowed it. Once more,
naturam expellas furca, etc.

In art, we have the opposition of classic and romantic.
Classic beauty is dependent upon relation of the parts; it
is based upon the idea of balance or organic unity; it fol-
lows the principle of internality. Romantic beauty is
inherent in the object or situation itself; a virile quahty,
stirring the beholder by a certain intrinsic dynamism.
Herein it manifests the principle of externahty, as anything
independent does. Impressionism, on the other hand, is in
contrast with both these; it looks to the relation between
the work of art and the beholder. It thus depends upon the
internal principle, but in one direction only; it is alhed to
the subjectivistic tendency in metaphysics. In another
way, however, it is an example of externality. The structure
of the object does not matter, its relations to other objects,
the arrangement, order, etc., of parts is indifferent. As long
as it is felt to be beautiful it is so, and the subject's feehng
is a criterion sufficient unto itself. In the same way the
philosophic type subjectivism took the subject as independ-
ent. Post-impressionism in turn offers a new contrast. As
radicahsm in art it is akin to social democracy; it stands
for the intrinsic interest, even beauty, of all things — pots,
pans, cobblestones, dreary streets, all that men have
hitherto found insignificant. Distinctions of value dis-
appear; there is no aristocracy in the realm of beauty.
The form, too, tends to deny better and worse: it is " free
verse. ' ' In music it gives room to what have been considered
discords; it includes all possible combinations; the tonic

448 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

has no superiority; major and minor are no longer dis-
tinguished. All is relative to the point of view; if a man is
but willing to look or listen, to train himself in the new
modes of expression, they will seem beautiful. Is not this
strictly comparable to the democratic behef that one man
is as interesting and as valuable as another ? It looks away
from individual distinctions, and toward a general leveUing.
Equahty is its motto. In declaring that intrinsically no one
chord, or melody, or scene, or object is better than another,
it subscribes to the doctrine of universal relativity, and
builds upon the principle of internahty. And thereby it
makes indignant those who retain a behef in distinctions of
better and worse; in certain objects, situations, tone-com-
binations, as inherently more beautiful than others. The
latter view of course illustrates the principle of externality;
and once more the battle is on.

Further instances may be given. In morals, we find the
rigorist opposing the hedonist. The former accepts the idea
of certain deeds being right in themselves; the ten com-
mandments, or " self-reahzation," or the mean between two
extremes, or the gospel of love, embody his moral law. The
latter wiU grant that any conduct is right which brings a
good result — the single directly verifiable good result being
happiness. The rigorist here follows in his absolutism the
principle of externahty; the hedonist, deeming goods rela-
tive to human feehng, the opposite principle. In general,
ideahsm, whether in morals or art, depends upon externahty;
for the ideals men pursue are felt to be worthy ends in and
by themselves. They justify their own subsistence, inde-
pendent of further consequences. Reahsts in morals and
art are relativists; they tend to recognize no ultimate,
absolute distinctions of good and bad. Whatever ministers
to human advantage is good; and whatever is true to Ufe is
interesting and beautiful.

THE DIAGNOSIS OF THE DISEASE 449

Of this sort is also the conflict between religion and
science. The religious man would prove the reality of his
ideals, God and immortality; the scientist is not interested
in one fact, or set of facts, more than in another. The former
does not really care for all truth as such; he prefers some
truth, if he can attain it, to other truth. He views reality
as an aristocracy, presided over by a supreme being, and he
is interested first of all in this supreme being. The dem-
ocratic attitude is that of the scientist; he will not seek any
such one privileged truth, but will only impartially collect
facts and let them, if they must, point to a creator. What-
ever comes to his net is for him valuable ; he might say " all
the true is good." On the other hand, the pious soul does
not make good a predicate of all truth; but only of some
particular truth; he makes good thus a special quality not
possessed by all things. Reversing the scientific attitude,
he might say " all the good is true." He makes the good
into a substantive, and self-sufl&cient; his opponent makes
it into a predicate, relative to his own desire to get facts.
If we take the point of view of value, the scientist appears to
lack discrimination; if we take the point of view of truth,
the religious man seems to be no impartial inquirer. Each
thus condemns the other for not doing justice to his prin-
ciple. And in fact each is right. The existence of God, and
the truth of immortality, are not yet scientifically estab-
lished; nor does the scientist concern himself seriously with
the investigation of much beyond the material data of the
laboratory. It is usually so; democracy, valuing all things,
does not sufficiently emphasize the more important ones,
but dwells rather on the less — Sis the French language,
accenting all syllables alike, comes to accent the last syllable
most. Aristocracy, valuing preeminently the more signifi-
cant things, neglects unduly the commonplace. Religion,

4SO PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

intent on its own objects, overlooks the question of impar-
tial evidence, and is accused of believing because it wishes
to believe. The quarrel will never be settled until objective
investigation, guided by a sense of the superlative impor-
tance of the religious questions, gives the conclusions de-
manded by rehgion. And without this guidance that result
will never happen. Facts do not of themselves point to
anything; they must be arranged in the proper perspective
by the human inquirer.

The two ultimate axioms penetrate even to the inmost
character of a man and the little acts of his daily life. Is he
egotistic ? That is but the moral side of a theoretic egoism
which regards the self as independent of its fellows. Is he
thoughtful for others in small matters: polite, " giving
place unto wrath," gentle, considerate ? Then is he realiz-
ing the law of internality. Is he a man of uncompromising
principle, adhering through thick and thin to his ideals
whatever their difficulties may be ? Then he is an exter-
nalist. Is he on the other hand a fashion-foUower, a man
whose beliefs always are found to agree with the main cur-
rent of his time ? Then he is a thoroughgoing internalist.
Or suppose he is tactful without being too yielding, insisting
on his convictions by precept and example, yet not forcing
them down people's throats ? In that case he is that per-
fectly balanced moral character which is the adjustment of
the antagonist claims; a character infrequent indeed in a
world of struggle and change, where the reformer must ever
be an externalist and the lover of humanity an internalist.

In his book Pragmatism Professor James aligned the
various conflicts of human thought and endeavour some-
what as we have done, under the rubrics " tender-minded "
and " tough-minded." His object was to show that the
pragmatic attitude is able to reconcile these enemies, and is

THE DIAGNOSIS OF THE DISEASE 45 1

therefore the ideal philosophy. His attempt was of course
a noble one; but it is evident enough to the reader, however
sympathetic, that James did not long keep the synthetic
spirit. As he proceeded through the problems of philosophy
he more and more preferred the " tough-minded " views;
and in fact we have had to admit that pragmatism, exclud-
ing the static, the dogma, the concept, as it does, is a parti-
san type. Nevertheless we believe that James's map of
philosophy — in lieu of a map of the universe — is a sine
qua non to him who would grasp the situation. Of his book
it is the part least noticed, perhaps, in professional circles;
but that should hardly count against it. To be sure, one's
sense of justice suggests that in his terms James a little
sacrificed fairness to literary effect. Everybody wants to be
" tough-minded "; tenderness lies too near to softness, to
be wholly admirable in the eyes of the male thinker. James
might as truly have called the tender ones long-minded and
the tough short-minded, or the tender broad-minded and the
tough narrow-minded. The distinction he had in mind
seems to be between those who believe most in ideals, re-
mote and unrealized, and those who are most occupied with
the concrete and imperfect. It almost seems as if we ought
to call the tender-minded people the strong, and the tough,
the weak ones, since it takes much more strength of char-
acter to adhere to one's belief in the ideals than to declare
the reality of what is obvious, the imperfect world. Never-
theless, comparisons are invidious where both sides are
necessary. While we may not acquiesce in James's arrange-
ment of this or that view under the head of tender or tough,
we find in his distinction substantially our own. The tender
minds prefer the ideal and the transcendent, the remote and
the perfect; they are aristocratic souls. The tough minds
take aU that comes, as of equal value to the truth-seeker:

452 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

they have democratic tempers. As empiricists, they test all
things by their effect upon our sense-organs or minds, that
is, by experience; and everything is the appearance of it in
experience. The others, as rationalists, adore certain prin-
ciples, independent of their appearance or concrete bearings.
The two schools follow the axioms of internahty and ex-
ternahty respectively. The contrast is between self-evi-
dence and concrete verification. But how to harmonize
these without injustice to either, philosophers, no more than
statesmen, artists, moraUsts, or anybody else, have learned.
Such being the nature of the malady which has infected
human thought and conduct, we have to ask, is there any
escape ? Can we find a point of view which will suggest a
cure ?

CHAPTER XII

THE REMEDY

SOMEHOW the real world itself has harmonized these
antagonisms: if it did not, it would be instantly an-
nulled. As a man who contradicts himself takes away our
behef in what he has just said, so a reality which was incon-
sistent would remove what it put down — and we should
have no experience. ReaHty has solved the problem; man
has not, and so man does not know what reahty properly is.
The reason man has not learned to adjust himself better to
his great environment is that he has not learned the true
nature of that environment. He does not yet know the
essence of reality. For it is just the essence of reahty, that
which makes it real rather than a human idea, that we are
now in quest of: it might be said to be the definition of
reahty that the antinomies have driven us to seek. Since
what condemns to failure all our attempts at a map of
reahty, is just our inabihty to settle the conflict, would not
the settlement give us the key-position, the fundamental
principle on which the map is to be constructed ? Thus at
the lowest point of our inquiry a promise is vouchsafed: if
we cure the disease, we shall also do much more, for we shall
have discovered the scheme of the map we set out to draw.
In laying off our burden we are enabled to leap across the
gulf that has held us back from touching the real.

Moreover, we may be sure that the contradictions are
soluble jor our own finite thought. Our thought gets its
material from reahty, and it cannot really get it an3rwhere

454 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

else. If reality marries two antagonists, thought has no
power to forbid the banns; its sole function is to follow
reality. If thought could not be equated to reahty — as
Mr. Bradley says — then it would be because thought did
not follow as it should, but revolted or tried something on
its own hook, or some such vagary. For heaven knows what
reason, it has essayed to work in vacuo — -and the antinomies
have resulted. The dialectic must then be soluble — not
only in reality, as the Hegehans have taught us, but also in
our particular vexed understandings. That last is alone
what we seek. It is true in reflection, as in life, that the
only escape from the dialectic which is of any value is the
actual deliverance in concrete situations here and now. Of
what use to goverrmient is a Utopia which cannot be put
into operation ? How does it help a sick man to know that
God is well while he is not ? What satisfaction can the
human mind take in a solution of the dialectic which it
cannot understand in detail ?

The antagonist principles, we are told, deny each other.
The one says that a fact is itself, indifferent to its relations.
The other says that a fact is not indifferent to its surround-
ings, but is in and through them constituted. Both are
true; both cannot be true. Of these two last statements
one concerns reality, and is positive; the other is a negation,
and its sanction Hes not in objective evidence. According
to the objective evidence, indeed, they could both be true —
for they are. Why then do we declare that they cannot ?
Because, we say, the one is a flat denial of the other. But
is it indubitably seen to be a denial, as the truth of the two
axioms is indubitably verified in our daily thought and
life ? No, it is not; for denial and contradiction have a
reflective character; they are not objectively observed, but
are phenomena of thinking, and thinking is just the region

THE REMEDY 455

where errors come in. The allegation of contradiction is
thus thrown open to doubt.

The external principle says — to put it symbohcally —
.4 is ^ . The internal principle says A is RB — where RB
means, a certain relation toward, or function of, something
else, B. Let us replace RB by C. Then the alleged con-
tradiction consists in the statement " ^ is C and ^4 is ^ ";
for C is other than A and hence " A is C " = " A is other
than A," or not A. That A is something else besides A,
something different from A, contradicts ^'s identity with
itself. Sameness excludes difference. That is the contra-
diction reduced to lowest terms. Mr. Bradley says, " The
simple identification of the diverse is precisely that which
one means by contradiction " (Mind, 1909, p. 496). And
Mr. Bosanquet declares that contradiction " consists in
' differents ' being ascribed to the same term, while no
distinction is alleged within that term such as to make it
capable of receiving them." (Logic, 2d ed., I, p. 224.)
St. Thomas, too, had the same idea: " Quae secundum se
diversa sunt non conveniunt in aliquod unum, nisi per
aliquam causam adunantem ipsa." (Summa Theologica,
part I, question 3, art. 7.) In the last analysis, sameness
and difference are deemed incompatible. This is the part of
the organism in which lives the germ of that great malady;
and our task is now to attack that germ.

The problem is a very abstract one — in other words, it
is a very simple one, quite unlike the complex issues of daily
life. But it is not always in the complex situations in which
they occur, that the battles of hfe are won or lost; it is often
•in the preparation, the simple, unnoticed decisions, the
small matters which go to make up stable character. If to
be faithful in that which is least is to be faithful also in
much, then our contention is not unlikely, that the solution

456 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

of this abstract diflSculty will entail that of the concreter
issues.

The whole root of the trouble lies indeed in the simplest of
all things in the world, namely, a quite arbitrary dictum.
Its simplicity Hes in its arbitrariness; the dictum stands
alone, ungrounded, unsupported in any way whatsoever.
That sameness and difference exclude each other is the
purest dogma, a fuhnination out of the darkness, justified
by no utility or self-evidence. Search as we may, we find no
argument offered, in all the long history of thought, to
excuse it. That a thing cannot be itself while at the same
time being much else — this has been treated as a sacrosanct
principle; but we do not hesitate to say it is a priori, need-
less, and in fact the case par excellence of thought working
in vaciM). In vacuo, because it is not in any way confirmed
by observation. We observe in every moment of our waking
lives that two things are the same while at the same time
different. Two oranges are of the same colour, yet of dif-
ferent shapes; a particular stone is now in my hand, now
flying through the air, yet the same stone; you are the same
man today that you were yesterday in spite of added expe-
riences. Always we witness the opposite of this dictum, yet
men have felt, or thought they felt, a certain iimer compul-
sion to utter it. Thought seems to have set up a rule of its
own, independent of observation — and doing so, has
allowed itself to become divorced from reality. If we spoke
in the old religious terms, we should say that pride of
intellect had debarred man from attaining the knowledge
he sought.

Of course it is not the dialecticians alone who have done
this. They are only those who are honest and clear-headed
enough to see that they have done it and to say so. Other
thinkers, as we have now many times pointed out, implicitly

THE REMEDY 457

deny that anything can become another without loss of its
identity. In the field of philosophy, we find a nominalist
denying that the colour of one orange can be numerically
the same as that of another, or a Great Objectivist alleging
that consciousness cannot be unique because it is definable
in terms of its objects; in the field of practice, the modern
citizen affirms that the individual cannot display any indif-
ference to society because he is essentially a social being;
in religion, we are taught that one cannot exercise faith
unless the dogmas remain mysterious — and so on. In
fact, to accept our contention is to go against the time-
honoured exclusiveness with which man has pursued practi-
cally all of his aims. Our simple remedy, as simple as the
evil it would meet, seems hard enough to swallow, when we
reckon the revolutionary consequences of the admission.
And yet if it is true, all those consequences are as inevitable
as they are disturbing. And that is perhaps one of the
surest indications we could have, that we are upon the right
track; for we are seeking a philosophy which will make
concrete differences to the life of man.

We must frankly acknowledge, in the first place, that
certain considerations look to be against us. It is easy
enough to say in a rough conversational way that two pieces
of paper have, to all appearance, the same degree of white
colour. But take the statement seriously and see where you
land. Absolutely, numerically the same ? Many people
would prefer the non-committal word similar. Does not
that seem fairer than to credit a conceptual thing, white-
colour, appearing unaltered, unaffected by the pecuKarities
of the particular papers ? Why, to do so is to break the rule
of internal relations! No two things can be the same, for
then they are unaffected by the very distinctions which
make them two. Perhaps there is, after all, good reason for
the dictum above condemned.

458 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

Certain other instances seem more striking. You and I
are different persons — does not our very individuality, our
self-hood, rest upon that difference ? We could not be the
same and retain our personal identity. "Two souls with
but a single thought," etc. — that would so far be not two
but one. Absorption into the One of the Buddhist or mystic
means loss of individuality. In the personal life, at any rate,
difference precludes sameness. The value of a person lies in
his uniqueness; and that value is destroyed by sameness, by
uniformity with others. But we need not go so high as
personality. This square foot of ground whereon I stand is
quite distinct from one next it; and that distinction could
not possibly permit identity between the two. If I prove an
alibi, then I could not have committed the crime of which I
am accused. If red and green are diverse, how could they be
the same ? If a circle is round, how could it be identified
with a square ? And we might thus proceed indefinitely.
No; whatever else may be said of sameness, it is apparently
going against all experience and common sense to say that
difference does not exclude it. This dictum is not only self-
evident; it is at the basis of all the values of life.

