{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_34654/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_34654","id":"gutenberg_34654","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34654","summary":null,"tags":["Category: American Literature","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","James, William, 1842-1910","National characteristics, American","Philosophy, American -- 19th century","Royce, Josiah, 1855-1916","United States -- Civilization -- 1865-1918"],"text":"CHARACTER AND OPINION IN THE UNITED STATES\n\nBY THE SAME AUTHOR\n\nTHE LIFE OF REASON\n\nOR THE PHASES OF HUMAN PROGRESS\n\nVol. I. Reason in Common Sense.\n\nVol. II. Reason in Society.\n\nVol. III. Reason in Religion.\n\nVol. IV. Reason in Art.\n\nVol. V. Reason in Science.\n\n[image]\n\nINTERPRETATIONS OF POETRY AND RELIGION\n\n[image]\n\nTHE SENSE OF BEAUTY\n\n[image]\n\nLITTLE ESSAYS DRAWN FROM THE WRITINGS OF GEORGE SANTAYANA\n\nEdited with a Preface by LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH\n\n[image]\n\n\n\n*CHARACTER & OPINION IN THE UNITED STATES*\n\n*WITH REMINISCENCES OF WILLIAM JAMES AND JOSIAH ROYCE*\n\n*AND ACADEMIC LIFE IN AMERICA*\n\nBY\n\nGEORGE SANTAYANA\n\nLATE PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY\n\nNEW YORK\n\nCHARLES SCRIBNER\u2019S SONS\n\n1921\n\n\n\n_First Published 1920_\n\n_Reprinted 1921_\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\nThe major part of this book is composed of lectures originally addressed\nto British audiences. I have added a good deal, but I make no apology,\nnow that the whole may fall under American eyes, for preserving the tone\nand attitude of a detached observer. Not at all on the ground that \u201cto\nsee ourselves as others see us\u201d would be to see ourselves truly; on the\ncontrary, I agree with Spinoza where he says that other people\u2019s idea of\na man is apt to be a better expression of their nature than of his. I\naccept this principle in the present instance, and am willing it should\nbe applied to the judgements contained in this book, in which the reader\nmay see chiefly expressions of my own feelings and hints of my own\nopinions. Only an American\u2014and I am not one except by long\nassociation\u00b9\u2014can speak for the heart of America. I try to understand it,\nas a family friend may who has a different temperament; but it is only\nmy own mind that I speak for at bottom, or wish to speak for. Certainly\nmy sentiments are of little importance compared with the volume and\ndestiny of the things I discuss here: yet the critic and artist too have\ntheir rights, and to take as calm and as long a view as possible seems\nto be but another name for the love of truth. Moreover, I suspect that\nmy feelings are secretly shared by many people in America, natives and\nforeigners, who may not have the courage or the occasion to express them\nfrankly. After all, it has been acquaintance with America and American\nphilosophers that has chiefly contributed to clear and to settle my own\nmind. I have no axe to grind, only my thoughts to burnish, in the hope\nthat some part of the truth of things may be reflected there; and I am\nconfident of not giving serious offence to the judicious, because they\nwill feel that it is affection for the American people that makes me\nwish that what is best and most beautiful should not be absent from\ntheir lives.\n\nCivilisation is perhaps approaching one of those long winters that\novertake it from time to time. A flood of barbarism from below may soon\nlevel all the fair works of our Christian ancestors, as another flood\ntwo thousand years ago levelled those of the ancients. Romantic\nChristendom\u2014picturesque, passionate, unhappy episode\u2014may be coming to an\nend. Such a catastrophe would be no reason for despair. Nothing lasts\nfor ever; but the elasticity of life is wonderful, and even if the world\nlost its memory it could not lose its youth. Under the deluge, and\nwatered by it, seeds of all sorts would survive against the time to\ncome, even if what might eventually spring from them, under the new\ncircumstances, should wear a strange aspect. In a certain measure, and\nunintentionally, both this destruction and this restoration have already\noccurred in America. There is much forgetfulness, much callow disrespect\nfor what is past or alien; but there is a fund of vigour, goodness, and\nhope such as no nation ever possessed before. In what sometimes looks\nlike American greediness and jostling for the front place, all is love\nof achievement, nothing is unkindness; it is a fearless people, and free\nfrom malice, as you might see in their eyes and gestures, even if their\nconduct did not prove it. This soil is propitious to every seed, and\ntares must needs grow in it; but why should it not also breed clear\nthinking, honest judgement, and rational happiness? These things are\nindeed not necessary to existence, and without them America might long\nremain rich and populous like many a barbarous land in the past; but in\nthat case its existence would be hounded, like theirs, by falsity and\nremorse. May Heaven avert the omen, and make the new world a better\nworld than the old! In the classical and romantic tradition of Europe,\nlove, of which there was very little, was supposed to be kindled by\nbeauty, of which there was a great deal: perhaps moral chemistry may be\nable to reverse this operation, and in the future and in America it may\nbreed beauty out of love.\n\n [1] Perhaps I should add that I have not been in the United States\n     since January 1912. My observations stretched, with some intervals,\n     through the forty years preceding that date.\n\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n  \u00b7 PREFACE\n  \u00b7 CHAPTER I\u2014THE MORAL BACKGROUND\n  \u00b7 CHAPTER II\u2014THE ACADEMIC ENVIRONMENT\n  \u00b7 CHAPTER III\u2014WILLIAM JAMES\n  \u00b7 CHAPTER IV\u2014JOSIAH ROYCE\n  \u00b7 CHAPTER V\u2014LATER SPECULATIONS\n  \u00b7 CHAPTER VI\u2014MATERIALISM AND IDEALISM IN AMERICAN LIFE\n  \u00b7 CHAPTER VII\u2014ENGLISH LIBERTY IN AMERICA\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\u2014THE MORAL BACKGROUND\n\n\nAbout the middle of the nineteenth century, in the quiet sunshine of\nprovincial prosperity, New England had an Indian summer of the mind; and\nan agreeable reflective literature showed how brilliant that russet and\nyellow season could be. There were poets, historians, orators,\npreachers, most of whom had studied foreign literatures and had\ntravelled; they demurely kept up with the times; they were universal\nhumanists. But it was all a harvest of leaves; these worthies had an\nexpurgated and barren conception of life; theirs was the purity of sweet\nold age. Sometimes they made attempts to rejuvenate their minds by\nbroaching native subjects; they wished to prove how much matter for\npoetry the new world supplied, and they wrote \u201cRip van Winkle,\u201d\n\u201cHiawatha,\u201d or \u201cEvangeline\u201d; but the inspiration did not seem much more\nAmerican than that of Swift or Ossian or Ch\u00e2teaubriand. These cultivated\nwriters lacked native roots and fresh sap because the American intellect\nitself lacked them. Their culture was half a pious survival, half an\nintentional acquirement; it was not the inevitable flowering of a fresh\nexperience. Later there have been admirable analytic novelists who have\ndepicted American life as it is, but rather bitterly, rather sadly; as\nif the joy and the illusion of it did not inspire them, but only an\nabstract interest in their own art. If any one, like Walt Whitman,\npenetrated to the feelings and images which the American scene was able\nto breed out of itself, and filled them with a frank and broad afflatus\nof his own, there is no doubt that he misrepresented the conscious minds\nof cultivated Americans; in them the head as yet did not belong to the\ntrunk.\n\nNevertheless, _belles\u2010lettres_ in the United States\u2014which after all\nstretch beyond New England\u2014have always had two points of contact with\nthe great national experiment. One point of contact has been oratory,\nwith that sort of poetry, patriotic, religious, or moral, which has the\nfunction of oratory. Eloquence is a republican art, as conversation is\nan aristocratic one. By eloquence at public meetings and dinners, in the\npulpit or in the press, the impulses of the community could be brought\nto expression; consecrated maxims could be reapplied; the whole latent\nmanliness and shrewdness of the nation could be mobilised. In the form\nof oratory reflection, rising out of the problems of action, could be\nturned to guide or to sanction action, and sometimes could attain, in so\ndoing, a notable elevation of thought. Although Americans, and many\nother people, usually say that thought is for the sake of action, it has\nevidently been in these high moments, when action became incandescent in\nthought, that they have been most truly alive, intensively most active,\nand although _doing_ nothing, have found at last that their existence\nwas worth while. Reflection is itself a turn, and the top turn, given to\nlife. Here is the second point at which literature in America has fused\nwith the activities of the nation: it has paused to enjoy them. Every\nanimal has his festive and ceremonious moments, when he poses or plumes\nhimself or thinks; sometimes he even sings and flies aloft in a sort of\necstasy. Somewhat in the same way, when reflection in man becomes\ndominant, it may become passionate; it may create religion or\nphilosophy\u2014adventures often more thrilling than the humdrum experience\nthey are supposed to interrupt.\n\nThis pure flame of mind is nothing new, superadded, or alien in America.\nIt is notorious how metaphysical was the passion that drove the Puritans\nto those shores; they went there in the hope of living more perfectly in\nthe spirit. And their pilgrim\u2019s progress was not finished when they had\nfounded their churches in the wilderness; an endless migration of the\nmind was still before them, a flight from those new idols and servitudes\nwhich prosperity involves, and the eternal lure of spiritual freedom and\ntruth. The moral world always contains undiscovered or thinly peopled\ncontinents open to those who are more attached to what might or should\nbe than to what already is. Americans are eminently prophets; they apply\nmorals to public affairs; they are impatient and enthusiastic. Their\njudgements have highly speculative implications, which they often make\nexplicit; they are men with principles, and fond of stating them.