{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_16712/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_16712","id":"gutenberg_16712","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16712","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Locke, John, 1632-1704","Philosophy","Philosophy, Modern"],"text":"Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Michael Ciesielski and the\nOnline Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net\n\n\n\n\n\nSOME TURNS OF THOUGHT IN\nMODERN PHILOSOPHY\n\n_Five Essays_\n\n\nBY\n\n\nGEORGE SANTAYANA\n\n\nNEW YORK\nCHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS\n1933\n\n\n\n\nPublished under the auspices of\nTHE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE\n\nPRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\nI. Locke and the Frontiers of Common Sense                      page 1\n\nPaper read before the Royal Society of Literature on the\noccasion of the Tercentenary of the birth of John Locke.\nWith some Supplementary Notes\n\n\nII. Fifty Years of British Idealism                                 48\n\nReflections on the republication of Bradley's _Ethical Studies_\n\n\nIII. Revolutions in Science                                         71\n\nSome Comments on the Theory of Relativity and the new Physics\n\n\nIV. A Long Way Round to Nirvana                                     87\n\nDevelopment of a suggestion found in Freud's _Beyond the\nPleasure Principle_\n\n\nV. The Prestige of the Infinite                                    102\n\nA review of Julien Benda's _Sketch of a consistent theory of\nthe relations between God and the World_\n\n\nThe Author's acknowledgments are due to the Editors of _The New Adelphi_,\n_The Dial_, and the _Journal of Philosophy_, in which one or more of these\nEssays originally appeared.\n\n\n\n\nI\n\nLOCKE AND THE FRONTIERS OF COMMON SENSE[1]\n\n\nA good portrait of Locke would require an elaborate background. His is not\na figure to stand statuesquely in a void: the pose might not seem grand\nenough for bronze or marble. Rather he should be painted in the manner of\nthe Dutch masters, in a sunny interior, scrupulously furnished with all\nthe implements of domestic comfort and philosophic enquiry: the Holy Bible\nopen majestically before him, and beside it that other revelation--the\nterrestrial globe. His hand might be pointing to a microscope set for\nexamining the internal constitution of a beetle: but for the moment his\neye should be seen wandering through the open window, to admire the\nblessings of thrift and liberty manifest in the people so worthily busy in\nthe market-place, wrong as many a monkish notion might be that still\ntroubled their poor heads. From them his enlarged thoughts would easily\npass to the stout carved ships in the river beyond, intrepidly setting\nsail for the Indies, or for savage America. Yes, he too had travelled, and\nnot only in thought. He knew how many strange nations and false religions\nlodged in this round earth, itself but a speck in the universe. There were\nfew ingenious authors that he had not perused, or philosophical\ninstruments that he had not, as far as possible, examined and tested; and\nno man better than he could understand and prize the recent discoveries of\n\"the incomparable Mr Newton\". Nevertheless, a certain uneasiness in that\nspare frame, a certain knitting of the brows in that aquiline countenance,\nwould suggest that in the midst of their earnest eloquence the\nphilosopher's thoughts might sometimes come to a stand. Indeed, the\nvisible scene did not exhaust the complexity of his problem; for there was\nalso what he called \"the scene of ideas\", immaterial and private, but\noften more crowded and pressing than the public scene. Locke was the\nfather of modern psychology, and the birth of this airy monster, this\nhalf-natural changeling, was not altogether easy or fortunate.[2]\n\nI wish my erudition allowed me to fill in this picture as the subject\ndeserves, and to trace home the sources of Locke's opinions, and their\nimmense influence. Unfortunately, I can consider him--what is hardly\nfair--only as a pure philosopher: for had Locke's mind been more profound,\nit might have been less influential. He was in sympathy with the coming\nage, and was able to guide it: an age that confided in easy, eloquent\nreasoning, and proposed to be saved, in this world and the next, with as\nlittle philosophy and as little religion as possible. Locke played in the\neighteenth century very much the part that fell to Kant in the nineteenth.\nWhen quarrelled with, no less than when embraced, his opinions became a\npoint of departure for universal developments. The more we look into the\nmatter, the more we are impressed by the patriarchal dignity of Locke's\nmind. Father of psychology, father of the criticism of knowledge, father\nof theoretical liberalism, god-father at least of the American political\nsystem, of Voltaire and the Encyclopaedia, at home he was the ancestor of\nthat whole school of polite moderate opinion which can unite liberal\nChristianity with mechanical science and with psychological idealism. He\nwas invincibly rooted in a prudential morality, in a rationalised\nProtestantism, in respect for liberty and law: above all he was deeply\nconvinced, as he puts it, \"that the handsome conveniences of life are\nbetter than nasty penury\". Locke still speaks, or spoke until lately,\nthrough many a modern mind, when this mind was most sincere; and two\nhundred years before Queen Victoria he was a Victorian in essence.\n\nA chief element in this modernness of Locke was something that had hardly\nappeared before in pure philosophy, although common in religion: I mean,\nthe tendency to deny one's own presuppositions--not by accident or\ninadvertently, but proudly and with an air of triumph. Presuppositions are\nimposed on all of us by life itself: for instance the presupposition that\nlife is to continue, and that it is worth living. Belief is born on the\nwing and awakes to many tacit commitments. Afterwards, in reflection, we\nmay wonder at finding these presuppositions on our hands and, being\nignorant of the natural causes which have imposed them on the animal mind,\nwe may be offended at them. Their arbitrary and dogmatic character will\ntempt us to condemn them, and to take for granted that the analysis which\nundermines them is justified, and will prove fruitful. But this critical\nassurance in its turn seems to rely on a dubious presupposition, namely,\nthat human opinion must always evolve in a single line, dialectically,\nprovidentially, and irresistibly. It is at least conceivable that the\nopposite should sometimes be the case. Some of the primitive\npresuppositions of human reason might have been correct and inevitable,\nwhilst the tendency to deny them might have sprung from a plausible\nmisunderstanding, or the exaggeration of a half-truth: so that the\ncritical opinion itself, after destroying the spontaneous assumptions on\nwhich it rested, might be incapable of subsisting.\n\nIn Locke the central presuppositions, which he embraced heartily and\nwithout question, were those of common sense. He adopted what he calls a\n\"plain, historical method\", fit, in his own words, \"to be brought into\nwell-bred company and polite conversation\". Men, \"barely by the use of\ntheir natural faculties\", might attain to all the knowledge possible or\nworth having. All children, he writes, \"that are born into this world,\nbeing surrounded with bodies that perpetually and diversely affect them\"\nhave \"a variety of ideas imprinted\" on their minds. \"External material\nthings as objects of Sensation, and the operations of our own minds as\nobjects of Reflection, are to me\", he continues, \"the only originals from\nwhich all our ideas take their beginnings.\" \"Every act of sensation\", he\nwrites elsewhere, \"when duly considered, gives us an equal view of both\nparts of nature, the corporeal and the spiritual. For whilst I know, by\nseeing or hearing,... that there is some corporeal being without me, the\nobject of that sensation, I do more certainly know that there is some\nspiritual being within me that sees and hears.\"\n\nResting on these clear perceptions, the natural philosophy of Locke falls\ninto two parts, one strictly physical and scientific, the other critical\nand psychological. In respect to the composition of matter, Locke accepted\nthe most advanced theory of his day, which happened to be a very old one:\nthe theory of Democritus that the material universe contains nothing but a\nmultitude of solid atoms coursing through infinite space: but Locke added\na religious note to this materialism by suggesting that infinite space, in\nits sublimity, must be an attribute of God. He also believed what few\nmaterialists would venture to assert, that if we could thoroughly examine\nthe cosmic mechanism we should see the demonstrable necessity of every\ncomplication that ensues, even of the existence and character of mind: for\nit was no harder for God to endow matter with the power of thinking than\nto endow it with the power of moving.\n\nIn the atomic theory we have a graphic image asserted to describe\naccurately, or even exhaustively, the intrinsic constitution of things, or\ntheir primary qualities. Perhaps, in so far as physical hypotheses must\nremain graphic at all, it is an inevitable theory. It was first suggested\nby the wearing out and dissolution of all material objects, and by the\nspecks of dust floating in a sunbeam; and it is confirmed, on an enlarged\nscale, by the stellar universe as conceived by modern astronomy. When\ntoday we talk of nuclei and electrons, if we imagine them at all, we\nimagine them as atoms. But it is all a picture, prophesying what we might\nsee through a sufficiently powerful microscope; the important\nphilosophical question is the one raised by the other half of Locke's\nnatural philosophy, by optics and the general criticism of perception. How\nfar, if at all, may we trust the images in our minds to reveal the nature\nof external things?\n\nOn this point the doctrine of Locke, through Descartes,[3] was also\nderived from Democritus. It was that all the sensible qualities of things,\nexcept position, shape, solidity, number and motion, were only ideas in\nus, projected and falsely regarded as lodged in things. In the things,\nthese imputed or secondary qualities were simply powers, inherent in their\natomic constitution, and calculated to excite sensations of that character\nin our bodies. This doctrine is readily established by Locke's plain\nhistorical method, when applied to the study of rainbows, mirrors, effects\nof perspective, dreams, jaundice, madness, and the will to believe: all of\nwhich go to convince us that the ideas which we impulsively assume to be\nqualities of objects are always, in their seat and origin, evolved in our\nown heads.\n\nThese two parts of Locke's natural philosophy, however, are not in perfect\nequilibrium. _All_ the feelings and ideas of an animal must be equally\nconditioned by his organs and passions,[4] and he cannot be aware of what\ngoes on beyond him, except as it affects his own life.[5] How then could\nLocke, or could Democritus, suppose that his ideas of space and atoms were\nless human, less graphic, summary, and symbolic, than his sensations of\nsound or colour? The language of science, no less than that of sense,\nshould have been recognised to be a human language; and the nature of\nanything existent collateral with ourselves, be that collateral existence\nmaterial or mental, should have been confessed to be a subject for faith\nand for hypothesis, never, by any possibility, for absolute or direct\nintuition.\n\nThere is no occasion to take alarm at this doctrine as if it condemned us\nto solitary confinement, and to ignorance of the world in which we live.\nWe see and know the world through our eyes and our intelligence, in visual\nand in intellectual terms: how else should a world be seen or known which\nis not the figment of a dream, but a collateral power, pressing and alien?\nIn the cognisance which an animal may take of his surroundings--and surely\nall animals take such cognisance--the subjective and moral character of\nhis feelings, on finding himself so surrounded, does not destroy their\ncognitive value. These feelings, as Locke says, are signs: to take them\nfor signs is the essence of intelligence. Animals that are sensitive\nphysically are also sensitive morally, and feel the friendliness or\nhostility which surrounds them. Even pain and pleasure are no idle\nsensations, satisfied with their own presence: they violently summon\nattention to the objects that are their source. Can love or hate be felt\nwithout being felt towards something--something near and potent, yet\nexternal, uncontrolled, and mysterious? When I dodge a missile or pick a\nberry, is it likely that my mind should stop to dwell on its pure\nsensations or ideas without recognising or pursuing something material?\nAnalytic reflection often ignores the essential energy of mind, which is\noriginally more intelligent than sensuous, more appetitive and dogmatic\nthan aesthetic. But the feelings and ideas of an active animal cannot help\nuniting internal moral intensity with external physical reference; and the\nnatural conditions of sensibility require that perceptions should owe\ntheir existence and quality to the living organism with its moral bias,\nand that at the same time they should be addressed to the external objects\nwhich entice that organism or threaten it.\n\nAll ambitions must be defeated when they ask for the impossible. The\nambition to know is not an exception; and certainly our perceptions cannot\ntell us how the world would look if nobody saw it, or how valuable it\nwould be if nobody cared for it. But our perceptions, as Locke again said,\nare sufficient for our welfare and appropriate to our condition. They are\nnot only a wonderful entertainment in themselves, but apart from their\nsensuous and grammatical quality, by their distribution and method of\nvariation, they may inform us most exactly about the order and mechanism\nof nature. We see in the science of today how completely the most accurate\nknowledge--proved to be accurate by its application in the arts--may shed\nevery pictorial element, and the whole language of experience, to become a\npure method of calculation and control. And by a pleasant compensation,\nour aesthetic life may become freer, more self-sufficing, more humbly\nhappy in itself: and without trespassing in any way beyond the modesty of\nnature, we may consent to be like little children, chirping our human\nnote; since the life of reason in us may well become science in its\nvalidity, whilst remaining poetry in its texture.\n\nI think, then, that by a slight re-arrangement of Locke's pronouncements\nin natural philosophy, they could be made inwardly consistent, and still\nfaithful to the first presuppositions of common sense, although certainly\nfar more chastened and sceptical than impulsive opinion is likely to be\nin the first instance.\n\nThere were other presuppositions in the philosophy of Locke besides his\nfundamental naturalism; and in his private mind probably the most\nimportant was his Christian faith, which was not only confident and\nsincere, but prompted him at times to high speculation. He had friends\namong the Cambridge Platonists, and he found in Newton a brilliant example\nof scientific rigour capped with mystical insights. Yet if we consider\nLocke's philosophical position in the abstract, his Christianity almost\ndisappears. In form his theology and ethics were strictly rationalistic;\nyet one who was a Deist in philosophy might remain a Christian in\nreligion. There was no great harm in a special revelation, provided it\nwere simple and short, and left the broad field of truth open in almost\nevery direction to free and personal investigation. A free man and a good\nman would certainly never admit, as coming from God, any doctrine contrary\nto his private reason or political interest; and the moral precepts\nactually vouchsafed to us in the Gospels were most acceptable, seeing\nthat they added a sublime eloquence to maxims which sound reason would\nhave arrived at in any case.\n\nEvidently common sense had nothing to fear from religious faith of this\ncharacter; but the matter could not end there. Common sense is not more\nconvinced of anything than of the difference between good and evil,\nadvantage and disaster; and it cannot dispense with a moral interpretation\nof the universe. Socrates, who spoke initially for common sense, even\nthought the moral interpretation of existence the whole of philosophy. He\nwould not have seen anything comic in the satire of Moliere making his\nchorus of young doctors chant in unison that opium causes sleep because it\nhas a dormitive virtue. The virtues or moral uses of things, according to\nSocrates, were the reason why the things had been created and were what\nthey were; the admirable virtues of opium defined its perfection, and the\nperfection of a thing was the full manifestation of its deepest nature.\nDoubtless this moral interpretation of the universe had been overdone, and\nit had been a capital error in Socrates to make that interpretation\nexclusive and to substitute it for natural philosophy. Locke, who was\nhimself a medical man, knew what a black cloak for ignorance and villainy\nScholastic verbiage might be in that profession. He also knew, being an\nenthusiast for experimental science, that in order to control the movement\nof matter--which is to realise those virtues and perfections--it is better\nto trace the movement of matter materialistically; for it is in the act of\nmanifesting its own powers, and not, as Socrates and the Scholastics\nfancied, by obeying a foreign magic, that matter sometimes assumes or\nrestores the forms so precious in the healer's or the moralist's eyes. At\nthe same time, the manner in which the moral world rests upon the natural,\nthough divined, perhaps, by a few philosophers, has not been generally\nunderstood; and Locke, whose broad humanity could not exclude the moral\ninterpretation of nature, was driven in the end to the view of Socrates.