Practical idealism

PRACTICAL IDEALISM

BY

WILLIAM DEWITT HYDE

PRESIDENT OF BOWDOIN COLLEGE
AUTHOR OF " OUTLINES OF SOCIAL THEOLOGY," ETC.

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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
I897

All rights resem<ed

COPYRIGHT, 1897,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

J. S. Clashing & Co. - Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

PREFACE

IN these days when, attracted by the achieve
ments of the specialist in every other field, Phi
losophy herself is sorely tempted to forsake her
mission as interpreter of the world as a whole and
guide to noble living, for the mystical cult of the
devotee or the technical craft of the critic, it may
not be amiss to try to tell once more in simple
terms how Thought constructs the Natural World
in which we dwell; and how Love is striving to
create a Spiritual World that shall be as fair as
the face of Nature and as free as the will of
man : and to point out plainly the things that
are best worth seeing along the great highway,
surveyed by Plato and Aristotle, and reopened
by Kant and Hegel, which leads from the mist-
enshrouded vale of sense up to the sunlit heights
where the pure in heart stand face to face

God.

This attempt to interpret the spiritual
cance of everyday life originated in a course
lectures delivered at the summer school at

vi PREFACE

rado Springs, at the summer term of Chicago
University, and at the Chautauqua Assembly. Its
practical aim precludes the discussion of ultimate
metaphysical problems, and confines it to those
concrete aspects of philosophy which lie closest
to the common concerns of men. By way of
compensation for this summary treatment of great
themes numerous quotations and references to
philosophical writers are introduced, in the hope
that this brief excursion may stimulate a few
choice members of the party to undertake a
more extended and strenuous journey with some
of these native guides.

WILLIAM DEWITT HYDE.

BOWDOIN COLLEGE, BRUNSWICK, ME.,
July, 1897.

CONTENTS

PART I

THE NATURAL WORLD
CHAPTER I

PAGE

THE WOULD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION

The two elements in knowledge. Locke's doctrine of the
passivity of the mind. Its correction by Leibnitz and Kant
Knowledge a joint product of sensation and thought 1
fnfant's first impression confused. Analysis of the confusion.
Sensation and perception. Apperception. Perception of
Sane, InadVy of Potion. Memory ^ ~
of perception. Te.timony of others. The bondage
arbitrariness of the world of sense-perception. Facts
sense largely constructions of the mind.

CHAPTER II

36

THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION

The world-process not fixed but fluid. No plated thing
or events All exist in relations. Association by c
and bTlilarity. The reconstruction of wholes when o^y
parts Le given involves large HabiHty to erro, D
systematic doubt. Illusion. Ghosts
Hypnotism. Mental therapeutics. ^^
Control of dreams. Recapitulation. 1 he test ol

viii CONTENTS

CHAPTER III

PAGE

THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 68

Can we transcend perception? Observation. Experi
ment. Hypothesis. The formation of concepts. Animal
and human reasoning. The nature and validity of inference.
Hume and Mill. Mediation through concept. Heat and
expansion. Empirical and logical laws. The laws of thought
and the principles of the syllogism. Sigwart, Bosanquet,
Hibben, on ground of inference. Science deals with con
cepts. Cause. Canons of scientific investigation. Illus
trations of scientific reasoning from Plato and Darwin.
Science not ultimate reality.

CHAPTER IV

THE WORLD OF ART 113

Science deals with essential elements; art with character
istic wholes. Mechanic arts and fine arts. " Art for art's
sake." Art not an abstraction. Decoration the soul of art.
Art rests on scientific laws. Art improves Nature. Realism
and idealism in art. John La Farge. The truth realism
intends. Objective idealism. Morality and art. The free
dom of art. Universal Principle suggested by science and
art.

PART II

THE SPIRITUAL WORLD
CHAPTER V

THE WORLD OF PERSONS . 137

Philosophy reduces the manifold to unity. Persons less
tractable than things. Truth, beauty, and goodness. Evo
lution of personality. Appreciation of personality of others
essential to our own. Royce. Interpretation of others by
ourselves. Freedom. The " fall " a stage of evolution.

CONTENTS IX

PAGE

Man lower or higher than brute. Sin of indifference. Con
sciousness of kind. Love the creator of the social world.
Matthew Arnold, Browning, Wordsworth. Immortality.
Literature the interpretation of life. Literature and phi
lology.

CHAPTER VI

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 162

Individuals apart from institutions mutually exclusive.
The family. Schopenhauer on love. Hegel on the family.
Mackenzie. Edward Caird. The increasing complexity of
life and the strain upon the family. Marriage growing bet
ter and worse. The training of children. Relation of
members of family to each other. The school. End of
education. The new education. The kindergarten. The
" three R's " instruments but not substance of education.
Dangers of a merely formal education. Manual training.
Examinations. Modern language and physical science in
lower schools. Literature in school. Drawing and music.
Crisis of public schools. Social mission of public school.
Results expected of the new education. Industry. Social
significance of work. Harris. Hegel. Laissez-faire and
socialism. Moral socialism and economic individualism.
Bosanquet. The state. War and arbitration. Patriotism.
Currency. Taxation. Pensions. Civil-service reform.

CHAPTER VII

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 2I9

Unconscious conformity to custom. Collision of interests.
The necessity of choice. Appetites good in themselves be
come bad when preferred to greater good. Inferior natural
good is the morally bad. Intuitionism, hedonism, and ideal
ism. Self-realization. The ordering of the desires with
reference to an end. Two elements of moral end : univer-

CONTENTS

sality of sympathy and individuality of function. Concen
tration essential to greatest contribution. The danger to
woman in modern life. Rules relative to the end, and to
the circumstances of the individual. Duty is the affirmation
of universal interests as binding on the individual will.
Murder; theft; lying. Conscience. Abstract discussion of
virtue unprofitable. Vice is meanness, the choice of the
lesser good. Moral evil, impossible to inanimate nature and
the animal, enters in the child as naughtiness. It consists
in deliberate choice of lesser good, when the greater is pres
ent to the mind, because the soul is small. Cowardice, ava
rice, drunkenness, licentiousness, are all the sacrifice of large
interests to small. Strength of evil is the little good it holds.
Why iron ships float. Remedy lies in the enlargement of
the soul. Application to the four examples of evil. Temp
tation always takes the form of something good. The
hardening of moral evil into sin. Morality prescribes the
remedy; but religion induces the patient to take it.

CHAPTER VIII

THE WORLD OF RELIGION 277

Wholeness of view, wholesomeness of feeling, holiness of
character not yet reached, yet implied in each lower stage.
Religion the ultimate unification of life. The personality of
God. Idea of God as ultimate unity of thought and being
latent in all finite consciousness. The gospel of the concrete
universal. Incarnation the corner-stone of Christianity.
" Back to Jesus ! " a false cry, if it means that the particu
lar as particular expresses the universal. Christ in America
to-day our hope of glory. Religious rites, institutions, per
sons, how far sacred. The Bible. The church. The creed.
The sacraments. Tendency to corruption and superstition.
Criticism and credulity. Science and religion. The prob
lem of evil : evil in nature, badness in others, sin in our
selves. Natural evil due to collision of finite forces, each
of which in itself is good. Volcanoes. Bacteria. Cle-

CONTENTS xi

anthes' hymn. The wickedness of others. Vengeance and
punishment. Forgiveness and grace. The teaching of Jesus.
Sin in ourselves. Repentance. Faith. Salvation. Sacrifice
and Service. Religion the victory over man's last enemies,
evil without and guilt within. Wherein religion is superior
to morality. Religion brings infinite significance into daily
life. The union of philosophic insight to see the world as
a whole, and the religious spirit to serve God in the persons
of our fellows the great need of the present day.

INDEX 327

PART I
THE NATURAL WORLD

INTRODUCTION

THERE are no worlds ready-made for sale or to
let. Each man must build his own. This effort
of the mind to build the materials of sensation
into an intelligible world, and this struggle of
the will to mould the relations of persons into a
moral order, is philosophy. Every man must have
a philosophy, just as he must wear a coat. It
may be a firmly woven and well-fitted garment : it
may be a patch-work of tradition and prejudice.
We live by faith in a world-order ; and that world-
order is an affair of our own construction : albeit
the pattern was woven in eternity, and a copy is
imbedded in the structure of each individual mind.
Out of the chaos of elementary sensation qualities,
42,415 in number according to the reckoning of
Professor Titchener,1 and out of the collision of
personal interests, we build the world in which we
dwell. How full and fair this world shall be rests
partly with the heredity, partly with the training,
partly with the will of the builder. We all build
better than we know. Yet the study of the process
is full of interest, and fruitful of practical results.

1 "Outline of Psychology," page 67.
3

4 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

This fundamental truth that we must build our
world, and cannot take it as we find it, is so forci
bly set forth by Professor James 1 that his words
may serve as the text for our whole discussion.
" The world's contents are given to each of us in
an order so foreign to our subjective interests that
we can hardly, by an effort of the imagination,
picture to ourselves what it is like. We have to
break that order altogether, and by picking out
from it the items that concern us and connecting
them with others far away, which we say belong
with them, we are able to make out definite threads
of sequence and tendency ; to foresee particular lia
bilities and get ready for them ; to enjoy simplicity
and harmony in the place of what was chaos. Is
not the sum of your actual experience taken at
this moment and impartially added together an
utter chaos ? The strains of my voice, the lights
and shades inside the room and out, the murmur
of the wind, the ticking of the clock, the various
organic feelings you may happen individually to
possess, do these make a whole at all ? Is it not
the only condition of your mental sanity in the
midst of them that most of them should become
non-existent for you, and that a few others — -'the
sounds, I hope, which I am uttering — should
evoke from places in your memory, that have
nothing to do with this scene, associates fitted

1 " Psychology," Volume II, page 635.

INTRODUCTION

5

to combine with them in what we call a rational
train of thought ? — rational because it leads to
a conclusion which we have some organ to appre
ciate. We have no organ or faculty to appreciate
the simply given order. The real world as it is
given at this moment is the sum total of all its
beings and events now. But can we think of such
a sum ? Can we realize for an instant what a
cross-section of all existence at a definite point
of time would be ? While I talk and the flies
buzz, a sea-gull catches a fish at the mouth of
the Amazon, a tree falls in the Adirondack wilder
ness, a man sneezes in Germany, a horse dies in
Tartary, and twins are born in France. What
does that mean ? Does the contemporaneity of
these events with each other, and with a million
more as disjointed as they, form a rational bond
between them and unite them into anything that
means for us a world? Yet just such a collateral
contemporaneity, and nothing else, is the real order
of the world. It is an order with which we have
nothing to do but to get away from it as fast as
possible. As I said, we break it : we break it into
histories, and we break it into arts, and we break
it into sciences, and then we begin to feel at
home."

This passage from Professor James shows that
the world in which we live is a construction made
by the mind in the interest of the heart and will ;

6 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

and that in this one great world there are sub
ordinate worlds of history, science, and art. It
shows how utterly unintelligible and uninhabitable
and unendurable a real as opposed to an ideal
world would be ; and that Practical Idealism is
simply a presentation of the familiar facts of every
day life in their rational relations, as elements in a
logical process and parts of an organic whole.

PRACTICAL IDEALISM

CHAPTER I

THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION

THE world of sense-perception is the world of
things and events : the world of chairs and tables,
of stars and seas ; the world of planting and reap
ing, of cooking and eating. "Surely," the hard-
headed reader will say, " there is no room for your
idealism here ; it is certainly all nonsense to talk
about the mind's constructing these things which
we see and hear and smell and taste and handle.
Whatever may be true of your scientific theories
and your metaphysical systems, these particular
concrete things come to us just as they are.
They walk straight into our minds through the
open doors of the five senses. There is noth
ing ideal or mental about them." Idealism joins
issue with materialism precisely at this point.
" Show me a single thing," Idealism replies,
" which enters the mind ready-made ; point out
a single item of knowledge, the main part of
which does not come from the stores of the mind
which knows it, and I will stop right here, and

7

8 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

confess that what you prove to be true of a single
thing in the world, of a single idea in your mind,
is true of the universe as a whole, and of all know
ledge whatsoever." This is an old controversy,
however, and the masters shall speak for them
selves.

The man who tried hardest to get along without
this constructive principle, involved in the very
nature of intelligence, is John Locke. He tells
us, " All ideas come from sensation or reflection.
Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say,
white paper, void of all characters, without any
ideas ; how comes it to be furnished ? Whence
comes it by that vast store which the busy and
boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an
almost endless variety? Whence has it all the
materials of reason and knowledge ? To this I
answer in one word, from experience ; in that all
our knowledge is founded, and from that it ulti
mately derives itself. Our observation employed
either about external sensible objects, or about the
internal operations of our minds, perceived and re
flected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our
understanding with all the materials of thinking.
These two are the fountains of knowledge from
whence all the ideas we have, or naturally can have,
do spring." Locke is here opposing the doctrine

1 " Essay on the Human Understanding," Book II, Chapter i,
Section 2.

THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION 9

of innate ideas, which he understood to mean that
there are "certain innate principles, — some pri
mary notions, characters, as it were, stamped upon
the mind of man, which the soul receives in its
very first being, and brings into the world with it." l
Locke triumphantly and completely overthrows
the crude notion against which he so cogently and
valiantly contends. Not that his own conclusion
is by any means satisfactory. Far from it. But
he raises the question, and he gives a definite if
not a conclusive answer. And in philosophical
studies, questions and suggestions, yes, spurs and
provocations, are quite as valuable as answers and
results. The man who makes us pause and won
der and doubt and differ and deny is doing us no
mean philosophical service.

Now good John Locke was a pious and devout
believer in God, and even spoke respectfully of
angels. Yet he was the father of British material
ism. Logically thought out to its legitimate con
clusions, the doctrine of these opening chapters of
his lucid Essay is fatal to those spiritual faiths his
heart so fondly cherished. For us, to-day, it is
simply impossible to accept his psychological doc
trine, and at the same time subscribe to his spirit
ual creed.

This word of warning is not thrown out to

1(< Essay on the Human Understanding," Book I, Chapter li,
Section I.

10 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

frighten the reader away from Locke's position. If
it is true, we must accept it, no matter what be
comes of the things we would like to believe. As
Leibnitz says, " Our interest is not the measure of
truth." We are in search of facts for the founda
tion of our world ; and we must take them as we
find them. The appreciation of the immense
spiritual interests at stake, however, may lend to
this rather technical discussion an interest which
the dry details alone might lack. Laying founda
tions always involves digging and drudgery ; and
the foundations of our world must be laid in
patient psychological analysis.

We have had Locke's clear, flat-footed state
ment. Now let us hear him justify it by putting
his principles into practice. In Book I, Chapter ii,
Section 15, he tries to give account of the actual
working of the first of his two principles, sensa
tion, and to show us how sensation alone gives
ideas. "The senses at first let in particular ideas,
and furnish the yet empty cabinet ; and the mind
by degrees growing familiar with some of them,
they are lodged in the memory, and names got
to them. Afterwards the mind, proceeding fur
ther, abstracts them, and by degrees learns the
use of general names. In this manner the mind
comes to be furnished with ideas and language,
the materials about which to exercise its discur
sive faculty ; and the use of reason becomes daily

THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION II

more visible, as these materials that give it
employment increase."

If now the reader will read and re-read, and
probe and ponder these few lines of Locke, he
cannot fail to notice one or two points of moment
ous significance.

First, he tells us that the mind into which the
senses bring ideas is an " empty cabinet." In
the previous passage it was "white paper, void of
all characters." Yet in the very next line he
tells us that "the mind by degrees grows familiar"
with some of these ideas. Now did anybody ever
know of an empty cabinet, or a sheet of white
paper, which by degrees grew familiar with ideas ?
The looking-glass does not grow familiar with the
pictures presented to it. The phonograph does
not come to be on intimate terms with the sounds
it registers. No more could the mind, if it were

O

like a phonograph or a mirror or an empty cabinet
or a sheet of paper, or any material object or
receptacle whatsoever. Even in Locke's own
chosen sentences the mind refuses to be consist
ent with the passive, receptive, mechanical role
he would assign it. In Book II, Chapter i, Sec
tion 25, he tells us that in the reception of simple
ideas "the understanding is merely passive." In
the passage quoted above he tries his best to keep
the mind down to this " merely passive " attitude.
The "yet empty cabinet" is "furnished" by the

12 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

senses with ideas, which are "lodged in the mem
ory." Nevertheless he finds it impossible to write
half a dozen lines in description of what actually
takes place without as many times employing terms
which attribute active and constructive processes
to this "merely passive" mind. It "grows famil
iar," "proceeds further," "abstracts," "learns,"
"exercises its discursive faculty," "uses reason,"
finds "employment." This " empty cabinet " has
more in it than the trickiest spiritualist ever con
cealed in his. This " white paper " has been
secretly sensitized. Later on Locke himself1
qualifies this statement of the passivity of the
mind in sense-perception by the remark, " In bare
naked perception the mind is for the most part o\\\y
passive."

The correction of Locke's one-sided view was
made by Leibnitz.2 He supplements the contribu
tions of sense by the reaction of the mind. He
says: "Faculties without some act are only fic
tions, which nature knows not, and which are
obtained only by the process of abstraction. For
where in the world will you ever find a faculty
which shuts itself up in the power alone without
performing any act ? There is always a particular
disposition to action and to one action rather than

1 Book II, Chapter ix, Section i.

2 "New Essays concerning Human Understanding." Translated
by Alfred G. Langley. "Critique of Locke on Human Under
standing," Book II, Chapter i.

THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION 13

another. And besides the disposition there is a
tendency to action, of which tendencies there is
always an infinity in each subject at once ; and
these tendencies are never without some effect.
Experience is necessary, I admit, in order that the
soul be determined to such or such thoughts, and
in order that it take notice of the ideas which are
in us ; but by what means can experience and the
senses give ideas ? Has the soul windows, does it
resemble tablets, is it like wax ? It is plain that
all who so regard the soul, represent it as at bottom
corporeal. You oppose to me this axiom received
by the philosophers that there is nothing in the
soul ivhich does not come from the senses. But you
must except the soul itself and its affections.
NiJiil est in intellects quod non fucrit in sensu,
excipe : nisi ipse intcllectns."

A thing as we know it then is composed of two
elements : one of which is sensation, or reflection ;
the other of which is the mind itself and its
own ways of working, or forms of thought. A
simple illustration may help to make clear this
union of sensuous and intellectual elements.

Cotton cloth is made of cotton. There is noth
ing but cotton in it. You cannot make it without
cotton. Is cotton cloth therefore mere cotton ?
Will cotton alone account for it ? Do the fibres
of cotton weave themselves into cloth ? No. The
machinery through which it passes imposes upon

14 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

it certain forms of orderly arrangement. The
picker and card and spinning jenny and loom add
no new material to the cotton. But they separate
and straighten and twist and weave it into shape.
The finished cloth is matter reduced to precise
and definite form. So things as we know them
are made out of sensations ; and without sensa
tions there would be no knowledge. Without
sensations the machinery of the mind would lie
forever idle ; the storehouse of intelligence would
stand perpetually empty. Yet it does not follow
that the things we know are mere sensations,
dumped into the mind as bales of cotton are
dumped into the picker-room. Our knowledge
of things is the product of sensation wrought
over by the forms and processes which consti
tute the action of the mind. Not until cotton
can weave itself into cloth, will sensation alone
account for our knowledge of a single object, or
materialism become a satisfactory explanation of
the world.

It was the great achievement of Kant, not
merely to recognize, as Leibnitz had done, the
presence of these two factors in the production of
knowledge ; but to describe with marvellous in
sight and accuracy the exact element which each
piece of our mental machinery contributes to the
process, and to enumerate the precise stages
through which the raw materials of sensation have

THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION 15

to pass on their way to the final product of an
orderly and intelligible world. The general prin
ciple fhat there are these two factors in all know
ledge he states as follows:1 — "Our knowledge
springs from two fundamental sources of our soul.
We call sensibility the receptivity of our soul, or
its power of receiving representations whenever it
is in any wise affected, while the understanding,
on the contrary, is with us the power of producing
representations, or the spontaneity of knowledge.
We are so constituted that our intuition must
always be sensuous, and consist of the mode in
which we are affected by objects. What enables
us to think the objects of our sensuous intuition is
the understanding. Neither of these qualities or
faculties is preferable to the other. Without sen
sibility objects would not be given to us; without
understanding they would not be thought by us.
Thoughts without contents are empty ; intuitions
without concepts are blind. The understanding
cannot see ; the senses cannot think. By their
union only can knowledge be produced."

Things and events as we know them, then, are
a joint product of sensation and thought. Sensa
tion is the starting-point of all our knowledge of
the world. Sensation, however, does not begin,
as Locke supposed, with letting in clear-cut, partic-

1 Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason," translated by F. Max
Mxiller. "Transcendental Logic," Introduction, Section I.

1 6 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

ular, simple ideas. Modern Psychology l lays down
as its first principle that the infant's original sensa
tion is vague, general, and confused. According
to Professor Baldwin, the first sensation is "an
undifferentiated sensory continuum." In the words
of Professor James,2 "The physiological condition
of this first sensible experience is probably many
nerve-currents coming in from various peripheral
organs at once ; but this multitude of organic
conditions does not prevent the consciousness
from being one consciousness. The object which

1 The best general treatises on Psychology are those of Bald
win, Ladd, Dewey, James, and Titchener. The works of Baldwin
and Ladd are the more exhaustive and scientific. Dewey's is the
most philosophical. The conception of the world as a creation of
the mind out of the materials of sensation by the increasingly elabo
rate and complex interpreting activity of intelligence, which we are
trying to develop here, is wrought into the structure of Dewey's
" Psychology." Titchener gives the most recent and readable ac
count of psychology from the experimental or physiological side.
James is gifted with literary genius. His book is human and alive.
And though we may lament his lack of proportion, regret the order
of presentation, deplore the unfilled gaps, and reject his favourite
conclusions, yet we must admit that there is no book like James'
" Psychology : Briefer Course," to arouse in the uninitiated a zest for
psychological study. For example, contrast in the passages quoted
the two phrases by which Baldwin and James characterize the
vagueness of the primitive sensation. One calls it " an undifferenti
ated sensory continuum." The other, " one big, blooming, buzzing
confusion." Both mean the same thing. One strikes you so that
you can never forget it. The other sends you off to grope among
the reminiscences of your Latin lexicon before you appreciate its
force. This is a fair specimen of the world-wide difference of style
between James and all the other writers on Psychology.

2 "Psychology: Briefer Course," page 16.

THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION 17

the numerous inpouring currents of the baby
bring to his consciousness is one big, blooming,
buzzing confusion. That Confusion is the baby's
universe ; and the universe of all of us is still
to a great extent such a Confusion, potentially
resolvable, and demanding to be resolved, but
not yet actually resolved, into parts. So far as it
is unanalyzed and unresolved, we may be said to
know it sensationally ; but as fast as parts are dis
tinguished in it, and we become aware of their re
lations, our knowledge becomes perceptual or even
conceptual."

The problem before each one of us is to pick
this "big, blooming, buzzing Confusion" to pieces,
and then to put it together again so as to make it
a radiant and rational order. The " big, blooming,
buzzing Confusion " undergoes constant change.
It is not the same at any two successive periods.
Yet it does not change all at once. Some of
its elements come and go at stated intervals. The
infant has his milk and is happy. Then he has it
not ; and in clue time becomes unhappy. Then he
has it again and is happy once more. Hence, as
hunger is a large element in his total conscious
ness, the alternating presence and absence of its
satisfaction come to stand out as distinct from
the more constant and less intense background
of the big Confusion. The recognition of this
recurring phase of experience, as distinct from the

1 8 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

whole experience of which it is a part, consti
tutes separate sensations of hunger and the taste
of food. Thus a simple and rudimentary memory,
and the dawning of a permanent self is involved,
even in the simplest sensation which is recognized
as distinct from the total consciousness. Recogni
tion comes before cognition, paradoxical as the
statement seems.1 To know anything implies
bringing together at least two elements. One of
these elements must be present, and the other must
be past ; one particular, the other universal. Sen
sation in general, or the big, blooming Confusion,
we might have without contrast of present with
past ; and, consequently, without knowing that we
were having it. In that case, we should not have
it : we should rather be it. Consciousness with
out contrast is impossible. Indeed, the word
"consciousness," literally, knowing with or know
ing together, bears etymological witness to the
psychological fact.

Still, in even a distinct and separate sensation,
so long as it remains unrelated, we know, as yet,
qualities only, not things. The infant knows
looks-bright, but not candle ; the general satis-
factoriness of the thumb-in-mouth condition, but
not thumb nor mouth : tastes-good, but not milk ;
being-cuddled, but not mother : in other words,

1 For an explanation of this seeming paradox see Titchener's
"Outline of Psychology," pages 266-268.

THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION 19

the quality as it affects him, not the thing or
person as they are. All this, of course, no
mother is expected to believe. If it seems hard
and cruel to say that the infant does not know and
love his mother, it is equally true that he neither
knows nor loves himself. It is too bad to steal
away the infant's charm in this merciless, analytic
fashion. We can only say with Keats :

" Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy ?
Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings."

Let the grieved and wounded mother, then, be
patient, and in due time she shall have her dear
child back again with all his angelic charms
restored.

Thus, by breaking up the big Confusion into its
more striking constituent parts, the infant acquires
the sensations of warmth, colour, sweetness, noise,
motion, and the like. He knows not things ; but
he knows some of the qualities of things. He
knows not persons, either himself or others ; but
he knows how the acts of persons affect him. He
has gathered a few materials out of which to build
his world.

In sensation the mind is confined to what is pre
sented here and now. Beyond this point of space,
this moment of time, it cannot go. In one moment
of time, and from one point in space, however, more
than one sensation may be presented. Our infant

20 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

may get from the same place looks-pretty and feels-
hard; and at the same time, sounds-loud. Repeated
experiences with that concentrated mystery which
we call his rattle establish the constant connection
between these three sensations. Whenever one is
present the other cannot be far away. So he comes
to tie these three sensations in one bundle by the
two strings of space and time l which he always
carries with him in the pocket of his mind. This
tying up of two or more sensations in one bundle
prepares the way for perception. Perception arises
when one of these sensations becomes the sign of
the other sensations which are tied up in the same
bundle with it by these two strings of space and
time. He sees looks-pretty, and recognizes that
it means feels-hard, and sounds-loud. He takes
hold of it and shakes it, and behold ! out of looks-
pretty, feels-hard and sounds-loud obediently come
forth. He has found the mental key which fits
the lock of the external world, and opens wide the
doors of sense-perception. Sensation no longer can
imprison him in the narrow confines of the here
and the now. He begins to feel the freedom of an
unfettered mind. He can pass from the present
sensation back to sensations which he has had be
fore ; forward to such repetitions of past sensations

1 For the classic discussion of the nature and function of space
and time as factors in our knowledge see the Transcendental
^Esthetic in Kant's " Critique of Pure Reason."

THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION 21

as he desires. The immediate and the present has
become the symbol of the absent and the remote.
He gets a very dim and fleeting glimpse of an
ideal, a universal, an eternal world. And this
emancipation of self, this construction of our own
world, by making the presentations of sense sym
bolic of a larger possible experience, which enters
here at the very threshold of perception, is, as we
shall see, the essence of the entire intellectual pro
cess by which the mind builds its worlds of art and
science, and poetry and philosophy, and morals and
religion. Perception gives us sensations tied to
gether in space, or things; and sensations tied
together in time, or events. Perception enables us
to interpret sight in terms of possible hearing ;
hearing in terms of probable feeling ; feeling in
terms of prospective tasting. Perception takes a
part of a thing or an event as the sign and symbol
of the whole. Our most elaborate processes of
scientific reasoning, and our most exalted exercise
of spiritual faith proceed in precisely the same way.
Sensations are the common materials out of which
the world of the nursery and the world of the uni
versity are constructed. The difference between
the simple world of the infant, and the complex
world of the sage, the saint, and the seer, is in the
amount of elaboration to which these sensations
are subjected, and the amount of symbolic mean
ing they are compelled to support. In the words

22 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

of Professor Dewey,1 " Perception is the stage of
knowledge least advanced in the interpretation of
sensations."

Perception consists in the enrichment of a sen
sation by adding to it all the remembered past,
and therefore possible present or future sensations
that go with it in the unity of the thing which
these combined sensations represent. When I
say I see a tree, I have merely the sensation of an
irregular coloured outline in the field of vision.
That sensation of sight becomes the sign and
symbol of the number of steps I should have to
take in order to be able to place my hand on it,
or its distance ; the nature and extent of the resist
ance I should feel in trying to reach around it,
or its size ; the resonance I should get if I were to
strike it with an axe, or its sound ; the warmth I
should get were I to ignite portions of it in my
fireplace, or its chemical constitution ; the shade
I should receive were I to lie underneath it, and
the beauty it adds to the landscape, or its aesthetic
charm ; the price I could get for its timber and
wood, or its market value ; its relation to other
trees, and its structural peculiarities, or its botani
cal classification. I perceive all this in the tree ;
but I see only the patch of colour.

Thus all perception is apperception. We see in
any presented object just as much as there is of

1 "Psychology," page 158.

THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION 23

that object already in us. To return to our tree.
The infant who has not had experience in walk
ing does not see the distance of the tree. He is
as likely as not to reach out and try to grasp a tree
that is a dozen rods away. He does not see its
size, never having handled anything so large be
fore. Never having chopped, he has no idea
of the resonance the axe would evoke. Never
having lighted a fire, it suggests to him no
warmth for winter nights ; and never having
sought protection from a summer sun, it suggests
no grateful shade. Not being a merchant, it is
destitute of value to his mind ; and not being a
botanist, it has no technical terminology tacked
on to it. The tree which each man perceives is
the tree which experience, observation, study, and
reflection has built up in his own mind. The
botanist sees its structure and genetic relation
ships ; the merchant sees its market value ; the
landscape gardener sees its beauty ; the woodman
hears the ring of the axe ; the housekeeper feels
the fireside glow ; the surveyor estimates its size
and distance.

Thus even at an elementary stage of knowledge
the greater part of the truth we perceive at any
given moment comes from within, rather than
from without. As Browning says,

" To know,
Rather consists in opening out a way

24 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without."

One of the most interesting of our perceptions
is that of the distance of an object. As Berkeley 1
showed conclusively, it is impossible to see dis
tance directly. The lines of light are projected
endwise toward the eye ; and it is impossible by
looking at the end of a line of light to see how
long it is, just as it is impossible to see the
length of a pencil which is held in such a way that
you can see only the end of it. It may have a
sixteenth of an inch, it may have six inches hid
den behind the end we see. We perceive the
distance of objects exclusively by the interpreta
tion of signs. First, the dimness of the image is
a sign of distance ; the clearness of the image is a
sign of nearness. Second, the more nearly the
eyes look in parallel lines, the greater the distance ;
the more they converge, the less the distance.
Third, the less the strain of accommodation, the
greater the distance ; the greater the strain of
accommodation, the less the distance. Fourth, the
fact that near objects cover remote ones and,
when we move, the near objects seem to pass by
the more distant objects, helps us to determine
their relative distances. Fifth, apparent size, in
proportion as it is less than the real size, is a sign

1 "An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision."

THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION 25

of distance. Thus our perception of the distance
of an object is a purely mental interpretation of
the elements which sensation gives.

The great truth in the doctrine of apperception l
is the principle that previous experience deter
mines what the new sensation shall signify ; and
also that the new sensation, as soon as it is taken
up into the body of this previous experience, re
acts upon it, and unites with it to form a new mass
of experience, which in turn determines anew the
significance which all subsequent experience shall
have for us. The action of the mind upon the
sensation has been part of the recognized doctrine
of perception since Leibnitz and Kant. But the
equally important reaction of the sensation on the
perceiving power of the mind is a comparatively
modern conception ; of great pedagogical as well
as psychological significance. What we can per
ceive at any given time depends not merely on
the formal powers with which we are endowed at
birth, but on the nature and extent of the use we

1 Herbart and his numerous interpreters have assumed to monop
olize this term, and that school has been most active in developing
the many important applications of the doctrine to pedagogy. But
under one name or another the substitution of an active, organic
assimilation of elements, for a mechanical aggregation of units, is
common to all modern psychology. A fresh account of it will be
found in Stout's " Analytical Psychology," Volume II, pages 1 1 1-
167, where apperception is defined as "the process by which a
mental system appropriates a new element, or receives a fresh
determination."

26 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

have made of them. The city child, to whom a
fern is a bunch of green feathers, had substantially
the same faculties to start with as the country boy
who knows a fern the instant he sets eyes on it.
The country boy, however, has had his power to
perceive ferns developed by a host of previous
perceptions. The city child has never seen that
particular shape tied up with anything but the
properties of feathers ; and therefore a bunch of
green feathers the fern must be to him. In the
same way as a plant or animal transforms the sub
stances which it takes into its system, the mind
transforms sensations into such bundles of sensa
tions, or perceptions, as it has had experience
with before. What it cannot thus assimilate, it
rejects as insignificant and unintelligible. Hence
the maxims of Herbartian pedagogy, that it is
worse than useless to present to a child's mind
new matter which his mind has not been prepared
by previous lessons to assimilate ; and that the
awakening of interest in a subject, by showing its
relation to what is already known, is the essential
condition of effective study and the supreme art
of good teaching.

In thus interpreting present sensations in terms
of sensations that we have had or expect to have,
we obviously take great risks. The facts we get
in this way may turn out not to be facts at all.
Hereafter we shall have occasion to consider some

THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION 27

of these fancies which try to pose as facts, and
to find some way of discriminating between fact,
and fancy palming itself off for fact. For the
present, however, let us not attempt to go behind
the returns which sensation, interpreted in terms
of previous experience, gives. Let us assume for
the time being that everything is a fact which
our mind accepts as such. Even in that case we
should not be able to proceed far in the build
ing of our world. We should find ourselves
dwelling in tents of the flimsiest texture, liable
to be blown away by every fresh breeze of sense,
and swept beyond our reach down the swift
stream of time.

The things and events which perception gives
us are almost, though not quite, as fleeting and
evanescent as the sensations out of which they
are constructed. No sooner do we get them
than they are gone. One crowds out another
in an endless procession. Were perception our
only mode of communication with the world, we
should be compelled to watch a perpetual pano
rama of things and events, unrelated save in this
mere order of succession, and consequently desti
tute of theoretical coherence or practical utility.
Bound to the particular spot in space where acci
dent had placed them, chained to the ever-van
ishing moment of the present time, creatures of
mere perception, though more free than creatures

28 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

of mere sensation, would still remain for the
most part in the narrow prison-house of sense.

The next step out into broader space and last
ing time we take in conscious memory. An un
conscious activity of memory has been involved
already in perception. This emancipating func
tion of memory has been so well set forth by
Professor Dewey,1 that I will state it in his
words.

" Memory removes one limitation from know
ledge as it exists in the stage of perception : the
limitation to the present. The world of strict
perception has no past nor future. Perception is
narrowly confined to what is immediately before
it. What has existed and what may exist it has
nothing to do with. Memory extends the range
of knowledge beyond the present. The world of
knowledge as it exists for memory is a world of
events which have happened, of things which have
existed. In short, while the characteristic of
perception is space relations, that of memory is
time relations. Knowledge, however, is still lim
ited to individual things or events which have
had an existence in some particular place and at
some particular time. Memory, therefore, like
perception, is an active construction by the mind
of certain data. It differs from perception only
in the fact that the interpreting process which is

1 "Psychology," page 176.

THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION 29

involved in both is carried in memory a stage
further. In perception, the sensation is inter
preted only as the sign of something present,
which could be experienced by actually bringing
all the senses into relation with it. In memory
it is interpreted as the sign of some experience
which we once had, and which we might have
again, could we accurately reproduce all its
conditions."

Thus memory emancipates from the particular
and the momentary, and gives us in some meas
ure the largeness and liberty of an ideal world.
Still the emancipation which mere memory brings
is very imperfect. Memory gives us a larger and
more lasting world than the world of sensation
and perception, but it is not of necessity either
a happier or a nobler world. He who lives
in the world of memory is tied by a longer
rope than he who lives in a world of immediate
perception. But he is tied nevertheless. His
prison is larger, but it is a prison still. Man
endowed with memory remains a slave. And
often this slavery of memory is more cruel than
the slavery of the senses. For sensation, at least,
constantly shifts the scenery, and gives us novelty
and variety, if nothing more. While an idea, once
fixed in the memory, may remain to haunt us at
all seasons and all hours. Memory is impartial.
It makes the happy man happier by keeping

30 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

his happy experiences ever present. It makes
the wretched man more wretched by keeping his
unhappy experiences always with him.

As a means of storing up materials for higher
faculties to select from and work over, memory is
an indispensable and invaluable instrument of
our spiritual emancipation. But we are now con
sidering the mental faculties, one by one, in im
aginary abstraction and isolation from the rest ;
and so considered memory is only a larger and
more enduring form of perception, and the world
it gives us is simply a permanent copy of the
world of fleeting perceptions.

Memory, being merely the accumulation of the
individual's perceptions, is limited to what the
individual has perceived. Our individual senses,
however, even though exercised through a long
period of years, bring us into contact with only
a small fragment of the world, and consequently
give us but an infinitesimal fraction of the facts
of which it is composed. One other principle
comes in to supplement the inadequacy of the indi
vidual's own senses. That is the testimony of
others. Through acceptance of the spoken and
written words of others, we appropriate the results
of their perception and memory ; and thus multi
ply the range of our individual perception by the
speeches we hear, and the books and newspapers
we read.

THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION 31

Thus the world of known things and events
comes to be made up of what we perceive through
the senses ; what we remember to have perceived ;
and what we accept on the testimony of others as
having been perceived by them. There are ob
vious elements of uncertainty entering at each
of these stages. We may be deceived in our
interpretation of our sensations ; we may be de
ceived in our recollection of what we think we
have previously perceived ; we may be deceived
through the fallible perception, the uncertain mem
ory, or the wilful misrepresentation of others.
These sources of possible error must be reserved
for subsequent consideration. For the present,
we will accept as final all the facts presented
by healthy perception, normal memory, and pre
sumably reliable witnesses.

Such, taken at its best, given the benefit of
all that is offered in its favour, undisturbed by the
suspicions of doubt that may justly be brought
against it — such is the world of things and
events, based on sense-perception, present or
past, of ourselves or of our fellows. What now
is lacking in such a world ? Why is it not good
enough to dwell in ? Why not build tabernacles
here ? Are not facts everything ?

This world of sense-perception, this world of
things and events, in spite of its enlargement
through memory and the testimony of others, re-

32 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

mains to the last a narrow prison. There is no
real freedom in it. As Wordsworth says :

" Whose mind is but the mind of his own eyes,
He is a slave the meanest we can meet."

These things that the world is full of, these
events that come and go, are neither the expres
sion of our reason nor the product of our choice.
The infant's world is not the world he wanted ;
but the world he had to take, because he found it
there. He may fuss and fume as much as he
pleases ; these same things will stand there and
defy him; these same events will persist in pro
voking him. Other persons, more intelligent than
he, may indeed come to his rescue, interpret his
impotent and futile complainings, and remove the
cause for him ; but they do so by introducing
vicariously into his world laws and principles of
which as yet he himself knows nothing. If his
nurse were, like him, limited to the world of sense-
perception, the world of presented things and pass
ing events, the nurse would be as impotent as
he to assuage his grief and calm his troubled spirit.

And that is the great reason why the mature
man cannot endure to dwell permanently in the
world of bare fact, of presented things and events.
This is a world of iron necessity. These things
are alien to himself. These events are utterly
regardless of his wishes. They bring him what

THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION 33

he does not want ; they take away relentlessly the
sources of his dearest joys. As Mr. Bradley says :
" These particulars have got no permanence ; their
life endures for a fleeting moment. They can
never have more than one life ; when they are
dead they are done with." Man is the passive
sport of an omnipotent caprice. If he tries to
content himself long with this world of unrelated
things and events, he is sure to fall into pes
simism and despair. Pessimism is the only con
sistent and logical attitude for any man to take
who conceives the world he lives in as a mere
aggregate of facts ; the mere presentation in time
and space of objects and events. No wonder that
the child's first language is a cry. Left to himself
he could only cry himself to death. Not until
either actually for ourselves, or vicariously as the
child does through his nurse, we can go behind the
things and events of mere perception, and shift
the scenes, and mould the forms, and guide the
forces, and appreciate the meaning of the world,
does it become a place of freedom and dignity and
worth. To show how the mind goes behind the
returns of mere perception, and out of these facts
builds up a series of worlds more and more to
its own liking, and thus gradually emancipates
itself from the bondage of sense and wins the
liberty of the spirit, will be the problem of suc
ceeding chapters. Perception has moulded the

34 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

clay of sensation into the hard, regular bricks
of things and events. Our own memories, sup
plemented by the testimony of others, have heaped
high the piles of these bricks on the platform of
our intelligence. Yet they remain a mere heap;
a chaos, not a cosmos. We have the materials
to make a world, but no form to give it ; no plan
to build it by.

We started out with the incipient sensational
ism, the latent materialism of the inconsistent, and,
in spite of his premises, more than half-spiritual
Locke. Following Leibnitz and Kant and James
and Dewey, and the whole trend of modern psy
chology, we have been compelled to abandon it
even at the very outset of our journey. We have
seen that sensations with no intelligence acting
upon them, and reacted upon by them, would
give no knowledge within and no world without.
These sensations have had to be unified, in the
forms of space and time ; bound together with
those that come before and after and lie on either
side. In place of the " empty cabinet " of a mind
that is, "for the most part, merely passive," we
have found even perception an active process of
action and reaction, in which the mind is ever as
completely the dominating factor over the sensa
tions presented to it, as is a plant or animal organ
ism over the chemical constituents of the food
which it takes into its system. Sensation, indeed,

THE WORLD OF SENSE-PERCEPTION 35

furnishes the elements which are wrought into the
structure of the mind by the reaction of its own
vital processes upon them ; but in turn it is the
mind which, out of the elements of its gradually
assimilated sensations, builds even the fragmentary
objects and events which, taken together, consti
tute the world of sense-perception.

CHAPTER II

THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION

IN our treatment of the world of sense-percep
tion, for the sake of clearness and simplicity, we
have been abstract, and to that extent misleading.
It was unavoidable. The world-process is not
fixed but fluid. There is no precise point where
one process begins and another ends. Things
and events are in perpetual flux and flow, pass
into each other by imperceptible gradations, and
stand in mutual relations. In order to describe
and classify these things and events, however, we
have to pull them apart from these relations, and
treat them as fixed and isolated. Thus only can
we get the clear-cut objects of perception and
memory. Yet these isolated things and events do
not actually exist. Just as sensations alone do
not exist, but are elements in things and events;
so things and events do not exist alone, but are
elements in larger groups and vaster processes.
Each thing has its halo of relations; each event
has its fringe of antecedents, concomitants, and
consequences. The world of association is the
world we get by grouping things and events
according to their more obvious relations.

36

THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 37

Association is a continuation of the process in
volved in perception. Association is the tendency
of the mind to reconstruct a total previous ex
perience when any element of it is presented in
perception or revived in memory. Now if the
same groups of elements were always found in the
same wholes, as is more frequently, though by no
means universally, the case in our perception of
things, association would be a very simple and
perfectly infallible process.

These elemental experiences, however, are like
the letters in a font of type. The same letter or
group of letters may form part of a great variety
of words. The same idea or group of ideas may
form a part of a great variety of different experi
ences. The capacity to put our perceptions into
such wholes as subsequent experience will verify
is what we mean by sagacity, good judgment,
common sense.

Association works along two lines : contiguity
and similarity. In association by contiguity we
put together elements which have previously been
found together in the outside world. The sight
of the postmaster on the street calls up the idea
of the post-office where we have usually seen him.
The whistle of the locomotive calls up the train
and track with which it has been connected in
previous experience. The letters A and B call
up the letter C, because they have always gone

38 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

together in the repetition of the alphabet. What
time and space have bound together, the mind
is loath to put asunder.

Association by similarity is a much more subtle
process. We put together elements which stand
related in our minds. A watch calls up the town
clock. The two things are far apart in space,
and may never have been seen at the same time.
But the idea of the watch and the idea of the
clock have the same element of time-keeping,
and the same general configuration of face and
hands. In simple association by similarity we
do not make this common, identical element an
object of precise definition and explicit reference.
Were we to do that we should pass beyond mere
association and enter the world of science, with
its reasoning and classification and law. In asso
ciation by similarity we pass over this bridge of
an identical element common to both ideas ; but
the transition is so rapid, and the eye is so intent
on the practical goal, that we do not stop to examine
the bridge, or to pay toll to the logician at the
gate. Association by similarity is the intuitive
performance of the function which science and
reasoning make explicit. There is, however, an
element of necessity about reasoning, which is
absent, or at all events latent, in association by
similarity.

While this tendency to reconstruct wholes out

THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 39

of parts in these two ways is ever present, yet the
extent to which the actual reconstruction shall be
carried depends on the frequency, the recency, the
vividness with which the whole has previously
existed in our minds. Mental training and emo
tional states have much to do with it. The ab
sence of conflicting lines of thought is a condition
of the higher forms of association.

Since association consists in reconstructing a
whole experience, when only a part is given ; and
since the same part may be an element in many
different wholes, obviously association affords large
opportunity for mistakes. We may put the given
part into a whole to which it does not belong.
That is the essence of illusion in all its forms.
And because there are so many ways in which
this mistake can be made, one might almost call
the world of association the world of illusion.

Inasmuch as perception involves association,
illusion is possible, even in our perception of
the simplest objects. In considering perception,
in the last chapter, we took things as the senses
gave them, asking no questions as to whence
they came, or by what authority they were
given to us. While in this way we got a fairly
well-furnished world, we were not quite sure that
its foundations were solid; we could not say
with certainty that any given piece of furniture
really belonged to us ; and we had discovered no

40 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

principles by which to arrange these scattered
unauthenticated articles in an orderly and beauti
ful whole. This problem of orderly arrangement
must be postponed still further. The question of
the foundations we will consider now. Descartes l
shall state the problem for us. In the First Medi
tation he tells us, " All that I have, up to this
moment, accepted as possessed of the highest
truth and certainty, I received either from or
through the senses. I observed, however, that
these sometimes misled us ; and it is the part of
prudence not to place absolute confidence in that
by which we have been even once deceived. I am
in the habit of sleeping and representing to my
self in dreams those same things, or even some
times others less probable, which the insane think
are presented to them in their waking moments.
How often have I dreamt that I was in these
familiar circumstances, — that I was dressed and
occupied this place by the fire, when I was lying
undressed in bed ? There exist no certain marks
by which the state of waking can ever be distin
guished from sleep. Let us suppose, then, that
we are dreaming, and that all these particulars —
namely, the opening of the eyes, the motion of the
head, the forth-putting of the hands — are merely
illusions ; and even that we really possess neither

!" Discourse on Method and Meditations." Translated by
John Veitch.

THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 41

an entire body nor hands such as we see. Still,
whether I am awake or dreaming, it remains true
that two and three make five, and that a square
has but four sides. I will suppose then that some
malignant demon, who is at once exceedingly
potent and deceitful, has employed all his arti
fice to deceive me ; I will suppose that the sky,
the air, the earth, colours, figures, sounds, and all
external things, are nothing better than the illu
sions of dreams, by means of which this being has
laid snares for my credulity ; I will consider myself
as without hands, eyes, flesh, blood, or any of the
senses, and as falsely believing that I am possessed
of these ; I will continue resolutely fixed in this
belief, and if indeed by this means it be not in my
power to arrive at the knowledge of truth, I shall
at least guard with settled purpose against giving
my assent to what is false. I suppose, accord
ingly, that all the things which I see are false
(fictitious); I believe that none of those objects
which my fallacious memory represents ever ex
isted ; I suppose that I possess no senses ; I be
lieve that body, figure, extension, motion, and
place are merely fictions of my mind. What is
there, then, that can be esteemed true ? "

If our knowledge of the world of sense-percep
tion came to us ready-made, then indeed such
sweeping, searching doubt as this of Descartes
would be absolutely fatal to it. Fortunately, how-

42 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

ever, we found that there was something more
involved in the act of sense-perception than mere
sensation dumped into an empty cabinet, a passive
mind. This active, mental element now turns out
to be the one rock of salvation, to rescue the valid
ity of all knowledge whatsoever from the floods
of doubt which threaten, in the merciless pages of
Descartes, to sweep all certitude and objective
reality away. Our analysis of the process of nor
mal sense-perception and association has given us
a key to the interpretation of illusion and halluci
nation, which robs them of all their terrors.

When one has clearly grasped the mental ele
ment in all perception, it is easy to see how illu
sions 1 arise. Indeed, the wonder is that we are
not subject to more illusions than we are. Take
the matter of distance. In a clear, dry air we get
the distinctness of outline which is ordinarily con
nected with the nearness of an object. Hence the
visitor in a mountainous region, who brings his
principles of interpretation from the coast, is liable
to set out to walk before breakfast to foothills
twenty miles away. The story is told of an East
ern man who had been frequently deceived in his
estimate of distance to the great amusement of his
Colorado host, that on one occasion, when they

1 See chapter on Perception, Chapter xx, James' "Psychology :
Briefer Course." For an exhaustive treatment, see " Illusions " by
James Sully, The International Scientific Series.

THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 43

came to a little rivulet, a foot or two in width, the
Eastern man sat down on the bank and began to
pull off his shoes and stockings, preparatory to
wading. His friend expostulated with him, and
asked him why he did not jump across ? " How
do I know that it isn't quarter of a mile across ? "
was his reply. His Eastern principles of interpre
tation had proved illusory so often that he was
prepared to abandon them altogether.

The psychological process in illusion is precisely
the same as that in perception. In illusion and
in perception alike, we add to the presented sensa
tion other elements which usually accompany it
in the unity of one thing or event. In perception
we add the right accompaniment; in illusion we
add the wrong accompaniment. That is the dif
ference. What we add in perception, subsequent
experience proves to be actually there. What we
add in illusion proves not to be there.

The following illusion, experienced by Professor
W. R. Sorley, is an example of thousands which
might be cited. " Lying in bed, facing the win
dow, I saw the figure of a man, some three or
four feet from my head, standing perfectly still
by the bedstead, so close to it that the bedclothes
seemed slightly pushed towards me by his leg
pressing against them. The image was perfectly
distinct, — height about five feet eight inches, sal
low complexion, gray eyes, grayish moustache,

44 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

short and bristly, and apparently recently clipped.
His dress seemed like a dark gray dressing-gown,
tied with a dark red rope.

" My first thought was, ' That's a ghost ' ; my
second, ' It may be a burglar whose designs upon
my watch are interrupted by my opening my
eyes.' I bent forward towards him, and the im
age vanished.

" As the image vanished, my attention passed
to a shadow on the wall, twice or three times the
distance off, and perhaps twelve feet high. There
was a gas lamp in the mews-lane outside, which
shed a light through the lower twelve inches or
so of the first-floor window, over which the blind
had not been completely drawn, and the shadow
was cast by the curtain hanging beside the win
dow. The solitary bit of colour in the image —
the red rope of the dressing-gown — was immedi
ately afterwards identified with the twisted ma
hogany handle of the dressing-table, which was
in the same line of vision as part of the shadow.

" I wondered very much afterwards that I had
not identified the image with my brother, who is
about the same general build and height, and
wears a short moustache which he sometimes
clips. Probably the identification was prevented
by the burglar-scare occurring to me. I did not
think at the time of any one in connection with
the image."

THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 45

In this case, we see how elaborate an image the
mind can construct out of very slender materials.
One very important species of the genus ghost is
constructed on this model. Illusion is a large part
of the stock in trade of professional spiritualists.
The resemblance which Professor Sorley saw to
his brother explains the facility with which be
reaved patrons find consolation at spiritualistic
seances. Expectancy is the explanation of a large
class of illusions. We see that of which our mind
is already full. The features which we carry in
our mind and heart are projected upon any ob
jective sensation, however faint and shadowy and
dim ; and out of the shadowy sensation and the
vivid image in the mind there is constructed a
supposed object which combines the reality of the
objective sensation and the vividness of the sub
jective image. The following confession of an
exposed medium illustrates the ease with which
such recognitions of materialized spirits may be
brought about. "The first seance I held after it
became known to the Rochester people that I
was a medium, a gentleman from Chicago rec
ognized his daughter Lizzie in me, after I had
covered my small moustache with a piece of
flesh-coloured cloth, and reduced the size of my
face with a shawl I had purposely hung up in
the back of the cabinet. From this sitting, my
fame began to spread."

46 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

Illusions are not confined to the sense of sight
alone. The rattling of a loose shingle by the
wind may become the groaning of a ghost in
a haunted house ; the reaction of the muscles,
after continued pressure, may become the tap
upon the shoulder by a departed spirit.

Hallucination takes us one step farther from
reality than illusion. An illusion clothes an ele
ment of sensation with a whole outfit of ideas
contributed by the mind. But in illusion there
is always a basis of objective sensation for the
mind to put this ideal outfit onto. In hallucina'
tion the mind projects the whole experience from
within.

Hallucinations are by no means uncommon phe
nomena. The Society for Psychical Research
found no difficulty in picking up seventeen hun
dred fairly well attested cases, and came to the
conclusion that about one person in every ten has
an hallucination at some time in his life. Prob
ably nearly every one knows of persons in his
immediate circle of relatives and friends who have
had such an experience. I will relate one which
happened to a friend of mine eight or ten years
ago, and which he related to me. He was brought
up under the strict religious discipline which for
merly prevailed in New England ; but had never
experienced what is called conversion. While a
strictly upright and moral man, and during his

THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 47

thirty years of active life as a New York merchant
a regular attendant at church, he had never united
with any church; and on his retirement to the
country he had fallen out of the habit of church-
attendance, and had become decidedly sceptical
as to the doctrines of Christianity. When about
sixty-five years of age, and while living quietly
upon the farm to which he had retired from
business, he had, when wide awake and in good
health, a vision in which the Lord Jesus Christ
appeared to him and pointed out with perfect dis
tinctness of detail two roads : one leading through
delightful walks, underneath stately trees, amid
beautiful flowers; the other leading to barren
sands. The Lord described at considerable length
the courses of conduct which these two ways sym
bolized, and gave him a great deal of most sound
and appropriate spiritual advice. Although a
typical hard-headed business man, he never has
doubted the objectivity of this vision. He has
told me the whole story two or three times ; and
frequently, as we have been discussing religious
subjects, he has quoted the words which he heard
in connection with this vision.

I give this case because it is one which has
come to me directly at first hand. There are
hundreds of such cases on record. The Proceed
ings of the Society for Psychical Research for
August, 1894, devotes four hundred pages to the

48 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

citation and discussion of the 1684 cases collected
in its census.

Hallucinations may be originated in two ways.
First, they may originate in the bodily organs.
Thus motes floating in the eyeballs may set up
that irritation of the endings of the optic nerve
which conveys to the brain sufficient stimulus to
produce in the visual centre the strong explosion
which is interpreted as an actual sensation of sight.
Morbid conditions of the ear may likewise induce
an explosion in the centres of hearing sufficiently
strong to be interpreted as an objective sound.
These hallucinations which originate in the organs
of sensation are obviously very closely related to
illusions. The ghost of illusion originates in light
reflected from some external object; and this
single element of sensation is clothed by the
contributions of memory and imagination. The
ghost of this first type of hallucination originates
in a light which is due to some peculiarity in the
structure or contents of the eye ; and this sensation
of merely ocular origin is then clothed with the
contributions of memory and imagination, pre
cisely as in the case of illusion. This is a fre
quent but not the only source of hallucination.

Hallucinations of this class may be illustrated
by a familiar parallel in dreams. We all know
that if the bedclothes become loosened at the foot
on a cold night, we dream of walking in snow,

THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 49

wading in cold water, and the like. An actual
sensation of cold in our feet is interpreted in
terms of cold external objects, as snow or ice-
water. In dreams of this sort and in hallucina
tions of this class alike, a sensation originating in
the body is projected by the imagination into an
object appropriate to serve as the cause of the
sensation.

The second type of hallucinations are those
which originate in the brain itself. In hallucina
tions of this type we have the cerebral process
excited spontaneously within the centre, without
any occasion either in external objects or the
organs of sensation. This may come through
changes in the blood-supply, as during fever, or in
consequence of the use of opium or alcohol, or
in madness, or in poor health ; and it may come
to persons in apparently normal and healthy con
ditions. Whenever and however we get an excita
tion of a cerebral centre, due to no external object
and no conditions of the organs of sense, yet as
sudden and strong and intense as excitations origi
nating in sensation ordinarily are, then we inter
pret the excitation in terms of sensation and
perception, and think we see or hear or feel an
actual object. This is hallucination of the second
type. An excitation as intense as that which sen
sation produces is interpreted as sensation. That is
the principle which explains all these phenomena.

50 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

Thus about simple and ordinary hallucinations
there is no more mystery than there is about illu
sions or perceptions. Psychology has its simple
formula to which all these marvellous tales are
readily reduced. At the approach of this formula,
the legions of apparitions and ghosts and spirits
divest themselves of the aura of mystery and the
supernatural, and quietly take their places in the
museum of recorded and tabulated phenomena.

There remains one class of hallucinations, how
ever, the so-called veridical hallucinations, which,
if genuine, refuse to be thus easily disposed of.
A veridical hallucination is one which coincides in
time with a real event, otherwise unknown and un
expected by the percipient. Among the 17000
persons interviewed in connection with the " Cen
sus," out of the 1684 cases of hallucinations re
ported, and out of 322 cases of recognized appa
ritions of living persons recorded at first-hand,
Mr. Frank Podmore 1 tells us that " we have 32
cases in which we have evidence of the occur
rence of a hallucination without apparent cause,
within twelve hours of the death of the person
seen."

These cases, if genuine, are far more numerous
than mere chance will account for ; and suggest
telepathy, or some mode of " communication be
tween mind and mind, otherwise than through the

1 " Apparitions and Thought Transference," page 223.

THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 51

known channels of the senses." That these cases,
or the general fact of which they are examples, are
genuine, the very competent committee, of which
Professor Henry Sidgwick was chairman, expressed
their unanimous conviction in these words, " Be
tween deaths and apparitions of the dying person
a connection exists which is not due to chance
alone. This we hold as a proved fact." Many
other alleged facts point to telepathy as a vera
causa. These phenomena, however, belong to the
domain of research, rather than of accepted sci
ence and philosophy, and any hypothesis which
attempts to explain them must be regarded as
purely tentative.

Hypnotism is a method of inducing hallucina
tion artificially. It is more than that, for it in
cludes the execution of motions expressive of the
ideas thus produced. The way to an understand
ing of hypnotism is through the understanding
of perception, illusion, and hallucination. The
most convenient bridge on which to cross from
the phenomena we have been considering to the
phenomena of hypnotism is suggestion. In per
ception we saw that the object was constructed
out of a presented sensation and a number of
remembered ideas. Let us call the presented sen
sation the suggestion, in response to which the
mind produces the ideas which previous experi
ence has associated with it. Looked at in this

52 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

way, our knowledge of the external world arises in
response to the suggestion given in sensation.
An illusion likewise is a response made by the
mind to a suggestion presented by the senses,
and differs not at all from perception in the men
tal process involved ; but only in the fact that the
other elements contributed by the mind in response
to the suggestion are peculiar to the individual
mind that contributes them, and have no objective
basis in which other minds may find them. Hal
lucination is the response of the mind to a sugges
tion, originating either in the bodily organs, or in
the brain itself. The ideas of a hypnotized per
son likewise are produced by the mind bringing
out of its own treasures of memory, imagination,
and experience, appropriate contributions in re
sponse to the suggestions of the hypnotist. In
this case the suggestions are words, looks, or gest
ures, instead of the mere sights and sounds of
ordinary sensation. And the patient is made re
sponsive to these verbal suggestions by a special
preparation. This preparation may take several
distinct forms ; but whether it is done by gazing
steadily at a bright object, or by passes, or by
talking sleep, or by fixing the attention, or by all
these methods combined, the essential thing is to
throw into temporary abeyance that self-control
and self-direction toward a conscious end, which is
the characteristic of our normal waking state. It

THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 53

is a fundamental principle of psychology1 that
every idea that gains admission to our mind tends
to surround itself with related ideas already in the
mind, and to express the total state thus produced
in outward action. In other words, infinite sue:-

J o

gestibility is the prime mental fact. " Conscious
ness is by its very nature impulsive, " as James
says. If we had no higher powers than those
which we have considered thus far, this suggesti
bility would be absolute and unrestrained, and
everything that came to us would at once call up
its associates in our mind and proceed to external
ize itself in outward deeds. Hypnotism, by its
devices, simply produces artificially and tempo
rarily this condition in which imagination, unre
strained by reason and unchecked by reference to
objective standards and external ends, has its own
fantastic way, and works its own sweet will. The
hypnotized person is temporarily dwelling in a
world in which fact and fancy are inextricably
intermingled ; into which no laws and no ends
are introduced, and over which he has no power
of inhibition.

There are other physiological phenomena, such
as anaesthesia and hyperaesthesia of organs, altera
tions in nutrition of parts, catalepsy, lethargy, con-
tracture, rigidity, which are due to the intimate

1See chapter on Will in James' "Psychology," especially his
discussion of ideo-motor action.

54 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

connection between the nervous system and the
vital functions, and which require for their ex
planation the hypothesis that the mind has sub
conscious as well as explicitly conscious states and
functions.

Into the details of these phenomena our present
purpose does not require us to enter. These mys
terious realms are interesting topics of research ;
and incidentally principles are being discovered
which give promise of considerable therapeutic
value. There are certain classes of diseases for
which hypnotic treatment is highly beneficial.
Mental healing in all its various forms, in so far as
it is valuable, rests on the principle that body and
mind are very closely interrelated through the partly
conscious but chiefly unconscious control of the
vital functions through the nervous system ; and
that the state of the mind at any given time, and
consequently the state of the body, in so far as we
know it at that time, is made up of a relatively
small presentation of sensation, and a very large
contribution of associations. Hence a very slight
suggestion through the senses, by speech, or physi
cal contact, or eradication of fixed images, anxie
ties, and fears, may introduce a new nucleus around
which an entirely new set of associations will
cluster; so that through the renewing of the mind
the body may come to be transformed. So far
forth mental healing rests on a sound psycho-

THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 55

logical foundation, and unquestionably beneficial
effects have in many cases followed from its
application. One may heartily recognize this
psychological principle of suggestion as the inciter
of association, and through association the con-
structer of the mind and the reconstructer of the
body, without committing himself to that disregard
of other agencies, and that peculiar "metaphysics"
which characterizes its practitioners. Either with
or without the accompaniments of hypnotism, or
peculiar religious faiths or esoteric metaphysical
speculations, the principle of association, based on
suggestion, is a fundamental psychological fact;
closely related to the process of ordinary percep
tion ; present under a slightly different aspect in
all illusion and hallucination, and capable of
being employed for good or evil, according to the
intent and purpose of the operator. As such it
has a legitimate application to the healing of
disease, and ought not to be divorced from tech
nical scientific training ; but should be taken up
into the body of recognized medical science, and
made a part of the equipment of every educated
physician. Then we shall see it in its proportions:
not despising it as humbug on the one hand, nor
embracing it as a panacea on the other hand ; but
accepting it as one among the many beneficent
forces which make for human health and happi
ness.

56 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

Tricks like these, which are played upon us by
physical forces, or personal influences, in illusion,
hallucination, hypnotism, and the various forms of
mental healing, a man may play upon himself for
his own amusement. This playing upon our own
credulity, and at the same time standing off and
recognizing that it is nothing but mere play, is
fancy or imagination. It is a source of infinite
delight; and, when worthily employed, one of
the noblest of our faculties.

Thus Keats advises,

" Ever let the fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home ;
At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth,
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth ;
Then let winged fancy wander
Through the thought still spread beyond her ;
Open wide the mind's cage-door,
She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar."

Imagination is confined to the materials which
sensation and perception bring, and memory stores
up for us. Yet among those materials imagination
takes what it pleases and rejects the rest. It com
bines these materials in new and original ways ;
and while it gives us no new sensations, it does
give us new combinations of sensations, or new
things, and new events. What sensation gives at
rare intervals, only to snatch away, imagination
holds permanently before the mind. What in

THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 57

actual perception comes in scant quantity, and
imbedded in a mass of unsightly and irrelevant
detail, imagination disengages from its unworthy
environment, and presents in concentrated form
and worthy setting.

Thus imagination gives the world of gods and
heroes, goddesses and angels, Elysian fields and
heavenly places ; the world of poetry and romance ;
the world of art and fancy. All mythologies, and
all the traditions and histories of early tribes and
races, are products of the pious imagination,
portraying patriarch, lawgiver, ancestor, king, not
as they were to the immediate perception of their
contemporaries, squalid, coarse, sensual, cruel ; but
as generations later loved to think of them, noble,
brave, pious, generous. Thus it is that in many
respects the earliest literature remains to this day
the most precious that we have. In it material is
most freely moulded to ideal ends. Imagination
to-day cannot regain the naivete and freedom of
the Iliad and the Odyssey ; of Genesis and Samuel.
In our writing we have to choose between dry,
cold, hard fact, which has lost all the charm and
freedom of the imagination, or else fiction, which
has lost even the semblance of reality. These
primitive writers had not yet drawn that sharp
distinction, and so they mixed up the two with
perfect freedom and incomparable charm. Hence
Wordsworth's lament,

58 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

" The world is too much with us ; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers ;
Little we see in Nature that is ours ;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon ;
This sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like steeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune ;
It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn ;
So might I. standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn."

Imagination gives us free range throughout
the entire realms of space and time. All the
experiences of our remembered past, all the an
ticipations of our possible future, it brings and
concentrates within the present moment. The
objects we have seen in our travels, the scenes
that we read about in books, the regions which
the telescope and the microscope disclose, imagi
nation places before our eyes. It can erect
castles in the air; entertain us with visions of
Oriental splendour; win battles, make fortunes,
and fill our day-dreams with every conceivable
delight. Yet there is an unreality about it all.
Revels of this kind are soon ended : " the baseless
fabric of the vision" dissolves, the "insubstantial
pageant" fades, and "leaves not a rack behind."

Again, though all particular things are at her

THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 59

beck and call, the imagination is tied down to the
particular, and holds its riches in the inconvenient
and perishable form of an aggregate of particulars.
Imagination alone is unable to bind particulars
together into the unity of law. It can indeed
select one particular object as the type of a class,
and thus idealize the particular. It cannot, how
ever, realize the universal. Imagination, therefore,
can give us ideals, but not laws; types, but not
principles; art, but not science; mythology, but
not philosophy.

Imagination, however, is not content to serve as
the docile and demure handmaid of the waking
and normal intelligence. She plays all sorts of
tricks upon us as we lie asleep, or linger in the
borderland between sleep and waking. Dreams
are simply the unrestrained carnival of the imagi
nation. All recent, intense, and exciting experi
ences are potentially present in the modified
structure of the brain, and all that is needed
to call up these experiences is the excitation of
the centres in which these potential experiences
reside. A hearty meal before going to bed, or
hard mental work late in the evening, or exces
sive strain, either mental or physical, throughout
the day, produce changes in the structure and the
blood-supply of the brain which excite these cen
tres of potential experience, and dreams appear.
In general, whatever causes cerebral activity to be

60 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

kept up during sleep, produces dreams. The way
to avoid dreams, therefore, is to avoid food and
drink in such quantity, or of such quality, or at
such times as will induce activity in the brain at
night ; and also to avoid such over-exertion as will
make necessary the repair of large waste during
sleep.

This indirect approach to dreams through their
physiological conditions is the most effective
means of gaining control over them, and exclud
ing unpleasant dreams from our sleeping con
sciousness. Still, to a certain extent, it is possible
to gain a direct control of them through sugges
tion just before going to sleep. If unpleasant
dreams cannot be avoided, they can to some extent
be controlled. For instance, my favourite form
of mild nightmare, in days when I was beginning
to speak in public, used to be that of finding my
self before an audience, and suddenly discovering
that I had no manuscript, and no coherent ideas.
Between rushing off home in breathless haste
after my lost manuscript, while the audience was
kept waiting, and failing to find it, or else beat
ing my brains for some sort of notion of what
I was expected to talk about, I used to spend as
unhappy dream-hours as ever fell to the lot of an
inexperienced speaker to endure in actual life.
After a little practice in charging my mind before
going to sleep, with the idea that if one found him-

THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 6 1

self in that plight he had nothing to do but simply
dismiss the audience with an apology and an
explanation ; and that such things do not happen
anyway except in dreams ; and probably any such
experience that might come to me was a dream,
I managed to dream myself out of the situa
tion in one of these ways. I suppose I have
in my dreams dismissed forty or fifty disappointed
audiences ; I have a hundred times dreamed my
self out of awkward and frightful situations by the
formula : " Such hopelessly horrible situations as
this happen only in dreams, and it is time to wake
up."

Emerson has gone so far as to attribute a moral
significance to dreams. He says : " A skilful man
reads his dreams for his self-knowledge ; yet not
the details, but the quality. What part does he
play in them, — a cheerful, manly part, or a poor,
drivelling part? However monstrous and grotesque
their apparitions, they have a substantial truth."

"Night-dreams trace on Memory's wall
Shadows of the thoughts of day,
And thy fortunes as they fall
The bias of thy will betray."

As Goethe said, " These whimsical pictures, in
asmuch as they originate from us, may well have
an analogy with our whole life and fate."

We have now considered several ways in which
the mind may, so to speak, take the bits in its

62 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

own mouth, cut loose from the vehicle of sense
to which it was originally harnessed, and run away
on frolics of its own. Let us, by way of a brief
review of all we have done thus far, consider the
various ways in which we may get the vision of a
man.

First : The image projected on the retina from
the actual man, physically present before the phys
ical eye, gives rise to a photo-chemical process
which disintegrates the pigments with which the
endings of the optic nerve are laden, and so sets
up a commotion which is transmitted to the occipi
tal lobe of the cerebrum, and there produces an
explosion of considerable force. The sudden and
violent explosion at this point revives affiliated
processes in this brain-tract that have been dor
mant, associated ideas are grouped with the new
sensation, and the whole is interpreted as the
vision of an actual man. This is ordinary per
ception.

Second : This same centre may be excited over
again, together with other centres, in a more
gradual and more gentle manner. This re-exci
tation, in connection with other centres, and of
milder intensity, is the cerebral condition corre
sponding to remembering the vision of a man.

Third : A portion of this cerebral centre, say
that which corresponds to the rough outline of a
man, may be excited through the regular physio-

THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 63

logical channel of retina and optic nerve, with all
the intensity that accompanies ordinary sensation ;
and the rest of the excitation which ordinarily goes
with it to form the perception of a man may be
contributed, gratuitously and erroneously, by the
mind. This is illusion ; and differs from percep
tion only in the fact that, whereas in perception
the associations which the mind contributes in
interpreting the sensation may be verified by sub
sequent experience, in illusion the contribution
which the mind makes cannot be thus verified,
and has corresponding to it no possible sensation
which subsequent experience can realize.

Fourth : We may have the physiological pro
cess in the optic nerve, which ordinarily accom
panies sensation, induced there, however, not by
rays of light reflected from an external object,
but by motes floating before the eye. This is the
first type of hallucination, and is exactly like
illusion in all that takes place after the excitation
is once produced in the optic nerve ; but differs
from illusion in the source of the physical stimulus
which gives rise to this excitation.

Fifth : We may have the cerebral process ex
actly like the cerebral process in perception, illu
sion, and the first type of hallucination ; and yet
it may be due to nothing before the eye or in the
eye itself, but to the nature of the blood-supply
which the feverish or intoxicated or otherwise

64 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

abnormal system sends to this brain-centre. This
is hallucination of the second type, or centrally
initiated hallucination.

Sixth : In response to a suggestion from another
who has first put our powers of resistance and
contradiction into temporary abeyance, and then
says emphatically, " See that man there," the
cerebral activities which correspond to the vision
of a man may be set into vigorous activity, and con
sequently give rise to the same experience that we
ordinarily have when these same centres are ex
cited by the ordinary process of sense-perception.
This is hypnotism. And if, instead of being told
to see a man, we are told we are well, and at the
same time feel the reassuring touch of a firm
hand and a strong personality, we get one of the
numerous applications of the essential principle of
hypnotism which underlies the various forms of
mental healing.

Seventh : We may deliberately arouse the dor
mant centres, whose activity corresponds to the
vision of a man, by trying to think of him ; and
thus call the vision of him before our mind. This,
done in the waking state, and when we know
what we are doing, is imagination.

Eighth : When asleep these processes which
have previously been brought into activity in per
ception, or imagination, or memory, may keep up
their activity, and, inasmuch as there is little or

THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 65

nothing to compete with them for our attention,
may come to occupy for the time our entire con
sciousness, in which case we shall have the vision
of a man before the mind's eye. This, of course,
is dreaming.

Of these eight ways, two- — perception and mem
ory — give us facts; the other six — illusion, the two
types of hallucination, hypnotism, imagination, and
dreams — give us fictions.

How do we know whether a given experience is
a perception or an illusion ? By what test shall we
discriminate fact from fancy ? This question has
kept rising up to disturb our equanimity at every
turn. And Descartes raised it in thorough and
systematic fashion, once for all. We have kept
pushing it farther and farther along ; but have not
answered it. We have described perception and
memory ; we have described illusion, hallucination,
hypnotism, imagination, and dream. We can de
scribe either when we have it ; but how shall we
know which we have in any given case ? Alas !
Experience does not come to us with the appro
priate label pasted upon it. For ordinary purposes
we have three rough and ready tests. First : The
strong, pungent excitation is due to sense ; the
weaker, vaguer image is due to imagination. The
hard, sharp, clear outline is fact; the dim, shad
owy, confused impression is fancy. The second
practical test is the witness of different senses. If

66 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

we can see the object which we seem to hear, if
we can go up and touch the thing we seem to see,
then waking illusion is ruled out, though hallucina
tion, hypnotism, and dreaming is still a possible in
terpretation. The third practical test is the testi
mony of our fellows. If they see and hear and
touch and handle the same thing that we do, and
their testimony corroborates our own experience,
then, although dreaming or hypnotism might pro
duce in us the idea that these other persons testify
to having the same ideas that we have, still we are
practically sure that we are in contact with objec
tive facts. These rough tests do well enough for
everyday, practical affairs ; but they fail us in the
exceptional cases where alone a test is really
needed.

The ultimate test is to be sought in worlds we
have not yet explored. We may, however, intimate
by way of anticipation what such a test must be.
Reality must be self-consistent. If a fact be a real
fact, it must take its place in a system of things,
side by side with all the other facts we know. The
working out of this principle of self-consistency
takes us into the world of science ; and introduces
us to logic, which is the law of science.

Experience, whether of one sense or of many,
whether of myself or of my fellow-men, simply
tells me what appears to me or to them. There
is no necessity, and therefore no ultimate cer-

THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 67

tainty about it. Science with its conception of
a coherent system of experience, logic with its
postulate of the self-consistency of knowledge, is
the final arbiter between the rival pretensions of
sense-perception and the various forms of illusion
which we have been considering. The world of
association is by its very nature so liable to all
sorts of deception and illusion, that it can never
take us beyond the sphere of the usual and the
probable, into the realm of necessity and univer
sality.

CHAPTER III

THE " big, blooming, buzzing confusion " with
which we started is for the most part an un
resolved confusion still. We have, to be sure, —
thanks to our two strings of space and time, — tied
up a few groups of qualities into distinct things,
and a few series of sequences into distinct events,
which we recognize when we see them. Associa
tion again has grouped these things and events
into larger wholes, on whose constancy and uni
formity we are accustomed to rely. Still, the
discovery that the greater part of the experience
we tie up together in perception and association
comes from within, rather than from without, and
our consequent liability to mistake subjective con
tributions for objective data, has greatly shaken
our faith in the reality of these perceptions and
associations. Unless we can discover a higher
unity and a stronger bond than coexistence in
space, sequence in time, and association in our
experience, we shall not gain the freedom of the
mind and the orderliness of the world of which we
are in search. Is there such a higher unity ? Is

THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 69

there such a stronger bond ? Can we put things
and events together in our minds in ways in which
they must stand together in all other minds and
must hold together in the external world itself?
Can we be as sure of facts which we do not
immediately perceive, as we should be if they were
actually presented in immediate sensation ? These
are the problems of science, vital and practical in
themselves, and of momentous theoretical and
spiritual significance. To answer them we must
leave the pleasant and fertile fields of psychology,
where we have been lingering hitherto, for the
higher altitudes and thinner air of the more for
bidding realm of logic.1

Science begins when we pass from mere percep
tion of facts as they flow by us on the ceaseless
stream of sensation, or flit across our pathway on
the light wings of fantasy, to precise and accurate

1The best books on logic for the general reader are Jevons'
"Elementary Lessons in Logic," which presents the traditional
forms and terminology; Hibben's "Inductive Logic," which
shows by the aid of abundant modern illustrations the methods and
principles on which scientific investigations proceed and scientific
conclusions rest; and Bernard Bosanquet's "Essentials of Logic,"
which sets forth with great clearness and force the main thesis
which this book is trying to establish, — that the world in which
we live is not a ready-made world, but an affair of our own con
struction. For more fundamental and exhaustive discussions of the
subject the reader is referred to the Logics of Sigwart, Bradley, and
Bosanquet, Jevons' " Principles of Science," and Kant's "Critique
of Pure Reason," with its numerous commentaries of which "The
Critical Philosophy of Kant," by Edward Caird, is the best.

70 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

observation. Observation, viewed from the stand
point of psychology, is attention. In observation
we concentrate attention on a single feature of the
vast mass of phenomena which sensation brings ;
we watch for its recurrence, and carefully note its
antecedents, concomitants, and consequences in
each recurring case.

The scientist repeats his observation many times,
to make sure that it is coloured by no tempo
rary phase of his sensibility. He has others note
the same or similar facts, to make sure that the
thing he perceives is not affected by his personal
equation. Through such careful observation the
scientist, while he never gets at facts apart from
the reaction of his own perceptive powers, or the
perceptive powers of others, upon the data pre
sented, — which would be an impossibility, a con
tradiction in terms, — does get facts as they
present themselves to the normal perceptive
powers of all men.

Observation, however, is only the beginning of
science. It is a slow process. For even the most
careful observation deals with a great mass of
irrelevant matter from which it has to fish out
the thing it is after as it comes along. The next
great step is experiment. Experiment is observa
tion under artificial circumstances. Experiment
is the observation of phenomena, which have been
brought together on purpose to exemplify the

THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 71

particular critical point which is the object of
inquiry. In experiment we can multiply instances ;
control the time and manner of their appearance ;
disentangle essential from non-essential features ;
and vary particular conditions in such ways as to
show the varying results which accompany the
variation of these conditions.

Experiment involves, consciously or uncon
sciously, hypothesis. An hypothesis is a work
of imagination. It undertakes to say how things
will look before we have seen them ; to tell us
how things are related to each other, although we
have before us only the unrelated elements. Thus,
in the making of hypotheses, we assume that things
stand to each other in precise and definite relations.
What those relations are, we do not know at this
stage of the inquiry. But that there are such re
lations, so much, at least, is involved in every
hypothesis we make and every experiment we
perform. There is just one way in which a set of
facts will hang together. Imagination, in the form
of hypothesis, tells us what that one way may be.
In the words of Professor Tyndall, in his address
on the Scientific Use of the Imagination, "Bounded
and conditioned by co-operant Reason, imagination
becomes the mightiest instrument of the physical
discoverer, and by this power we can lighten the
darkness that surrounds the world of the senses.
In fact, without this power, our knowledge of

72 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

Nature would be a mere tabulation of coexistences
and sequences. We should still believe in the
succession of day and night, of summer and win
ter ; but the soul of Force would be dislodged from
our universe ; causal relations would disappear, and
with them that science which is now binding the
parts of Nature to an organic whole."

In observation and experiment we have kept
close to sense-perception. Or if we have ventured
beyond, it has been in the merely tentative way of
pure hypothesis. Now, neither sense alone, nor
sense and association together, can give science.
Both in the world of sense-perception and in the
world of association we have failed to find any
thing universal, necessary, systematic. We have
had facts and fancies in abundance ; but nothing
to hold them together in bonds of rational unity;
in other words, no logic, and therefore no science.
Aristotle has stated the fundamental defect of
sense-perception, once for all. " Nor is it possible
to obtain scientific knowledge by way of sense-
perception. For even if sense-perception reveals
a certain character in its object, yet we necessarily
perceive this, here, and now. The universal, which
is throughout all, it is impossible to perceive, for
it is not a this-now. If it had been, it would not
have been universal, for what is always and every
where we call universal. Since, then, scientific
demonstration is universal, and such elements it is

THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 73

impossible to perceive by sense, it is plain that we
cannot obtain scientific knowledge by way of sense.
But it is clear that even if we had been able to per
ceive by sense (e.g. by measurement) that the three
angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles,
we should still have had to search for a demonstra
tion, and should not, as some say, have known it
scientifically without one ; for we necessarily per
ceive in particular cases only, but science comes
by knowing the universal. Wherefore, if we could
have been on the moon, and seen the earth coming
between it and the sun, we should not by that mere
perception have known the cause of the eclipse.
Not but what, by seeing this frequently happen,
we should have grasped the universal, and obtained
a demonstration ; for the universal becomes evident
out of a plurality of particulars, and the universal
is valuable because it reveals the cause."

Before these facts, which observation and ex
periment gather, can serve the purpose of science,
they must be sorted and classified. This sortin°-

o

too must go deeper than surface appearances. Not
merely the things that are found together and look
alike, but qualities which are identical must be put
in the same class. This involves pulling things to
pieces, or analysis.

This power to analyze a complex situation into
its constituent elements, and then to select the one
element which is essential to our purpose, and make

74 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

that stand for the whole, is the essence of reason
ing. The brute and the unreflecting man reason
from wholes to wholes. The horse turns into the
stable where it has been well fed, with the confident
expectation that it will be fed well there again.
The man, before he expects good fare at a hotel
where previously he has been well entertained,
asks whether it is under the same management.
If the horse is disappointed, it is an ultimate, inex
plicable fact. If the man fares poorly, he wants to
know the reason why. That is, he breaks the
whole situation up into its constituent elements,
and lays the blame on the proprietor, the cook, or
the waiter. This is the great difference between
animals and men. Paulsen l remarks, " As a rule,
the behaviour of animals and the thoughts by
which they are guided differ from human conduct
in this, that animals react upon complex situations
or processes with stereotyped inferences and acts.
Human thought, and consequently human conduct,
is more flexible : it analyzes the phenomenon into
its essential factors and accidental circumstances,
and hence separates real and constant sequences
from accidental and transitory combinations."
Assuming now that our ideas have been made

i " Introduction to Philosophy." Translated by Frank Thilly,

page 411.

2 For a clear and readable account of the process of practical
reasoning see James' " Psychology : Briefer Course," Chapter xxii.

THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 75

perfectly clear and distinct by careful observation,
ingenious experiment, and correct analysis, are
we competent to draw from the results of our
observations, as they are stored up in these ideas,
a valid inference ? An inference is a judgment
which affirms a fact on the ground of its relation
to a concept. Have we any right to pass from
concept to fact, from thought to things ?

That we do thus pass from thought to thing,
from concept to case, everybody admits. As to
the grounds on which the process rests, and the
degree of certainty attained, there is wide differ
ence of opinion.

The empirical school, the school of Hume and
Mill, representing what is known as the " Theory
of the Association of Ideas," or the " Philosophy
of Experience," undertake to base the validity of
inference on the mere fact of mental habit, or
association in our experience, supported by the
assumption to which this habitual association gives
rise, that the course of Nature is uniform.

Now unquestionably a large class of our infer
ences rest on no better basis than that. For
practical purposes this immense probability of the
continued uniformity of Nature amounts to all the
certainty we need. The expectation of the child,
that fire will burn his hand if he touches it ; the
expectation of the savage, that the sun will rise
to-morrow as it has on all previous days ; the ex-

76 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

pectation of the mason, that his mortar will harden
as it always has heretofore, — these are all inferences
based on mental habit and the tacit assumption of
the uniformity of nature. Reasoning of this nature
is simply an extension of the principle involved in
sense-perception. It accepts association as the
sole and ultimate bond between ideas. A law
which rests on this basis alone is called an empiri
cal law. We find that it is true in many cases ;
but can give no reason why it must be so.

A logical reason, a scientific law, on the con
trary, rests on the mediation of a concept which
binds the two terms of the proposition together as
parts of a rational whole. For instance, the belief of
the scientist, that heat tends to expand substances,
does not rest on the mere fact that heat has been
seen to expand substances in multitudes of cases.
Heat to him is a mode of molecular motion. The
hotter a thing becomes, the more motion there must
be among its molecules. For increased heat is
increased molecular motion. But increased molec
ular motion involves certain other phenomena. If
these molecules move more rapidly, they strike each
other harder, and tend to drive each other farther
apart. They strike the medium which surrounds
them harder, and tend to push farther out into it.
But this tendency to drive the molecules farther
apart, and to push those on the outside farther out
into the surrounding space, — this is what we mean

THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 77

by tendency to expand. Therefore heat and ten
dency to expansion are parts of one inseparable pro
cess. They are bound up together in the unity of the
concept of molecular motion. What the scientist
means by heat is inseparable from what we all
mean by tendency to expansion. It is impossible
to think of the one without thinking of the other,
provided you employ the concept of molecular
motion as the essential characteristic of what
heat is. Heat and the tendency to expansion,
therefore, do not merely hang together in the
habit of our minds, as the result of numerous ex
periences. They are bound together, in the very
structure of our minds, by the strong cement of a
concept common to both. We cannot think of
heat, in terms of the scientific conception of heat,
without at the same time, and as an essential ele
ment of the same thought, thinking of a tendency
to expansion.

Have we then a universal law that all substances
expand under the influence of heat? Not quite.
As a matter of observation, all gases obey that law;
but a few solids and liquids do not. For instance,
a few substances which have the queer property of
being cooled by compression, of which iodide of
silver is one, contract with rise of temperature. If
we suspend by means of a soft rubber tube a
weight heavy enough to stretch the tube consider
ably, and then heat the tube by means of a Bunsen

78 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

flame, the tube contracts and lifts the weight.
Water turns into ice with increase of volume, while
heat is flowing out from the water.

In the face of these exceptions, what becomes
of our law, that substances tend to increase under
the influence of heat ? It stands unshaken. The
words "tend" and "tendency "save it from destruc
tion. In these apparent exceptions the tendency
to expand has been counteracted by the molecular
attractions, or chemical changes, in the molecules ;
and the contraction of the total substance repre
sents the excess of these molecular attractions
over the molecular activities which are insepa
rable from the concept of heat. Indeed, it is the
peculiar glory of a logical as distinct from an
empirical law, that it can meet and include ex
ceptions without being overthrown by them. In
such cases the exception is not to the logical iden
tity which holds the terms of the proposition
together. The exception is clue to the fact that
the concrete phenomenon, though appearing simple
to the casual observer, is really complex ; and in
cludes, side by side within itself, the working of the
law which the logical proposition affirms, and the
working of other laws, which in the particular
case happen to be more effective than the law under
consideration ; and so give a total result which
to the superficial observer seems to contradict it.

In the case of heat and expansion the possibility

THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 79

of exception was due to no defect in our process of
reasoning, but to the complexity of the phenome
non, which allowed other forces than that under
consideration to come into play. In order to pass
from a logical law, which is true in itself, but may
admit of exceptions when applied to concrete phe
nomena, to a law which is absolutely and uni
versally and necessarily true, we have simply to
eliminate the element of complexity, which in the
previous case came in to vitiate the universality of
our proposition, that all substances expand under
the influence of heat. Such abstraction from all
complexity of content, such pure simplicity, we get
in mathematics ; and consequently there we get ab
solute, universal, and necessary truth. The propo
sition that the three angles of a triangle are equal
to two right angles is true in just the same way
that it is true that heat tends to expand substances.
You cannot think of heat in scientific terms with
out thinking of the tendency to expansion as an
element in the total conception. So you cannot
think out accurately in scientific terms what you
mean by a triangle, without having to include
among its properties the equality of its three angles
to two right angles. A figure which did not have
its three angles equal to two right angles would
not be a triangle ; just as a body whose particles
were not hitting each other harder and tending to
drive each other farther apart, and so tending to

8o PRACTICAL IDEALISM

occupy more space, would not be increasing in
heat. But there is this difference between the two
cases. Into our conception of a heated substance
other elements besides that of rapidity and force
of molecular motion may enter ; and consequently
give a result different from that which this element
alone would give. Hence the possibility of ex
ception, even to a logical law, when applied to the
infinite complexity of physical phenomena. The
introduction of new elements gives results which
counteract, while they do not contradict the law
with which we start. Chemical affinity produces re
sults contrary to those which gravitation acting alone
produces. The root-hair of the plant, in turn, breaks
up the combinations which chemical affinity forms.
The animal transforms the tissues of the plant to
serve physiological functions of its own. And the
mind and will of man transform the substance and
modify the action of his own organs in ways which
physics, chemistry, and physiology together cannot
account for.

In mathematics, on the other hand, no such com
plication can enter. The mathematical concept is
by definition pure form, abstracted from all texture
and content. Nothing can enter into our concep
tion of a triangle, which by any possibility can
affect its nature, or make it possible for its three
angles to be more or less than two right angles.
The mathematical concept is a closed system, into

THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 8 1

which no disturbing element can enter. Therefore
the propositions of mathematics are absolutely,
universally, and necessarily true. The terms of a
mathematical proposition stand related to each
other in bonds of such rational and inseparable
systematic connection, that where the one is the
other must be. You cannot pull them apart with
out separating a thing from itself ; without cutting
the universe of truth into two repugnant and unre
lated halves ; without vivisecting your own intel
ligence.

The validity of all reasoning ultimately rests on
the power of the mind to form and hold fast per
manent conceptions. In the words of Professor
James,1 "Each act of conception results from our
attention's having singled out some one part of
the mass of matter-for-thought which the world
presents, and from our holding fast to it without
confusion. Each conception thus eternally re
mains what it is, and never can become another.
This sense of sameness is the very keel and back
bone of our consciousness. The mind can always
intend, and knows when it intends, to think the
same." Hence, what is once true is always true
of that same conception. Mathematical reason
ing is more certain than physical or sociologi
cal reasoning, simply because by virtue of its
formal nature we can always be sure that in

1 " Psychology : Briefer Course," Chapter xiv.
G

82 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

mathematics we are dealing with the same, and
nothing but the same, conception with which we
started out. This principle of sameness or iden
tity is what underlies the so-called laws of thought
and the principles of the syllogism.

The three primary laws of thought are :

1. The Law of Identity. Whatever is, is.

2. The Law of Contradiction. Nothing can
both be and not be.

3. The Law of Excluded Middle. Everything
must either be or not be.

On these laws rest the two fundamental princi
ples of the syllogism :

(i.) Two terms agreeing with one and the same
third term agree with each other.

(2.) Two terms, of which one agrees and the
other does not agree with one and the same third
term, do not agree with each other.

When a conclusion conforms to these laws and
principles it is in form absolutely and universally
true. The only uncertainty that can pertain to
such a proposition is the uncertainty whether the
facts have been accurately observed and the
terms correctly defined. The tendency of modern
logic is to go behind these formal laws and princi
ples and affirm the great fundamental law or prin
ciple on which they all rest. That fundamental
principle is that the world is a self-consistent,

1 Jevons' " Elementary Lessons in Logic," Lesson xiv.

THE WORLD OF SCIENCE S;

rational whole, and consequently even-thing in it
has definite and precise relations to everything
else. Hence each part of the world, each fact
and concept, has relations to other facts and con-
cepis which together with it make up a self -consist
ent whole. Hence if we know two things which
necessarily involve a third thing, we know the third
thing just as surely as we know the first two.

In the language of Professor Hibben.1 "Our
knowledge is capable of arrangement in a self-con
sistent and harmonious system, and which, more
over, in its content and form faithfully represents
objective reality. We find, therefore, that in the
focus of consciousness at any one time, whether in
the sphere of presentation or in the region of repre
sentative or the conceptual processes, whatever is
given carries with it always certain implications,
and therefore certain necessary relations. To un
fold any data in all their manifold implications is
the process of inference. Therefore a part being
given, we supply in our minds other parts, or the
whole to which the part must necessarily belong.
To achieve this, with logical warrant, our know
ledge of the part must be adequate to the extent
that we know that the element under considera
tion cannot be complete in itself, but must be sup
plemented by its appropriate related elements
which with it go to make up the complete system.

1 *• Inductive Logic," Chapter i.

84 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

We infer the nature of the flower not yet in bud
by the sprouting leaf. The one necessitates the
other by virtue of their common inherence in the
same plant system. Columbus, noting the sea
weed and birds and the drift of the sea, inferred
a shore beyond, to which he was constrained by
the necessities of thought to refer them. It is
said of Cuvier that he was able to reconstruct part
for part the entire frame and organism of an ani
mal whose fossil tooth alone formed the original
datum. He knew the system to which it must
have belonged and to which it alone could possibly
be referred." Bosanquet likewise bases the valid
ity of inference upon this recognition of the sys
tem in which the parts or members of necessity
inhere. " System is a group of relations, or prop
erties, or things, so held together by a common
nature that you can judge from some of them
what the others must be."

From this point of view which regards infer
ence as " interpreting the implications of the
system to which the given in consciousness be
longs," it is easy to see the difference between
induction and deduction. This has been so well
stated by Professor . Hibben,1 that I quote him
again at length. " When the system can be
considered as a whole, and is apprehended in its
entirety, then it may become the ground upon

1 " Inductive Logic," Chapter ii.

THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 85

which the inference is based, resulting in unfold
ing the necessary nature or relations of any of the
parts. The procedure in such a case is from
the nature of the whole system to the nature of
the several parts and their existent relations, and
this is deductive in its essential features. On
the other hand, when we know the various parts
and proceed from them as data to construct the
system which their known nature and relations
necessitate, it is induction, or procedure from
elementary parts to the whole thus necessitated.
From a knowledge of the planetary system, we
can infer the necessary positions of sun, moon,
and earth at any required time, as, for instance, in
the calculation of an eclipse. This is deduction.
But when we begin with investigating the several
movements of the different planets, and from
them infer the necessary nature of the system
of which they are parts, we have the process of
induction. Such processes we see must be com
plementary and mutually dependent."

According to Sigwart, " The logical justification
of the inductive process rests upon the fact that it
is an inevitable postulate of our effort after know
ledge that the given is necessary, and can be
known as proceeding from its grounds according
to universal laws." According to Bosanquet this
postulate of knowledge, which is the basis of
inference, is that " the universe is a rational sys-

86 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

tern, taking rational to mqan not only that it can
be known by intelligence, but that it can be
known and handled by our intelligence." Pro
fessor Hibben,1 from whose pages I have taken
the above definitions, gives his own definition- of
this postulate as follows : " That our knowledge
must be consistent throughout with itself, part
to part, and parts to Whole, and that the world
for us is the world as constructed by our know
ledge. Whatever is given in consciousness must
belong, therefore, in the one place where it appro
priately and necessarily belongs. Here also there
must be a place for everything, and everything
in its place. Whenever a concrete instance is
present in consciousness, its existence must
be considered as necessitated by some ante
cedent which can satisfactorily explain it, and
which can at the same time be appropriately
adjusted to the whole of our knowledge in inter
preting it."

This interdependence of all phenomena in a
single, rational system, of which the elements may
be singled out and held fast in permanent con
cepts, and in which the relations between these
concepts may be declared in universal laws, is
what we mean by causation. Short of this whole
interdependent system it is impossible to stop in
the attempt to assign the specific cause of any

1 "Inductive Logic," Chapter iii.

87

specific effect. This is happily illustrated in an
example given by Bosanquet.1 "We start, no
doubt, by thinking of a cause as a real event
in time, the priority of which is the condition
of another event, the effect. Pull the trigger
-cause — and the gun goes off — effect. The
moment we look closer at it, we see that this will
not do. Pull the trigger ? — yes, but the cartridge
must be in its place, the striker must be straight,
the cap must be in order, the powder must be dry
and chemically fit, and so on, till it becomes pretty
clear that the cause is a system of circumstances
which include the effect. But then our troubles
are not ended. Only the essential and invariable
conditions enter into the cause, if the cause is
invariable. This begins to cut away the particu
lar circumstances of the case. You need not use
the trigger, nor even the cap; you may ignite
powder in many ways. You may have many
kinds of explosives. All that is essential is to
have an explosion of a certain force and not too
great rapidity. Then you will get this paradox.
What is merely essential to the effect is always
something less than any combination of real
'things' which will produce the effect, because
every real thing has many properties irrelevant to
this particular effect. So, if the cause means some
thing real, as a material object is real, it cannot
1 " Essentials of Logic," page 164.

88 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

be invariable and essential. We can only escape
this by identifying both cause and reason with
the complete ground, that is, the nature of a sys
tem of reality within which the cause and effect
both lie."

Still, while in the ultimate analysis we cannot
stop short with any particular finite cause for any
particular phenomenon, it is useful for practical
purposes to treat certain invariable antecedents as
proximate causes, and to have reliable methods
for determining such causes, in advance of our
ability to apprehend the systematic relations in
which the phenomena stand, and to deduce our
conclusions therefrom. For this purpose, and as
a preliminary stage on the way to the comprehen
sion of the system to which the phenomena belong,
the scientist has frequent occasion to avail himself
of the well-known methods of induction, formulated
by John Stuart Mill. The method of agreement
depends on the principle that, "If two or more
instances of the phenomenon under investigation
have only one circumstance in common, the cir
cumstance in which alone all the instances agree,
is the cause (or effect) of the given phenomenon."
The Method of Difference proceeds on the principle
that, "If an instance in which the phenomenon
under investigation occurs, and an instance in
which it does not occur, have every circumstance
in common save one, that one occurring only in the

THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 89

former, the circumstance in which alone the two
instances differ, is the effect, or the cause, or an in
dispensable part of the cause, of the phenomenon."

The principle of the Joint Method is, " If two or
more instances in which the phenomenon occurs
have only one circumstance in common, while two
or more instances in which it does not occur have
nothing in common, save the absence of that cir
cumstance, the circumstance in which alone the
two sets of instances always or invariably differ is
the effect, or the cause, or an indispensable part
of the cause of the phenomenon."

The Method of Residues is, " Subduct from any
phenomenon such part as is known by previous
inductions to be the effect of certain antecedents,
and the residue of the phenomenon is the effect of
the remaining antecedents."

The Method of Concomitant Variations is,
"Whatever phenomenon varies in any manner,
whenever another phenomenon varies in some par
ticular manner, is either a cause or an effect of
that phenomenon, or is connected with it through
some fact of causation."

By the application of these methods of induc
tion ; by apprehension of the system of relations
which the facts gathered by induction involve, and
require for their explanation ; and by deduction
in strict accord with the laws of thought, we get
truths of physical and social science which are of

PRACTICAL IDEALISM

objective and universal validity. These sciences
do not tell us, like the laws of mathematics, that
things must have been and always must continue
to be as we know they are. They depend upon
experience for their facts, and for the first sug
gestion of the nature of the system to which the
facts belong. They tell us, however, that within
the system of things which experience presents,
and the only system of which we have any know
ledge, and with which we have any practical
concern, things not only are but must be of a
certain nature. Whether or not there might be
a different world from that in which we live,
science does not undertake to say. But it does
tell us that some elements of this actual world can
not exist apart from other elements of it ; and that
if we have some of these elements, we must also
have such others as are inseparable from those
we have. With this single qualification, physical
and moral and social science gives laws which are
as necessary and universal as the laws of mathe

matics.

Science, and logic which is the formulation of
the method of science, proceeds on the postulate
and rests its conclusions on the conviction that the
world is not an aggregate of unrelated atoms, but
an organism of rationally related members. The
universe is like the body of an animal, not like a
heap of sand. Inference is valid, science is certain,

THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 91

law is reliable just so far as it is based first of all
on facts of sense-perception ; and, second, on such
a clear and comprehensive conception of the system
of things to which those facts belong, that out of
perceived facts and the known system, together,
the unperceived facts which belong with the per
ceived facts in the unity of the system may be
predicted.

As illustrations of this process of inference by
which we pass from what is known to what was
previously unknown or unrecognized, let us take
two examples : the first, a rather abstract specula
tive discussion of ethical principles by the great
master of ancient dialectic ; the other, a scientific
generalization of innumerable facts by the fore
most of modern scientists. Both are striving to
establish views which had previously been un
recognized, and which their contemporaries were
not predisposed to accept.

Socrates was the first to make explicit use of
the process of inference. He confined it to the
discussion of ethical questions. His method was
that of question and answer. There is no better
way to bring out the essential features of the
process than to take one of his ethical problems
and see how he handled it. In the Gorgias Plato
represents Socrates as conversing with Polus, a
conceited young upstart, who advocates the Sophis
tic doctrine that it is all right to do wrong, pro-

92 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

vided you don't get punished. Socrates draws out
the statement of this position in the most emphatic
and uncompromising form, and then a few pages
later compels the young fellow in spite of him
self to profess allegiance to exactly the opposite
doctrine. Let us see how he does it. As usual,
he starts with a concrete case. I will give Plato's
words, slightly condensed.1

" Polus. You see, I presume, that Archelaus, the
son of Perdiccas, is now the ruler of Macedonia ?

Socrates. At any rate I hear that he is.

Pol. And do you think that he is happy or
miserable ?

Soc. I cannot say, Polus, for I have never had
any acquaintance with him.

Pol. And cannot you tell at once, and without
having any acquaintance with him, whether a man
is happy ?

Soc. Indeed, I cannot.

Pol. Then clearly, Socrates, you would say that
you did not even know whether the great king was
a happy man ?

Soc. And I should say the truth ; for I do not
know how he stands in the matter of education
and justice.

Pol. What ! and does all happiness consist in
this ?

1 Plato: " Gorgias," Jovvett's translation, 470-475.

THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 93

Soc. Yes, indeed, Polus, that is my doctrine ;
the men and women who are gentle and good are
also happy, as I maintain, and the unjust and the
evil are miserable.

Pol. Then, according to your doctrine, the said
Archelaus is miserable ?

Soc. Yes, my friend ; if he is wicked, he is.

Pol. I cannot deny that he is wicked, for he
had no title at all to the throne which he now
occupies, as he was only the son of a woman who
was the slave of Alcetas, the brother of Perdiccas,
and therefore in strict right he was the slave of
Alcetas himself; and, if he had meant to do
rightly, would have remained his slave, and then,
according to your doctrine, he would have been
happy ; but now he is unspeakably miserable, for
he has been guilty of the greatest crimes. In the
first place, he invited his uncle and master Alcetas
to come to him, under the pretence that he would
restore to him the throne which Perdiccas had
usurped ; and, after entertaining him and his son
Alexander, who was his cousin and nearly of an
age with him, and making them drunk, he threw
them into a wagon and carried them off by night,
and slew them, and got both of them out of the
way ; and when he had done all this wickedness,
he never discovered that he was the most miser
able of all men, and was very far from repenting.
I will tell you how he showed his remorse. He

94 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

had a young brother of seven years old, who was
the legitimate son of Perdiccas. This was the heir
to whom of right the kingdom belonged ; but he
had no mind to be happy by bringing him up as
he ought and restoring him to the kingdom ; and,
not long after this, he threw him into a well and
drowned him, and declared to his mother, Cleo
patra, that he had fallen in while running after
a goose and had been killed. And now, as he is
the greatest criminal in all Macedonia, he may be
supposed to be the most miserable and not the
happiest ; and I daresay that his misery would
not be desired by any Athenian, and by you, least
of all, certainly not : he is the last of the Mace
donians whose lot you would choose.

Soc. I praise you at first, Polus, for being a
rhetorician rather than a reasoner. But, my good
friend, where is the refutation ? I certainly do
not admit a word that you have been saying.

Pol. That is because you won't, for you surely
must think as I do.

Soc. Not so, my simple friend ; but because you
will refute me in the way which rhetoricians fancy
to be refutation in courts of law. For there the
one party think that they refute the other when
they bring forward a number of witnesses of good
repute in proof of their allegations, and their ad
versary has only a single one, or none at all. But
this kind of proof is of no value where truth is

THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 95

the aim. And now I know that nearly every one,
Athenian as well as stranger, will be on your side
in this argument ; if you like to bring witnesses
in disproof of my statement, you may summon, if
you will, the whole house of Pericles, or any other
great Athenian family whom you choose : they
will all agree with you. I only am left alone and
cannot agree, for you do not convince me, you
only produce many false witnesses against me, in
the hope of depriving me of my inheritance, which
is the truth. But I consider that I shall have
proved nothing, unless I make you the one will
ing witness of my words ; neither will you, unless
you have made me as the one witness of yours
— no matter about the rest of the world. For
there are two ways of refutation : one which is
yours and that of the world in general ; but mine
is of another sort, and therefore I will begin by
asking you about this very point. Do you not
think that a man who is unjust and is doing in
justice can be happy, seeing that you think Arche-
laus unjust and yet happy? Am I not right in
supposing that to be your meaning ? (Observe
that here Socrates turns from the particular case
to the universal — "a man who is unjust.")
Pol. Quite right.

Soc. Now the point of difference between us is
this, is it not ? I was saying that to do, is worse
than to suffer injustice?

96 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

Pol. Exactly.

Soc. And you said the opposite ?

Pol. Yes.

Soc. I said, also, that the wicked are miserable,
and this again you denied ?

Pol. Yes, I did, and no mistake.

Soc. But that was only your opinion, Polus ?

Pol. Yes, and I am surely right. Do you not
think, Socrates, that you have been sufficiently
refuted when you say that which no human being
will allow ? Ask the company.

Soc. O, Polus, if, as I was saying, you have no
better argument than numbers, let me have a
turn, and do you make a trial of the sort of proof
which, as I think, ought to be given ; for I shall
produce one witness only of the truth of my
words, and he is the person with whom I am
arguing ; his suffrage I know how to take ; but
with the many I have nothing to do, and do not
even address myself to them. May I ask, then,
whether you will answer in turn and have your
words put to the proof? For I certainly think
that I, and you, and every man do really believe
that to do is a greater evil than to suffer in
justice.

Pol. And I should say that neither I, nor any
man believes this ; would you yourself, for exam
ple, suffer rather than do injustice ?

Soc. Yes, and you, too ; I and any man would.

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Pol. Quite the reverse ; neither you, nor I, nor
any man.

Soc. But will you answer ?

Pol. Certainly, I will, for I am curious to hear
what you are going to say.

Soc. Tell me, then, and you will know, and let
us suppose that I am beginning at the beginning ;
which of the two, Polus, in your opinion, is the
worst — to do injustice or to suffer?

(Thus far we have had merely a clear statement
of the universal proposition, bringing out sharply
the point at issue. Now Socrates will begin to
develop the content and meaning of the term
"injustice." Not until the two agree as to what
the precise and universal and constant character
istic of injustice is, will they be in a position to
agree as to whether it is better to do or to suffer
injustice. Injustice has so many aspects that it
is useless to discuss it as an unresolved whole.
He will analyze it, and deal with what he regards
as its essential element. Let us watch him as
he sticks in his bill, and pulls out the one abstract,
universal quality on which the whole discussion
is to turn.)

Polus having repeated his assertion, " I should
say that suffering was worst," Socrates now puts
the crucial question.

Soc. And which is the greater disgrace? An
swer.

98 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

Pol. To do. (Socrates has got him on his hook.
He starts to pull him in at once, but Polus is not
ready to come, so he lets him play with it awhile,
and in the meantime fastens it more securely in
his mouth.)

Soc. And the greater disgrace is the greater
evil ?

Pol. Certainly not. (Socrates has not yet
reached a term sufficiently abstract and universal
to compel agreement. He and Polus appear to
differ as sharply about the term "disgrace," as they
did about the term "injustice." So he will proceed
to analyze this term "disgrace," and this time he
employs the dilemma, which, by breaking a term
up into mutually exclusive parts, is bound to pin
his opponent down to something from which he
cannot escape. By this time Polus realizes that
he is in a precarious situation, and is likely to
be wary. So the shrewd old angler, Socrates,
conceals the hook under the opposite of that
term which he really wishes to analyze. Conse
quently we have an apparent, though not a real
digression. Instead of disgrace and deformity, it
is the opposite — beauty — which is the next topic
of inquiry.)

Soc. And what do you say to this ? When you
speak of beautiful things, as, for example, bodies,
colors, figures, sounds, institutions, do you not
call them beautiful in reference to some standard ?

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Bodies, for example, are beautiful in proportion as
they are useful, or as the sight of them gives
pleasure to the spectators : can you give any other
account of personal beauty ?

Pol. I cannot, Socrates, and I very much
approve of your measuring beauty by the standard
of pleasure and utility. (Having thus gained his
hearty assent to the proposition about beauty, he
now turns to the opposite, which he was after all
the time.)

Soc. And deformity, or disgrace, may be equally
measured by the opposite standard of pain or evil ?

Pol. Certainly.

Soc. Then when of two beautiful things one
exceeds the other in beauty, the excess is to be
measured in one or both of these, that is to say,
in pleasure or good, or both.

Pol. Very true.

Soc. And of two deformed things, that which
exceeds in deformity or disgrace, exceeds either in
pain or evil, — does not that follow ?

Pol. Yes. (Now Socrates begins to wind up
his reel and pull the unsuspecting Polus in.)

Soc. But then, again, what was that observation
which you just now made about doing and suffer
ing wrong ? Did you not say that suffering wrong
was more evil, and doing wrong more disgraceful ?

Pol. I did say that.

Soc. Then, if doing wrong is more disgraceful

100 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

than suffering, the more disgraceful must be more
painful, and exceed in pain or in evil, or both : is
not that the necessary inference ? (Note the word
"necessary" coming in here. It is now no ques
tion of opinion, or majority vote.)

Pol. Of course.

Soc. First, then, let us consider whether the
doing of injustice exceeds the suffering in pain.
Do the injurers suffer more than the injured?

Pol. No, Socrates ; certainly not that.

Soc. Then do they not exceed in pain ?

Pol. No.

Soc. But if not in pain, then not in both ?

Pol. Certainly not.

Soc. Then they can only exceed in the other.

Pol. Yes. (Now Socrates begins to pull him
out of the water. The next answer will land him
high and dry on the shore; and it will only remain
to make him realize where he is.)

Soc. That is to say in evil ?

Pol. True.

Soc. Then doing injustice, having an excess of
evil, will be a greater evil than suffering injustice ?

Pol. Clearly.

Soc. But have not you and the world already
agreed that to do injustice is more disgraceful than
to suffer ?

Pol. Yes.

Soc. And that is now discovered to be more evil?

THE WORLD OF SCIENCE IQI

Pol. True.

Soc. And would you prefer a greater evil or a
greater disgrace to a less one? Answer, Polus,
and fear not, for you will come to no harm if you
nobly give yourself to the healing power of the
argument, which is a sort of physician, and either
say " Yes " or " No " to me.
Pol. I should say not.
Soc. Would any other man ?
Pol. Not according to this way of putting the
case, Socrates.

Soc. Then I said truly, Polus, that neither you
nor I nor any man would rather do than suffer
injustice, for to do injustice is the greater evil
of the two.

Pol. That is true.

Soc. Well, and was not this the point in dispute,
my friend ? You deemed Archelaus happy, because
he was a very great criminal and unpunished ; I, on
the other hand, maintained that the doer of injus
tice, whether Archelaus or any other, is more mis
erable than the sufferer —was not that what I said?
Pol. Yes.

Soc. And that has been proved to be true?
Pol. Certainly."

In this brief dialogue the whole principle of
inference is involved. Injustice is not an isolated
fact, which one man can see in one light and

102 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

another in another. Injustice is an element in a
system of ethical relationships, and has various con
stant and universal characteristics. One of these
constant, universal characteristics is deformity or
disgrace. Disgrace, again, is not an isolated fact,
concerning which there may be two contradictory
opinions held by two disputants. Disgrace has
certain constant characteristics. It is, as the
opposite of beauty and honour, either painful or
evil or both. Hence, siace it is more disgraceful to
do than to suffer injustice, it must be either more
painful or more evil, or both. But it is not more
painful. Therefore it must be more evil. The
doing of injustice is inseparable from the greater
disgrace, and the greater disgrace is the greater
evil. Therefore the doing of injustice is a greater
evil than suffering it.

Darwin's explanation of the origin of species
by natural selection is a good example of scien
tific reasoning. Darwin was not the author of the
idea that species originated through the gradual
transformation of simpler, primitive forms. That
idea was already present as a speculative hy
pothesis, and dates back to Aristotle, Empedocles,
and in very crude form to Anaximander. Eras
mus Darwin, Goethe, and especially Lamarck had
attempted to fill in the intervening gap between
primitive and present forms ; but with only partial
and fragmentary success. Lamarck attributed the

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transformation to the crossing of previous species,
to the influence of environment, and to the effects
of use and disuse of organs. These principles,
especially the last two, are true causes, and enter
as elements into the theory of Darwin ; but stand
ing alone are inadequate to account for such
extensive transformations. What the Greeks dimly
foresaw ; what Goethe's poetic intuition perceived
in the parts of the flower; what Lamarck antici
pated, but could not fully explain, Darwin con
clusively proved. And his proof consisted in
showing the intermediate links which bind the
present to the primitive forms in the unity of a
coherent and consistent system. There are sev
eral of these links, — variation, artificial selec
tion, fecundity, struggle for existence, adaptation
to environment, survival of the fittest, and the
chain which all these links compose is natural
selection. Let us consider the links of this chain
in order.

The first link is the fact that no two descendants
of the same parents are quite alike. The minute
differences between them are what he calls varia
tions.

The second link is the fact that these variations
may be inherited. The offspring of parents which
have a given variation tend to reproduce the same
variation in themselves, and to hand it down to
their offspring.

IO4 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

The third link is artificial selection. This link,
however, is illustrative of the argument, not a
feature of the process. By selecting the varia
tions which please him, and accumulating them
through a series of generations, man develops
from the same species diverse breeds of domestic
animals and cultivated plants. For instance, the
carrier, the tumbler, the turbit, the trumpeter, the
fantail, have all been developed from the wild rock-
pigeon by this process of artificial selection.

The fourth link is the fact of enormous fecun
dity : the significance of which was suggested to
Darwin by Malthus. Plants and animals tend to
increase in a geometrical ratio. " Every organic
being naturally increases at so high a rate that, if
not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered by
the progeny of a single pair."

The fifth link is the struggle for existence. The
means of subsistence are limited. In this struggle
the many perish ; only a few survive.

The sixth link is the survival of the fittest.
Adaptation to the environment enables a few to
survive, while the less adapted multitudes perish.
And since the survivors alone can transmit their
characteristics to offspring, only the most favorable
variations are perpetuated.

These six links taken together constitute the
chain of natural selection which is merely a com
prehensive term for the total process by which

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105

Nature, working through the forces of fecundity,
variation and heredity, struggle and survival, in
the reaction of organisms upon their environment,
selects the best for preservation and perpetuation.
The theory receives further corroboration from
facts of morphology and embryology, which show
that allied species, such as the gorilla and man,
have the same fundamental plan of structure, and
a complete correspondence of parts ; that man and
the apes alike possess in a rudimentary form organs
or parts which are present in the lower animals ;
and that the foetus of the human child and of the
ape go through the same stages of embryological
development in which they present a recapitulation
of the very process of evolution which, according
to Darwin's theory, these species themselves have
passed through on their way from the primordial
forms to their present specific characteristics.

Inasmuch as the theory of natural selection
bridges this gap between primordial and present
forms of plant and animal life; inasmuch as it
shows the whole history of plant and animal life
as one continuous system ; inasmuch as by its aid
we can see how each existing form stands related
to coexisting and preceding forms, it has been
accepted at least as a working hypothesis by all
scientists of repute. There are indeed differences
of opinion as to the extent of the influence of
natural selection and the mode of its operation.

106 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

But it harmonizes so many facts which otherwise
would be left standing apart in helpless, reasonless
isolation, and reduces them to so coherent and
consistent a unity, that it has been accepted by
the consensus of the competent as the law of all
beings which live and reproduce in competition
with each other in blind obedience to their natural
impulses. Natural selection is the cause of exist
ing species in the sense which we have attributed
to the term "cause"; that is, natural selection
represents the group of forces and relations which
are most immediately connected with the forms
and functions of existing plants and animals.

Darwin's doctrine of natural selection is at the
same time an excellent illustration of the limita
tions of science. It does not offer any ultimate
explanation of phenomena. Because, by the aid
of such mechanical devices as the pulley and the
inclined plane, we can lift a weight a given distance
with a thousandth part of the force by applying it
a thousand times as long, it docs not follow that
we could do the same work by applying no force
whatever an infinite length of time. And because
Darwin, by the device of natural selection, has
showed that changes can be brought about by
applying through thousands of generations very
little purposive intelligence at any given point, it
does not follow that by making the amount of time
indefinite you can explain the total process without

THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 1 07

any purposive intelligence whatsoever. How pri
mordial forms, environment, and tendency to vary
came to be so related that out of their mutual re
lations, under the law of natural selection, there
evolves a hierarchy of forms, having at its head
man "crowned with glory and honour" is a
question of philosophy, to which Darwin has
given, and science alone can give, no satisfactory
answer whatsoever. Darwin himself sometimes in
words attributes this total process and tendency to
" the Creator " ; but the logic which betrays his
more characteristic thought, when he speaks of
variation as spontaneous and indefinite, inclines to
rest the whole on chance. Now chance is merely
another name for ignorance of the definite and
subtle conditions which together constitute the
cause. When we say that the throw of the dice,
the turn of a wheel, or the deal of a pack of cards
is due to chance, we really mean that these things
are due to such secret and subtle and uncliscover-
able forces that we cannot apprehend them with
sufficient definiteness to predict the result. If,
however, we could know the original position of
the dice in the bottom of the box ; if we could
know the force and direction of each impulse given
to them in the process of shaking and throwing,
we could from these data predict with absolute
certainty every time precisely what figures would
come out on top.

IOS PRACTICAL IDEALISM

Darwinism, therefore, contributes to philosophy
the negative result of banishing special creation
and external teleology. To the fundamental prob
lem, as to whether the universe is a product of
blind mechanism or intelligent purpose; to the
problem of immanent teleology, which is the only
form of teleology seriously entertained by intelli
gent persons to-day, Darwinism contributes noth
ing whatsoever ; but leaves the question precisely
where it found it. The alliance of Darwinism and
materialism is entirely unwarranted, although Dar
win's disposition to regard variation as spontaneous
and indefinite, a view in which the most competent
naturalists have refused to follow him, pointed in
that direction. The positive, scientific contribu
tion, and the negative, philosophical consequence
of it, were great achievements. They have vastly
widened and impregnably intrenched the legiti
mate field of science, making it extensive as the
interrelation of objects and the sequence of events
in space and time, and warning off from this broad
field all metaphysical and theological intruders. It
has enthroned evolution as the supreme formula
under which particular sequences must be inter
preted and particular forms must be explained.
Into the question of the ultimate nature of this
process as a whole, and man's relation to it, and to
its origin and outcome, its immanent law and its
universal life, neither physical science in general,

THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 1 09

nor Darwinism in particular, has any authoritative
word to say.

Still, although science answers not the ultimate
philosophical problem, it does restate it ; it does,
as we have seen, tell us that one seemingly simple
answer cannot be accepted ; and in doing these
things it also hints at what the nature of the
answer must be. Science shows that all the sepa
rate departments of the world are held together by
precise and invariable laws. It shows that these
laws are universal as space ; enduring as time ;
absolute and eternal as the mind whose concep
tions they are. Since Plato, it has been impossible
to think consistently, without thinking that it is a
greater evil to do wrong than to suffer wrong.
Since Darwin, it has been impossible to think of
the origin of species candidly and intelligently,
without thinking of natural selection as an element
in their development. Now if the parts of the
world are thus held together by precise and immu
table laws; if the widest gaps of space and time
have been bridged by the laws discovered by
Newton and Lyell ; and if the last gap of all has
been satisfactorily spanned by Darwin's principle
of natural selection, it becomes extremely proba
ble that whatever else the world may be, it is a
unity, consistent from first to last, rational through
and through.

Thus the self-consistent unity and rationality of

IIO PRACTICAL IDEALISM

the universe, which is the postulate of logic, finds
its confirmation in the formulas of science. These
laws of science are not foreign to the mind, as the
isolated facts at first seem to be. They are not
capricious. We can rely upon them. Though in
the immense complexity of actual phenomena we
may not be able to trace them ; though in the
confusion and strife of affairs their working may
be obscured ; yet the man of science knows that
there are laws everywhere, and that they are akin
to his own intelligence, and that, if clearly appre
hended and faithfully observed, they are bound to
be his servants and his friends. In science mind
finds itself reflected back from objective nature,
and begins to feel at home in the outside world.
Science bears witness to the twofold truth that
the real is rational and the rational is real. It
intimates the kinship of Nature and man, and points
toward a common source, at onee infinite as Nature
and personal as ourselves. From the point of view
of science, however, these intimations are mere
suggestions, and nothing more. Science has shown
conclusively that the various departments of the
universe are rational. It may not be a long step
from that conclusion to the intuition that the uni
verse as a whole is the expression of One Infinite
Reason. But it is a step which science alone is
not concerned to take. It is no small gain to
have become convinced that the world without

THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 1 1 I

and the world within are permeated by rational
principles common to both, even if we do not
press at once the question, How came this to be?
and, What must be the nature and source of such
rational principles ?

In science we find an objective reality which
is akin to our intelligence. And yet we must
not confound these laws of science with the
ultimate reality. The world of science is real,
but it cannot claim to be the only or the ex
clusively real world. As Mr. Bradley says,1
" The synthesis of facts may be partly the same
as our mental construction ; but in the end it
diverges, for it always has much that we are not
able to represent. We cannot exhibit in any ex
periment that enormous detail of sensuous context,
that cloud of particulars which enfolds the meeting
of actual events. We may say, indeed, that we
have the essential ; but it is just because we have
merely the essence that we have not got a copy
of the facts. The essence does not live in the
series of events : it is not one thing that exists
among others." Because our science must ever
be "abstract and symbolic, it mutilates phenomena,
it can never give us that tissue of relations, it can
not portray those entangled fibres, which give life
to the presentations of sense. It offers instead an
unshaded outline without a background, a remote

1 " Principles of Logic," p. 528.

112 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

and colourless extract of ideas, a preparation which
everywhere rests on dissection and recalls the knife."
Science is, after all, a skeleton, of which the sev
eral natural laws are the constituent bones. Like
bones, these laws are hard and rigid. They do
not bend and yield and pass away like fleeting
facts and fading fancies. They dwell in a change
less world, enduring as the mind whose nature
they reflect. They are independent of the ca
price of the individual ; they ask no favour ; they
compel the consensus of the competent. Yet,
though real and universal, these laws, like bones
again, have no warmth and life in themselves, apart
from the flesh and blood of concrete facts and
forces. Their life is in the facts, and their worth
is in the power they have to control facts and
forces. This control of the facts and forces of the
world through ideals according to laws, however,
is not science, but art ; and this will be the subject
of the next chapter.

CHAPTER IV

THE WORLD OF ART

SCIENCE gives us only the skeleton of a world. Its
laws are after all only bones ; in themselves devoid
of life and beauty; yet the indispensable frame
work of the living flesh and breathing beauty of
the organic whole. Art, on the other hand, gives
us the warm tints of the flesh; the graceful out
lines of the form ; " the breath and finer spirit of
all knowledge ; the impassioned expression which
is in the countenance of all Science." The world
of Art is the world of significant expression.

Science abstracts from the living texture of facts
and events the universal principles which are com
mon to them all. Experiment and inference are
the hook and line by which Science fishes the dry
formulas out of the fluid facts. Art, on the con
trary, puts into selected facts thoughts and imagi
nations of the mind. Science is analytic. Art is
synthetic. Instead of fishing out what Nature has
put into the stream of life, Art undertakes to
stock the stream with choice specimens of her
own breeding and selection. Art is dependent
on Science, inasmuch as it is impossible to put
i 113

114 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

together what has not first been broken apart ;
yet Art is the nobler of the two, inasmuch as to
create is greater than to dissect. Science deals
with essential elements ; Art presents characteris
tic wholes.

Science by the aid of imagination and reason
extends the world of sense-perception through its
concepts and hypotheses and laws until it is vast
enough to draw general conclusions from. Art,
on the contrary, seizes and constrains, limits and
confines imagination, until its ideals are precise
and definite enough to be embodied within the
hard and fast limits of the world of sense. Sci
ence brings facts of sense-perception under con
cepts and laws. Art expresses ideals and principles
in terms of sense-perception.

Science, as we have seen, is not a mere aggre
gation of facts : it is the extraction from facts of
universal principles or laws imbedded in them.
Art likewise is not the mere reproduction of facts.
It is not mere imitation of Nature. As Browning
says, in " The Ring and the Book,"

" Fancy with fact is just one fact the more ;
To wit, that fancy has informed, transpierced.
Thridded and so thrown fast the facts, else free."

The ideal arises out of a felt contrast between
what we have and what we want ; what we are and
what we long to be. The practical arts arise from

THE WORLD OF ART 115

this felt need of food, shelter, and raiment. Hav
ing experienced the satisfaction of these needs,
and finding himself without the present means of
renewing that satisfaction, man sets himself the
task of providing them. His ideal is always a con
ception of himself, as enjoying something which
is not actually present. Although this ideal is
for the most part composed of ideas previously
experienced, yet the imagination, working freely
upon the suggestions of memory, may transcend
those suggestions and improve upon the past.
Such improvement is originality. It is the pre
rogative of imagination. In its highest forms it
is the expression of genius. The discovery of
the principle of the arch in architecture was
such a stroke of inventive genius.

The aim of the mechanic arts is utility ; the
satisfaction of felt physical or social needs. The
aim of the fine arts is beauty, or the satisfaction
of the aesthetic feelings. The mechanic arts and
the fine arts are closely related in their psychologi
cal origin, being both alike attempts of man to
realize an ideal of himself. In practice the two
kinds of art ought to be kept closely together.
The tendency to divorce them ; to manufacture
useful things which have no beauty ; and to collect
together beautiful things apart from their natural
associations with utility is fatal alike to the truest
utility and the highest beauty. Every useful thing

Il6 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

must have some form, and that form must be
either beautiful or ugly. Every beautiful thing
must be placed somewhere, either where it be
longs, or where it does not belong. The place
for beautiful things, if they have the true beauty
of expressiveness and characterization, will always
be in the most natural relation to the domestic
or social or civic or religious life of man. " Ab
straction," says Bosanquet, in his " History of
yEsthetic," "is a sure sign of decadence. Art
for Art's sake is a silly notion." Not until we
insist on having the conditions of our everyday
life beautiful, do we really love beauty. The at
tempt to worship beauty exclusively in the museum
is as fatal to art, as is the attempt to warship God
exclusively in the church fatal to religion. Beauty
is the appropriate form, as religion is the appro
priate spirit of all life ; and until they are brought
out of the gallery and the cloister into the public
square and the market-place, into the school and
the home, they are but ghostly abstractions, haunt
ing the borderland of our real lives ; and we re
main at heart pagans and barbarians. Decoration,
instead of being a side issue, is the very heart and
soul of true art.

In the broadest sense of the word all business,
commerce, manufacture, war, housekeeping, school-
teaching, as well as painting, architecture, poetry,
and music, are forms of art. For in them all man

THE WORLD OF ART

117

forms in his imagination a picture of himself as
enjoying, or helping others to enjoy, something
which is not yet real, and apart from his efforts
would never become real. In all these activities
man is maker, creator, poet, artist, realizer of ideals.
Professor Barrett Wendell, in his recent book on
Shakespeare, points out that the acquisition of a
fortune, and the purchase of his estate at Strat
ford out of the proceeds of his labours as play-
writer and theatre manager, was quite as much an
achievement of the imagination, as the writing of
his immortal plays.

The bridge by which the artist gets from the
picture in his imagination over to the solid reality
of fact, is the very one which the scientist has
laboriously built for him, — the bridge of universal
laws. In order to build a ship that will float, and
attain a given speed, he must know and reckon
with the laws of specific gravity, the lines of least
resistance, the strength of materials. He can em
body his vision of his swift ship in wood and iron,
because he can count upon certain universal and
constant properties of water and air and wood and
iron, and certain definite relations between them.
The actual ship is the designer's vision, limited
and defined by the properties of the materials
used, and embodied in these materials in conform
ity to mechanical laws. An ideal is not a mere
fiction of the fancy. It is the product of imagina-

I 1 8 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

tion, subdued and chastened by the laws of science
and the limitations of fact. Art, therefore, is an
improvement upon Nature, inasmuch as it is an
adaptation of natural forces to ends for which
Nature has failed to make adequate provision.
At the same time it is in subjection to Nature,
inasmuch as it must take its materials from her
hands, and obey implicitly her laws. It is through
strict obedience to law, that Art, like Science, se
cures its liberty.

Thus art, as Schiller expressed it, is a process
of " widening Nature without going beyond it."
In the words of Edward Caird, the artist is an
" organ by which Nature reaches a further develop
ment." The artist moulds materials which he
takes out of the vast network of natural facts and
forces into an expression of an idea in his own
mind and heart. Yet, while this idea is his own,
it is at the same time an expression of more than
his private, subjective self. Subjective whims and
caprices refuse to be embodied in art ; external
facts and forces refuse to lend themselves to such
idle and trivial service. It is only true and objec
tive ideas, ideas which are not peculiar to the
individual, but are common to humanity, and in
harmony with the ongoings of Nature herself,
which can find perfect and worthy embodiment in
art. As Ruskin is forever insisting, the tree in
general, the tree that is neither maple nor oak nor

THE WORLD OF ART rig

spruce nor hemlock, it is impossible to paint. The
artist must first conform his ideas to the laws and
principles of Nature, before Nature will honour
his drafts on her resources. As Caird has said, " If
he remoulds the immediate facts of the world of
experience, it must be by means of forces which
are working in it as well as in himself, and which
his own plastic genius brings to clearer manifesta
tion. The facts are changed, but the change is
such that it seems to have taken place in the fac
tory of Nature herself. Creative imagination is a
power which is neither lawless, nor yet, strictly
speaking, under law ; it is a power which, as Kant
says, makes laws. It carries us with free steps
into a region in which we leave behind and forget
the laws of Nature ; yet as soon as we begin to
look round us, and to reflect on our new environ
ment, we see that it could not have been otherwise.
The world has not been turned upside down, but
widened by the addition of a new province which
is in perfect continuity with it." 1

From this point of view the foolish controversy
between so-called realism and idealism in art be
comes manifestly absurd. There is no such thing
as realism. It is a psychological impossibility ;
and the attempt to realize it is likely to lead to
either artistic monstrosity or moral perversity, or
both. A work of art is a product of the mind of
1 "Literature and Philosophy," pages 58-60.

I2Q PRACTICAL IDEALISM

the artist and the materials and laws of Nature :
a union of presentations of sense with the precon
ceptions of his mind. What facts he sees will
depend on what training his eye has previously
had. All perception, still more all memory, is a
process of selecting the significant and interest-
in"- few out of the irrelevant and unimportant

t>

many presentations of sense. What is interest
ing and significant to the individual depends on
what sort of a person he is. A work of art is not
and cannot be a picture of a reality unmodified by
the selective attention of the beholding artist. If
the predominating effect of a picture is ugly, it is
an evidence either that the artist loves ugliness, or
else is incompetent to portray beauty. If the pre
dominating tone of a novel is filth and licentious
ness, it is infallible proof, not that nature and
reality, but that the heart and soul of the writer is
vulgar and libidinous. He tells us that he has
represented what he sees, to which psychology
replies : " Yes ; but you see what you are looking
at ; you look at what catches your eye ; and what
catches your eye is what you have an affinity
for ; and what you have an affinity for is what
you are." It is not ethics alone which they
affect to despise : it is the clearest, coldest,
hardest facts of scientific psychology which con
demns this rotten realism. It tells these realists
in the plainest sort of language, not that they

THE WORLD OF ART 12 1

are bad merely, which they would rather con
sider a compliment, or, at any rate, an advertise
ment ; but it tells them that they are fools, and
that their boasted contention is self-contradictory
nonsense.

This is so well stated in John La Farge's recent
" Considerations on Painting " that I quote at
length from his second lecture on "Personality and
Choice." "Though we do well to tend towards an
absolute way of painting, there is no such thing,
if by painting we mean the representation of what
can be noticed or seen. But there are wise ways
and less wise ways, more generous ones, less
narrow ones, more universal ones, some more per
sonal, others more general. But each of these is
based on what the man intended. Of him we can
judge as we judge men; and strange to say, it
will always be more or less by a moral idea, by
an appreciation of the way he looked upon the
world." (Note please that these are the words
of a master artist, not a professional preacher or
moralist.)

" And in the artist, have you ever noticed how
simple it is to disentangle the man ? When once
the artist has summed up in himself the memories
of his apprenticeship, the acquired memories of
others, and his own, — derived from them perhaps,
but at any rate added to them, — you can try with
him the following experiment. Take him to ten

122 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

different places ; set before him ten different sub
jects ; ask him to copy what he sees before him.
I say to copy, so as to make our task of finding
him out more easy. All of these so-called copies,
which are really representations, will be stamped
in some peculiar way, more or less interesting,
according to the value of our artist. And you will
recognize at once that they are really ten copies of
his manner of looking at the thing that he copies.

" Suppose again that you persuade ten men to
copy, as I have called it, the same subject in nature,
the same landscape ; and you will have ten differ
ent landscapes, in that you will be able to pick out
each one for the way it was done. In short, any
person who knew anything about it would recog
nize, as it were, ten different landscapes.

" I remember myself, years ago, sketching with
two well-known men. What we made, or rather,
I should say, what we wished to note, was merely
a memorandum of a passing effect upon the hills
that lay before us. We had no idea of expressing
ourselves, or of studying in any way the subject
for future use. We merely had the intention to
note this affair rapidly, and we had all used the
same words to express to each other what we liked
in it. There were big clouds rolling over hills,
sky clearing above, dots of trees and water and
meadowland below, and the ground fell away sud
denly before us. Well, our three sketches were,

THE WORLD OF ART

123

in the first place, different in shape. Two were
oblong, but of different proportions ; one was
more nearly square. In each picture the distance
bore a different relation to the foreground. In
each picture the clouds were treated with different
precision and different attention. In one picture
the open sky above was the main intention of the
picture. In two pictures the upper sky was of no
consequence — it was the clouds and the moun
tains that were insisted upon. The drawing was
the same, that is to say, the general make of
things ; but each man had involuntarily looked
upon what was most interesting to him in the
whole sight ; and though the whole sight was
what he had meant to represent, he had uncon
sciously preferred a beauty or an interest of things
different from what his neighbour liked.

"The colour of each painting was different, — the
vivacity of colour and tone, the distinctness of each
part in relation to the whole ; and each picture
would have been recognized anywhere as a speci
men of work by each one of us, characteristic of
our names. And we spent on the whole affair
perhaps twenty minutes.

" I wish you to understand, again, that we each
thought and felt as if we had been photographing
the matter before us. We had not the first desire
of expressing ourselves, and I think would have
felt very much worried had we not felt that each

124 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

was true to nature. And we were each one true
to nature.

" Of course there is no absolute nature ; as with
each slight shifting of the eye, involuntarily we
focus more or less distinctly some part to the
prejudice of others.

" All this sort of thing is perfectly well known,
but on that very account you will have passed
over the importance of its meaning. You will see
again what I have been telling you that the man
is the main question, and that there can be no
absolute view of nature. If the experiments that
I spoke of; if the experiences such as I have just
related about myself and others, bring out the re
sult that you have seen, there is for you practically
no such thing as realism. If you ever know how
to paint somewhat well, you will always give to
nature, that is to say, what is outside of you, the
character of the lens through which you see it —
which is yourself."

Absurd as realism is, when taken as a statement
of psychological fact, or employed as a principle of
philosophical interpretation, or put on as a cloak
for artistic immorality, there is, nevertheless, a
profound truth at the heart of it all. An illustra
tion from the kindred sphere of science may help
to make its meaning clear. The scientific man
must yield himself up unreservedly to the facts. No
preconceived theory may alter or twist or manufact-

THE WORLD OF ART 125

ure or explain away the actual facts. To that extent
the scientist must be a realist. His theory must
express the facts. At the same time the theory
is more than the facts. It is contributed by what
Professor Tyndall calls " that composite and crea
tive unity in which reason and imagination are
together blent " ; and it " leads us into a world not
less real than that of the senses, and of which the
world of sense itself is the suggestion and justifi
cation." The man of science lays aside all pre
conceptions and prejudices that are private and
peculiar to himself ; and allows the thought which
is behind and within the facts to come forth in his
imagination, and express itself in his thinking.
Truth to the scientific man is the reproduction in
him of a thought which was first produced in the
world of facts. Not the facts themselves, but
the inner law and meaning of the facts consti
tute scientific truth, and that is a product of an
objective Thought which is common to facts with
out a»d thinking within.

Art is science reversed. And the same prin
ciples hold good in both. The artist, like the
scientist, must respect facts. He must produce
nothing which the world of sense and fact does
not, to use Tyndall's words again, "suggest and
justify." If by realism you mean mere copying of
facts, then as we have seen there can be no such
thing ; for isolated facts, apart from an intelli-

126 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

gence which groups them in relations and thinks
them into a unity, have no existence for us, and
consequently the theory of art that confines it
self to them can be nothing but a myth. If by
realism, however, you mean fidelity to the thought
or law implied in facts ; if you mean the stern sup
pression of private whim and personal caprice ; if
you mean that the work of art shall contain noth
ing which the implicit logic of fact and reality can
not at once "suggest and justify," then realism
or objectivity or impersonality, or whatever you
please to call it, is as essential to the artist as it
is to the scientist. Only the proper name for it is
not realism, but rather objective or universal ideal
ism. For what the true artist and the true scien
tist alike are faithful to is not a reality which is
opposed to thought or distinct from thought : it
is rather a universal thought which is hidden
within facts ; an objective law which is behind
things ; a system of ideas which is the ground
and principle of that spiritual reality of which
particular things and events are but the temporary
and partial embodiment.

The twofold truth to which idealism and so-
called realism are complementary witnesses is
happily expressed in the closing line of Rudyard
Kipling's poem, L' Envoi:

•' And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master
shall blame ;

THE WORLD OF ART 12 7

And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for

fame ;
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate

star,
Shall draw the thing as he sees it for the God of things as

they are."

From this point of view we see how far mo
rality enters into art. The artist has no right
to paint a picture or write a story, the predomi
nant and final effect of which is to hold lust or
brutality or ugliness or deformity or meanness
before the mind of the beholder. He has no right
to do it because he has no moral right to be the
kind of man who wants to do it. The man whose
ordinary conversation is full of such things we
set down at once as vulgar and low-minded. Art,
however, is simply highly elaborate and endur
ing conversation. The picture or story is simply
the artist's way of talking to the world, and tell
ing it what sort of things he loves to dwell on.
The artist who is forever harping on indecencies,
whose favourite theme is sexual perversity, and
who leaves the taste of these things as the pre
dominant effect upon the normal reader's mind,
is simply a vulgar and indecent person, unfit for
decent society, and therefore incapable of produc
ing decent art. It is impossible for him to hide
or excuse his indecency under the flimsy pretext
of devotion to realistic art.