\nMoreover, they have an intense self\u2010reliance; to exercise private\njudgement is not only a habit with them but a conscious duty. Not seldom\npersonal conversions and mystical experiences throw their ingrained\nfaith into novel forms, which may be very bold and radical. They are\ntraditionally exercised about religion, and adrift on the subject more\nthan any other people on earth; and if religion is a dreaming\nphilosophy, and philosophy a waking religion, a people so wide awake and\nso religious as the old Yankees ought certainly to have been rich in\nphilosophers.\n\nIn fact, philosophy in the good old sense of curiosity about the nature\nof things, with readiness to make the best of them, has not been absent\nfrom the practice of Americans or from their humorous moods; their\nhumour and shrewdness are sly comments on the shortcomings of some\npolite convention that everybody accepts tacitly, yet feels to be\ninsecure and contrary to the principles on which life is actually\ncarried on. Nevertheless, with the shyness which simple competence often\nshows in the presence of conventional shams, these wits have not taken\ntheir native wisdom very seriously. They have not had the leisure nor\nthe intellectual scope to think out and defend the implications of their\nhomely perceptions. Their fresh insight has been whispered in\nparentheses and asides; it has been humbly banished, in alarm, from\ntheir solemn moments. What people have respected have been rather scraps\nof official philosophy, or entire systems, which they have inherited or\nimported, as they have respected operas and art museums. To be on\nspeaking terms with these fine things was a part of social\nrespectability, like having family silver. High thoughts must be at\nhand, like those candlesticks, probably candleless, sometimes displayed\nas a seemly ornament in a room blazing with electric light. Even in\nWilliam James, spontaneous and stimulating as he was, a certain\nunderlying discomfort was discernible; he had come out into the open,\ninto what should have been the sunshine, but the vast shadow of the\ntemple still stood between him and the sun. He was worried about what\n_ought_ to be believed and the awful deprivations of disbelieving. What\nhe called the cynical view of anything had first to be brushed aside,\nwithout stopping to consider whether it was not the true one; and he was\nbent on finding new and empirical reasons for clinging to free\u2010will,\ndeparted spirits, and tutelary gods. Nobody, except perhaps in this last\ndecade, has tried to bridge the chasm between what he believes in daily\nlife and the \u201cproblems\u201d of philosophy. Nature and science have not been\nignored, and \u201cpractice\u201d in some schools has been constantly referred to;\nbut instead of supplying philosophy with its data they have only\nconstituted its difficulties; its function has been not to build on\nknown facts but to explain them away. Hence a curious alternation and\nirrelevance, as between weekdays and Sabbaths, between American ways and\nAmerican opinions.\n\nThat philosophy should be attached to tradition would be a great\nadvantage, conducive to mutual understanding, to maturity, and to\nprogress, if the tradition lay in the highway of truth. To deviate from\nit in that case would be to betray the fact that, while one might have a\nlively mind, one was not master of the subject. Unfortunately, in the\nnineteenth century, in America as elsewhere, the ruling tradition was\nnot only erratic and far from the highway of truth, but the noonday of\nthis tradition was over, and its classic forms were outgrown. A\nphilosophy may have a high value, other than its truth to things, in its\ntruth to method and to the genius of its author; it may be a feat of\nsynthesis and imagination, like a great poem, expressing one of the\neternal possibilities of being, although one which the creator happened\nto reject when he made this world. It is possible to be a master in\nfalse philosophy\u2014easier, in fact, than to be a master in the truth,\nbecause a false philosophy can be made as simple and consistent as one\npleases. Such had been the masters of the tradition prevalent in New\nEngland\u2014Calvin, Hume, Fichte, not to mention others more relished\nbecause less pure; but one of the disadvantages of such perfection in\nerror is that the illusion is harder to transmit to another age and\ncountry. If Jonathan Edwards, for instance, was a Calvinist of pristine\nforce and perhaps the greatest _master_ in false philosophy that America\nhas yet produced, he paid the price by being abandoned, even in his\nlifetime, by his own sect, and seeing the world turn a deaf ear to his\nlogic without so much as attempting to refute it. One of the\npeculiarities of recent speculation, especially in America, is that\nideas are abandoned in virtue of a mere change of feeling, without any\nnew evidence or new arguments. We do not nowadays refute our\npredecessors, we pleasantly bid them good\u2010bye. Even if all our\nprinciples are unwittingly traditional we do not like to bow openly to\nauthority. Hence masters like Calvin, Hume, or Fichte rose before their\nAmerican admirers like formidable ghosts, foreign and unseizable. People\nrefused to be encumbered with any system, even one of their own; they\nwere content to imbibe more or less of the spirit of a philosophy and to\nlet it play on such facts as happened to attract their attention. The\noriginality even of Emerson and of William James was of this incidental\ncharacter; they found new approaches to old beliefs or new expedients in\nold dilemmas. They were not in a scholastic sense pupils of anybody or\nmasters in anything. They hated the scholastic way of saying what they\nmeant, if they had heard of it; they insisted on a personal freshness of\nstyle, refusing to make their thought more precise than it happened to\nbe spontaneously; and they lisped their logic, when the logic came.\n\nWe must remember that ever since the days of Socrates, and especially\nafter the establishment of Christianity, the dice of thought have been\nloaded. Certain pledges have preceded inquiry and divided the possible\nconclusions beforehand into the acceptable and the inacceptable, the\nedifying and the shocking, the noble and the base. Wonder has no longer\nbeen the root of philosophy, but sometimes impatience at having been\ncheated and sometimes fear of being undeceived. The marvel of existence,\nin which the luminous and the opaque are so romantically mingled, no\nlonger lay like a sea open to intellectual adventure, tempting the mind\nto conceive some bold and curious system of the universe on the analogy\nof what had been so far discovered. Instead, people were confronted with\nan orthodoxy\u2014though not always the same orthodoxy\u2014whispering mysteries\nand brandishing anathemas. Their wits were absorbed in solving\ntraditional problems, many of them artificial and such as the ruling\northodoxy had created by its gratuitous assumptions. Difficulties were\ntherefore found in some perfectly obvious truths; and obvious fables, if\nthey were hallowed by association, were seriously weighed in the balance\nagainst one another or against the facts; and many an actual thing was\nproved to be impossible, or was hidden under a false description. In\nconservative schools the student learned and tried to fathom the\nreceived solutions; in liberal schools he was perhaps invited to seek\nsolutions of his own, but still to the old questions. Freedom, when\nnominally allowed, was a provisional freedom; if your wanderings did not\nsomehow bring you back to orthodoxy you were a misguided being, no\nmatter how disparate from the orthodox might be the field from which you\nfetched your little harvest; and if you could not be answered you were\ncalled superficial. Most spirits are cowed by such disparagement; but\neven those who snap their fingers at it do not escape; they can hardly\nhelp feeling that in calling a spade a spade they are petulant and\nnaughty; or if their inspiration is too genuine for that, they still\nunwittingly shape their opinions in contrast to those that claim\nauthority, and therefore on the same false lines\u2014a terrible tax to pay\nto the errors of others; and it is only here and there that a very great\nand solitary mind, like that of Spinoza, can endure obloquy without\nbitterness or can pass through perverse controversies without contagion.\n\nUnder such circumstances it is obvious that speculation can be frank and\nhappy only where orthodoxy has receded, abandoning a larger and larger\nfield to unprejudiced inquiry; or else (as has happened among liberal\nProtestants) where the very heart of orthodoxy has melted, has absorbed\nthe most alien substances, and is ready to bloom into anything that\nanybody finds attractive. This is the secret of that extraordinary vogue\nwhich the transcendental philosophy has had for nearly a century in\nGreat Britain and America; it is a method which enables a man to\nrenovate all his beliefs, scientific and religious, from the inside,\ngiving them a new status and interpretation as phases of his own\nexperience or imagination; so that he does not seem to himself to reject\nanything, and yet is bound to nothing, except to his creative self. Many\ntoo who have no inclination to practise this transcendental method\u2014a\npersonal, arduous, and futile art, which requires to be renewed at every\nmoment\u2014have been impressed with the results or the maxims of this or\nthat transcendental philosopher, such as that every opinion leads on to\nanother that reinterprets it, or every evil to some higher good that\ncontains it; and they have managed to identify these views with what\nstill seemed to them vital in religion.\n\nIn spite of this profound mutation at the core, and much paring at the\nedges, traditional belief in New England retained its continuity and its\npriestly unction; and religious teachers and philosophers could slip\naway from Calvinism and even from Christianity without any loss of\nelevation or austerity. They found it so pleasant and easy to elude the\npast that they really had no quarrel with it. The world, they felt, was\na safe place, watched over by a kindly God, who exacted nothing but\ncheerfulness and good\u2010will from his children; and the American flag was\na sort of rainbow in the sky, promising that all storms were over. Or if\nstorms came, such as the Civil War, they would not be harder to weather\nthan was necessary to test the national spirit and raise it to a new\nefficiency. The subtler dangers which we may now see threatening America\nhad not yet come in sight\u2014material restlessness was not yet ominous, the\npressure of business enterprises was not yet out of scale with the old\nlife or out of key with the old moral harmonies. A new type of American\nhad not appeared\u2014the untrained, pushing, cosmopolitan orphan, cock\u2010sure\nin manner but not too sure in his morality, to whom the old Yankee, with\nhis sour integrity, is almost a foreigner. Was not \u201cincrease,\u201d in the\nBible, a synonym for benefit? Was not \u201cabundance\u201d the same, or almost\nthe same, as happiness?