\nHe seriously invoked the Scholastic maxim that nothing can produce that\nwhich it does not contain. For this reason the unconscious, after all,\ncould never have given rise to consciousness. Observation and experiment\ncould not be allowed to decide this point: the moral interpretation of\nthings, because more deeply rooted in human experience, must envelop the\nphysical interpretation, and must have the last word.\n\nIt was characteristic of Locke's simplicity and intensity that he retained\nthese insulated sympathies in various quarters. A further instance of his\nmany-sidedness was his fidelity to pure intuition, his respect for the\ninfallible revelation of ideal being, such as we have of sensible\nqualities or of mathematical relations. In dreams and in hallucinations\nappearances may deceive us, and the objects we think we see may not exist\nat all. Yet in suffering an illusion we must entertain an idea; and the\nmanifest character of these ideas is that of which alone, Locke thinks, we\ncan have certain \"knowledge\".\n\n     \"These\", he writes, \"are two very different things and carefully to\n     be distinguished: it being one thing to perceive and know the idea\n     of white or black, and quite another to examine what kind of\n     particles they must be, and how arranged ... to make any object\n     appear white or black.\" \"A man infallibly knows, as soon as ever he\n     has them in his mind, that the ideas he calls white and round are\n     the very ideas they are, and that they are not other ideas which he\n     calls red or square.... This ... the mind ... always perceives at\n     first sight; and if ever there happen any doubt about it, it will\n     always be found to be about the names and not the ideas\n     themselves.\"\n\nThis sounds like high Platonic doctrine for a philosopher of the Left; but\nLocke's utilitarian temper very soon reasserted itself in this subject.\nMathematical ideas were not only lucid but true: and he demanded this\ntruth, which he called \"reality\", of all ideas worthy of consideration:\nmere ideas would be worthless. Very likely he forgot, in his philosophic\npuritanism, that fiction and music might have an intrinsic charm. Where\nthe frontier of human wisdom should be drawn in this direction was clearly\nindicated, in Locke's day, by Spinoza, who says:\n\n     \"If, in keeping non-existent things present to the imagination, the\n     mind were at the same time aware that those things did not exist,\n     surely it would regard this gift of imagination as a virtue in its\n     own constitution, not as a vice: especially if such an imaginative\n     faculty depended on nothing except the mind's own nature: that is\n     to say, if this mental faculty of imagination were free\".\n\nBut Locke had not so firm a hold on truth that he could afford to play\nwith fancy; and as he pushed forward the claims of human jurisdiction\nrather too far in physics, by assuming the current science to be literally\ntrue, so, in the realm of imagination, he retrenched somewhat illiberally\nour legitimate possessions. Strange that as modern philosophy transfers\nthe visible wealth of nature more and more to the mind, the mind should\nseem to lose courage and to become ashamed of its own fertility. The\nhard-pressed natural man will not indulge his imagination unless it poses\nfor truth; and being half aware of this imposition, he is more troubled at\nthe thought of being deceived than at the fact of being mechanised or\nbeing bored: and he would wish to escape imagination altogether. A good\nGod, he murmurs, could not have made us poets against our will.\n\nAgainst his will, however, Locke was drawn to enlarge the subjective\nsphere. The actual existence of mind was evident: you had only to notice\nthe fact that you were thinking. Conscious mind, being thus known to\nexist directly and independently of the body, was a primary constituent of\nreality: it was a fact on its own account.[6] Common sense seemed to\ntestify to this, not only when confronted with the \"I think, therefore I\nam\" of Descartes, but whenever a thought produced an action. Since mind\nand body interacted,[7] each must be as real as the other and, as it were,\non the same plane of being. Locke, like a good Protestant, felt the right\nof the conscious inner man to assert himself: and when he looked into his\nown mind, he found nothing to define this mind except the ideas which\noccupied it. The existence which he was so sure of in himself was\ntherefore the existence of his ideas.\n\nHere, by an insensible shift in the meaning of the word \"idea\", a\nmomentous revolution had taken place in psychology. Ideas had originally\nmeant objective terms distinguished in thought-images, qualities,\nconcepts, propositions. But now ideas began to mean living thoughts,\nmoments or states of consciousness. They became atoms of mind,\nconstituents of experience, very much as material atoms were conceived to\nbe constituents of natural objects. Sensations became the only objects of\nsensation, and ideas the only objects of ideas; so that the material world\nwas rendered superfluous, and the only scientific problem was now to\nconstruct a universe in terms of analytic psychology. Locke himself did\nnot go so far, and continued to assign physical causes and physical\nobjects to some, at least, of his mental units; and indeed sensations and\nideas could not very well have other than physical causes, the existence\nof which this new psychology was soon to deny: so that about the origin of\nits data it was afterwards compelled to preserve a discreet silence. But\nas to their combinations and reappearances, it was able to invoke the\nprinciple of association: a thread on which many shrewd observations may\nbe strung, but which also, when pressed, appears to be nothing but a\nverbal mask for organic habits in matter.\n\nThe fact is that there are two sorts of unobjectionable psychology,\nneither of which describes a mechanism of disembodied mental states, such\nas the followers of Locke developed into modern idealism, to the\nconfusion of common sense.[8] One unobjectionable sort of psychology is\nbiological, and studies life from the outside. The other sort, relying on\nmemory and dramatic imagination, reproduces life from the inside, and is\nliterary. If the literary psychologist is a man of genius, by the\nclearness and range of his memory, by quickness of sympathy and power of\nsuggestion, he may come very near to the truth of experience, as it has\nbeen or might be unrolled in a human being.[9] The ideas with which Locke\noperates are simply high lights picked out by attention in this nebulous\ncontinuum, and identified by names. Ideas, in the original ideal sense of\nthe word, are indeed the only definite terms which attention can\ndiscriminate and rest upon; but the unity of these units is specious, not\nexistential. If ideas were not logical or aesthetic essences but\nself-subsisting feelings, each knowing itself, they would be insulated for\never; no spirit could ever survey, recognise, or compare them; and mind\nwould have disappeared in the analysis of mind.\n\nThese considerations might enable us, I think, to mark the just frontier\nof common sense even in this debatable land of psychology. All that is\nbiological, observable, and documentary in psychology falls within the\nlines of physical science and offers no difficulty in principle. Nor need\nliterary psychology form a dangerous salient in the circuit of nature. The\ndramatic poet or dramatic historian necessarily retains the presupposition\nof a material world, since beyond his personal memory (and even within it)\nhe has nothing to stimulate and control his dramatic imagination save\nknowledge of the material circumstances in which people live, and of the\nmaterial expression in action or words which they give to their feelings.\nHis moral insight simply vivifies the scene that nature and the sciences\nof nature spread out before him: they tell him what has happened, and his\nheart tells him what has been felt. Only literature can describe\nexperience for the excellent reason that the terms of experience are moral\nand literary from the beginning. Mind is incorrigibly poetical: not\nbecause it is not attentive to material facts and practical exigencies,\nbut because, being intensely attentive to them, it turns them into\npleasures and pains, and into many-coloured ideas. Yet at every turn there\nis a possibility and an occasion for transmuting this poetry into science,\nbecause ideas and emotions, being caused by material events, refer to\nthese events, and record their order.\n\nAll philosophies are frail, in that they are products of the human mind,\nin which everything is essentially reactive, spontaneous, and volatile:\nbut as in passion and in language, so in philosophy, there are certain\ncomparatively steady and hereditary principles, forming a sort of orthodox\nreason, which is or which may become the current grammar of mankind. Of\nphilosophers who are orthodox in this sense, only the earliest or the most\npowerful, an Aristotle or a Spinoza, need to be remembered, in that they\nstamp their language and temper upon human reason itself. The rest of the\northodox are justly lost in the crowd and relegated to the chorus. The\nfrailty of heretical philosophers is more conspicuous and interesting: it\nmakes up the _chronique scandaleuse_ of the mind, or the history of\nphilosophy. Locke belongs to both camps: he was restive in his orthodoxy\nand timid in his heresies; and like so many other initiators of\nrevolutions, he would be dismayed at the result of his work. In intention\nLocke occupied an almost normal philosophic position, rendered precarious\nnot by what was traditional in it, like the categories of substance and\npower, but rather by certain incidental errors--notably by admitting an\nexperience independent of bodily life, yet compounded and evolving in a\nmechanical fashion. But I do not find in him a prickly nest of obsolete\nnotions and contradictions from which, fledged at last, we have flown to\nour present enlightenment. In his person, in his temper, in his\nallegiances and hopes, he was the prototype of a race of philosophers\nnative and dominant among people of English speech, if not in academic\ncircles, at least in the national mind. If we make allowance for a greater\npersonal subtlety, and for the diffidence and perplexity inevitable in the\npresent moral anarchy of the world, we may find this same Lockian\neclecticism and prudence in the late Lord Balfour: and I have myself had\nthe advantage of being the pupil of a gifted successor and, in many ways,\nemulator, of Locke, I mean William James. So great, at bottom, does their\nspiritual kinship seem to me to be, that I can hardly conceive Locke\nvividly without seeing him as a sort of William James of the seventeenth\ncentury. And who of you has not known some other spontaneous, inquisitive,\nunsettled genius, no less preoccupied with the marvellous intelligence of\nsome Brazilian parrot, than with the sad obstinacy of some Bishop of\nWorcester? Here is eternal freshness of conviction and ardour for reform;\ngreat keenness of perception in spots, and in other spots lacunae and\nimpulsive judgments; distrust of tradition, of words, of constructive\nargument; horror of vested interests and of their smooth defenders; a love\nof navigating alone and exploring for oneself even the coasts already well\ncharted by others. Here is romanticism united with a scientific conscience\nand power of destructive analysis balanced by moral enthusiasm. Doubtless\nLocke might have dug his foundations deeper and integrated his faith\nbetter. His system was no metaphysical castle, no theological acropolis:\nrather a homely ancestral manor house built in several styles of\narchitecture: a Tudor chapel, a Palladian front toward the new\ngeometrical garden, a Jacobean parlour for political consultation and\nlearned disputes, and even--since we are almost in the eighteenth\ncentury--a Chinese cabinet full of curios. It was a habitable philosophy,\nand not too inharmonious. There was no greater incongruity in its parts\nthan in the gentle variations of English weather or in the qualified moods\nand insights of a civilised mind. Impoverished as we are, morally and\nhumanly, we can no longer live in such a rambling mansion. It has become a\nnational monument. On the days when it is open we revisit it with\nadmiration; and those chambers and garden walks re-echo to us the clear\ndogmas and savoury diction of the sage--omnivorous, artless,\nloquacious--whose dwelling it was.\n\n\n[1] Paper read before the Royal Society of Literature on the occasion of\nthe Tercentenary of the birth of John Locke.\n\n[2] See note I, p. 26.\n\n[3] See note II, p. 29.\n\n[4] See note III, p. 35.\n\n[5] See note IV, p. 36.\n\n[6] See note V, p. 37.\n\n[7] See note VI, p. 39.\n\n[8] See note VII, p. 43.\n\n[9] See note VIII, p. 46.\n\n\n\n\nSUPPLEMENTARY NOTES\n\n\nI\n\nPage 3. _This airy monster, this half-natural changeling._\n\nMonsters and changelings were pointed to by Locke with a certain\ncontroversial relish: they proved that nature was not compressed or\ncompressible within Aristotelian genera and species, but was a free\nmechanism subject to indefinite change. Mechanism in physics is favourable\nto liberty in politics and morals: each creature has a right to be what it\nspontaneously is, and not what some previous classification alleges that\nit ought to have been. The Protestant and revolutionary independence of\nLocke's mind here gives us a foretaste of Darwin and even of Nietzsche.\nBut Locke was moderate even in his radicalisms. A human nature totally\nfluid would of itself have proved anarchical; but in order to stem that\nnatural anarchy it was fortunately possible to invoke the conditions of\nprosperity and happiness strictly laid down by the Creator. The\nimprovidence and naughtiness of nature was called to book at every turn by\nthe pleasures and pains divinely appended to things enjoined and to things\nforbidden, and ultimately by hell and by heaven. Yet if rewards and\npunishments were attached to human action and feeling in this perfectly\nexternal and arbitrary fashion, whilst the feelings and actions\nspontaneous in mankind counted for nothing in the rule of morals and of\nwisdom, we should be living under the most cruel and artificial of\ntyrannies; and it would not be long before the authority of such a code\nwould be called in question and the reality of those arbitrary rewards and\npunishments would be denied, both for this world and for any other. In a\ntruly rational morality moral sanctions would have to vary with the\nvariation of species, each new race or individual or mode of feeling\nfinding its natural joy in a new way of life. The monsters would not be\nmonsters except to rustic prejudice, and the changelings would be simply\nexperiments in creation. The glee of Locke in seeing nature elude\nscholastic conventions would then lose its savour, since those staid\nconventions themselves would have become obsolete. Nature would henceforth\npresent nothing but pervasive metamorphosis, irresponsible and endless. To\ncorrect the weariness of such pure flux we might indeed invoke the idea of\na progress or evolution towards something always higher and better; but\nthis idea simply reinstates, under a temporal form, the dominance of a\nspecific standard, to which nature is asked to conform. Genera and species\nmight shift and glide into one another at will, but always in the\nauthorised direction. If, on the contrary, transformation had no\npredetermined direction, we should be driven back, for a moral principle,\nto each of the particular types of life generated on the way: as in\nestimating the correctness or beauty of language we appeal to the speech\nand genius of each nation at each epoch, without imposing the grammar of\none language or age upon another. It is only in so far as, in the midst of\nthe flux, certain tropes become organised and recurrent, that any\ninterests or beauties can be transmitted from moment to moment or from\ngeneration to generation. Physical integration is a prerequisite to moral\nintegrity; and unless an individual or a species is sufficiently organised\nand determinate to aspire to a distinguishable form of life, eschewing all\nothers, that individual or species can bear no significant name, can\nachieve no progress, and can approach no beauty or perfection.\n\nThus, so long as in a fluid world there is some measure of life and\norganisation, monsters and changelings will always remain possible\nphysically and regrettable morally. Small deviations from the chosen type\nor the chosen direction of progress will continue to be called morbid and\nugly, and great deviations or reversals will continue to be called\nmonstrous. This is but the seamy side of that spontaneous predilection,\ngrounded in our deepest nature, by which we recognise beauty and nobleness\nat first sight, with immense refreshment and perfect certitude.\n\n\nII\n\nPage 8. _Through Descartes._\n\nVery characteristic was the tireless polemic which Locke carried on\nagainst Descartes. The outraged plain facts had to be defended against\nsweeping and arbitrary theories. There were no innate ideas or maxims:\nchildren were not born murmuring that things equal to the same thing were\nequal to one another: and an urchin knew that pain was caused by the\npaternal slipper before he reflected philosophically that everything must\nhave a cause. Again, extension was not the essence of matter, which must\nbe solid as well, to be distinguishable from empty space. Finally,\nthinking was not the essence of the soul: a man, without dying, might lose\nconsciousness: this often happened, or at least could not be prevented\nfrom happening by a definition framed by a French philosopher. These\nprotests were evidently justified by common sense: yet they missed the\nspeculative radicalism and depth of the Cartesian doctrines, which had\nstruck the keynotes of all modern philosophy and science: for they\nassumed, for the first time in history, the transcendental point of view.