Theoretical and practical motives would seem to unite in
supporting that " simple arbitrary dogma " as we called it.
And yet we must believe these motives to be illusion, and
founded on illusion. Let us examine them.

The logical reason for deeming sameness and difference
inconsistent, we found to be none other than the principle of
internal relations. We are told that the quality of one
thing cannot be the same as that of another, since it will be
affected by the other attributes of the things in which it
resides. This is the view of extreme nominahsm, which we
saw in Chapter VIII; nominalism in the exclusive sense.
How can the shade of one apple be exactly the same

THE REMEDY 459

as that of another ? Being in different places, the light
will not play alike on them; differing ever so slightly
in texture of skin, size, or shape, the light-waves will not be
reflected and absorbed in identical ways in both. The
identity is destroyed by the differences. And have we
ground for supposing that there exist in the universe any
two shades of red exactly alike ? Surely not. On the other
hand, we might ask, putting all questions of logic aside,
have we any empirical certainty that there never have
existed two perfectly similar instances of red colour ? Or
two sticks of absolutely the same length, if measurements
could be suitably taken ? Or two candles giving just equal
amounts of light ? The principle of internality is not able
to prevent such a thing happening. It says only that the
different surroundings must affect each instance differently;
giving a resultant difference on the whole. Suppose the light
of the sun strikes apple A a little stronger than it does apple
B . Then A's red will be a brighter red than B 's. But do we
not speak of a brighter or less bright shade of one and the
same tint ? The identity of the tint has not disappeared.
It has been overlaid by a new and additional quality, but
the overlay does not annihilate the original. Sometimes it
may, of course: as when one daubs the apple with green
paint. Nevertheless there is no necessity, no logical com-
pulsion forcing us to think that always the difference cuts
into the sameness. It may affect it as much as you please
without in any degree diminishing it; viz., by adding to it
some qualification; a new shade, a limitation or extension
of its area, a greater warmth in one apple, etc. So I may be
influenced by my friend's argument for govermnent owner-
ship, yet respect as much as ever the instinct of property —
which means only that I seek some plan by which these two
may work together and supplement each other. Or I may

460 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

feel the claim of dogma while yet I am influenced by the
desire to see the interconnection of the various dogmas, and
their agreement with scientific principles. Cannot romantic
beauty reside in a face with classic features ? Cannot a
man work directly for some end that benefits both his fel-
lows and himself — as when the physician discovers the
antidote for a poison, or the inventor perfects a more efficient
system of fighting ? Is it not the teaching of Freud and
Holt that good conduct is that which does not suppress one
purpose by another, but organizes them into a system in
which all are fulfilled ? Every such instance — and with
the progress of civiHzation their number increases — is a
case where one purpose, or quality, or interest, is affected by
another without being destroyed. Indeed, the doctrine that
one entity cannot be influenced by another without losing
its self-identity is a pure superstition, a reHc of barbarism.
It is the old logic of the " war of all against all " which is
being today, thank Heaven ! so widely replaced by the logic
of cooperation. But that latter does not yet seem to have
penetrated into the halls of philosophy — so remote has
philosophy become from the currents of fife.

Still the exclusive logic dies hard; and it has more to say
for itself than this. Our instances may be called loose,
inaccurate; who can say offhand that romantic beauty is
not somewhat lessened by too perfect an outline ? We are
not stirred by the compositions of Mozart. We do not Hsten
to the music-dramas of Wagner with a sense of profound
repose. We do not find scientific discoveries remarkable for
their frequency among CathoHcs, nor invincible faith in
God the rule among biologists and physicists. If it comes to
the heaping up of cases, we surely find a majority of them
showing that the one interest, when it becomes pretty
strong, destroys the other. And this difficulty, if not im-

THE REMEDY 461

possibility, of uniting our practical motives would seem to
indicate that the theoretical difficulty about sameness and
difference must be well grounded.

No, we must admit, you cannot get a ringing conclusion
from the concrete examples. They are too inexact. If we
point out cases where one party, or one set of motives, has
influenced the other to join hands with it, you may always
retort that each has suffered some loss, or that the har-
monization is but a compromise; or you may asseverate
that the apparent harmonies are so exceptional as to prove
the rule opposite. We must return to the simple abstract
case. And there the dialectic lies in wait with a new argu-
ment; this time a reductio ad absurdum.

Suppose the sun's Hght quaMes the original red of the
apple with a new shade. Then this shade must, by the prin-
ciple of internality, work upon the red tint. How can it
show any effect upon that tint without changing it ? And
what is to change but to destroy, at least in part ? We
answer, it is not necessarily that. Destruction is not the
only sort of change. A thing may be quaUfied by a positive
addition. Effectiveness is not best shown by killing and
maiming, but by new creation, by adding to the sum of life.
It is really absurd to speak of one thing, one person, affeciing
another destructively. Destruction is removal of what is
real — there is nothing to show; it is not effect but absence
of effect. This however is probably too simple and too con-
trary to accepted standards to be admitted until illustrated;
which we proceed to do. Now, we do not know just how the
play of Hght and shade would act upon the colour. But no
doubt it would give rise to some new quality, a positive one
added to the red and the Ughter shade; a third one beside
these other two. Imagine, e.g., that it is the quality of
having a charming effect. The brighter red, perhaps, is

462 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

more pleasing than the duller. At the same time this charm
of the bright red apple must have its effect upon the redness
and brightness — at least upon them as perceived. Perhaps
the brightness is a little increased. Then one more quality-
has been enrolled on the list. And this too must have its
additive result upon the rest — we dare not say just what it
is, but the principle of internality assures us that the charm
is not there for nothing. How much further must we go ?
Clearly there is no limit; the effects must multiply even to
infinity. And now, says the objector, behold the absurdity;
for the sum total of these qualities is really present, all at
once in this particular finite apple. It is our old friend the
complete infinite: a patent self-contradiction.

So it appears that if we do not straightway confess that
the differences kill the sameness, we are driven into the con-
tradiction of the completed infinite. Yet a little reflection
shows that this argument must be a vicious circle. If, as we
saw in Chapter XI, that contradiction is simply a result of
the antagonism between the two great axioms of internality
and externality, and if that antagonism rests in turn upon the
alleged hostility between sameness and difference, how can
the last be proved by appeal to the first? In fact, the com-
pleted infinite is not contradictory at all, if once we grant
that sameness and difference do not belie each other. The
sameness runs undiminished through all the infinite Hst of
qualities, whatever their differences. The apple is red ; it is
bright red and pleasing; it is bright red and pleasing and
some other quality; and so on. What then do we mean by
saying that it is complete while all its qualities are so many
they can never be complete ? Simply that every added
quality, is of the same old apple; is it, in truth, while yet
the number of novelties overlaying the sameness is endless.
The completeness signifies the fact that the sameness re-

THE REMEDY 463

mains undestroyed; the incompleteness, that ever new and
positive differences may be added. The series is complete
at every stage, for every novelty discovered is a predicate
of — identified with — the original datum, the red apple.
It is incomplete at every stage, in the sense that no amount
of identity precludes an additional difference which we pro-
ceed to discover. But for that very reason the incomplete-
ness does not give the lie to completeness. It seems to do so
only because it suggests to our minds that always some
quahties of the apple, being different from all yet enu-
merated, are left out — as if they could not be there. But
when we remember that they are sure to be identified with,
as predicates of, the datum we started with, we can see that
they are not left out. That datum already includes them.
Their incompleteness, in short, does not mean that they
are not all there, but that being there they generate, as it
were, ever new aspects of the said object. And these new
aspects, again, however many and divergent, are always to be
identified with the original datum. There is then a question-
begging character in the word incompleteness; it is uncon-
sciously assumed to connote that some terms of the series
are never reached. But they are all reached; only when
reached they at once reveal a novel element, a diversity
which enlarges the already completed thing. The whole
difficulty turns upon our interpreting incompleteness as
if it denied some real part of the object — an interpreta-
tion which is of a piece with that root-error that difference
forbids sameness. Arbitrary exclusion once more !

Even supposing this solution were admitted, however, the
way is not closed. Common sense steps up and says " I
don't care anything about your infinite regress, but I see
that difference cannot truly coexist with sameness. For the
one apple differs from the other in one respect, and is the

464 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

same in another respect. The apples are the same in redness,
diverse in shape; etc. They couldn't be the same and dif-
ferent in one and the same respect. Imagine, if you can,
two apples of the same colour, yet different in colour! " The
objection looks very formidable. It is due to the principle of
externahty, as the first one was due to that of externahty.
It is not based upon the mutual influence, but upon the
necessity of keeping intact the sameness and the difference.
Sunder them, don't let them get together, lest the one in-
fluence the other and destroy it! The technical term which
expresses this sundering is " respect " or " aspect." One
aspect of a thing, it is usually beheved, may be X and an-
other the very contradiction of X; but it matters not,
because they are separated; the wall of the thing is between
them, and they are on different sides of it.

Now common sense is based upon practical needs, and is
in general, of course, sound. But it seldom does Justice to
the need of understanding; and that is the case here. "As-
pect " is simply a useful device to prevent us from sensing a
contradiction and diverting otherwise useful energy toward
it; we must go on with observations and get the concrete
information which life and science call for. The dialectic
interferes with the business of common sense — away with
any appearance of it ! To the logical point of view, however,
the whole thing is a makeshift. The aspect-device solves no
difl&culty for the intellect. Do not the various aspects con-
stitute the thing ? The colour, form, brightness, scent, etc.,
of the apple are the apple. However much of an underlying
substance is the real apple over against its properties, it is
by the principle of internaHty identical with aU those prop-
erties. Let the two be identical in colour and dissimilar in
shape. Nevertheless, the apples are their forms and their
colours; if they are identical in colour they are so far not

THE REMEDY 465

distinct from each other. It is logically just as bad as if the
apple were utterly simple. Mr. Bradley has made much of
this plea, showing that the thing and its aspects offers a
seK-contradiction. And indeed it does, unless you affirm at
the outset that any two things may be the same and also
different — without regard to aspects or sides.

Ah, but now, one says, you are not talking good sense.
Things never do show sameness and difference in one and the
same respect at the same time. If one red is identical in
colour with another, it cannot differ from it in colour. If
one triangle has exactly the same shape as another, it cannot
differ from it in shape, but only in size or position. Always
the difference is found to He in a distinct aspect of the thing
from that of the sameness. This is an empirical matter,
logic or no logic. It is not open to doubt. But we reply,
what do you make of the resemblance between yellow and
green ? Do they not show a sameness in colour and also
difference in colour ? Perhaps it would be well to ask what
we mean by the " aspect " of a thing; for even though com-
mon sense is justified in distinguishing the aspects, and
empirically well grounded, it may be that they have nothing
to do with the consistency or inconsistency of the thing.
Now generally what we call the aspects of a thing are its
relations to other things. The colour of a rose is its effect
upon my visual organs, the weight its tendency to approach
the centre of. the earth, the odour its effect upon my organs
of smell, the form upon my faculty of space-perception, etc.
Each aspect expresses the relation between the one object
and a certain other entity ; their diversity is due to the diver-
sity of the entities to which the said object is related. And
because those external entities are so clearly distinct, we
think there is no contradiction in sajdng the object is mani-
fold; if we concentrated attention upon the unity of the

466 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

object by itself, we should deem it inconsistent that it is
manifold. The actual ground, however, for attributing to
the one thing different aspects is not any such recondite
motive as the avoidance of dialectic. Everybody makes the
attribution, but very few have felt the danger of the dia-
lectic. The real motive is that the thing is empirically
found to have many relations. The aspects are distinguished
with this simple empirical motive; they are irrelevant to the
problem of the dialectic. It is quite possible that some
object be experienced which is given as one and yet as at the
same time internally manifold; manifold because it offers
within itself a, composite character. And more: there are
such instances. Purple is one colour, yet purple contains
two different colours, red and blue. A musical chord — or
discord — is given to us as one sound, yet it contains inter-
nal diversity. Do we abolish the contradiction between
purple being reddish and purple being bluish by saying that
it is red in one aspect, blue in another ? There are no dif-
ferent sense-faculties for us to refer these different colours
to, in order to separate the conflicting quaUties. Of course
if we Kke we may say that purple is red in one aspect, blue
in another; but then " aspect " is not used in the above
relative sense. No: here is a case where two entities are
plainly different and yet are fused into a unity which over-
lays the difference without destroying it. And the case
shows that the aspect-device is not always available, as
common sense thinks, to dissolve the antinomy.

Indeed, as we already have tried to show, it never could
solve a contradiction, if there were one there. But there are
so many instances where it is appUcable, and where its
specious claims are tempting to a surface inspection, that
we make an over-hasty inductive generalization and con-
clude that all dialectic contradictions are avoided in this

THE REMEDY 467

way. Meanwhile no evidence has been given to prove that
there is any dialectical contradiction. The resort to aspects
was thought to indicate it; but we find that that resort is
dictated by empirical motives; and that even if it did serve
to remove the antagonisms, there are cases where it could
have no ef&cacy. But we must go further; those cases
are not sporadic, but legion. Practically every colour that
we see is a mixture. We aln;iost never see a colour that is
not, either obviously or after slight training of the eye, com-
posite. The familiar colours of the rose, the violet, of the
sky, the sea, the clouds, the sunset, the human face and eye,
the clothes, the buildings, the foliage — few or none of
these there are, which do not present a fusion of several
colours into one. In them we see a red that is at the same
time yellow without ceasing to be red, a green that is blue
without losing its green quality — and so on. So far from
its being true that red cannot be blue while yet it is red, we
find that it usually is something else besides itself, and in the
very same aspect in which itself is found to reside. The two
apples in our illustration may very well possess an identical
red and at the same time be different in respect to colour —
if, say, one had a slight purplish tinge and the other were
pure saturated red. We do not refer the sameness and the
difference to different sides of the things. And not of colours
alone does our assertion hold. How many sounds do we
hear that are not at once several different sounds ? Not
musical chords only are composite, but the rumblings of the
street, the soughing of the wind, and the voices of our fel-
low men; yet these are severally heard, often enough, as one
sound. Of aesthetic effects this sort of thing is notoriously
true. A painting is pleasing, but tormenting, stirring, yet
also restful — indeed who shall enunciate the effects upon
the cultured beholder of a work of art ? Further illustration

468 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

is easy, and perhaps needless. The work of James, Dewey,
and other opponents of Platonism has emphasized the in-
exactness of the concrete things; we should prefer to put it
in positive terms and call it their richly composite nature.
But we promised to stick to the simpler, more abstract
examples; let us, therefore, exemplify no more at present.