\n\nMeantime the churches, a little ashamed of their past, began to court\nthe good opinion of so excellent a world. Although called evangelical,\nthey were far, very far, from prophesying its end, or offering a refuge\nfrom it, or preaching contempt for it; they existed only to serve it,\nand their highest divine credential was that the world needed them.\nIrreligion, dissoluteness, and pessimism\u2014supposed naturally to go\ntogether\u2014could never prosper; they were incompatible with efficiency.\nThat was the supreme test. \u201cBe Christians,\u201d I once heard a president of\nYale College cry to his assembled pupils, \u201cbe Christians and you will be\nsuccessful.\u201d Religion was indispensable and sacred, when not carried too\nfar; but theology might well be unnecessary. Why distract this world\nwith talk of another? Enough for the day was the good thereof. Religion\nshould be disentangled as much as possible from history and authority\nand metaphysics, and made to rest honestly on one\u2019s fine feelings, on\none\u2019s indomitable optimism and trust in life. Revelation was nothing\nmiraculous, given once for all in some remote age and foreign country;\nit must come to us directly, and with greater authority now than ever\nbefore. If evolution was to be taken seriously and to include moral\ngrowth, the great men of the past could only be stepping\u2010stones to our\nown dignity. To grow was to contain and sum up all the good that had\ngone before, adding an appropriate increment. Undoubtedly some early\nfigures were beautiful, and allowances had to be made for local\ninfluences in Palestine, a place so much more primitive and backward\nthan Massachusetts. Jesus was a prophet more winsome and nearer to\nourselves than his predecessors; but how could any one deny that the\ntwenty centuries of progress since his time must have raised a loftier\npedestal for Emerson or Charming or Phillips Brooks? It might somehow\nnot be in good taste to put this feeling into clear words; one and\nperhaps two of these men would have deprecated it; nevertheless it\nbeamed with refulgent self\u2010satisfaction in the lives and maxims of most\nof their followers.\n\nAll this liberalism, however, never touched the centre of traditional\northodoxy, and those who, for all their modernness, felt that they\ninherited the faith of their fathers and were true to it were\nfundamentally right. There was still an orthodoxy among American\nhighbrows at the end of the nineteenth century, dissent from which was\nfelt to be scandalous; it consisted in holding that the universe exists\nand is governed for the sake of man or of the human spirit. This\npersuasion, arrogant as it might seem, is at bottom an expression of\nimpotence rather than of pride. The soul is originally vegetative; it\nfeels the weal and woe of what occurs within the body. With locomotion\nand the instinct to hunt and to flee, animals begin to notice external\nthings also; but the chief point noticed about them is whether they are\ngood or bad, friendly or hostile, far or near. The station of the animal\nand his interests thus become the measure of all things for him, in so\nfar as he knows them; and this aspect of them is, by a primitive\nfatality, the heart of them to him. It is only reason that can discount\nthese childish perspectives, neutralise the bias of each by collating it\nwith the others, and masterfully conceive the field in which their\ncommon objects are deployed, discovering also the principle of\nforeshortening or projection which produces each perspective in turn.\nBut reason is a later comer into this world, and weak; against its\nsuasion stands the mighty resistance of habit and of moral presumption.\nIt is in their interest, and to rehabilitate the warm vegetative\nautonomy of the primitive soul, that orthodox religion and philosophy\nlabour in the western world\u2014for the mind of India cannot be charged with\nthis folly. Although inwardly these systems have not now a good\nconscience and do not feel very secure (for they are retrograde and sin\nagainst the light), yet outwardly they are solemn and venerable; and\nthey have incorporated a great deal of moral wisdom with their egotism\nor humanism\u2014more than the Indians with their respect for the infinite.\nIn deifying human interests they have naturally studied and expressed\nthem justly, whereas those who perceive the relativity of human goods\nare tempted to scorn them\u2014which is itself unreasonable\u2014and to sacrifice\nthem all to the single passion of worship or of despair. Hardly anybody,\nexcept possibly the Greeks at their best, has realised the sweetness and\nglory of being a rational animal.\n\nThe Jews, as we know, had come to think that it was the creator of the\nworld, the God of the universe, who had taken them for his chosen\npeople. Christians in turn had asserted that it was God in person who,\nhaving become a man, had founded their church. According to this Hebraic\ntradition, the dignity of man did not lie in being a mind (which he\nundoubtedly is) but in being a creature materially highly favoured, with\na longer life and a brighter destiny than other creatures in the world.\nIt is remarkable how deep, in the Hebraic religions, is this interest in\nmaterial existence; so deep that we are surprised when we discover that,\naccording to the insight of other races, this interest is the essence of\nirreligion. Some detachment from existence and from hopes of material\nsplendour has indeed filtered into Christianity through Platonism.\nSocrates and his disciples admired this world, but they did not\nparticularly covet it, or wish to live long in it, or expect to improve\nit; what they cared for was an idea or a good which they found expressed\nin it, something outside it and timeless, in which the contemplative\nintellect might be literally absorbed. This philosophy was no less\nhumanistic than that of the Jews, though in a less material fashion: if\nit did not read the universe in terms of thrift, it read it in terms of\nart. The pursuit of a good, such as is presumably aimed at in human\naction, was supposed to inspire every movement in nature; and this good,\nfor the sake of which the very heavens revolved, was akin to the\nintellectual happiness of a Greek sage. Nature was a philosopher in\npursuit of an idea. Natural science then took a moralising turn which it\nhas not yet quite outgrown. Socrates required of astronomy, if it was to\nbe true science, that it should show why _it was best_ that the sun and\nmoon should be as they are; and Plato, refining on this, assures us that\nthe eyes are placed in the front of the head, rather than at the back,\nbecause the front is the nobler quarter, and that the intestines are\nlong in order that we may have leisure between meals to study\nphilosophy. Curiously enough, the very enemies of final causes sometimes\ncatch this infection and attach absolute values to facts in an opposite\nsense and in an inhuman interest; and you often hear in America that\nwhatever is is right. These naturalists, while they rebuke the moralists\nfor thinking that nature is ruled magically for our good, think her\nadorable for being ruled, in scorn of us, only by her own laws; and thus\nwe oscillate between egotism and idolatry.\n\nThe Reformation did not reform this belief in the cosmic supremacy of\nman, or the humanity of God; on the contrary, it took it (like so much\nelse) in terrible German earnest, not suffering it any longer to be\naccepted somewhat lightly as a classical figure of speech or a mystery\nresting on revelation. The human race, the chosen people, the Christian\nelect were like tabernacle within tabernacle for the spirit; but in the\nholy of holies was the spirit itself, one\u2019s own spirit and experience,\nwhich was the centre of everything. Protestant philosophy, exploring the\ndomain of science and history with confidence, and sure of finding the\nspirit walking there, was too conscientious to misrepresent what it\nfound. As the terrible facts could not be altered they had to be\nundermined. By turning psychology into metaphysics this could be\naccomplished, and we could reach the remarkable conclusion that the\nhuman spirit was not so much the purpose of the universe as its seat,\nand the only universe there was.\n\nThis conclusion, which sums up idealism on its critical or scientific\nside, would not of itself give much comfort to religious minds, that\nusually crave massive support rather than sublime independence; it leads\nto the heroic egotism of Fichte or Nietzsche rather than to any green\npastures beside any still waters. But the critical element in idealism\ncan be used to destroy belief in the natural world; and by so doing it\ncan open the way to another sort of idealism, not at all critical, which\nmight be called the higher superstition. This views the world as an\noracle or charade, concealing a dramatic unity, or formula, or maxim,\nwhich all experience exists to illustrate. The habit of regarding\nexistence as a riddle, with a surprising solution which we think we have\nfound, should be the source of rather mixed emotions; the facts remain\nas they were, and rival solutions may at any time suggest themselves;\nand the one we have hit on may not, after all, be particularly\ncomforting. The Christian may find himself turned by it into a heathen,\nthe humanist into a pantheist, and the hope with which we instinctively\nfaced life may be chastened into mere conformity. Nevertheless, however\nchilling and inhuman our higher superstition may prove, it will make us\nfeel that we are masters of a mystical secret, that we have a faith to\ndefend, and that, like all philosophers, we have taken a ticket in a\nlottery in which if we hit on the truth, even if it seems a blank, we\nshall have drawn the first prize.