\nNo wonder that Locke could not do justice to this great novelty: Descartes\nhimself did not do so, but ignored his subjective first principles in the\ndevelopment of his system; and it was not until adopted by Kant, or rather\nby Fichte, that the transcendental method showed its true colours. Even\ntoday philosophers fumble with it, patching soliloquy with physics and\nphysics with soliloquy. Moreover, Locke's misunderstandings of Descartes\nwere partly justified by the latter's verbal concessions to tradition and\nauthority. A man who has a clear head, and like Descartes is rendered by\nhis aristocratic pride both courteous and disdainful, may readily conform\nto usage in his language, and even in his personal sentiments, without\ntaking either too seriously: he is not struggling to free his own mind,\nwhich is free already, nor very hopeful of freeing that of most people.\nThe innate ideas were not explicit thoughts but categories employed\nunwittingly, as people in speaking conform to the grammar of the\nvernacular without being aware that they do so. As for extension being the\nessence of matter, since matter existed and was a substance, it would\nalways have been more than its essence: a sort of ether the parts of which\nmight move and might have different and calculable dynamic values. The\ngist of this definition of matter was to clear the decks for scientific\ncalculation, by removing from nature the moral density and moral magic\nwith which the Socratic philosophy had encumbered it. Science would be\nemployed in describing the movements of bodies, leaving it for the senses\nand feelings to appreciate the cross-lights that might be generated in the\nprocess. Though not following the technique of Descartes, the physics of\nour own day realises his ideal, and traces in nature a mathematical\ndynamism, perfectly sufficient for exact prevision and mechanical art.\n\nSimilarly, in saying that the essence of the soul was to think, Descartes\ndetached consciousness, or actual spirit, from the meshes of all unknown\norganic or invented mental mechanisms. It was an immense clarification and\nliberation in its proper dimension: but this pure consciousness was not a\nsoul; it was not the animal psyche, or principle of organisation, life,\nand passion--a principle which, according to Descartes, was material. To\nhave called such a material principle the soul would have shocked all\nChristian conceptions; but if Descartes had abstained from giving that\nconsecrated name to mere consciousness, he need not have been wary of\nmaking the latter intermittent and evanescent, as it naturally is. He was\ndriven to the conclusion that the soul can never stop thinking, by the\ndesire to placate orthodox opinion, and his own Christian sentiments, at\nthe expense of attributing to actual consciousness a substantial\nindependence and a directive physical force which were incongruous with\nit: a force and independence perfectly congruous with the Platonic soul,\nwhich had been a mythological being, a supernatural spirit or daemon or\nincubus, incarnate in the natural world, and partly dominating it. The\nrelations of such a soul to the particular body or bodies which it might\nweave for itself on earth, to the actions which it performed through such\nbodies, and to the current of its own thoughts, then became questions for\ntheology, or for a moralistic theory of the universe. They were questions\nremote from the preoccupations of the modern mind; yet it was not possible\neither for Locke or for Descartes to clear their fresh conceptions\naltogether from those ancient dreams.\n\nWhat views precisely did Locke oppose to these radical tendencies of\nDescartes?\n\nIn respect to the nature of matter, I have indicated above the position\nof Locke: pictorially he accepted an ordinary atomism; scientifically, the\nphysics of Newton.\n\nOn the other two points Locke's convictions were implicit rather than\nspeculative: he resisted the Cartesian theories without much developing\nhis own, as after all was natural in a critic engaged in proving that our\nnatural faculties were not intended for speculation. All knowledge came\nfrom experience, and no man could know the savour of a pineapple without\nhaving tasted it. Yet this savour, according to Locke, did not reside at\nfirst in the pineapple, to be conveyed on contact to the palate and to the\nmind; but it was generated in the process of gustation; or perhaps we\nshould rather say that it was generated in the mind on occasion of that\nprocess. At least, then, in respect to secondary qualities, and to all\nmoral values, the terms of human knowledge were not drawn from the objects\nencountered in the world, but from an innate sensibility proper to the\nhuman body or mind. Experience--if this word meant the lifelong train of\nideas which made a man's moral being--was not a source of knowledge but\nwas knowledge (or illusion) itself, produced by organs endowed with a\nspecial native sensibility in contact with varying external stimuli. This\nconclusion would then not have contradicted, but exactly expressed, the\ndoctrine of innate categories.\n\nAs to the soul, which might exist without thinking, Locke still called it\nan immaterial substance: not so immaterial, however, as not to be conveyed\nbodily with him in his coach from London to Oxford. Although, like Hobbes,\nLocke believed in the power of the English language to clarify the human\nintellect, he here ignored the advice of Hobbes to turn that befuddling\nLatin phrase into plain English. Substance meant body: immaterial meant\nbodiless: therefore immaterial substance meant bodiless body. True,\nsubstance had not really meant body for Aristotle or the Schoolmen; but\nwho now knew or cared what anything had meant for them? Locke scornfully\nrefused to consider what a substantial form may have signified; and in\nstill maintaining that he had a soul, and calling it a spiritual\nsubstance, he was probably simply protesting that there was something\nliving and watchful within his breast, the invisible moral agent in all\nhis thoughts and actions. It was _he_ that had them and did them; and this\nself of his was far from being reducible to a merely logical impersonal\nsubject, an \"I think\" presupposed in all thought: for what would this \"I\nthink\" have become when it was not thinking? On the other hand it mattered\nvery little what the _substance_ of a thinking being might be: God might\neven have endowed the body with the faculty of thinking, and of generating\nideas on occasion of certain impacts. Yet a man was a man for all that:\nand Locke was satisfied that he knew, at least well enough for an honest\nEnglishman, what he was. He was what he felt himself to be: and this inner\nman of his was not merely the living self, throbbing now in his heart; it\nwas all his moral past, all that he remembered to have been. If, from\nmoment to moment, the self was a spiritual energy astir within, in\nretrospect the living present seemed, as it were, to extend its tentacles\nand to communicate its subjectivity to his whole personal past. The limits\nof his personality were those of his memory, and his experience included\neverything that his living mind could appropriate and re-live. In a word,\n_he was his idea of himself_: and this insight opens a new chapter not\nonly in his philosophy but in the history of human self-estimation.\nMankind was henceforth invited not to think of itself as a tribe of\nnatural beings, nor of souls, with a specific nature and fixed\npossibilities. Each man was a romantic personage or literary character: he\nwas simply what he was thought to be, and might become anything that he\ncould will to become. The way was opened for Napoleon on the one hand and\nfor Fichte on the other.\n\n\nIII\n\nPage 9. __All_ ideas must be equally conditioned._\n\nEven the mathematical ideas which seem so exactly to describe the dynamic\norder of nature are not repetitions of their natural counterpart: for\nmathematical form in nature is a web of diffuse relations enacted; in the\nmind it is a thought possessed, the logical synthesis of those deployed\nrelations. To run in a circle is one thing; to conceive a circle is\nanother. Our mind by its animal roots (which render it relevant to the\nrealm of matter and cognitive) and by its spiritual actuality (which\nrenders it original, synthetic, and emotional) is a language, from its\nbeginnings; almost, we might say, a biological poetry; and the greater the\nintellectuality and poetic abstraction the greater the possible range. Yet\nwe must not expect this scope of speculation in us to go with adequacy or\nexhaustiveness: on the contrary, mathematics and religion, each in its way\nso sure, leave most of the truth out.\n\n\nIV\n\nPage 9. _He cannot be aware of what goes on beyond him, except as it\naffects his own life._\n\nEven that spark of divine intelligence which comes into the animal soul,\nas Aristotle says, from beyond the gates, comes and is called down by the\nexigencies of physical life. An animal endowed with locomotion cannot\nmerely feast sensuously on things as they appear, but must react upon them\nat the first signal, and in so doing must virtually and in intent envisage\nthem as they are in themselves. For it is by virtue of their real\nconstitution and intrinsic energy that they act upon us and suffer change\nin turn at our hands; so that whatsoever form things may take to our\nsenses and intellect, they take that form by exerting their material\npowers upon us, and intertwining them in action with our own organisms.\n\nThus the appearance of things is always, in some measure, a true index to\ntheir reality. Animals are inevitably engaged in self-transcending action,\nand the consciousness of self-transcending action is self-transcendent\nknowledge. The very nature of animal life makes it possible, within animal\nconsciousness, to discount appearance and to correct illusion--things\nwhich in a vegetative or aesthetic sensibility would not be\ndistinguishable from pure experience itself. But when aroused to\nself-transcendent attention, feeling must needs rise to intelligence, so\nthat external fact and impartial truth come within the range of\nconsciousness, not indeed by being contained there, but by being aimed at.\n\n\nV\n\nPage 19. _Conscious mind was a fact on its own account._\n\nThis conscious mind was a man's moral being, and personal identity could\nnot extend further than possible memory. This doctrine of Locke's had some\ncomic applications. The Bishop of Worcester was alarmed. If actions which\na hardened sinner had forgotten were no longer his, a short memory would\nbe a great blessing in the Day of Judgment. On the other hand, a theology\nmore plastic than Stillingfleet's would one day find in this same doctrine\na new means of edification. For if I may disown all actions I have\nforgotten, may not things not done or witnessed by me in the body be now\nappropriated and incorporated in my consciousness, if only I conceive them\nvividly? The door is then open to all the noble ambiguities of idealism.\nAs my consciousness expands, or thinks it expands, into dramatic sympathy\nwith universal experience, that experience becomes my own. I may say I\nhave been the agent in all past achievements. Emerson could know that he\nwas Shakespeare and Caesar and Christ. Futurity is mine also, in every\npossible direction at once; and I am one with the spirit of the universe\nand with God.\n\nLocke reassured the Bishop of Worcester, and was humbly confident that\nDivine Justice would find a way of vindicating Itself in spite of human\nwit. He might have added that if the sin of Adam could not only be imputed\nto us juridically but could actually taint our consciousness--as it\ncertainly does if by Adam we understand our whole material heritage--so\nsurely the sins done or the habits acquired by the body beyond the scope\nof consciousness may taint or clarify this consciousness now. Indeed, the\nidea we form of ourselves and of our respective experiences is a figment\nof vanity, a product of dramatic imagination, without cognitive import\nsave as a reading of the hidden forces, physical or divine, which have\nformed us and actually govern us.\n\n\nVI\n\nPage 19. _Mind and body interacted._\n\nThe self which acts in a man is itself moved by forces which have long\nbeen familiar to common sense, without being understood except\ndramatically. These forces are called the passions; or when the dramatic\nunits distinguished are longish strands rather than striking episodes,\nthey are called temperament, character, or will; or perhaps, weaving all\nthese strands and episodes together again into one moral fabric, we call\nthem simply human nature. But in what does this vague human nature reside,\nand how does it operate on the non-human world? Certainly not within the\nconscious sphere, or in the superficial miscellany of experience.\nImmediate experience is the intermittent chaos which human nature, in\ncombination with external circumstances, is invoked to support and to\nrationalise. Is human nature, then, resident in each individual soul?\nCertainly: but the soul is merely another name for that active principle\nwhich we are looking for, to be the seat of our sensibility and the source\nof our actions. Is this psychic power, then, resident in the body?\nUndoubtedly; since it is hereditary and transmitted by a seed, and\ncontinually aroused and modified by material agencies.\n\nSince this soul or self in the body is so obscure, the temptation is great\nto dramatise its energies and to describe them in myths. Myth is the\nnormal means of describing those forces of nature which we cannot measure\nor understand; if we could understand or measure them we should describe\nthem prosaically and analytically, in what is called science. But nothing\nis less measurable, or less intelligible to us, in spite of being so near\nus and familiar, as the life of this carnal instrument, so soft and so\nviolent, which breeds our sensations and precipitates our actions. We see\ntoday how the Freudian psychology, just because it is not satisfied with\nregistering the routine of consciousness but endeavours to trace its\nhidden mechanism and to unravel its physical causes, is driven to use the\nmost frankly mythological language. The physiological processes concerned,\nthough presupposed, are not on the scale of human perception and not\ntraceable in detail; and the moral action, though familiar in snatches,\nhas to be patched by invented episodes, and largely attributed to daemonic\npersonages that never come on the stage.\n\nLocke, in his psychology of morals, had at first followed the verbal\nrationalism by which people attribute motives to themselves and to one\nanother. Human actions were explained by the alleged pursuit of the\ngreater prospective pleasure, and avoidance of the greater prospective\npain. But this way of talking, though not so poetical as Freud's, is no\nless mythical. Eventual goods and evils have no present existence and no\npower: they cannot even be discerned prophetically, save by the vaguest\nfancy, entirely based on the present impulses and obsessions of the soul.\nNo future good, no future evil avails to move us, except--as Locke said\nafter examining the facts more closely--when a _certain uneasiness_ in the\nsoul (or in the body) causes us to turn to those untried goods and evils\nwith a present and living interest. This actual uneasiness, with the dream\npictures which it evokes, is a mere symptom of the direction in which\nhuman nature in us is already moving, or already disposed to move. Without\nthis prior physical impulse, heaven may beckon and hell may yawn without\ncausing the least variation in conduct. As in religious conversion all is\ndue to the call of grace, so in ordinary action all is due to the ripening\nof natural impulses and powers within the psyche. The _uneasiness_\nobserved by Locke is merely the consciousness of this ripening, before the\nfield of relevant action has been clearly discerned.\n\nWhen all this is considered, the ostensible interaction between mind and\nbody puts on a new aspect. There are no _purely mental_ ideas or\nintentions followed by material effects: there are no material events\nfollowed by a _purely mental_ sensation or idea. Mental events are always\nelements in total natural events containing material elements also:\nmaterial elements form the organ, the stimulus, and probably also the\nobject for those mental sensations or ideas. Moreover, the physical strand\nalone is found to be continuous and traceable; the conscious strand, the\nsequence of mental events, flares up and dies down daily, if not hourly;\nand the medley of its immediate features--images, words, moods--juxtaposes\nChina and Peru, past and future, in the most irresponsible confusion. On\nthe other hand, in human life it is a part of the conscious\nelement--intentions, affections, plans, and reasonings--that _explains_\nthe course of action: dispersed temporally, our dominant thoughts contain\nthe reason for our continuous behaviour, and seem to guide it. They are\nnot so much links in a chain of minute consecutive causes--an idea or an\nact of will often takes time to work and works, as it were, only\nposthumously--as they are general overarching moral inspirations and\nresolves, which the machinery of our bodies executes in its own way, often\nrendering our thoughts more precise in the process, or totally\ntransforming them. We do roughly what we meant to do, barring accidents.\nThe reasons lie deep in our compound nature, being probably inarticulate;\nand our action in a fragmentary way betrays our moral disposition: betrays\nit in both senses of the word betray, now revealing it unawares, and now\nsadly disappointing it.\n\nI leave it for the reader's reflection to decide whether we should call\nsuch cohabitation of mind with body interaction, or not rather sympathetic\nconcomitance, self-annotation, and a partial prophetic awakening to a life\nwhich we are leading automatically.\n\n\nVII\n\nPage 21. _To the confusion of common sense._\n\nBerkeley and his followers sometimes maintain that common sense is on\ntheir side, that they have simply analysed the fact of our experience of\nthe material world, and if there is any paradox in their idealism, it is\nmerely verbal and disappears with familiarity. All the \"reality\", they\nsay, all the force, obduracy, and fertility of nature subsist undiminished\nafter we discover that this reality resides, and can only reside, in the\nfixed order of our experience.