Let it not be supposed that the cases of sameness-in-dif-
ference are confined to the psychological field. We are
talking about objects: the colour of the rose is as objective
as its form (cf . Chapter IV) ; and the motion of a projectile
acted upon by many simultaneous forces is objective enough
to satisfy even a materialist. Even were it true only in the
mental realm, that would be sufficient for our purposes;
mental facts are as real (cf. Chapter VIII) as physical.
But we are not now asking about anything else but the
general possibiHty of sameness permitting difference; and
we have detected no reason against it. We are not asserting
that any quality can combine with any other quality. We
are only concerned to deny that in a logical point of view
none can — that is the claim of the dialectician. We on the
other hand acknowledge that there are cases where one
quality, taking on another, is apparently destroyed. Red
plus green usually destroys the red : the resulting grey has
no resemblance, so far as we can discern, with either of the
originals. And let no one object that we are dogmatically
calling resemblance absolute identity. Of course it is so
only for analysis; but we have found (Chapter VIII) that
analysis, provided it is not incorrect, gives truth. Again,
some sounds " interfere " with each other; some human
qualities work directly against others, as when jealousy
overcomes kindness, or love of comfort inhibits the love of
knowledge. The clearest cases of such incompatibility,
perhaps, are the elementary physical and spatial ones. If

THE REMEDY 469

the end of a stick is in one place, it is so far not in another;
if a body is falling to earth, it cannot at the same time rise
from the earth. Space and matter are the great depositories
of incompatibility, and no doubt it is due to a preoccupation
with the material world, not outgrown even by ideaHsts,
that the logic of exclusion has remained potent in the higher
realms. Yet even in that world things are, so to speak,
loosening up. Who has not in the laboratory seen water
boiling and freezing at once ? And do not some psy-
chologists claim that olive-green is partly red ? (Cf . Holt,
The New Realism, p. 334.) The rigid system of mutual ex-
clusions that we have believed in is growing softer. Our
beliefs about it have to some extent been hberated by the
non-Euclidean geometries, and still more by later researches
into the underlying postulates of mathematics. That
paralleHsm between straight lines excludes their meeting,
is no longer a necessity in itself; that 2-I-3 = 5 is found to
depend upon presuppositions which are not in themselves
so absolutely certain as we are used to believe that sum-
mation to be. Perhaps some day a system will be discovered
which while admitting the truth of our EucHdean geometry,
will enable us to accept at the same time many other pro-
positions which the older mathematics would not counte-
nance. Not that we here build upon what appears at best a
remote contingency ; we only say it is not the part of wisdom
to deny such possibilities. If anything at all is taught by
human history, it is that impossibility is a word which the
prudent will seldom use. We do not say " never," but, " as
little as he can." Meanwhile, certain apparent incompati-
bilities remain, and we are far from denying them here. But
the dialectic, and too often common sense, as well as the
inherited instincts of man, do make a sweeping claim of the
opposite tenor; they deny, consciously or by impHcation,

470 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

that sameness is consistent with difference. And we declare,
that for this extreme utterance there is no justification in
heaven or earth.

Our whole point is that there is no ground for saying that
sameness gives the lie to difference, or conversely. It would,,
of course,, not be enough to bring up fact after fact where the
two are found together. The empiricists do this, and be-
lieve that they have thereby refuted the logician. But they
have not met him; the two are arguing at cross-purposes.
The logician knows as well as anybody else what the facts
are, but he is actuated by an arriere pensee of which they are
unaware. He has behind him, pushing him on, this dictum
which all men, even the empiricists, actually use in other
fields, viz., that logically sameness and difference are in-
compatible; he has seen deeper than they do in this regard.
That is why such a solution as that of James {A Pluralistic
Universe, p. 68) is really no solution. James says that they,
the dialecticians, take the entity as excluding what it does
not expressly include, and then weave in an inconsistency
when they find that it includes that same. No doubt he is
correct; that is exactly what they do do. But James did
not see that they had every motive for doing so ; that they
but followed the customary procedure of mankind when
they did it; a procedure which every philosopher has
adopted, and which James himself, in spite of the best
intentions, also adopted when he objurgated rationalism,
absolutism, and the whole tribe of transcendentalists. We
have said motive, but not ground. Our inquiry has led us to
believe that at bottom the whole momentous decision, so
potent of evil in human history, is a simple, groundless act
of choice; caused, if you are a determinist and wish to
insist, but caused not by intellectual or practical need, bat
probably by some mysterious, transfer of instinct from the

THE REMEDY 47-1

phsysical arena of the struggle for existence over to the realm
of disinterested investigation.

The last stronghold of this brute:postulate lies in the claim,
of self-evid'ence. " Why argue about the matter," we may
.be addressed, " when you know perfectly well that different
positions never can be one, that white is. not and never can
be sweet, that red can never be heavy, that you cannot be
your friend. ? " And after all, who would think of denying
these distinctions ? Are they not of all things the most
patent ? How then can we say they hold between iden-
tities ? Surely if two things are two they are not one, and
if they are one they are no longer two; and surely identity
means oneness and difference means duality. Now there is
just enough of obvious truth in these statements to cast
upon one who would quahfy them a little, the suspicion of
absurdity. White is not sweet, we say; but what is evident
here is that white is other than sweet, not that white refuses
to be identified in any way with sweet. " White " has
toward " sweet " a certain relation which we call " other-
ness "; why should it not also have that relation we call
" identity " ? In the famous lump of sugar of Mr. Bradley,,
the white and sweet are identified. It is that little word
" not " which contains just enough of ambiguity to mis-
direct the intelhgence. For we use that one word to mean
now the relation of otherness between terms, now the denial
of a suggested judgment. Had the peoples who gradually
formed the EngHsh language been, per impossible, exact
Ibgieians, they would have used two different words for
these distinct meanings. When I say, Caesar did not kill
Brutus, I contradict the suggestion that he did so; when I
say red is not blue,. I may mean only to signify the duality
of these two. The former proposition is equivalent to ' ' it is
not tFue that Caesai killed Brutus " ; the latter proposition.

472 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

need not be meant as a denial of anything, but rather as an
affirmation of the relation otherness or duality. Otherness is
a very different concept from opposition or denial; unfor-
tunately the negative of human language has not indicated
the difference. No, the distinction between white and sweet
may be eternally valid, but it is not obvious, when we look
carefuUy, that it precludes identity between them. Nor is it
obvious that the distinction between my friend and myself
forbids some identity. For certain purposes, I am he; as
when he gives me his proxy and I cast the vote, or indeed
when I represent him in any way. The objector was sup-
posed just now to say that if two things are two they are not
one. Here again it is the ambiguity of " not " that is to
blame for the opinion that the alleged exclusion is obvious.
If they are two, their relationship is so far other than the
relationship of identity. But " other than " does not
obviously mean " opposed to "; what is obvious is simply
that we have here two distinct concepts. So it is not ob-
vious that if two things are two, any identity or unity of
them ought to be denied. They can be both two and one.
Or if we take the other statement, that if they are one, they
are no longer two, we must make a similar reply. Unity is
other than duality, but there is no excuse for saying that it is
opposed to it or denies it.

In spite of all arguments, however, one may insist that to
him the transition from other than to opposed to is an obvious
one. We can not directly say him nay. If a man smells a
smell, he smells it, and no amount of assertion on our part
that we do not smeU it will refute him. How shall we meet
this ultimate insistence ? So many men have uttered it —
practically all men, explicitly or implicitly: may it not be a
sort of final axiom which we ourselves lack the power to
grasp ? Here then would be a hopeless deadlock; unless we

THE REMEDY 473

can go further than we have gone, we have really not met
his claim. We have only contradicted it as arbitrarily as he
has posited it. But we beheve that it is possible to go
further; we declare that in the nature of the case, such a
transition could not be self-evident. It is essentially a nega-
tive judgment and nothing more. It says " it is self-evident
that difference is incompatible with identity "; and incom-
patibility is at bottom naught but denial pure and simple.
Negative judgments however must have some positive basis;
but there is no such basis available. The only such basis
could be, observation of some quahty, given in experience,
about the difference-relation which is seen then and there to
rule out identity. Where else than to experience have we to
look for positive grounds for our negative judgments ? Not
to thought, certainly, for thought is the very agent that is
seeking a positive basis for its own utterance. But if we
look to experience, we find the very opposite of what we are
seeking. We find, time after time, instances of sameness-
in-difference; our account a few pages back enumerated
some of them. So far from finding positive ground for
this mysterious negation of our opponent's, we find ground
for disallowing it. No ground is forthcoming, then, for
his negation; it subsists in vacuo. And being in vacuo,
with nothing positive about it, it could not be self-evident.
No mere denial can be; for it is something which could
not appear as object for the mind to gaze at; it has no
content.

If we have so far proceeded without serious error, we may
then make bold to dismiss the whole claim of the dialectic.
And now let us set forth the true significance of our method.
It will, we believe, reveal to us a principle which is as
beneficent and fruitful of results as the germ of the dialectic
was deadly.

474 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

Confining the discussion still to the more abstract sphere,
we say that any two tMngs, A and B, may be identical yet
different. Call it partly identical or identical in some aspect,
and partly different, or different in some other aspect, if
you please; nothing is essentially changed by such wording.
The point is that sameness and difference may cohabit with-
out shame. Now this means "A is A and also A isB"; the
truth is an ultimate one, not subject to criticism as being
partial, abstract, inconsistent, or in any other way phil-
osophically damnable. But since both these propositions
are true, must we always implicitly afl&rm them both ? Is
it not ultimately true to say that A is B, if we say nothing
and think nothing and imply nothing about the other pro-
position ? In other words, do these two form an organic
unity, such that each impHes the other and one without the
other is meaningless, or are they just two principles side by
side and independent of each other ? If the former is the
case, we have an ultimate monism; if the latter, ultimate
dualism.

Notice that the monistic union of these two principles
views them by the Hght of the principle of intemality; and
that the duaHstic one views them under that of externahty.
The monistic view says that each axiom implies the other,
and thereby it appHes one of the axioms to both of them.
The duahstic view finds each axiom independent of the
other, and thus appHes the other axiom to both of them.
And it is quite proper that this should be so ; for if these two
axioms are ultimate, they ought to apply to themselves as
well as to everything else. Have we then ultimate monism
or ultimate dualism ? Why, we have both. You can say,
A is A throughout all changes — the principle of externality;
you can stop there, and need not appeal to the other axiom
to show it; the statement is ultimate quite by itsdf. Or

THE REMEDY 475

again you can say, A is B — the principle of intemality;
and this need not be supported on the other axiom, for it is
able to stand alone. Or, finally, you can say, both are true,
each supplementing the other and bringing a new and
richer meaning to that other. That we are permitted to say
either one we please of the first two is the truth of ultimate
dualism; that we are equally permitted to say the third, is
ultimate monism. In short, we may choose freely which
principle we shall serve, but we must make the choice with
the understanding that the other choice is also permitted.
Indeed, if it were not also permitted, there would be no
freedom; the choice being once made, we should not longer
be free to admit the counter-principle. Phrasing this in
objective terms, we say: reality is monistic, and it is du-
alistic, either or both; any single object or thing is part of the
great system of the whole, or it is independent, or it is both
together. But since duality is what permits the alternation,
the deeper trait is duality. Duality and unity are not of
quite equal rank ; the account we shall give of the universe
will describe it primarily as a duality.

If reality were not thus freely dual, the dialectic could not
have been solved. For then, the choice of one side — be it
ultimate dualism, or ultimate monism, ultimate independ-
ence, or ultimate system — would have excluded the choice
of the other; to accept it as true alone and for itself would
be to accept it as exclusive of that other; it would be as is
customary in human affairs, that having made one choice
we are not allowed to admit the justice of the other. But
reality lends itself impartially to either interpretation;
which means that reality itself is both. This may also be put
in another way. Human attention is selective; we fix the
eye on one spot, and the surroundings pass more or less out
of the visual field. But we do not thereby deny the actuality

476 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

of what is beyond the fringe of vision. We ignore it, we
exclude it from our sight, but there is objectively no exclu-
sion. Here is a matter whose importance, so far as we know,
philosophers have never recognized. They are wont to
justify their exclusive partisanships by referring to the
narrowness of the field of attention; but they altogether
overlook the fact that this narrowness is not at all of a
denying sort, but is just an ignoring. To ignore is far from
denying. The denier does not at all ignore; the ignorer
does not at all deny. Now reality is exactly so constituted.
Its parts or elements ignore one another, or they consult
one another; in consulting one another, they ignore the
attitude of ignoring, and vice versa. As human beings are
free to attend now to this Kmited field, now to that, and get
indubitable ti'uth when they do so, so reality itself contains
parts which display a like freedom; they are independent of
one another, and they are " interpenetrated," and these
properties of independence and interpenetration are again
independent and interpenetrative, and so on. The principle
by which we have rid ourselves of exclusion is not an exclu-
sive inclusion, but a free inclusion. Herein our remedy dif-
fers, so far as we know, toto caelo from any remedy that has
hitherto been proposed, either by partisan or synthetist;
yet it includes the remedies alike of both, though freely.
In following this method of free choice, it makes dualism
absolute; for reality, permitting such a choice, thereby
writes itself down as fundamentally duahstic. But again,
dualism itself would not be dualism if it were duaUsm alone;
for then it would be single and exclusive. It also permits
monism, but once more in no exclusive manner.

This is the abstract and formal account of our proposed
solution; it remains to apply it to the various antinomies.
And in that Hes the test of its validity; for however sound

THE REMEDY 477

it might happen to seem in abstracto, it must show that
soundness also by itsbearing upon the concrete issues. Here,
too, both of the ultimate principles should apply. If the
solution is valid by itself, it ought to be valid as well in its
relation to the particular antagonisms which have developed
in human thought and practice.

Let us then see how the principle of the duahty of reahty
solves the chief antinomies. It is natural to begin with the
simpler, i. e., the theoretical ones.

Zeno's famous old arrow-tip is at rest in each point of its
flight; and notwithstanding the definition of rest as in-
volving duration, we might as well call this rest, since it is
quite other than motion. The tip is where it is, and none
should deny that it is in a particular point of space at a
particular point of time; for these points to which analysis
leads are quite real. But the rest is not exclusive of motion;
which appears as follows. It is the nature of time that the
present no sooner is than it becomes something new. In
the very act of occurring, the present shows a Uttle bit of
futurity; it is transeunt. Transeuncy simply means that
the future is here, to however small an extent, with the pres-
ent. How, then, do you ask, is that bit of the future which
the present has got between its teeth (to use a Bergsonian
metaphor) distinguished from the instantaneous present, if
both are equally here now ? Simply by the fact that the
instantaneous present also takes on the mysterious quality
which we call pastness; while the bit of futurity does not.
The tip of the arrow is at the present moment here and at
another very near moment a little further on; but this
occurrence is one integral existential thing. But the second
moment is already present with the first moment; such is
the continuity and the transeuncy of time. We do not then
say that the tip is in two different places at one instant, but

478 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

that it is in two different places at two different instants
which in spite of their difference are both present. They are
present, however, in different ways, for the later moment,
which we have called a bit of futurity, has itself a transeunt
quality similar to that of its predecessor, while its predeces-
sor has that fading quality which we call disappearance or
pastness. All this is simply our psychological " specious "
present, as James called it, objectified. Time is, indeed,
just the sort of thing we immediately feel it to be. It con-
tains instants and is punctual; but it is also much more,
for the points are not cut off or discrete. They are identi-
cally present but with different relations; the one being
productive of something not included in the present (this
is the later moment) the other being not productive (this
is the earlier which has the fading quality). And the tip of
the arrow is at the present instant just where it is, and at a
later but equally present instant somewhere else. As
purple is at once both red and blue, the present position of
the tip is in both of these positions at one present time; but
that time is a dual affair.

In this solution we have been just to our experience; for
experience offers exactly that union of instant with instant
which we have emphasized. At the same time we have not
— as empiricists in this matter usually do — denied the
reality of that product of analysis, the punctual element.
But we have included both the internal and the external
principles; the particular instant and position of the arrow's
tip is admitted real, and yet at the same time is adnutted
the transition to another position. This admission of both
is rendered possible only by our general solution: that A
may be B while yet it is 4, sameness being not exclusive of
or excluded by difference. The present moment may in-
cbde a certain future moment, while not ceasing to be pres-

THE REMEDY 479

ent. How much of the future it includes is an empirical
matter — and actually we find that it includes very little.
And of course we have not pretended herein to give a full
definition of time.

Next, take the antinomy of time's beginning. There can
be a first moment of time; for instance, such a dual moment
as we have described above. We were able to describe that
moment without in the least presupposing an earlier one.
Herein the externality-principle is respected. But ' the
internality-principle need not be denied ; for there may be an
infinite number of preceding moments also. But d6es this
not contradict the statement that the said moment was the
beginning ? No, for beginning connotes an event such that
before it there was nothing other than itself: that event
always was. To say a thing always was, up to a certain
point of time, and then was succeeded by something else,
is to say that time began at that point. It is also to grant
that there is infinite past time preceding it; for if you insist
that every moment of time is relative to a preceding moment
your insistence is rewarded by the admission that the event
in question may be dated with reference to the moment
before it began to change, and that latter moment again
with reference to a preceding moment, and so on without
end. But since that event continues unchanged through
all these retrogressing moments, this infinite series is not one
which could never all have transpired. For the event was
eternally accomphshed ; it did not have to wait through an
eternity before it could happen; the objection to the end-
lessness of past time vanishes. As long as we grant that one
and the same event can be occurring at continuously suc-
ceeding moments, there is no difficulty about the endless
series. But this admission is nothing but our principle of
sameaess-in-difference. A past moment of time may conr

480 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

tain the same individual event as the present moment con-
tains. To deny this is the arbitrary exclusion perpetrated
by the Bergsonian and other such theories.