On the other hand, avarice, cruelty, lust, jeal-

128 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

ousy, vanity, vulgarity, are widespread and potent
factors in the inconsistent and troubled life of
actual men and women. They are parts of that
whole which is the universe, permitted to be there
by the law of its life ; though not permitted to
abide there long without coming to shame and
sorrow and disaster, and not permitted to occupy
the foreground of any permanent social arrange
ment. To represent life as uninfluenced by these
evil forces, and to represent it as dominated by
them, is equally false to the facts. Sunday-school
stories in which the boys and girls win cheap
victories over temptations which are artificially
easy, and yellow-covered novels where violent men
and depraved women revel in bloodshed and lewd-
ness, are equally defective from the artistic point
of view. As the highest kind of virtue is that
which meets and overcomes real temptation, and
is wrought out in the face of the utmost wiles of
the world, the flesh, and the devil, so the truest
art represents purity and uncleanness, love and
hate, heroism and cowardice, honour and shame,
nobleness and baseness, fidelity and treachery,
generosity and meanness, in actual collision and
genuine struggle ; and at the same time shows,
not necessarily the outward victory and material
reward of virtue, but at all events the inner supe
riority and spiritual supremacy of good over evil.
For such inner superiority and spiritual suprem-

THE WORLD OF ART

129

acy is a law of the nature of things as inevitable
and immutable as gravitation ; and whoever paints
a picture or writes a novel in disregard or defiance
of that law commits not only a moral sin, but an
artistic blunder of essentially the same nature as if
he painted a human figure in an attitude of repose
whose centre of gravity should fall outside the base,
or a human face with eyes at the sides and ears in
front. Moral law, as we shall see when we come
to it, is just as essential an expression of the facts
of human life as natural law is an essential ex
pression of the facts of physical nature. And the
artist is just as much bound to respect the one
law as the other. In both cases it is not his
whim and caprice on the one hand, nor isolated
and unrelated facts on the other, which as artist
he is called on to portray. In both cases it is
the law of their mutual relations, "the linked
purpose of the whole," in Emerson's phrase, which
he is to express. If his forms are not self-con
sistent, if his denouement is not inevitable, his art
is false, his product is a fiction of his fancy, not
a creation of the imagination ; and he himself is
a slave of his own wayward caprice, not the ser
vant and friend of the ideal.

This point of view shows the advantage Art has
over Nature and wherein it can transcend her. In
Nature the inner beauty of patience and gentleness
is often obscured beneath inadequate and unworthy

K

130 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

circumstance, and the shining forth of its superior
ity is often long delayed by untoward environment.
Art can draw shy and modest beauty out of its hid
ing places, concentrate attention on a few "ultra-
characteristic " features, and, by a sort of forcing
process, hurry virtuous and vicious alike on to their
inevitable fates. In both time and space, it disen
tangles the essential from the meshes of the irrele
vant, presents the significant features in clear
outline, and brings the whole to a suitable and
speedy consummation.

At this point it is worth while to pause and
gather up the significance of all that we have
gained thus far. We could not rest in mere
things and events as presented in the World of
Sense-perception, because they are fleeting and ca
pricious. We do not gain our freedom there ; we do
not find ourselves. In illusion and fancy, on the
other hand, we find pure freedom, without let or hin
drance. But this abstract freedom of mere caprice,
just because it meets no opposition, has no reality.

Next we seek stability and permanence in
Science and its laws. This self-surrender to law,
however, is a very different thing from the abject
slavery to brute fact, from which we first recoiled
when we forsook fact for fancy. For, unlike fact,
law is not capricious, and it is not alien to our
own intelligence. Law, rather, is a uniform and
constant expression of our own intellectual nature;

THE WORLD OF ART 131

and, in submitting to law, we are expressing our
essential self. If Science in one aspect is the
abstraction from facts of the reason that is in
them, in another aspect it is the development
from within our minds of the reason that is latent
in us. Science is thus the meeting-point of Rea
son in Nature and the same Reason in man. Sci
ence is the manifestation and embodiment of the
essential rational unity of the World of Fact with
out and the World of Self within, and is the in
fallible witness to the truth that Nature and man
are the expressions of a single Principle common
to both. Science unites the reality of fact with
the rationality of self; and, in so doing, it at once
reveals the rationality of the external world and
the reality of our own intelligence.

Still, inasmuch as Science starts from the side
of external fact, the subjection of the mind to facts
is the most prominent aspect of scientific pursuits.
It is a bondage freely chosen, and it leads to ulti
mate freedom ; but it is a sort of bondage to the
last. Though, as we have seen, there is large room
for the free and spontaneous play of imagination,
and as Tyndall and Darwin proclaim, Science can
not advance a step without the free use of imagina
tion in the form of hypotheses, still this freedom
must be constantly checked and restrained within
the hard and fast limits of facts as we find them.

In Art finally we gain our real liberty, and we

132 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

gain it just in proportion to the completeness of
our previous surrender to fact and our obedience to
scientific law.

In artistic production we start from the self,
and impose its desires, its longings, its visions, its
ideals upon the world of fact. If the artist be a
man who has seen the vision of goodness and
truth and beauty ; and if he has also trained him
self to thorough mastery of the materials and
methods of his art, then this hard World of Sense-
perception, which before seemed so capricious and
cruel, alien and hostile, hard and cold, becomes
perfectly pliable and gentle, obedient and sym
pathetic, faithful and constant in his hands. The
defiant foe becomes a devoted friend. The appar
ent barrier becomes a bridge. The rigid resistance
is converted into plastic expressiveness.

As Science reveals through law that our minds
are the offspring of the Reason that is imbedded in
Nature, so Art in turn reveals through its ideals
that Nature is the expression of that Beauty and
Beneficence which is implanted in our hearts.
That man apprehends the laws which underlie the
facts of Nature ; and that Nature honours the
drafts drawn upon it by human ideals : these two
great fundamental departments of life are the in
contestable evidence of the kinship of Nature and
man, and the revelation of their relationship to a
common Principle.

THE WORLD OF ART ^3

Whether this common Principle is more akin to

Nature or to man; whether it is conscious or

unconscious; whether it is material or spiritual,

personal or impersonal, we are not yet prepared to

say. Before we can answer that question we must

inquire more minutely into the nature of ourselves.

Thus far we have been taking ourselves and other

people for granted. So long as we were concerned

merely with the relation of man to the external

world, such assumptions were perfectly admissible.

That ground, however, so far as our limits permit,

we have now gone over. That half of the task we

set ourselves is done. We have seen the world

and the mind first set over against each other in

the hard, repellent, mutually exclusive aspects of

fact and fancy, perception and illusion, and then

we have seen this opposition reconciled ; first, in

Science, in which Nature renders up her secrets in

the form of laws intelligible to the human mind ;

and second, in Art, in which man embodies his

feelings and affections in external forms.

Through Science and Art, Nature and man are
reconciled. There remains, however, the antagon
ism of man against man, and the reconciliation of
that antagonism in the form of social institutions.
And then when that peace shall have been won,
we shall still be confronted by the discord of man
within himself, or the moral problem; and shall
have to seek the reconciliation of this moral strife

134 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

through acceptance of the deeper Self, of which in
the unity of man with Nature we already have a
suggestion, the Universal and Absolute Self, the
Object of religion.

PART II
THE SPIRITUAL WORLD

CHAPTER V

THE WORLD OF PERSONS

OUR problem thus far has been to reduce the
multiplicity of sense to the unity of reason and
the harmony of beauty ; out of the sensible chaos
to construct an intelligible cosmos, an enjoyable
world. The natural world is a comparatively
simple world, and the process of construction con
sists in simply putting together natural facts and
forces according to the laws of their mutual rela
tionships. Disentangle the rational principles from
the mass of sensuous detail, and you have the world
of science. Impress the ideal on a passive and
pliant medium, and you have the world of art.
Neither of these processes is altogether easy ; but
both are simple in comparison with the complicated
problems involved in the world of persons. For,
unlike physical facts, persons have wills and wishes
of their own ; and they stoutly refuse to be put
together and pulled apart according to our notions
of scientific analysis or artistic synthesis. A thing
does not exist in and for itself, but only in itself
and for us, to use the Hegelian phrase. In other

138 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

words, it is not aware of its own existence, and has
no concern about its own welfare. We may do
with it as we please, so long as we do not violate
those rational relationships which are inherent in
it, but of which it knows nothing. Persons, on
the contrary, exist both in and for themselves.
They know themselves ; they know what they
want, and insist on being consulted in any arrange
ments and dispositions we seek to make of them.
Unless we- recognize these rights of personality
in others, we cannot construct a satisfactory social
order ; we cannot even preserve intact our own
personality. Slavery, which ignores and tramples
on the personality of the slave, tends to make a
brute of the master. In order to be a person one
must respect the personality of others. In the
words of Professor Howison, ''The very quality of
personality is, that a person is a being who recog
nizes others as having a reality of the same un
qualified nature as his own, and who thus sees
himself as a member of a moral republic, standing
to other persons in an immutable relationship of
reciprocal duties and rights, himself endowed with
dignity, and acknowledging the dignity of all the
rest."

The world of persons brings with it a new ideal.
The world of science brought truth, or the har
monious relation of parts to each other in a system
too vast for the harmony of the whole, or its beauty,

THE WORLD OF PERSONS

139

to be sensibly perceived. The world of art brought
beauty, or the complete and sensible harmony of
relatively small wholes. The world of persons de
mands goodness, or the harmony of free and inde
pendent members in a whole of their own creation.
Thus the common mark of the True, the Beautiful,
and the Good is harmony, unity, self-consistency,
wholeness, system, organization. The Good is the
highest ideal of all, because the elements which
enter into it are higher, freer, more complex. In
the words of Professor Howison again, " Creatively
to think and be a world is what it means to be a
man. To think and enact such a world merely in
the unity framed for it by natural causation, is what
it means to be a Natural Man ; to think and enact
it in its higher unity, its unity as framed by the
supernatural causation of the pure Ideals, su
premely by the Moral Ideal, is what it means to
be a Spiritual Man, a moral and religious man, or,
in the philosophical and true sense of the words,
a supernatural being." The first part of this book
has described the natural man in his construction
of the natural world. The second part will pre
sent the spiritual man, in his relation to other
spiritual beings like himself, in the spiritual
world.

The appreciation of others in terms of ourselves
gives us the world of persons ; and out of this world
of persons, and personal relations, springs the world

140 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

of institutions, the world of morality, and the
world of religion.

Personality does not come to us ready-made. It
is a slow and gradual development. As Tennyson

says :

" The baby new to earth and sky,
What time his tender palm is pressed
Against the circle of the breast,
Has never thought that this is I.

But as he grows, he gathers much,
And learns the use of I and me,
And finds I am not what I see,
And other than the thing I touch ;

So rounds he to a separate mind,
From whence clear memory may begin,
As thro1 the frame that binds him in,
His isolation grows defined."

This consciousness of self as distinct from one's
separate sensations, this " use of I and me," is
the mark of personality. Kant used to declare
that when his horse could say " I " he would get
off its back. Fichte gave a feast on the day when
his son first said " I," as marking his real birthday.
Hegel's comprehensive formula for all moral and
social relations is, " Be a person, and respect the
personality of others."

Most of us regard other persons, except per
haps a few relatives and friends, not as persons at
all, but practically as things. Professor Royce l

1 "The Religious Aspect of Philosophy," pages 149-162.

THE WORLD OF PERSONS 14 r

has stated the truth on this point forcibly: "The
common sense, imperfect recognition of our neigh
bour implies rather realization of the external aspect
of his being, as that part of him which affects us,
than realization of his inner and peculiar world of
personal experience. Let us show this by example.
First, take my realization of the people whom I
commonly meet but do not personally very well
know, e.g. the conductor on the railway train when
I travel. He is for me just the being who takes
my ticket, the official to whom I can appeal for cer
tain advice or help if I need it. That this conduc
tor has an inner life, like mine, this I am apt never
to realize at all. He has to excite my pity or some
other special human interest in me ere I shall even
begin to try to think of him as really like me.
On the whole he is for me realized as an automa
ton. But still frequently I do realize him in
another way, but how ? I note very likely that
he is courteous or surly, and I like or dislike him
accordingly. Now courtesy and discourtesy are
qualities that belong not to automata at all.
Hence I must somehow recognize him in this
case as conscious. But what aspect of his con
sciousness do I consider? Not the inner aspect
of it as such, but still the outer aspect of his con
scious life, as a power affecting me ; that is what
I consider. He treats me so and so, and he does
this deliberately; therefore I judge him. But

I42 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

what I realize is his deliberate act, as something
important to me. It seldom occurs to me to
realize fully how he feels ; but I can much more
easily come to note how he is disposed. The
disposition is his state viewed as a power affect
ing me.

" Now let one look over the range of his bare
acquaintanceship, let him leave out his friends,
and the people in whom he takes a special per
sonal interest ; let him regard the rest of the
world, his world of fellow-men : his butcher, his
grocer, the policeman that patrols his street, the
newsboy, the servant in his kitchen, his busi
ness rivals whom he occasionally talks to, the
men whose political speeches he has heard or
read, and for whom he has voted, with some
notion of their personal characters : how does he
conceive of all these people? Are they not one
and all to him ways of behaviour towards himself
or other people, outwardly effective beings, rather
than realized masses of genuine inner life, of senti
ment, of love, or of felt desire? Does he not
naturally think of each of them rather as a way of
outward action than as a way of inner volition ? Is
any one of these alive for him in the full sense, -
sentient, emotional, and otherwise like himself;
as perhaps his own son, or his own mother or wife
seems to him to be ? Is it not rather their being
for him, not for themselves, that he considers in

THE WORLD OF PERSONS 143

all his ordinary life, even when he calls them con
scious ? They are still seen from without. Not
their inner, volitional nature is realized, but their
manner of outward activity ; not what they are for
themselves, but what they are for others."

This "illusion of selfishness " is the most subtle
and insidious foe of man's spiritual life. Unless
we can get outside of ourselves and into this reali
zation of the lives of others, we do not live a spirit
ual life at all. We do not enter the world of other
persons ; and our own personality, thus bereft of
all true spiritual companionship, shrivels and with
ers and dies. Continual contact with mere things ;

O "

and with persons who are thought of and treated
as mere things, tends to reduce us to mere things
ourselves. As imagination and reason were neces
sary to take us beyond the mere presented facts
into the world of science and art ; so this social
imagination and appreciative sympathy are the
necessary steps from the brute selfishness of mere
physical existence into the world of persons and
personal relations.

We interpret the experience of others through
our own remembered past. George Eliot, one of
the great masters of the supreme art of sympa
thetic interpretation of personality, defines sym
pathy as " a living again through our own past in a
new form." In addition to the conscious memory
of the individual there is an unconscious memory

144 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

of the race, which for instance enables us to appre
ciate the terror of others even if we have not been
seriously frightened ourselves. Yet both the racial
and the individual memory fade out, unless revived
by frequent experience or sympathy ; and the heart
becomes narrow, cold, and hard. In our study of
perception we saw that even in seeing an external
object, like a tree, we see only so much of a tree as
we have known before, and bring with us out of our
past experience. In appreciating persons this prin
ciple is even more obvious. We appreciate in
tensely only what we have experienced. All else
comes to us only through the medium of imper
fectly translated symbols. To a man who has never
felt hungry, hunger is merely a name in a foreign
language, which he can translate into his own
vernacular only in some inadequate general term
like pain. One who has never been in love can
only interpret to himself the passion in terms of
such fondness as he may feel for those whom acci
dent has made his chance companions. Wherein
we judge another with relish and gusto, we thereby
make public confession that the evil we thus de
light to dwell upon has its counterpart in our
own secret experience. The scandal-monger is
always a man or woman with a loveless spirit and
an evil heart. The infallible mark of the highest
character is that it "rejoiceth not in iniquity."
This power to appreciate others in terms of self

THE WORLD OF PERSONS 145

marks man off from the brutes. This is the power
which, according as it is employed, lifts man into
fellowship with God, or degrades him below the
level of the beast, and makes a demon of him.
The brute has ends and chooses means to realize
those ends. Man, by virtue of his enlarged power
of sympathy and appreciation, has competing ends
before his mind at the same time, and not merely
chooses appropriate means to realize these ends,
but chooses between the ends themselves. Herein
is man's freedom. The brute, selecting appropriate
means to realize ends necessitated by its physical
constitution, has only the form of freedom. Man,
so long as he remains in this brutish condition, has
only formal freedom. Real freedom enters when
man presents to himself his own private good and
the good of his neighbour as conflicting ends.

The life of primitive men, like the animal life
from which it emerged, was innocent ; and its in
nocence was due, not to the perfection, but to the
imperfection of its moral consciousness. Primitive
man was conscious of only two forces in the guid
ance of his conduct : his natural appetites and
passions on the one hand, and the customs and
conventions of his tribe on the other. These two
forces had never been set over against each other
in the consciousness of the individual. Of the
fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil, in the sense of self-conscious choice of one of

146 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

these forces and deliberate rejection of the other,
man had not yet eaten. Hence his obedience to
the requirements of social custom was not morally
good ; and his obedience to animal impulse was
not morally bad. The purely impulsive and unre
flecting nature of both classes of action did not
permit of that balancing of one set of interests
against the other which is essential to the moral
goodness or badness of the inner motive as dis
tinct from the physical goodness or badness of the
external act. That degree of self-eonsciousness
and that power of self-determination in presence
of simultaneous alternatives, which are the psycho
logical conditions of moral good and moral evil,
had not yet been evolved out of the inherited ani
mal consciousness of immediate appetite and the
primitive social consciousness of custom. That
this was the condition of primitive man is ren
dered highly probable by what we know of animals,
savage men, and very young children.

Out of this primitive unconscious innocence
man has passed into the stage in which he clearly
recognizes that the impulses of his individual
animal self, and the interests of others, and of
the social order to which he and they belong, are
frequently antagonistic ; and in which he is com
pelled to choose between sacrificing the interests
of the social order as expressed in its customs,
laws, and institutions in order to gratify his indi-

THE WORLD OF PERSONS I47

vicinal appetites and passions, or sacrificing his
appetites and passions for the promotion and
maintenance of the social well-being.

This transition from the innocence which went
with freedom from self-consciousness to the re
sponsibility which comes with conscious choice
between these alternatives is the essential fact
which Hebrew seer and Christian doctor sought
to set forth in their doctrine of the fall of man;
and this same fact is forced upon the modern
scientist and philosopher who attempts to recon
struct the spiritual history of the race in the light
of the doctrine of evolution.

The fall of man was an essential stage in
human evolution. It was a fall from innocence into
responsibility ; from a condition in which holiness
and sin were alike impossible, into a condition in
which both are possible, and one or the other must
be chosen. If it is not, as Lessing said, " a fall
upward," it is a fall forward onto a plane where he
cannot maintain his equilibrium, but must either
consciously climb higher, or else deliberately sink
lower than the plane of Nature whence he came.
The fall of man marks the point where he ceases
to be an obedient because blind servant of Nature,
and is forced to become either a wilful rebel
against divine and human law, or else a reverent
child of his Heavenly Father and a loving brother
to his fellow-men.

148 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

There is an hereditary tiger, yes, worse than
that, there is a potential or rudimentary Nero,
in us all. The best boy civilization has yet bred
has had a period of liking to torment and torture
the kitten or the flies or the frogs. Christianity's
finest specimens of girlhood are not without their
stages of saying hateful things about their more
homely or less well dressed sisters. Fired by
lust, or liquor, or jealemsy, or avarice, cruelty is
still a fearful factor even in the life of civilized
society. Yes. Personality came into the world
through a tremendous fall. Lower than the brute
man has descended through the exercise of that
faculty of the knowledge of good and evil, through
which he is destined ultimately to rise into com-
muniem and fellowship with God. This tragic
stage in human evolution is a stern fact which
cannot be explained away.

As Royce has shown us, the realization of others
in terms of ourselves is not easy, and although
we know better and mean better, we are con
stantly slipping back into that primitive condition
which realizes only our own selfish wants, and
regards other persons as mere means for our
gratification. In spite of man's inheritance from
the tigers and the Neros, it is probable that
vastly more suffering and misery is caused by his
inheritance from the oyster and the clam ; by in
difference and neglect, than by intentional malice

THE WORLD OF PERSONS I4g

and cruelty. A hundred husbands are unlovino-

&'

where one is positively hateful to his wife. A
hundred neighbours don't care what happens to
the family across the street, where one wishes
them harm. A hundred merchants will let an
other fail for lack of timely credit and support,
where one will actually plot his downfall. A hun
dred men will lead a woman on to ruin under the
guise of affection, where one could realize the woe
and degradation it means to her, and deliberately
plan for its accomplishment. A hundred women
will destroy another's reputation by scandal where
one would deliberately wound another's heart. A
hundred capitalists will suffer employees to live
and work in unhealthy conditions on unfair terms,
where one would deliberately take the bread from
the mouth of the starving or press poison to the
lips of a fellow-man. A hundred men will share
the profits of a dishonest deal, where one would
deliberately steal his neighbour's pocket-book.
Indifference is the largest factor, though not the
ugliest form, which enters into the production of
evil.

If, however, selfishness and indifference are
natural to man, sympathy and kindness are nat
ural too. If Hobbes with his Homo homini
lupus, and Calvin with his dogma of total deprav
ity, and Kant with his doctrine of the bad prin
ciple in human nature, all have good grounds

150 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

for their position ; on the other hand Aristotle
with his declaration that man is by nature a
social being, Adam Smith with his principle of
sympathy, Channing with his faith in the latent
divinity of human nature, represent a still deeper
aspect of the truth. And this conception of
the essentially social nature of man is being
brought to the front in our day as never before,
through the increased devotion to anthropological
and sociological studies. The outcome of these
tendencies is forcibly expressed by Professor Gid-
dings:1 "Human nature is not the unsocial
egoistic nature. Self-interest is not the distinc
tively human trait ; it is a primordial animal trait,
which man, an animal after all, still possesses
and must cultivate if he would continue to live.
Human nature is the pre-eminently social nature.
Its primary factor is a consciousness of kind
that is more profound, more inclusive, more dis
criminating, more varied in its colouring, than any
consciousness of kind that is found among the
lower animals."

The practical expression of this consciousness
of kind is love. Love does for the world of per
sons what reason does for the world of things and
events. Apart from reason, man would be chained
down to the sensations of his individual organism,
at the time and place where he might chance to be.

1 " Principles of Sociology," page 225. See also page 421.

THE WORLD OF PERSONS 151

Reason, working upon facts, transmuting them
through imagination, binding them together in the
unity of laws, emancipates man from this bond
age to time and place and sense, and makes him
a member of a universal kingdom, a sharer in
an eternal life. Yet this life which man gains
through reason working upon facts of the outward
world, though infinite in range and power, is lack
ing in warmth and sympathy. Stoicism, indeed,
in its poets, from Cleanthes to Matthew Arnold,
has tried to establish some sort of spiritual com
munion between man and the "untroubled and
unpassionate " processes of Nature. Such com
munion, though beautiful as the moonlight on
Mount Auburn tombstones, is yet after all a cold
and melancholy cult. And in his best moments
our greatest modern poet of Stoicism rises above
resignation and self-dependence to rest on human
sympathy and feed on human love. His best
poems conclude with lines like these :

"Ah, love, let us be true
To one another ! for the world which seems
To lie about us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain."
And,

"Only — but this is rare —
When a beloved hand is laid in ours,
When, jaded with the rush and glare
Of the interminable hours,

152 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear,

When our world-deafened ear

Is by the tones of a loved voice caress'd —

A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,

And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.

The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,

And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.

A man becomes aware of his life's flow,

And hears its winding murmur, and he sees

The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze.

And then he thinks he knows

The hills where his life rose,

And the sea where it goes."

This which comes as a sort of concession from
the Stoic Arnold, is the Alpha and Omega of the
gospel of the spiritual idealist Browning : the per
petual burden of his song.

" There is no good of life but love — but love !
What else looks good, is some shade flung from love,
Love gilds it, gives it worth."

"For the loving worm within its clod
Were diviner than a loveless God
Amid his worlds, I will dare to say."

" For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,
And hope and fear, — believe the aged friend, —
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is ;
And that we hold thenceforth to the uttermost
Such prize despite the envy of the world,
And having gained truth, keep truth : that is all."

THE WORLD OF PERSONS 153

No one has loved Nature more keenly than
Wordsworth ; and no one is more ready to inter
mingle

" The lake, the bay, the waterfall ;
And thee, the Spirit of them all !

At Tintern Abbey he is

" A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains ; and of all that we behold
From this green earth ; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear ; "

not for themselves alone but because of their as
sociations with God, with humanity, and with a
dearest friend.

" For I have learned
To look on Nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns?
And the round ocean, and the living air.
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man :
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things."

" For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river ; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend ; and in thy voice I catch

154 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes."

" Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake."

The simplest, though not chronologically the
earliest, or socially the most important, manifesta
tion of love is friendship, or the mutual regard of
individuals for each other, irrespective of family
ties, business connections, or any external bonds
of time and space. Friendship increases the range
of life by making the interests, the aims, the affec
tions of others as precious and dear to us as our
own. It divides sorrows and multiplies joys.
Each friend is another self. Not only does friend
ship thus widen the range of life by this simple
process of adding the interests of others to our
own, and multiplying our sympathies by theirs:
it raises our own life to a higher power. What
we would hardly take the trouble to win for our
selves, we eagerly strive to obtain for our friends.
The worth of each is enhanced by the regard of
the other. Latent interests, dormant capacities,
slumbering ambitions, are quickened into life and
ripened into fruitful ness under the warm sunshine
of the constant kindliness of friends. Without
friends wealth is poor, talent dull, achievement

THE WORLD OF PERSONS 155

wearisome, fame hollow, glory a mockery. Not
until they are reflected from the eyes of those we
love do these, or any external goods, acquire their
true and spiritual worth.

To make and keep friends is the great art of
life : yet the easiest and simplest thing in the
world. Everybody desires friends ; though from
shyness, or pride which is often the veil of shy
ness, few are ready to meet us at first half-way.
But if we can learn to ignore the thin films of
diversity in training, station, interest, and aim,
and go straight to the heart of our fellow-man, we
are sure of finding a cordial response. All that
is needed is first of all the imaginative sympathy
to see what the other's heart is really set on ; and
second, the generosity to make that other's point
of view and centre of interest our own. The
secret of the popularity and charm of a certain
prominent woman was expressed by one who knew
her well in the remark, " She is always of exactly
the age of the child she happens to be with."
With reference to this consummate tact, this
universal friendliness, which immediately takes on
the conditions and serves the ends of him with
whom one happens to be, the question no doubt
arises in many minds, Can this habitual gracious-
ness, this impartiality of devotion, be really sincere ?
That it may be counterfeited, that it sometimes is
a mere trick of manners, is not to be denied. Yet

156 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

to say that it cannot be, and that in many persons
it is not, a genuine expression of a large and gen
erous nature, is to lapse into the belief that human
nature is fundamentally selfish and hopelessly bad ;
it is to deny that any souls can be genuinely and
really great ; and since all such judgments of others
are based chiefly on our knowledge of ourselves, it
is to make a rather humiliating confession about
the capacity of one's own soul. That a large and
genuine friendliness is unnatural to a little soul is
obvious; and for a little soul to make pretensions
of this kind would be hypocrisy. But universal
friendliness and all-including love are as natural
and genuine and sincere in a great soul, as pride and
exclusiveness and indifference are in a small one.
Love is the solvent of society. Love lifts man
out of his petty individuality, and makes him par
taker in a universal life. " In loving, the indi
vidual becomes re-impersonated in another ; the
distinction of Me and Thee is swept away, and
there pulses in two individuals one warm life.
The throwing down of the limits that wall a man
within himself, the mingling of his own deepest
interests with those of others, always marks love ;
be it love of man for maid, parent for child, or
patriot for his country. It opens an outlet into
the pure air of the world of objects, and enables
man to escape from the stuffed and poisonous
atmosphere of his narrow self. It is a streaming

THE WORLD OF PERSONS 157

outwards of the inmost treasures of the spirit,
a consecration of its best activities to the welfare
of others. Love, which, in its earliest form, seems
to be the natural yearning of brute for brute,
appearing and disappearing at the suggestion of
physical needs, passes into an idealized sentiment,
into an emotion of the soul, into a principle of
moral activity which manifests itself in a perma
nent outflow of helpful deeds for man. It repre
sents, when thus sublimated, one side at least of the
expansion of the self, which culminates when the
world beats in the pulse of the individual, and
the joys and sorrows, the defeats and victories of
mankind, are felt by him as his own."1

Love is the creator of the social world, as
reason is the creator of the natural world. The
individual is far more essential to the social
than to the natural world. For the natural world
might exist in one mind, apart from any other
mind to behold and apprehend it. Though in that
case there would be no way of knowing whether
this world, confined to a single mind, were a
reality or a dream. The social world, on the other
hand, could not exist without finite members. We
are more than beholders, or even interpreters, of
the social order. We are the organs through
whom that order is realized and expressed. The

1 Henry Jones, " Browning as a Philosophical and Religious
Teacher," Chapter VI.

158 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

social world is as impossible without individual
members, as the body is impossible without head
and trunk and arms and legs. We are the con
stituent members of which society is made. Here
lies incidentally one of the strongest intima
tions of immortality. If the social and spiritual,
rather than the merely physical and natural, is the
goal of evolution ; if God is to be conceived not as
a superannuated mechanic but as an eternal Father,
then the eternity of finite spirits like ours is as
essential to him as his own being. As between
the preservation and maturing of spirits trained
and disciplined through the experiences of sense
and flesh, and their destruction and the creation
of others, all the analogies of evolution, all the
force of the doctrine of the parsimony of causes,
as well as the profoundest instincts and holiest
aspirations of the human heart, point to the im
mortality rather than the mortality of the human
spirit as the more rational, the more economical,
the more consistent with the dignity of man and
the glory of God.

The great exponent of the life of love is lit
erature. Literature is the expression of human
thought and feeling, human aspiration and achieve
ment, at its best. It is through this medium that
our own lives and the lives of others are inter
preted. In biography and the novel, in poetry and
the drama, we see the soul of man laid bare for

THE WORLD OF PERSONS 159

our appreciation ; and by the reaction of literature
upon us our own ideals are formed and our per
sonality is developed. That is the reason why in
all sound systems of liberal education, language and
literature, poetry and the drama, occupy so promi
nent a place. It is not for the vocabulary and the
syntax and the philology which they contain that
we require our choicest youth to become familiar
with the language and literature of the ancient
world. It is for the sake of that enlargement of
vision, that emancipation of the mind, that appre
ciation of the best that has been thought and felt
by man, that we begin our liberal education at the
fountain heads, whence have sprung the concep
tions and institutions out of which society is formed.
He who understands man has the key to the inter
pretation of Nature. For Nature comes to -us
through the medium of human thought and speech.
To discriminate fine shades of meaning ; to appre
hend accurately human conceptions ; to take points
of view widely remote from our own ; to transfer
thoughts back and forth from one set of symbols
to another; is the shortest, surest road to that
appreciation of Nature and humanity which is the
end and aim of education. In view of the im
mense spiritual significance of this power of litera
ture to interpret his larger self to man, it is high
time for every lover of letters to resist the ten
dency now manifest in very influential centres to

160 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

convert the fortifications which have been erected
for the preservation and defence of literature into
the cheerless barracks of philology. With physical
science itself the man of letters has no quarrel.
In the proportion of attention received in the
college and university curriculum it may be that
science must increase and letters must decrease.
It may be that Greek will cease to be an essential
element in a liberal education. These, however, are
relatively small matters. It is not aggressions and
attacks from without ; it is treachery and betrayal
within the camp of letters itself that is most to be
feared. Classic literature is perfectly competent
to hold its own against the legitimate claims of
physical science in the free competition of the
elective system ; provided anybody can be found
to teach it. The present type of classical train
ing is not producing, and is not calculated to pro
duce, such teachers. The emphasis of nearly all
the instruction, in French and German and even
English, as well as in Latin and Greek, is upon the
refinements of philology rather than upon the spirit
of literature. Now, philology is important in its
proper sphere. Like oleomargarine, it is harmless
and useful under its proper label ; but most un
welcome when palmed off as a substitute for some
thing better. It is good and useful work in its
way, to which a limited number of specialists
should be set apart in each generation. To make

THE WORLD OF PERSONS 161

that, however, the exclusive or the main concern
of the great body of students and teachers of
ancient and modern literature is to degrade men
who should be architects into hod-carriers and
bricklayers ; it is to leave the ministry of the living
Word for the dissection of dead specimens ; it is
to offer to those who ask for bread a stone.1

The love which builds the social world works in
subtle and crafty ways. It assumes three essen
tial forms : first, institutions, customs, and con
ventions, which the individual finds ready-made
and blindly and unconsciously obeys ; second,
morality, which is the conscious reflection upon
the institutions, customs, and relations which love
is striving to establish between us and our fellows ;
third, religion, which is the complete conscious
acceptance of the principle of love as the law and
inspiration of life. The three succeeding chapters
will be devoted to these three ways in which the
omnipresent and omnipotent spirit of love is silently
and surely working to build a social world in which
man can dwell in peace and blessedness.

1 For a timely criticism of this tendency which has seized pos
session of the men whose position ought to make them priests
of letters and prophets of personality, see Woodrow Wilson's " Mere
Literature," and his address at the Princeton Sesquicentennial Cele
bration.

CHAPTER VI

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS

THE world of persons, to which friendship is the
private key and literature the open door, expands
enormously our range of interest and sympathy,
and thereby gives us something of the spiritual
freedom that we seek. Yet the freedom we gain
through this immediate relation to other indi
viduals, merely as individuals, is in many ways
imperfect. It is at best an external union that we
form. However profound the affinity, however
sincere the affection, however constant the devo
tion, so long as it remains the relation of one indi
vidual to another it is of necessity the contact of
mutually exclusive units, which may indeed be very
close at certain points, but cannot pass over into a
new and higher unity. Our friends in real life, our
heroes and heroines in fiction and poetry, remain to
the last alien and unassimilated beings. We, in
deed, find our best selves embodied in them, and
reflected from them. But while we admire and
adore, and give and take, and love and serve,
there yawns, fixed and impassable, the great gulf
between our separate individualities.

162

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 163

" Yes! in the sea of life enisled
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.

Who order'd that their longing's fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cool'd?
Who renders vain their deep desire ?
A God, a God their severance ruled !
And bade between their shores to be
The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea." 1

This gulf, so impassable to the Stoic with his
doctrine of extreme individualism, is bridged by
the World of Institutions. Through membership
in common institutions we become partakers in
a common life which is neither mine nor thine,
but in which " mine and thine are ended." These
institutions are to persons what natural laws are to
facts. They unite the multitude of individuals in
a social order, just as natural laws reduce the
manifold of sensation to the intelligibility of a
scientific system.

The first and fundamental social institution is
the Family. The family is grounded by nature in
the physiological fact of sex ; but in its modern
form it is also the product of personal freedom,
expressing itself in the mutual love of one man
and one woman for each other ; and of both for
their common offspring. The monogamous family

1 Matthew Arnold, " Switzerland."

164 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

of modern civilization is the free creation of reason
working through love. The family is the only
form in which the physiological fact of sex, and the
emotional fact of sexual love, can find expression
without producing contradiction and chaos. Yet,
while reason is the real force which produces the
family and maintains it in existence, as Schopen
hauer has pointed out in his shrewd, cynical way,
reason, or, as he would say, the will to live, ap
proaches this problem of the family by a very sly
and circuitous route ; keeping herself entirely in
the background, and contriving to put the most
intense and passionate interest of the individual
perpetually in the foreground. Love, however, is
not the illusion which Schopenhauer represents it
to be. Undoubtedly he is right in his contention
that the will of the species gets itself performed
through the individual without much conscious
ness on the part of the individual that he is at the
same time serving the will of the species. But in
the profoundest sense the lover is really serving
himself and his own spiritual interests. If in one
aspect he is falling into the illusion of passion, as
Schopenhauer says, at the same time he is rising
above the illusion of selfishness into a life of real
unity with another. If in one aspect he is the slave
of the will of the species, in another and higher he
is gaining the true liberty of the spirit.

The spiritual significance of the love which

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 165

founds the family, as the great deliverer from the
illusions of self-sufficient independence, is set forth
by Hegel 1 as follows : " Love is the consciousness
of the unity of myself with another. I am not
separate and isolated, but win my self-consciousness
only by renouncing my independent existence,
and by knowing myself as unity of myself with
another and of another with me. But love is feel
ing, that is to say, the ethical in the form of the
natural. The first element in love is that I will be
no longer an independent self-sufficing person, and
that, if I were such a person, I should feel myself
lacking and incomplete. The second element is
that I gain myself in another person, in whom I
am recognized, as he again is in me. Hence, love
is the most tremendous contradiction, incapable of
being solved by the understanding. The solution
of this contradiction is an ethical union."

The measure of a man's life is the range of
interests he makes his own. Judged by this stand
ard the family is the entrance to the larger life of
the Spirit. He that climbeth up in some other
way into the service of humanity, and devotion to
general causes, is apt to have a certain coldness and
abstractness of attitude and temper. We must
love men and women before we can love humanity.
We must be faithful members of a household before
we can become the most loyal members of the state.

1 " Philosophy of Right," translated by S. W. Dyde, Section 158.

[66 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

Socialistic and communistic schemes, like the Re
public of Plato, which try to jump over the family to
the community, in so doing leave out the very disci
pline and experience on which devotion to the larger
community must rest for its foundation and inspi
ration. " Family life is the primary school of char
acter in the case of the majority of mankind. The
unity which is founded on natural feeling must
precede that which depends on acquired sympathies
and thoughts. To begin with the love of human
ity would be to begin with a cold abstraction. The
family is like a burning-glass which concentrates
sympathy on a point. Within that narrow circle
selfishness is gradually overcome and wider inter
ests developed. Each one is supplied with the
opportunity of knowing a few human beings
thoroughly, than which nothing is more important
as a first stage in the transcendence of the merely
individual self. One who knows only himself in
wardly and sees others only by a kind of outward ob
servation, which in a large circle is an almost inevit
able result, is apt to become for himself too entirely
the centre of his world, if, indeed, he ever forms a
world or cosmos for himself at all. The family
enables a few persons to become not merely objects
for each other, but parts of a single life ; and the
unity thus affected may then be very readily ex
tended as sympathies grow." l

1 Mackenzie, "Social Philosophy," page 315.

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 167

This last sentence, " The family enables persons
to become not merely objects for each other, but
parts of a single life," sums up in the shortest
possible compass the ethical and spiritual signifi
cance of the family. As long as other persons
remain merely objects to us, we are still confined
within the hard and fast limits of the natural
world. There are facts and forces, coexistences
and sequences in this natural world, and these
other people take their places in this world among
the other facts and forces, and their feelings and
actions fall into line with the ongoings of natural
laws. It is not until we recognize these other
persons as sharers of the same interests and aims,
partakers in the same purposes, members of the
same life, that we know them from within, and
appreciate them as they really are. " The well-
married husband and wife " are not merely the
happy possessors of each other: each is partaker
of a life larger than the individual life of either.
They both are living in a richer, larger world.
Edward Caird, in his "Critical Philosophy of
Kant," expresses the same thought: "The true
moral self-surrender is not simply the surrender
of one self to another, but of all to the universal
principle which, working in society, gives back
to each his own individual life transformed into
an organ of itself. What gives its moral value
to the social life, is that it not merely limits the

1 68 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

self-seeking of each in reference to the self-seeking
of the rest, nor even that it involves a reciprocal
sacrifice of each to the others, but that a higher
spirit takes possession of each and all, and makes
them its organs, turning the natural tendencies
and powers of each of the members of the society
into the means of realizing some special function
necessary to the organic completeness of its life.
A social relation, say the relation of husband and
wife, would be an unsanctified unity of repellent
atoms through desires which turn them into ex
ternal means of each other's life, if those who
participate in it were not, by the fact of their
union, brought into the conscious presence of
something higher than their individuality. The
surrender of the individual as a natural being,
and his recovery of his life as an organ dedicated
to a special social function, is the essential dialec
tic of morals, which repeats itself in every form of
society. For the natural desires can be brought to
a unity, only if the separate gratification of each
of them ceases to be conceived as an end in itself,
and if it is sought as an end only in so far as in it
the principle of our rational life can reveal itself."

When the family is thus apprehended as the
primary institution through which man is lifted
up out of his isolation as a solitary individual in
a world of external men and things, and made
a partaker in a larger social life, its sacredness

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 169

becomes at once apparent. The integrity and
stability and purity of family life are the very
foundation of the moral and spiritual order. It
is not a relation into which one may enter lightly,
or for external considerations. Only those who
are prepared to renounce the littleness of merely
selfish ends are fit to enter this larger life : though
by the gift of children nature shows a wonderful
capacity for assimilating the unfit, and making the
most sordid and selfish souls over into generous
and devoted fathers and mothers. Parental affec
tion transforms thousands of fathers and mothers
where otherwise conjugal affection would have
failed. Association and habit in the course of time
bind together many who at first seem destined to
remain estranged. Divorce is a dreadful remedy,
to be permitted only as the surgeon's knife is
permitted, in extreme cases, where neither nature,
nor affection, nor time, nor moral transformation
give the slightest hope of the ultimate establish
ment of the true unity of family life.

Just as true marriage is the highest blessedness
that can come to man or woman, so a false mar
riage, a marriage conceived in vanity or avarice or
sensuality, is the most fearful calamity. The bind
ing of two loveless, selfish hearts together can
only result in mutual misery. The resulting state
is not simply hell, as it is frequently called. It
is that more painful, but at the same time more

PRACTICAL IDEALISM

hopeful condition, which in figurative language
we may describe as the compelling of persons who
are fit only for hell to dwell perpetually in heaven.
It is a condition which calls for the expression of
the most tender and unselfish love at every point
of constant contact, imposed upon persons who
have no love to give. The supreme blessedness
of the ideal marriage measures by contrast the
superlative wretchedness of a loveless union. The
blame rests, however, not with the institution, but
with the low natures of those who bring to it less
than its high requirement. And the remedy for
these evils, vast as they are, lies not in a weaken
ing of the marriage bond, but in the spiritual edu
cation of the race up to that unselfishness and
purity where the bond will cease to be a fetter,
and become instead the symbol of liberty won
through the transforming power of genuine affec
tion.

That marriage should be growing worse at the
same time that it is growing better is inevitable.
It is the working of the same fundamental law as
that which tends to make the rich richer and the
poor poorer as the outcome of the same economic
tendencies. A modern watch is a much better
timepiece than a sun-dial or hour-glass. But the
increased complexity and delicacy of adjustment
which makes the watch better, when it is in order,
also renders it liable to more serious maladjust-

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS I/I

ments when it gets out of order. A grain of dust
injures a fine watch more than a hurricane harms
a sun-dial. Any blacksmith can repair the latter at
short notice, but only a skilled jeweller can put
the watch to rights. So a modern locomotive is a
vastly better means of transportation than a wheel
barrow. But the locomotive is liable to disasters
of which the wheelbarrow is incapable. It is a
universal law that the more complex and highly
differentiated a mechanism is, the more serious
are the evils of maladjustment to which it is liable.
The condition of its excellence involves increased
liability to intensified disorders.

Now the characteristic of modern society is the
increased differentiation of its members. Each
individual is different from every other. And this
brings to the family which is to unite these diverse
individuals at the same time the opportunity for
a higher and better union, and the liability to
more painful and serious " incompatibilities." In
primitive agricultural conditions, wealth, culture,
and social position were pretty evenly distributed.
The boy and girl reared on adjoining farms,
trained in the district school, or country academy,
or parochial school, were homogeneous in mental
outlook, social standard, aesthetic taste, and relig
ious conviction. They united easily and naturally
along all these lines. And yet the resulting union
was not so broad and deep as the modern union

1/2 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

in which wider diversities are reconciled. The
easier it was for any boy to be fairly adapted to
any girl, and vice versa, the more difficult was
it for the highest harmony of complementary
qualities to be realized. At the present time
the best marriages unite very diverse ways of
thinking and feeling into a complex and at the
same time harmonious union of opposites, which
in simpler times would have been impossible.
At the same time the average couple to-day
find differences which if allowed to remain un
reconciled, bring into married life troubles and
divisions of which the more primitive bride and
groom could have no conception. In a word, the
greater the differences to be reconciled and the
more marked the individuality, the more difficult
is it to unite the two lives harmoniously ; and at
the same time the more rich and sweet and beau
tiful the harmony if it is really gained. The
modern family is getting to-day the high premium
in its best, and the terrible penalty in its poorest
marriages, of the intense development of individu
ality. The modern man brings to his wife a wide
range of business sagacity, political influence,
scientific and speculative interests. The modern
woman brings to her husband rich acquisitions
in literary and aesthetic taste, social life and
philanthropic and religious fervour. Each life is
reinforced and multiplied by all that is in the

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 173

other; and thus both enter through the portals of
the family into the life of the Universal Spirit, of
which at best only vague and shadowy glimpses
came to them in the blindness of their individual
istic isolation.

In the internal economy and regulation of the
family there are two equally fatal extremes to be
avoided. There are two ways of bringing up a
child which are almost equally bad. One parent
does everything for the child ; lays down rules
for his conduct ; regulates minutely his going out
and coming in ; chooses his playmates ; superin
tends his recreations ; and by his superior wisdom
solves all his problems for him and determines
everything he does. What is the result ? A poor,
effeminate, namby-pamby, unsophisticated weak
ling. Having had no responsibility to bear, the
feeble, flabby will is undeveloped and atrophied ;
and when the props by which he has been sup
ported are withdrawn, he falls an easy victim to
the first temptation that crosses his path. Parents
must not bear the children's burdens for them so
long and so completely, that the children acquire
no strength wherewith to bear their own. A
mistake that a boy makes himself, and corrects
himself, is often better than a dozen right answers
furnished for him ready-made by an over-solicitous
father or mother.

On the other hand, it is just as grave a mistake

1/4 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

to leave him entirely alone. Left to himself,
going and coming when and where he pleases,
doing what he likes and shirking what he doesn't
like, he is pretty sure to take the broad road to
destruction. He has to meet the inherited force
of animal appetite, the accumulated momentum of
social temptation, single-handed and alone; with
out the warnings of experience, or the pleadings
of affection, or the support of sympathy, or the
inspiration of high ideals. The wonder is that the
children of negligent and preoccupied parents do
not turn out badly more often than they do.

If, then, both these ways are wrong, what shall
we do ? Put the two together. Give him his lib
erty, and keep his confidence. Let him choose
his course ; but be so good and close a friend that
he will not think of making an important choice
without asking your advice. Spend much time
with him ; talk much with him : but talk about
his little interests, not your grand ideas. Never
evade an honest question, or put off a legitimate
curiosity. Make sure that his first intimations
of the significance of sex are suffused with an at
mosphere of reverence for its sacredness. Never
weary of the interminable prattle about his ex
ploits in play, the characteristics of playmates,
the hardships of school, the mechanism of loco
motives, the aspirations to become an engineer, a
stage-driver, or a soldier. Undoubtedly this union

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 1/5

of perfect liberty with perfect confidence is rather
an expensive process in the time, patience, and
sympathy of the parents ; but the reward is great
and to be had with certainty on no cheaper terms.
It is the one way to insure in the child a character
which is at the same time strong and good.

This union of liberty and sympathy is the secret
of happiness in all the family relations, that of
brother and sister, husband and wife. The ideal
family is not that in which one arbitrary will is
imposed on all the others ; nor yet one in which
each individual has his or her own way. One of
these conditions is tyranny ; the other is anarchy :
both are departments of hell. The true family
is that in which each member — father, mother,
husband, wife, brother, sister, son, daughter — has
interests, enthusiasms, aims, peculiar to himself
or herself, for which he or she assumes entire
responsibility ; and at the same time no one has
any interest, enthusiasm, or aim, which is not
respected, encouraged, appreciated, and shared by
every other member. That is heaven in a home.