\n\nBut no: analysis of immediate experience will never disclose any fixed\norder in it; the surface of experience, when not interpreted\nmaterialistically, is an inextricable dream. Berkeley and his followers,\nwhen they look in this direction, towards nature and the rationale of\nexperience and science, are looking away from their own system, and\nrelying instead on the automatic propensity of human nature to routine, so\nthat we spontaneously prepare for repeating our actions (not our\nexperience) and even anticipate their occasions; a propensity further\nbiased by the dominant rhythms of the psyche, so that we assume a future\nnot so much similar to the past, as better. When developed, this\npropensity turns into trust in natural or divine laws; but it is contrary\nto common sense to expect such laws to operate apart from matter and from\nthe material continuity of external occasions. This appears clearly in our\ntrust in persons--a radical animal propensity--which is consonant with\ncommon sense when these persons are living bodies, but becomes\nsuperstitious, or at least highly speculative, when these persons are\ndisembodied spirits.\n\nIt is a pity that the beautiful system of Berkeley should have appeared in\nan unspiritual age, when religion was mundane and perfunctory, and the\nfree spirit, where it stirred, was romantic and wilful. For that system\nwas essentially religious: it put the spirit face to face with God,\neverywhere, always, and in everything it turned experience into a divine\nlanguage for the monition and expression of the inner man. Such an\ninstrument, in spiritual hands, might have served to dispel all natural\nillusions and affections, and to disinfect the spirit of worldliness and\negotism. But Berkeley and his followers had no such thought. All they\nwished was to substitute a social for a material world, precisely because\na merely social world might make worldly interests loom larger and might\ninduce mankind, against the evidence of their senses and the still small\nvoice in their hearts, to live as if their worldly interests were absolute\nand must needs dominate the spirit.\n\nMorally this system thus came to sanction a human servitude to material\nthings such as ancient materialists would have scorned; and theoretically\nthe system did not escape the dogmatic commitments of common sense against\nwhich it protested. For far from withdrawing into the depths of the\nprivate spirit, it professed to describe universal experience and the\nevolution of all human ideas. This notion of \"experience\" originally\npresupposed a natural agent or subject to endure that experience, and to\nprofit by it, by learning to live in better harmony with external\ncircumstances. Each agent or subject of experience might, at other times,\nbecome an object of experience also: for they all formed part of a\nmaterial world, which they might envisage in common in their perceptions.\nNow the criticism which repudiates this common material medium, like all\ncriticism or doubt, is secondary and partial: it continues to operate with\nall the assumptions of common sense, save the one which it is expressly\ncriticising. So, in repudiating the material world, this philosophy\nretains the notion of various agents or subjects gathering experience; and\nwe are not expected to doubt that there are just as many streams of\nexperience without a world, as there were people in the world when the\nworld existed. But the number and nature of these experiences have now\nbecome undiscoverable, the material persons having been removed who\nformerly were so placed as to gather easily imagined experiences, and to\nbe able to communicate them; and the very notion of experience has been\nemptied of its meaning, when no external common world subsists to impose\nthat same experience on everybody. It was not knowledge of existing\nexperiences _in vacuo_ that led common sense to assume a material world,\nbut knowledge of an existing material world led it to assume existing, and\nregularly reproducible, experiences.\n\nThus the whole social convention posited by empirical idealism is borrowed\nwithout leave, and rests on the belief in nature for which it is\nsubstituted.\n\n\nVIII\n\nPage 21. _The literary psychologist may come very near to the truth of\nexperience._\n\nExperience cannot be in itself an object of science, because it is\nessentially invisible, immeasurable, fugitive, and private; and although\nit may be shared or repeated, the evidence for that repetition or that\nunanimity cannot be found by comparing a present experience with another\nexperience by hypothesis absent. Both the absent experience and its\nagreement with the present experience must be imagined freely and credited\ninstinctively, in view of the known circumstances in which the absent\nexperience is conceived to have occurred. The only instrument for\nconceiving experience at large is accordingly private imagination; and\nsuch imagination cannot be tested, although it may be guided and perhaps\nrecast by fresh observations or reports concerning the action and language\nof other people. For action and language, being contagious, and being the\nmaterial counterpart of experience in each of us, may voluntarily or\ninvoluntarily suggest our respective experience to one another, by causing\neach to re-enact more or less accurately within himself the experience of\nthe rest. Thus alien thoughts and feelings are revealed or suggested to us\nin common life, not without a subjective transformation increasing, so to\nspeak, as the square of the distance: and even the record of experience in\npeople's own words, when these are not names for recognisable external\nthings, awakens in the reader, in another age or country, quite\nincommensurable ideas. Yet, under favourable circumstances, such\nsuggestion or revelation of experience, without ever becoming science, may\nbecome public unanimity in sentiment, and may produce a truthful and\nlively dramatic literature.\n\nAll modern philosophy, in so far as it is a description of experience and\nnot of nature, therefore seems to belong to the sphere of literature, and\nto be without scientific value.\n\n\n\n\nII\n\nFIFTY YEARS OF BRITISH IDEALISM[10]\n\n\nAfter fifty years, an old milestone in the path of philosophy, Bradley's\n_Ethical Studies_, has been set up again, as if to mark the distance which\nEnglish opinion has traversed in the interval. It has passed from insular\ndogmatism to universal bewilderment; and a chief agent in the change has\nbeen Bradley himself, with his scornful and delicate intellect, his wit,\nhis candour, his persistence, and the baffling futility of his\nconclusions. In this early book we see him coming forth like a young David\nagainst every clumsy champion of utilitarianism, hedonism, positivism, or\nempiricism. And how smooth and polished were the little stones in his\nsling! How fatally they would have lodged in the forehead of that\ncomposite monster, if only it had had a forehead! Some of them might even\nhave done murderous execution in Bradley's own camp: for instance, this\npebble cast playfully at the metaphysical idol called \"Law\": \"It is\n_always_ wet on half-holidays because of the Law of Raininess, but\n_sometimes_ it is _not_ wet, because of the Supplementary Law of\nSunshine\".\n\nBradley and his friends achieved a notable victory in the academic field:\nphilosophic authority and influence passed largely into their hands in all\nEnglish-speaking universities. But it was not exactly from these seats of\nlearning that naturalism and utilitarianism needed to be dislodged; like\nthe corresponding radicalisms of our day, these doctrines prevailed rather\nin certain political and intellectual circles outside, consciously\nrevolutionary and often half-educated; and I am afraid that the braggart\nGoliaths of today need chastening at least as much as those of fifty years\nago. In a country officially Christian, and especially in Oxford, it is\nnatural and fitting that academic authority should belong to orthodox\ntradition--theological, Platonic, and Aristotelian. Bradley, save for a\nfew learned quotations, strangely ignored this orthodoxy entrenched\nbehind his back. In contrast with it he was himself a heretic, with first\nprinciples devastating every settled belief: and it was really this\nvenerable silent partner at home that his victory superseded, at least in\nappearance and for a season. David did not slay Goliath, but he dethroned\nSaul. Saul was indeed already under a cloud, and all in David's heart was\nnot unkindness in that direction. Bradley might almost be called an\nunbelieving Newman; time, especially, seems to have brought his suffering\nand refined spirit into greater sympathy with ancient sanctities.\nOriginally, for instance, venting the hearty Protestant sentiment that\nonly the Christianity of laymen is sound, he had written: \"I am happy to\nsay that 'religieux' has no English equivalent\". But a later note says:\n\"This is not true except of Modern English only. And, in any case, it\nwon't do, and was wrong and due to ignorance. However secluded the\nreligious life, it may be practical indirectly _if_ through the unity of\nthe spiritual body it can be taken as vicarious\". The \"_if_\" here saves\nthe principle that all values must be social, and that the social organism\nis the sole moral reality: yet how near this bubble comes to being\npricked! We seem clearly to feel that the question is not whether\nspiritual life subserves animal society, but whether animal society ever\nis stirred and hallowed into spiritual life.\n\nAll this, however, in that age of progress, was regarded as obsolete:\nthere was no longer to be any spirit except the spirit of the times. True,\nthe ritualists might be striving to revive the latent energies of\nreligious devotion, with some dubious help from aestheticism: but against\nthe rising tide of mechanical progress and romantic anarchy, and against\nthe mania for rewriting history, traditional philosophy then seemed\nhelpless and afraid to defend itself: it is only now beginning to recover\nits intellectual courage. For the moment, speculative radicals saw light\nin a different quarter. German idealism was nothing if not self-confident;\nit was relatively new; it was encyclopaedic in its display of knowledge,\nwhich it could manipulate dialectically with dazzling, if not stable,\nresults; it was Protestant in temper and autonomous in principle; and\naltogether it seemed a sovereign and providential means of suddenly\nturning the tables on the threatened naturalism. By developing romantic\nintuition from within and packing all knowledge into one picture, the\nuniverse might be shown to be, like intuition itself, thoroughly\nspiritual, personal, and subjective.\n\nThe fundamental axiom of the new logic was that the only possible reality\nwas consciousness.\n\n     \"People find\", writes Bradley, \"a subject and an object correlated\n     in consciousness.... To go out of that unity is for us literally to\n     go out of our minds.... When mind is made only a part of the whole,\n     there is a question which _must_ be answered.... If about any\n     matter we know nothing whatsoever, can we say anything about it?\n     Can we even say that it is? And if it is not in consciousness, how\n     can we know it?... And conversely, if we know it, it cannot be not\n     mind.\"\n\nBradley challenged his contemporaries to refute this argument; and not\nbeing able to do so, many of them felt constrained to accept it, perhaps\nnot without grave misgivings. For was it not always a rooted conviction of\nthe British mind that knowledge brings material power, and that any\nfigments of consciousness (in religion, for instance) not bringing\nmaterial power are dangerous bewitchments, and not properly knowledge?\nYet it is no less characteristic of the British mind to yield\noccasionally, up to a certain point, to some such enthusiastic fancy,\nprovided that its incompatibility with honest action may be denied or\nignored. So in this case British idealists, in the act of defining\nknowledge idealistically, as the presence to consciousness of its own\nphenomena, never really ceased to assume transcendent knowledge of a\nself-existing world, social and psychological, if not material: and they\ncontinued scrupulously to readjust their ideas to those dark facts, often\nmore faithfully than the avowed positivists or scientific psychologists.\n\nWhat could ethics properly be to a philosopher who on principle might not\ntrespass beyond the limits of consciousness? Only ethical sentiment.\nBradley was satisfied to appeal to the moral consciousness of his day,\nwithout seeking to transform it. The most intentionally eloquent passage\nin his book describes war-fever unifying and carrying away a whole people:\nthat was the summit of moral consciousness and of mystic virtue. His aim,\neven in ethics, was avowedly to describe that which exists, to describe\nmoral experience, without proposing a different form for it. A man must be\na man of his own time, or nothing; to set up to be better than the world\nwas the beginning of immorality; and virtue lay in accepting one's station\nand its duties. The moralist should fill his mind with a concrete picture\nof the task and standards of his age and nation, and should graft his own\nideals upon that tree; this need not prevent moral consciousness from\nincluding a decided esteem for non-political excellences like health,\nbeauty, or intelligence, which are not ordinarily called virtues by modern\nmoralists. Yet they were undeniably good; better, perhaps, than any\npainful and laborious dutifulness; so that the strictly moral\nconsciousness might run over, and presently lose itself in \"something\nhigher\". Indeed, even health, beauty, and intelligence, which seemed at\nfirst so clearly good, might lose their sharpness on a wider view. In the\npanorama that would ultimately fill the mind these so-called goods and\nvirtues could not be conceived without their complementary vices and\nevils. Thus all moral consciousness, and even all vital preference might\nultimately be superseded: they might appear to have belonged to a partial\nand rather low stage in the self-development of consciousness.\n\nWith this dissolution of his moral judgments always in prospect, why\nshould Bradley, or any idealist, have pursued ethical studies at all?\nSince all phases of life were equally necessary to enrich an infinite\nconsciousness, which must know both good and evil in order to merge and to\ntranscend them, he could hardly nurse any intense enthusiasm for a\ndifferent complexion to be given to the lives of men. His moral\npassion--for he had it, caustic and burning clear--was purely\nintellectual: it was shame that in England the moral consciousness should\nhave been expressed in systems dialectically so primitive as those of the\npositivists and utilitarians. He acknowledged, somewhat superciliously,\nthat their hearts were in the right place; yet, if we are to have ethics\nat all, were not their thoughts in the right place also? They were\nconcerned not with analysis of the moral consciousness but with the\nconduct of affairs and the reform of institutions. The spectacle of human\nwretchedness profoundly moved them; their minds were bent on transforming\nsociety, so that a man's station and its duties might cease to be what a\ndecayed feudal organisation and an inhuman industrialism had made of them.\nThey revolted against the miserable condition of the masses of mankind,\nand against the miserable consolations which official religion, or a\nphilosophy like Bradley's, offered them in their misery. The utilitarians\nwere at least intent on existence and on the course of events; they wished\nto transform institutions to fit human nature better, and to educate human\nnature by those new institutions so that it might better realise its\nlatent capacities. These are matters which a man may modify by his acts\nand they are therefore the proper concern of the moralist. Were they much\nto blame if they neglected to define pleasure or happiness and used\ncatch-words, dialectically vague, to indicate a direction of effort\npolitically quite unmistakable? Doubtless their political action, like\ntheir philosophical nomenclature, was revolutionary and relied too much on\nwayward feelings ignorant of their own causes. Revolution, no less than\ntradition, is but a casual and clumsy expression of human nature in\ncontact with circumstances; yet pain and pleasure and spontaneous hopes,\nhowever foolish, are direct expressions of that contact, and speak for the\nsoul; whereas a man's station and its duties are purely conventional, and\nmay altogether misrepresent his native capacities. The protest of human\nnature against the world and its oppressions is the strong side of every\nrebellion; it was the _moral_ side of utilitarianism, of the rebellion\nagainst irrational morality.\n\nUnfortunately the English reformers were themselves idealists of a sort,\nentangled in the vehicles of perception, and talking about sensations and\nideas, pleasures and pains, as if these had been the elements of human\nnature, or even of nature at large: and only the most meagre of verbal\nsystems, and the most artificial, can be constructed out of such\nmaterials. Moreover, they spoke much of pleasure and happiness, and hardly\nat all of misery and pain: whereas it would have been wiser, and truer to\ntheir real inspiration, to have laid all the emphasis on evils to be\nabated, leaving the good to shape itself in freedom. Suffering is the\ninstant and obvious sign of some outrage done to human nature; without\nthis natural recoil, actual or imminent, no morality would have any\nsanction, and no precept could be imperative. What silliness to command me\nto pursue pleasure or to avoid it, if in any case everything would be\nwell! Save for some shadow of dire repentance looming in the distance, I\nam deeply free to walk as I will. The choice of pleasure for a principle\nof morals was particularly unfortunate in the British utilitarians; it\nlent them an air of frivolity absurdly contrary to their true character.