We pass to the " completed infinite." Already this
antinomy has been solved in regard to the thing-quality
category, and predication; we have now to apply the solu-
tion to the case of the finite line and its infinite points.
The Kne contains all the points. As we analyze (divide) the
line we find ever new points not before discovered. But
these new points were really there all the time, ere we dis-
covered them. Every new point is but the same old
material, the content of the fine, which we had at the
beginning. The endlessness of the collection of points then
does not signify that the line is never completed; for what-
ever new entities the series of points includes are the same
as the content of the original line. Since every new element
is the same old material, the series is always completed;
since on the other hand it is a new instance of that material,
different in position from the other instances, the series
always can be extended. It is just because the points help
to constitute the hne that they offer the spectacle of iden-
tity pervading an endless series of differences. And it is
because sameness and difference are non-contradictory and
complementary aspects that this spectacle contains no
antinomy.

The completed infinite in time looks tougher, because the
collection of instants in a duration, say, of one minute, is
not " all there " at once. The new instants, as they come
on the scene.in succession, are not the same old material that
was there at the beginning. So at least it appears at first.
But recall what we have said about the extension of the pres-
ent moment. It contains at l^ast two instants; and these
are separated by a finite interval of duration, however

THE REMEDY 481

small. It could not be otherwise, because there are no two
points next each other. Now such an interval, given all at
once as it is, is exactly comparable to the line in space. All
the instants which must have transpired — and they are
infinite — are present together, " all there " so that each
new point discovered by analysis is but the same old
material as the original present moment. There is then no
contradiction in this elementary present moment. As to the
minute of duration, that is a finite sum of these finite parts
and can therefore offer no pretense of an antinomy.

We come now to the most difficult of the theoretical list,
viz., that apparently hard and fast opposition between
freedom and determination. The axiom of internality says
that every event is dependent upon all the rest of the uni-
verse — and in particular upon its antecedents. As the
rest of the universe is fixed, being just what it is and was, so
then the event in question is fixed; it could not be other
than what it is. On the other hand the axiom of exter-
nality forces us to believe that the event is a reahty for
itself, independent of others. Since independence means
indifference, the event is indifferent to those others. If
they had been otherwise, it might have been the same, and
they being what they are, it might have been otherwise.
Could there be a flatter contradiction than there is between
these two ? Either the event is determined, or it is not
determined — but since determination is not merely other
than indifference but the very opposite of it, it certainly
seems as if these two could not be reconciled. We have
already estimated the specious reconciUation of Kant and
many others, which relegates the antagonists to diverse
aspects. We might in any case know from our discussion
of the " aspect-device " as a solvent of contradiction, that
the procedure of Kant could not succeed. But can we do
any better ?

482 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

Take the case of a heavy ball of lead falling at sea level in
a vacuum from the height of 32.08 feet to the ground. It
should fall, by the law of gravitation, in exactly one second.
We find by careful measurement that it falls in 1.0002
seconds. We say that this apparently accidental variation
from strict rule is not free, but is determined by the sur-
roundings, e. g., by the fact that the vacuum is not perfect.
Calculating the retardation due to the presence of a small
quantity of air, we find that the ball should have fallen in
1. 0001 9 seconds. This apparently accidental deviation,
however, we ascribe to a slight upward component due to
the attraction, say, of the moon upon the leaden ball. Cal-
culating now the actual effect of this attraction, we find that
the ball should have fallen in i. 000201 seconds. This sHght
discrepancy, again, we explain away by some other cause,
and so on indefinitely.

At every stage of the explaining process, we find that the
phenomenon is for the most part determined, whUe there
is a relatively small residuum which has not been accounted
for. This residuum, we say, is due to the action of some
remote cause which has been reduced indeed to a minimum,
but has not been whoUy removed. But as fast as this mini-
mum is discounted, we find another minimal discrepancy
within it which has not been accounted for. Now each of
these slight discrepancies is due to the influence of some fact
independent of the main phenomenon which is being investi-
gated. The resistance of the air, the attraction of the moon,
etc., are causes which do not depend upon the gravitation of
the lead toward the earth. The air is a different body from
the earth, the moon is distinct from earth and air, and so on;
and each of these bodies exercises its effect by itself — an
effect which cannot be wholly reduced to terms of the earth's
gravitation. However interdependent these various agents

THE REMEDY 483

may be, they are ultimately separate things, and as plural-
ism has once for all shown (Chapter XI), they cannot be
reduced to one bare identity and nothing more.

Any one single event, however simple it appears, is indefi^
nitely composite; compounded out of an indefinitely great
number of causes. The variation of that event from exact
obedience to law is only the expression of the presence of
these many causes. In so far as these causes are irreducible
to one another, they are independent entities; and in so far
they are relatively to one another free. The variation of the
event from exact law is therefore in the last analysis, free
variation; only this does not mean that the said event is
itself so far undetermined. Given the existence of the many
causes which produce it, itself is quite determined; but
though it does the will of those causes implicitly, yet it is, so
to speak, carrying out their free behests.

And the same is true of the event itself. The ball of lead
is an ultimate fact, independent of the pull of the moon, the
air, the earth's attraction. It is an element upon which all
of these react; an end- term to which they assume certain
relations. Its own way of reacting to their influence is eter-
nally its own; its own behaviour is characteristic of it, and
when fully recorded, serves to differentiate it from all other
bodies. Herein lies a freedom peculiar to itself. If the
metaphor may be permitted, it must respond to the call of
these agents, but it will respond in its own way; even as one
man will respond to a sermon or a lecture in a very different
way from that of another man. It feels the resistance of the
air less than a feather, it is not as elastic as glass, etc., etc.
And in all this we are not exhibiting empty formahties
such as the lead as a thing-in-itself versus the lead as a
phenomenon, or as a unique individual versus a congeries of
Universals, etc. ; but Verifiable traits of concrete behaviour.

484 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

But this is only a superficial reconciKation. Have we any-
thing but determinism in such an account ? The ball of
lead once given, cannot change its way of reacting; the
moon cannot help pulHng on it, the air must resist just as it
does, etc. It seems quite barren to call these actions and
reactions free when we know they cannot be otherwise.
There are no genuine alternatives of behaviour before these
things. But let us look more closely.

When an experiment like this one of the falling ball is
repeated again and again, the results are found to vary.
Perhaps never do we get the same results twice aUke. To
be sure, the degree of such variation is relatively small. The
resistance of the air varies ever so Uttle, from moment to
moment; but we keep it as nearly constant as we can. The
attraction of the moon may in itself even vary enormously
in direction — but it is a remote cause, so small, we say, as
to be neghgible. Indeed, the very nature of a scientific
experiment is that all the causes but one (or a very few) are
reduced to a minimum. Consequently, while the experi-
ment gives varying results, those results vary always within
certain rather narrow limits. The leaden ball, let fall
repeatedly, will fall in, say, 1.0002 seconds the first time,
1. 00018 the second, 1.000209 the third, and so forth. In
other words, the " uniformity of nature " is but approxi-
mately verified. The divergence from law never passes
beyond a certain range of variation; how narrow the range
is, depends upon the accuracy of the experiment.

These variations are, it would seem, due to the changing
conditions which surround the experiment. They are not
to be construed as the realization of alternative possibiUties
one after another; everything is so far in accord with deter-
minism. But there is another fact which, so far as we know,
seems not yet to have been noticed by philosophers. It is

THE REMEDY 485

a very well-known fact, but it seems not to have attracted
the philosophic mind. We refer to a certain character of
these variations from exact law. They are, to a surface
view, merely irregular. But when carefully measured,
tabulated, plotted in a graph, they show a remarkable prop-
erty. The graph is that of the probability-curve. And this
is a phenomenon of wide generality; for it is true that
almost all the events of Nature show it. Repeated shots at
a target, repeated measurements of a rod, repeated almost
anything, as the science of statistics has shown, give a
figure which is some form or other — skew or symmetrical
— of this same curve.

The significance of such a fact we believe to be this. The
probability-curve is what we get when we graphically plot
the values of a series of resultants which are compounded
out of many causes — where all possible combinations of
those causes occur in approximately equal numbers. This
condition of the equal frequency of all possible combinations
is essential to the curve. Is it not a curious trait ? Why on
earth should there be such a peculiar property ? We do not
know how to account for it. Why, when a given event is
tried again and again, should the results vary so as to cover
all possible cases ? Why does a man shooting at a small
target hit every part of the target if he shoots long enough ?
Why do we feel sure that if a vast number of letters were
jumbled together, time after time, eventually we should get
any designable combination, say the play of Hamlet ?
Somehow we take for granted this tendency to vary it; it
seems a priori, inevitable. But it is not so. There is no a
priori reason why the continual repetition of anything
should cover aU possible cases. It is a priori quite con-
ceivable that it might show no variation. Do you say that
the second repetition must be different from the first, be-

486 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

cause the conditions are found to be different ? No doubt,
we reply: no doubt they are bound to be different in each
repetition. But that does not guarantee the equal frequency
of all possible variations. Certain ones might greatly pre-
dominate over others: there is nothing in the notion of per-
petual difference to forbid it. No, we seem to have here a
sort of ultimate attribute of reality; the tendency to spread,
to cover all the cases not ruled out by the circumstances. It
reminds us of the water issuing from the garden hose, whose
general current running in one direction may be likened to a
law, and whose spraying, spreading quaUty, increasing as
the water proceeds outward, is analogous to the variations
here emphasized.

As a matter of fact this impartiahty of Nature, giving
equal opportunity to all possible combinations of events, is
a beautiful illustration of that free union of freedom and
determination which we are seeking to elucidate. First, as
to freedom. Freedom means impartiality; a free choice
would have no intrinsic preference for one alternative over
another. If such a preference were shown time after time,
we must conclude that there was no freedom, but a ground
for the choice. Where there is no preponderance, there is
no reason for thinking the choices adopted to be diie to
anything. That, indeed, is the very definition of indif-
ference. An event A is said to be indifferent to another B
when A happens equally often in the absence or the presence
of B, and conversely. Now just such is the case with so
many of the events in Nature. A single event X is the com-
pound result of an indefinitely great nvunber of causes
Xi, Xi, Xa, ... As the event is repeated, the same causes
on the whole reappear, but now one cause, now another,
predominates, changing the value of X now in this direction
now in that, until all the possible values are (approximately)

THE REMEDY 487

equally realized. These causes thereby show their indif-
ference to one another. In the case of the falling ball, the
variation of the air's resistance is largely indifferent to the
pull of the moon; the changes in one are so far not corre-
lated with changes in the other. And this fact, that these
two are independent, is simply a consequence of the fact
that the air has its own character, external to that of the
moon, and vice versa. The independence between the varia-
tions of the respective agents Xi, Xi, X3, etc., of event X is
the result of the externality of these agents to one another;
just that quality which we dwelt upon a little above. Speak-
ing in general terms, we may say that the whole world is the
combination of a vast number of independent causal series;
independent because made up, respectively, of the behaviour
of things which are logically external to one another.
The behaviour of no one of these agents can be logi-
cally deduced from that of any other; no, not even if we
had perfect knowledge of all that that other has done or will
do. The freedom really lies in the individual way of acting
and reacting which each entity in the universe displays.
And this shows how we can say there are genuine possi-
bilities, alternatives of behaviour not realized at a given
time and place. The " nature " of any one entity — say
the moon's pull, or the density of the lead, is not deter-
minable from anything else but just itself. It might have
shown, in any given case, a different reaction from the one
it does show. Oh no ! we may be told : lead could not rise
like hydrogen. Why not ? we ask. There is no way of
answering this question without a vicious circle. If it rose
like hydrogen it would not be lead, true — but why should
it be lead ? Why should lead act as lead does ? Perhaps
because certain chemical agencies have combined in a cer-
tain way to produce this leaden ball; but then the question

488 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

is only shoved back. Those agencies acted as they did for
no reason except their inherent " nature." Or if we go back
further and find the compulsion in the behaviour of electrons,
then we but find those electrons displaying their own
" natures."

Nevertheless, this " nature " of lead, this ultimate fact
that in a given situation it reacts as it does, once discovered,
permits the inference that, if that situation is exactly re-
peated, the lead must react always in the same way. But
it is never in exactly the same situation, presvunably, as
before. That means that at a given moment it is acted upon
by a new combination of causes. How will it react to this
new combination ? In so far as the combination resembles
the former one, the reaction of the lead wiU be the same.
But if the new were entirely different from the old, we could
not predict beforehand what the lead would do. So to say,
the lead itseK could not predict what it would do; for its
" nature " shows, by the principle of internal relations, a
different side for every new enviromnent. Now in all ex-
periments conducted by man, as they are repeated the con-
ditions are very nearly the same. Accordingly, we may be
sure that the reaction of the body experimented upon will
be very nearly the same. In so far as the conditions differ
more and more will the reaction differ more and more, and
since the nature of the body is not known until all its intrin-
sic ways of reacting are known^ we should be able to predict
less and less as to what would happen. A perfect knowl-
edge of everything that had happened in the past would
not enable one to make such a prediction. The " nature "
of the reagent is not something preexisting, determining the
reaction; it is the reaction itself. There is real indeter-
mination here. In the actual situations of our life, the
fundamental changes are relatively slight, and so we can

THE REMEDY 489

predict what will happen within very narrow limits. We
know that certain things are, in the conditions given,
practically ruled out. Lead cannot rise suddenly, etc., etc.,
— that we know, because we have seen lead acting in the
presence of the earth's gravitation. But if we were suddenly
thrown into a universe where different chemicals existed,
no gravitation, no electricity, etc., then there would be no
way of telling what might happen. There is in short real
chance; but where the conditions remain so largely uniform
there is very little occasion for it to show itself.

But all this is at the same time determination, simply
because all that happens is subject to the law that the same
conditions give the same results. A thing never acts con-
trary to its habits: the leaden ball can be counted upon to
behave practically as it always has behaved, because the
conditions are practically what they always were. And each
way of reacting to each new situation, constituting as it
does the character of the reagent, expresses the law of that
reagent's nature.

This combination of freedom and determinism verifies
our principle of duahty. One and the same reaction of a
given body to a given force acting upon it may be regarded
as free, or determined, or both. In so far as the reaction is
identically the nature of the body, it is free. In so far as the
reaction is only an individual event, while the " nature "
of the body is a permanent character, the reaction is deter-
mined. These two, the individual event and the " nature "
of the body, are the same yet distinct; and it is that
sameness-in-difference which allows each aspect of the
matter, the freedom and the determination, to be ulti-
mately true.

Of the freedom of the human will, which is a special case
of the above, we do not now propose to treat. The nature

490 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

of will and choice is not very well understood; the experience
of activity is a topic beset with disagreements. The reac-
tion of a particular man to the motives which urge him is no
doubt free: but just how it occurs, how it bears upon his
character, whether a good character has more or less free-
dom than a bad one — all such questions are empirical ones
which, however interesting and profitable, we must here
dismiss. We must for the present concentrate our attention
upon the application of our principle to the cure of the
ancient philosophic malady.

It remains to show the solution which our principle
affords, of the practical antinomies. In general, that solu-
tion must be in accord with the maxim " live and let Uve."
And if we men had each of us infinite time or energy at our
disposal, it would be enough to say this. We could put
tremendous energy into self-cultivation, by education, re-
flection, and other self-regarding processes, and still have
plenty left to devote to the problems of poHtics, economics,
and other social concerns. But with our short lives and
limited strength we must find a way of combining these
opposites. We must seek a mode of Uf e which will so far as
possible conduce at one stroke to the interests of both. To
a certain extent, it is true, we must allow the separation of
private and pubUc interests. There must be times when we
play, or seek our own profit and seK-discipline forgetful of
our membership in the social body, and there must be cer-
tain other moments when we deliberately disregard our own
interests for the sake of the community. Still, with the
limitation of man's powers what it is, these self-seeking
moments must be fewer than the moments when we are
trying to harmonize egoism and altruism. Our work should
occupy a much larger space of life than our play; our daily
labour in the community than our pleasant fancies or our

THE REMEDY 49I

bitter sacrifices. Now the solution of the problem, how best
to make egotism and altruism interpenetrating and mutually
contributory, is not to be found in the principle we have
been elucidating, but in its counterpart principle. For,
once more, true to our fundamental dualistic attitude, we
find that the principle of duality is by itself insufficient.
True, valuable, indispensable as it is, it is not enough to give
us a positive system of reahty or an articulate plan of life.
It requires supplementation. Or it would be better to say
that the form of that principle which we have already an-
nounced, should be supplemented by a second form; since
these two bases of reahty are really but two sides of one
principle.