The institution which stands next to the family
is the School. The school is the great reservoir
where the accumulated results of civilization are
stored, and from which they are communicated
to the individual according to his capacity and
needs. There the education begun in the home
is continued and expanded. In the home the

176 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

child has learned that he and his interests are
dear to others, and been taught to hold the inter
ests of others dear to himself. The province of
the school is to show the child that the same
reason and law and love that animate the home
also rule the universe. Instead of being a foreign
and unexplored country, peopled perchance by
superstition with fantastic shapes and hostile
powers, the world of Nature and Humanity,
through the interpretation given in the school,
becomes familiar, friendly, homelike, and endeared.
The school is established to make the child at
home in this large world of men and things ; the
master of its forces, the minister of its laws, the
possessor of its treasures, the sharer of its joys.

This world in which we live is established
through wisdom ; founded on truth ; governed by
law ; clothed in beauty ; crowned with beneficence.
The business of the school is to open the mind
to understand that perfect wisdom ; to appreciate
that wondrous truth ; to respect that universal
law ; to admire that radiant beauty ; to praise that
infinite beneficence. Humanity, of which we are
members, has brought forth great men and glori
ous deeds ; it has formed languages and reared
civilizations; it has expressed its ideals and aspi
rations on canvas and in stone ; it has uttered its
joys and sorrows, its hopes and fears, in music
and poetry. The province of the school is to

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 177

interpret to the scholar these glorious deeds of
noble men ; to open to him the languages and
civilizations of the past ; to make him share the
pure ideals and lofty aims of artist and architect ;
to introduce him to the larger world of letters
and the higher realms of song.

Nothing lower than this interpretation of Nature
and Humanity to man can be accepted as the end
of education. To make one at home in the world,
and friends with all which it contains, is the object
of the school. The forms of natural objects, the
laws of life in plant and animal, the principles of
mathematics and physics, the languages which
nations speak, the literature in which they have
expressed their sorrows and joys, their hopes and
fears, their achievements and aspirations ; the laws
of economics, the institutions of society, the in
sights of philosophy, the ideals of ethics and relig
ion — all these things are man's rightful heritage,
and it is the aim of education to put man in pos
session of this rich inheritance.

It is the attempt to reconstruct the common
schools with a view to the realization of this social
ideal of education which, consciously or uncon
sciously, is behind the various changes in pro
grammes, methods of instruction, and principles
of administration which, taken together, consti
tute what is called the new education. Viewed
separately, out of connection with this controlling

1/8 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

aim, these innovations doubtless look like whims,
fads, and excrescences. Viewed in the light of
their common purpose, and in their relation to
this social mission of the school, these changes
are seen to be the indispensable means for the
accomplishment of this social ideal of educa
tion.

Let us now consider some of these means by
which the new education is striving to realize it.

The kindergarten introduces the child to the
elemental forms and objects which constitute this
larger world. It takes the child at the age when
the instincts of observation, comparison, combina
tion, and imitation are fresh and strong within
him, and helps him to create little spheres in which
his own sense of proportion, harmony, beauty, and
order are expressed. It peoples for him the great
unknown with the products of a fancy kindred to
his own ; and stimulates his native tendency to
believe that this vast world is alive with the keen
interests, the hard problems, the fierce conflicts,
the generous enthusiasms, the splendid victories
which already begin to stir the blood of his own
throbbing heart. It teaches him to let the frail
bark of his individual personality float out on the
social waters of game and song and rhythmic
motion. The child is learning that the world is
congenial to his intelligence, responsive to his
curiosity, plastic to his will, friendly to his heart.

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 179

He in turn is learning to be interested, alert,
resolute, persevering, sympathetic in his reaction
toward it. The world is coming into his mind in
forms of orderly arrangement ; his heart is going
out into the world in acts of interested attention
and affectionate regard.

To lead the child from the intense interests and
warm affections of the home out into an undimin-
ished interest and an unchilled affection for the
larger world is the province of the kindergarten.
To omit this stage is to permit to remain unde
veloped powers of mind and capacities of heart
which, if not developed at this time, can never be
recovered in their freshness and vigour. Instead
of the eager, enthusiastic, affectionate nature which
such a training at this time develops, we have the
dull, stupid mind, the hard, cold heart, which the
imposition of technical formalities at this stage
tends to produce. The capacity to deal naturally
and effectively with the minute, formal, and arbi
trary symbols involved in reading, writing, and
arithmetic is not present at first in the normal
child; and though we can force the process pre
maturely, and we have all seen classes of five and
six year old children shown off as prodigies of
fluency and facility, I trust that we are coming
to realize that it is like vegetables out of season,
a hothouse luxury, purchased at an exorbitant
price, and indulged in at no little risk to mental

ISO PRACTICAL IDEALISM

health. We purchase at a high cost of nervous
strain what would have come easily and natu
rally a year or two later ; and we pay for it the
ruinous price of the permanent dulling of native
interest in the forms and objects of nature, and
the stunting of that imaginative play which is
the secret of appreciation of literature and en
joyment of art. We have sacrificed the most
precious substance of thought and emotion,
for the sake- of the premature ripening of the
symbols by which thought and emotion is ex
pressed : and what wonder that education from
this time forth becomes a dreary and mechanical
drudgery, which the boy is all too ready to ex
change for what seems the more vital and inspiring
reality of work. A year or two of kindergarten
method and spirit, followed by a year or two of
devotion to reading, writing, and arithmetic, are
more productive of facility in the latter studies
than the entire time devoted to these alone ; and
in addition you have the infinite advantage of a
developed power of thought and capacity for
feeling, without which these formal facilities are
but an empty shell. The good kindergarten is the
connecting link between the happiness of the home
and the glory of the great world. The true kinder-
gartner is the mediator between the human parent
and the Heavenly Father ; leading the child not
the less effectively because for the most part un-

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 181

consciously from the love of the one to the love of
the other.

In going out to meet the child, as the kinder
garten does, there is some danger of excessive con
descension on the part of the teacher ; a tendency
to consult the child on every matter, which results
in fostering inordinate conceit and wilfulness in
the child. These evils are not inseparable from
the kindergarten : though no commendation of the
kindergarten system should be given unless accom
panied by a warning against them. This danger
has never been more clearly and forcibly stated
than by Hegel : l " The necessity for the education
of children is found in their inherent dissatisfac
tion with what they are, and in their impulse to
belong to the world of adults, whom they rever
ence as higher beings, and in the wish to become
big. The sportive method of teaching gives to
children what is childish under the idea that it is
in itself valuable. It makes not only itself ridicu
lous, but also all that is serious. It is scorned
by children themselves : since it strives to repre
sent children as complete in their very incomplete
ness, of which they themselves are already sensible.
Hoping to make them satisfied with their imperfect
condition, it disturbs and taints their own truer
and higher aspiration. The result is indifference to
and want of interest in the substantive relations of

1 "Philosophy of Right," translated by S. W. Dyde, Section 175.

1 82 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

the spiritual world, contempt of men, since they have
posed before children in a childish and contempti
ble way, and vain conceit devoted to the contem
plation of its own excellence." In the tendency,
so prevalent in home and kindergarten alike, to
become the companion and playmate of the child,
rather than his guide and ruler, the modern parent
and teacher are in danger of losing those deeper
influences which come through reverence, admira
tion, and aspiration. It is not by becoming child
ish that we shall win children to true manhood.
Still, to appreciate the danger, is not to discredit
the immense value of the kindergarten and its
methods.

The world to be mastered, however, is too large
for the eye of the child to see, for his ear to hear,
for his hands to handle, even in its elemental forms.
If he is to apprehend the universe as it stretches
away from the particular spot he now occupies
into the twin infinitudes of time and space, he must
acquire a set of symbols far more arbitrary, techni
cal, and universal than the gifts and occupations of
the kindergarten. All things stand to each other
and to their own constituent parts in definite
numerical relations. Arithmetic is the science of
these numerical relations. All things and all as
pects and relations of things which men regard as
important have received names, and are expressed
in words and sentences. This spoken language

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 183

the child already knows. But he cannot have some
one by his side all the time to tell him just what
he wants to know. Reading, writing, and gram
mar are the system of symbols by which the child
learns to apprehend and communicate with the
world which is beyond the range of his vision, the
sound of his voice, and the reach of his hands.

As instruments of education these numerical
and verbal symbols are absolutely indispensable.
And yet they are mere instruments, and little
more. A man is not nourished by having a knife
and fork put into his hands. A soldier wins no
victories by the skilful manipulation of his musket.
The farmer gets no harvest by the mere possession
of spade and hoe and reaper and rake. All these
are well-nigh indispensable instruments ; but the
instrument is not the substance, and can never be
a substitute therefor.

In these other spheres no one expects the mere
possession of the instrument to accomplish great
results. At the table we call for the roast beef
and the pudding. In war we dismiss McClellan
and call in Grant. On the farm we put vital seed
into the upturned soil. And yet in the public
school we have been too long content to give the
great mass of scholars these arbitrary symbols and
mere instruments of learning ; and graduate them
from our grammar schools with the expectation
that they will prove educated men ! What wonder

1 84 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

that we are disappointed ! What wonder that
crime does not diminish ! What wonder that
morality declines, and religion languishes, and art
decays, and man degenerates. What wonder that
now by the tongue of the demagogue, now by the
bribe of the plutocrat, the masses of the people are
corrupted and misled. The giving of the instru
ment without the substance is everywhere a dan
gerous thing. The knife and fork without the
food provoke to suicide. The musket and knap
sack without the just cause and the campaign
invite sedition. The pitchfork with no hay upon
its tines is the appropriate emblem of an agrarian
uprising. And reading, writing, and arithmetic,
with no sound science to feed upon ; no manual
training to apply them to; no hard problems of
history and civil government to grapple with ; no
difficulties of foreign language to conquer ; no
ideals of great literature to cherish and delight in,
are very dangerous implements to have lying about
loose in a democratic society. The public school
must do either less or more, if it is to be a real
educator of youth, an effective supporter of the
state.

This devotion to arithmetic and grammar, this
cultivation of the purely ceremonial and symbolic
side of the intellectual life, is indeed important,
nay essential and indispensable. But it is no sub
stitute for the weightier matters of the law, which

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 185

in education are science and history, and literature.
As Jesus said to the Scribes and Pharisees in his
day, so the educational reformer says to school
principals and superintendents to-day: "These ye
ought to have done, and not to have left the other
undone." It is perfectly possible to do these two
things in our grammar schools. With a properly
constructed curriculum, and with properly qualified
teachers, it is perfectly possible to teach all that is
valuable in the arithmetic that has hitherto been
taught, and the elements of algebra and an ac
quaintance with physical phenomena besides ; all
that is valuable in the geography that has hitherto
been taught, and a considerable knowledge of what
has taken place in these lands besides ; all that is
valuable in the reading, writing, and grammar that
has hitherto been taught, and a genuine apprecia
tion of the great masterpieces which fall within
the range of youthful and popular comprehension.
The traditional grammar school has fed the chil
dren on husks. Now husks are valuable in their
time and place as wrappers and protectors of the
substantial and nutritious corn. But husks alone
are not fit food for children, and if you feed chil
dren on them long enough you will turn them into
swine. You must fill out these husks of arith
metic, geography, and grammar with the nutritious
grains of science, history, and literature, before they
are fit mental diet for a growing child.

T86 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

The teaching of reading, writing, arithmetic,
grammar, and the old-fashioned geography must be
done in the elementary schools. That we all rec
ognize. That we all take for granted. But all
that is the mere shell of learning. To use another
figure, it puts the keys of knowledge into the
scholar's hand, but it does not unlock the doors
and open the treasures of wisdom to his mind and
heart. Of what use is it to teach him to read if he
reads nothing but sensational accounts of crime
and scandal in the newspapers ? Of what use is it
to teach him interest and partnership, if he spends
his earnings for fraudulent insurance and quack
medicines? Of what use is it to teach him the
boundaries of the nation and the capitals of states,
if he can be made to believe at each election that
the perpetuity of this nation or the prosperity of
these states depends on making money cheaper by
a law, or food and raiment dearer by a tax.

These people that know how to read and write
and parse and know little or nothing else ; — these
are the people who furnish fuel for the flames of
jingo folly and A. P. A. fanaticism. These are the
people who clamour for fiat prices at which to sell
their goods and fiat money with which to pay their
bills. These are the people who would substitute
quackery for medical science ; mob violence for law ;
theosophy for religion ; impulse for reason; crazes
and caprices for conscience and the constitution.

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 187

A merely formal education makes a man a
stronger force for either good or evil ; but it does
nothing whatever to determine whether his strength
shall be exerted on the good or on the evil side.
The education which is to give wisdom to its
scholars and security to the community must induce,
not the mere smartness that comes of formal facil
ity in intellectual gymnastics, but the reverence and
love that come of communion with the solid realities
of natural facts and forces, and fellowship with the
thoughts and deeds of human hearts and hands.

Manual training is an essential feature of the
social mission of the common schools. It unites
mind and body in harmonious development and
healthful exercise. Those who are to be artisans
need it, if industrially we are to keep pace with
the manufacturing nations of Europe in the skill
of our workmen and the artistic finish of our
manufactured goods. The surgeon, the dentist,
the artist all need it for their professions. But
they need it most who will never use it in these
special ways. No man can thoroughly appreciate
a good thing made by another, unless he has some
faint conception of how to make the thing himself.
Manual training is essential to elevate the taste of
the consumer as well as to increase the skill of the
producer. It is necessary as a common bond of
appreciation and fellowship between rich and poor.
This is its great social mission. Says Felix Adler :

1 88 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

"Twenty-five years ago we fought to keep this
people a united nation. Then was State arrayed
against State. To-day class is beginning to be
arrayed against class. The chief source of the
danger, I think, lies in this, that the two classes
of society have become so widely separated by
difference of interest and pursuits that they no
longer fully understand each other, and misunder
standing is the fruitful mother-source of hatred
and dissension. This must not continue. The
manual labourer must have time for intellectual im
provement. The intellectual classes on the other
hand must learn manual labour ; and this they can
best do in early youth, in school, before the differ
entiation of pursuits has yet begun."

Manual training calls into eager and enjoyable
activity the whole power of the child; and thus
crowds out the baser passions that root themselves
in idleness and inactivity. It awakens self-confi
dence and dignity ; and rests the sense of per
sonal property on* its true foundation in labour
performed. By giving a tangible and interesting
object to work for, it stimulates attention, con
centration, perseverance, and continuity of effort
as no formal exercise of abstract will could ever
do. It awakens latent constructive and artistic
powers which would otherwise become atrophied by
disuse. It stimulates invention, and cultivates taste.
In the power to labour diligently and patiently

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 189

with hand and eye it lays the firm foundation for
that patience and industry of mind on which all
worthy intellectual achievements rest.

Another condition essential to the social function
of the public school is flexible programmes, with
frequent irregular promotions and with examina
tions which test the power to do intellectual work
rather than capacity to remember information.

All children are not alike, either in their mental
tastes and aptitudes, or in the rapidity with which
they can acquire knowledge, or in the ability to
recite what they have learned. There should be
as much opportunity as possible for the individual
aptitudes of the pupils to find exercise and expres
sion. Broadly speaking, all minds are divided into
two classes, the literary and the scientific. Some
boys will do splendid work in the laboratory who
can get very little from the library. Some who
shine in the library are utterly stupid in the lab
oratory. The good mathematician is often a poor
linguist ; and frequently the good linguist is a
wretched mathematician. As soon as possible, the
children should be allowed to follow the native
bent of their own minds ; selecting for study the
things for which they are best fitted. This princi
ple of election has won its way in all our colleges.
In the shape of two or three parallel courses it
prevails in our high schools. The time is not
far distant when a limited number of substantial

IQO PRACTICAL IDEALISM

courses will be offered by the high school to all
the pupils, and when each pupil will be allowed to
select, with the advice of parents and teachers, his
own course ; and the same diploma will be granted
to all who have completed satisfactorily the re
quired number of courses. Thus, instead of trying
to make alike the boys and girls whom nature has
made unlike, we shall rather endeavour to develop
the unlikeness and individuality of our pupils, in con
tinuation of the good work which nature has begun.
Examination should consist, not in a test of a
student's power to disgorge the crude materials
which he has hurriedly crammed ; but rather in
a test of his power to apply the principles which
he has gradually assimilated to the problems with
which they are concerned. In actual life the test
of efficiency is not, " How much information can
you repeat by rote without looking at your book?"
but it is, " What problems can you solve, what
presentation of a case can you make, with all
your books and tools before you ? " The time
is not far distant when we shall no more expect
a pupil to dump upon an examination paper all
that he has learned during a term than we shall
expect him to regurgitate all the food that he has
eaten during the same length of time. We shall
expect him to keep a record of work done through
out the term, which shall be open to inspection ;
we shall expect him to show his ability to com-

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 191

prehend statements and solve problems and dis
cuss questions which would have been altogether
beyond him at the beginning of the term.

The ideal programme is not a cast-iron one,
over which every scholar must go at the same rate,
and from which all shall show the same results, but
a flexible programme, in which each shall study the
subjects for which he is best fitted ; over which
the bright scholar shall pass quickly, and the dull
scholar slowly ; and from which each scholar shall
show some growth of power and quickening of
intelligence and interest peculiar to himself.

The introduction of modern languages, and phys
ical science, and advanced mathematics into the
grammar schools for pupils at the age of from
eleven to thirteen is in the interest of the more
perfect accomplishment of its social mission by
the public school. To keep scholars grinding
away at the refinements of arithmetic and Eng
lish grammar year after year, at this most enthu
siastic and susceptible period of life, is to disgust
them forever with all that has the name of educa
tion. By the time a boy is eleven years old he
may have all of these matters that will ever be of
any value to him ; and to keep him grinding away
at them for two or three years longer is a wicked
waste of the most precious intellectual opportuni
ties of his whole life. Then, if ever, he should
have a chance to learn his own language by the

1 92 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

fascinating and fruitful acquisition of a language
other than his own. Then he should fix forever
his arithmetic by carrying the principles of it up
into algebra, out into geometry, and making appli
cation of it all by weighing and measuring and
calculating the forms and forces with which physi
cal science is concerned. Emerson has said that
no man ever does anything well who does not
come to it from a higher ground. The surest
approach to a thorough comprehension of English
grammar is through Latin or French. The best
way to retain arithmetic is to preserve it in the
form of algebra. The best way to assimilate what
we have learned already is not to keep digging away
at it after all its freshness has been worn out ; but
to go right on using the power acquired in master
ing one subject for the conquest of another.

The introduction of physical science, first in the
form of object lessons and familiar talks, and then
in systematic study as a substantial subject, before
the great mass of children leave school altogether,
is an important element in the social mission of
the school. There is a time in the life of al
most every boy and girl when interest in natural
objects is keen and eager. Let the student
then be trained to observe things at first hand ;
to weigh and measure, to perform experiments,
to keep a record of things seen and done,
and he will thus acquire a lifelong interest in

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 193

nature. This is equally desirable for the great
majority of children who leave school for work,
and for the few who go to college. To those who
go to work at once, it gives a more intelligent
interest in the familiar objects with which they
have to deal, and a wider companionship in the
world of which they form a part. To those who
go to college it gives a training in accurate obser
vation, and a facility in experiment which lays
a foundation for the accurate scientific studies
of their college course. Now, the great majority
of boys come to college with their powers of obser
vation, and their interest in natural phenomena,
stunted and atrophied by prolonged disuse, and
crowded out by the mere book-learning on which
our narrow lines of requirement have forced them
to concentrate. Scientific studies pursued by sci
entific methods are an element of training for the
largest and truest enjoyment and usefulness of life
which no system of education which will fulfil its
social mission can omit.

What observation and experiment and the
methods of the laboratory are in relation to Nature,
that good literature is to Humanity.

Literature presents the ideal of human life as it
has expressed itself in the great institutions of
family, church, state, and society. It clothes these
ideals in the flowing robes of the imagination and
adorns them with the jewels of well-chosen words,

IQ4 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

set in rhythmic and melodious forms. To feed
the mind of youth on the ideals of a noble and
elevated human life : to win his fidelity to the
family through sweet pictures of parental affection,
and filial devotion, and pure household joys ; to
secure his loyalty to the state by thrilling accounts
of the deeds of brave men and heroic women ; to
make righteousness attractive by pointed fable,
or pithy proverb, or striking tale of self-sacrificing
fidelity to the costly right against the profitable
wrong ; to inflame with a desire to emulate the
example of patriot, martyr, and philanthropist ;
this is the social mission of good literature in the
public schools. To interpret this literature so
that it comes home to the boys and girls ; so that
they see reflected in it the image of their own bet
ter selves ; so that they carry with them its inspira
tion through all their after lives ; is the duty and
the privilege of the public school. It is not of
so much consequence what a boy knows when he
leaves school, as what he loves. The greater part
of what he knows he will speedily forget. What he
loves he will feed on. His hunger will prompt his
efforts to increase his store. The love of good liter
ature — a genuine delight in Longfellow and Whit-
tier, Lowell and Tennyson, Hawthorne and Scott,
Shakespeare and Homer — is, from every point of
view, the most valuable equipment with which the
school can send its boys and girls into the world.

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 195

For the same reasons drawing and music should
be prominent features of the public-school cur
riculum. To what purpose does the artist " re
create the glory of the world," and the musician
"re-echo its loveliest songs," unless there be
developed in the great mass of his fellow-men
the power to appreciate the beauty and harmony
of form and sound. It is not to make artists and
musicians, it is to create appreciation of art and
music, and to make these the ministers of gladness
and hope and cheer in every humblest home, that
the school should teach its pupils to draw, to model,
and to sing. It places within the reach of every
child sources of innocent and wholesome pleasure
which riches cannot give nor poverty take away.

I have endeavoured to present, first, the motive
or ideal of the new education, which is nothing
less than the fitting of each individual member of
society for a useful and enjoyable participation in
all that is purest, noblest, and highest in our conv
mon intellectual and social life. I have pointed
out some of the more important features on which
the new education insists as essential to the ac
complishment of this, its social mission. Physical
and manual training ; flexible programmes and
rational examinations and frequent promotions ;
science and literature, drawing and music ; kinder
garten methods to start with, and opportunity for
the individual to determine his own course with

196 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

reference to individual aptitudes and future occu
pations — these are some of the things which
the new education finds essential to its social
mission.

The present is a time of crisis for the public
schools. I do not refer to political dangers, either
such as may come from partisanship in the attempt
to use school offices as party spoils ; or to reduce
appropriations from motives of short-sighted econ
omy ; serious as these evils must always be in a
democratic government. I do not refer to ecclesi
astical jealousies and antagonisms, disastrous as
these may become wherever diversities of relig
ious faith prevail. Both these dangers the public
schools will pass ; for the properly conducted pub
lic school is so manifestly superior to anything
that sectarian ecclesiasticism ever can furnish,
that its inherent superiority will continue in the
future as in the past to vindicate its claim to popu
lar support.

The only thing that any institution really and
permanently has to fear is the substitution of
something better in its place. Now there is some
thing better than the public-school system as it
exists to-day. A school system where the promo
tion is frequent, and the programme is flexible, and
instruction is personal and individual, and exami
nation is rational and natural, and where the great
topics which call out youthful enthusiasm and min-

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 197

ister to intellectual and social delight are introduced
as early and rapidly as they can be appreciated and
enjoyed, is infinitely preferable to a system where
everybody must take the same course in the same
time in the same way ; and be worried once in so
often over the same arbitrary and formal examina
tions, and waste the same number of precious years
in the same dreary and monotonous drudgery upon
subjects which have long since lost all interest and
charm. The wealthy and intelligent portion of
the community are beginning to understand that
the public school of to-day is not the ideal school ;
and that fact constitutes the crisis of the hour.
Shall this demand of the intelligent and wealthy
parents be met by private schools to which the
children of the more favoured classes shall be sent,
and by leaving the public schools exclusively for
the poorer children whose parents cannot afford to
send them to a better school ? The moment that
policy is permitted to prevail, the public school
receives a more fatal blow than it was ever in the
power of politician or ecclesiastic to inflict. The
public school will conquer every inferior rival. Its
rivals hitherto, both private and parochial, have
been hopelessly inferior to the public school ; and
in spite of all opposition, the public school has
thus far come out of every conflict magnificently
triumphant. Unless the public-school system it
self responds at once to the new ideal, it will, ere

198 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

long, find itself confronted for the first time by
a rival whose superiority to itself will render it
really formidable.

The public school is the institution which says
that the poor boy, though he may eat coarser food,
and wear a shabbier coat, and dwell in a smaller
house, and work earlier and later and harder than
his rich companion, still shall have his eyes trained
to behold the same glory in the heavens and the
same beauty in the earth ; shall have his mind
developed to appreciate the same sweetness in
music and the same loveliness in art ; shall have
his heart opened to enjoy the same literary treas
ures and the same philosophic truths ; shall have
his soul stirred by the same social influences and
the same spiritual ideals as the children of his
wealthier neighbours.

The socialism of wealth, the equalization of
material conditions, is at present an idle dream,
a contradictory conception ; toward which society
can take, no doubt, a few faltering steps, but
which no mechanical invention or constitutional
device can hope to realize in our day. The social
ism of the intellect, the offering to all of the true
riches of an enlightened mind and a heart that is
trained to love the true, the beautiful, and the
good ; this is a possibility for the children of every
workingman : and the public school is the channel
through which this common fund of intellectual

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS

199

and spiritual wealth is freely distributed alike to
rich and poor.

Here native and foreign-born should meet to
learn the common language and to cherish the
common history and traditions of our country ;
here the son of the rich man should learn to re
spect the dignity of manual labour, and the daugh
ter of the poor man should learn how to adorn and
beautify her future humble home. Here all classes
and conditions of men should meet together and
form those bonds of fellowship and ties of sym
pathy, that community of interest and identity of
aim, which will render them superior to all the
divisive forces of sectarian religion, or partisan
politics, or industrial antagonisms ; and make them
all contented adherents, strong supporters, firm
defenders of that social order which must rest
upon the intelligence, the sympathy, the fellow
ship, the unity of its constituent members.

What will be the result of this introduction of
real matter instead of mere form into the element
ary schools ? Will it make physicists and biolo
gists, historians, and literary critics of the children ?
By no means. It will, however, hold a larger
proportion of children in school until in the high
school and the college they can begin the study
of separate sciences and departments of know
ledge. They will not leave school at the first
opportunity, as so many have done in the past, in

20O PRACTICAL IDEALISM

sheer disgust at the monotonous routine of dry
formalities. Yet the great majority, even under
the best system of instruction, must leave school
finally from one of the elementary grades. What
will they carry with them, which has been lacking
in the past ? Will they have merely a little larger
amount of scattered bits of information ? If that
were all it would be little gain. If even in this
cursory and general way nature and human history
and life have been intelligently and interestingly
taught, the scholars will carry with them, in uncon
scious and unreflecting form no doubt, the growing
conviction that this world in which they live is
constructed on a beautiful plan and ruled by defi
nite and inexorable laws ; and that the life of man
in the world is a struggle and conflict with evil in
which noble aims and high ideals may be sought
and won.

These reasonable convictions will bear appro
priate fruit in later life. Such a reverence for
natural law, and such an enthusiasm for human
ideals, will prove a stronger safeguard against
intemperance than special lessons on morbid
physiology. The child thus trained will not be
so eager to fight a foreign nation ; or to perse
cute the adherents of another religious faith ; or
to resort to a general remedy for an undefined
ailment ; or to believe that national prosperity
depends on either high taxes or cheap money ;

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 2OI

or to prefer the hasty impulse of a mob to the
safeguards of the constitution and the deliberate
judgment of the courts. In short, even the grad
uates of our elementary schools will have the ele
ments of civilization imparted to them ; which are
reverence for natural law, and respect for consti
tuted authority ; and a belief that there were
brave men before Agamemnon, and sound political
ideas before the latest deliverance of their party
platform. They will be able to face the dema
gogue with the conviction of the Pope's Legate,
in Browning's "The Soul's Tragedy," "I have
known four-and-twenty leaders of revolts."

Knowledge, as distinct from the mere forms and
symbols and instruments of knowledge, must be
imparted to the child, if we are to expect his edu
cation to bear the civilizing fruits of wisdom and
intelligence and virtue and piety. The province
of the public school is the introduction of the child
to the two great worlds of nature and human so
ciety. To give him six or eight years of mental
discipline in the symbols of knowledge without
opening his mind and heart to the apprehension
of the real substance of the natural and spiritual
world, is simply to sharpen up his wits, and throw
him back on his sensual appetites and passions,
on vile images and low ambitions for the actual
material to exercise his sharpened wits upon. An
empty mind is ever the fit abode of devils. But

2O2 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

nowhere do they hold such horrid carnival as in a
mind that is swept and garnished by a merely
formal training, and at the same time empty of all
positive contents. And that is precisely the kind
of mind the grammar schools which refuse to adopt
the new subjects and methods into their curricula
are pre-eminently fitted to turn out. Such schools
are Godless in a far deeper sense than it has oc
curred to any one thus far to accuse them of being.
Whether they admit or exclude religious exercises,
they commit the serious and fatal crime of with
holding from the children at their most sensitive
and impressionable age an appreciation and love
for those aspects of Nature and Humanity in
which the divine wisdom and goodness is most
impressively and convincingly revealed.

Industry has become so highly organized in
modern times that it deserves the rank and exerts
the power of a great social institution. It is, or
ought to be, a mighty force for the spiritual libera
tion of man. Carlyle exclaims, " Blessed is he who
has found his work ; let him ask no other blessed
ness. Consider how, even in the meanest sorts of
labour, the whole soul of a man is composed into a
kind of real harmony, the instant he sets himself
to work. Work is worship. All true work is
sacred. All works, each in their degree, are a
making of madness sane ; truly enough a religious
operation."

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 2O3

Work, under modern conditions, is not a mere
satisfaction of individual wants. We cannot draw
our individual sustenance direct from nature, like
the savage. We can satisfy our wants only through
the mediation of society, and through this satis
faction we are brought into the closest relations
of mutual service with our fellow-men. Professor
George Harris1 has happily expressed this social
dependence of the individual : " If a cross-section
showing a single day in the life of a civilized man
could be exposed, it would disclose the services of
a multitude of helpers. When he rises, a sponge
is placed in his hand by a Pacific Islander, a cake
of soap by a Frenchman, a rough towel by a Turk.
His merino underwear he takes from the hand of
a Spaniard, his linen from a Belfast manufacturer,
his outer garments from a Birmingham weaver,
his scarf from a French silk grower, his shoes
from a Brazilian grazier. At breakfast, his cup of
coffee is poured by natives of Java and Arabia;
his rolls are passed by a Kansas farmer, his beef
steak by a Texan ranchman, his orange by a Florida
negro. He is taken to the city by the descendants
of James Watt; his messages are carried hither
and thither by Edison, the grandson by electrical
consanguinity of Benjamin Franklin : his day's
stint of work is done for him by a thousand Irish
men in his factory ; or he pleads in a court which

1 " Moral Evolution," page 36.

2O4 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

was founded by ancient Romans, and for the sup
port of which all citizens are taxed ; or in his study
at home he reads books composed by English his
torians and French scientists, and which were
printed by the typographical descendants of Guten-
burg. In the evening he is entertained by German
singers who repeat the myths of Norsemen, or by a
company of actors who render the plays of Shake
speare ; and finally he is put to bed by South Amer
icans who bring hair, by Pennsylvania miners and
furnace workers who bring steel, by Mississippi
planters who bring cotton, or, if he prefers, by
Russian peasants who bring flax, and by Labrador
fowlers who smooth his pillow. A million men,
women, and children have been working for him
that he may have his day of comfort and pleasure.
In return he has contributed his mite to add a unit
to the common stock of necessaries and luxuries
from which the world draws. Each is working
for all ; all are working for each."

As one's wants are supplied by multitudes of
others, so the individual in his work is compelled
to consult the taste and desire of others in the
quantity, quality, form, and style of the commodity
he produces in return. The carpenter, the weaver,
the dyer, the tailor, must produce, not the thing
which happens to strike his individual fancy, not
the thing which his untrained eye and hand can
turn off most readily ; but what the experience

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 205

and taste of society demands of him. Not until
he has entered into the thought and feeling and
will of society with reference to the article he pro
poses to produce ; not until he has made his eye
and hand and brain implicitly obedient to that
social will, can he be accepted as the servant of
society, and by virtue of that service claim an
equivalent social service in return. Thus indus
try, both in its demands and its supplies, compels
the individual to become a producer and a partaker
of what society has come to consider good. This
liberalizing and socializing function of industry
is clearly and profoundly set forth by Hegel:1
" Labour has as its aim to satisfy the private
wants of the individual. Yet by the introduction
of the needs and free choice of others it rises to
universality. Through the compulsion I am under
to fashion myself according to others my wants
take on a universal form. I acquire from others
the means of satisfaction, and must accordingly
fall in with their opinions. At the same time I
am compelled to produce the means for the satis
faction of the wants of others. One plays into
the other, and the two are interdependent. Every
thing particular becomes in this way social. This
social element brings a liberation, by which the
stringent necessity of nature is turned aside, and
man is determined by his own universal opinion.

1 "Philosophy of Rights," Sections 189-208.

2O6 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

Through the dependence and co-operation involved
in labour, subjective self-seeking is converted into
a contribution towards the satisfaction of the
wants of all others. The universal so penetrates
the particular that the individual, while acquiring,
producing, and enjoying for himself, at the same
time produces and acquires for the enjoyment of
others. Private persons through self-seeking are
compelled to turn themselves out towards others."

Thus the industrial order is by its very nature
a great social force, imposing its standards on all
and exacting its tribute of each. This it does by
the force of the reason that is latent in it. The
effort of socialism to grasp this immanent reason
in definite rules, and compress it into a system,
and impose it by authority, would be destructive
of the freedom, and ultimately of the rationality, of
the industrial order.

The attempt to mark out by public authority
just what everybody shall want, and what part
each person shall take in the production which
shall satisfy those wants, would be fatal alike to
individuality and taste in consumption, and origi
nality and enterprise in production. The competi
tive system unquestionably has grave defects, and
needs reform at various points. But these reforms
should be made in the interest of greater rather
than less freedom of individual initiative, and in
the protection of the weak against the unscrupu-

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 207

lous ; not in the destruction of freedom, and the
reduction of weak and strong alike to a dead
level of uniformity and monotony and inefficiency.
Cruelly as the present industrial system crushes
certain individuals, heavily as it rests on certain
classes, wickedly as it works under certain condi
tions and in certain hands ; nevertheless the power
it gives on the whole, and in the long run, to every
body to become a contributor to the social prod
uct and a partaker to the extent of the market
value of his product in the whole wealth of the
social world, renders it, like the family, the school,
and the state, one of the great social institutions
which make for the liberation of man from the
limitations of natural necessity and selfish iso
lation from his fellows. Destined undoubtedly
to undergo many and radical transformations,
the institution of organized industry, resting on
the free determination of the individual, expres
sive of his taste, responsive to his will, and met
ing out to each, according to the social value of
his product, his proportionate share in the diver
sified wealth of the world, is one of the most
marvellous products of that practical reason which
is immanent in society, and one of the most
beneficent institutions for the spiritual emancipa
tion of man.

The twofold principle previously applied in the
family indicates the right relation of society to

208 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

the individual in economic relations. There must
be the union of liberty and sympathy.

Laissez-faire says, Let each man look out for
himself and the Devil take the hindmost. When
the weak are driven to the wall, when the poor
are plundered just because of their poverty, when
the family is undermined, when children are
starved and stunted, when men are degraded by
drink, and women are starved into dishonour,
this doctrine raises no protest, but looks com
placently on, finding abundant consolation in the
reflection that the more keen the struggle and
the more cruel the competition, the stronger and
fitter will be the remnant who survive.

Socialism, on the other hand, would provide the
individual with a suitable tenement, send his chil
dren to school, furnishing instruction and books,
even clothes and food if need be, at the public
expense, direct his industry, guarantee him steady
employment at a remunerative wage, manage his
mines, railroads, factories, and farms for him,
adjust supply and demand by special legislation,
and insure to everybody happiness and prosperity
ready-made.

• Now, neither of these attitudes is more practi
cable or less cruel than the other. We must
put the two together. We must unite what Bos-
anquet calls "moral socialism" with "economic
individualism." We must let each man develop

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 2CX)

the strength and independence that comes of try
ing to bear his own burden, and then we must
give him all the help in doing so that is consistent
with that development of strength and indepen
dence. In the words of Bosanquet:1 "You must
let the individual make his will a reality in the
conduct of his life, in order that it may be possible
for him consciously to entertain the social purpose
as a constituent of his will. Without these con
ditions there is no social organism and no moral
socialism. Economic socialism rests on the in
dividualistic fallacy of thinking that you can main
tain a moral structure without maintaining the
morality which is the cohesion of its units. Thrift,
in the shape of a resolution to bear at least your
own burdens, is not a selfish but an unselfish
quality, and is the first foundation, and the well-
known symptom, of a tendency, not to moral in
dividualism, but to moral socialism. The man
who looks ahead and tries to provide for bearing
his own burden is the man who can appreciate a
social purpose, and who cares for the happiness
of others. Economic socialism fails to appreciate
the depth of individuality which is necessary in
order to contain, in a moral form, the modern
social purpose."

The social problem is to make each citizen
strong and energetic and wise enough to bear his

1 "Civilization of Christendom," page 330.

2IO PRACTICAL IDEALISM

individual burden and take care of himself ; and at
the same time make all citizens generous and
public-spirited enough to provide such general ad
vantages as education, and sanitation, and factory
legislation, and tenement-house inspection, and
insurance supervision, and parks and holidays, and
reasonable hours and healthful conditions of labour,
and relief in unavoidable disease and disaster for
all. The bearing of one another's burdens by men
who have the energy and enterprise and indepen
dence to try their best to bear their own; — this
is the ideal industrial order.

In the state or nation, and the social life which
it supports, however, man finds the fullest and
freest realization of himself. For the state is
founded, not on the necessities of reproduction
and nutrition which lie at the base of family
life and the industrial order ; but on man's
widest social relations to his fellow-men. As we
have already seen, man exists side by side with
multitudes of other human beings like himself.
In some way or other he must come into conscious
relations to these other persons. He may engage
in strife and warfare ; but these prove unsatisfac
tory and suicidal. He must ultimately seek peace ;
and this can only come when his interests and the
interests of these other beings shall be blended
and transformed into a social interest common to
them all. The state is such a transforming insti-

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 211

tution. By its laws, customs, and institutions ; its
officers and courts and armies, the state breaks
down the hard and fast separation of individuals
from each other ; suppresses the strife of indi
viduals against each other ; and transforms these
warring individuals into co-operating members of
a united whole. The spirit of nationality is thus
the spirit of liberty. It enlarges the range of
the individual's interest and sympathy and devo
tion ; making him one with all the other citizens
of the nation to which he belongs.

In times when nations were comparatively small,
when boundaries were vague, and laws were un
developed, frequent wars were inevitable. The
spirit of nationality found its most frequent and
natural expression in antagonism to other nations.
Kings and irresponsible rulers frequently found
it for their interest to stir up strife between
nations for their own glory and aggrandizement.
For the control of uncivilized races; for the suppres
sion of internal disorder; for the preservation of
peace and the protection of life and property of
citizens in foreign lands, fleets and armaments are
still a necessity ; and legitimate wars may yet be
waged. But between the civilized Christian nations
of the present day war is unnecessary and inex
cusable. The so-called jingo spirit, which seeks
pretexts for fighting, and threatens the perma
nence of peace by needless preparation for improb-

212 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

able wars, is a relic of the dark ages, which ought
to be thoroughly exterminated before the dawn of
the twentieth century. The railroads, the tele
graph, the telephone, the extension of travel and
commerce, the spread of a common religion, the
international organization of labour, the common
interest of literature, science, art, and philan
thropy are combining to unite all the nations of
the earth in a common brotherhood. International
arbitration affords a mode of settlement for dis
putes between nations, far more economical, far
more just, far more creditable, far more bene
ficial alike to victor and to vanquished, than
the cruel arbitrament of arms. Scientific inven
tion is bringing the weapons and engines of
destruction to such deadly efficiency, that the
very perfection of the art of war will render its
practice on any large scale and for protracted
periods impossible. The dawn of universal peace,
though doubtless not quite at hand, is not far
distant. The federation of all civilized and Chris
tian nations, and their united protectorate over
the uncivilized communities through the develop
ment of international law and the establishment
of some form of international tribunal, is a con
summation of the prolonged struggle of man for
liberty, which persons now living may hope to see
within their lifetime.

There is abundant room for patriotism outside

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 213

of the particular field which jingoism has appro
priated to itself. There are enemies enough to
conquer, even if we do not get up a war with
England or Spain. The enemies of the modern
state are within ; its foes are they of its own
household. The chief danger of the modern
democratic state is that certain classes, instead
of supporting the state in a loyal and disinterested
devotion, will use their political power to make the
state serve their private interests ; and true patri
otism at the present time manifests itself chiefly
in resistance to these special classes, so far as they
seek to manipulate the government in their private
interest. True patriotism is the strenuous, vigi
lant, and intelligent devotion to the common good
of all, as against the attempts of private parties
and classes to secure for themselves special favours
at the general expense. Let us consider, in order,
some of these special points at which the true
patriot must be on his guard.

First : The currency. A stable, reliable, and
universally acceptable medium of exchange is a
matter of prime importance to the welfare of
the nation. A currency liable to serious fluctua
tion in its intrinsic or sudden alteration in its
conventional value, cuts the nerve of legitimate
business, and leads to panic and disaster. Not
merely the fact, but the expectation of such
fluctuations and alterations is a national calamity

214 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

of the first magnitude. Yet it is for the interest of
the creditor class as such to contract the volume
and appreciate the value of the currency. It is
likewise for the interest of the debtor class, and
of the owners of silver mines as a class, to expand
the volume and depreciate the value of the cur
rency. To vote on either side from these merely
private and class considerations is to be a traitor
to one's country in one of the chief ways in which
treason is possible in a peaceful modern republic.
True patriotism at this point demands that a
man study the currency question fairly, fully, and
impartially ; and then vote, not as creditor or
bond-holder ; not as debtor or mine-owner ; but
as a citizen intent on securing that stability and
acceptableness in the currency on which the true
economic prosperity of the whole community
depends.

Another point on which the true patriot must
be watchful against the encroachments of private
interests is taxation. Taxation is one of the most
fundamental and sacred powers intrusted to gov
ernment. It allows the state to step in and take
from the labourer such portion of the product of
his day's work as it sees fit. From the wheat of
the farmer ; from the web of the weaver ; from
the house of the carpenter ; from the rent of the
landlord ; from the profits of the merchant ; from
the salary of the clerk ; from the fees of the

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS 215

lawyer; from the earnings of the corporation,
taxation takes its inexorable toll. Such being the
omnipresent and almost omnipotent social power
of taxation, it is obvious that so sacred and im
portant a function should be exercised scrupu
lously and exclusively for the public good. No
individual, and no class of individuals ; no private
corporation, or combination of corporations, should
be allowed to use this sacred governmental func
tion for the promotion of their personal and pri
vate profits. And yet it is for the interest of the
importers as a class to have duties removed from
the commodities in which they deal. It is for the
interest of manufacturers as a class to force the
duties up on the commodities which they produce.
Here comes in a second great opportunity for
treason against the state. The man who votes
one way or the other on the tariff, simply with a
view to the effect that tariff will have on his
private business, or the profits of the class to
which he belongs, is as false and black a traitor
as the conditions of a peaceful industrial republic
make it possible for him to be. He is the kind
of a man who in warlike times would have been
a Benedict Arnold. He is willing to put his
private interest above the general good : and that
is the essence of treason in all times, the world
over. The true patriot at this point is the man
who studies the enormously dry and detailed sub-

2l6 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

ject of the tariff patiently, thoroughly, and impar
tially, and casts his vote, not in the interest of
his business, nor according to the prejudice of his
locality, nor at the dictation of his party, but in
the interest of that justice and equality which
is the foundation on which republican institutions
rest.

A third point where true patriotism is in demand
is that of pensions. The roll of pensions in the
United States has risen from 345,125 in 1885 to
970,524 in 1895. The disbursements have in
creased within these ten years from $65,693,706
in 1885 to $140,959,361 in 1895. Now in so far
as these pensions represent the gratitude of the
country for actual disabilities incurred in its de
fence, there is no expenditure of the government
which is more wisely bestowed, or more benefi
cently directed, or more cordially approved. But
we are all aware that a very large part of the entire
sum, and the larger part of this enormous increase
of $75,000,000 within the past ten years, does
not represent merited pensions freely bestowed by
a grateful country ; but on the contrary represents
unearned pensions extorted through iniquitous
legislation, imposed upon political parties by the
pernicious activity of the pension agents and the
pensioners themselves. That again is treason,
and the parties who have exerted their political
influence for these selfish and unrighteous ends

THE WORLD OF INSTITUTIONS

are traitors to their country, in the modern mean
ing of that word. At this point true patriotism
demands a firm and determined resistance to this
plunder of the public treasury by members of a
class, even though that class be one which, on
general grounds, we deservedly honour above all
others.

Another point on which true patriotism is called
for is the civil service. Sneered at, and betrayed,
and starved, and decried by politicians, the reform
of the civil service has gone steadily forward until
at length, after thirty years of agitation, 85,000
places, or substantially the entire national service,
is brought under the rules. Much remains to be
done to establish and perpetuate the reform, and
to extend it in states and municipalities. But the
principle has at last achieved a permanent and
substantial victory in the field of national politics.
By this reform offices cease to be party spoils, and
become opportunities for public service. This is
the most substantial victory which genuine patriot
ism has won in recent years.

To show the countless concrete ties by which the
individual is bound to the state, and to the social
life and common interests which the state conserves
and promotes, would take us into the boundless
fields of politics and sociology. The state is about
us as the very atmosphere in which our social life
lives and moves and has its being: and it behooves

2l8 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

us to keep the springs of patriotic feeling pure
and sweet and simple and practical. This means
that we shall not permit these feelings to be di
verted into the fanatical persecution of an ecclesi
astical organization, or the foolish jealousy of
foreign countries ; that we shall treat as public
enemies and traitors every man and every class of
men who try to influence legislation or manipulate
taxation, or bribe officials, or mislead the people, in
order that out of public folly, or public privilege,
or public franchises, or public plunder they may
make private gain ; and that against such efforts
to betray general interests for personal profit we
stand as disinterested and courageous defenders of
the interest of the nation as a whole, and the rights
of the people it represents.