\nPleasure might have been a fit enough word in the mouth of Aristippus, a\nsemi-oriental untouched by the least sense of responsibility, or even on\nthe lips of humanists in the eighteenth century, who, however sordid their\nlives may sometimes have been, could still move in imagination to the\nmusic of Mozart, in the landscape of Watteau or of Fragonard. But in the\nland and age of Dickens the moral ideal was not so much pleasure as\nkindness: this tenderer word not only expresses better the motive at work,\nbut it points to the distressing presence of misery in the world, to make\nnatural kindness laborious and earnest, and turn it into a legislative\nsystem.\n\nBradley's hostility to pleasure was not fanatical: one's station and its\nduties might have their agreeable side. \"It is probably good for you\", he\ntells us, \"to have, say, not less than two glasses of wine after dinner.\nSix on ordinary occasions is perhaps too many; but as to three or four,\nthey are neither one way nor the other.\" If the voluptuary was condemned,\nit was for the commonplace reason which a hedonist, too, might invoke,\nthat a life of pleasure soon palls and becomes unpleasant. Bradley's\nobjection to pleasure was merely speculative: he found it too \"abstract\".\nTo call a pleasure when actually felt an abstraction is an exquisite\nabsurdity: but pleasure, in its absolute essence, is certainly simple and\nindefinable. If instead of enjoying it on the wing, and as an earnest of\nthe soul's momentary harmony, we attempt to arrest and observe it, we find\nit strangely dumb; we are not informed by it concerning its occasion, nor\ncarried from it by any logical implication to the natural object in which\nit might be found. A pure hedonist ought therefore to be rather relieved\nif all images lapsed from his consciousness and he could luxuriate in\nsheer pleasure, dark and overwhelming. True, such bliss would be rather\ninhuman, and of the sort which we rashly assign to the oyster: but why\nshould a radical and intrepid philosopher be ashamed of that? The\ncondition of Bradley's Absolute--feeling in which all distinctions are\ntranscended and merged--seems to be something of that kind; but there\nwould be a strange irony in attributing this mystical and rapturous ideal\nto such ponderous worthies as Mill and Spencer, whose minds were nothing\nif not anxious, perturbed, instrumental, and full of respect for\nvariegated facts, and who were probably incapable of tasting pure pleasure\nat all.\n\nBut if pleasure, in its pure essence, might really be the highest good for\na mystic who should be lost in it, it would be no guide to a moralist\nwishing to control events, and to distribute particular pleasures or\nseries of pleasures as richly as possible in the world. For this purpose\nhe would need to understand human nature and its variable functions, in\nwhich different persons and peoples may find their sincere pleasures; and\nthis knowledge would first lend to his general love of pleasure any point\nof application in the governance of life or in benevolent legislation.\nSome concrete image of a happy human world would take the place of the\nfutile truism that pleasure is good and pain evil. This is, of course,\nwhat utilitarian moralists meant to do, and actually did, in so far as\ntheir human sympathies extended, which was not to the highest things; but\nit was not what they said, and Bradley had a clear advantage over them in\nthe war of words. A pleasure is not a programme: it exists here and not\nthere, for me and for no one else, once and never again. When past, it\nleaves the will as empty and as devoid of allegiance as if it had never\nexisted; pleasure is sand, though it have the colour of gold. But this is\nevidently true of all existence. Each living moment, each dead man, each\ncycle of the universe leaves nothing behind it but a void which perhaps\nsomething kindred may refill. A Hegel, after identifying himself for a\nmoment with the Absolute Idea, is in his existence no less subject to\nsleepiness, irritation, and death than if he had been modestly satisfied\nwith the joys of an oyster. It is only their common form, or their common\nworship, that can give to the quick moments of life any mutual relevance\nor sympathy; and existence would not come at all within sight of a good,\neither momentary or final, if it were not inwardly directed upon realising\nsome definite essence. For the rest this essence may be as simple as you\nwill, if the nature directed upon it is unified and simple; and it would\nbe mere intellectual snobbery to condemn pleasure because it has not so\nmany subdivisions in it as an encyclopaedia of the sciences. For the\nmoralist pleasure and pain may even be the better guides, because they\nexpress more directly and boldly the instinctive direction of animal life,\nand thereby mark more clearly the genuine difference between good and\nevil.\n\nWe may well say with Bradley that the good is self-realisation; but what\nis the self? Certainly not the feeling or consciousness of the moment, nor\nthe life of the world, nor pure spirit. The self that can systematically\ndistinguish good from evil is an animal soul. It grows from a seed; its\npotentiality is definite and its fate precarious; and in man it requires\nsociety to rear it and tradition to educate it. The good is accordingly\nsocial, in so far as the soul demands society; but it is the nature of the\nindividual that determines the kind and degree of sociability that is good\nfor him, and draws the line between society that is a benefit and society\nthat is a nuisance. To subordinate the soul fundamentally to society or\nthe individual to the state is sheer barbarism: the Greeks, sometimes\ninvoked to support this form of idolatry, were never guilty of it; on the\ncontrary, their lawgivers were always reforming and planning the state so\nthat the soul might be perfect in it. Discipline is a help to the spirit:\nbut even social relations, when like love, friendship, or sport they are\nspontaneous and good in themselves, retire as far as possible from the\npressure of the world, and build their paradise apart, simple, and hidden\nin the wilderness; while all the ultimate hopes and assurances of the\nspirit escape altogether into the silent society of nature, of truth, of\nessence, far from those fatuous worldly conventions which hardly make up\nfor their tyranny by their instability: for the prevalent moral fashion is\nalways growing old, and human nature is always becoming young again.\nWorld-worship is the expedient of those who, having lost the soul that is\nin them, look for it in things external, where there is no soul: and by a\ncurious recoil, it is also the expedient of those who seek their lost soul\nin actual consciousness, where it also is not: for sensations and ideas\nare not the soul but only passing and partial products of its profound\nanimal life. Moral consciousness in particular would never have arisen and\nwould be gratuitous, save for the ferocious bias of a natural living\ncreature, defending itself against its thousand enemies.\n\nNor would knowledge in its turn be knowledge if it were merely intuition\nof essence, such as the sensualist, the poet, or the dialectician may rest\nin. If the imagery of logic or passion ever comes to convey _knowledge_,\nit does so by virtue of a concomitant physical adjustment to external\nthings; for the nerve of real or transcendent knowledge is the notice\nwhich one part of the world may take of another part; and it is this\nmomentous cognisance, no matter what intangible feelings may supply terms\nfor its prosody, that enlarges the mind to some practical purpose and\ninforms it about the world. Consciousness then ceases to be passive sense\nor idle ideation and becomes belief and intelligence. Then the essences\nwhich form the \"content of consciousness\" may be vivified and trippingly\nrun over, like the syllables of a familiar word, in the active recognition\nof things and people and of all the ominous or pliable forces of nature.\nFor essences, being eternal and non-existent in themselves, cannot come to\nconsciousness by their own initiative, but only as occasion and the subtle\nmovements of the soul may evoke their forms; so that the fact that they\nare given to consciousness has a natural status and setting in the\nmaterial world, and is part of the same natural event as the movement of\nthe soul and body which supports that consciousness.\n\nThere is therefore no need of refuting idealism, which is an honest\nexamination of conscience in a reflective mind. Refutations and proofs\ndepend on pregnant meanings assigned to terms, meanings first rendered\nexplicit and unambiguous by those very proofs or refutations. On any\ndifferent acceptation of those terms, these proofs and refutations fall\nto the ground; and it remains a question for good sense, not for logic at\nall, how far the terms in either case describe anything existent. If by\n\"knowledge\" we understand intuition of essences, idealism follows; but it\nfollows only in respect to essences given in intuition: nothing follows\nconcerning the seat, origin, conditions, or symptomatic value of such\nintuition, nor even that such intuition ever actually occurs. Idealism,\ntherefore, without being refuted, may be hemmed in and humanised by\nnatural knowledge about it and about its place in human speculation; the\nmost recalcitrant materialist (like myself) might see its plausibility\nduring a somewhat adolescent phase of self-consciousness. Consciousness\nitself he might accept and relish as the natural spiritual resonance of\naction and passion, recognising it in its proud isolation and specious\nautonomy, like the mountain republics of Andorra and San Marino.\n\nGerman idealism is a mighty pose, an attitude always possible to a\nself-conscious and reflective being: but it is hardly a system, since it\ncontradicts beliefs which in action are inevitable; it may therefore be\nreadily swallowed, but it can never be digested. Neither of its two\ningredients--romantic scepticism and romantic superstition--agrees\nparticularly with the British stomach. Not romantic scepticism: for in\nEngland an instinctive distrust of too much clearness and logic, a\ndifficulty in drawing all the consequences of any principle, soon gave to\nthis most radical of philosophies a prim and religious air: its purity was\nalloyed with all sorts of conventions: so much so that we find British\nHegelians often deeply engaged in psychology, cosmology, or religion, as\nif they took their idealism for a kind of physics, and wished merely to\nreinterpret the facts of nature in an edifying way, without uprooting them\nfrom their natural places. This has been made easier by giving idealism an\nobjective, non-psychological turn: events, and especially feelings and\nideas, will then be swallowed up in the essences which they display. Thus\nBradley maintained that two thoughts, no matter how remote from each other\nin time or space, were identically the same, and not merely similar, if\nonly they contemplated the same idea. Mind itself ceased in this way to\nmean a series of existing feelings and was identified with intelligence;\nand intelligence in its turn was identified with the Idea or Logos which\nmight be the ultimate theme of intelligence. There could be only one mind,\nso conceived, since there could be only one total system in the universe\nvisible to omniscience.\n\nAs to romantic scepticism, we may see by contrast what it would be, when\nleft to itself, if we consider those lucid Italians who have taken up\ntheir idealism late and with open eyes. In Croce and Gentile the\ntranscendental attitude is kept pure: for them there is really no universe\nsave spirit creating its experience; and if we ask whence or on what\nprinciple occasions arise for all this compulsory fiction, we are reminded\nthat this question, with any answer which spirit might invent for it,\nbelongs not to philosophy but to some special science like physiology,\nitself, of course, only a particular product of creative thought. Thus the\nmore impetuously the inquisitive squirrel would rush from his cage, the\nfaster and faster he causes the cage to whirl about his ears. He has not\nthe remotest chance of reaching his imaginary bait--God, nature, or\ntruth; for to seek such things is to presuppose them, and to presuppose\nanything, if spirit be absolute, is to invent it. Even those philosophies\nof history which the idealist may for some secret reason be impelled to\nconstruct would be superstitious, according to his own principles, if he\ntook them for more than poetic fictions of the historian; so that in the\nstudy of history, as in every other study, all the diligence and sober\nlearning which the philosopher may possess are non-philosophical, since\nthey presuppose independent events and material documents. Thus perfect\nidealism turns out to be pure literary sport, like lyric poetry, in which\nno truth is conveyed save the miscellaneous truths taken over from common\nsense or the special sciences; and the gay spirit, supposed to be living\nand shining of its own sweet will, can find nothing to live or shine upon\nsave the common natural world.\n\nSuch at least would be the case if romantic superstition did not\nsupervene, demanding that the spirit should impose some arbitrary rhythm\nor destiny on the world which it creates: but this side of idealism has\nbeen cultivated chiefly by the intrepid Germans: some of them, like\nSpengler and Keyserling, still thrive and grow famous on it without a\nblush. The modest English in these matters take shelter under the wing of\nscience speculatively extended, or traditional religion prudently\nrationalised: the scope of the spirit, like its psychological\ndistribution, is conceived realistically. It might almost prove an\neuthanasia for British idealism to lose itself in the new metaphysics of\nnature which the mathematicians are evolving; and since this metaphysics,\nthough materialistic in effect, is more subtle and abstruse than popular\nmaterialism, British idealism might perhaps be said to survive in it,\nhaving now passed victoriously into its opposite, and being merged in\nsomething higher.\n\n\n[10] _Ethical Studies_, by F.H. Bradley, O.M., LL.D. (Glasgow), late\nFellow of Merton College, Oxford; second edition revised, with\nadditional notes by the Author. Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1927.\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\nREVOLUTIONS IN SCIENCE\n\n\nSince the beginning of the twentieth century, science has gained notably\nin expertness, and lost notably in authority. We are bombarded with\ninventions; but if we ask the inventors what they have learned of the\ndepths of nature, which somehow they have probed with such astonishing\nsuccess, their faces remain blank. They may be chewing gum; or they may\ntell us that if an aeroplane could only fly fast enough, it would get home\nbefore it starts; or they may urge us to come with them into a dark room,\nto hold hands, and to commune with the dear departed.\n\nPractically there may be no harm in such a division of labour, the\ninventors doing the work and the professors the talking. The experts may\nthemselves be inexpert in verbal expression, or content with stock\nphrases, or profoundly sceptical, or too busy to think. Nevertheless,\nskill and understanding are at their best when they go together and adorn\nthe same mind. Modern science until lately had realised this ideal: it was\nan extension of common perception and common sense. We could trust it\nimplicitly, as we do a map or a calendar; it was not true for us merely in\nan argumentative or visionary sense, as are religion and philosophy.\nGeography went hand in hand with travel, Copernican astronomy with\ncircumnavigation of the globe: and even the theory of evolution and the\nhistorical sciences in the nineteenth century were continuous with liberal\nreform: people saw in the past, as they then learned to conceive it,\nsimply an extension of those transformations which they were witnessing in\nthe present. They could think they knew the world as a man knows his\nnative town, or the contents of his chest of drawers: nature was our home,\nand science was our home knowledge. For it is not intrinsic clearness or\ncoherence that make ideas persuasive, but connection with action, or with\nsome voluminous inner response, which is readiness to act. It is a sense\nof on-coming fate, a compulsion to do or to suffer, that produces the\nillusion of perfect knowledge.\n\nI call it illusion, although our contact with things may be real, and our\nsensations and thoughts may be inevitable and honest; because nevertheless\nit is always an illusion to suppose that our images are the intrinsic\nqualities of things, or reproduce them exactly. The Ptolemaic system, for\ninstance, was perfectly scientific; it was based on careful and prolonged\nobservation and on just reasoning; but it was modelled on an image--the\nspherical blue dome of the heavens--proper only to an observer on the\nearth, and not transferable to a universe which is diffuse, centreless,\nfluid, and perhaps infinite. When the imagination, for any reason, comes\nto be peopled with images of the latter sort, the modern, and especially\nthe latest, astronomy becomes more persuasive. For although I suspect that\neven Einstein is an imperfect relativist, and retains Euclidean space and\nabsolute time at the bottom of his calculation, and recovers them at the\nend, yet the effort to express the system of nature as it would appear\nfrom _any_ station and to _any_ sensorium seems to be eminently\nenlightening.