The solution of standing contradictions by a sort of pas-
sivity, a meek acceptance of both sides, of all doctrines as
equally true, is all very well; but it gives no account of the
way in which the universe is put together; no positive idea
for which we can do battle with single-eyed devotion. Such
a non-resisting attitude is weakening to the intellect un-
less it goes hand in hand with some positive principle,
some definite platform on which we take our stand as
propagandists.

When we diagnosed the philosophic disease we found that
philosophy was barren because it was exclusive. If then we
have removed the exclusiveness, we should thereby cure the
barreimess. That same principle which solves the antino-
mies and removes the exclusiveness, ought to render human
thought fertile to explain the concrete detail of reahty. The
principle, in other words, should enable us to understand
how one fact or aspect of the universe imphes others. If,
as Mr. Bradley says, " thought demands to go with a
ground and a reason," we ought now to have the means of
satisfying that demand. The principle which above we

492 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

called the duality of reality thus will appear as a productive
principle, or better, since it shows how one thing gives rise
to another, a creative principle. Empowering us to go
from one part of reality to another, to see how reality builds
itself up, it should furnish us with the key to that map of the
universe which is the goal of philosophic inquiry.

CHAPTER XIII

THE CREATIVE PRINCIPLE

REALITY, we have said, is through and through dual.
It is free and constrained, it is static and dynamic, it is
term and relation, individual and universal, and so on.
Hitherto our effort has been to show that these contrasts
are not conflicts. But the very principle of duality suggests
that this is but one side of the matter; there is also another
side, wherein freedom and law, static and dynamic, individ-
ual and universal, have a positive relationship. They do not
merely fail to conflict, they are not only mutually indif-
ferent; they are also mutually contributory. The two
aspects are always of one and the same reality. They are
distinct, yet they are united; they are different, yet in their
difference they display a sameness and a reciprocal con-
firmation. The principle above announced, of the free
duality of reaUty, was so to speak the individualistic formu-
lation of our total result; it must be supplemented by its
correlative, the socialistic rendering, which proclaims the
junction or union of the counter-aspects. If the former
justified the partisan philosophic types in all but their
exclusion, the latter will justify the synthetic types in a
similar manner. The socialistic attribute of reality, when
clearly set forth, should explain to us how it is that reaUty
joins up its contrasting sides. It should elucidate, as none
of the synthetic types was able to do, the transition from
one real thing or event to another, show how one implies
another, how event gives rise to event — and show it in

493

494 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

concreto; in a word it should reveal the way in which the
intemality of relations works. For, in our solution of the
dialectic, we built most upon the principle of externality;
we showed that the counterpart members of each opposition
were indifferent to each other. We have now to show that
they are not only thus external the one to its feUow, but of
one blood, mutually supporting and interpenetrating.

At first we must proceed abstractly; we shall, however,
ascend to the concrete as soon as possible.

Since the principle of reality's free choice or ultimate
duality has now been justified, let us apply it to the present
case. Given any one fact, we are at liberty to fasten upon
it in its isolation, to consider its internal make-up, what it is
in and for itself; or on the other hand we may consider its
connection with the rest of the world. And further, having
distinguished these aspects, we are metaphysically correct
in choosing to regard only their distinctness, and to say that
they are two entirely different sides of it. Or, on the other
hand, we may choose to regard their ultimate identity. We
may declare that they are at bottom one and the same thing.
Let us now make this latter choice; let us say that these
counter-aspects, to wit, the thing by itseK and the thing's
relations, are one. We are herein telling nothing but the
absolute truth; it is no merely subjective point of view,
foreign to the real manifoldness of the thing, which excuses
the statement. Reality is what we see it to be. Now for a
moment may we resort to symbols ? CaU the thing by
itself A, and the thing as related to other things B. The A
is identical with B: that is our present declaration. But
reality chooses also to contain a differentiation within the
identity; it is then also absolutely true that A differs from
B. And both these truths hold, neither denying the other.
Now of this situation there are certain consequences.

THE CREATIVE PRINaPLE 495

In any given case, A and B have, as an empirically given
fact, some specific relation to each other. What that rela-
tion is, depends of course upon the particular case. Sup-
pose, for instance, that A and B are the two aspects of a
candle-flame X. Then A represents the composition of that
flame — the process of rapid combination of the oiled wick
with ox)^en; and B represents, say, the effect of the flame
upon some object — the light-rays perhaps which illuminate
the latter. The specific difference here is, among other
things, a temporal one; B is temporally consequent upon A .
In general, however, the specific relation between A and B
may be of any sort; succession, juxtaposition, leftness,
Tightness, or what not. But pay attention for the moment
only to the symbols. We have then A and 5, and they are
quite the same, yet also different and specifically so. Call
the specific relation between them R. Now if A is the same
as B then what is true of A is true of 5. B, being A over
again — for sameness means absolute, numerical, individual
identity or it means nothing at all — does what A does, has
the qualities that A has, and so on. But it is true of A that
it is RB. It follows that it is also true of B that it is EB.
B must therefore differentiate itself; it must generate, so to
speak, another instance of itself, to which it is related by
the specific difference R. This second instance of B must
be the same as, and also distinct from, the first instance.
We have a repetition of the original case of sameness-in-
difference. Something genuinely new, we believe, is here
produced out of the original situation : something involved in
it, but not tacitly read in or already assumed. The process
is one of logical deduction; it is, we think, quite simple,
clear and distinct; it satisfies the demand for seeing how
novelty can arise — though of course as yet in a very
abstract and formal kind of case only. Deduction here

496 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

becomes production. And not production of merely one
novelty; for the second instance of B is related to the first
as that first was related to A; whence it too will produce a
third instance, and so on indefinitely. Let the reader then
fix his attention upon this paradigm; we deem it of incal-
culable importance for the understanding of reahty. In
fact, it is the only principle, so far as we know, which gives
understanding of the way in which one entity may give rise
to another; for it shows how the former necessitates the
latter.

The situation before us is one in which the twofoldness of
a single object is directly seen to operate, to create another
object. This is that positive side of reahty which reveals
the counterpart of our first principle, the duahstic one. It
is far more momentous than that one, for it is not negative;
it does not remove contradictions, but generates novelties.
It cannot dispense with the first principle, but it cannot be
reduced wholly to terms thereof. And the two are asym-
metrically related. The first does no work, but only Hber-
ates, as it were, the members of the real object, by untying
the knots which chafe and bind them; the second, which
cannot act until the first has performed its part, does
work in providing the world with a new being. At bottom,
nevertheless, these two principles are one; the first being
the disjunctive side, with its either-or, the second, with its
both-and, the conjunctive side. The second is just the
identification of the A and B together with their difference,
the former was just the separation of them, of their same-
ness, of their difference, and the seeing of them as real in
their indifference. And in virtue of the productiveness, the
fertihty, of our second principle, we beheve it to be that
particular one which above all the philosopher seeks; that
creative principle which shows how the parts of reahty are

THE CREATIVE PRINCIPLE 497

joined. By its aid, then, we should be able to furnish a
map of reality, and to satisfy that instinct which, as we
saw in Chapter I, sets the initial philosophic problem.
But the application of this principle is a task of so great
magnitude and withal so novel, that we can discharge it
only by slow degrees. In what follows, then, we make but
a beginning.

Consider some natural object: say an iceberg floating in
the sea. It is a definite body, a mass, a group of forces — ■
i. e., substantial, in accord with the principle of externality.
It is much more also : it enters into many relations with its
environment. It displaces its own weight of water, thereby
raising the level of the ocean. It reflects and refracts the
sunHght, affording to the beholder a spectacle of marvellous
beauty. It absorbs heat from the surrounding air and water ;
it attracts by gravitation much flotsam and jetsam; and it
finally disintegrates as the ice is melted by the warm cur-
rents of the ocean. If the substantial aspect is symbolized
by the letter A, B may stand for any one or all of these
relations between the iceberg and its milieu. Let us select
the phenomenon of reflection. Now witness the situation
between A and B. A designates the structure and order of
the ice-crystals, B the effect of them in reflecting the sun-
light, say to a certain distance outside of the iceberg. This
reflection B is the characteristic behaviour of A and so far
is A; they are in part the same thing. Ice is that which
reflects light in a certain way. If then B is the same as A ,
B must act as A does. That is, B too must be accompanied
by the phenomenon of projecting the Hght-rays further out,
and to a distance equal to the one just mentioned; and this
second stage, so to speak, of the reflection, similarly implies
a third and equal stage. This process, once begun, clearly
goes on without end; that is, light is reflected outwards in a

498 PRODuexrvE duality

straight line to an infinite distance. Our principle, viz., the
fusion of sameness and difference, of internal and external
relations,^ thus explains a great number of distinct events
beyond the initial reflection of the light-rays: nothing less,
in fact, than the whole course of the light-rays in their end-
less journey. And it explains this whole course in detaU and
in particular. We can see why the process, once begun,
must go on, as clearly as we can see why 2 -F 2 = 4. We
do not have to content ourselves with a causal postulate;.
we do not rest in a faith-attitude, asserting dogmatically
that every event will have its effect. We see directly how
and why it has its effect — though as yet in this instance
only, of course. Herein is fulfilled for the present case that
demand which no synthetic type was able to satisfy, that
we see how one fact or event, one part of the universe, leads
on to another. The principle of internality is no longer
merely a general axiom, unverified in concrete; it is an object
of sight and understanding. Are we not then bound to
believe that our second principle is deserving of the name
creative ? It has shown — even though to a very limited
extent so far — a fertility which no other principle yet
named has been able to claim. It has accounted for a causal
connection; it has shown how from a given initial situation
an infinite stream of events — all the different stages of the
hght-ray in its onward progress — is generated.

Take now some other property of our iceberg. It dis-
places its own weight of water. If our principle is sound,
why is not this displacement accompanied by a further dis-
placement, and so on — leaving the ocean heaven knows
where, if indeed anywhere at all ? Surely this is a reductia
ad absurdum of our contention. But we have only to re-
member Newton's first law of motion: that a body in mo-
tion continues in rectilinear motion unless acted upon by

THE CREATIVE, PRINCIPLE 499

some external force. The displaced water is shoved out of
its position when the iceberg breaks off from its parent
glacier, and thereby acquires a momentum which, in accord-
ance with the law of the Conservation of Momentum, con-
tinues. The energy passes, as the water is raised, into
potential form, and as the water settles back, into kinetic
form; but neither the momentum nor the energy is lost.
They simply combine with other forces to produce a com-
pound resultant. Now it would be too long a story, to
attempt to show here that all causal action is but a case of
our sameness-difference paradigm. That story we have
told elsewhere {Journal of Philosophy, XI, pp. 197, 253, 309,
365) and naturally we cannot ask that it be taken for
granted. So we limit ourselves to the comparatively simple
eases where motion is propagated in a straight line. For
sjich cases it would seem that our principle furnishes a real
explanation. And if so, to that extent our common-sense
faith in the efficacy of causes is vindicated. The necessary
eonnectibn which Hume was unable to discern between
cause and effect, is brought to light.

But we may carry the application a little further. The
doctrine that the same causes give the same effects — which
some regard as the essence of natural law — is a direct con-
sequence of the creative principle. For, if cause A is suc-
ceeded by effect B once, then where we have again the
individual event A we should have the same effect B. If
4 2 is the same as Ai and if .4 1 is RBi (related to Bi by the
link of sequence) then A^ must also be related in the same
way to Bi, and we shall have B\ over again, or Bi. In this
manner we justify that postulate which is called the Uni-
formity of Nature. Induction,, by common consent, rests.
upoa such a postulate; and thereby we have explained the
vaJidity of indiUiCtive reasoning.

500 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

Of course, we must expect to be confronted at once by a
reductio ad absurdum; any philosophic doctrine must expect
that, since it aims to be universal and since there will
always be special cases where its truth is overlaid with other
truths. There is a very easy reductio: several, indeed, of
which we select a typical one. If sameness and difference
work together as alleged, to create a new entity, then see
what results: this pen is like the other pen, i. e., in part
identical with it; this pen is now writing, therefore the other
must be. But (presumably) it isn't. Or again: my hat
is in part identical with your hat, since both are black; my
hat has been (with me) on a long sea voyage — therefore
yours has. Or in general: — almost anything is in part
identical with almost anything else, therefore it has all the
properties of almost anything else. Could there be a sillier
view ? Now we might know such an argument is wrong,
because a similar argument can be brought against every
law whatsoever. Thus, the earth attracts bodies; but a
hydrogen balloon moves away from the earth — therefore
the earth does not attract it. Or — action and reaction
are equal, but a ball of putty does not rebound from the
ground as violently as it strikes, hence there is no such law.
We know, of course, that the law is not discredited when
other laws combine with it to produce a resultant. Just so
with our principle. It never ceases to act, but its action is
always compounded with that of another and negative
principle, which runs: A is other than B, but B is RC,
therefore A is other than RC. (We are talking of individ-
uals, A, B, and C and a particular relation R and identity
between A , B, and RC: no notion of the class is yet pre-
supposed. In magnitudes this principle becomes : UA = B,
and 5±C, then A=^C.) Take, for example, the colours
yellow and red. Yellow is a bright colour, and so is red; so

THE CREATIVE PRINCIPLE SOI

far they are identical; but yellow is also a different colour
from, other than, red, so that the identical brightness takes
on in addition a difference: the brightness of red, while
resembling that of yellow, is also in part of a different
quality from that of yellow. Suppose now the reductio ad
absurdum is proposed : yellow is identical with red but red is
complementary to green therefore yellow is complementary
to green. It is obvious enough that the reasoning is sound as
far as it goes. In so far as yellow has that peculiar sort of
brightness that is found in red, so far yellow is identical with
red, and to that degree, neglecting the specific difference of
yeUow from red, we may call yellow complementary to
green. The only thing that would forbid this train of rea-
soning is that we should not be permitted to analyze re-
semblance into partial identity; but in Chapter VIII (on
Intellectualism) we saw that such analysis is always per-
missible. To return now to the earlier reductiones. This
pen is in part identical with a certain other pen; this pen is
writing — therefore the other is writing, which it is n't.
Now as a matter of fact the qualities which are identical in
both pens are in the pen which is writing; and in that sense
the other pen is doing just what this pen is doing. But take
account also of the differences. The other pen is off there
in a drawer where no hand touches it, therefore it cannot be
writing; the apparent contradiction is resolved on the part
of reahty by the fact of the two instances of the common
qualities: one of which is writing while the other isn't.
When we speak of that other pen we mean to designate the
individuality of it, the differences which mark it off from this
one; so we say that it is not writing. But if we were to
neglect those differences and to mean by it those attributes
only which it shares with this pen, then we could truthfully
say that that pen was writing. Do we not often^ indeed,

502 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

speak thus without being charged with falsehood ? Do I
not say that / voted when the man to whom I gave my
proxy voted in my stead ? Do we not say of a photograph
or landscape-painting " What a beautiful view! " when it is
the original that is denoted through its identities with the
copy ? We have only to recall the weU-nigh universal em-
ployment of representation in our lives to see how frequently
we single out the sameness of different individuals, and
treat the one as if it were doing what the other is doing. In
truth, we never can tell beforehand to how great an extent
we may identify things even the most diverse. " Every-
thing in Nature," said Emerson somewhere, "has all the
powers of Nature " ; and we see why that is so. In a very
true sense the sameness between the parts of reaUty permits
us to say that one part does what it is, as an individual,
very far from doing. This is not poetry — at least in the
anti-logical connotation of that term — but is in accord with
the strictest logic. And so, to return to our absurd second
instance above: if my hat has been around Cape Horn then
the identical quaUties in yours have indeed had that same
experience. If it suits your purpose to consider my par-
ticular hat a representative of yours, you may consider that
yours has had the benefit of the experiences which mine
has suffered. The absurdity of the illustration lies in the
fact that we can hardly conceive any good practical reason
why one hat should thus represent another; but there is
nothing in the logic of the matter to prevent it. In so far
as you separate the individual marks of your hat from those
of mine, so far yours has done otherwise than mine; in so
far as you identify them, the one has done what the other
has done. There are two different points of view about the
matter, that is all; and neither denies the other. There
is no reductio; the one object does what the other object

THE CREATIVE PRINCIPLE 503

does, and it does also much that the other object does
not do.