CHAPTER VII

THE WORLD OF MORALITY

PERSONS win our love before we know it. We
do not choose them : they choose us rather, and
draw us after them by their compelling charm.
We love by pre-established harmony; because we
belong to each other, and feel it is not good for us
to be alone. Institutions, likewise, dominate us
most completely when we are least aware of their
subtle and pervasive power. Little do the youth
and maiden concern themselves about the ethical
nature of the family when they fall in love and
engage to marry. It is well that it is so. The
hearts of persons, the logic of institutions, are
treasures far too precious to entrust to the caprice,
or even to the conscience of individuals. The wise
World-Spirit keeps these affairs for the most part
in his own control, and not until the race is well
on toward maturity does he begin little by little to
delegate some of these functions to our clumsy
hands.

" Fate which foresaw
How frivolous a baby man would be,
By what distractions he would be possessed,
How he would pour himself in every strife,
219

22O PRACTICAL IDEALISM

And well-nigh change his own identity,
That it might keep from his capricious play
His genuine self, and force him to obey,
Even in his own despite his being's law,
Bade through the deep recesses of our breast
The unregarded river of our life
Pursue with indiscernible flow its way,
And that we should not see
The buried stream, and seem to be
Eddying at large in blind uncertainty,
Though driving on with it eternally." 1

Such was the condition of primitive man, and
many people to-day never get much beyond this
immediate response to natural impulse and spon
taneous compliance with social customs and con
ventions. These are the happy souls of whom
Wordsworth sings : 2

" There are who ask not if thine eye
Be on them ; who in love and truth,
Where no misgiving is, rely
Upon the genial sense of youth ;
Glad hearts, without reproach or blot,
Who do thy work, and know it not."

Jesus, deeply as he probed the paradoxes of self-
consciousness, and mightily as he has strengthened
the power of self-determination in man, yet had
the most broad and generous recognition of this
unconscious virtue which does not let the left
hand know what the right hand doeth ; which
"answered and said, I will not, but afterward

1 Matthew Arnold, "The Buried Life." 2 Ode to Duty.

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 221

repented and went " ; which gives meat to the
hungry, drink to the thirsty, clothes the naked,
and visits the sick, all in utter unconsciousness
that in so doing the individual is serving the uni
versal principle of duty and ministering to the
supreme Lord of life.

The mature modern man, however, is not al
lowed to linger long in the blissful unconsciousness
of this Garden of Eden stage. He must needs
eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
and taste the bitter fruit of self-consciousness,
with its fateful choices and heavy responsibilities,
its inward compunctions and outward defeats, its
unattained ideals and its flying goal. He must de
liberately take sides either for or against his own
highest good and the welfare of his fellows ; he
must be either the enemy or the friend, the hater
or the lover, of his kind. There is no middle
ground. Better or worse than the animal ances
tor and the primitive tribesman, the modern citi
zen and householder must be. He cannot rest
in the easy-going average virtue which institutions
and customs impose upon him from without. He
must either array himself against these customs
and institutions in wanton violation of their claims,
and thus become knowingly wicked and responsi
bly guilty; or else he must cheerfully and heartily
make the interests they represent his own, and so
become positively and aggressively righteous.

222 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

This consciousness of the collision between con
flicting interests, both of which appeal to sides of
our nature, and the necessity of choosing the one
and renouncing the other, is the root of the moral
problem. It is in connection with the urgency of
natural appetites and passions that this collision
is first forced upon our attention, and the moral
conflict is begun.

Natural appetites and passions in themselves,
or as they exist in the animal, are neither good
nor bad. Taken apart from their relations to the
other interests of our lives, and to the rights of our
fellows, the appetites of hunger, thirst, and sex,
the impulses toward wealth, power, fame, are mor
ally indifferent. There is no evil in their indul
gence, and no good in their suppression. If a
man were merely one of these appetites and
nothing else, and if he stood in conscious rela
tion to no other persons, then the greatest gratifi
cation of this one appetite or passion would be for
this hypothetical man the supreme good.

Fortunately, however, no man is or can be quite
so small as that. He is greater than any or all of
his appetites ; and, as Carlyle says, " His misery
comes of his greatness." We have many appe
tites and desires, and we stand in conscious
relations to many persons. To indulge one of
these appetites to its full capacity, is to rob and
stunt and dwarf and kill a hundred other interests

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 223

of my own ; it is to trample on the rights and
violate the claims, and destroy the happiness, and
degrade the character of my neighbours.

This consciousness of the conflicting claims of
different sides of our complex nature, each of
which in itself is naturally good, but of which in
any given case some are so much better than
others that by comparison the inferior natural
good becomes the morally bad, — this is the funda
mental fact of ethics. From this insight all ethi
cal doctrine can be deduced. The end of conduct,
the highest good, duty, law, virtue, and vice all
become clear the moment you approach them in
the strong light of this fundamental truth that
the instincts and impulses, the appetites and pas
sions of our nature do not exist as isolated facts ;
but side by side in a great mass of conflicting
appetites and passions, all of which are naturally
good : and consequently that no appetite or pas
sion is or can be morally -good or bad in itself; but
becomes morally good when it is so subordinated
and correlated with the other impulses and inter
ests as to promote the harmonious and efficient
realization of the self as a whole ; and becomes
morally bad when through insubordination and
maladjustment to the other impulses and inter
ests, it brings disintegration and discord and in
efficiency to the self as a whole.

Let us then examine the fundamental ethical

224 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

conceptions in the light of this transparent truth.
First : the end, the good, the moral ideal. Here,
at the very outset, we enter debatable ground.
On this question there always have been sharp
differences of opinion. In general there are three
ends which may be regarded as the supreme
object of moral conduct. Of these three ends
the first is based on the idea that natural appe
tites and impulses are worthless, if not positively
evil in themselves ; and consequently the end
of conduct is their repression or control. The
second is based on the idea that natural appe
tites and impulses are not only valuable in them
selves, but the sole and ultimate values in life ;
and consequently the end of conduct is their
maximum indulgence. The third is based on the
idea that natural appetites and passions have a
natural value in themselves, but derive their moral
worth from the relation in which they are placed
to one another by the reason and will of the self
to which they belong.

First : We have the doctrine that appetites and
passions are morally worthless in themselves
(which is true) and must remain morally worth
less in relations (which is false) ; and consequently
the end of conduct, the supreme good, is their
repression and control. This is the view of Kant,
and to this view the various forms of intuitionism,
Stoicism, and asceticism are closely affiliated.

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 22$

Kant declares, " Nothing in the whole world, or
even outside of the world, can possibly be regarded
as good without limitation except a good will."1
His categorical imperative is, " So act as if the
maxim of thy action were by thy will to become a
universal law."2 Will and law, however, are both
abstractions. The will that wills nothing is no
will at all. The law that has no definite content
is no law at all. Military discipline is a good thing
in an army, but military discipline is nothing in
itself, and apart from actual soldiers wins no vic
tories. The strictest martinet that ever wore
shoulder straps cannot dispense with soldiers to
impose his rules upon. Law and will likewise
must have appetites and interests, and it is only
in these appetites and interests that law and will
acquire reality and moral worth. The good will is
the will that regulates appetites wisely and furthers
interests beneficently. The universal law is the
law that regards persons and promotes their well-
being. Were these natural appetites and social
interests not capable of being made good, or ele
ments in the good, law would have no content, and
will no object ; law would be empty, and will would
be impotent. Now the empty law is not the uni
versal law, nor the impotent will the good will.
Consequently formal conformity to law is not the
ultimate end of conduct. Such an end is a mere

1 "Metapnysics of Morality," Section i. 2 Ibid., Section 2.
Q

226 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

abstraction. The man who fulfils the law will
indeed be a good man. But his goodness will con
sist, not in the mere formal possession of a subjec
tive conformity to abstract law, but rather in that
identification of himself with the interests of his
fellows, and that devotion to the institutions in
which the common life is expressed, which the
law requires. Love is the fulfilling of the law.
Unless we rise above mere conformity to law, to
the social and spiritual plane of love to others and
loyalty to the institutions in which that love must
find its orderly expression, our lives remain cold,
formal, and empty ; and before we know it pride,
conceit, censoriousness, and all the seven devils
that haunt the empty chambers of the isolated and
self-sufficient heart will have come in and taken up
their permanent abode. As a negative check on
wrongdoing, this principle of conformity to law
works well enough with cold-blooded and highly
reflective minds. But on the hot appetites and
burning passions of the average man this cold, calm
declaration of a formal law makes but faint and
feeble impression. Even to the few who heed its
still small voice, while it affords a check against
wrongdoing, it fails to give the specific guidance,
the natural attractiveness, the warmth of feeling
which goes with the highest type of virtue.
Duty for duty's sake, virtue regarded as an end in
itself, remains to the last a pale, bloodless abstrac-

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 22/

tion. The extirpation of unruly appetites and pas
sions is an element in morality; just as ploughing,
harrowing, and weeding are essential processes of
agriculture. But the ploughed, harrowed, hoed,
and weeded field is not the harvest ; and this legal,
formal virtue is not the crown of life.

The other type of moral abstraction, hedonism,
exalts the emotional aspect of conduct into an end
in itself. As Kant and the ascetics declare that
there is nothing absolutely good but good will,
hedonism declares that there is nothing absolutely
good but good feeling. The one position is just
as false and inadequate as the other. The de
fect of both is the same, — the taking of a sin
gle aspect of conduct as identical with the con
crete whole. Mill states the position as follows :
"Actions are right in proportion as they tend to
promote happiness ; wrong as they tend to produce
the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended
pleasure and the absence of pain ; by unhappiness
pain and the privation of pleasure. Pleasure and
freedom from pain are the only things desirable
as ends." : This is consistent hedonism. To be
sure Mr. Mill, by introducing distinctions of quality
into pleasure, by estimating this quality in terms of
the superior dignity of the higher faculties, and the
identification of self with others and with society,
proceeds to part company with his hedonistic

1 Utilitarianism, Chapter ii.

228 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

premises ; and in the end he gives us, thanks to
his incomparable inconsistency, a most admirable
set of ethical precepts, from which all trace of
hedonism, save the mere name, has been elimi
nated.

To return to the positive and consistent hedon
ism of Mill's first statement, and which we may
accept as in its essential features the position of
all consistent hedonists from Aristippus and Epi
curus to Hobbes and Spencer, the essence of the
doctrine is that " pleasure and freedom from pain
are the only things desirable as ends." That
statement is from a psychological point of view
absolutely false. So far from being the only ob
jects desirable as ends, pleasure and freedom from
pain become objects of conscious desire only at
rare and exceptional intervals in the life of the
normal person ; and they are the habitual objects of
desire of only a very small and contemptible class
of persons, — the deliberate voluptuaries and epi
cures. When pleasure and pain are consciously
present to the mind it is doubtless true that they
are powerful agents in determining our conduct.
But this theory declares that they are the only
agents that can or ought to determine conduct.
Says Professor James,1 "This is a great mistake,
however. Important as is the influence of pleas
ures and pains upon our movements, they are far

1 "Psychology," Volume II, pages 549-558,

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 229

from being our only stimuli. With the manifesta
tions of instinct and emotional expression, for ex
ample, they have absolutely nothing to do. Who
smiles for the pleasure of the smiling, or frowns
for the pleasure of the frown ? Who blushes to
escape the discomfort of not blushing ? Or who
in anger, grief, or fear is actuated to the move
ments which he makes by the pleasures which
they yield? The objects of our rage, love, terror,
the occasions of our tears and smiles, whether they
be present to our senses, or whether they be
merely represented in idea, have this peculiar sort
of impulsive power. The impulsive quality of
mental states is an attribute behind which we can
not go. Some states of mind have it more than
others. Feelings of pleasure and pain have it,
and perceptions and imaginations of fact have it,
but neither have it exclusively or peculiarly. It
is the essence of all consciousness to instigate

O

movement of some sort. All the daily routine of
life — our dressing and undressing, the coming and
going from our work, or carrying through of its
various operations — is utterly without mental ref
erence to pleasure and pain, except under rarely
realized conditions. A pleasant act and an act
pursuing a pleasure are in themselves two per
fectly distinct conceptions, though they coalesce
in one concrete phenomenon whenever a pleasure
is deliberately pursued. I cannot help thinking

230 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

that it is the confusion of pursued pleasure with
mere pleasure of acJdcvement which makes the
pleasure theory of action so plausible to the ordi
nary mind. Action in the line of the present im
pulse is always for the time being the pleasant
course ; and the ordinary hedonist expresses this
fact by saying that we act for the sake of the
pleasantness involved. But who does not see that
for this sort of pleasure to be possible, the impulse
must be there already as an independent fact ?

The pleasure of successful performance is the
result of the impulse, not its cause. You cannot
have your pleasure of achievement unless you have
managed to get your impulse under headway
beforehand by some previous means. Because a
pleasure of achievement can become a pursued pleas
ure upon occasion, it does not follow that every
where and always that pleasure must be what is
pursued. This, however, is what the pleasure-
philosophers seem to suppose. As well might
they suppose, because no steamer can go to sea
without incidentally consuming coal, and because
some steamers may occasionally go to sea to try
their coal, that therefore no steamer can go to sea
for any other motive than that of coal-consumption."

I have introduced this long. quotation from an
unprejudiced psychologist, because the hedonists
are wont to regard their position as so self-evident
and axiomatic, that nothing short of prejudice in

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 231

favour of some other ethical theory can prevent
one from seeing its truth and force. The theory
has indeed undesirable ethical tendencies. But the
fundamental objection to it is not that it is ethi
cally injurious, but that it is psychologically, and
practically, and scientifically without foundation
in experience and fact. We simply do not act
as this theory tells us we must act, and cannot
help acting. Our interest, if we are healthy, nor
mal persons, is primarily and directly in objects,
activities, persons, and personal relations. And
though pleasure is an inseparable concomitant of
such healthy and direct interest in persons and
things, the thought of pleasure as a motive to
action is a relatively rare experience in the life of
the normal man ; and the man to whom this
thought is not rare is himself such a rarity as to
amount to a moral monstrosity. The consistent
hedonist, or the outright voluptuary, is as abnor
mal a being as the consistent legalist, — the man
whose every act is weighed and measured by con
scious reference to the amount of virtue it will
develop in him. Both legalism and hedonism
are unwarranted and unreal abstractions. Each
takes an aspect which is latent or expressed in all
conduct, and then declares that all conduct is and
must be simply that isolated abstract aspect, and
nothing more. Hedonism leads from the opposite
side to the same fundamental defect as legalism.

232 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

The hedonist, like the legalist, has no direct and
genuine devotion to persons and institutions: he
does not love and serve them for their own sake,
but rather as means and instruments to his own
pleasure. He does not get outside of his poor,
petty, selfish individuality. Hedonism is the at
tempt to universalize subjective emotion, just as
legalism is an attempt to universalize subjective
conformity to law. And the hedonist, hugging
his little armful of pleasures, is quite as pitiful a
spectacle as the legalist gloating over his hoard of
duties done and virtues gained. Both of them are
dwarfed and stunted victims of a view of life which
undertakes to make the individual self the centre
of the universe, and to regard all outside objects
as means and instruments of the individual's pleas
ure or perfection. Both theories have made frantic
and desperate attempts to overcome the fatal limi
tation inherent in this merely subjective and in
dividualistic point of view. Both have tried to
reconcile egoism with altruism, and to transcend
the finitude of the subjective self, which both alike
accept as their starting-point. Both theories have
failed utterly in the attempt. And the reason for
their failure in both cases is the same. Man is
more than an isolated individual, and man is more
than an abstraction. Both theories cut man off
from a natural, normal relation to his physical
and social environment ; and then are unable to

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 233

restore the healthy, vigorous unity of life which
this abstraction has sundered. Mill tries desper
ately, by the aid of one of the most transparent fal
lacies1 ever resorted to by man or logician, to set
the bones his theory had broken; but with the
result that he virtually gives us a new and better
theory than his premises warrant.

Kant, on the other hand, had to admit that his
formal virtue is not for us mortals in this world of
sense, and postponed its realization to a supersen-
suous intelligible world. The world is none the
worse for the impossibility of a practical realiza
tion of either the ethics of hedonism or the ethics
of legalism. The paradise of mere pleasure-seekers
and pleasure-givers would be the acme of insipid
ity. " The white-robed, harp-playing heaven of our
Sabbath-schools, and the lady-like tea-table elysium
represented in Mr. Spencer's ' Data of Ethics ' as
the final consummation of human progress, are ex
actly on a par in this respect, — lubberlands pure
and simple, one and all. If this be the whole fruit
of the victory, we say, if the generations of
mankind suffered and laid down their lives ; if

1 Each person's happiness is a good to that person, and the gen
eral happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons.
Mill's "Utilitarianism," Chapter iv. As Carlyle has pointed out,
this argument, if it may be so called, would prove that because
each pig wants all the swill for itself, therefore the herd of swine
in the aggregate will be altruistic in its disposition of the contents
of the trough.

234 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

prophets confessed and martyrs sang in the fire,
and all the sacred tears were shed for no other
end than that a race of creatures of such unex
ampled insipidity should succeed, and protract in
secula seculorum their contented and inoffensive
lives, — why at such a rate, better lose than win
the battle, or at all events better ring down the
curtain before the last act of the play, so that a
business that began so importantly may be saved
from so singularly flat a winding-up." 1

If the accomplished and full-fledged hedonist
would be intolerable from flatness and insipidity,
the consummate exponent of formal virtue is
even more repulsive. It is the sanctimonious,
conceited, cranky creatures of this type who have
done so much to make the name of virtue a
reproach, the aspect of goodness unattractive,
and the atmosphere of piety stifling and unen
durable. You can't deny that these people have
the abstract essence of righteousness bottled up
inside them somewhere ; but the very sight of
their cold, calculating conscientiousness makes us
shiver ; and their advocacy of any good cause, like
temperance or foreign missions, is enough to drive
one to the haunts of carousal and the camp of the
infidel. Aurora Leigh's frigid aunt, with her
"smooth conscience," is a fine type of the charac
ter that comes of " duty for duty's sake."

1 Professor James, Unitarian Review for September, 1884.

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 235

" She did

Her duty to me (I appreciate it
In her own word as spoken to herself),
Her duty, in large measure, well-pressed out,
But measured always. She was generous, bland ;
More courteous than was tender, gave me still
The first place, as if fearful that God's saints
Would look down suddenly and say, ' Herein
You missed a point, I think, through lack of love.'
Alas, a mother never is afraid
Of speaking angerly to any child,
Since love she knows is justified of love."

These last three lines of Mrs. Browning point
to the true ethical end. The words "mother"
and " child " and " love " take us out of the close,
stifling atmosphere of either emotional or voli
tional individualism, and give us a breath of con
crete humanity with its warm atmosphere of
personal affection. It is the fulfilment of the
concrete social relations in which one is placed ;
it is devotion to the persons with whom one is
thrown ; it is absorption in the interests that lie
about us, that constitutes the moral life. "No
heart is pure that is not passionate, and no virtue
is safe that is not enthusiastic," as the author of
"Ecce Homo" tells us. Passion and enthusiasm
are not engendered by abstractions.

The true end of conduct is neither the suppres
sion nor the gratification of appetites and passions.
The gratification or suppression of an appetite
depends for its moral worth upon the relation in

236 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

which it stands to other appetites : in the words
of Mackenzie,1 upon the universe of desire of
which it forms a part. Hence, not the suppres
sion of desires with the ascetic and the celibate,
nor the gratification of desires with the epicure
and the aesthete ; but the subordination and or
ganization of desires with " the good neighbour
and the honest citizen," to use the words of Pro
fessor Green, is the real ethical end. This ulti
mate end is so concrete and individual for each
man that it cannot be adequately stated in words.
It is that realization of himself through his appe
tites, passions, desires, affections, energies, and
activities which will make him the most useful
and loyal and hearty and happy member of the
social order to which, by his very birthright, he
belongs ; and in which, for better or for worse, he
has a definite place to fill and a specific function
to perform.

The moral ideal is a product of reason appre
hending our social environment and our relation
to it. Reason affirms the reality of persons and
institutions ; and at the same time declares that
we have no reality or worth apart from them.
The ideal which reason presents is therefore the
realization of ourselves in and through our recogni
tion of the rights and interests of our fellows, and
our response to the claims of those institutions and

1" Manual of Ethics," Chapter v.

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 237

customs which preserve and promote the common
social good.

" Moral conduct is the ordering of the desires
with a view to the production of a social universe
in which every person shall find his true realiza
tion. It is not meant, of course, that this idea of
the end is present to the mind of every man who
does right. Such a view would be contrary to all
experience. It is meant, rather, that this statement
makes explicit what is implicit in all conduct which
can be truly called moral. A man lives a moral life
by living out to the best of his ability his share of
the life which is common to him and the social
system of which he is an element. When he lives
thus, he is really guiding himself by the ethical
principle, for the Idea is useless for guidance as a
mere empty form, and the content which makes
it useful is simply the whole process of human
life."1

This concrete moral ideal presents itself in two
opposite and complementary aspects: sympathy
and individuality. First it demands an expansion
of our sympathy, so that we shall include the good

Charles F. D'Arcy, "A Short Study of Ethics," pages 105-
114. This view is most exhaustively set forth in T. H. Green's
" Prolegomena of Ethics." The main features of this doctrine
may be found in three recent books of moderate size and readable
style: Muirhead's "Elements of Ethics," Mackenzie's "Man
ual of Ethics," and Dewey's "Outlines of a Critical Theory of
Ethics."

238 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

of all our fellows in the good we call our own.
Kant, in spite of his attempted formalism, was
obliged to introduce this social content into his
ideal; and in Mill's "Utilitarianism," it is stated
in the most emphatic and uncompromising man
ner. Kant's second maxim is, " Act so as to use
humanity, whether in your own person or in the
person of another, always as an end, never merely
as a means." l

Mill, thanks to his incomparable inconsistency,
states the same principle with equal force. " The
social state is at once so natural, so necessary, and
so habitual to man, that except in some unusual
circumstances or by an effort of voluntary ab
straction, he never conceives of himself otherwise
than as a member of a body ; and this association
is riveted more and more, as mankind are farther
removed from the state of savage independence.
Any condition, therefore, which is essential to a
state of society, becomes more and more an in
separable part of every person's conception of the
state of things which he is born into, and which is
the destiny of a human being. The deeply rooted
conception, which every individual has of himself
as a social being, tends to make him feel it one of
his natural wants that there should be harmony
between his feelings and aims and those of his
fellow-creatures. He comes as though instinc-

1 " Metaphysic of Morality," Section 2.

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 239

tively to be conscious of himself as a being who of
course pays regard to others." 1

Professor Royce states this social side of the
moral ideal in the formulas, " Act as a being would
act who included thy will and thy neighbour's
will in the unity of one life, and who had there
fore to suffer the consequences for the aims of
both that will follow from the act of either " ; and
" In so far as in thee lies, act as if thou wert at
once thy neighbour and thyself. Treat these two
lives as one." 2

The "Golden Rule" is obviously a popular state
ment of the same principle. The ground of this
social aspect of the moral ideal is our inability to
accept as the expression of our heart and will any
thing narrower or smaller than the universal good
which reason demands. To know the needs and
hopes and aims and claims of a fellow-man, and at
the same time not to feel a sympathy with them,
and not to will their rightful satisfaction, is a con
tradiction which reason refuses to tolerate ; and if
we try to force that contradiction upon her, reason,
in the form of conscience, turns upon us and stings
us with reproaches and brands us as recreants, until
in shame and humiliation we confess our meanness
and strive to bring our souls out of the little
ness of selfishness into the largeness of a love

l" Utilitarianism," Chapter iii.

2 "The Religious Aspect of Philosophy," pages 148, 149.

240 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

and loyalty which reason can approve as commen
surate with her own universal claims. Thus on
the one hand reason forces us to accept as our
ideal and our end nothing less than the good of all
persons, and the promotion of all enterprises and
institutions which make for social well-being. It
is not abstract law, nor abstract pleasure, which is
the ideal and end of conduct ; but that realization
of a social good in which all persons shall partake,
of which law is an indispensable condition and
happiness an inevitable consequence.

If the ideal thus expands us in sympathy and
aspiration and endeavour, until it makes us sharers
in a universal life, and promoters of a world-wide
social good, so that nothing human remains alien
to us and no social interest appeals to our apprecia
tion and our support in vain ; on the other hand
the ideal is individual and definite, and limits and
confines our actual service to the particular place
which we occupy and the precise function which
we are best fitted to perform.

For although on the side of reason and appre
ciation we are potentially infinite ; on the side of
physical power and nervous force we are very
finite, and subject to the strictest limitations. One
cannot do everything. The large-hearted, clear
sighted man cannot do more than one of a hundred
of the things he knows ought to be done, and which
he would like to do.

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 241

Right here enters the most serious temptation
to which good, strong men and bright, generous
women are at the present time exposed. The
gospel I am about to preach is not for the
lazy and the immature. For multitudes of such
the spur and the goad is needed still. But for
practically all persons of sufficient mental disci
pline and moral earnestness to read a book like
this, the warning most needed is against the well-
meant effort to undertake too much, and spread
themselves out too thin.

The demands upon one's strength and endur
ance, one's time and talents, one's nerves and
brain, in these days of the railroad, the telegraph,
and the telephone, these seasons of clubs and
conventions, associated charity and organized phi
lanthropy, scientific societies and institutional
churches, is simply overwhelming. The man or
woman of any considerable intellectual or social
gifts who has not the power to resolutely resist
ninety-nine out of every hundred of these calls
that come pouring in from every quarter is sure
to be shorn of all real mastery and power to guide
and help his fellows in original and valuable ways,
and to become the mere slave and drudge of the
status quo.

The moral ideal is individual as well as univer
sal. It demands that each man shall give his
best ; that is, the thing that by endowment, train-

242 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

ing, position, and influence he is specifically fitted
to do better than anybody else can do it. It
requires that, for the sake of this specific thing
which he can do better than others, and which rep
resents his best, he shall cut off remorselessly all
other things, however good in themselves and
however desirable that others should do them,
which interfere with this one thing which is his
nearest duty and his specific function. The su
preme importance of health, not in the sense of
mere immunity from actual disease, but in the
sense of surplus vitality, unspent energy, overflow
ing vivacity, imperturbable good nature, irrepres
sible and contagious buoyancy of spirits, must be
recognized as the all-essential condition of the
greatest individual efficiency. To overdraw one's
stock of nervous energy, unless it be in an emer
gency with strict determination to make good the
deficit at the earliest possible opportunity, is a
greater crime than to overdraw one's bank-account.
To be sure, Nature is at first more indulgent than
the bank cashier and gives us longer credit. In
the end she is more inexorable; and nervous break
down, whether in sudden collapse, or protracted
depression of spirits and depletion of vitality, is a
far more serious thing than financial bankruptcy.
For the largest usefulness, and for any considera
ble happiness whatever, it should be the rule of
every person who has important duties and respon-

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 243

sibilities never to do anything unless one has a
stock of surplus energy to do it with, so that one
can do it with that eagerness and zest with which
a strong man rejoices to run a race.

No doubt the first effect of putting this rule in
general practice would be a panic and crash in our
educational, social, philanthropic, and religious cen
tres worse than was ever known in Wall Street :
but if we could once get through the panic, and
resume business on the basis of the rule proposed,
we should, as business men say, be on bed rock ;
we should know where we are, and in the long run
there would be a great increase in the worth of
our work, to say nothing of the inestimable in
crease in the pleasure of doing it.

The moral ideal will accept nothing which does
not increase the efficiency and freedom and power
of the particular life it enters. Whether it is a
whist party or a prayer-meeting ; whether it is
a Browning club or a dance ; the question which
the moral ideal puts is not merely whether this
thing is good or bad in itself; but whether for me,
with my station, my duties, my opportunities, my
state of body and of mind, the engagement in
question will be a hindrance or a help to my high
est individual development and largest social ser
vice.

The moral quality of an act does not depend on
the thing .in itself : it depends on the part that

244 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

thing plays in the life of the individual who takes
it up into himself. If it promotes the end of a
good man, it is good for him. If it obstructs the
good man in the prosecution of a good end, it is
bad for him. And the sooner we recognize this
principle, the quicker we shall quit passing snap
judgments on our fellows for this or that particu
lar thing they do or fail to do, and the less atten
tion we shall pay to such judgments when passed
upon ourselves. Women especially should heed
this law of limitation. Woman has the vitality
and welfare of future generations intrusted to her
care and keeping, and for a woman to overdraw
her store of physical and nervous force in severe
intellectual pursuits or intense social strain in the
years between fifteen and thirty, is not simply to
rob herself of the best part of her own future hap
piness, and to make her a burden rather than a
blessing to her friends ; it is to impair the stock
and to lower the tone of her children ; it is practi
cally to bring about the extinction of her line
within at most two or three generations, and hand
over our institutions to the care and keeping of
the descendants of the women who are to-day liv
ing lives in closer touch with nature in our fac
tories and on our farms.

These evils are not inseparable from the edu
cation and the so-called emancipation of women ;
but if women are to enter into the intense strain of

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 245

intellectual, business, and charitable activities, and
escape the destruction of themselves and the ex
tinction of their families, they must learn to limit
themselves to what they can do quietly, calmly,
healthily, and heartily, and give up the silly ambi
tion to be first and foremost in half a dozen lines
at once; they must put health above everything
else; and care more to be centres of love and
gladness in a small sphere than recipients of flat
tery and fame in a large one. Every woman of
intellectual attainments and social leadership, who
either breaks down herself, or brings into existence
puny, neurotic offspring, is doing more to dis
credit the cause of woman's education and influ
ence than a dozen brilliant scholars and reformers
can do to commend it.

Not that woman is inferior to man and should
be deprived of opportunities. Far from it. Woman
has a higher function than man, a more vital rela
tion to the welfare of the race, and at the same
time a more sensitive and delicate organization.
Therefore both for herself and for her offspring she
needs to guard herself even more carefully than
man against the consuming craze for excessive
activity and ephemeral distinction, which just now
is laying its destroying hand upon her.

The one feature of my short service as a pastor
to which I look back with unalloyed satisfaction,
is the fact that it was my practice to discourage

246 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

women who were teachers in public schools from
teaching in Sunday-school and attending the sec
ond church service. It is so easy to appeal to
the conscience of these tired and overworked
women, and get them to take on an extra burden
to help one out, and then it is so much easier to
get one who is doing enough to do more, than it
is to get some lazy creature who is doing nothing
to do anything, that we are all sorely tempted to
secure for our pet scheme, whether it be church
or charity, club or entertainment, as president
or secretary, director or speechmaker, some one
who has more than enough to do already. The
only remedy is for each person to limit himself
strictly to the narrow line in which he can serve
to the best advantage, and throw the thousand and
one appeals from other sources remorselessly into
the waste-basket.1

This principle of limitation is not incon
sistent with the principle of expansion. Self-
preservation is not inconsistent with sympathy.
For a true and far-sighted devotion to the social
good requires us to promote that good, not by
miscellaneous activities in every direction, but by
making the one part of that whole with which we

1 For the importance of this element of the moral ideal see
Dewey's "Outlines of Ethics," Section 40, Spencer's "Data of
Ethics," Chapter xi, and the earlier chapters of Harris' " Moral
Evolution."

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 247

have immediately to do, the sound, healthy, happy,
cheerful, vigorous, vital member of that whole it
ought to be. Differentiation is essential to inte
gration. The more completely each man is him
self, and sticks to his own business, and looks
out for his own health, the better member of
society he thereby becomes. For no amount
of bustling and miscellaneous activity in other
lines can make up for the failure of the mason
to lay a solid wall; the carpenter to build a tight
house; the plumber to make proper connections
with the sewer ; the physician to master the forces
of disease ; the teacher to set forth the truth ; the
mother to give a sound body and a sane mind and
a trained will to her children. The end of conduct,
the moral ideal, the highest good, therefore, is this
combination of a world-wide devotion to the com
prehensive social good, with the strictest concen
tration on the specific place and function in that
great whole through which we can make our most
individual and characteristic contribution to it.

Inasmuch as the end, or the supreme good, is
thus concrete and individual, it is impossible to
draw up rules that will have universal application.
Shall a man bestow his goods to feed the poor ?
That depends on who the man is. Is he a man
with a family who can barely earn enough to
support them ? Then if giving to others is to
starve his family, he ought to give little, if any-

248 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

thing, to feed the poor. Shall a young lawyer
go into politics ? That depends on the nature of
his practice and his capacities. If he is engaged
in important litigation, involving great industrial
interests which, if neglected or intrusted to less
competent hands, would bring ruin and disaster to
multitudes ; and if plenty of men can be found to
do the political work fairly well, then it is his duty
to stick to his profession and let politics alone.
Is he merely making out papers and collecting
bills, which a dozen other lawyers stand ready to
do equally well, while politics are sure to fall into
the hands of corrupt and incompetent men, if he
fails to take his part, then it is his duty to go into
politics, even at a great personal sacrifice of prac
tice. Shall the young minister go as a foreign
missionary where millions have never heard of the
gospel ? or shall he stay at home and minister to a
few people who have been preached to all their
lives ? It is impossible to say. Has this particular
individual family ties which bind him to his coun
try ? Is he primarily a student, rather than a man
of affairs? Do his capacities lie in the direction
of insight into the principles of social and spiritual
progress, rather than in application of the rudi
ments of civilization and spirituality to primitive
peoples ? Then it is his duty to stay with the
handful of cultivated Christians rather than to go
to the hordes of heathen. Not unless in freedom

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 249

from home ties and capacity for adaptation to
novel situations and ability to be a jack at all
trades, from that of farmer, carpenter, and tailor
up to that of physician, editor, and teacher, and
power to adjust truth to the limitations of national
and racial idiosyncrasies, he is specially qualified
for the work of a missionary, is it his duty to go.
There is no merit whatever in self-sacrifice as
an end in itself. There is no great merit in self-
sacrifice for the sake of a work for which one feels
no special qualification. There is need every
where. Not until we find the need which we
are specially fitted to supply, have we found the
duty which devolves specifically on us. To be
simply one more unit in some great aggregate is
scarce worth while. Not until we have found the
sphere in which we can take our place as members,
having some peculiar fitness of taste, tempera
ment, training, or aptitude, have we found that
which is clearly and unmistakably our duty. The
best thing any one has to give is himself. All
other gifts derive their chief value from their
relation to the self. A dollar given to the needy
neighbour whose worth we appreciate, whose needs
we understand, whose plans we talk over with him,
whose confidence we have, is worth a hundred
given in promiscuous charity. A dollar which a
man spends in attending a political convention in
which he has power and influence for good, is worth

250 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

twenty which he puts into the contribution box.
The question is not how much a man gives,
or even what he gives to, so much as whether he
gives his personal sympathy and social influence
and individual power in and through what he
gives, and so puts himself into the contribution.

The most valuable friends of an institution like
a hospital or college are not of necessity the
largest contributors upon the subscription lists.
They are the men of large experience and great
executive ability, who give time, talents, expert
knowledge, and watchful interest to the manage
ment of its affairs. The enormous amount of
gratuitous service of this kind which is rendered
in our day by the busiest of our professional and
business men, even more than the sums of money,
indicates the vital and genuine charity that ani
mates our Christian society to-day.

There is no rule that governs these things.
The man with a large family ; the man who is
giving of his time and talent and knowledge and
influence in countless committees, boards, parties,
and associations might be doing himself and his
family a great wrong were he to give a tenth or
even a twentieth of his actual money income in
benevolent and charitable contributions. On the
other hand, the unmarried man or woman who is
drawing a large income from invested funds, but
who has scarcely any concrete relationships through

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 251

which to serve society in direct personal ways,
may be guilty of unwarrantable selfishness if he
or she retains for merely private and personal
uses, a half or even a quarter of the annual in
come. The giving of money is simply the
type of all service. It is impossible to lay down
rules binding upon all. For the duty for each in
dividual is that particular devotion of his capaci
ties and resources which will make him the most
effective and vital member of that concrete social
organism in which he finds himself. Abstract
laws and duties treat individuals as mere atoms in
an aggregate ; whereas it is the first command
ment of a discerning morality that each individual
shall render that particular service which by vir
tue of his individual position and capacity is the
most valuable contribution that he can make.

Institutions in general, and churches in particu
lar, are apt to be arrayed against this individual
aspect of duty ; and from the time of the Scribes
and Pharisees even until now have been prone to
impose the same tithes, the same rites, the same
ceremonies, the same amusements, the same re
strictions, the same views of truth even, upon all
adherents, regardless of the differences which con
stitute the essence and worth of individuals.
Jesus indeed took sharp issue with this tendency,
and insisted that the spirit which animates the
deed, not the deed itself, is the test of spiritual

252 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

worth. Uniformity, however, is easy to work, and
lends itself readily to mechanical methods ; and
consequently the followers of Jesus have too often
fallen into the temptation which proved so fatal
to the Scribes and Pharisees, and have tried to
draw up rules and regulations which shall make,
not merely the motive and spirit, but the details
of faith and practice identical for all adherents.
That is good legalism, superb Pharisaism ; but it
is bad morals and recreant Christianity.

While duty is thus individual, and dependent on
one's particular aptitudes, and determined by one's
position in the social organism, yet there are cer
tain great classes of interests which in general
have the right of way against all competing claims.
These fairly constant rights of persons and claims
of institutions give rise to the several duties and
commandments which serve as general rules for
the guidance of the individual in the great ma
jority of cases. Since inclination has always
leaned strongly to the side of self-indulgence,
duties and laws have naturally come to represent
more especially the social side of the ideal ;
though, as we have seen, it is coming to be neces
sary, in the interest of certain classes of people
who are caught in the whirl of modern social con
ditions, to state duty in terms of self-preservation.

Duty is the affirmation of the universal interest
as binding upon the individual will. Duty pre-

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 253

supposes that we are aware of our relationship to
the world of persons and the world of institutions,
and simply demands that we act consistently with
the insight which shows us that these persons are
as real and these institutions as sacred as our own
persons and our private affairs. The several com
mandments and moral laws are specific applica
tions of this principle.

"Thou shalt not kill " is simply the demand that
I shall treat my neighbour's life as I would treat
my own. His life and mine are of equal reality
and presumably of equal worth. To desire my
own life, and not to desire his, from the point of
view of impartial reason, is absurd. Only the illu
sion of selfishness could make it possible to enter
tain such a contradiction. Duty demands that
the contradiction cease, and that his life be re
garded in the same light as my own. In the deep
est sense all disregard of the conditions of health
and vitality of another person is murder. Murder
is more common in the United States to-day than
it was when the Indians, with tomahawk and
scalping-knife, roamed through the wilderness.
Every death that comes prematurely through de
fective sanitation, over-strain, anxiety, unkindness,
sorrow, neglect, betrayal, discouragement, in so
far as those conditions were removable, is practi
cally a case of murder ; and the landlord, the em
ployer, the father, the husband, the son, the mer-

254 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

chant, the neighbour, who might have relieved or
removed these unhealthful physical or nervous or
mental or emotional conditions, and failed to do
so, is a murderer. " Whosoever loveth not his
brother is a murderer, and abideth in death," as
St. John declares.

" Thou shalt not steal " is the demand that the
right of another to self-expression through property
shall be as sacred in my eyes as is my own. Theft
is not merely the appropriation of a thing. It is
the spoliation of a person and the disorganization
of the community.

The duty to tell the truth rests on the same social
basis. A lie is not merely a convenient escape
from difficulty for ourselves. A lie is a refusal to
treat another person as real ; a refusal to recognize
the validity of his intelligence and his social rela
tionship to us. In attempting to thrust another
outside the pale of mutual understanding, the liar
banishes himself from all genuine social relation
ship. It is, as Kant says, "the abrogation of per
sonality."

All duties and all laws are specifications of our
obligation to treat persons as real and to respect
the institutions in which the rights and interests
of persons are embodied. Hence, all laws resolve
themselves into the one fundamental law : " Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and
with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 255

all thy mind, and thy neighbour as thyself." In
other words, the identification of one's self with
the universal realm of personal interests and insti
tutional claims, through faithful performance of that
function for which our individual position and en
dowment best fits us, is the principle from which all
particular duties are derived, and on which the
authority of all particular laws is based.

These personal relations and institutional claims
which duty represents are sensitive beyond the
sensitiveness of the chemist's balances ; swift and
unerring as the electric current ; resistless and
inexorable and omnipotent as gravitation. These
duties constitute one world. These laws are
brethren. He who knowingly and unrepentingly
offends the least of them, finds the whole moral
universe arrayed against him, and all human re
lationships transformed from ministering angels
into outraged furies inflicting vengeance on his
soul.

The representative and, when violated, the
avenger of duty is conscience. Conscience is
the consciousness on the part of the individual
of the laws and requirements of society as bind
ing upon him. Conscience may or may not be
explicitly aware of the personal interests and
social institutions of which these laws are the
expression. That depends on the degree of re
flectiveness attained. Conscience may scarcely

256 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

recognize the law as law. It may carry it im
plicitly in the form of unreflecting feeling. But
in any case conscience is the reproduction in the
individual of the laws and duties which express
the rights of persons and the claims of the institu
tions which together constitute the social order to
which the individual belongs.

Conscience is more keen to detect violations of
the law than to discover higher applications of it.
Its function is hence largely negative : a restrain
ing rather than a compelling force. We are more
aware of its presence when we do wrong than
when we do right : just as the musician takes
more notice of the one false note which he hap
pens to strike than he does of the many correct
ones which are regarded as a matter of course.

Conscience punishes our misdeeds by revealing
to us our guilt and ill desert. It will not permit
us to enjoy the love of one whom we have se
cretly betrayed. It will not suffer us to take
pleasure in the esteem of our fellows, when we
have fallen below the standards which they cher
ish. It cannot be put off or cheated or bribed.
For it is inside us ; it is an aspect of ourselves :
and to get away from it, or get around it, is as
impossible as to get away from or around our
selves. Repentance, confession, and attempted
restitution are the only offerings by which of
fended conscience can be appeased. For these

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 257

are the only ways in which we can restore our
right relations to the world of persons and institu
tions which conscience represents.

The state of mind and heart and will which
results from the habitual doing of one's duty is
virtue, and the specific duties have special virtues
which correspond to them. Virtue and the vir
tues, however, though affording convenient terms
in which to express our appreciation of others,
are not profitable subjects for moral contempla
tion in ourselves. As Hegel says, " Discourse
about virtue easily passes into empty declamation,
since its subject-matter is abstract and indefinite,
and its reasons and declarations appeal to the
individual's caprice and subjective inclination.
The French are the people who talk most about
virtue." 1 This abstract self-conscious moralizing,
which fixes the eye of the individual on his own
subjective states, is the straight road to all man
ner of morbidness, sentimentalism, and insincerity.
The healthy ethical man fixes his eye on objects,
persons, institutions, and in doing his duty toward
these, virtue and the virtues come as a matter of
course.

Vice, on the other hand, or the state of mind
and heart and will which corresponds to the neg
lect of duty, may occasionally be scrutinized with
less risk to our mental and moral health. It is

1 " Philosophy of Rights," Section 150.

258 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

well for us at times to strip from vice its thin dis
guises, and see clearly how mean and hideous it
is. For men not infrequently pride themselves
upon their vices, as though there were something
grand and smart and large and free about them.
As well might a man boast of a boil or bunion, a
swollen limb or an inflamed joint. He is, to be
sure, bigger and more alive at that particular point;
but it is at the expense of depletion and disorgani
zation of all the rest of his system. If the drunk
ard, the glutton, the libertine, were simply the
particular appetites he indulges, and nothing more,
then he would be the bigger man he boasts of be
ing, in consequence of his indulgences. But he is
something more, and that something more con
demns him. Vice is the gratification of a part
of one's nature at the expense of the whole, and
frequently takes the form of the indulgence of a
sensual appetite of the individual at the expense
of the welfare of his fellows. And that is where
the meanness of it lies. And when we see the
dulled sensibilities, the hardened heart, vice brings
to the man himself ; when we see the betrayed
affections, the blasted hopes, the bleeding hearts
the vicious man inflicts o«n his victim, his family,
his friends, then we see the other side of vice, and
can measure the terrible cost to himself and to
others at which his petty indulgence has been
bought.

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 259

As our definition of the moral ideal or the good
has been in somewhat general terms, it may profit
ably be supplemented by a consideration of moral
evil, or vice, in some of its specific forms. The
problem presents three distinct aspects : Whence
comes moral evil ? Why does it captivate us ?
and, How can we overcome it ?

First, Whence comes moral evil ? At what stage
of evolution does it enter? Inanimate nature
knows it not. The stars, the mountains, the
streams, are innocent. Why ? Because they have
no self-consciousness; no adjustments to make to
persons and things about them. Having no prob
lems to solve, no choices to make, they fall into
no vices and commit no sins. It is the sighing
for this lost sinlessness of nature that gives its
melancholy charm to Matthew Arnold's verse.
He is never weary of adoring the self-dependence
and self-containedness and self-sufficiency of sea
and sky and air :

" Unaffrighted by the silence 'round them,
Undistracted by the sights they see,
These demand not that the things without them
Yield them love, amusement, sympathy.

And with joy the stars perform their shining,
And the sea its long moon silvered roll ;
For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting
All the fever of some differing soul.

Bounded by themselves, and unregardful
In what state God's other works may be,

260 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

In their own tasks all their powers pouring,
These attain the mighty life you see."

From the strife and turmoil and anguish of
humanity, he appeals to

" The heavens, whose pure, dark regions have no sign
Of languor, though so calm, and though so great
Are yet untroubled and unpassionate."

Now all this is beautiful poetry, but impossible
philosophy. Whether we like it or not, we have
come to self-consciousness. We are compelled to
recognize persons and things around us, and we
must adjust ourselves to them. Out of the garden
of this primitive, unconscious, self-sufficient inno
cence of nature our evolving souls have driven us.
The flaming sword of the necessity of conscious
adjustment of our environment, and responsibility
therefor, turns every way to guard its gates ; and
neither the watchword of the Stoic philosophy nor
the charm of pessimistic poetry can pass the
modern man back by that stern sentinel. Not
by a return to a condition in which evil was
impossible, not by Stoic conformity to unconscious
nature, shall we conquer the evil in our conscious
breasts.

Does moral evil then enter with the animal ?
Shall we find in animalism an answer to our
problem ? The animal is a relatively independent

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 261

centre. The animal has life, and the problem of
life; which, in Mr. Spencer's phrase, is "the ad
justment of inner to outer relations." Yet, so
perfectly is the animal under the domain of in
stinct, and so oblivious is the animal of the inter
ests of others, as a rule, that it practically never
raises the question whether its actions are in
jurious to others or not. The consciousness of
mal-adjustment, responsibility for wrong choice,
therefore, never enters the mind or disturbs the
equanimity of the average, normal, uncontaminated
animal. Training, the hope of reward and the fear
of punishment, may induce in the higher animals
anticipations of these things ; but speaking broadly
of animals as a class, it holds true that they are
innocent of moral evil. And their innocence is
due to the absence of that keen and vivid realiza
tion of the interests of others, without which the
sense of having violated those interests is obviously
impossible. Hence there have not been wanting
men who have sought to solve the problem of evil
by a return to animalism. This doctrine is drawn
out at tedious length in a certain class of nauseat
ing novels ; but it is presented in most concen
trated and quotable form by Walt Whitman : and
his reasons for faith in his gospel of animalism
bear a very close resemblance to the reasons which
Matthew Arnold gives in support of his gospel of
the inanimate. Here again it is their placidity,

262 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

self-sufficiency, self-containedness, with which he
contrasts the yearnings and aspirations of men :

" I think I could turn and live with animals ; they are so

placid and self-contained.
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania

of owning things,

Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thou
sands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth."