\n\nTheory and practice in the latest science are still allied, otherwise\nneither of them would prosper as it does; but each has taken a leap in its\nown direction. The distance between them has become greater than the naked\neye can measure, and each of them in itself has become unintelligible. We\nroll and fly at dizzy speeds, and hear at incredible distances; at the\nsame time we imagine and calculate to incredible depths. The technique of\nscience, like that of industry, has become a thing in itself; the one\nveils its object, which is nature, as the other defeats its purpose, which\nis happiness. Science often seems to be less the study of things than the\nstudy of science. It is now more scholastic than philosophy ever was. We\nare invited to conceive organisms within organisms, so minute, so free,\nand so dynamic, that the heart of matter seems to explode into an endless\ndischarge of fireworks, or a mathematical nightmare realised in a thousand\nplaces at once, and become the substance of the world. What is even more\nremarkable--for the notion of infinite organisation has been familiar to\nthe learned at least since the time of Leibniz--the theatre of science is\ntransformed no less than the actors and the play. The upright walls of\nspace, the steady tread of time, begin to fail us; they bend now so\nobligingly to our perspectives that we no longer seem to travel through\nthem, but to carry them with us, shooting them out or weaving them about\nus according to some native fatality, which is left unexplained. We seem\nto have reverted in some sense from Copernicus to Ptolemy: except that the\ncentre is now occupied, not by the solid earth, but by _any_ geometrical\npoint chosen for the origin of calculation. Time, too, is not measured by\nthe sun or stars, but by _any_ \"clock\"--that is, by any recurrent rhythm\ntaken as a standard of comparison. It would seem that the existence and\nenergy of each chosen centre, as well as its career and encounters, hang\non the collateral existence of other centres of force, among which it must\nwend its way: yet the only witness to their presence, and the only known\nproperty of their substance, is their \"radio-activity\", or the physical\nlight which they shed. Light, in its physical being, is accordingly the\nmeasure of all things in this new philosophy: and if we ask ourselves why\nthis element should have been preferred, the answer is not far to seek.\nLight is the only medium through which very remote or very minute\nparticles of matter can be revealed to science. Whatever the nature of\nthings may be intrinsically, science must accordingly express the universe\nin terms of light.\n\nThese reforms have come from within: they are triumphs of method. We make\nan evident advance in logic, and in that parsimony which is dear to\nphilosophers (though not to nature), if we refuse to assign given terms\nand relations to any prior medium, such as absolute time or space, which\ncannot be given with them. Observable spaces and times, like the facts\nobserved in them, are given separately and in a desultory fashion.\nInitially, then, there are as many spaces and times as there are\nobservers, or rather observations; these are the specious times and spaces\nof dreams, of sensuous life, and of romantic biography. Each is centred\nhere and now, and stretched outwards, forward, and back, as far as\nimagination has the strength to project it. Then, when objects and events\nhave been posited as self-existent, and when a \"clock\" and a system of\nco-ordinates have been established for measuring them, a single\nmathematical space and time may be deployed about them, conceived to\ncontain all things, and to supply them with their respective places and\ndates. This gives us the cosmos of classical physics. But this system\ninvolves the uncritical notion of light and matter travelling through\nmedia previously existing, and being carried down, like a boat drifting\ndown stream, by a flowing time which has a pace of its own, and imposes it\non all existence. In reality, each \"clock\" and each landscape is\nself-centred and initially absolute: its time and space are irrelevant to\nthose of any other landscape or \"clock\", unless the objects or events\nrevealed there, being posited as self-existent, actually coincide with\nthose revealed also in another landscape, or dated by another \"clock\". It\nis only by travelling along its own path at its own rate that experience\nor light can ever reach a point lying on another path also, so that two\nobservations, and two measures, may coincide at their ultimate terms,\ntheir starting-points or their ends. Positions are therefore not\nindependent of the journey which terminates in them, and thereby\nindividuates them; and dates are not independent of the events which\ndistinguish them. The flux of existence comes first: matter and light\ndistend time by their pulses, they distend space by their deployments.\n\nThis, if I understand it, is one half the new theory; the other half is\nnot less acceptable. Newton had described motion as a result of two\nprinciples: the first, inertia, was supposed to be inherent in bodies; the\nsecond, gravity, was incidental to their co-existence. Yet inherent\ninertia can only be observed relatively: it makes no difference to me\nwhether I am said to be moving at a great speed or absolutely at rest, if\nI am not jolted or breathless, and if my felt environment does not change.\nInertia, or weight, in so far as it denotes something intrinsic, seems to\nbe but another name for substance or the principle of existence: in so far\nas it denotes the first law of motion, it seems to be relative to an\nenvironment. It would therefore be preferable to combine inertia and\nattraction in a single formula, expressing the behaviour of bodies towards\none another in all their conjunctions, without introducing any inherent\nforces or absolute measures. This seems to have been done by Einstein, or\nat least impressively suggested: and it has been found that the new\ncalculations correspond to certain delicate observations more accurately\nthan the old.\n\nThis revolution in science seems, then, to be perfectly legal, and ought\nto be welcomed; yet only under one important moral condition, and with a\nparadoxical result. The moral condition is that the pride of science\nshould turn into humility, that it should no longer imagine that it is\nlaying bare the intrinsic nature of things. And the paradoxical result is\nthis: that the forms of science are optional, like various languages or\nmethods of notation. One may be more convenient or subtle than another,\naccording to the place, senses, interests, and scope of the explorer; a\nreform in science may render the old theories antiquated, like the habit\nof wearing togas, or of going naked; but it cannot render them false, or\nitself true. Science, when it is more than the gossip of adventure or of\nexperiment, yields practical assurances couched in symbolic terms, but no\nultimate insight: so that the intellectual vacancy of the expert, which I\nwas deriding, is a sort of warrant of his solidity. It is rather when the\nexpert prophesies, when he propounds a new philosophy founded on his\nlatest experiments, that we may justly smile at his system, and wait for\nthe next.\n\nSelf-knowledge--and the new science is full of self-knowledge--is a great\nliberator: if perhaps it imposes some retrenchment, essentially it revives\ncourage. Then at last we see what we are and what we can do. The spirit\ncan abandon its vain commitments and false pretensions, like a young man\nfree at last to throw off his clothes and run naked along the sands.\nIntelligence is never gayer, never surer, than when it is strictly formal,\nsatisfied with the evidence of its materials, as with the lights of\njewels, and filled with mounting speculations, as with a sort of laughter.\nIf all the arts aspire to the condition of music, all the sciences aspire\nto the condition of mathematics. Their logic is their spontaneous and\nintelligible side: and while they differ from mathematics and from one\nanother in being directed in the first instance upon various\nunintelligible existing objects, yet as they advance, they unite: because\nthey are everywhere striving to discover in those miscellaneous objects\nsome intelligible order and method. And as the emotion of the pure artist,\nwhatever may be his materials, lies in finding in them some formal harmony\nor imposing it upon them, so the interest of the scientific mind, in so\nfar as it is free and purely intellectual, lies in tracing their formal\npattern. The mathematician can afford to leave to his clients, the\nengineers, or perhaps the popular philosophers, the emotion of belief: for\nhimself he keeps the lyrical pleasure of metre and of evolving equations:\nand it is a pleasant surprise to him, and an added problem, if he finds\nthat the arts can use his calculations, or that the senses can verify\nthem; much as if a composer found that the sailors could heave better when\nsinging his songs.\n\nYet such independence, however glorious inwardly, cannot help diminishing\nthe prestige of the arts in the world. If science misled us before, when\nit was full of clearness and confidence, how shall we trust it now that it\nis all mystery and paradox? If classical physics needed this fundamental\nrevision, near to experience and fruitful as it was, what revision will\nnot romantic physics require? Nor is the future alone insecure: even now\nthe prophets hardly understand one another, or perhaps themselves; and\nsome of them interlard their science with the most dubious metaphysics.\nNaturally the enemies of science have not been slow to seize this\nopportunity: the soft-hearted, the muddle-headed, the superstitious are\nall raising their voices, no longer in desperate resistance to science,\nbut hopefully, and in its name. Science, they tell us, is no longer\nhostile to religion, or to divination of any sort. Indeed, divination is a\nscience too. Physics is no longer materialistic since space is now curved,\nand filled with an ether through which light travels at 300,000 kilometres\nper second--an immaterial rate: because if anything material ventured to\nmove at that forbidden speed, it would be so flattened that it would cease\nto exist. Indeed, matter is now hardly needed at all; its place has been\ntaken by radio-activity, and by electrons which dart and whirl with such\nmiraculous swiftness, that occasionally, for no known reason, they can\nskip from orbit to orbit without traversing the intervening positions--an\nevident proof of free-will in them. Or if solids should still seem to be\nmaterial, there are astral bodies as well which are immaterial although\nphysical; and as to ether and electricity, they are the very substance of\nspirit. All this I find announced in newspapers and even in books as the\nbreakdown of scientific materialism: and yet, when was materialism more\narrant and barbarous than in these announcements? Something no doubt has\nbroken down: but I am afraid it is rather the habit of thinking clearly\nand the power to discern the difference between material and spiritual\nthings.\n\nThe latest revolution in science will probably not be the last. I do not\nknow what internal difficulties, contradictions, or ominous obscurities\nmay exist in the new theories, or what logical seeds of change, perhaps of\nradical change, might be discovered there by a competent critic. I base my\nexpectation on two circumstances somewhat more external and visible to the\nlay mind. One circumstance is that the new theories seem to be affected,\nand partly inspired, by a particular philosophy, itself utterly insecure.\nThis philosophy regards the point of view as controlling or even creating\nthe object seen; in other words, it identifies the object with the\nexperience or the knowledge of it: it is essentially a subjective,\npsychological, Protestant philosophy. The study of perspectives, which a\nseverer critic might call illusions, is one of the most interesting and\nenlightening of studies, and for my own part I should be content to dwell\nalmost exclusively in that poetic and moral atmosphere, in the realm of\nliterature and of humanism. Yet I cannot help seeing that neither in logic\nnor in natural genesis can perspectives be the ultimate object of science,\nsince a plurality of points of view, somehow comparable, must be assumed\nin the beginning, as well as common principles of projection, and ulterior\npoints of contact or coincidence. Such assumptions, which must persist\nthroughout, seem to presuppose an absolute system of nature behind all the\nrelative systems of science.\n\nThe other circumstance which points to further revolutions is social. The\nnew science is unintelligible to almost all of us; it can be tested only\nby very delicate observations and very difficult reasoning. We accept it\non the authority of a few professors who themselves have accepted it with\na contagious alacrity, as if caught in a whirlwind. It has sprung up\nmysteriously and mightily, like mysticism in a cloister or theology in a\ncouncil: a Soviet of learned men has proclaimed it. Moreover, it is not\nmerely a system among systems, but a movement among movements. A system,\neven when it has serious rivals, may be maintained for centuries as\nreligions are maintained, institutionally; but a movement comes to an end;\nit is followed presently by a period of assimilation which transforms it,\nor by a movement in some other direction. I ask myself accordingly whether\nthe condition of the world in the coming years will be favourable to\nrefined and paradoxical science. The extension of education will have\nenabled the uneducated to pronounce upon everything. Will the patronage of\ncapital and enterprise subsist, to encourage discovery and reward\ninvention? Will a jealous and dogmatic democracy respect the\nunintelligible insight of the few? Will a perhaps starving democracy\nsupport materially its Soviet of seers? But let us suppose that no\nutilitarian fanaticism supervenes, and no intellectual surfeit or\ndiscouragement. May not the very profundity of the new science and its\nmetaphysical affinities lead it to bolder developments, inscrutable to the\npublic and incompatible with one another, like the gnostic sects of\ndeclining antiquity? Then perhaps that luminous modern thing which until\nrecently was called science, in contrast to all personal philosophies, may\ncease to exist altogether, being petrified into routine in the\npractitioners, and fading in the professors into abstruse speculations.\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\nA LONG WAY ROUND TO NIRVANA\n\n\nThat the end of life is death may be called a truism, since the various\nkinds of immortality that might perhaps supervene would none of them\nabolish death, but at best would weave life and death together into the\ntexture of a more comprehensive destiny. The end of one life might be the\nbeginning of another, if the Creator had composed his great work like a\ndramatic poet, assigning successive lines to different characters. Death\nwould then be merely the cue at the end of each speech, summoning the next\npersonage to break in and keep the ball rolling. Or perhaps, as some\nsuppose, all the characters are assumed in turn by a single supernatural\nSpirit, who amid his endless improvisations is imagining himself living\nfor the moment in this particular solar and social system. Death in such a\nuniversal monologue would be but a change of scene or of metre, while in\nthe scramble of a real comedy it would be a change of actors. In either\ncase every voice would be silenced sooner or later, and death would end\neach particular life, in spite of all possible sequels.\n\nThe relapse of created things into nothing is no violent fatality, but\nsomething naturally quite smooth and proper. This has been set forth\nrecently, in a novel way, by a philosopher from whom we hardly expected\nsuch a lesson, namely Professor Sigmund Freud. He has now broadened his\nconception of sexual craving or _libido_ into a general principle of\nattraction or concretion in matter, like the Eros of the ancient poets\nHesiod and Empedocles. The windows of that stuffy clinic have been thrown\nopen; that smell of acrid disinfectants, those hysterical shrieks, have\nescaped into the cold night. The troubles of the sick soul, we are given\nto understand, as well as their cure, after all flow from the stars.\n\nI am glad that Freud has resisted the tendency to represent this principle\nof Love as the only principle in nature. Unity somehow exercises an evil\nspell over metaphysicians. It is admitted that in real life it is not well\nfor One to be alone, and I think pure unity is no less barren and\ngraceless in metaphysics. You must have plurality to start with, or\ntrinity, or at least duality, if you wish to get anywhere, even if you\nwish to get effectively into the bosom of the One, abandoning your\nseparate existence. Freud, like Empedocles, has prudently introduced a\nprior principle for Love to play with; not Strife, however (which is only\nan incident in Love), but Inertia, or the tendency towards peace and\ndeath. Let us suppose that matter was originally dead, and perfectly\ncontent to be so, and that it still relapses, when it can, into its old\nequilibrium. But the homogeneous (as Spencer would say) when it is finite\nis unstable: and matter, presumably not being co-extensive with space,\nnecessarily forms aggregates which have an inside and an outside. The\nparts of such bodies are accordingly differently exposed to external\ninfluences and differently related to one another. This inequality, even\nin what seems most quiescent, is big with changes, destined to produce in\ntime a wonderful complexity. It is the source of all uneasiness, of life,\nand of love.\n\n     \"Let us imagine [writes Freud][11] an undifferentiated vesicle of\n     sensitive substance: then its surface, exposed as it is to the\n     outer world, is by its very position differentiated, and serves as\n     an organ for receiving stimuli.... This morsel of living substance\n     floats about in an outer world which is charged with the most\n     potent energies, and it would be destroyed ... if it were not\n     furnished with protection against stimulation. [On the other hand]\n     the sensitive cortical layer has no protective barrier against\n     excitations emanating from within.... The most prolific sources of\n     such excitations are the so-called instincts of the organism....\n     The child never gets tired of demanding the repetition of a game\n     ... he wants always to hear the same story instead of a new one,\n     insists inexorably on exact repetition, and corrects each deviation\n     which the narrator lets slip by mistake.... According to this, _an\n     instinct would be a tendency in living organic matter impelling it\n     towards reinstatement of an earlier condition_, one which it had\n     abandoned under the influence of external disturbing forces--a kind\n     of organic elasticity, or, to put it another way, the manifestation\n     of inertia in organic life.