\n\nOrthodoxy in New England, even so transformed and attenuated, did not of\ncourse hold the field alone. There are materialists by instinct in every\nage and country; there are always private gentlemen whom the clergy and\nthe professors cannot deceive. Here and there a medical or scientific\nman, or a man of letters, will draw from his special pursuits some hint\nof the nature of things at large; or a political radical will nurse\nundying wrath against all opinions not tartly hostile to church and\nstate. But these clever people are not organised, they are not always\ngiven to writing, nor speculative enough to make a system out of their\nconvictions. The enthusiasts and the pedagogues naturally flock to the\nother camp. The very competence which scientific people and connoisseurs\nhave in their special fields disinclines them to generalise, or renders\ntheir generalisations one\u2010sided; so that their speculations are\nextraordinarily weak and stammering. Both by what they represent and by\nwhat they ignore they are isolated and deprived of influence, since only\nthose who are at home in a subject can feel the force of analogies drawn\nfrom that field, whereas any one can be swayed by sentimental and moral\nappeals, by rhetoric and unction. Furthermore, in America the\nmaterialistic school is without that support from popular passions which\nit draws in many European countries from its association with\nanticlericalism or with revolutionary politics; and it also lacks the\nmaturity, self\u2010confidence, and refinement proper in older societies to\nthe great body of Epicurean and disenchanted opinion, where for\ncenturies wits, critics, minor philosophers, and men of the world have\nchuckled together over their Horace, their Voltaire, and their Gibbon.\nThe horror which the theologians have of infidelity passes therefore\ninto the average American mind unmitigated by the suspicion that\nanything pleasant could lie in that quarter, much less the open way to\nnature and truth and a secure happiness. There is another handicap, of a\nmore technical sort, under which naturalistic philosophy labours in\nAmerica, as it does in England; it has been crossed by scepticism about\nthe validity of perception and has become almost identical with\npsychology. Of course, for any one who thinks naturalistically (as the\nBritish empiricists did in the beginning, like every unsophisticated\nmortal), psychology is the description of a very superficial and\nincidental complication in the animal kingdom: it treats of the curious\nsensibility and volatile thoughts awakened in the mind by the growth and\nfortunes of the body. In noting these thoughts and feelings, we can\nobserve how far they constitute true knowledge of the world in which\nthey arise, how far they ignore it, and how far they play with it, by\nvirtue of the poetry and the syntax of discourse which they add out of\ntheir own exuberance; for fancy is a very fertile treacherous thing, as\nevery one finds when he dreams. But dreams run over into waking life,\nand sometimes seem to permeate and to underlie it; and it was just this\nsuspicion that he might be dreaming awake, that discourse and tradition\nmight be making a fool of him, that prompted the hard\u2010headed Briton,\neven before the Reformation, to appeal from conventional beliefs to\n\u201cexperience.\u201d He was anxious to clear away those sophistries and\nimpostures of which he was particularly apprehensive, in view of the\nsomewhat foreign character of his culture and religion. Experience, he\nthought, would bear unimpeachable witness to the nature of things; for\nby experience he understood knowledge produced by direct contact with\nthe object. Taken in this sense, experience is a method of discovery, an\nexercise of intelligence; it is the same observation of things, strict,\ncumulative, and analytic, which produces the natural sciences. It rests\non naturalistic assumptions (since we know when and where we find our\ndata) and could not fail to end in materialism. What prevented British\nempiricism from coming to this obvious conclusion was a peculiarity of\nthe national temperament. The Englishman is not only distrustful of too\nmuch reasoning and too much theory (and science and materialism involve\na good deal of both), but he is also fond of musing and of withdrawing\ninto his inner man. Accordingly his empiricism took an introspective\nform; like Hamlet he stopped at the _how_; he began to think about\nthinking. His first care was now to arrest experience as he underwent\nit; though its presence could not be denied, it came in such a\nquestionable shape that it could not be taken at its word. This mere\npresence of experience, this ghostly apparition to the inner man, was\nall that empirical philosophy could now profess to discover. Far from\nbeing an exercise of intelligence, it retracted all understanding, all\ninterpretation, all instinctive faith; far from furnishing a sure record\nof the truths of nature, it furnished a set of pathological facts, the\npassive subject\u2010matter of psychology. These now seemed the only facts\nadmissible, and psychology, for the philosophers, became the only\nscience. Experience could discover nothing, but all discoveries had to\nbe retracted, so that they should revert to the fact of experience and\nterminate there. Evidently when the naturalistic background and meaning\nof experience have dropped out in this way, empiricism is a form of\nidealism, since whatever objects we can come upon will all be _a priori_\nand _a fortiori_ and _sensu eminentiori_ ideal in the mind. The irony of\nlogic actually made English empiricism, understood in this psychological\nway, the starting\u2010point for transcendentalism and for German philosophy.\n\nBetween these two senses of the word experience, meaning sometimes\ncontact with things and at other times absolute feeling, the empirical\nschool in England and America has been helplessly torn, without ever\nshowing the courage or the self\u2010knowledge to choose between them. I\nthink we may say that on the whole their view has been this: that\nfeelings or ideas were absolute atoms of existence, without any ground\nor source, so that the elements of their universe were all mental; but\nthey conceived these psychical elements to be deployed in a physical\ntime and even (since there were many simultaneous series of them) in\nsome sort of space. These philosophers were accordingly idealists about\nsubstance but naturalists about the order and relations of existences;\nand experience on their lips meant feeling when they were thinking of\nparticulars, but when they were thinking broadly, in matters of history\nor science, experience meant the universal nebula or cataract which\nthese feelings composed\u2014itself no object of experience, but one believed\nin and very imperfectly presented in imagination. These men believed in\nnature, and were materialists at heart and to all practical purposes;\nbut they were shy intellectually, and seemed to think they ran less risk\nof error in holding a thing covertly than in openly professing it.\n\nIf any one, like Herbert Spencer, kept psychology in its place and in\nthat respect remained a pure naturalist, he often forfeited this\nadvantage by enveloping the positive information he derived from the\nsciences in a whirlwind of generalisations. The higher superstition, the\nnotion that nature dances to the tune of some comprehensive formula or\nsome magic rhyme, thus reappeared among those who claimed to speak for\nnatural science. In their romantic sympathy with nature they attributed\nto her an excessive sympathy with themselves; they overlooked her\ninfinite complications and continual irony, and candidly believed they\ncould measure her with their thumb\u2010rules. Why should philosophers drag a\ntoy\u2010net of words, fit to catch butterflies, through the sea of being,\nand expect to land all the fish in it? Why not take note simply of what\nthe particular sciences can as yet tell us of the world? Certainly, when\nput together, they already yield a very wonderful, very true, and very\nsufficient picture of it. Are we impatient of knowing everything? But\neven if science was much enlarged it would have limits, both in\npenetration and in extent; and there would always remain, I will not say\nan infinity of unsolved problems (because \u201cproblems\u201d are created by our\nimpatience or our contradictions), but an infinity of undiscovered\nfacts. Nature is like a beautiful woman that may be as delightfully and\nas truly known at a certain distance as upon a closer view; as to\nknowing her through and through, that is nonsense in both cases, and\nmight not reward our pains. The love of all\u2010inclusiveness is as\ndangerous in philosophy as in art. The savour of nature can be enjoyed\nby us only through our own senses and insight, and an outline map of the\nentire universe, even if it was not fabulously concocted, would not tell\nus much that was worth knowing about the outlying parts of it. Without\nsuggesting for a moment that the proper study of mankind is man only\u2014for\nit may be landscape or mathematics\u2014we may safely say that their proper\nstudy is what lies within their range and is interesting to them. For\nthis reason the moralists who consider principally human life and paint\nnature only as a background to their figures are apt to be better\nphilosophers than the speculative naturalists. In human life we are at\nhome, and our views on it, if one\u2010sided, are for that very reason\nexpressive of our character and fortunes. An unfortunate peculiarity of\nnaturalistic philosophers is that usually they have but cursory and\nwretched notions of the inner life of the mind; they are dead to\npatriotism and to religion, they hate poetry and fancy and passion and\neven philosophy itself; and therefore (especially if their science too,\nas often happens, is borrowed and vague) we need not wonder if the\nacademic and cultivated world despises them, and harks back to the\nmythology of Plato or Aristotle or Hegel, who at least were conversant\nwith the spirit of man.