Coming back to the creative principle, we may now ask
how it enables our thought to pass " with a ground and a
reason " from any one fact outward to others more or less
contemporaneous with it ? Certain causal deductions from
one fact to its later effects have perhaps been justified, and
therein we have taken our first actual step in the philo-
sophical journey through the universe. But the whole
system of pluralism has not been touched; the reply to that
system, which we gave in Chapter XII, remains based
solely upon faith, even though properly based. And faith
is not enough. We must try to find some tangible thread
which joins those distinct parts of the world, showing how
one fact of itself imphes other facts. We have not yet
solved the problem set by the synthetic types. The iceberg
of our example above is forever distinct from the sea, the
atmosphere, the sun's rays, and the admiring beholder.
How does it involve all of these ? And in general, how does
the internal constitution and behaviour of any one fact or
event show the existence and the character of the remainder
of the universe ?

It shows them thus. The single fact, iceberg-reflecting-
Hght is a compound affair. It is constituted by the make-up
of the ice-crystals, and by the Ught impinging upon them
from however short a distance outside, and being reflected
back. Now this impinging of the Hght upon the ice is a
process logically quite similar to the reflection outward. As
the reflection proceeds outward indefinitely in its effects,
so the impact must have come inward from an indefinitely
long chain of causes. The symbols A and B might be ap-
plied here, just as above. Let the impact of the light on the
ice be A, and the incoming light-ray, just before impact, B.

504 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

Then A is the effect of B, and in accordance with the defini-
tion of causation aheady noted, there is a sameness between
the two. This is our typical situation again; the sameness-
in-difference of A and B imphes a further cause C of which
B is the effect, and so on forever. Thus the effect implies
the cause outside that effect. And in this way we may
detect in the here-and-now behaviour of an object the pres-
ence, however remote, of a causal agent producing a part of
that behaviour. The HegeUans of course use these same
causal illustrations to show the interpenetration of things;
only they have not behaved it possible for human thought to
explain the causal nexus. We, in grounding that nexus, in
showing its real necessity, have rendered their illustrations
fertile for an inteUigent comprehension of the matter; we
have empowered the intellect to go " with a ground and a
reason " from effect to cause, or from cause to effect. There
is brought to hght no mere xmiform sequence, but a real
objective necessity. It is the necessary connection which
binds the behaviour of the particular fact to its remote
causes. And it is not without interest to note that our
creative principle has restored causation to that eminence
from which it had been dragged by the inability of phi-
losophers to understand it. The AristoteUan-Thomistic
system, with the wisdom of common sense, has steadily
refused to dethrone this most useful of all concepts; and
herein its insight is justified. Indeed, the failure of philos-
ophy to explain anything whatsoever is bound to go with its
renunciation of this category; for causation is the category
which above all others contains the notion of creation —
and if that is not understood, neither is anything explained.
Modern criticism has condemned causal efficacy because it
has seen that a law is no explanation of a particular instance
of the law. Quite true : the stone does not fall because of the

THE CREATIVE PRINCIPLE 505

law of gravitation. But it is over-hasty to conclude that
since the particular is not explained by the universal (as
Aristotle thought) it is not explicable. Our own account
shows that it is explained by a preceding particular event of
dual structure. Laws do not explain, but they are " short-
hand resumes " of similar occurrences which are explained
by similar predecessors.

The extent to which the scientist has been able to trace in
isolated events the action of far distant events — distant in
time, or in space only, or in both — is today very great
indeed. The rapid enlargement of our knowledge of electri-
cal phenomena has furnished impressive instances of this
sort: as when, for instance, the magnetic storms on our
globe are shown to depend upon certain electrical conditions
in the sun. It is true that this tracing of one fact in another
is by no means complete, nor can be, perhaps, until our
science is complete; but it is much to have Justified in
concreto the principle of internal relations to the degree
already done. The empirical indications are strong that
every fact contains in itself the imprint of the rest of the
universe; and hereby we find confirmed Leibnitz's doctrine
of the monads, those mirrors of the universe. But we avoid
the pit of universal relativity into which Leibnitz is said to
have fallen, by the other side of the whole matter, the inner
constitution of the monad; for that inner constitution shows
an unpredictable reaction, an irreducible factor in the re-
sultant behaviour. Every fact, probably, is a mirror of the
universe, but each mirror contributes as it were a positive
colour of its own to the picture.

The reason why previous attempts to get from one part of
the universe to another have failed, is that they started
from a single instead of a dual base. From one you cannot
get anything except what is tacitly presupposed in it; any

5o6 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

appearance of productivity is due only to the hiddenness of
the presupposition. The logical situation here is like the
biological. Fertilization proceeds not from one sex alone
but requires the union of two. As the fruitful element of
language and thought is the proposition or the judgment,
with its twofold structure of subject and predicate; as the
working element of society is the family, rooted in the sex-
contrast; as the foundation of serial reasoning in mathe-
matics Hes in the binomial theorem, with its two cases
sufficing for the whole demonstration; as electrical phe-
nomena depend upon positive and negative charges; so at
the very heart of reahty itself we find that duality is the
necessary and sufficient condition of intelhgibility and pro-
ductiveness. If we had studied, for instance, our iceberg as
a term alone, without any external reference, we shoxild
never have found imphcation of aught beyond the original
datum. The appearance of the ice-crystals, their form,
their smooth contour, their consolidation — aU these prop-
erties by themselves are but so many dead brute facts.
" Brute " is the only word for it: they provide no chance
for the understanding to work. What is given is given and
what is not given is not given. There is no possible basis for
inferring from an isolated fact to a cause of it. We are in an
Eleatic system as cold and barren as the ice of our illustra-
tion. But once introduce that element of external reference,
to wit, the light impinging from ever so Uttle a distance out-
side the iceberg, and we can progress; we can infer to some-
thing more than this given twofold datum. We can combine
the two aspects of the situation and from the combination
generate a new implicate; this new impUcate in turn we can
combine with the original, and produce a fourth, and so
onward. The small amount of external reference that has
fertilized the single datum of the iceberg in itself does not

THE CREATIVE PRINCIPLE 5 07

secretly contain what we proceed to discover; any more
than an inch contains a yard. Given an inch, however, we
proceed to take an ell; given a point, a bare unit, and we
can take nothing. We did not presuppose that the light
which impinges upon the surface of the crystals came from
a very great distance; nothing was said or assumed about
the original source of that Ught. We assumed only a very
small distance: as small as you please. Indeed, what we
assumed was infinitesimal in the true meaning of that word;
for the infinitesimal is no static quantity, but one which is
small at will. But this iota of externality sufiices to im-
pregnate the phenomena of the inner structure; since it
gives us the occasion for applying the formula of sameness-
in-di£ference which is the prototype of all rationality and
productivity. The little bit of externality, identified with
the primitive monad of the original single datum, imphes a
further bit, and this another, and thenceforth passes out to
any required degree.

Yet with all this granted, we have at best but made our
landing upon the shore of a continent: within the hmits of a
single volume we can do Httle more than indicate its vast
extent. The doubter, if perhaps in a generous mood ad-
mitting that we have landed at all, will pronounce it shifting
sandbank or at most a small island. It certainly devolves
upon us to articulate our universe pretty thoroughly by this
second principle of ours. We have not yet touched those
vital disagreements, the practical and emotional issues, of
which the philosophical quarrels are the intellectual counter-
part. Still less have we dehneated that fertile union of the
two factions in each issue, which should present a workable
plan of action for man. Yet if our formula gives us such a
map of the universe as we have been seeking, it must do all
this: it must enable us to adjust ourselves profitably to our

5o8 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

great environment. But as before undertaking a voyage we
must possess the chart, or before attempting to cope with
our environment we must know its cardinal features, it
behooves us now to give some sort of outline, however
rough, of the system which we beheve our principle warrants.

So far, reaUty is an infinite assemblage, not so much of
monads, as of dyads, each of which is two-in-one. This
holds, so far as we can see, alike of physical facts, of mental,
and of any other which we can with any clearness conceive.
For all have their inner substantial aspect as well as their
relative, adjectival status.

But how are these dyads specifically related ? The above
seems at first to tell us very Httle. Does our principle throw
any fight upon the fact that there are physical objects in
space and time, which also are numerable, have magnitude,
exercise gravitation, etc.; that there are minds as well as
bodies, fiving as well as inorganic things, that there are
values, goods and evils, as well as bare facts; that there are
many of each of these sorts of being rather than one of each;
and so on ? These all are things to be explained. Unless
our principle at least helps in this direction, it is scarcely to
be dignified with a very fundamental title.

No one, we befieve, has deduced the categories. We
showed this partly in Chapter IV; but the most illustrious
attempt, that of Hegel, is an even more instructive instance
than those of our earUer account. Hegel started with a
pure monad (Being) out of which he drew another monad
(Nothing) ; these two he combined to produce a third. He
was not, so far as we can ascertain, aware of the principle we
are extolling; for he beh'eved that contradiction was the
spur which pricked thought onward. We have tried to
make clear that contradiction plays no part here, except to
lead to endless bickerings; certainly the combination of

THE CREATIVE PRINCIPLE 5C9

contradictories would but annul each. He saw at times
— just how clearly it is difficult to say — that two are
needed to produce something; yet he did not see it un-
waveringly, for he subscribed to the law that everything of
itself turns into its opposite. Now that is a quite unin-
telligible doctrine. Trueor not trueitmay be: but it is no
explaining principle. Better confess at the outset that you
have an ultimate duality than try to draw the antithesis
from the thesis. But Hegel passed himself ofif not for a
dualist but for a monist, and a monist only; and thereby he
lost the pith and juice of the creative formula; for dualism
must be ultimate if we are to explain things. The origin of
the categories is still a virgin soil for philosophy.

Besides this problem of the genesis of the categories is the
problem of the main attributes of each category. Life, for
instance: why has it the attributes of nutrition, secretion,
mating, breathing, etc. ? Space: why is it infinite, contin-
uous, homogeneous, and so on ? Time: why is it hnear,
irreversible, infinite ? And so for each category.

Now these two problems are, at least to some extent,
amenable to treatment by our principle. As to the former:
we can account for the origin of certain categories. For
instance, generality, or the universal, or class. Suppose the
simplest possible dyad : any two things which possess both
sameness and difference. Call them A and B. Then B,
being the same as A , must have the relation to B which A
has, to wit, difference. B is therefore different from B.
(This of course does not destroy the identity of 5, as same-
ness and difference are not mutually destructive.) This
second B should be called by a new name, to distinguish it
from the first, viz., C. Now C, being the same with B, must
be, as B is, different from itself — hence is implied a new
entity D. This series is indefinitely long. Herein is gen-

5IO PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

era ted the notion of a class; for we have a collection of
individuals, all displaying a sameness, while the number of
the collection actually taken is indifferent. It is potentially
infinite. Such is the logical universal — which when re-
garded from the point of view of the various individual
cases of it, we call a class. And we have produced this
category by applying our principle to just two individuals,
with nothing general or universal about them. They are
individual, their relation is an individual one, and every-
thing about them is individual. There is, so far as we can
see, no tacit presupposition which is later hauled out of its
hiding-place to provide some unexpected novelty. There
is simply production, due to the union of these relations of
sameness and difference in accord with our principle. The
category of individual with which we started has generated
its counter-category, the universal. But from one individual
alone we could never have gotten this result; we need two,
related by sameness and difference.

Again, consider number. The series we have above
brought forth forms the series of ordinal numbers. It con-
tains a first and second instance at the outset, and from
these two it spins an endless sequence; the third instance,
fourth, fifth, and so on. From such a series, as is well
known, can be obtained many, if not all, of the materials of
arithmetic and algebra.

When we come to the genesis of space, there is a difficulty
which we do not yet know how to meet. The property of
extension, or side-by-side-ness, seems quaHtatively unique
and not generable. Once grant this property, to be sure, and
we can deduce a great many of the properties of space.
Given two points, one being in any way you please dis-
tinguished from the other — to the right of it, say, or above
it; then it follows that there must be an endless series of

THE CREATIVE PRINCIPLE 511

points further to the right, or further above the former, as
well as an endless series in the other direction. Given two
equal areas touching each other and differentiated as were
the points, then further areas may be implied as were the
further points. And the same is true of volumes. The
homogeneity of space throughout can then be deduced, if we
assume at the start only two bits of space which are homo-
geneous. But we do not at present know how to account
for the fact that things have position at all; nor, granting
position, can we' deduce therefrom lines, or areas, or volume,
or even higher dimensions, if there are any. That is a prob-
lem for the future — and of course there is a plenty of such
problems. Their presence simply shows us that our map
cannot yet be completely filled in; but we have made no
claim to do this. We claim only to have exhibited a prin-
ciple which will remove the vitiating, self-devouring habits
of previous philosophy and will to some degree show us how
things can be accounted for. There may well be other
fundamental principles besides our own; but at any rate it
should, by virtue of the services it performs, take its stand
somewhere near the head of the universe.

We hope to show in later studies how the creative prin-
ciple helps to account for some of the other categories and
their peculiar traits. For we strongly suspect that it does so ;
though naturally we can ask no one to accept our opinion
until evidence shall have been produced. The problem is
at the outset an empirical one. We must learn by inductive
inquiry and analysis the meaning of each category; for
each category's definition is to be gathered only from the
specific properties of the facts to which that category ap-
plies. We must then ask whether this definition can be
accounted for upon the basis of some simple dyad ; whether,
indeed, the definitions of the many categories can be ac-r

512 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

counted for, by the aid of our principle, from one another,
or from some ultimate simple dyad. The reason why we can
hardly help believing in the efficacy of our principle to
accomphsh this task is that it furnishes so clear a paradigm
of productiveness, of the generation of one entity out of
another (dual) entity. To solve that problem of generation
is, in embryo, to solve the world-problem; for the whole
world-problem is to show the why of things, their origin or
genesis. If the universe is an intelligible affair — and the
axiom of internal relations is but the registration of our
indomitable faith that it is so — then somehow the main
categories of it must be capable of deduction; and the type
of all fertile deduction seems to be before us in our second
principle. It is true that we have not shown this to be the
only type; there may be others. Yet a little reflection sug-
gests that that is probably the case. For it was just by a
perverse interpretation, a dismemberment, of this simple
dyad, that philosophy emasculated itself; by refusing to
admit both terms of the duaUty and clinging to one and
excluding the other, or again, admitting both together and
denying each in itself — never, in short, admitting on equal
footing both part and whole, both sameness and difference,
in that lawful wedlock which alone can generate legitimate
offspring. If then the recognition of this dyad is the one
thing needful for the salvation of philosophic thought, it
looks as if it were the one thing which knits together the
parts of reality; for what is thought but the humble fol-
lower of reality ? But this is at present only a high prob-
abihty, not a proved result.

At any rate, the philosophic child has taken his first step
onward; and though he will certainly fall often and as often
mark time quite after the custom of his caste, it seems to be
only a matter of patience, till he walks about and surveys,

THE CREATIVE PRINCIPLE 513

with trigonometric exactitude, the whole universe. And he
may rejoice in freedom from the old shackles. He will no
longer have to square his findings with epistemological criti-
cism; he need not fear that he is " hypostasizing " any con-
cepts, or believing in abstractions; he need not pause to
refute the stock solution of his problem by realism, or ideal-
ism, or pluralism, or nominalism, or pragmatism, or any other
factional ism; for all those views, considered as possible
foes, are equally true, irrelevant, and infertile. He need ask
only whether his results depend upon correct observation
and inference, and whether they are able to explain, i. e.,
logically to generate, the facts they are meant to illuminate.

We turn finally to the practical issues. Obviously their
solution is not, like that of the theoretical, one which can be
assured on paper. We might make certain proposals, or
utter injunctions, but even were this done with the greatest
wisdom and impressiveness, there could be no guaranty of
their reahzation. ReaUty solves its own problems in the very
act of existing; but the practical solutions depend upon the
free choice of human individuals. In fact, it looks as if we
must go further, and say that the practical evils of man's
life are inevitable.