When we pass from Arnold to Whitman, from
the gospel of the inanimate to the gospel of ani
malism, we get poorer poetry and no better philoso
phy. The one position is as impossible for the
modern man as the other, for we have long since
outgrown them both. Epicureanism is no better
password than Stoicism to the garden of freedom
from self-consciousness from which the race was
banished long ago.

Midway between the animal and the mature
man stands the child. In him we begin to see
the foreshadowing of moral evil. The child is
neither virtuous nor wicked. He does things
which, if done by a mature man, would be intoler
able rudeness, unpardonable wickedness. Yet it is
not wickedness in him. He does not first imagine
how his conduct will annoy you and then deliber-

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 263

ately go on and do it with that end in view. The
child simply acts out his impulses without the
slightest thought of how his actions will affect you.
The child fails to consider your interests, and
so he falls short of righteousness. We recognize
this negative character of the child's conduct in
the name we give to it. We call it, not wicked
ness, but naughtiness. To be sure we chide and
punish him for this naughtiness. Yet even then,
if we are wise, our punishment is not so much
retribution for past wickedness as an incentive for
future thoughtfulness. Man does not pass from
naughtiness to wickedness until he realizes the in
terests of others and then deliberately violates
them for the sake of preferred claims of his own.
Moral evil enters when man, in conscious presence
of simultaneous alternatives, deliberately prefers
the lesser to the greater good ; because the lesser
good appeals to his little self, while the greater
good does not. The real root of moral evil is in
the smallness of the soul of the immoral man.
The bad man is the man of limited vision and con
tracted sympathy. Meanness and vice are synony
mous terms. Show me any form of vice that is
not mean, and I will show you a straight line that
is not the shortest distance between two points.

Vice, however, is a very abstract term. Let us
take a few concrete cases, — cowardice, avarice,
drunkenness, licentiousness, and see wherein the

264 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

evil of them lies. What is the evil of cowardice ?
Obviously the coward's readiness to sacrifice large
and sacred interests at any moment in order to
save his skin. His friend may be insulted, and he
dares not protest. The truth may be denied in
his presence, and he dares not affirm it. Corrup
tion may plunder the public treasury, and he dares
make no remonstrance. His country's fate may
be depending on the issue of the battle, and he
will run away. The coward is one of the most
contemptible types of evil, because the range of
human interests to which he is false and faithless
is so vast.

Avarice again is evil on the same grounds.
His neighbour may be suffering in sickness, or
starving from lack of employment. That is noth
ing to the avaricious man. He will not take him
food or help to find him work. The tenant in
his unsanitary houses may be dying with fever.
He will appropriate no fraction of his exorbitant
rent to provide him the air and light and water
and cleanliness he needs. His community needs
better schools, extended sewers, better roads,
stronger bridges; but this man votes blindly and
obstinately against everything that will draw by
taxation an extra penny from his hoard. Avarice
is evil ; the avaricious man is mean, simply be
cause the range of interest he cares for is so
small and circumscribed.

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 265

Intemperance is evil for precisely the same rea
son. It unfits a man for his work ; but what does
the man intent on drink care whether he works or
loafs? It brings sorrow and shame to father and
mother, ruin and wretchedness to wife and child ;
but what does the drunkard at the moment of
indulgence care for father or mother, wife or
child. It is the most poverty-wasting, criminal-
breeding, politics-corrupting, home-embittering,
soul-destroying curse that society suffers from
to-day ; and yet, what is the security of property,
the peace of society, the purity of politics, the
happiness of homes, the dignity of self-respect to
this man, in comparison to the temporary titilla-
tion of his palate and the transient sensation that
all is well inside his individual stomach ? The
smallness to which the soul of the intemperate man
has shrunk measures the evil of intemperance.

So likewise with licentiousness. The founda
tion of all stable and political institutions and
all enduring social order is the family. The
family requires sexual purity as the indispensable
condition of its happiness and peace. Yet the
licentious man brings alienation and strife and
bitterness into his own home ; carries deceit and
fraud and hatred into the homes of others ; con
signs unhappy women to short-lived shame ; brings
into life children from whom their birthright is
withheld, and undermines the very foundations of

266 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

domestic happiness and social welfare. And inas
much as the ties he ruthlessly destroys are the
most tender, the affections which he wantonly cor
rupts the most sweet, the aspect of life he pollutes
and betrays the most sacred and sensitive, there
fore, among the mean and cruel and despicable
vices, licentiousness stands out as the most mean
and despicable of them all.

It would be easy to show that every form of vice
bears this common mark of smallness and mean
ness. These four examples, however, must suffice.
We have the answer to our first question, Whence
comes moral evil ? Moral evil conies from our
power to appreciate large spheres of human inter
est and welfare ; and, in spite of such appreciation,
to choose the selfish, the petty, and the mean at the
sacrifice of the generous and glorious and grand.

With this first question answered, the second
almost answers itself. Wherein lies the power of
evil ? Why does it captivate our wills ? Evil is
the choice of a less good rather than a greater.
The power of evil lies, then, in that little good.
If evil were merely negative and destructive, it
could not exist. The reason why evil persists is
the same as the reason why iron ships float. It is
not the iron itself which floats the ship. If the
ship were solid iron, it would go down at once.
The iron holds a mass of timber and air of suf
ficient bulk to render the combined weight of iron

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 267

and timber and air less than the weight of the
water it displaces. It is the lighter wood and
air which really float the iron ship. So it is not
the evil, as evil, but the partial good that the
shell or hull of evil holds within it which makes
persistence in evil possible. A brief review of
our concrete cases will make this clear.

The coward does not run away because he
wishes to betray his country. He simply follows
the instinct of self-preservation which in itself is
good. If it were not for the good which he thus
thinks to secure for himself, the most craven
coward that ever lived would not desert his post.

The avaricious man is not stingy because he
wants to see his sick neighbour languish, and his
community given over to stagnation. If he could
have his neighbours happy and his community
prosperous at no cost to himself, the meanest
miser would favour liberal charities and gener
ous appropriations. The trouble with him is that
he cares more for his own little good than for
these great ends. The desire for property which
moves him is itself a good, and only becomes bad
by its collision with these higher ends.

The drunkard is by no means the morose and
intentionally cruel man he is so often charged with
being. He is simply a good fellow who likes to
have a good time with a set of other good fellows,
and finds that drink helps on the good-fellowship.

268 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

Now in itself this good-fellowship is an excellent
thing. It is generally the best fellows who are
ruined by drink. The drinking only becomes bad
when it conflicts with the more permanent forms
of this same good-fellowship which are represented
by home and family and industry and society.

Even licentiousness has a core of good wrapped
up in the unsightly mass of indecency and treachery
which are its outward marks. It seizes and per
verts one of the most fundamental and beneficent
instincts of our nature. The sexual nature has
nothing bad in itself. It is the sweet fountain,
whence the joys of family life are drawn, and at
which the race is perennially renewed. And here,
as everywhere, it is the sweetness and beauty and
excellence of the permanent family and social rela
tions that are perverted and destroyed, not any inher
ent evil or degradation in the fact or function of sex
itself which constitutes the evil of licentiousness.
Here, as everywhere, it is by what is good, not by
what is inherently bad, that men are captivated
and led astray. Though here, more than anywhere
else in the world, the good sought is insignificant,
and beyond all expression contemptible,

" The expense of spirit, in a waste of shame,"

as Shakespeare says, in comparison with the good
trampled on and denied.

In all the forms of moral evil of which these

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 269

four may serve as types, our law holds true.
Every appetite and passion of our nature is useful
and honourable and beneficent and praiseworthy
in normal and natural relation to its appropriate
end. The gratification of these appetites and pas
sions becomes bad only when it collides with a
greater good with which this gratification is in
consistent. Were there not this kernel of natural
good wrapped up within these things which we call
evil, they could not exist.

Now we are ready for the third question, How
can evil be overcome ? If the strength of evil
is in the little good it holds and its weakness is
in the littleness of that good, then the way to
overcome it is to bring in more good. By asceti
cism, by laws and enactments, by pains and penal
ties, you may repress the outward manifestations
of evil ; but nothing short of bringing a larger
good will overcome the evil principle itself.
Treat evil as the great, strong, positive fact ; and
then bring your threats and terrors as negative
devices for checking and thwarting these positive
forces of evil, and you are sure to be overcome.
The bad man will feel that there is more of good
wrapped up in his indulgences and selfish satisfac
tions than there is within your hollow asceticism
with its formal laws and arbitrary penalties. Your
only chance of conquering him is to admit frankly
whatever of good there is in his evil way and

2/O PRACTICAL IDEALISM

then show him what a poor, miserable pittance
of good it is in comparison to the rich and glorious
good which he might have in place of it. Let us
apply this principle to the cases we have been
considering.

The coward is doing a good thing in preserv
ing his own skin from harm. As compared with
the reckless fellow who throws his life away, he is
a prudent man. What the coward needs to lift
him up and make a man of him, is to recognize
that the lives of others and the preservation of
his country have a worth as well as his own little
self.

So with the miser. You will not cure him of
his miserliness by telling him that his hard-earned
wealth is trash. It isn't trash. It is the symbol
of the products of human toil ; and, therefore, one
of the most sacred and valuable things in all the
earth. To lift him out of his miserliness you
must make his gold more precious to him rather
than less. Let him come to feel what this money
of his means in food to the hungry, in clothes for
the naked, in care and comfort for the sick ; in
education to the promising young man ; in parks
and libraries and good government for the com
munity ; and by this deeper and broader apprecia
tion of its real worth he will be lifted out of his
littleness and miserliness and meanness, into
generous and public-spirited citizenship.

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 271

The drunkard must be saved, if he is saved at
all, not by less good-fellowship, but by vastly
more. He must be lifted to an appreciation of
the higher, holier, sweeter, more enduring fellow
ship which consists in honouring the parents
who have reared him, in loving and cherishing
and supporting the wife and children to whom he
is bound by every tie of natural and moral obliga
tion and affection ; in taking a self-respecting and
honourable part in the maintenance and promo
tion of those institutions and relations by which
the intellectual and political and social and spirit
ual interests of mankind are perpetuated and
preserved.

And the licentious man — his salvation lies not
in less love for woman, which would be impossi
ble, but in awakening for the first time within
his coarse and hardened heart a real love for her.
Let the libertine once realize the wretchedness
and despair his cruel conduct brings to the homes
he destroys and the lives he ruins, and then let
him realize that these women whose hopes he
has blasted, whose self-respect he has stolen or
purchased for a paltry price, and whom he has
ruthlessly condemned to life-long shame and deg
radation, are even such as was the mother or
the sister of his own sweet childhood days ; let
him once realize that they are persons whose
purity is as sacred as that of his own mother or

2/2 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

sister or wife, and whose happiness and welfare
should be to him even more precious than his
own, and it will become to him forever impossible
to tolerate such wanton cruelty, such contemptible
meanness, such more than brutal selfishness in
himself, or to speak lightly of such outrages and
enormities when committed by others. Whether
it destroys the family, as in adultery, or sacrifices
the individual, as in seduction, or dooms a whole
class to short-lived degradation and hopeless
misery and shame, as in prostitution, licentious
ness is the mark of a low, mean, cruel creature
not yet emerged from the beastliness and brutality
of his animal heredity. What he needs first of
all is the scorn and contempt of all decent folk
to shock his dull and deadened sensibilities into
susceptibility for the shame and self-disgust he
ought to feel ; and second, such a development
of his dwarfed and stunted human faculties as
will enable him to realize that persons are not
things, and that their heart's affections are not
to be trampled on as swine trample pearls in the
mire, but are the holiest and noblest gift of God
to men, and as such are to be respected, pro
tected, cherished, and reverenced by every man
who claims to have risen above the level of the
brute.

It is high time that we cease to regard respect
for women as merely an arbitrary precept of con-

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 2/3

ventional morality, whose violation by young men
may be lightly excused ; and that we see it in its
true light as the very essence of that chivalry and
generosity and recognition of the rights and inter
ests of other persons, which marks the difference
between the man and the brute, between the gentle
man we all admire and honour, and the villain whom
we despise and scorn. When the man is found
in civilized society who can honestly say that he
would willingly be the son, the husband, the
father, the brother of an impure woman ; then for
the first time shall we see a man who does not
know that he is as mean as a thief and as cruel
as a murderer every time he violates the purity
of woman in the person of the mother, daughter,
wife, or sister of another, and who after doing
so dastardly a deed is not in his inmost heart
ashamed of the inhuman beast he has permitted
himself to be. Here as everywhere it is the in
coming of a higher humanity, a larger life, a truer
love, that must cast out the brutal, the selfish, and
the base. Not until you fill a man's heart with
a genuine love for woman, can you lift him
above the temptation of its cruel and beastly
counterfeit.

In every case moral evil is the perversion of a
natural good. Our temptations do not come to us
in the form of things wholly bad. The vice for
which some more or less respectable excuse can-

T

2/4 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

not be offered, and of which fools will not find
occasion for boasting as something which makes
them big and smart, does not exist. The wise
man watches the other side of the account, and
weighs the worth of the better things this petty,
perverted good destroys.

The things that tempted Jesus are the types of
the things that tempt us all. Food, fame, and
power are not bad in themselves : they were bad
for Jesus then, there, and in that particular form ;
because under the circumstances they were incon
sistent with higher duties and possibilities. For
us to-day riches, popularity, ambition, are not bad
in themselves ; but are far better than the seclu
sion, sloth, and squalor of a hermit's cell. To
place riches before righteousness, popularity before
sincerity, ambition before service — that is bad ;
that is the temptation of every man in public life
to-day. And we must overcome these temptations
of ours as Jesus overcame the temptations that
came to him at the opening of his ministry, not by
despising these things as evil in themselves, which
they are not ; but by overcoming the partial good
there is in them through clear vision and firm
grasp of the higher duty and the greater good
with which these lesser natural goods conflict.

Such is the origin of moral evil, the secret of its
fascination, and the nature of the remedy. Yet
while the original spring and inciting power of

THE WORLD OF MORALITY 275

moral evil lies in the little good it seizes and per
verts, we must recognize that persistence in evil
so hardens and perverts the heart that the origi
nal natural good from which it took its rise be
comes almost forgotten, and the cold, hard shell
of malignant, defiant self-assertion is left stand
ing almost alone as an end in itself. Evil thus
encrusted over with pride and rebelliousness
toward God, and hate and bitterness toward one's
fellow-men, is the deeper disease of sin. Such a
man we call a hardened sinner. While the ulti
mate problem for him, as for all men, is to get a
clear vision and a strong grasp of the higher life
and the larger good, yet in order to bring
him to this point of view and this attitude of
will, something more than a description of the
moral ideal or a treatise on scientific ethics is
required.

The sinner is not merely at strife with his natu
ral environment, like the man of thoughtless vice
or passionate wrongdoing. He is at war with
himself, in insurrection against the moral order,
implicitly if not consciously arrayed in rebellion
against his Maker and his God. Morality, indeed,
can give a diagnosis of his case, and indicate in
general terms the remedy. But the worst trouble
is that the patient does not care to be cured, and
refuses to take the medicine morality prescribes.
Morality shows a man what he must do and be,

2/6 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

provided he wishes to do what he ought to do, and
become the best he is capable of being.

If, however, the man cares for none of these
things ; if he has ceased to care much what becomes
of himself, then morality offers its unwelcome diag
nosis and its distasteful medicine in vain. The sin
ner must be shown that others care for him, even
if he does not care for himself ; that he has a worth
in the eyes of others, even if he has none in his
own. The dead self must be quickened into life
by the love of those who have life and love to im
part. And this gratuitous giving of life to those
who lack it, this free bestowal of love on those who
have no claim on others and have lost their respect
for themselves — this takes us beyond the formal
precincts of ethics into the vital realm of religion.
Morality, with its stern laws and rigid formulas,
its lofty aim and seemingly unapproachable ideal,
must be supplemented by the warm heart and
tender appeal of religion, before it can bring the
wilful sinner under its beneficent control.

CHAPTER VIII

THE WOKLO OF RELIGION

To grasp the world as a whole is the goal of
all thought ; to find our place in the whole is the
way to be free ; to be true to the whole is what
it means to be holy ; to rest in the whole is the
secret of peace ; to work with the whole is the
motive of power. This wholeness of view, this
wholesomeness of feeling, this holiness of charac
ter, is the still unachieved end toward which our
progress from lower to higher worlds has tended.
Sense-perception ties a few bits of sensation to
gether into things with constant qualities. Asso
ciation arranges these things and events in larger
groups. Science binds them together in the strong
bonds of the identity of common concepts, and
the relation of parts to each other which the
whole involves. Art moulds matter into the form
of its ideal, and makes force tributary to its
designs. Human life and love, and literature
which is human life and love writ large, introduce
new elements of caprice and waywardness. These
in turn are reduced to harmony and order through
277

2/8 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

social institutions. Into this Eden of institutional
conventionality there crawls the serpent of con
scious and deliberate selfishness with its loathsome
trail of avarice and lust and cruelty and crime ; and
the resulting break between man and his social
environment produces strife and discord without,
guilt and remorse within. Morality next tries to
patch up these breaks and lesions at the particular
points where they occur. But between hedonism
on the one hand and legalism on the other it gets
entangled in the toils of a cold, self-centred sub
jectivity; and even if it embraces the deeper ideal
of concrete self-realization through natural and
social relations, the process is an endless one, and
it is inadequate to cope with indifferent folly
and deliberate sin.

To stop at this point is to leave our world
uncompleted, our minds unsatisfied, our hearts
unfilled, our wills unfree. It is the reluctance of
the mind and heart to accept this lame and impo
tent conclusion ; the refusal of the will to withdraw
from the field at this stage of the contest, that
drives man with the eagerness of an infinite passion
on into the sphere of religion.

Religion alone offers a complete and ultimate
unification of life ; in it alone man finds perfect
freedom and complete realization. Religion gathers
up the partial and relative unities of these several
lower worlds into the all-inclusive unity of a single

THE WORLD OF RELIGION 279

system of relations, and bids man find his peace
and blessedness in harmony with this one Absolute
Thought and Universal Love. This ultimate unity
of all thought and being, this interrelation of all
things and all persons in one comprehensive
rational system has been implied in each of the
lower stages we have been considering. We found
that there could be no such thing as an isolated
fact ; but that all facts have reality through their
inherence in a world of connected actual or pos
sible experience. Even fancy must take its rise
from facts, and make some sort of connection with
the world of common experience, or it evaporates
in subjective hallucination and capricious sug
gestion. The inferences and laws of science
presuppose the self-consistency of one rational
all-inclusive experience as the major premise on
which their ultimate validity depends. Art can
widen nature and enrich experience only by abso
lute fidelity to those universal principles which
are immanent in nature and experience to begin
with, and merely come to more explicit conscious
ness in the artist than in other men. Friendship
is the recognition, and literature the expression,
of a community of nature between individuals
which reveals a single spiritual principle as its
source. Social institutions are the product and
embodiment of a necessary rational relation of
persons to each other which is deeper than the

280 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

individual consciousness, yet capable of progres
sive reproduction in it. Moral laws, duties, and
virtues are the fragmentary expressions of an
ideal of man's conscious unity with his total envi
ronment : an ideal which he can neither entirely
banish nor yet completely realize.

Now religion is the explicit and conscious recog
nition of this underlying, over-ruling, all-including,
rational and spiritual unity which we have found
to be latent and implied in each and every special
aspect of the world which we have been consider
ing. The world of religion is not a world apart
from these special worlds of sense ancl science,
art and humanity, institutions and morals. It is
rather the larger, deeper unity in which all these
special aspects inhere, to which they all stand
related, from which they derive their meaning and
rationality. The world of religion is the world of
the Absolute Reason, the Eternal Love, that in
cludes all finite reality, and embraces all finite
persons. The object of religion is God.

Is God, thus conceived as the rational and moral
unity of all things, all thinkers, and all thought, a
person ? That depends on what we mean by per
son. If we identify personality with physical feat
ures and physical form, obviously God is not a
person in that sense. But everybody sees that this
is a very unworthy and inadequate notion of person
ality. The true personality of man is that unity of

THE WORLD OF RELIGION 281

self-consciousness and self-determination which re
duces to a consistent rational whole and conforms
to a worthy end the multiplicity of sensations and
conceptions, appetites and desires which present
themselves to him. But this rational and spiritual
comprehension of diversity in unity is precisely
what our study of the special aspects of the world
has been forcing upon our attention all the time.
We have reached our conception of God along the
line of that rational unification of diverse particu
lars, which is the very essence of what we mean by
personality in ourselves. Undoubtedly the Infinite
Mind which holds "all thinking things, all objects
of thought " together in the unity of absolute self-
consciousness, is profound and vast and constant
and calm beyond anything that our petty, shallow,
fickle, and perturbed experience can suggest. This,
however, ought not to surprise us. We ought not
to withhold from God the attribute, if we may call
what is essential an attribute, of personality, be
cause he is infinitely more of a person than we.
We have discovered in the world a rational unity
and a spiritual purpose, pervading and determining,
comprehending and harmonizing all differences.
The only category under which we can subsume
such rational and moral unity is that of personality
or self-consciousness as we know it in ourselves.
Finding, therefore, that the world without, viewed
as a whole, reveals a characteristic which we find

282 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

nowhere else save in the ideal of self-conscious
personality, we cannot refuse to recognize that the
world without and the mind within are expressions
of a single Spiritual Principle, common to both,
and endowed with the highest mode of existence
that is revealed in either. Having found expressed
in the world without what is the essential charac
teristic of our own personality, we can no more
refuse to recognize the personality of the World-
Spirit, than the drop could refuse to recognize the
aqueousness of the ocean, or the finger refuse to
ascribe life to the body of which it is a living
member. The God whom the rational unity of
the world reveals is a person, because that rational
and spiritual unity through and in which he is
revealed is the very essence of personality as we
know it in ourselves.

The idea of God is latent in all finite conscious
ness. From first to last our finite consciousness
is a relating of given particulars to a permanent
and universal background of thought and ideas.
In science this background becomes explicit in the
abstract form of laws. In morality it becomes ex
plicit in duty and the voice of conscience. Neither
an isolated fact nor an isolated person is conceivable.
And the rational bonds which bind facts together
in science, and persons to each other in ethical
institutions and moral requirements, are simply the
manifestations of the One Reason and Righteous-

THE WORLD OF RELIGION 283

ness of whose being all special forms of truth and
duty are expressions and declarations.

The Infinite is surer than any finite fact. The
finite presupposes the Infinite. As the inch pre
supposes the foot, the foot the yard, the yard the
rod, the rod the mile, and each and all presuppose
infinite space of which these finite spaces are but
the markings and determinations, so the particu
lar facts which are the elements of our mental life
presuppose a whole of which they are fragmentary
aspects. As science and art alike presuppose a
rational and constant determination of this whole,
according to precise laws and definite ideals; as
persons demand institutions as the condition of
their social coherence ; as institutions demand
morality as their safeguard and support, so all
alike demand the higher and more comprehensive
unity of religion as their centre and source. God
is the Being from whom proceed and in whom in
here the laws of science and of morals ; the ideals
of art and the ends of social evolution. As the
whole is partially revealed in its several parts, so God
is progressively revealing himself to man in the con
quests of science, the creations of art, the develop
ment of institutions, and the perfection of humanity.
God is the One Spirit of whom the intellectual and
aesthetic and social and moral development of man
is the progressive revelation. He is the infinite
circle of which these developments are fragmen-

284 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

tary, yet truly constituent arcs. He is the cen
tral authority of whose righteous will all moral
requirements are partial expressions; the final
Judge at whose bar the might of right shall be
vindicated, and the weakness and meanness of
wrong exposed. Apart from these concrete ex
pressions of himself in nature and humanity,
there is no proof possible of the being of God. In
these he stands revealed, or rather through these
his revelation is in constant process before our
eyes. He that sees these finite aspects of nature
and humanity in their relations and implications
therein beholds the Infinite. As Jesus is repre
sented as saying in the Gospel of John, " He that
hath seen me hath seen the Father ; and how sayest
thou then, ' Show us the Father ? ' '

It is this Gospel of a concrete universal, this
doctrine of incarnation, which saves Christianity
from the fate of pantheistic and agnostic systems.
Were we to stop at the conception of God, which we
reach by following the philosophic desire for unity
to its source in the Infinite, we should indeed find
there a certain satisfaction for the mind ; but no
concrete object to win the heart's affection ; no
definite authority to claim the allegiance of the will.
A God who is infinite in the sense of not becom
ing finite, who is universal to the exclusion of all
particulars ; or in theological language, a Father
who has begotten no Son and sent forth no Spirit

THE WORLD OF RELIGION 285

into the world, is to all intents and purposes no
God at all. The abstract universal and nonentity
are synonymous terms. "Unity ejects content
when identity comes in." 1 Pantheism leads either
to atheism or polytheism the moment it seeks con
crete expression. To worship and serve a God
whose only approach is through the impalpable
ether of philosophical abstraction, or along the
dusty road of historical and scientific generalization,
is not a permanent possibility for practical and
earnest men. Unless the abstract can become con
crete, unless the universal is revealed in the partic
ular, unless the divine is human, unless the eternal
is historical, unless the ideal is social, it may amuse
the agnostic philosopher and occupy the pious
mystic : but it does not afford the basis of a religion
into which children can be trained ; by which men
and women will regulate their conduct ; to which
they will devote their energies ; for which, if need
be, they will lay down their lives. If religion is to
be that real guide and inspiration to life which all
men need and which it purports to be, its concep
tion of God must not be left in the pale abstract-
ness of a scientific term or philosophical specula
tion. It must be clothed in the flesh and blood of
concrete reality. We may not return to the crude
representation of God in images, or again identify
his presence with sacred places, his pleasure with

1 Wenley, " Contemporary Theology and Theism," page 170.

286 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

sacred ceremonies, his will with sacred rites and
sacred institutions. Yet if the thought of Him is
not to vanish into thin air, and the worship of Him
fade out into an empty sentiment, a concrete and
individual expression of Himself is a necessity.
Such a concrete and definite point of contact
between God and man, Christianity presents in
Jesus Christ.

In the person of a man, who, in the concrete
relations of human life, sought ever to speak the
absolute truth and do the universal will, we have
an incarnation of God. We have the essential
element of divinity, the universal truth and the
absolute love ; and at the same time we have the
flesh and blood, the kinship and sympathy which
appeal to the heart of our common humanity.
More adequate symbol, or more perfect embodi
ment, or more complete expression of the absolute
and infinite God, it is impossible to have. Chris
tianity is the ultimate and absolute form of re
ligion, because it presents the most spiritual
expression of the divine nature which is consistent
with that definiteness and individuality which alone
can afford a concrete and real object for our love
and reverence.

Still the particular, merely as particular, cannot
adequately represent the universal. Even Christ,
so long as he is known "after the flesh," is an
incomplete revelation of the fulness of the Infinite

THE WORLD OF RELIGION 287

God. The attempt to exalt him, regarded merely
as a particular historical individual, or, to use his
own words, as he was "of mine own self," in which
capacity he confessed that he " could do nothing,"
into the ultimate and exclusive object of worship
would lead to a narrowing and hardening of the re
ligious spirit. The attempt to go " back to Jesus "
and find in the imitation of the precise manner of
his simple life the law for a complex modern civili
zation, is a misconception of the true significance
of Christianity. It misses the meaning of the
doctrine of the Holy Spirit. It is not Jesus as
an individual; but rather the Spirit of love that
was poured out without measure upon him, and
came forth from him, whereby the Infinite God
is revealed to men. And this Spirit is not con
fined to Jesus, but flows forth freely and gladly
into the hearts and lives of as many as are
willing to receive it as the principle of a new
life of love and service in themselves. It is
not Jesus in Palestine nineteen hundred years
ago, but Christ in us in America to-day that
is our hope of glory. It is because it does not
ask man to stand forever gazing up into the
clouds of philosophical abstraction or historical
marvel, but infuses into his daily life and ordi
nary duties an infinite Ideal and a divine Spirit,
that Christianity accomplishes the reconciliation
of man with his total and ultimate environment.

288 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

The man who does his daily duty, and meets his
common tasks in the Spirit which in its fulness
Christ revealed : he becomes thereby a son of
God, he hath everlasting life.

While we no longer regard times or places, rites
or ceremonies, as sacred in themselves, or as the
peculiar residence of an extra-mundane deity,
still the indwelling Spirit of God is not confined
to the breast of the individual as his sole habita
tion. The Spirit finds appropriate expression
first of all in speech and action ; and so the words
and deeds of Jesus, and of the disciples who
caught the Spirit directly from him, became the
basis of a sacred literature, or Holy Scriptures.
The Spirit manifested in these writings, however,
was not entirely new to the world. The same
Spirit, in less adequate ways, had been struggling
for self-expression in all the holy deeds and pious
aspirations of early saints and prophets ; and in
the history and literature of Israel had found its
least adulterated and most characteristic embodi
ment. Accordingly, the Spirit in the new Chris
tian community recognized both the Old and the
New Testaments as historical and literary expres
sions of itself ; bound them in one book, and gave
us our Bible. As the expression of the Spirit of
God working in the hearts of men and the life of
humanity, the Bible is an inspired book. And its
inspiration consists, not in a mechanical dictation,

THE WORLD OF RELIGION 289

or a miraculous preservation of the writers from
incidental error, but in the simple, obvious fact
that in these writings the Spirit of love, which is
the Spirit of God, has found expression, and
through them has power to awaken and sustain
the life of the Spirit in the soul of the reader.

As the Bible is the expression of the Spirit of
God in literature, so the church is the expression
of the same Spirit in an institution. Each human
relation, as we have seen, must realize itself in
some form of institution, or it becomes lost in
mere caprice and subjectivity. Thus sexual rela
tions produce the family; and civil relations necessi
tate the state. Likewise that love for one another,
which is the first fruit of the Spirit, prompts all
who share it to assemble themselves together ;
to recount the story of the world's long struggle
toward this new life of love, and its final coming
in the person of Jesus Christ ; to confirm one
another in this new faith ; to praise God, the
giver of this and every perfect gift ; to confess
and ask forgiveness for their sins, and to con
sider the ways of helpfulness and service through
which this new life may go forth to save and bless
their fellow-men. Such meeting together for wor
ship and service and mutual encouragement in
volves the setting apart of special times and places
which, from these spiritual uses, derive a borrowed
sanctity. It involves a definite constitution, with

PRACTICAL IDEALISM

specific conditions of membership, established
modes of procedure, formulated statements of be
lief, recognized officers and rulers. While none of
these institutions or persons have any special sanc
tity, considered in themselves, yet as the regularly
established vehicles and organs for the social and
public expression of the life of the Spirit, they too
have reflected upon them from the divine end they
serve a relative sacredness of their own. Thus
the Sabbath and the sanctuary, Baptism and the
Lord's Supper, the creed and the confession, the
rites and ceremonies of public worship, the person
of priest or preacher, become clothed with a
spiritual dignity and authority, akin to the dig
nity and authority which in the sphere of the
family attaches to the father and mother, and in
that of the state to the officers and laws. The
Spirit of God is not a disembodied ghost, though
our unfortunate English version tends to produce
that impression. The Spirit is the new life of
mutual love and service which Christ came to
impart. As such a living, vital energy it cannot
remain a disembodied shade, a merely private and
individual possession. It must find institutional
expression. To talk of the spiritual life apart from
the church and its worship and service is like talk
ing of patriotism while refusing allegiance to any
country, or conjugal love while refusing to marry.
There may be occasions when it is right to sepa-

THE WORLD OF RELIGION 29 1

rate from family and from country. But these are
rare and abnormal. So there may be circum
stances which require one to stand aloof from the
church. But these are very rare and altogether
abnormal. The Spirit of God is the Spirit of love;
and love implies fellowship, mutual helpfulness,
unity of purpose and aim. And not until we can
get unity without uniting, not until we can get
fellowship without association, not until we
can get love without communion, can we have a
permanent and vital and real religion apart from
some such organized form of communion with
God and with one another as the church affords.

At the same time it cannot be denied that the
tendency of these rites, formulas, and institutions is
to lose their original significance as expressive of
the indwelling Spirit, and to become mere hard
repulsive crusts upon the surface of religion. All
forms of ecclesiastical organization suffer from this
accretion of worn-out symbolism ; and naturally
the churches which are oldest, and have gone long
est without a reformation, show the worst effects
of this incrustation. Thus the use of incense may
linger as a mode of expressing religious feeling,
long after better and more refined symbols have
displaced the crude symbolism of smell in all other
departments of life. And so creeds may continue
to affirm contradictions in the name of religion,
which science and philosophy have long since

2Q2 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

banished to the limbo of mythology and fairy-land.
Crude and uncritical theories of the way in which
the books of the Bible were composed and collected
may survive in the teaching of the Sunday-school
long after sound scholarship has ascertained and
published the true account of their origin. Marvels
and prodigies which were intended to point the
moral of inspiring exhortation, or consoling poem,
may come to be interpreted as literal fact.

This exaltation of pseudo-science, pseudo-phi
losophy, and pseudo-history into identification with
the infallible oracles of God is responsible for that
collision between the scientific, philosophical, and
historical spirit on the one side, and the supposed
interests of religion on the other. Identify re
ligion with the Mosaic authorship of the Penta
teuch, the scientific accuracy of the opening
chapters of Genesis, the historicity of the story
of Jonah, the narrative of the birth of Jesus in the
Gospel of the Infancy, and kindred traditional
views, and then indeed there is a serious quarrel
between science and religion, or rather between
criticism and credulity. But religion is not bound
up in the remotest connection with these unscien
tific and unhistorical positions. Religion is love
to God and man ; the life of unselfish service
and generous devotion to the Infinite in all his
countless forms of finite manifestation. Religion
is the incoming of God into the life of man, and

THE WORLD OF RELIGION 293

the outgoing of man in service to his brother.
It can no more be confined to a particular in
terpretation of an ancient document, the profes
sion of a modern creed, or the performance of
an ecclesiastical rite, than the sunlight can be
confined in a burning-glass, or the ocean com
prehended in a bucket. Buckets and burning-
glasses have their uses, and so have interpreta
tions of ancient documents, and affirmations of
modern creeds, and performance of church rites.
But the uses of these things consist not in narrow
ing down religion to their limited dimensions ; but
in adapting the vastness of the religious realm to
the finite comprehension of particular times, par
ticular communities, and individual believers. The
only demand true religion makes on any of these
points is that the individual shall believe what is
true ; and for the apprehension of what is true in
these matters, religion can offer no royal road. It
must bid its followers either tread for themselves
the dry and dusty road of scientific and critical
detail ; or else accept the verdict of those scien
tists and critics, who in candour and sincerity
have trod it for them.

If philosophy is only the dim background of re
ligion, ecclesiasticism is no more than its temporary
scaffolding. The ultimate expression of religion,
its essential nature, is the life of love. Philosophy,
with its conviction of the unity of all things and

294 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

all persons in God, affords the theoretical justifica
tion of the life of love, and finds therein the only
practical solution of its quest for the ultimate unity
of man with his complete environment. Ecclesi-
asticism keeps alive this spirit of devotion by set
ting apart persons and institutions, times and
places, for its systematic cultivation. But the
end, to which all speculation and all organization
are merely the means, is the life of love in which
the will is devoted to the service of God and one's
fellows ; and in return the heart is strengthened
and supported by their sympathy and love. The
religious life is that which knows no unreconciled
opposition, no alien limitation; but finds all cir
cumstances friendly, all trials bearable, all persons
lovable, all victory attainable. Is this ideal of
religion possible for man ? Is God the real ruler
of the real world, so that the soul that clings to
Him in faith and hope and love can conquer all
things ? That is the religious form of the ques
tion which philosophy knows as the problem of
evil. To that in conclusion we must address our
selves. To be beaten at this point is to confess
all previous labour vain. Is evil then ultimate ?
Or is God a very present help in time of trouble ?
Is there possible for the mind and heart of man a
unity with the universe, a peace with God, which
neither the evil in nature, nor the wrongdoing
of others, nor the evil in our own souls take away ?

THE WORLD OF RELIGION 295

The answer to this question requires clear con
ceptions of evil in its three forms : evil in nature,
badness in others, and sin in ourselves.

First : Natural Evil. Nature is an assemblage
of forces, each of which is seeking its own appro
priate expression. Each of these forces in itself
is good. The eruption of a volcano, the shock of
an earthquake, the stroke of lightning, the bite of
a tiger, the multiplication of bacteria, are all ex
pressions of forces which in themselves are inno
cent and right and good. It is only in relation to
other things and to persons that they become
evil. The devastation of a valley, the destruction
of a city, the burning of a house, the devouring of
a sheep, the death of a man by typhoid fever, are
evils to the things and beings injured. But in
no one of these cases does the evil inhere in the
force or agency that does it.

Natural evil therefore arises from the conflict of
forces, all of which in themselves are good. If
each of these beings, volcano and valley, earthquake
and city, lightning and house, tiger and sheep,
bacteria and man, could express itself without
colliding with another, then all would be well and
there would be no evil.

To be sure these things do not and could not
exist by themselves. A volcano with nothing to
overflow, an earthquake with nothing to shake,
lightning with no medium of conduction, a tiger

296 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

with nothing to devour, bacteria with no organic
matter to feed upon, are things which neither man
can conceive, nor God could make. If these
things are to exist at all, they must exist in rela
tions. And the coexistence of particular active
forces, side by side in the same system of relations,
involves the possibility, yes, the necessity, of com
petition, conflict, and collision. The inevitable-
ness of this collision between finite forces bound
together in the same universe is the root and origin
of natural evil. In no other sense can any natural
object be properly called bad. Each inanimate
force is simply acting out its own inherent nature.
Each plant, each animal, is simply intent on its own
self-preservation. It is from the collision of these
forces, each of which in itself is good, that evil
comes to pass. A more specific consideration
of one or two of these concrete cases will make
this proposition clear.

A volcano is not an evil in itself. It is simply
an expression of the general law that two bodies
cannot occupy the same place at the same time.
The contraction of the earth's crust due to cooling,
consequent upon the radiation of heat into space,
and the generation of gases underneath the surface,
make it necessary for some of the molten matter
to be thrown out from time to time. Dr. Edward
Hull, in his book on "Volcanoes, Past and Pres
ent," says, "Volcanoes are safety valves for regions

THE WORLD OF RELIGION 297

beyond their immediate influence, so that whatever
may be the disastrous results of an eruption, they
would be still more disastrous if there had been no
such safety valve as that afforded by a volcanic
vent." Unless we are prepared to say that the
impossibility that two bodies should occupy the
same space at the same time is evil, and unless we
are prepared to propose a preferable alternative to
the whole process of contraction and radiation of
heat which has characterized the evolution of the
solar system during the entire fifteen or twenty
million years of its history, we cannot call the vol
cano evil in itself.

To the inhabitants of Herculaneum and Pompeii
in A.D. 79, and to the eighteen thousand persons
reported to have perished in consequence of the
eruption in 1631, the deluge of volcanic mud and
the showers of ashes and lapilli unquestionably
were evils of the first magnitude. But there was
no malice in the heart of Vesuvius. Terrific as
was the scene, it was only the most faint and
feeble reproduction on an infinitesimal scale of
what for millions of years was the condition of the
whole solar system. During these vast periods
everything was blazing with an infinitely intenser
heat ; yet this universe of diffused dust cloud or
"fire mist" was not evil then, for there were no
cities to be buried, and no life to be destroyed.
The most important source of evil in the sphere

298 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

of Biology is the universal presence of bacteria.
Bacteria are minute vegetable organisms which,
owing to the absence of chlorophyl, are depend
ent upon organic matter for their nutrition. They
are of two kinds : the saprophytes, which feed on
dead organic matter, and the parasites, which can
not live apart from other living organisms. The
great majority of all bacteria are saprophytes, and
their functions are not merely advantageous to
themselves, but absolutely essential to the exist
ence of the higher forms of vegetable and animal
life. Dr. A. C. Abbott, in his "Principles of
Bacteriology," remarks: "The role played in
nature by the saprophytic bacteria is a very im
portant one. Through their presence the highly
complicated tissues of dead animals and vege
tables are resolved into the simpler compounds, —
carbonic acid, water, and ammonia — in which form
they may be taken up and appropriated as nutri
tion by the more highly organized members of the
vegetable kingdom. It is through this ultimate
production of carbonic acid, ammonia, and water
by the bacteria, as end-products in the process of
decomposition and fermentation of the dead ani
mal and vegetable tissues, that the demands of
growing vegetation for these compounds are
supplied. Were it not for the activity of these
microscopic living particles, all life upon the sur
face of the earth would undoubtedly cease. De-

THE WORLD OF RELIGION 299

prive higher vegetation of the carbon and nitrogen
supplied to it as a result of bacterial activity, and
its development comes rapidly to an end ; rob the
animal kingdom of the food-stuffs supplied to it by
the vegetable world, and life is no longer possible."

The parasites are injurious to the higher organ
isms in which they take up their abode. By ap
propriation of nutritive materials essential to the
life of their host, and by the production of sub
stances poisonous to its tissues, they induce disease
and frequently cause death.

Now neither the saprophytes are consciously
beneficent to the universe, nor are the parasites
intentionally detrimental to the organisms which
they force to be their hosts. Each is intent on
living its own life in the most thrifty and economi
cal way possible. As a matter of fact bacteria on
the whole are beneficial. The saprophytes, which
form the vast majority of all bacteria, are essential
to any life whatever ; while the parasites, which
constitute the minority, are detrimental to some
lives.

Just as we should choose the solar system as a
whole in spite of its incidental manifestations in
an occasional volcanic eruption, so we should
choose the biological evolution as a whole in
preference to universal death, even though some
deaths are occasioned by parasitic bacteria. These
parasitic bacteria are, like the volcanic eruptions,

300 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

so far as we can see, so intimately connected with
the total process of which they are a part, that they
must be judged good or bad, not in themselves,
but in their relation to the whole of which they
are organic members.

Natural evil is, from the point of view of the in
dividual sufferer, an unmixed and total evil. The citi
zen at the foot of erupting Vesuvius ; the shepherd
whose sheep are in the clutches of the wolves ; the
patient who is tossing under the ravages of fever,
so long as he looks at the volcano, the wolves, or
the bacteria from his individual point of view, must
pronounce them absolutely and unqualifiedly bad.
Yet if he be enough of a scientist and philosopher
to rise to the universal point of view, and see these
forces as parts and functions of an organic whole,
which has found these manifestations essential
features of the total cosmic process ; if he sees
that if there had been no cooling of molten mat
ter into a hard crust, there could have been no
green earth ; if there had been no fierce wolfish
self-assertion, the animal frame which supports the
human soul could never have been evolved out of the
keen competition of the primeval forest ; if there
had been no hordes of scavengers to cleanse the
system, disease and death would have been the rule,
rather than the exception; then the thought of a
Universal Beneficence, manifested in spite of inci
dental collision as well as through the resultant

THE WORLD OF RELIGION 30 1

harmony, may give him power to bear the evil, not
in blind and sullen rebelliousness, but in faith and
trust, that in spite of the evil which has befallen
him as an individual, he is yet the offspring of a
process which makes for general harmony, — the
child of a Father who wills the universal good.
In that faith he may not escape individual suffer
ing, or remove all evil from the world ; but he will
learn to attack resolutely such ills as can be cured,
and to surfer bravely such as cannot be escaped.
Sharing in some slight degree the insight and pur
pose, he will attain some measure of the peace and
serenity of God. This calm insight into the uni
versality, and serene acceptance of the beneficence
of natural law, is the point at which the highest
scientific generalization and the widest philosophic
outlook passes over into the first vague outlines of
a spiritual faith. Such a merging of philosophy in
religion, such a spiritual significance of the univer
sality of law, such a triumph of absolute good over
partial evil, is expressed in the hymn of Cleanthes,
the consummate literary expression of the Stoic
faith : " Thee it is lawful for all mortals to ad
dress. For we are Thy offspring, and alone of
living creatures possess a voice which is the image
of reason. Therefore I will forever sing to Thee
and celebrate Thy power. All this universe rolling
round the earth obeys Thee and follows willingly
at Thy command. Such a minister hast Thou in

302 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

Thy invincible hands, the two-edged, naming,
vivid thunderbolt. O King, most High, nothing is
done without Thee, neither in heaven or on earth,
nor in the sea, except what the wicked do in their
foolishness. Thou makest order out of disorder,
and what is worthless becomes precious in Thy
sight ; for Thou hast fitted together good and evil
into one, and hast established one law that exists
forever. But the wicked fly from Thy law, unhappy
ones, and though they desire to possess what is
good, yet they see not, neither do they hear the
universal law of God. If they would follow it with
understanding, they might have a good life. But
they go astray, each after his own devices — some
vainly striving after reputation, others turning
aside after gain excessively, others after riotous
living and wantonness. Nay, but, O Zeus, Giver
of all things, who dwellest in dark clouds and rulest
over the thunder, deliver men from their foolish
ness. Scatter it from their souls, and grant them
to obtain wisdom, for by wisdom Thou dost rightly
govern all things ; that being honoured we may
repay Thee with honour, singing Thy works with
out ceasing, as it is right for us to do. For there is
no greater thing than this, either for mortal men
or for the gods, to sing rightly the universal
law."

This Stoic reverence for the universal law is an
important stage in the religious life; and it is a

THE WORLD OF RELIGION 303

serious mistake when Christianity, with its deeper
insight and richer experience, ventures to leave
this out. The stern Executor of universal and
impartial law is a worthier object of religious
reverence than the arbitrary and capricious Dis
penser of special favours to whom an effeminate
sentimentalism is ever prone to appeal. With
reference to external physical evil, resulting from
the collision of forces which are not endowed
with individual self-consciousness and self-deter
mination, the Stoic attitude is wise and strong
and dignified ; its song of praise in spite of in
cidental evil is a nobler and braver expression of
sonship to God than " lawless prayer " for special
exemption from such particular natural evils as fall
to our individual lot.