\n\nPhilosophers are very severe towards other philosophers because they\nexpect too much. Even under the most favourable circumstances no mortal\ncan be asked to seize the truth in its wholeness or at its centre. As\nthe senses open to us only partial perspectives, taken from one point of\nview, and report the facts in symbols which, far from being adequate to\nthe full nature of what surrounds us, resemble the coloured signals of\ndanger or of free way which a railway engine\u2010driver peers at in the\nnight, so our speculation, which is a sort of panoramic sense,\napproaches things peripherally and expresses them humanly. But how\ndoubly dyed in this subjectivity must our thought be when an orthodoxy\ndominant for ages has twisted the universe into the service of moral\ninterests, and when even the heretics are entangled in a scepticism so\npartial and arbitrary that it substitutes psychology, the most\nderivative and dubious of sciences, for the direct intelligent reading\nof experience! But this strain of subjectivity is not in all respects an\nevil; it is a warm purple dye. When a way of thinking is deeply rooted\nin the soil, and embodies the instincts or even the characteristic\nerrors of a people, it has a value quite independent of its truth; it\nconstitutes a phase of human life and can powerfully affect the\nintellectual drama in which it figures. It is a value of this sort that\nattaches to modern philosophy in general, and very particularly to the\nAmerican thinkers I am about to discuss. There would be a sort of\nirrelevance and unfairness in measuring them by the standards of pure\nscience or even of a classic sagacity, and reproaching them for not\nhaving reached perfect consistency or fundamental clearness. Men of\nintense feeling\u2014and others will hardly count\u2014are not mirrors but lights.\nIf pure truth happened to be what they passionately desired, they would\nseek it single\u2010mindedly, and in matters within their competence they\nwould probably find it; but the desire for pure truth, like any other,\nmust wait to be satisfied until its organ is ripe and the conditions are\nfavourable. The nineteenth century was not a time and America was not a\nplace where such an achievement could be expected. There the wisest felt\nthemselves to be, as they were, questioners and apostles rather than\nserene philosophers. We should not pay them the doubtful compliment of\nattributing to them merits alien to their tradition and scope, as if the\nnobleness they actually possessed\u2014their conscience, vigour, timeliness,\nand influence\u2014were not enough.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\u2014THE ACADEMIC ENVIRONMENT\n\n\nDuring some twenty\u2010five years\u2014from about 1885 to 1910\u2014there was at\nHarvard College an interesting congregation of philosophers. Why at\nHarvard in particular? So long as philosophy is the free pursuit of\nwisdom, it arises wherever men of character and penetration, each with\nhis special experience or hobby, look about them in this world. That\nphilosophers should be professors is an accident, and almost an anomaly.\nFree reflection about everything is a habit to be imitated, but not a\nsubject to expound; and an original system, if the philosopher has one,\nis something dark, perilous, untested, and not ripe to be taught, nor is\nthere much danger that any one will learn it. The genuine philosopher\u2014as\nRoyce liked to say, quoting the Upanishads\u2014wanders alone like the\nrhinoceros. He may be followed, as he may have been anticipated; and he\nmay even be accompanied, though there is as much danger as stimulus to\nhim in flying with a flock. In his disputations, if he is drawn into\nthem, he will still be soliloquising, and meeting not the arguments\npersuasive to others, but only such a version of them as his own thought\ncan supply. The value of his questions and answers, as Socrates knew so\nwell, will lie wholly in the monition of the argument developing within\nhim and carrying him whithersoever it will, like a dream or like a god.\nIf philosophers must earn their living and not beg (which some of them\nhave thought more consonant with their vocation), it would be safer for\nthem to polish lenses like Spinoza, or to sit in a black skull\u2010cap and\nwhite beard at the door of some unfrequented museum, selling the\ncatalogues and taking in the umbrellas; these innocent ways of earning\ntheir bread\u2010card in the future republic would not prejudice their\nmeditations and would keep their eyes fixed, without undue affection, on\na characteristic bit of that real world which it is their business to\nunderstand. Or if, being mild and bookish, it is thought they ought to\nbe teachers, they might teach something else than philosophy; or if\nphilosophy is the only thing they are competent to teach, it might at\nleast not be their own, but some classic system with which, and against\nwhich, mankind is already inoculated\u2014preferably the civilised ethics and\ncharming myths of Plato and Aristotle, which everybody will be the\nbetter for knowing and few the worse for believing. At best, the true\nphilosopher can fulfil his mission very imperfectly, which is to pilot\nhimself, or at most a few voluntary companions who may find themselves\nin the same boat. It is not easy for him to shout, or address a crowd;\nhe must be silent for long seasons; for he is watching stars that move\nslowly and in courses that it is possible though difficult to foresee;\nand he is crushing all things in his heart as in a winepress, until his\nlife and their secret flow out together.\n\nThe tendency to gather and to breed philosophers in universities does\nnot belong to ages of free and humane reflection: it is scholastic and\nproper to the Middle Ages and to Germany. And the reason is not far to\nseek. When there is a philosophical orthodoxy, and speculation is\nexpected to be a reasoned defence of some funded inspiration, it becomes\nitself corporate and traditional, and requires centres of teaching,\nendowment, and propaganda. Fundamental questions have been settled by\nthe church, the government, or the Zeitgeist, and the function of the\nprofessor, himself bred in that school, is to transmit its lore to the\nnext generation, with such original touches of insight or eloquence as\nhe may command. To maintain and elucidate such a tradition, all the\nschools and universities of Christendom were originally founded; and if\nphilosophy seemed sometimes to occupy but a small place in them\u2014as for\ninstance in the old\u2010fashioned American college\u2014it was only because the\nentire discipline and instruction of the place were permeated with a\nparticular system of faith and morals, which it was almost superfluous\nto teach in the abstract. In those universities where philosophical\ncontroversy is rife, its traditional and scholastic character is no less\nobvious; it lives less on meditation than on debate, and turns on\nproofs, objections, paradoxes, or expedients for seeming to re\u2010establish\neverything that had come to seem clearly false, by some ingenious change\nof front or some twist of dialectic. Its subject\u2010matter is not so much\nwhat is known of the world, as what often very ignorant philosophers\nhave said in answer to one another; or else, when the age is out of\npatience with scholasticism, orthodoxy may take refuge in intuition, and\nfor fear of the letter without the spirit, may excuse itself from\nconsidering at all what is logical or probable, in order to embrace\nwhatever seems most welcome and comforting. The sweet homilies of the\nprofessors then become clerical, genteel, and feminine.\n\nHarvard College had been founded to rear puritan divines, and as\nCalvinism gradually dissolved, it left a void there and as it were a\nmould, which a philosophy expressing the same instincts in a world\nintellectually transformed could flow into and fill almost without\nknowing it. Corporate bodies are like persons, long vaguely swayed by\nearly impressions they may have forgotten. Even when changes come over\nthe spirit of their dream, a sense of the mission to which they were\nfirst dedicated lingers about them, and may revive, like the antiquarian\nand poetic Catholicism of Oxford in the nineteenth century. In academic\nAmerica the Platonic and Catholic traditions had never been planted; it\nwas only the Calvinistic tradition, when revived in some modern\ndisguise, that could stir there the secret cord of reverence and\nenthusiasm. Harvard was the seminary and academy for the inner circle of\nBostonians, and naturally responded to all the liberal and literary\nmovements of which Boston was the centre. In religion it became first\nUnitarian and afterwards neutral; in philosophy it might long have been\nsatisfied with what other New England colleges found sufficient, namely\nsuch lofty views as the president, usually a clergyman, could introduce\ninto his baccalaureate sermons, or into the course of lectures he might\ngive for seniors on the evidences of Christianity or on the theory of\nevolution. Such philosophical initiation had sufficed for the\ndistinguished literary men of the middle of the century, and even for so\ndeep a sage as Emerson. But things cannot stand still, and Boston, as is\nwell known, is not an ordinary place. When the impulse to domestic\nliterary expression seemed to be exhausted, intellectual ambition took\nother forms. It was an age of science, of philology, of historical\nlearning, and the laurels of Germany would not let Boston sleep. As it\nhad a great public library, and hoped to have a great art museum, might\nit not have a great university? Harvard in one sense was a university\nalready, in that the college (although there was only one) was\nsurrounded by a group of professional schools, notably those of law and\nmedicine, in which studies requisite for the service of the community,\nand leading potentially to brilliant careers, were carried on with\nconspicuous success. The number of these professional schools might have\nbeen enlarged, as has been actually done later, until training in all\nthe professions had been provided. But it happens that the descriptive\nsciences, languages, mathematics, and philosophy are not studies useful\nfor any profession, except that of teaching these very subjects over\nagain; and there was no practical way of introducing them into the\nHarvard system except to graft them upon the curriculum of the college;\notherwise neither money nor students could have been found for so much\nornamental learning.\n\nThis circumstance, external and irrelevant as it may seem, I think had a\ngreat influence over the temper and quality of the Harvard philosophers;\nfor it mingled responsibility for the education of youth, and much\nlabour in it, with their pure speculation. Teaching is a delightful\npaternal art, and especially teaching intelligent and warm\u2010hearted\nyoungsters, as most American collegians are; but it is an art like\nacting, where the performance, often rehearsed, must be adapted to an\naudience hearing it only once. The speaker must make concessions to\ntheir impatience, their taste, their capacity, their prejudices, their\nultimate good; he must neither bore nor perplex nor demoralise them. His\nthoughts must be such as can flow daily, and be set down in notes; they\nmust come when the bell rings and stop appropriately when the bell rings\na second time. The best that is in him, as Mephistopheles says in\n_Faust_, he dare not tell them; and as the substance of this possession\nis spiritual, to withhold is often to lose it. For it is not merely a\nmatter of fearing not to be understood, or giving offence; in the\npresence of a hundred youthful upturned faces a man cannot, without\ndiffidence, speak in his own person, of his own thoughts; he needs\nsupport, in order to exert influence with a good conscience; unless he\nfeels that he is the vehicle of a massive tradition, he will become\nbitter, or flippant, or aggressive; if he is to teach with good grace\nand modesty and authority, it must not be he that speaks, but science or\nhumanity that is speaking in him.