Man's difficulties in hving arise from two sources; the
one being a more or less wilful perversity and the other a
certain restriction imposed on him by the environment.
Wilful perversity, we say; but there are many degrees of
this, shading down into simple inability. A man may re-
main idle, though with leisure enough, from sheer laziness;
he may be seduced from the human problems by a round of
social pleasure (this holds perhaps of women more than of
men); he may belong to too many organizations and be
overridden with their administrative detail (a rather fa-
vourite vice of our gregarious epoch); being of moderate

514 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

means, he may beget more children than he can afford to
maintain, and be driven to make more money — a not
uncommon failing, whose cruelty is not excused by thought-
lessness or tradition. Or, zealously studying the needs of
mankind, he may allow himself to become so obsessed by
one doctrine as to neglect the truth of the counter-doctrine;
this is the prevaihng fault, perhaps, of those who really
wish to think and labour for the common good. Again,
many an earnest soul, truly interested in the graver prob-
lems, is so wearied by the day's toil that he cannot take them
up with sufficient seriousness; enough to keep the wolf from
the door from day to day. Putting off the time of reflection
till he shall have established his family in secure comfort,
he becomes at length so absorbed in the daily business that
he cannot change. Or, once more, he may be the victim of
ignorance; nobody has taught him the imperative duty of
ameHorating the whole lot of man. Who is any one that he
should blame another for such ineffectiveness ? Yet, though
we know not where to draw the Hne, it seems certain that
some men, having opportunity to study the practical issues,
do it not, or else, studying them, they adopt one or another
solution in so exclusive a fashion as to kill the spirit of free
inquiry. For this we cannot but impute blame ; and as long
as such a fanatical attitude is indulged, so long will men fail
to meet their Hfe-problems. But the other factor remains
potent in any case. Reality is no doubt, from the himian
point of view, capricious and unjust. She limits the re-
sources on which we must draw if we are to live. The supply
of material goods, as well as of some that are not material,
is hot adequate to the demand. The more land one man
owns, the less is left for others; the more money he possesses,
the less another can possess; and so on. The very concep-
tion of economic value is built upon the conception of

THE CREATIVE PRINCIPLE 515

limited supply. The problems of social readjustment, the
issues of capital and labour, of private and state ownership,
et al., grow out of this situation. But not these problems
only. Time is available to man only in restricted quantities.
If one devotes his best years to trifling, he has once for all
lost the opportunity of being useful to society in any great
measure. And the sober-minded also feel time's pinch. We
want to be well informed: we would acquaint ourselves
with all the scientific knowledge, the great works of art, the
events of the day, the history of nations, et sic ultra; but the
time fails. And in many other ways the environment holds
us down to mediocrity, even to poverty, spiritual and
material. It looks impossible, even with the best will in the
world, to carry out in the practical sphere any such scheme
of reconciliation as we have expounded in the theoretical.

As regards the free choices of men and women, they can
doubtless never be discounted beforehand. So long as the
poor carelessly beget too many children, or insist upon buy-
ing as good meat as their wealthier fellows buy; so long as
the idle rich set up an exclusive " society " which is con-
cerned only with itself — so long will the best projects fail.
Nevertheless the region within which such choice is exer-
cised, may be much restricted. Education, increased sense
of social responsibility, legislation, even on occasion force,
may help in this direction. Indeed, they are steadily doing
so. It is impossible to doubt that the altruistic spirit is
spreading. But unless that spirit is aided by intelligent
manipulation of human resources, it may do as much harm
as good. What we need is some plan or method which will
minimize the incompatibiHty of your possessing sufficient
means of hfe and my possessing them. The niggardhness
of the material world, of time, of human powers, must some-
how be reduced; the contradiction, hitherto deemed so

5l6 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

obvious, between your wealth and mine, your success and
mine, must be exorcized.

Now in the attainment of these results two requirements
must be kept in mind; the one is concerned with details and
the other with the general object. The former is a matter
for expert knowledge in special fields; the latter can be
fulfilled, we beheve, only by philosophy. Each has tended
to despise the other, and disaster has resulted, and will ever
result, while that is the case. No philosopher, without
expert knowledge of economics, social psychology, hygiene,
machinery, etc., can hope to launch upon the world a plan
of social organization with any hope of success. Such
Utopias have been proposed often, and with different degrees
of practicabihty; according as the originator was well or iU
acquainted with the actualities of human nature and the
material environment. They have all more or less failed,
Just because of the impossibihty of the needed expert knowl-
edge. On the other hand, experts in economics, sociology,
hygiene, or social legislation, have generally not had a
sufficiently broad philosophic point of view. The chief
difference, perhaps, between the older Utopias and the
modern sociahstic schemes, resides in this: the former were
too exclusively philosophical, and the latter are too exclu-
sively utiHtarian, or materialistic, or somehow one-sided.
Now in this situation, the philosopher's part is to point out
the ideals which must be continually kept in mind, to which
the experts must adapt their schemes. If the latter do not
do this, they will but renew the old battles between individ-
ual and society, authority and freedom. It is reserved for
the philosopher to indicate, along general lines, the com-
bination of the two counter-ideals which can alone found a
workable solution. More than this he cannot do; there is
always a distinction between the general law and the specific

THE CREATIVE PRINCIPLE 517

application. The dualism which holds everywhere else holds
here also. If it were not so, there would be no other knowl-
edge than philosophical knowledge; but we saw at the very
beginning that philosophy is distinct from the special fields
of science, art, reUgion, and practice, and that each is needed
for the best kind of living. At the same time, the philo-
sophic contribution to the practical solutions must occupy
a leading position: the relation between philosopher and
specialist is an asymmetrical one, like that between the
law and the jurist who interprets it to fit the particular
occasion.

The ideal is to combine the two antagonist principles so
that each fosters the other. Now the institution which so
unites the individualistic and the sociaHstic factors is divi-
sion of labour. The spirit of this institution is organic and
systematic; it gives a certain scope to individual preference
and abihty, at the same time making them conduce to the
collective interest. But it is of the very essence of such a
system that it is not symmetrical. Individuals never will
be equal in native endowment; some will be clearer-headed
and more devoted to the common good than others. Initia-
tive, discovery, and invention will therefore come from
individual enterprise; and the centering of responsibility
and authority in one, or a few individuals, is a corollary of
this. Every goverimient, every organization for any prac-
tical end, presumably, must therefore be a kind of aristoc-
racy. The more intelHgent and public-spirited are the ones
who should govern a nation; not the great mass of the
people. That mass is too unwieldy, too slow-moving, too
inexpert, to judge quickly and wisely upon difficult ques-
tions. The principle of division of labour requires that the
labour of governing should be placed in the hands of a small
minority. How then are we to select for our rulers such

51 8 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

well-endowed individuals, whose very individuality consists
in this devotion and this ability to exercise it intelligently ?
As Plato long ago saw, this is the first great problem of
politics. But he himself did not answer it; for however
admirable was the system of training which he advocated
as the means of selecting these guardians, he had to pre-
suppose some already existing power which could and would
carry out that training. We, with our govenmient by popu-
lar vote, have no very soimd criterion of selection. For see:
with us there must always be two parties, since there wiU
always be, in some form or other, the same duaHsm of
purposes that pervades all the needs of men. It may take
the shape of the business interests versus the "labouring"
classes, tariff versus free trade, national honour versus
pacifism, manhood suffrage versus the democratic project
of universal suffrage — or any other of those issues with
which we are today wrestling — but always we may expect
to have two rival claims to adjust and consequently a con-
solidation into two principal parties. And while with a
smaller group of experts such differences of opinion may be
settled by free discussion, that is hardly feasible with the
great mass of the people. The logical result will always be,
to a greater or less extent, party organization, and the well-
known evils thereof. Accordingly, even were the bulk of
the people the best judges of the fitness of their president
and legislators, the institution of the popular vote would in
a measure defeat itself. But in any case they are not; it is
reaUy quite ridiculous to suppose that the vote of a habitual
drunkard should count as much as that of a professor of
political science.

Wrong it doubtless would be to deprive any of the ruled
of a voice in the choosing of the ruler; every mite has its
needs, and its point of view should be represented. But it is

THE CREATIVE PRINCIPLE 519

equally wrong, to reduce all voices to the same level. We
have rightly cast out the old unintelligent form of aristoc-
racy; we have largely abolished its injustices, cruelties, class
privileges, etc. But the democracy toward which we are
tending has its own injustices; the tyranny of majorities,
the warping of genius to the popular taste, the premium put
upon social cowardice, the lack of reverence for the high as
against the low. We need some new sort of aristocracy.

Of course, " equality of opportunity " is a perfectly just
ideal; and we do not advocate such an aristocracy as would
prevent its reahzation. An aristocracy of altruists is the
very best means of securing it. The old objection at once
arises, that it is not safe to give absolute power to one or to
a few; they will exploit the people. The real way to meet
this objection is to make it safe. In the old days of caste, it
could not be done; but today the spirit of universal brother-
hood has grown far beyond what it was; so far has it grown
that it begins to be credible that rulers may not be selfish
beings. At any rate, the best way to secure such an aristoc-
racy as we here speak of is to develop, slowly though it be,
and more especially in the young and impressionable, the
simple virtues of kindness, tolerance, and breadth of interest.
It is a matter of gradual education; but there is no short and
easy road. No revolutions are needed, no upheavals of the
existing fabric of government from the bottom. It is in the
spirit, not in the letter, that the victories are to be won
which ensure intelKgence and devotion in our leaders. In
short, there is only one way of bringing into existence a class
of men fit to be the ruHng class, and that is by the insistence,
in season and out of season, upon the altruistic virtues.
Then, when intelligence and expert knowledge are joined to
these virtues, there is nothing to fear from a ruling class.
And only in a society where there is a class like this, open to

520 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

all who show themselves fit, are the social and individual
motives organically joined.

We do no more at present than give these general indica-
tions; hoping later to give a more specific account. Our
wish is now but to show that our dualistic scheme of the
universe has definite consequences for human action; con-
sequences which we believe would tend to abolish that
peremiial strife which man wages with himself and which a
niggardly Nature had made so easy. In spite of its policy of
non-resistance, of meek acceptance of all views, our position
has its propagandist side, and demands a militant attitude.
It is indeed positive, more positive, we think, than any
other, inasmuch as it is the only one which possesses fer-
tility. Its rubric is that the free union of two produces a
third; its ideal of the State is the union of individuaUst
and social motives in which each, so to speak, fertilizes the
other; the good citizen's individuality being developed by
his citizenship, and conversely.

Even if the time is not yet ripe, to establish the new
aristocracy here spoken of, our system makes a difference
to our present political acts. For instance, at every
presidential election, it is probably the case that one party
represents a more extreme view than the other; that the
former stands for measures which would over-emphasize
the individualistic motives, or the socialistic. At the present
time we believe that the Democratic party has taken such
a one-sided position. It is, we think, tending to extol the
sodaKstic motives to the exclusion of the individualistic;
accordingly, we should not think it right to support it.
Some decades ago, the boot was on the other leg; the Re-
pubHcan party with its high tariff and other measures
favouring " capital " had emphasized individualistic mo-
tives too much, and on the whole therefore seemed too one-

THE CREATIVE PRINCIPLE 52I

sided. Always we should try to restore the balance, to avert
the dangers of political monism. Sometimes it might hap-
pen, however, that a certain extreme measure should be
adopted in order that its evils be thoroughly appreciated.
One cannot tell beforehand how the rule is going to apply;
always empirical knowledge is required to fit the rule to the
occasion. But one cannot do this — i. e., one cannot really
vote intelHgently — unless he knows the rule. And he must
keep before him, we believe, as the ideal rule which he seeks
to approximate, the organic fusion of the two counter-
motives which make up human society; and by precept and
example hasten the time when expert knowledge may com-
bine with exceptional endowment and pubUc spirit to form
a responsible type of magistrate.

So much for a vague suggestion of the way of meeting one
social problem. Let us make now some analogous applica-
tions in the sphere of individual morality. Hitherto it has
been too common to assume here an exclusive attitude; if
I do the right thing, it matters little to me what you do. At
any rate, it matters little to the morality of my act what you
do. Since generosity is a virtue, shall I be generous when
my being so makes you less considerate or just ? Suppose
you ask me to lend you a sum which I could well afford to
give you, I knowing that you are shiftless and ought to feel
the pinch of want a little to learn the lesson of thrift. Many
a kind-hearted person has been admired for an impulsive
generosity which increased the sum-total of immorahty.
Should a criminal be pardoned because " the quality of
mercy . . . blesseth him that gives and him that takes " ?
Ought he not, in justice to society, and in obedience to that
motive of all law, the prevention of crime, to pay the de-
creed penalty ? These are not idle issues today; we see
every few days cases like this where the admiration of that

522 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

chiefest of modern virtues, sympathy, is conceived in such
exclusion as to preclude other virtues no less necessary to
society. This solution we offer is of course nothing new, yet
we behave it is much needed. Our exaggeration today of
that social virtue, kindness, is working dead against the
individual virtue of prudence. The real kindness is that
which endeavours to identify the benefit of the recipient
with that of society. Reform the criminal, but let him suffer
punishment too; refuse your careless friend, but show him
why you do so. Devotion to a person who is doing wrong
may be consistent with a certain severity of treatment —
as the parent's love of a child is consistent with punishment.
Fortunately the progress of mankind has made the above
remarks rather trite; but they are the precise appHcation
of our principle, and they need emphasis.

A mode of conduct which creates further good conduct,
even as the cause creates an effect like itself — that is the
only true, because the only productive morahty. An act of
kindness which tends to develop the recipient's character so
that he may perform similar acts — such is the only desir-
able kindness. This, again, is not merely the organic theory
of society; for that theory excludes the possibiHty of merely
individual morality. But there is a merely individual
morahty too. A man owes certain things to himself; if it
were not so, others could not owe him anything. He owes
to himself prudence, and reflection, and a certain amount of
self -consciousness; the cultivation, so far as it interferes
with no one else's benefits, of a sound body and mind —
merely because it is an admirable thing in itseff. And one
mark of this is the unaffected sensual pleasure which accom-
panies it. Also because it gives pleasure to others, no doubt;
but not for that reason alone. Selfishness itself is bad only
when it excludes altruism; and it does not always do so.

THE CREATIVE PRINCIPLE 523

Men should be free to cultivate themselves for their own
sakes as well as to make themselves better citizens, friends,
fathers, brothers, etc. ; where to be any of the latter is to do
acts that are both good in themselves and tend to be re-
peated by others. It is a mistake to say, as one often hears
it said, that selfishness is the root of all evil. An exclusive
devotion tti any one person at the expense of another is
equally wicked. A mother's bUnd devotion to an exacting
child, or a woman's to her faithless lover, has little admir-
able about it; both are socially pernicious. The minute
this tendency to repetition is frustrated, that minute we
have moral evil; the act, beautiful in itself, becomes ugly
in relation to others, and the blemish destroys its integrity.
Also when an act, beautiful in its effect upon others, tends
to dwarf one's own character, so that one will not be likely
to repeat it, that act losesmoral worth. As the only proper
metaphysical principles are fertile and productive ones, so
the only proper ethical maxims are those which promote
conduct which promotes further conduct, i. e., those which
increase the sum- total of life; a generative series which
produces itself indefinitely, like the living organism.

Were we to write a book of ethics, we should begin by
saying that a sound ethics must be based upon meta-
physics; for we shall never know how to adjust ourselves
to our great environment until we know the nature of that
environment.

Our treatise has grown terribly lengthy: we must leave
to the reader (if we dare assume such a being) the appUcation
of the main principle to the other issues.

Free union and f ertihty — these are the watchwords
which must be the guide of man as he journeys through
a universe which is made up, from beginning to end, of
dyads.

524 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

We may characterize our doctrine summarily as follows:
(i) It maps reality as a collection of dyads, or two-in-one
monads: if a physical comparison is allowed, of two-atom
molecules; if a biological one, of families, each of which is
based upon the contrast of sex. It does not at present oflfer
any further chart; it is here limited to the study of the
microcosm rather than the macrocosm. This is, of course,
a defect, and a partial failure to fulfil the intention with
which we set out. We here say nothing of the objects of
rehgion, the categories of science. May we be able to do so
upon a future occasion! Nevertheless, we beHeve that the
sUght contribution which alone we could exhibit is a gen-
uine answer as far as it goes, in that it reveals the type
of explanation and is also of utility in the long run.