Nevertheless this covers only a small part of
the ground : the first of the three aspects of our
general problem. It makes explicit exception of
" What the wicked do in their foolishness," and
that is the chief source of the evils we endure.
In our study of the World of Morality, we have
already seen how moral evil enters and wherein
it consists. Moral evil, like natural evil, results
from the collision of finite forces, both of which
in themselves, apart from the collision, would be
innocent and good. The collision, however, in
this case is inside of consciousness, instead of
outside of it. The conflicting: interests are simul-

304 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

taneously presented to a self capable of appreci
ating the superiority of the larger to the smaller,
of the higher to the lower. That introduces
a new element into the problem and changes
radically our relation to it. When some vital
and important interest of ours is assailed, when
our property is ruined, our affections betrayed, our
health impaired, our life endangered by another,
and that for no adequate reason or from no
rightful claim, but merely to gain some trifling
compensation, some passing pleasure, some in
significant gratification for himself, — then we cry
out in indignation, then we call for vengeance,
then we hold our fellow-man responsible and lay
the blame on him and demand his proper punish
ment.

This indignation is perfectly natural; and from a
natural point of view it is perfectly righteous.
It is an attempt to bring home to the mind of the
offender the real merits of the case, and make him
see his act as we see it, and bear at least the shame
and remorse, as we do the pain and injury, conse
quent upon his deed. That vengeance and retri
bution thus have a salutary effect on the mind of a
thoughtless offender, is not to be denied. It is a
good thing for him to have the precise nature of
his deed brought home to him in such wise that
he can feel and realize the wrong-ness of it as
keenly as his victim does. In his selfish, unkind,

THE WORLD OF RELIGION 305

cruel, or unscrupulous conduct the offender was
practically ignoring me and my rights and feel
ings. Punishment makes him aware of my feel
ings in the case by giving him a taste of just
such feelings himself. As Hegel1 says, "Pun
ishment is only the negation of a negation." Yet
even Hegel, who is the most strenuous supporter
of the lex talionis in modern times, demands2
that punishment should not be mere personal
revenge, but the calm decision of society through
its constituted officers. Otherwise, as is the case
in primitive conditions, punishment degenerates
into mere personal revenge, which is ever in
danger of committing a new crime to pay off an
old one, and thus leads to perpetual feuds.

While there is a certain rude justice involved
in retributive punishment; while for the hard
hearts of uncultivated peoples it is the only form
of justice available; while even in civilized com
munities it is the only practicable way of making
justice manifest in cases where the offence is of
an external and impersonal nature, or where the
personal relations between the offender and the
injured party are slight ; nevertheless, wherever
more intimate personal relations enter, and where
a developed sensitiveness of heart has been or can
be induced, Christianity presents "a more excel-

1 " Philosophy of Rights," Section 97.

2 Section 102.
X

306 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

lent way." The way of vengeance seeks to make
the offender feel the suffering which his wrong
act caused me. The way of forgiveness, which
is the way of Christ, seeks to make me feel the
blindness and short-sightedness and meanness
which kept him from appreciating my claims, and
so made it possible for him to do the deed. From
this point of view the offender is the more to be
pitied than the victim of the offence, or, as Plato
put it, "to do is worse than to suffer wrong."
Between the offender and the person whom he
has wronged a break exists. There are these
two ways of healing it. The way of vengeance
begins with the offender, and tries to force him
to take my point of view, or something as near
like it as possible. But such a forced reconcilia
tion is very ineffectual upon the offender, and
leaves the offended one untouched ; although, like
the elder brother in the parable, his heart may in
reality be the harder, and his nature the more in
need of expansion of the two. The way of for
giveness begins with the sufferer, is freely entered
upon by him, and makes its almost resistless ap
peal straight to the free will and softened heart
of the offender. In this way one soul is certain
to be enlarged and united in love to his brother;
and since love begets love, especially when mani
fested in such trying circumstances, it is almost
sure to win the other to a repentance of his

THE WORLD OF RELIGION 307

wrong. Hence the precepts of Jesus : " Love your
enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to
them that hate you, and pray for them which
despitefully use you and persecute you ; that ye
may be the children of your Father which is in
heaven : for he maketh his sun to rise on the
evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the
just and on the unjust"; his counsel to forgive
"until seventy times seven"; his prayer for his
executioners, " Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do,"- — all point out the true
solution of the problem which is forced upon us
by the badness of our fellow-men. Their acts
are bad, the consequences of their acts are evil ;
yet when we see that badness as God sees it,
when, that is, we realize that these bad acts and
evil consequences are due to defective training,
contracted sympathy, undeveloped imagination,
unformed character, we feel at once that pity and
charity and sympathy and sorrow for them is the
only true attitude to take. When we see how
almost inevitable badness is to a little soul, and
how almost impossible it is to a great soul, we
cease to rage against the wrongdoer, and begin
rather to pity him and seek to deliver him from a
state of mind and heart to which such meanness
and baseness is possible. And since that is the
true attitude toward him, since that is the way
in which God regards him, it follows, as Jesus

308 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

tells us, that on no other terms than pity and for
giveness for him, can we maintain our own integ
rity of nature, and continue in the favour and
fellowship of God. " For if ye forgive men their
trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive
you ; but if ye forgive not men their trespasses,
neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."
In other words, if we do not maintain unbroken
the right relation between ourselves and the per
sons who are nearest us, we are not ourselves
within the circle in which right relations univer
sally prevail. The paraphrase is of course vastly
inferior to Jesus' statement ; but it may serve
to call attention to the fact that here, as every
where, Jesus is stating, not a capricious declara
tion of an arbitrary Ruler, but a necessary result
of the moral and spiritual constitution of the uni
verse. Whoever takes towards the wrongdoing
of others the attitude of Jesus, which is also the
attitude of God, and forgives them, as he desires
himself to be forgiven, has found the true solution
of the second phase of the problem of evil. He
knows how to live at peace in a world of strife;
he can maintain unimpaired the wholeness of a life
of love in the midst of men who are perpetually
doing wrong. For he has learned to love that in
men which is better than they are.

The last, worst enemy of man is sin and the guilt
which sin begets. Of what use is a rational con-

THE WORLD OF RELIGION 309

ception of the world, of what profit is the compre
hension of the oneness of Nature and Humanity in
God, if with it all comes the sad sense that we
ourselves are unworthy to have part or lot in this
fair creation of the mind, if by virtue of his holi
ness and perfection God must look on us with
condemnation and reproach ? To all men of depth
and insight, soon or late, this searching and dis
heartening question comes. When we realize our
ingratitude to the kind hearts who cared for us in
childhood ; when the storm and stress of strange
passions bursting upon us in our youth have driven
us to deeds of cruelty and shame ; when the haste
to be rich or popular or powerful has robbed our
manhood of honour and self-respect; when the
vision of wasted opportunities and powers haunts
old age with the dread of accounts that must soon
be rendered ; when God, the omniscient Judge ;
conscience, the unimpeachable witness ; and so
ciety, the jury of our peers, unite in condemnation
of the wrongs we have done, the duties we have
neglected, the miserable part our sloth, our lust,
our avarice, our envy, our ingratitude, our unkind-
ness, our selfishness, our insincerity, our cowardice
have made us play, then we are humbled in the
dust, then we cry out for pity, pardon, deliver
ance, salvation.

Where shall it be found ? There are many ways
of blinding the eyes, and dulling the feelings, and

3IO PRACTICAL IDEALISM

hardening the heart against the bitterness of this
experience. But evasion is not deliverance. And
deliverance, salvation, redemption, restoration to
favour and self-respect, is what we want. To
answer this deepest of practical questions we must
make clear the precise meaning of our terms. Sin
is the mean and selfish preference of some little
good for ourselves at the expense of the injury or
neglect of others, and the violation of that law of
God which his love has established in the equal
interest of all his children. The guilt and shame
of sin lies in the consciousness of how mean and
unworthy we are in our selfish independence, as
contrasted with what we might be as partakers in
the generous purposes of God, and promoters of
the welfare of our fellows.

The first step out of sin, therefore, is repentance.
We must hide neither from God, our fellows, or
ourselves just how mean and miserable and ashamed
of ourselves we feel. We must join heartily with
God and all right-minded men in condemnation of
the wrong deeds we have done, and the base feel
ings and purposes we have cherished. We must
put from us in loathing and abhorrence the evil,
and all the pleasure and profit it has brought with
it, and resolve with God's help never to be guilty
of the like again.

Will such genuine repentance be accepted ?
Shall we be restored to favour with God ; rein-

THE WORLD OF RELIGION 311

stated in the fellowship of good men, and the
service of God and goodness in the world ? Un
questionably, yes. That is the heart and soul of
the gospel of Jesus Christ. No matter how bad
we may have been ; no matter how much mischief
and havoc we may have wrought in human hearts
and human happiness ; if we are really sorry for
it, and repudiate it, and are heartily ashamed of it,
and try our best to make amends, and earnestly
and sincerely devote ourselves henceforth to the
larger life of loving service of God and our fellow-
men, we have the repeated promises of God, the
incarnate witness of Christ, the outstretched hand
of all who have the Christian Spirit, welcoming us
like the returning prodigal to the Father's house
and the better life. Though, alas ! there are many
self-constituted Christians of the elder brother type,
who have never entered into the life of love which
animates the Father's heart and home ; and these
as of old will be found grumbling and criticising
the sinner for presuming to come, and the Father
for his eagerness to welcome him. These people,
who think they love righteousness more than they
love persons, are the greatest obstacles to the
coming of the kingdom of heaven. They neither
go in themselves, nor, if they could help it, would
suffer others to enter. It is the difficulty of
getting by this self-righteous crowd, that block
all the avenues of forgiveness and obstruct all the

312 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

approaches to the throne of grace, that makes bad
men and fallen women despair of ever being really
restored to the favour of God and the fellowship
of the good and pure. It must be confessed that
the number of nominal Christians who really and
practically believe that a sinner can be actually
saved so as to be worthy of admission to their
circle of intimate acquaintance and genuine kind
liness is not large ; and until these Scribes and
Pharisees can be converted into Christians, it is
useless to expect great accessions from the more
hopeful but less presentable classes which we
commonly call vicious and criminal.

To return from the elder brother, with his cold,
hard heart, to the repentant prodigal — his only
chance is, in spite of the hate of the elder brother,
still to believe in the love of the Father ; in spite
of the pitiless Scribes and Pharisees, still to have
faith in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ ; still
to trust the Spirit of Christ as it appears in the
cordial greeting of the few who possess it. Faith
to believe in this proffered restoration, humility
to accept it, hope to be worthy of it, loyalty to the
Christ who brought it, love to the brethren who
transmit it — this is the second step out of the
bondage of sin and the darkness of guilt into the
freedom of the Spirit and the light of the Christian
life.

Persons who are reared in Christian homes and

THE WORLD OF RELIGION 313

trained in Christian institutions ordinarily enter
the kingdom without the explicit consciousness of
the steps so sharply outlined above. At this point,
however, we are dealing with the problem of delib
erate sin and conscious guilt. Out of these expe
riences there is no easier or smoother way than
that of repentance and faith in a humanly mediated
divine forgiveness. Not until he meets the love
of God in the heart of a fellow-man will the indif
ferent or deliberate sinner forsake his way and
open his own heart to the life and love of God.

The first impulse of one who is thus saved from
the dominion of sin into the glorious liberty of the
sons of God is to try to rescue his bound and per
ishing fellows. Then for the first time, although
he may have heard it in words before, he begins to
realize at what a cost Christ redeemed the world
from sin and at what a price his own salvation was
secured. Grace, or favour to the unlovely and un
deserving, is always costly. It incurs the displeasure
of the proud and self-righteous. It cost Jesus his
life. The Saviour has to bear first of all the sor
row which sin always brings to those who feel its
guilt and shame, whether in themselves or in those
they love ; and secondly, the hostility and hate of
those who in the hardness of their hearts wish to
treat sin in the old way of pitiless condemnation
and merciless punishment. This twofold sorrow
formed the cross of Christ ; and every one who

PRACTICAL IDEALISM

manifests the grace of Christ toward concrete sin
and actual sinners will have to bear his part of
this twofold burden of the cross on which his
Lord was crucified. On no easier or cheaper
terms can we search out, and trust in, and appeal
to, and thus reclaim and restore and save, those of
our fellows who have gone astray.

This love which seeks and wins the loathsome
and depraved, the outcast and the defiled, no less
than the attractive, the sweet, the gentle, and the
pure, is the crowning grace of Christian character.
It is the final and most difficult stage in the long
process by which man makes the world without, a
harmonious and triumphant expression of heart and
will within. He who loves his neighbour in the
Christian meaning of the term has conquered the
last enemy of his soul, and planted the banner of
spiritual freedom on the very ramparts of the cita
del of evil. For him there remains no thing and
no event, no act and no person, no repulsiveness
in others or guilt within himself, which he cannot
see in the light and transfigure with the love
which proceeds from the heart and radiates from
the throne of God. To him the world is a spirit
ual whole. In spite of imperfection and friction
and collision here and there, he knows that this
whole is good, capable of becoming better through
his efforts, and destined for the best. He has
come into a direct personal relation with the per-

THE WORLD OF RELIGION 315

sonal God, of whose thought all things are the
expression, and of whose love all persons are the
offspring : a relation which he can realize alike in
the quiet communion of secret prayer or in the
busy routine of social service. Whether it be his
lot to "only stand and wait" in obscure drudgery
and humdrum detail, or whether he be called upon
to face great difficulties and responsibilities on
which the welfare of multitudes depends, he has in
either case the consciousness of membership in
the one glorious kingdom of God and Christ and
the Christian Spirit : he feels in solitude its peace
within his breast and goes forth to his labour armed
and protected by its power.

Thus religion is the practical solution of the
moral problem, as it is the theoretical solution of
the intellectual problem. The union of the will of
man with the universal Will gives the victory over
evil in the same way that union of the mind of
man with the Absolute Mind gives the victory
over doubt. Science and art demand first of all
the surrender of our merely private whims, ca
prices, and prejudices ; and in return for such sur
render they give back universal laws and objective
ideals. In like manner ethical institutions and re
ligious life require first of all the renunciation of
merely selfish satisfactions, however innocent and
excellent they are in themselves, whenever they
conflict with social claims or personal welfare ;

316 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

and in return for such repentance and resignation,
man receives the universal life of identification
with the interests of all his fellows, and participa
tion in the gracious and blessed purposes of God.
He learns the supreme secret of forgiving others,
as he himself is forgiven, through participation in
that universal charity which seeks the highest
good of all men which their characters make
possible for them. He tries to improve their
characters, as he seeks to improve his own, that
they and he together may thus be able more fully
to enter into the kingdom of love and kindness
which stands wide open day and night for all who
seek admission.

In the world of religion, by participation in
the life and love of God, man conquers his last
enemies, — -the evil inherent in the inevitable clash
of finite natural forces ; the evil inherent in the
blindness and hardness of the hearts of other
men ; and the evil inherent in the sinfulness of
his own soul. The world of religion is the world
in which the last opposition is reconciled ; the
world in which man is at peace with nature, with
his fellow-men, and with his own soul, because he
has unreservedly accepted as his own the thought
and love of God which includes and unifies and
reconciles the ultimate diversity of thought and
being, the strife of man with nature, and of man
with man.

THE WORLD OF RELIGION 317

The universal is not the opposite of the particu
lar. They are not mutually exclusive. Neither
can exist apart from the other. The particular
has its existence in the universal, and the uni
versal has its expression through the particular.
Religion and the Christian life, therefore, are the
emptiest abstractions that ever flitted through
visionary brains, when conceived as apart from
practical affairs and aloof from men. It is in the
problems of science and the work of art ; in the
service of our fellows and the duties of our station ;
in the support of our families, and ministration to
the poor and lowly, and the upbuilding of the
community and nation under whose laws and in
stitutions we live, that the true Christian spirit
manifests itself. Yet, as the whole is more than
the sum of its parts, as the body is more than an
aggregate of members, so religion is more than
an accumulation of good works, or the acquisition
of specific virtues and graces. Religion is the
spirit of wholeness or holiness which gathers all
these detached aspects of life up into the unity of
a common principle, and inspires them with the
enthusiasm of a personal affection.

Consequently, though the words of the reli
gious man must be exactly the same as the words
of the scientist on a question of knowledge, and
although his deeds must be exactly the same as
the deeds of a moral man in a matter of ethics, yet

3l8 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

there is an infinite difference between the attitude
of religion, and that of mere science and morality,
toward truth and duty. It is the difference be
tween seeing the particular proposition or the
specific duty as a thing in itself, or at best, as part
of some small section of the world, and seeing
the same proposition or duty in its relations to the
rational universe and the cosmic process, to the
thought and will of God. An illustration will make
the difference clear to all who have been teachers.
There are two sorts of scholars in every class. The
first sort learn each lesson as it comes along, faith
fully, thoroughly, perhaps ; but do not care for
the science or history as a whole. They are not
earnestly striving in and through these successive
lessons to build up within their minds a coherent
and intelligible conception of the historic process
or the natural kingdom with which the lessons have
to do. Now, no matter how thoroughly they learn
their lessons, no matter how glibly they recite, the
discerning teacher knows that this sort of student
will never amount to much. He cannot refuse to
let them go on ; if they are naturally brilliant and
fairly industrious, he has to give them a high mark.
But he knows perfectly well that when they leave
school their education will be ended. They will
at once be caught in the whirl of new interests,
and all their learning will come to naught. An
aggregate of lessons, no matter how well they are

THE WORLD OF RELIGION 319

learned, will never make scholarship. So long as
these lessons are not related to each other, and to
the subject as a whole, within the student's mind,
no amount of study will raise the student to the
rank of scholar.

The better sort of student is he who learns his
lessons to be sure, but who through them all is
striving to gain a growing apprehension of the
subject of which they treat. He is always trying
to see how what he learns to-day stands related
to what he learned yesterday, and forecasting the
nature of what will come to-morrow. This sort
of student may be dull and slow, he may learn
with difficulty and recite with hesitation and con
fusion ; but every wise teacher knows that when
he has found a student of this temper he has got
one who twenty years hence will be a master of
the subject which he is studying. He learns the
lesson for the sake of the subject, and therefore
in due time the subject shall be his. The other
type learns the lesson for its own sake ; and
the day his lessons are over, his education
ends.

So it is with morality and religion. The man
who is merely moral, and nothing more, does his
duties much as the first type of student learns his
lesson. And therefore they remain isolated, un
related atoms in his spiritual life. He does not
grow, except in so far as the fixing of routine is

320 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

a sort of growth. But the enthusiasm, the devo
tion, the loyalty to a supreme Lord, the fellowship
with a divine Master, is not brought out. And
as a natural result, life does not deepen and en
large and intensify as the years go on ; and when
the time comes for him to leave the school of
earth with its special lessons, this man does not
carry forward into the world beyond that eager
zest for service, that unconquerable passion for
righteousness, that inextinguishable fire of love,
which is the guaranty of a blessed immortality.
He is only a school-boy who has recited some few
lessons fairly well ; but the love of learning is not
in him, and for the ripened scholarship of eter
nity he has acquired no taste.

The religious man is like our student of the
second type. He too has learned his lessons well.
For religion that dispenses with morality and con
crete duty is as absurd a thing as the scholarship
that dispenses with study. But in and through
his daily duties he has been entering into fellow
ship with the great purpose, and communion with
the holy will, and participation in the blessed love
of God. Each duty is seen as related to every
other ; as an element in the glorious service of
the one good God. The more he does, the
more he wants to do ; the more he suffers, the
more he is ready to bear ; the more he loves,
the more he is capable of loving. Life for him is

THE WORLD OF RELIGION 32!

a steady march forward, grander, sweeter, nobler
day by day ; and he knows it is too good, too
strong, too precious for death to put an end to,
or for God to permit to pass into nothingness.
It is out of this essentially religious attitude that
is born the hope and confidence that sees through
death to immortality. It is the man who lives
here and now this absolute and universal life, who
has just and reasonable expectations of living
more completely the same life hereafter.

"One who never turned his back, but marched breast

forward,

Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would

triumph,

Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.

" No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time
Greet the unseen with a cheer !

Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
' Strive and thrive! ' cry i Speed, fight on, fare ever
There as here!'"

Religion sees the highest privilege in the low
liest opportunity, because high and low are both
parts of one divine life. God is obeyed or dis
obeyed according as we do or fail to do the hum
blest duty ; Christ is confessed or denied according
as we are kind or cruel to our neighbour, helpful
or indifferent to the little child. Conceived as an
end in itself, a special department of life here, or

322 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

a mere preparation for a life hereafter, religion,
because it is then the most abstract and unreal of
all possible attitudes of mind, becomes the most
useless of the many superfluities that cumber the
crowded soil of modern society. Rightly appre
hended, as the great agency by which is cultivated
and kept alive the spirit of diligence and fidelity to
every task as a part of our worship of God ; loyalty
and devotion to every institution as an element of
our service to Christ ; gentleness and helpfulness
to every fellow-man as a child of God and a brother
of our own, religion will become in the future even
more than in the past, the source and centre of all
that is most noble and generous and sweet and
pure in the conduct and character, the aspiration
and endeavour of mankind.

The development of a deep religious life, in the
light of a sound spiritual philosophy, is the great
task which awaits the American people at the
opening of the twentieth century. In the midst
of our unexampled natural, political, and educa
tional advantages, this is the one thing needful.
All other good gifts either Nature has given us,
or we are in a fair way to work out for ourselves.
Mountains stored with the unspent energy of the
primeval sun, and veined with smelted treasures of
the slow-cooling earth ; streams which catch and
confine gravitation on its way back from the
heavens to the sea ; fields deep with the essential

THE WORLD OF RELIGION 323

elements of the riven rocks, and rich from the
decay through countless ages of myriad vegetable
forms, — these are our natural advantages, fresh
from the hand of God. Traditions of Puritan
piety, tempered with the grace of the Cavalier and
the good nature of the Dutch ; the conservatism
of English institutions, spiced with the radical
speculations of the French ; culture that flows
limpid down from its fountain-head in Greece,
through abundant colleges and secondary schools,
reinforced by ample facilities for technical training
and scientific research, — these are the gifts of the
same God, fashioned in the workshop of history,
and conveyed by the hand of man.

These good gifts have not fallen into unworthy
hands, nor been bestowed in vain. Our rail
roads and furnaces, our factories and farms, our
universities and courts, indicate our enterprise and
thrift. Our comfortable homes and hospitable
tables and happy children are evidence of the sound
morality which beats warm and vigorous in the
great nation's heart. Our hospitals for the sick,
our asylums for the insane, our homes for the
aged, our agencies for finding homes for orphans,
our charities for the poor, our settlements in the
slums, our parks and libraries and galleries free to
the public, show us to be generous withal. Our
churches, built, maintained, and multiplied by pri
vate contributions ; our missions pushed to the

324 PRACTICAL IDEALISM

farthest frontier, and prosecuted in the uttermost
parts of the earth, proclaim us a very religious people.
Yet in the absence of one element more funda
mental and important than all these outward gifts
and graces, these very things lose half their dignity
and worth, and all their sweetness and their charm.
Without this deeper element our business degen
erates into a mad rush for riches ; our politics sink
into a senseless scramble for privilege and place ;
our education deteriorates into a feverish cram
ming of specialized information ; our charities are
converted into parade grounds for bustling busy-
bodies ; our social life is loaded with burdensome
extravagance and foolish ostentation ; even our
religion is corrupted into a hunger for multiplied
activities and a thirst for thrilling sensations.

" And we say that repose has fled
Forever the course of the river of Time ;
That cities will crowd to its edge
In a blacker incessanter line ;
That the din will be more on its banks,
Denser the trade on its stream,
Flatter the plain where it flows,
Fiercer the sun overhead.
That never will those on its breast
See an ennobling sight,
Drink of the feeling of quiet again." 1

This lost repose, this longed-for quiet and tran
quillity, this peace that passeth understanding, this

1 Mathew Arnold, "The Future."

THE WORLD OF RELIGION 325

blessedness which the world can neither give nor
take away, must come to us, if it comes at all,
through the union of the philosophic insight with
the religious spirit. To see life clear and to see it
whole ; to feel the presence of the Infinite in its
lowliest and humblest finite forms ; to do the daily
duty and fulfil the homely task as the particular
points where our hearts greet the Universal Love
and our wills unite with the Divine ; to live one's
private life, however obscure and limited, in the
fellowship of the one only great society, "the
noble living and the noble dead " ; so to speak
and act that in and through these little lives of
ours the voice of the Universal Reason shall find
utterance, and the will of God shall be wrought
out : this union of infinite truth with finite fact ;
this embodiment of the largest purpose in the
smallest things ; this incarnation of the wisdom
of the ages in the service of the hour ; this com
munion with Christ in our dealings with one
another; this thankfulness and joy and blessed
ness in life, neither our storehouses of material
goods and scientific information, nor the buzz and
whirl of our physical and mental machinery can
ever give. These highest blessings can only come
as the fruit of the long-delayed union of a philoso
phy which sees the parts of life in their organic
relation to the whole, and a religion which identifies
the love of God with the service of our fellows.

INDEX

Abstraction a sign of decadence
in art, 116.

Adler, Felix, on the value of
manual training, 188.

Apperception, 22, 25.

Appetites, in themselves good,
become evil when preferred to
greater good, 222.

Appreciation of personality of
others essential to the preser
vation of one's own, 138, 143.

Arbitration, 211.

Arnold, Matthew, on human love,
151 ; on the sinlessness of nat
ure, 259.

Art, compared to science, 113 ; is
synthetic, 113 ; nobler than sci
ence, yet dependent on it, 114;
presents characteristic wholes,
114; expresses ideals in terms
of sense-perception, 114; for
art's sake, 116; in relation to
universal laws, 117; an im
provement upon nature, 118,
129; realism and idealism in,
119; is science reversed, 125;
morality in, 127 ; the freedom
of, 132; reconciling nature and
man, 133.

Artist, as described by Edward
Caird, 118 ; inevitably expresses
his personality in his work, 120 ;
the individuality of each, illus
trated by John La Farge, 121.

Arts, fine and practical, com
pared, 115.

Association, the world of, 36 ; de
fined, 37 ; by contiguity, 37 ; by
similarity, 38.

Avarice, the moral evil of, 264;
the good in it which gives it
strength, 267 ; the remedy for,
270.

Bacteria, an example of natural
evil, 298.

Baldwin, Professor, his descrip
tion of the first sensation, 16.

Berkeley, Bishop, on perception
of distance, 24.

Bible, the expression of the Spirit
of God in literature, 289.

Bosanquet, on inference, 85 ; on
the interdependence of phe
nomena, 87 ; in condemnation
of the " art for art's sake " the
ory, 116; on economic social
ism, 209.

Browning, Robert, on love, 152.

Caird, Edward, his definition of

an artist, 118; on the family,

167.

Canons of investigation, the, 90.
Carlyle on work, 202.
Cause, denned, 86; difficult to

assign specifically, 87 ; finite,

88 ; proximate, 88.

327

328

INDEX

Children, their training in the
family, 173 ; extremes of super
vision or neglect to be avoided,

173. J74-
Church, the, a social institution,

289.

Civil service reform, 217.
Cleanthes' hymn, 301, 302.
Concepts, the formation of, 76-81.
Conclusion of a syllogism, 82;

its truth dependent on its con
formity to the principles of the

syllogism, 82.
Confusion, the, of an infant's

first impressions, 17; analysis

thereof, 17.
Conscience, 255.
Consciousness implies contrast,

18.
Consciousness of kind, 150; the

distinctively human trait, 150 ;

love its expression, 150.
Contiguity and similarity, the

lines along which association

works, 37.
Cowardice, the moral evil of,

264 ; the good which gives it

strength, 267 ; its remedy, 270.
Creed, the, 290, 293.
Currency, 213.

D'Arcy, Charles F., his account
of moral conduct, 237.

Darwin's doctrine of natural se
lection, 102-105 i an example of
scientific reasoning, 102; the
links of his proof of the doc
trine, 103 ; variations and their
inheritance, 103 ; artificial selec
tion, 104 ; enormous fecundity,
104 ; the struggle for existence,
104 ; the survival of the fittest,
104 ; further corroboration of,
105; accepted as a working hy
pothesis, 105 ; an example of
the limitations of science, 106.

Darwinism, its contribution to
philosophy negative only, 108 ;
its alliance with materialism
unwarranted, 108.

Decoration the soul of art, 116.

Descartes' systematic doubt, 40.

Dewey, Professor, 16, 22.

Dewey's definition of memory, 28.

Divorce, 169.

Drawing in public schools, 195.

Dreams, 59; their control, 60;
Emerson on their significance,
61 ; Goethe's comment, 61.

Duty, defined, 251 ; attacks upon
the view of it as relative, 251 ;
defined again, 252; and again,
254; the principle from which
it is derived, 255.

Education, its end the interpreta
tion to the student of nature
and humanity, 177 ; dangers
of a formal education, 187.

Education, the new, 177; its
motive or ideal, 195 ; features
essential to its success, 195;
studies in its programme, 195 ;
results expected from it, 199 ; its
social significance, 200, 201.

Eliot, George, her definition of
sympathy, 143.

Emerson on dreams, 61.

Ethical conceptions, 224 ; hedon
ism stated by John Stuart Mill,
227 ; Professor James1 reply to
the hedonists, 228, 230 ; the true
moral ideal defined, 236 ; sym
pathy, 238-241 ; individuality,
242 ; combined with concentra
tion, 247.

Evil, moral, or vice, 257, 258 ; its
origin, 259 ; to inanimate nat
ure impossible, 259; Matthew
Arnold on the sinlessness of
nature, 259; animals also in
nocent of, 261 ; the animalism

INDEX

329

of Whitman, 262; the problem
of, 294 ; natural evil, 295 ; a
conflict of forces in themselves
good, 295 ; examples of natural
evil, 296-299.
Examinations, 190.

Faith, 312.

" Fall of man," the, a stage of
evolution, 147.

Family, the first and most funda
mental of social institutions,
163 ; its function according to
Mackenzie, 166 ; its signifi
cance expressed by Edward
Caird, 167 ; its integrity and
stability the very foundation of
moral and spiritual order, 169;
undergoing a greater strain as
individuals become more and
more differentiated, 172; the
training of children in, 173 ;
relation of members of, to each
other, 175.

Forgiveness, 306 ; taught by
Christ, 307, 308.

Freedom, 145.

Friendship, the simplest mani
festation of love, 154 ; increases
the range of life, 154 ; its main
tenance the art of life, 155.

Ghosts, 45.

Giddings, Professor, on the con
sciousness of kind, 150.

God, the personality of, 280-282 ;
the idea of, latent in all finite
consciousness, 282; the Being
from whom proceed the laws
of science and morals, ideals
of art and ends of social evo
lution, 283.

Hallucinations, their sources,
48 ; different types of, 49,
50; due to hypnotism, 51.

Heat and expansion, 77.

Hegel, on the spiritual signifi
cance of the love which founds
the family, 165; on danger of
kindergarten methods of edu
cation, 181 ; on the socializing
function of industry, 205.

Herbart, 25.

Hibben, Professor, on the validity
of inference, 83 ; on the dif
ference between induction and
deduction, 84; his definition of
the basis of inference, 86.

Hovvison, Professor, on person
ality, 138 ; on the spiritual man,

139-
Hume and Mill on the validity

of inference, 75.
Hypnotism a method of inducing

hallucinations, 51, 53.
Hypothesis, 71.

Ideal, the, its origin, 114 ; the new
ideal introduced with the world
of persons, 138 ; the moral, 224 ;
intuitionism, stoicism, asceti
cism, 224; as described by
Kant, 225 ; hedonism, stated
by John Stuart Mill, 227; Pro
fessor James' reply to hedon
ism, 228-230; the true ideal
defined, 236; the moral, 236;
has two elements, 237; sym
pathy, 238-241 ; individuality,
242; demands concentration,
243; its social side stated by Pro
fessor Royce, 239 ; defined, 247.

Idealism, practical definition, 6;
and realism in art, 119; ob
jective, same as so-called real
ism in art, 126.

Ideas, origin of, 8 ; innate, 9.

Identity, the principle of, under
lying the syllogism, 82.

Illusion, treated by Descartes, 39 ;
the psychological process the

330

INDEX

same as in perception, 43; an
example experienced by Pro
fessor W. R. Sorley, 43; its
source, 45 ; tests of, 65.
Imagination, 56; Wordsworth's
sonnet on, 58 ; its field, 58 ; in
dreams, 59; its scientific use,
71 ; indispensable to the ad
vancement of science, 131.
Immortality, intimations of, in

the social world, 158.
Inadequacy of the world of sense-
perceptions, 32.
Incarnation, the, 286.
Indifference, the sin of, 148 ; the
largest factor in the production
of evil, 149.
Individuals, mutually exclusive,

162.

Induction, distinguished from de
duction by Professor Hibben,
84 ; methods of, formulated by
John Stuart Mill, 88; method
of difference, 88 ; of residues,
89; of concomitant variations,
89; the joint method, 89.
Industry, organized, in modern
times exerting the power of
a great social institution, 202,
207 ; men's interdependence
on each other's work, 203;
Hegel, on its socializing func
tion, 205 ; its ideal, 210.
Inference, defined, 75 ; its validity,
as upheld by the Empirical
School, 75; discussed by
Professor Hibben, 83 ; illustra
tions of, 91-101 ; Socrates the
first to make explicit use of,
91.
Innocence of primitive man not

a moral quality, 146.
Institutions, unite individuals in
a social order, 163 ; are to per
sons what natural laws are to
facts, 163 ; first among them is

the family, 163 ; second, is the
school, 175.

Intemperance, the evil of, 265 ;
the good in it which gives it
strength, 268; its remedy, 271.

Interdependence of all phenom
ena, 86 ; illustrated by Bosan-
quet, 87.

Interpretation of the personality
of others by our own, 143.

Introduction, 3.

Intuitionism, 224; closely affili
ated with stoicism, asceticism,
etc., 224; set forth by Kant,
225 ; also termed legalism, 235.

Isolation of things or events an
impossibility, 36.

James, Professor, on the truth
that every man builds his own
world, 4; describing the first
sensation, 16; on the forming
of the concept, 81.

Jones, Henry, on love, 156.

Kant, his great achievement, 14;
his view of the moral ideal, 224.

Kindergarten, the, its office, 178-
180 ; the dangers in its method
stated by Hegel, 181.

Knowledge, the factors in its
production, 13, 14; its source,
15 ; of qualities precedes that of
things, 19 ; Browning's defini
tion, of, 23 ; which should be
imparted by the public schools,

2OI.

La Farge, his illustration of the
inevitable, unconscious expres
sion of the artist's personality
in his work, 121.

Laissez-faire and socialism, 208 ;
cruel and impracticable, 208.

Law, empirical, 76; logical or
scientific, 76 ; universal, 77, 79 ;

INDEX

331

exceptions to, 80 ; a uniform
and constant expression of our
own intellectual nature, 131 ;
moral, is as essential an expres
sion of human life as natural
law is of physical nature, 129 ;
all, resolves itself into the one,
fundamental law of love, 254.

Laws, of thought, 82 ; the law of
identity, 82; of contradiction,
82; of excluded middle, 82;
natural, compared to the bones
of the skeleton, science, 112;
having no life apart from the
flesh and blood of concrete
facts and forces, 112; their
power to control facts and
forces through ideals is not
science, but art, 112.

Leibnitz, on truth, 10 ; his cor
rection of Locke's one-sided
view of the senses, 12.

Licentiousness, the moral evil of,
265 ; the good in it which gives
it strength, 268; the remedy
for, 271-273.

Limitation, the principle of, 244,
246.

Literature, the great exponent of
the life of love, 158 ; the inter
pretation of life, 158 ; the im
mense spiritual significance of
its power of interpretation , 159 ;
and philology, 160; in school,

193, 194.

Locke, 7 ; father of British ma
terialism, 9; his account of
sensation, 10 ; his doctrine of
the passivity of mind, n; his
one-sided view corrected by
Leibnitz and Kant, 12.

Logic, treatises on, by Jevons,
Hibben, Bosanquet, Sigwart,
Bradley, 69.

Love, the practical expression of
the consciousness of kind, 150 ;

the creator of the social world,
157; as represented by Mat
thew Arnold, 151 ; by Robert
Browning, 152 ; by Words
worth, 153 ; by Henry Jones,
156 ; by Schopenhauer, 164 ; by
Hegel, 165; its manifestation
in friendship, 154; its great
exponent is literature, 158;
three essential forms under
which the spirit of love works
to build the social world, 161.
Lying, 254.

Mackenzie on the family, 166.

Man, his kinship to nature, 132;
their relation to a common
principle, 132 ; lower and
higher than brute, 148.

Manual training, an essential
feature of the social mission of
common schools, 187 ; recom
mended by Felix Adler, 188 ;
its effect on the child, 188.

Marriage, a blessing or a calam
ity, 169 ; growing at once better
and worse, 170.

Materialism, its alliance with
Darwinism unwarranted, 108.

Mathematical reasoning, 80.

Mechanic arts and fine arts, 115.

Mediation through concept, 76.

Memory, described by Professor
Dewey, 28; an extended and
more enduring form of percep
tion, 30; its limitations, 30.

Mental therapeutics, 54.

Mill, John Stuart, methods of
induction formulated by him,
88 ; his statement of hedonism,
227.

Mind, its subconscious states and
functions, 54 ; its power to form
the general concept, 81.

Moral evil, its first appearance as
naughtiness in the child, 262,

332

INDEX

263; it is the deliberate choice
of the lesser good, 263 ; all
forms of, as cowardice, avarice,
drunkenness, licentiousness,
are the sacrifice of large inter
ests to small, 264-269 ; the
source of its power, 266; it
persists for the same reason
that iron ships float, 266 ; with
out a kernel of good in, it
could not exist, 269 ; the rem
edy for, 269; persistence in,
275 ; morality prescribes a
remedy for, 275; religion in
duces the taking the remedy
for, 276.

Morality, in art, 127; an essen
tial truth of, the inferior natural
good becomes the morally bad,
223 ; D'Arcy's account of moral
conduct, 237 ; unconscious con
formity to custom involves no
question of, 220 ; the modern
man cannot occupy any such
neutral ground, 221 ; the neces
sity of choice between conflict
ing interests, 222 ; and religion,
275, 276.

Moral law as essential an expres
sion of human life as natural
law is of physical nature, 129.

Moral quality, the, of an act is
relative, 244.

Moral socialism and economic
individualism, 208.

Murder, 253 ; in its deepest sense
includes everything that tends
to injure health, 253.

Natural selection, Darwin's doc
trine of, a good example of
scientific reasoning, 102-105 ;
the history of the idea, 102;
the links of Darwin's proof,
103 ; variations and their in
heritance, 103; artificial selec

tion, 104 ; enormous fecundity,
104 ; the struggle for existence,
104 ; the survival of the fittest,
104; its further corroboration,
105 ; and acceptance as a work
ing hypothesis, 105 ; an example
also of the limitations of sci
ence, 106 ; it offers no ultimate
explanation of phenomena, 106.

Nature, akin to man, 132; their
relation to a common principle,
132; and man, reconciled in
science and art, 133.

Need, the great present, 325 ; to
see life as a whole, 325 ; to
serve God in our relations to
each other, 325.

Observation, 70, 72.

Origin of species by natural selec
tion, — the doctrine as proved
by Darwin a good example of
scientific reasoning, 102 ; the
links of his proof, 103 ; varia
tions and their inheritance, 103 ;
artificial selection, 104; enor
mous fecundity, 104 ; the strug
gle for existence, 104 ; the sur
vival of the fittest, 104 ; its
further corroboration, 105 ; its
general acceptance, 105.

Patriotism, 213.

Paulsen on reason in men and
animals, 74.

Pensions, 226.

Perception, defined, 22; of dis
tance described, 24; its origin,
20; and growth, 21; its place,
as defined by Professor Dewey,
22; discriminated from illusion,
65 ; tests for either, 65, 66.

Personality, the unconscious ex
pression of, illustrated by John
La Farge, 121 ; the quality of,
described by Professor Howi-

INDEX

333

son, 138 ; a recognition of its
right in others necessary to the
proper preservation of our own,
138, 140, 141, 143 ; quotations
from Professor Howison and
Professor Royce on the sub
ject, 138, 141 ; its gradual
development described by
Tennyson, 140; our interpre
tation of that of others by our
own, 143.
Persons less tractable than things,

137-

Plato's Gorgias quoted as an
illustration of the process of
inference, 91-101.

Practical Idealism denned, 6.

Primitive man, 145 ; guided by
two forces only, 145 ; uncon
scious of good or evil, 146; his
acts therefore not morally good
or bad, 146 ; Matthew Arnold's
sonnet to, 219.

Principle, a, to which both Nat
ure and Man are related, 132 ;
suggested by science and art,
131-

Problem, the moral, 221 ; its root
lies in a collision of conflicting
interests, 222.

Psychology, treatises on, by Bald
win, Ladd, Dewey, James, and
Titchener, 16.

Public Schools, their curriculum,
193-195 ; the present a critical
time for, 196; their social mis
sion, 198 ; dangers threatening
them, 196, 197 ; results expected
from their instruction, 199-201 ;
punishment, 305.

" R's, the three," instruments, not
the substance.of education, 183 ;
indispensable, 184 ; the mere
shell of learning, 186.

Realism in art, a psychological

impossibility, 119 ; every pict
ure is modified by the atten
tion of the artist, 120 ; the truth
which the term is intended to
express, 124.

Reality, the test of, 65 ; sought
but not found in the presenta
tions of sense-perception, 130 ;
nor in the freer ones of fancy
and illusion, 130; but united in
science with the rationality of
self, revealing the rationality of
the world and the reality of our
own intelligence, 131.

Reason the creator of the natural
world, 151, 157.

Reasoning, its essence, 73; human
and animal reasoning, 74;
Paulsen's distinction between
them, 74; its validity, 81.

Recapitulations, 62, 120, 277.

Reconstruction of wholes when
only parts are given involves
liability to error, 39.

Religion, the ultimate unification
of life, 278 ; its object God,
280 ; and science, 292 ; and
morality, the difference be
tween, 318 ; illustration thereof,
318-320.

Repentance, 310.

Rites and ceremonies, 288, 290;
their tendency to lose spiritual
significance, 291.

Royce, Professor, on recognizing
the personality of others, 141.

Rules of conduct relative to the
end and to the circumstances
of the individual, 247-250.

Sacraments, the, 290.

Sacrifice, 313.

Salvation, 313.

School, the, ranks among social
institutions next to the family,
175 ; its function in the life of

334

INDEX

the child, 176; the interpreta
tion of nature and humanity,
117; the grammar, 185; mod
ern languages and physical
science in the grades of, 191 ;
the public, 185; manual train
ing essential to their social
mission, 187; flexible pro
grammes and frequent pro
motions also essential, 189;
efficient examinations, 190 ;
the ideal programme, 191.
Schopenhauer on love, 164.
Science, its beginning, 69; its
limitations illustrated by Dar
win's doctrine of natural se
lection, 106; its testimony to
the existence of precise and
immutable laws, 109 ; an objec
tive reality akin to our intelli
gence, in; not an ultimate
reality, in; compared to a
skeleton of which the natural
laws are the bones, 112; deals
with essential elements, 114; is
analytic, 113 ; deals with essen
tial elements, 114; brings facts
of sense-perception under con
cepts and laws, 114; can make
no advances without the free
use of the imagination, 121 ;
and religion, 292.
Scientific reasoning, the canons
of, 90; illustration of, from
Plato, 19; from Darwin, 102.
Self-identification with the uni
versal realm of personal inter
ests and claims, through faithful
performance of one's special
function, is the principle from
which all duties are derived, on
which all laws are based, 255.
Self-realization man's ultimate

end, 236.

Sensation, number of elementary
qualities of, 3; Locke's ac

count of it, 10 ; as a factor of
knowledge, 13, 14; the first, 16;
defined by Professor Baldwin,
16; described by Professor
James, 16; confined to one
moment of time, 19; its sig
nificance determined by previ
ous experience, 25 ; its reaction
on the receiving power of the
mind, a modern conception,
25 ; its office, 35.
Sense-perception, the world of,
7 ; its bondage and arbitrari
ness, 32; its inadequacy, 33 ;
its defect, as stated by Aris
totle, 72 ; the basis of empiri
cal law, 76.
Service, 315.
Sidgwick, Professor Henry, on

telepathy, 51.

Sigwart, Dr., on induction, 85.
Sin in ourselves, 309, 310.
Socialism, and Laissez-faire com
pared, 208 ; equally cruel and
impracticable, 208 ; economic,
described by Bosanquet, 209.
Society, the, for Psychical Re
search, 46, 47; becoming in
creasingly complex, 172.
Socrates the first to make ex
plicit use of the process of
inference, 91.
Sorley, W. R., his experience of

illusion, 43.
Space and time, like two strings,

tie together sensations, 20, 68.
Stability sought in science and

its laws, 130.

State, the, as the field of man's
fullest realization of himself,
210, 217 ; its chief dangers,
213 ; some of the demands it
makes on the patriotism of the
individual, 213-217.
Suggestion in hypnotism, 51 ; in
mental healing, 54.

INDEX

335

Syllogism, the.the principles of, 82.
Sympathy defined by George
Eliot, 143.

Taxation, 214.

Telepathy, apparently genuine
cases of, 51.

Temptation always takes the form
of something good, 273.

Theft, 254.

The True, the Beautiful, and the
Good, 139.

Titchener, Professor, 3.

Training, the, of children, 173.

Treason against the state in
modern times, 215.

Truth absolute and universal, 79.

Truths of science, how deter
mined, 89.

Tyndall on Imagination, 71.

Unity obtained by Philosophy's
reduction of the manifold,
137-

Vengeance, 304.

Vice is meanness, the choice of
the lesser good, 257, 258.

Virtue, in the abstract, an un
profitable subject for discus
sion, 257 ; Hegel's comment on
such discourse, 257.

Vision of a man, the, elements in
the experience of, 62-65.

Volcanoes an example of nat
ural evil, 296, 297.

War and arbitration, 211.
Whitman, Walt, his gospel of

animalism, 262.
Wickedness of men, 303 ; arises

from a conflict of interests un

equally good, and the choice
of the inferior, 304.

Women, in modern life, the great
danger threatening them, 244;
their vital relation to the wel
fare of the race, 245.

Wordsworth on love, 153.

Work, its social significance, 203 ;
Carlyle on the blessedness of
work, 202 ; Professor Harris
on men's interdependence on
each other's work, 203.

World, of Art, the, 113; of Asso
ciation, the, 36; of Institutions,
the, 162 ; bridges the gulf be
tween separate individualities,
163 ; of Morality, the, 219 ; of
persons, the, more difficult to
analyze than the world of Sci
ence or of Art, 137 ; of Religion,
the, 277 ; not a world apart,
280 ; the deeper unity in which
the other special aspects of the
world inhere, 280 ; of Science,
the, 68 ; of Sense-perception,
the, 7 ; an organism of ration
ally related members, 90 ; a
unity, consistent and rational,
109 ; of Science compared to a
skeleton, 112; of Art compared
to the living flesh and blood,
113 ; the natural, 7 ; created by
reason, 157 ; the social, created
by love, 157 ; impossible with
out individual members, 158 ;
three essential forms through
which the spirit of love does
its creating work, 161 ; becom
ing increasingly complex, 171 ;
the spiritual, 137.

World-process, the, not fixed but
fluid, 36.

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