\n\nNow the state of Harvard College, and of American education generally,\nat the time to which I refer, had this remarkable effect on the\nphilosophers there: it made their sense of social responsibility acute,\nbecause they were consciously teaching and guiding the community, as if\nthey had been clergymen; and it made no less acute their moral\nloneliness, isolation, and forced self\u2010reliance, because they were like\nclergymen without a church, and not only had no common philosophic\ndoctrine to transmit, but were expected not to have one. They were\ninvited to be at once genuine philosophers and popular professors; and\nthe degree to which some of them managed to unite these contraries is\nremarkable, especially if we consider the character of the academic\npublic they had to serve and to please. While the sentiments of most\nAmericans in politics and morals, if a little vague, are very\nconservative, their democratic instincts, and the force of\ncircumstances, have produced a system of education which anticipates all\nthat the most extreme revolution could bring about; and while no one\ndreams of forcibly suppressing private property, religion, or the\nfamily, American education ignores these things, and proceeds as much as\npossible as if they did not exist. The child passes very young into a\nfree school, established and managed by the municipal authorities; the\nteachers, even for the older boys, are chiefly unmarried women,\nsensitive, faithful, and feeble; their influence helps to establish that\nseparation which is so characteristic of America between things\nintellectual, which remain wrapped in a feminine veil and, as it were,\nunder glass, and the rough business and passions of life. The lessons\nare ambitious in range, but are made as easy, as interesting, and as\noptional as possible; the stress is divided between what the child likes\nnow and what he is going to need in his trade or profession. The young\npeople are sympathetically encouraged to instruct themselves and to\neducate one another. They romp and make fun like young monkeys, they\nflirt and have their private \u201cbrain\u2010storms\u201d like little supermen and\nsuperwomen. They are tremendously in earnest about their college\nintrigues and intercollegiate athletic wars. They are fond, often\ncompassionately fond, of their parents, and home is all the more sacred\nto them in that they are seldom there. They enjoy a surprising\nindependence in habits, friendships, and opinions. Brothers and sisters\noften choose different religions. The street, the school, the young\npeople\u2019s club, the magazine, the popular novel, furnish their mental\npabulum. The force of example and of passing custom is all the more\nirresistible in this absence of authority and tradition; for this sort\nof independence rather diminishes the power of being original, by\nsupplying a slenderer basis and a thinner soil from which originality\nmight spring. Uniformity is established spontaneously without\ndiscipline, as in the popular speech and ethics of every nation. Against\nthis tendency to uniformity the efforts of a cultivated minority to\nmaintain a certain distinction and infuse it into their lives and minds\nare not very successful. They have secondary schools for their boys in\nwhich the teachers are men, and even boarding\u2010schools in the country,\nmore or less Gothic in aspect and English in regimen; there are other\nsemi\u2010foreign institutions and circles, Catholic or Jewish, in which\nreligion is the dominant consideration. There is also the society of the\nvery rich, with cosmopolitan leanings and a vivacious interest in\nartistic undertakings and personalities. But all these distinctions,\nimportant as they may seem to those who cultivate them, are a mere\nshimmer and ripple on the surface of American life; and for an observer\nwho sees things in perspective they almost disappear. By a merciful\ndispensation of nature, the pupils of these choice establishments, the\nmoment they plunge into business or politics, acquire the protective\ncolouring of their environment and become indistinguishable from the\ngeneric American. Their native disposition was after all the national\none, their attempted special education was perfunctory, and the\ninfluence of their public activities and surroundings is overwhelming.\nAmerican life is a powerful solvent. As it stamps the immigrant, almost\nbefore he can speak English, with an unmistakable muscular tension,\ncheery self\u2010confidence and habitual challenge in the voice and eyes, so\nit seems to neutralise every intellectual element, however tough and\nalien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good\u2010will, complacency,\nthoughtlessness, and optimism.\n\nConsider, for instance, the American Catholics, of whom there are\nnominally many millions, and who often seem to retain their ancestral\nfaith sincerely and affectionately. This faith took shape during the\ndecline of the Roman empire; it is full of large disillusions about this\nworld and minute illusions about the other. It is ancient, metaphysical,\npoetic, elaborate, ascetic, autocratic, and intolerant. It confronts the\nboastful natural man, such as the American is, with a thousand denials\nand menaces. Everything in American life is at the antipodes to such a\nsystem. Yet the American Catholic is entirely at peace. His tone in\neverything, even in religion, is cheerfully American. It is wonderful\nhow silently, amicably, and happily he lives in a community whose spirit\nis profoundly hostile to that of his religion. He seems to take stock in\nhis church as he might in a gold mine\u2014sure it is a grand, dazzling,\nunique thing; and perhaps he masks, even to himself, his purely\nimaginative ardour about it, with the pretext that it is sure to make\nhis fortune both in this life and in the next. His church, he will tell\nyou, is a first\u2010rate church to belong to; the priests are fine fellows,\nlike the policemen; the Sisters are dear noble women, like his own\nsisters; his parish is flourishing, and always rebuilding its church and\nfounding new schools, orphan asylums, sodalities, confraternities,\nperpetual adoration societies. No parish can raise so much money for any\nobject, or if there are temporary troubles, the fact still remains that\nAmerica has three Cardinals and that the Catholic religion is the\nbiggest religion on earth. Attachment to his church in such a temper\nbrings him into no serious conflict with his Protestant neighbours. They\nlive and meet on common ground. Their respective religions pass among\nthem for family matters, private and sacred, with no political\nimplications.\n\nSuch was the education and such the atmosphere of intellectual innocence\nwhich prevailed in the public\u2014mostly undergraduates\u2014to which the Harvard\nphilosophers adapted their teaching and to some extent their philosophy.\nThe students were intelligent, ambitious, remarkably able to \u201cdo\nthings\u201d; they were keen about the matters that had already entered into\ntheir lives, and invincibly happy in their ignorance of everything else.\nA gentle contempt for the past permeated their judgements. They were not\naccustomed to the notion of authority, nor aware that it might have\nlegitimate grounds; they instinctively disbelieved in the superiority of\nwhat was out of reach. About high questions of politics and religion\ntheir minds were open but vague; they seemed not to think them of\npractical importance; they acquiesced in people having any views they\nliked on such subjects; the fluent and fervid enthusiasms so common\namong European students, prophesying about politics, philosophy, and\nart, were entirely unknown among them. Instead they had absorbing local\ntraditions of their own, athletic and social, and their college life was\ntheir true education, an education in friendship, co\u2010operation, and\nfreedom. In the eighteen\u2010eighties a good deal of old\u2010fashioned\nshabbiness and jollity lingered about Harvard. Boston and Cambridge in\nthose days resembled in some ways the London of Dickens: the same dismal\nwealth, the same speechifying, the same anxious respectability, the same\nsordid back streets, with their air of shiftlessness and decay, the same\nodd figures and loud humour, and, to add a touch of horror, the\nmonstrous suspicion that some of the inhabitants might be secretly\nwicked. Life, for the undergraduates, was full of droll incidents and\nbroad farce; it drifted good\u2010naturedly from one commonplace thing to\nanother. Standing packed in the tinkling horse\u2010car, their coat\u2010collars\nabove their ears and their feet deep in the winter straw, they jogged in\na long half\u2010hour to Boston, there to enjoy the delights of female\nsociety, the theatre, or a good dinner. And in the summer days, for\nClass Day and Commencement, feminine and elderly Boston would return the\nvisit, led by the governor of Massachusetts in his hired\ncarriage\u2010and\u2010four, and by the local orators and poets, brimming with\njokes and conventional sentiments, and eager not so much to speed the\nyoungsters on their career, as to air their own wit, and warm their\nhearts with punch and with collective memories of youth. It was an\nidyllic, haphazard, humoristic existence, without fine imagination,\nwithout any familiar infusion of scholarship, without articulate\nreligion: a flutter of intelligence in a void, flying into trivial play,\nin order to drop back, as soon as college days were over, into the\ndrudgery of affairs. There was the love of beauty, but without the sight\nof it; for the bits of pleasant landscape or the works of art which\nmight break the ugliness of the foreground were a sort of \u00e6sthetic\nmiscellany, enjoyed as one enjoys a museum; there was nothing in which\nthe spirit of beauty was deeply interfused, charged with passion and\ndiscipline and intricate familiar associations with delicate and noble\nthings. Of course, the sky is above every country, and New England had\nbrilliant sunsets and deep snows, and sea and woods were at hand for the\nholidays; and it was notable how much even what a homely art or accident\nmight have done for the towns was studied and admired. Old corners were\npointed out where the dingy red brick had lost its rigidity and taken on\na mossy tinge, and where here and there a pane of glass, surviving all\ntenants and housemaids, had turned violet in the sunlight of a hundred\nyears; and most precious of all were the high thin elms, spreading\naloft, looped and drooping over old streets and commons. And yet it\nseemed somehow as if the sentiment lavished on these things had been\nintended by nature for something else, for something more important. Not\nonly had the mind of the nation been originally somewhat chilled and\nimpoverished by Protestantism, by migration to a new world, by\nabsorption in material tasks, but what fine sensibility lingered in an\nolder generation was not easily transmitted to the young. The young had\ntheir own ways, which on principle were to be fostered and respected;\nand one of their instincts was to associate only with those of their own\nage and calibre. The young were simply young, and the old simply old, as\namong peasants. Teachers and pupils seemed animals of different species,\nuseful and well\u2010disposed towards each other, like a cow and a milkmaid;\nperiodic contributions could pass between them, but not conversation.