\n\n     \"If, then, all organic instincts are conservative, historically\n     acquired, and directed towards regression, towards reinstatement of\n     something earlier, we are obliged to place all the results of\n     organic development to the credit of external, disturbing, and\n     distracting influences. The rudimentary creature would from its\n     very beginning not have wanted to change, would, if circumstances\n     had remained the same, have always merely repeated the same course\n     of existence.... It would be counter to the conservative nature of\n     instinct if the goal of life were a state never hitherto reached.\n     It must be rather an ancient starting point, which the living being\n     left long ago, and to which it harks back again by all the\n     circuitous paths of development.... _The goal of all life is\n     death...._\n\n     \"Through a long period of time the living substance may have ...\n     had death within easy reach ... until decisive external influences\n     altered in such a way as to compel [it] to ever greater deviations\n     from the original path of life, and to ever more complicated and\n     circuitous routes to the attainment of the goal of death. These\n     circuitous ways to death, faithfully retained by the conservative\n     instincts, would be neither more nor less than the phenomena of\n     life as we know it.\"\n\nFreud puts forth these interesting suggestions with much modesty,\nadmitting that they are vague and uncertain and (what it is even more\nimportant to notice) mythical in their terms; but it seems to me that,\nfor all that, they are an admirable counterblast to prevalent follies.\nWhen we hear that there is, animating the whole universe, an _Elan vital_,\nor general impulse toward some unknown but single ideal, the terms used\nare no less uncertain, mythical, and vague, but the suggestion conveyed is\nfalse--false, I mean, to the organic source of life and aspiration, to the\nsimple naturalness of nature: whereas the suggestion conveyed by Freud's\nspeculations is true. In what sense can myths and metaphors be true or\nfalse? In the sense that, in terms drawn from moral predicaments or from\nliterary psychology, they may report the general movement and the\npertinent issue of material facts, and may inspire us with a wise\nsentiment in their presence. In this sense I should say that Greek\nmythology was true and Calvinist theology was false. The chief terms\nemployed in psycho-analysis have always been metaphorical: \"unconscious\nwishes\", \"the pleasure-principle\", \"the Oedipus complex\", \"Narcissism\",\n\"the censor\"; nevertheless, interesting and profound vistas may be opened\nup, in such terms, into the tangle of events in a man's life, and a fresh\nstart may be made with fewer encumbrances and less morbid inhibition. \"The\nshortcomings of our description\", Freud says, \"would probably disappear if\nfor psychological terms we could substitute physiological or chemical\nones. These too only constitute a metaphorical language, but one familiar\nto us for a much longer time, and perhaps also simpler.\" All human\ndiscourse is metaphorical, in that our perceptions and thoughts are\nadventitious signs for their objects, as names are, and by no means copies\nof what is going on materially in the depths of nature; but just as the\nsportsman's eye, which yields but a summary graphic image, can trace the\nflight of a bird through the air quite well enough to shoot it and bring\nit down, so the myths of a wise philosopher about the origin of life or of\ndreams, though expressed symbolically, may reveal the pertinent movement\nof nature to us, and may kindle in us just sentiments and true\nexpectations in respect to our fate--for his own soul is the bird this\nsportsman is shooting.\n\nNow I think these new myths of Freud's about life, like his old ones\nabout dreams, are calculated to enlighten and to chasten us enormously\nabout ourselves. The human spirit, when it awakes, finds itself in\ntrouble; it is burdened, for no reason it can assign, with all sorts of\nanxieties about food, pressures, pricks, noises, and pains. It is born, as\nanother wise myth has it, in original sin. And the passions and ambitions\nof life, as they come on, only complicate this burden and make it heavier,\nwithout rendering it less incessant or gratuitous. Whence this fatality,\nand whither does it lead? It comes from heredity, and it leads to\npropagation. When we ask how heredity could be started or transmitted, our\nignorance of nature and of past time reduces us to silence or to wild\nconjectures. Something--let us call it matter--must always have existed,\nand some of its parts, under pressure of the others, must have got tied up\ninto knots, like the mainspring of a watch, in such a violent and unhappy\nmanner that when the pressure is relaxed they fly open as fast as they\ncan, and unravel themselves with a vast sense of relief. Hence the longing\nto satisfy latent passions, with the fugitive pleasure in doing so. But\nthe external agencies that originally wound up that mainspring never\ncease to operate; every fresh stimulus gives it another turn, until it\nsnaps, or grows flaccid, or is unhinged. Moreover, from time to time, when\ncircumstances change, these external agencies may encrust that primary\norgan with minor organs attached to it. Every impression, every adventure,\nleaves a trace or rather a seed behind it. It produces a further\ncomplication in the structure of the body, a fresh charge, which tends to\nrepeat the impressed motion in season and out of season. Hence that\nperpetual docility or ductility in living substance which enables it to\nlearn tricks, to remember facts, and (when the seeds of past experiences\nmarry and cross in the brain) to imagine new experiences, pleasing or\nhorrible. Every act initiates a new habit and may implant a new instinct.\nWe see people even late in life carried away by political or religious\ncontagions or developing strange vices; there would be no peace in old\nage, but rather a greater and greater obsession by all sorts of cares,\nwere it not that time, in exposing us to many adventitious influences,\nweakens or discharges our primitive passions; we are less greedy, less\nlusty, less hopeful, less generous. But these weakened primitive impulses\nare naturally by far the strongest and most deeply rooted in the organism:\nso that although an old man may be converted or may take up some hobby,\nthere is usually something thin in his elderly zeal, compared with the\nheartiness of youth; nor is it edifying to see a soul in which the plainer\nhuman passions are extinct becoming a hotbed of chance delusions.\n\nIn any case each fresh habit taking root in the organism forms a little\nmainspring or instinct of its own, like a parasite; so that an elaborate\nmechanism is gradually developed, where each lever and spring holds the\nother down, and all hold the mainspring down together, allowing it to\nunwind itself only very gradually, and meantime keeping the whole clock\nticking and revolving, and causing the smooth outer face which it turns to\nthe world, so clean and innocent, to mark the time of day amiably for the\npasser-by. But there is a terribly complicated labour going on beneath,\npropelled with difficulty, and balanced precariously, with much secret\nfriction and failure. No wonder that the engine often gets visibly out of\norder, or stops short: the marvel is that it ever manages to go at all.\nNor is it satisfied with simply revolving and, when at last dismounted,\nstarting afresh in the person of some seed it has dropped, a portion of\nits substance with all its concentrated instincts wound up tightly within\nit, and eager to repeat the ancestral experiment; all this growth is not\nmerely material and vain. Each clock in revolving strikes the hour, even\nthe quarters, and often with lovely chimes. These chimes we call\nperceptions, feelings, purposes, and dreams; and it is because we are\ntaken up entirely with this mental music, and perhaps think that it sounds\nof itself and needs no music-box to make it, that we find such difficulty\nin conceiving the nature of our own clocks and are compelled to describe\nthem only musically, that is, in myths. But the ineptitude of our\naesthetic minds to unravel the nature of mechanism does not deprive these\nminds of their own clearness and euphony. Besides sounding their various\nmusical notes, they have the cognitive function of indicating the hour and\ncatching the echoes of distant events or of maturing inward dispositions.\nThis information and emotion, added to incidental pleasures in satisfying\nour various passions, make up the life of an incarnate spirit. They\nreconcile it to the external fatality that has wound up the organism, and\nis breaking it down; and they rescue this organism and all its works from\nthe indignity of being a vain complication and a waste of motion.\n\nThat the end of life should be death may sound sad: yet what other end can\nanything have? The end of an evening party is to go to bed; but its use is\nto gather congenial people together, that they may pass the time\npleasantly. An invitation to the dance is not rendered ironical because\nthe dance cannot last for ever; the youngest of us and the most vigorously\nwound up, after a few hours, has had enough of sinuous stepping and\nprancing. The transitoriness of things is essential to their physical\nbeing, and not at all sad in itself; it becomes sad by virtue of a\nsentimental illusion, which makes us imagine that they wish to endure, and\nthat their end is always untimely; but in a healthy nature it is not so.\nWhat is truly sad is to have some impulse frustrated in the midst of its\ncareer, and robbed of its chosen object; and what is painful is to have an\norgan lacerated or destroyed when it is still vigorous, and not ready for\nits natural sleep and dissolution. We must not confuse the itch which our\nunsatisfied instincts continue to cause with the pleasure of satisfying\nand dismissing each of them in turn. Could they all be satisfied\nharmoniously we should be satisfied once for all and completely. Then\ndoing and dying would coincide throughout and be a perfect pleasure.\n\nThis same insight is contained in another wise myth which has inspired\nmorality and religion in India from time immemorial: I mean the doctrine\nof Karma. We are born, it says, with a heritage, a character imposed, and\na long task assigned, all due to the ignorance which in our past lives has\nled us into all sorts of commitments. These obligations we must pay off,\nrelieving the pure spirit within us from its accumulated burdens, from\ndebts and assets both equally oppressive. We cannot disentangle ourselves\nby mere frivolity, nor by suicide: frivolity would only involve us more\ndeeply in the toils of fate, and suicide would but truncate our misery and\nleave us for ever a confessed failure. When life is understood to be a\nprocess of redemption, its various phases are taken up in turn without\nhaste and without undue attachment; their coming and going have all the\nkeenness of pleasure, the holiness of sacrifice, and the beauty of art.\nThe point is to have expressed and discharged all that was latent in us;\nand to this perfect relief various temperaments and various traditions\nassign different names, calling it having one's day, or doing one's duty,\nor realising one's ideal, or saving one's soul. The task in any case is\ndefinite and imposed on us by nature, whether we recognise it or not;\ntherefore we can make true moral progress or fall into real errors. Wisdom\nand genius lie in discerning this prescribed task and in doing it readily,\ncleanly, and without distraction. Folly on the contrary imagines that any\nscent is worth following, that we have an infinite nature, or no nature in\nparticular, that life begins without obligations and can do business\nwithout capital, and that the will is vacuously free, instead of being a\nspecific burden and a tight hereditary knot to be unravelled. Some\nphilosophers without self-knowledge think that the variations and further\nentanglements which the future may bring are the manifestation of spirit;\nbut they are, as Freud has indicated, imposed on living beings by external\npressure, and take shape in the realm of matter. It is only after the\norgans of spirit are formed mechanically that spirit can exist, and can\ndistinguish the better from the worse in the fate of those organs, and\ntherefore in its own fate. Spirit has nothing to do with infinite\nexistence. Infinite existence is something physical and ambiguous; there\nis no scale in it and no centre. The depths of the human heart are finite,\nand they are dark only to ignorance. Deep and dark as a soul may be when\nyou look down into it from outside, it is something perfectly natural; and\nthe same understanding that can unearth our suppressed young passions, and\ndispel our stubborn bad habits, can show us where our true good lies.\nNature has marked out the path for us beforehand; there are snares in it,\nbut also primroses, and it leads to peace.\n\n\n\n\nV\n\nTHE PRESTIGE OF THE INFINITE\n\n\n\"The more complex the world becomes and the more it rises above the\nindeterminate, so much the farther removed it is from God; that is to say,\nso much the more impious it is.\" M. Julien Benda[12] is not led to this\nstartling utterance by any political or sentimental grudge. It is not the\nlate war, nor the peace of Versailles, nor the parlous state of the arts,\nnor the decay of morality and prosperity that disgusts him with our\nconfused world. It is simply overmastering respect for the infinite. _La\nTrahison des Clercs_, or Treason of the Levites, with which he had\npreviously upbraided the intellectuals of his time, now appears to consist\nprecisely in coveting a part in this world's inheritance, and forgetting\nthat the inheritance of the Levites is the Lord: which, being interpreted\nphilosophically, means that a philosopher is bound to measure all things\nby the infinite.\n\nThis infinite is not rhetorical, as if we spoke of infinite thought or\ninfinite love: it is physico-mathematical. Nothing but number, M. Benda\ntells us, seems to him intelligible. Time, space, volume, and complexity\n(which appears to the senses as quality) stretch in a series of units,\npositions, or degrees, to infinity, as number does: and in such\nhomogeneous series, infinite in both directions, there will be no fixed\npoint of origin for counting or surveying the whole and no particular\npredominant scale. Every position will be essentially identical with every\nother; every suggested structure will be collapsible and reversible; and\nthe position and relations of every unit will be indistinguishable from\nthose of every other. In the infinite, M. Benda says, the parts have no\nidentity: each number in the scale, as we begin counting from different\npoints of origin, bears also every other number.\n\nThis is no mere mathematical puzzle; the thought has a strange moral\neloquence. Seen in their infinite setting, which we may presume to be\ntheir ultimate environment, all things lose their central position and\ntheir dominant emphasis. The contrary of what we first think of them or of\nourselves--for instance that we are alive, while they are dead or\nunborn--is also true. Egotism becomes absurd; pride and shame become the\nvainest of illusions. If then it be repugnant to reason that the series of\nnumbers, moments, positions, and volumes should be limited--and the human\nspirit has a great affinity to the infinite--all specific quality and\nvariety in things must be superficial and deeply unreal. They are masks in\nthe carnival of phenomena, to be observed without conviction, and secretly\ndismissed as ironical by those who have laid up their treasure in the\ninfinite.\n\nThis mathematical dissolution of particulars is reinforced by moral\nconsiderations which are more familiar. Existence--any specific fact\nasserting itself in any particular place or moment--is inevitably\ncontingent, arbitrary, gratuitous, and insecure. A sense of insecurity is\nlikely to be the first wedge by which repentance penetrates into the\nanimal heart. If a man did not foresee death and fear it, he might never\ncome at all to the unnatural thought of renouncing life. In fact, he does\nnot often remember death: yet his whole gay world is secretly afraid of\nbeing found out, of being foiled in the systematic bluff by which it lives\nas if its life were immortal; and far more than the brave young man fears\ndeath in his own person, the whole life of the world fears to be exorcised\nby self-knowledge, and lost in air. And with good reason: because, whether\nwe stop to notice this circumstance or not, every fact, every laborious\nbeloved achievement of man or of nature, has come to exist against\ninfinite odds. In the dark grab-bag of Being, this chosen fact was\nsurrounded by innumerable possible variations or contradictions of it; and\neach of those possibilities, happening not to be realised here and now,\nyet possesses intrinsically exactly the same aptitude or claim to\nexistence. Nor are these claims and aptitudes merely imaginary and\npractically contemptible. The flux of existence is continually repenting\nof its choices, and giving everything actual the lie, by continually\nsubstituting something else, no less specific and no less nugatory.\n_This_ world, _any_ world, exists only by an unmerited privilege. Its\nglory is offensive to the spirit, like the self-sufficiency of some\nobstreperous nobody, who happens to have drawn the big prize in a lottery.\n\"The world\", M. Benda writes, \"inspires me with a double sentiment. I feel\nit to be full of grandeur, because it has succeeded in asserting itself\nand coming to exist; and I feel it to be pitiful, when I consider how it\nhung on a mere nothing that this particular world should never have\nexisted.\" And though this so accidental world, by its manifold beauties\nand excitements, may arouse our romantic enthusiasm, it is fundamentally\nan _unholy_ world. Its creation, he adds in italics, \"_is something which\nreason would wish had never taken place_\".