(2) It is absolute positivism, because it ascribes no nega-
tions to reality; negations, that is, in any sense but other-
ness. Exclusion and denial are totally ruled out, except in
apphcation to themselves. If a statement is true, the ex-
clusion of that statement from every universe of discourse is
excluded. This is the " law of contradiction "; don't deny
your statements. It is only a recasting of our main point;
exclusion is excluded from reaHty. We have used the phrase
" absolute positivism " also to contrast our view with that
of Auguste Comte; the latter was one of the most negative
systems which it has entered the mind of man to devise. It
excluded nearly everything in which man is most deeply
interested: rehgion and the extra-physical generally;
whereas our own works in just the opposite direction.

(3) Or one might foUow out the suggestion of the last
paragraph about negation and style the treatise The Mean-
ing of Negation. For the pivot on which we turned from the
realm of eternal strife to what we deemed the fertile solution
was, the analysis of negation into otherness rather than

THE CREATIVE PRINCIPLE 525

removal of what is negated. Our whole system rests upon the
proper interpretation of the negative; the most shadowy of
all concepts, perhaps, and the least likely to attract atten-
tion; and therefore just the one where the great root-error
of human thought would choose to lurk.

(4) Lastly, we are driven to characterize the universe as
an asymmetrical affair. Much has been heard, in recent
philosophy, of symmetrical and asymmetrical relations;
we have also described certain systems as symmetrical ones,
others as asymmetrical. This distinction we believe to be
profoundly important, particularly for practical applica-
tions of our own view. The ultimate dyad (sameness-in-
difference) is not wholly a S}Tmnetrical affair; or at least,
while in one aspect symmetrical, in another it is asymmet-
rical; and the latter though not more real than the former
yet plays a larger part. If we call the two elements of the
dyad A and B, then A , the first one, is the more significant
element. For 5 is in a sense dependent upon A; it is de-
fined wholly by reference to .4 . B is defined by the words
"the same as A " and "yet different from ^." A deserves
the name of the first and B of the second member of the
couple; though both are equally necessary, and though B
cannot be reduced wholly to terms of A , yet A appears the
more fundamental. In fact, if we did not add to our account
this last little touch, the distinction between A and B would
evaporate. They would both be logically quite relative;
each one displaying no nameable quality which the other
had not. But if there is something in A which B has not —
viz., a certain fundamentahty, then an ultimate difference
has been named between them. They are no longer inter-
changeable because they are not on the same level. And
this difference of level, i. e., of importance or significance,
pervades all the pairs of categories which align themselves

526 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

with the dualistic scheme. As A is more fundamental than
B, so the sameness-relation between them, rather than their
diversity, is the carrier of the productiveness by which C
was generated. It was the sameness between A and B,
which alone enabled us to infer from 5 to a new entity C.
To be sure, the difference between A and B was necessary
also, but it gave of itseK no movement onward, no transi-
tion, no motion, so to speak, such as resulted in the third
entity. And likewise of the pair " universal-individual."
The category of individual is more fundamental than that
of universal, for by the former (by two individuals related)
was the latter defined. So it is with the pair " cause-effect " :
the cause is logically and temporarily prior to the effect,
but yet the effect is necessary. But here again we must
content ourselves for the present with a curtailed exposition;
we pass at once to a certain application of fundamental
importance which we wish to make.

It is in general true that the principle of externality is
prior in reality to that of internality. This may be seen in
many ways. We found in Chapter XII that it is through
the principle of internality that opposition was rendered
possible in the philosophical field; although no doubt the
other principle must cooperate, in order that opposition may
become actual. In the battle-ground of the subjective the
situation is the reverse of what it is in the kingdom of reality.
What is real is individual — such has been long a favourite
principle of philosophers, from Aristotle to Hegel. The rela-
tions between real things, though indeed no less real, are
secondary to the things. We express this in the category of
the adjective. The adjective is in a clearly recognizable
sense subordinate to the substantive, the quality to the sub-
stance, the relation to the term. Reality needs both cate-
gories, as does our understanding; but it rests in the one,

THE CREATIVE PRINCIPLE $2/

and moves by the other in order to attain that one. Now
in the realm of social problems, the corollary is fairly ob-
vious. The prior requirement of the successful solution of
those problems is the estabUshment of a strong and moral
individuality. The reformation of society must be built
upon that of individuals. We do not say that latter would
sufl&ce; it certainly would not. The social sense is some-
thing over and above the individualistic motive; however
they may be identified in division of labour or other devices,
the one can never be wholly submerged in the other. But
you cannot, by legislation, by material rewards, or by any
other ingenuities, build up a well-founded state while the
individuals have not firmly fixed good characters. A man
cannot be a great publicist until his private character is
incorruptible; until he can control his anger, his jealousies,
his rivalries, his exclusiveness of many sorts. It is possible,
no doubt, for him to do these latter things while not labour-
ing very much in the service of the State; but even so, his
life is a relatively meagre one, for it then denies, to a large
extent, the social impulses. But the social depends on the
individual more than the individual upon the social. This
is a truth which needs emphasis and reemphasis in these
days when the individual is in danger of drowning in the
social bath. But social reform not preceded by individual
seK-discipline is reform resting upon no foundation. For
this reason politics is not quite so important as religion and
morality; these being concerned primarily with individuals.
" Seek ye first the kindgom of God and His righteousness,"
said Jesus; and we of today have almost forgotten these
words. This does not in the least imply that we should
neglect the interests of our neighbours and of the State;
any more than the love of one's friends implies a hatred of
the rest of the world. On the contrary, such a view, if

528 PRODUCTIVE DUALITY

correct, makes us the more likely to adjust ourselves to the
social milieu. And so religion and morahty, if properly
understood, should make one a better citizen. But that does
not mean that they are swallowed up in pohtics or statecraft,
of however exalted a sort.

Every practical problem should, in our belief, be met thus :
of the two positions in conflict, ascertain by empirical
analysis which one represents the principle of externality,
and which that of internality; seek a solution which will
identify the interest of each factor, yet so as to leave room
for the pursuit, on occasion, of each one by itself; and
remember that in this identification of their interests that
one of the contestants which stands for the principle of
externahty should claim priority in emphasis or in time.

INDEX

INDEX

Absolute Idealism or Absolutism,

107-108, 3178.^423.
Abstractions, 255 ff., 341.
Act and potency, 371.
Actus purus, 367.
Adjective, 526.

Aesthetic idealism, 115, 14S ff-
Aesthetic synthesis, 407 ff.
Affective idealism, 145 ff.
Agreement in philosophy, 25 ff.
Algebra, 510.

Als Ob, Philosophie des, 165.
Analysis, 187-188, 238, 2878.
Antinomies, 46, 181 ff., 300 ff., 428 ff.,

477 ff.
Aristocracy, 519 ff.
Aristotle, 229, 253, 360-361, 372.
Arithmetic, 510-
Art, 19, no, 13S-136, isoff., 447-

448.
Aspects, 464 ff .
Asymmetry, 9, 108, 371, si7, S25-

S28.
Authority, 384 ff.
Avenarius, 92 ff.
Axioms, 289, 386.

Baldwin, 145 ff.

Balmes, 362.

Behaviour, 206 ff.

Being, 375, 508.

Belly and Members, Fable of, 21.

Bergson, 287 ff.

Berkeley, 42, 44, 46, 61, 62.

Biology, 176, 206 ff.

Bosanquet, 225, 328, 332 ff., 455.
Bradley, 225, 264, 331, 436, 455.

Categories, 107, 112, 113, 117 ff., 414,
So8ff.

Catholicism, 360 ff., 439-440.

Causation, 123, 135, 365 ff., 374, 400,
496, S04 ff •

Centered responsibility, 517.

Chance, 239 ff., 481 ff.

Change, 236 ff., 300 ff., 477-479-

Classicism, 447.

Common sense, 348 ff.

Completed infinite, 428 ff., 462-463,
477-480.

Comte, 316, 524.

Consciousness, 180 ff.

Content of mind, 45.

Contingent, 377-378-

Contradiction, 342, 428 ff. Cf . An-
tinomies.

Counterpart, 413.

Creation, 370, 401. 493 ff.

Critical point, 66, 79, 90, 100, 139,
ipS, 201, 218-219, 237, 239, 242,
282, 304-305, 341, 40s, 413-

Deadlock, 85 ff.

Deduction, 107, 120 ff., 127 ff., 238,

49Sff-
Definition, 70-71, 101-102.
Democracy, 159, 248, 284, 441 ff.,
. Si7ff-
Descartes 50-51, 289.

S3I

532

INDEX

Destruction, 461.
Determinism, 239 ff., 481 ff.
Dewey, 32, 166, 209-210, 214, 249,

267 ff.
Dialectic, 46, 300 ff., 313 ff., 454 ff.
Difference, 455 ff.
Disagreement, 25 ff.
Disease, philosophical, 35-36, 317,

344, 413 ff-
Division of labour, 517-
Dogma, 351,3843.
Dualism, 87, 195, 475 ff., 493 ff-
Dyad, 508.
Dynamic view, 206 ff.

Eleatic, 506.

Emotion, 29.

Empiricism, 20-21, 511.

Endless tilt, 86 ff., 158, 217, 221, 243,

342-
Equal opportunity, 519.
Erdmann, B., 156.
Error, 194 ff., 202-203, 214 ff., 272-

273-
Eternal past time, 479.
Eternal truths, 479.
Ethics, 523.
Exemplars, 380.
Expectation, 216-217.
Experimental method, 283-286.
External world, 67 ff., 80, 159-160,

380-383.
Externality or External relations,

S3 ff., 228 ff., 330-331, 415 ff.

Faculties, 262-263.
Faith, 329, 384 ff.
Fertility, 496 ff.
Forces, 261.
Form, 380.

Freedom, 238, 358, 376-377, 475.
481 ff.

Function, 188-189, 206 ff.
Fusion of externality and intemality,
493 ff-

Genesis, 496 ff.

Genetic method, 145 ff.

God, 302-303, 365 ff.

Good, 375.

Government, 27, 166-167, 169-170,

260-261, 440 ff., 517 ff.
Great objectivism, 172 ff.
Great subjectivism, 105 ff.

Harmony, 135, 407.
Hegel, 317 ff., 508-509.
Herbart, 54, 225, 418.
Holt, 70, 195 ff.
Homogeneity of space, 511.
Hume, 499.

Idea, as behaviour, 206 ff.
Idea, Platonic, 228, 378-379.
Idealism, 43, 105 ff.
Identity, 53-56, 86 ff., 455 ff-
Imagination, 148.
Impressionism, 447.
Indefinables, 228 ff., 419.
Independence, 81-83, i73ff-, 2243.
Individualism, 440 ff., 517 ff.
Individuality, 234 ff., 252-253.
Induction, 499.
Industry, 137.
Infinite, 430, 510.
Infinite regress, 428 ff.
Infinitesimal, 480-481, 507.
Institutions, 260.
Intellectualism, 222 ff.
Interaction, 98.

Interdependence, 325 ff., 474-475.
Intemality or Internal relations,

52-57, 306, 330, 415 ff.
Introjection, 96.
Introspection, 183-187.

INDEX

533

Intuition, 287 ff.

Isolation of problems, 424-426.

James, 33, 40, 95, 98-99, 213-214,

24s ff., 267 ff.
Jesus, s, 388, 393, 394, 398, 402, 527.
Judgment, 53, 155-156, 436.

Kant, 45-49, 107 ff., 193, 355-359,

383, 429 ff.
Knowledge, 7 ff.

Law, 118 ff., 138, 182 ff., 239 ff., 259-

260, 499, 505.
Leibnitz, 407-410, 505.
Life, 509.

Marbe, 155-156.

Materialism, 218-220.

Mathematics, 227.

Memory, 190, 201, 212, 386-387.

Metaphysics, 20, 523.

Mind, defined, 172 ff.

Miracles, 395.

Monads, 508.

Monism, 58, 324, 508.

Montague, 189 ff.

Moore, A. W., 210-211, 2695., 281.

Moore, G. E., 179, 205.

Morality, 27-28, 138, 356, 448, 522-

523-
Motion, 301.
Miinsterberg, 127 ff.
Music, 447-448.

Mystery of Being, 299-300, 312-313.
Mysticism, 287 ff.

Natorp, 119 ff.
Nature, 159-161.
Needs of men, 7 ff.
Negation, 471, 524-525-
Negative judgment, 473-
Nelson, 155.

Newton's first law of motion, 499.
Nominalism, 51, 248.
Nothing, 299,312,508.
Novelty, 495 ff.
Null-class, 312.
Number, 510.

Objectivism, 67 ff.
One, 302-303, 375-376.
Opposition, 414 ff., 472.
Optimism, 3.
Otherness, 472.
Over-will, 128 ff.

Panaceas, 5.

Pancalism, 115, 146 ff.

Pantheism, 365-367.

Parallelism, 98.

Past time, 63-64.

Personality, 109, 134.

Philosophy, 12 ff., 23 ff., 166 ff., 516-

517-
Plato, 222 ff., 360, 518.
Plotinus, 302-303.
Pluralism, 418-420.
Political parties, 440, 520.
Positivism, 316, 524.
Possible alternatives, 484-490.
Post-impressionism, 447.
Postulate, 328, 356-357.
Potency or Potentiality, 77 ff., 189 ff.

371 ff-
Practical or Practice, 7 ff., 166-170,

277-279> 346 ff., 437 ff-, Si3 ff-
Pragmatism, 177, 206 ff., 267 ff.
Presentative theory, 86 ff., r74.
Primary qualities, 61.
Probability, 485 ff.
Problem, the supreme, 4 ff .
Progress, 3, 34.
Psychical, defined, r9off.
Psyckologismus, 155.
Psychology, ri3.

534

INDEX

Pure experience, 92 ff.
Purpose, 207.

Radical empiricism, 243 ff.
Rationalism, 115, 222.
Rationalistic synthesis, 317 ff.
Realism, 67, 172, 380-383.
Reason vs. dogma, 398 ff.
Reid, 354, 392.

Relation, see Externality and Inter-
nal! ty.
Relativism, 505.
Religion, 5, 28, iio-iii, 138, 359 ff.,

449-
Representative theory of knowledge,

86, 198-199.
Revelation, 384 ff.
Rickert, 115.
Romanticism, 447.
Royce, 108, 158, 209, 225, 253-254,

335-336, 339.
Russell, B., 179, 215, 229, 235.

Sameness, 331-332. 4SS 6-

Santayana, 25.

ScheUing, 145.

Schiller, 214.

Schopenhauer, 42, 183, 410-411.

Schroeder, 312.

Science, 5,6,19,110,176-177,424-426.

Secondary qualities, S9-61, 196, 381.

Selfishness, 522-523.

Self-repeater, 495 ff.

Series, 120-121.

Sex, 506.

Similarity, 187.

Singer, 211.

Skepticism, 427 ff.

Social or Society, 109, 158 ff., 273,

440 ff., 513 ff-
Socipsism, 158.
Solipsism, 72-76.
Space, 123, 126, 130, 510-511.

Spiritualism, 220, 291.
St. Thomas Aquinas, 360 ff .
Static, 212, 224 ff.
Stimuli, 206.
Subjectivism, 38 ff.
Substance, 180 ff., 206, 526.
S}aimietry, 108.
Synthesis, 317 ff.

Temperament, 31-32, 39-40.

Term and relation, 526-527.

Theism, 365-367.

Theology, 370.

Theory, 7 ff., 279-282.

Thing and qualities, 434-435. 526.

Thing-in-itself, 87, 165, 355.

Thomism, 360 ff .

Thought, 209, 453-454-

Time, 123, 131, 294 ff., 477 ff., 515.

Titchener, 156.

Transcendental deduction, 1178.

Transcendentalism, fault of, 139 ff.,

249.
Truth, 214-215, 272-273, 375.
Types, 36, 38-39.

Uniformity of Nature, 499.
Unitarianism, 400, 402-403, 439.
Universal mind, see Great subjec-
tivism.
Universals, 117 ff., 236, 250 ff., 510.

Vaihinger, 165.
Values, 127 ff., 146 ff.
Voluntarism, 127 ff.

Walker, 362, 364.
Ward, 96-97, 372.
WeUs, 26.
Why vs. How, 512.
Will, 126 ff., 513.
Will-to-believe, 277-278.

Zeno, 46, 300 ff., 428 ff.

PRINTED AT

THE HARVARD UNIYERSITY PRESS

CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U. S. A.