\nThis circumstance shows how much American intelligence is absorbed in\nwhat is not intellectual. Their tasks and their pleasures divide people\nof different ages; what can unite them is ideas, impersonal interests,\nliberal arts. Without these they cannot forget their mutual inferiority.\n\nCertainly those four college years, judged by any external standard,\nwere trivial and wasted; but Americans, although so practical in their\nadult masculine undertakings, are slow to take umbrage at the elaborate\nplayfulness of their wives and children. With the touching humility of\nstrength, they seem to say to themselves, \u201cLet the dear creatures have\ntheir fling, and be happy: what else are we old fellows slaving for?\u201d\nAnd certainly the joy of life is the crown of it; but have American\nladies and collegians achieved the joy of life? Is that the summit?\n\nWilliam James had a theory that if some scientific widower, with a child\nabout to learn to walk, could be persuaded to allow the child\u2019s feet to\nbe blistered, it would turn out, when the blisters were healed, that the\nchild would walk as well as if he had practised and had many a fall;\nbecause the machinery necessary for walking would have matured in him\nautomatically, just as the machinery for breathing does in the womb. The\ncase of the old\u2010fashioned American college may serve to support this\ntheory. It blistered young men\u2019s heads for four years and prevented them\nfrom practising anything useful; yet at the end they were found able to\ndo most things as well, or twice as well, as their contemporaries who\nhad been all that time apprenticed and chained to a desk. Manhood and\nsagacity ripen of themselves; it suffices not to repress or distort\nthem. The college liberated the young man from the pursuit of money,\nfrom hypocrisy, from the control of women. He could grow for a time\naccording to his nature, and if this growth was not guided by much\nsuperior wisdom or deep study, it was not warped by any serious\nperversion; and if the intellectual world did not permanently entice\nhim, are we so sure that in philosophy, for instance, it had anything to\noffer that was very solid in itself, or humanly very important? At least\nhe learned that such things existed, and gathered a shrewd notion of\nwhat they could do for a man, and what they might make of him.\n\nWhen Harvard was reformed\u2014and I believe all the colleges are reformed\nnow\u2014the immediate object was not to refine college life or render it\nmore scholarly, though for certain circles this was accomplished\nincidentally; the object was rather to extend the scope of instruction,\nand make it more advanced. It is natural that every great city, the\ncapital of any nation or region, should wish to possess a university in\nthe literal sense of the word\u2014an encyclop\u00e6dic institute, or group of\ninstitutes, to teach and foster all the professions, all the arts, and\nall the sciences. Such a university need have nothing to do with\neducation, with the transmission of a particular moral and intellectual\ntradition. Education might be courteously presupposed. The teacher would\nnot be a man with his hand on a lad\u2019s shoulder, his son or young\nbrother; he would be an expert in some science, delivering lectures for\npublic instruction, while perhaps privately carrying on investigations\nwith the aid of a few disciples whom he would be training in his\nspecialty. There would be no reason why either the professors or the\nauditors in such an institution should live together or should have much\nin common in religion, morals, or breeding, or should even speak the\nsame language. On the contrary, if only each was competent in his way,\nthe more miscellaneous their types the more perfect would these render\ntheir _universitas_. The public addressed, also, need not be restricted,\nany more than the public at a church or a theatre or a town library, by\nany requirements as to age, sex, race, or attainments. They would come\non their own responsibility, to pursue what studies they chose, and so\nlong as they found them profitable. Nor need there be any limit as to\nthe subjects broached, or any division of them into faculties or\ndepartments, except perhaps for convenience in administration. One of\nthe functions of professors would be to invent new subjects, because\nthis world is so complex, and the play of the human mind upon it is so\nexternal and iridescent, that, as men\u2019s interests and attitude vary,\nfresh unities and fresh aspects are always discernible in everything.\n\nAs Harvard University developed, all these characteristics appeared in\nit in a more or less marked degree; but the transformation was never\ncomplete. The centre of it remained a college, with its local\nconstituency and rooted traditions, and its thousand or two thousand\nundergraduates needing to be educated. Experts in every science and\nmoney to pay them were not at hand, and the foreign talent that could be\nattracted did not always prove morally or socially digestible. The\nbrowsing undergraduate could simply range with a looser tether, and he\nwas reinforced by a fringe of graduates who had not yet had enough, or\nwho were attracted from other colleges. These graduates came to form a\nsort of normal school for future professors, stamped as in Germany with\na Ph.D.; and the teachers in each subject became a committee charged\nwith something of the functions of a registry office, to find places for\ntheir nurslings. The university could thus acquire a national and even\nan international function, drawing in distinguished talent and youthful\nambition from everywhere, and sending forth in various directions its\napostles of light and learning.\n\nI think it is intelligible that in such a place and at such a crisis\nphilosophy should have played a conspicuous part, and also that it\nshould have had an ambiguous character. There had to be, explicit or\nimplicit, a philosophy for the college. A place where all polite Boston\nhas been educated for centuries cannot bely its moral principles and\nreligious questionings; it must transmit its austere, faithful,\nreforming spirit. But at the same time there had now to be a philosophy\nfor the university. A chief part of that traditional faith was the faith\nin freedom, in inquiry; and it was necessary, in the very interests of\nthe traditional philosophy, to take account of all that was being said\nin the world, and to incorporate the spirit of the times in the spirit\nof the fathers. Accordingly, no single abstract opinion was particularly\ntabooed at Harvard; granted industry, sobriety, and some semblance of\ntheism, no professor was expected to agree with any other. I believe the\nauthorities would have been well pleased, for the sake of completeness,\nto have added a Buddhist, a Moslem, and a Catholic scholastic to the\nphilosophical faculty, if only suitable sages could have been found,\nhouse\u2010trained, as it were, and able to keep pace with the academic\nmachine and to attract a sufficient number of pupils. But this official\nfreedom was not true freedom, there was no happiness in it. A slight\nsmell of brimstone lingered in the air. You might think what you liked,\nbut you must consecrate your belief or your unbelief to the common task\nof encouraging everybody and helping everything on. You might almost be\nan atheist, if you were troubled enough about it. The atmosphere was not\nthat of intelligence nor of science, it was that of duty.\n\nIn the academic life and methods of the university there was the same\nincomplete transformation. The teaching required was for the most part\ncollege teaching, in college subjects, such as might well have been\nentrusted to tutors; but it was given by professors in the form of\nlectures, excessive in number and too often repeated; and they were\nlistened to by absent\u2010minded youths, ill\u2010grounded in the humanities, and\nnot keenly alive to intellectual interests. The graduates (like the\nyoung ladies) were more attentive and anxious not to miss anything, but\nthey were no better prepared and often less intelligent; and there is no\ndunce like a mature dunce. Accordingly, the professor of philosophy had\nto swim against rather a powerful current. Sometimes he succumbed to the\nreality; and if, for instance, he happened to mention Darwin, and felt a\nblank before him, he would add in a parenthesis, \u201cDarwin, Charles,\nauthor of the _Origin of Species_, 1859; epoch\u2010making work.