\n\nFor we must not suppose that God, when God is defined as infinite Being,\ncan be the creator of the world. Such a notion would hopelessly destroy\nthat coherence in thought to which M. Benda aspires. The infinite cannot\nbe selective; it cannot possess a particular structure (such, for\ninstance, as the Trinity) nor a particular quality (such as goodness). It\ncannot exert power or give direction. Nothing can be responsible for the\nworld except the world itself. It has created, or is creating, itself\nperpetually by its own arbitrary act, by a groundless self-assertion which\nmay be called (somewhat metaphorically) will, or even original sin: the\noriginal sin of existence, particularity, selfishness, or separation from\nGod. Existence, being absolutely contingent and ungrounded, is perfectly\nfree: and if it ties itself up in its own habits or laws, and becomes a\nterrible nightmare to itself by its automatic monotony, that still is only\nits own work and, figuratively speaking, its own fault. Nothing save its\nown arbitrary and needless pressure keeps it going in that round. This\nfatality is impressive, and popular religion has symbolised it in the\nperson of a deity far more often recognised and worshipped than infinite\nBeing. This popular deity, a symbol for the forces of nature and history,\nthe patron of human welfare and morality, M. Benda calls the imperial God.\n\n     \"It is clear that these two Gods ... have nothing to do with one\n     another. The God whom Marshal de Villars, rising in his stirrups\n     and pointing his drawn sword heavenwards, thanks on the evening of\n     Denain, is one God: quite another is the God within whose bosom the\n     author of the _Imitation_, in a corner of his cell, feels the\n     nothingness of all human victories.\"\n\nIt follows from this, if we are coherent, that any \"return to God\" which\nascetic philosophy may bring about cannot be a social reform, a transition\nto some better form of natural existence in a promised land, a renovated\nearth, or a material or temporal heaven. Nor can the error of creation be\ncorrected violently by a second arbitrary act, such as suicide, or the\nannihilation of the universe by some ultimate general collapse. If such\nevents happen, they still leave the door open to new creations and fresh\nerrors. But the marvel is (I will return to this point presently) that the\nworld, in the person of a human individual endowed with reason, may\nperceive the error of its ways and correct it ideally, in the sphere of\nestimation and worship. Such is the only possible salvation. Reason, in\norder to save us, and we, in order to be saved, must both subsist: we must\nboth be incidents in the existing world. We may then, by the operation of\nreason in us, recover our allegiance to the infinite, for we are bone of\nits bone and flesh of its flesh: and by our secret sympathy with it we may\nrescind every particular claim and dismiss silently every particular form\nof being, as something unreal and unholy.\n\nAn even more cogent reason why M. Benda's God cannot have been the creator\nof the world is that avowedly this God has never existed. We are expressly\nwarned that \"if God is infinite Being he excludes existence, in so far as\nto exist means to be distinct. In the sense which everybody attaches to\nthe word existence, God, as I conceive him, _does not exist_\". Of course,\nin the mind of a lover of the infinite, this fact is not derogatory to\nGod, but derogatory to existence. The infinite remains the first and the\nultimate term in thought, the fundamental dimension common to all things,\nhowever otherwise they may be qualified; it remains the eternal background\nagainst which they all are defined and into which they soon disappear.\nEvidently, in this divine--because indestructible and necessary--dimension,\nBeing is incapable of making choices, adopting paths of evolution, or\nexercising power; it knows nothing of phenomena; it is not their cause\nnor their sanction. It is incapable of love, wrath, or any other passion.\n\"I will add\", writes M. Benda, \"something else which theories of an\nimpersonal deity have less often pointed out. Since infinity is\nincompatible with personal being, God is incapable of morality.\" Thus mere\nintuition and analysis of the infinite, since this infinite is itself\npassive and indifferent, may prove a subtle antidote to passion, to folly,\nand even to life.\n\nI think M. Benda succeeds admirably in the purpose announced in his title\nof rendering his discourse coherent. If once we accept his definitions,\nhis corollaries follow. Clearly and bravely he disengages his idea of\ninfinity from other properties usually assigned to the deity, such as\npower, omniscience, goodness, and tutelary functions in respect to life,\nor to some special human society. But coherence is not completeness, nor\neven a reasonable measure of descriptive truth; and certain considerations\nare omitted from M. Benda's view which are of such moment that, if they\nwere included, they might transform the whole issue. Perhaps the chief of\nthese omissions is that of an organ for thought. M. Benda throughout is\nengaged simply in clarifying his own ideas, and repeatedly disclaims any\nulterior pretensions. He finds in the panorama of his thoughts an idea of\ninfinite Being, or God, and proceeds to study the relation of that\nconception to all others. It is a task of critical analysis and religious\nconfession: and nothing could be more legitimate and, to some of us, more\ninteresting. But whence these various ideas, and whence the spell which\nthe idea of infinite Being in particular casts over the meditative mind?\nUnless we can view these movements of thought in their natural setting and\norder of genesis, we shall be in danger of turning autobiography into\ncosmology and inwardness into folly.\n\nOne of the most notable points in M. Benda's analysis is his insistence on\nthe leap involved in passing from infinite Being to any particular fact or\nsystem of facts; and again the leap involved in passing, when the\nconverted spirit \"returns to God\", from specific animal interests--no\nmatter how generous, social, or altruistic these interests may be--to\nabsolute renunciation and sympathy with the absolute. \"That a will to\nreturn to God should arise in the phenomenal world seems to be a miracle\nno less wonderful (though it be less wondered at) than that the world\nshould arise in the bosom of God.\" \"Love of man, charity, humanitarianism\nare nothing but the selfishness of the race, by which each animal species\nassures its specific existence.\" \"To surrender one's individuality for the\nbenefit of a larger self is something quite different from\ndisinterestedness; it is the exact opposite.\" And certainly, if we\nregarded infinite Being as a cosmological medium--say, empty space and\ntime--there would be a miraculous break, an unaccountable new beginning,\nif that glassy expanse was suddenly wrinkled by something called energy.\nBut in fact there need never have been such a leap, or such a miracle,\nbecause there could never have been such a transition. Infinite Being is\nnot a material vacuum \"in the bosom\" of which a world might arise. It is a\nPlatonic idea--though Plato never entertained it--an essence, non-existent\nand immutable, not in the same field of reality at all as a world of\nmoving and colliding things. Such an essence is not conceivably the seat\nof the variations that enliven the world. It is only in thought that we\nmay pass from infinite Being to an existing universe; and when we turn\nfrom one to the other, and say that now energy has emerged from the bosom\nof God, we are turning over a new leaf, or rather picking up an entirely\ndifferent volume. The natural world is composed of objects and events\nwhich theory may regard as transformations of a hypothetical energy; an\nenergy which M. Benda--who when he comes down to the physical world is a\ngood materialist--conceives to have condensed and distributed itself into\nmatter, which in turn composed organisms and ultimately generated\nconsciousness and reason. But in whatever manner the natural world may\nhave evolved, it is found and posited by us in perception and action, not,\nlike infinite Being, defined in thought. This contrast is ontological, and\nexcludes any derivation of the one object from the other. M. Benda himself\ntells us so; and we may wonder why he introduced infinite Being at all\ninto his description of the world. The reason doubtless is that he was not\nengaged in describing the world, except by the way, but rather in\nclassifying and clarifying his ideas in view of determining his moral\nallegiance. And he arranged his terms, whether ideal or materials, in a\nsingle series, because they were alike present to his intuition, and he\nwas concerned to arrange them in a hierarchy, according to their moral\ndignity.\n\nNot only is infinite Being an incongruous and obstructive term to describe\nthe substance of the world (which, if it subtends the changes in the world\nand causes them, must evidently change with them), but even mathematical\nspace and time, in their ideal infinity, may be very far from describing\ntruly the medium and groundwork of the universe. That is a question for\ninvestigation and hypothesis, not for intuition. But in the life of\nintuition, when that life takes a mathematical turn, empty space and time\nand their definable structure may be important themes; while, when the\nsame life becomes a discipline of the affections, we see by this latest\nexample, as well as by many a renowned predecessor of M. Benda, that\ninfinite Being may dominate the scene.\n\nNor is this eventual dominance so foreign to the natural mind, or such a\nmiraculous conversion, as it might seem. Here, too, there is no derivation\nof object from object, but an alternative for the mind. As M. Benda points\nout, natural interests and sympathies may expand indefinitely, so as to\nembrace a family, a nation, or the whole animate universe; we might even\nbe chiefly occupied with liberal pursuits, such as science or music; the\nmore we laboured at these things and delighted in them, the less ready\nshould we be for renunciation and detachment. Must conversion then descend\nupon us from heaven like a thunderbolt? Far from it. We need not look for\nthe principle of spiritual life in the distance: we have it at home from\nthe beginning. Even the idea of infinite Being, though unnamed, is\nprobably familiar. Perhaps in the biography of the human race, or of each\nbudding mind, the infinite or indeterminate may have been the primary\ndatum. On that homogeneous sensuous background, blank at first but\nsecretly plastic, a spot here and a movement there may gradually have\nbecome discernible, until the whole picture of nature and history had\nshaped itself as we see it. A certain sense of that primitive datum, the\ninfinite or indeterminate, may always remain as it were the outstretched\ncanvas on which every picture is painted. And when the pictures vanish, as\nin deep sleep, the ancient simplicity and quietness may be actually\nrecovered, in a conscious union with Brahma. So sensuous, so intimate, so\nunsophisticated the \"return to God\" may be for the spirit, without\nexcluding the other avenues, intellectual and ascetic, by which this\nreturn may be effected in waking life, though then not so much in act as\nin intent only and allegiance.\n\nI confess that formerly I had some difficulty in sharing the supreme\nrespect for infinite Being which animates so many saints: it seemed to me\nthe dazed, the empty, the deluded side of spirituality. Why rest in an\nobject which can be redeemed from blank negation only by a blank\nintensity? But time has taught me not to despise any form of vital\nimagination, any discipline which may achieve perfection after any kind.\nIntuition is a broadly based activity; it engages elaborate organs and\nsums up and synthesises accumulated impressions. It may therefore easily\npour the riches of its ancestry into the image or the sentiment which it\nevokes, poor as this sentiment or image might seem if expressed in words.\nIn rapt or ecstatic moments, the vital momentum, often the moral escape,\nis everything, and the achievement, apart from that blessed relief, little\nor nothing. Infinite Being may profit in this way by offering a contrast\nto infinite annoyance. Moreover, in my own way, I have discerned in pure\nBeing the involution of all forms. As felt, pure Being may be\nindeterminate, but as conceived reflectively it includes all\ndeterminations: so that when deployed into the realm of essence, infinite\nor indeterminate Being truly contains entertainment for all eternity.\n\nM. Benda feels this pregnancy of the infinite on the mathematical side;\nbut he hardly notices the fact, proclaimed so gloriously by Spinoza, that\nthe infinity of extension is only one of an infinity of infinites. There\nis an aesthetic infinite, or many aesthetic infinites, composed of all the\nforms which nature or imagination might exhibit; and where imagination\nfails, there are infinite remainders of the unimagined. The version which\nM. Benda gives us of infinite Being, limited to the mathematical\ndimension, is therefore unnecessarily cold and stark. His one infinity is\nmonochrome, whereas the total infinity of essence, in which an infinity of\noutlines is only one item, is infinitely many-coloured. Phenomena\ntherefore fall, in their essential variety, within and not without\ninfinite Being: so that in \"returning to God\" we might take the whole\nworld with us, not indeed in its blind movement and piecemeal\nillumination, as events occur, but in an after-image and panoramic\nportrait, as events are gathered together in the realm of truth.\n\nOn the whole I think M. Benda's two Gods are less unfriendly to one\nanother than his aggrieved tone might suggest. This pregnant little book\nends on a tragic note.\n\n     \"Hitherto human self-assertion in the state or the family, while\n     serving the imperial God, has paid some grudging honours, at least\n     verbally, to the infinite God as well, under the guise of\n     liberalism, love of mankind, or the negation of classes. But today\n     this imperfect homage is retracted, and nothing is reverenced\n     except that which gives strength. If anyone preaches human\n     kindness, it is in order to establish a \"strong\" community\n     martially trained, like a super-state, to oppose everything not\n     included within it, and to become omnipotent in the art of\n     utilising the non-human forces of nature.... The will to return to\n     God may prove to have been, in the history of the phenomenal world,\n     a sublime accident.\"\n\nCertainly the will to \"return to God\", if not an accident, is an incident\nin the life of the world; and the whole world itself is a sublime\naccident, in the sense that its existence is contingent, groundless, and\nprecarious. Yet so long as the imperial God continues successfully to keep\nour world going, it will be no accident, but a natural necessity, that\nmany a mind should turn to the thought of the infinite with awe, with a\nsense of liberation, and even with joy. The infinite God owes all his\nworshippers, little as he may care for them, to the success of the\nimperial God in creating reflective and speculative minds. Or (to drop\nthese mythological expressions which may become tiresome) philosophers owe\nto nature and to the discipline of moral life their capacity to look\nbeyond nature and beyond morality. And while they may _look_ beyond, and\ntake comfort in the vision, they cannot _pass_ beyond. As M. Benda says,\nthe most faithful Levite can return to the infinite only in his thought;\nin his life he must remain a lay creature. Yet nature, in forming the\nhuman soul, unintentionally unlocked for the mind the doors to truth and\nto essence, partly by obliging the soul to attend to things which are\noutside, and partly by endowing the soul with far greater potentialities\nof sensation and invention than daily life is likely to call forth. Our\nminds are therefore naturally dissatisfied with their lot and\nspeculatively directed upon an outspread universe in which our persons\ncount for almost nothing. These insights are calculated to give our brutal\nwills some pause. Intuition of the infinite and recourse to the infinite\nfor religious inspiration follow of themselves, and can never be\nsuppressed altogether, so long as life is conscious and experience\nprovokes reflection.\n\nSpirit is certainly not one of the forces producing spirit, but neither is\nit a contrary force. It is the actuality of feeling, of observation, of\nmeaning. Spirit has no unmannerly quarrel with its parents, its hosts, or\neven its gaolers: they know not what they do. Yet spirit belongs\nintrinsically to another sphere, and cannot help wondering at the world,\nand suffering in it. The man in whom spirit is awake will continue to\nlive and act, but with a difference. In so far as he has become pure\nspirit he will have transcended the fear of death or defeat; for now his\ninstinctive fear, which will subsist, will be neutralised by an equally\nsincere consent to die and to fail. He will live henceforth in a truer and\nmore serene sympathy with nature than is possible to rival natural beings.\nNatural beings are perpetually struggling to live only, and not to die; so\nthat their will is in hopeless rebellion against the divine decrees which\nthey must obey notwithstanding. The spiritual man, on the contrary, in so\nfar as he has already passed intellectually into the eternal world, no\nlonger endures unwillingly the continual death involved in living, or the\nfinal death involved in having been born. He renounces everything\nreligiously in the very act of attaining it, resigning existence itself as\ngladly as he accepts it, or even more gladly; because the emphasis which\naction and passion lend to the passing moment seems to him arbitrary and\nviolent; and as each task or experience is dismissed in turn, he accounts\nthe end of it more blessed than the beginning.\n\n\n[11] The following quotations are drawn from _Beyond the Pleasure\nPrinciple_, by Sigmund Freud; authorised translation by C.J.M. Hubback.\nThe International Psycho-Analytic Press, 1922, pp. 29-48. The italics\nare in the original.\n\n[12] _Essai d'un Discours coherent sur les Rapports de Dieu et du\nMonde._ Par Julien Benda. Librairie Gallimard, Paris, 1931.","title":"Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy: Five Essays","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":23950}