\u201d At other\ntimes he might lose himself altogether in the ideal and imagine that he\nwas publishing immortal thoughts to the true university, to the world at\nlarge, and was feeling an exhilarating contact with masses of mankind,\nthemselves quickened by his message. He might see in his mind\u2019s eye rows\nof learned men and women before him, familiar with every doubt, hardened\nto every conflict of opinion, ready for any revolution, whose minds\nnothing he could say could possibly shock, or disintegrate any further;\non the contrary, the naked truth, which is gentle in its austerity,\nmight come to them as a blessed deliverance, and he might fancy himself\nfor a moment a sort of hero from the realms of light descending into the\nnether regions and throwing a sop of reason into the jaws of snarling\nprejudice and frantic error. Or if the class was small, and only two or\nthree were gathered together, he might imagine instead that he was\nsowing seeds of wisdom, warmed by affection, in the minds of genuine\ndisciples, future tabernacles of the truth. It is possible that if the\nreality had corresponded more nearly with these dreams, and Harvard had\nactually been an adult university, philosophers there might have\ndistilled their doctrines into a greater purity. As it was, Harvard\nphilosophy had an opposite merit: it represented faithfully the complex\ninspiration of the place and hour. As the university was a local puritan\ncollege opening its windows to the scientific world, so at least the two\nmost gifted of its philosophers were men of intense feeling, religious\nand romantic, but attentive to the facts of nature and the currents of\nworldly opinion; and each of them felt himself bound by two different\nresponsibilities, that of describing things as they are, and that of\nfinding them propitious to certain preconceived human desires. And while\nthey shared this double allegiance, they differed very much in temper,\neducation, and taste. William James was what is called an empiricist,\nJosiah Royce an idealist; they were excellent friends and greatly\ninfluenced each other, and the very diversity between them rendered\ntheir conjunction typical of the state of philosophy in England and\nAmerica, divided between the old British and the German schools. As if\nall this intellectual complication had not been enough, they were\nobliged to divide their energies externally, giving to their daily tasks\nas professors and pedagogues what duty demanded, and only the remainder\nto scholarship, reflection, and literary work. Even this distracting\ncircumstance, however, had its compensations. College work was a human\nbond, a common practical interest; it helped to keep up that circulation\nof the blood which made the whole Harvard school of philosophy a vital\nunit, and co\u2010operative in its freedom. There was a general momentum in\nit, half institutional, half moral, a single troubled, noble, exciting\nlife. Every one was labouring with the contradiction he felt in things,\nand perhaps in himself; all were determined to find some honest way out\nof it, or at least to bear it bravely. It was a fresh morning in the\nlife of reason, cloudy but brightening.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\u2014WILLIAM JAMES\n\n\nWilliam James enjoyed in his youth what are called advantages: he lived\namong cultivated people, travelled, had teachers of various\nnationalities. His father was one of those somewhat obscure sages whom\nearly America produced: mystics of independent mind, hermits in the\ndesert of business, and heretics in the churches. They were intense\nindividualists, full of veneration for the free souls of their children,\nand convinced that every one should paddle his own canoe, especially on\nthe high seas. William James accordingly enjoyed a stimulating if\nslightly irregular education: he never acquired that reposeful mastery\nof particular authors and those safe ways of feeling and judging which\nare fostered in great schools and universities. In consequence he showed\nan almost physical horror of club sentiment and of the stifling\natmosphere of all officialdom. He had a knack for drawing, and rather\nthe temperament of the artist; but the unlovely secrets of nature and\nthe troubles of man preoccupied him, and he chose medicine for his\nprofession. Instead of practising, however, he turned to teaching\nphysiology, and from that passed gradually to psychology and philosophy.\n\nIn his earlier years he retained some traces of polyglot student days at\nParis, Bonn, Vienna, or Geneva; he slipped sometimes into foreign\nphrases, uttered in their full vernacular; and there was an occasional\nafterglow of Bohemia about him, in the bright stripe of a shirt or the\nexuberance of a tie. On points of art or medicine he retained a\nprofessional touch and an unconscious ease which he hardly acquired in\nmetaphysics. I suspect he had heartily admired some of his masters in\nthose other subjects, but had never seen a philosopher whom he would\nhave cared to resemble. Of course there was nothing of the artist in\nWilliam James, as the artist is sometimes conceived in England, nothing\nof the \u00e6sthete, nothing affected or limp. In person he was short rather\nthan tall, erect, brisk, bearded, intensely masculine. While he shone in\nexpression and would have wished his style to be noble if it could also\nbe strong, he preferred in the end to be spontaneous, and to leave it at\nthat; he tolerated slang in himself rather than primness. The rough,\nhomely, picturesque phrase, whatever was graphic and racy, recommended\nitself to him; and his conversation outdid his writing in this respect.\nHe believed in improvisation, even in thought; his lectures were not\nminutely prepared. Know your subject thoroughly, he used to say, and\ntrust to luck for the rest. There was a deep sense of insecurity in him,\na mixture of humility with romanticism: we were likely to be more or\nless wrong anyhow, but we might be wholly sincere. One moment should\nrespect the insight of another, without trying to establish too\nregimental a uniformity. If you corrected yourself tartly, how could you\nknow that the correction was not the worse mistake? All our opinions\nwere born free and equal, all children of the Lord, and if they were not\nconsistent that was the Lord\u2019s business, not theirs. In reality, James\nwas consistent enough, as even Emerson (more extreme in this sort of\nirresponsibility) was too. Inspiration has its limits, sometimes very\nnarrow ones. But James was not consecutive, not insistent; he turned to\na subject afresh, without egotism or pedantry; he dropped his old\npoints, sometimes very good ones; and he modestly looked for light from\nothers, who had less light than himself.\n\nHis excursions into philosophy were accordingly in the nature of raids,\nand it is easy for those who are attracted by one part of his work to\nignore other parts, in themselves perhaps more valuable. I think that in\nfact his popularity does not rest on his best achievements. His\npopularity rests on three somewhat incidental books, _The Will to\nBelieve_, _Pragmatism_, and _The Varieties of Religious Experience_,\nwhereas, as it seems to me, his best achievement is his _Principles of\nPsychology_. In this book he surveys, in a way which for him is very\nsystematic, a subject made to his hand. In its ostensible outlook it is\na treatise like any other, but what distinguishes it is the author\u2019s\ngift for evoking vividly the very life of the mind. This is a work of\nimagination; and the subject as he conceived it, which is the flux of\nimmediate experience in men in general, requires imagination to read it\nat all. It is a literary subject, like autobiography or psychological\nfiction, and can be treated only poetically; and in this sense\nShakespeare is a better psychologist than Locke or Kant. Yet this gift\nof imagination is not merely literary; it is not useless in divining the\ntruths of science, and it is invaluable in throwing off prejudice and\nscientific shams. The fresh imagination and vitality of William James\nled him to break through many a false convention. He saw that\nexperience, as we endure it, is not a mosaic of distinct sensations, nor\nthe expression of separate hostile faculties, such as reason and the\npassions, or sense and the categories; it is rather a flow of mental\ndiscourse, like a dream, in which all divisions and units are vague and\nshifting, and the whole is continually merging together and drifting\napart. It fades gradually in the rear, like the wake of a ship, and\nbites into the future, like the bow cutting the water. For the candid\npsychologist, carried bodily on this voyage of discovery, the past is\nbut a questionable report, and the future wholly indeterminate;\neverything is simply what it is experienced as being.\n\nAt the same time, psychology is supposed to be a science, a claim which\nwould tend to confine it to the natural history of man, or the study of\nbehaviour, as is actually proposed by Auguste Comte and by some of\nJames\u2019s own disciples, more jejune if more clear\u2010headed than he. As\nmatters now stand, however, psychology as a whole is not a science, but\na branch of philosophy; it brings together the literary description of\nmental discourse and the scientific description of material life, in\norder to consider the relation between them, which is the nexus of human\nnature.\n\nWhat was James\u2019s position on this crucial question? It is impossible to\nreply unequivocally. He approached philosophy as mankind originally\napproached it, without having a philosophy, and he lent himself to\nvarious hypotheses in various directions. He professed to begin his\nstudy on the assumptions of common sense, that there is a material world\nwhich the animals that live in it are able to perceive and to think\nabout. He gave a congruous extension to this view in his theory that\nemotion is purely bodily sensation, and also in his habit of conceiving\nthe mind as a total shifting sensibility. To pursue this path, however,\nwould have led him to admit that nature was automatic and mind simply\ncognitive, conclusions from which every instinct in him recoiled. He\npreferred to believe that mind and matter had independent energies and\ncould lend one another a hand, matter operating by motion and mind by\nintention. This dramatic, amphibious way of picturing causation is\nnatural to common sense, and might be defended if it were clearly\ndefined; but James was insensibly carried away from it by a subtle\nimplication of his method. This implication was that experience or\nmental discourse not only constituted a set of substantive facts, but\nthe _only_ substantive facts; all else, even that material world which\nhis psychology had postulated, could be nothing but a verbal or\nfantastic symbol for sensations in their experienced order. So that\nwhile nominally the door was kept open to any hypothesis regarding the\nconditions of the psychological flux, in truth the question was\nprejudged. The hypotheses, which were parts of this psychological flux,\ncould have no object save other parts of it. That flux itself,\ntherefore, which he could picture so vividly, was the fundamental\nexistence. The _sense_ of bounding over the waves, the _sense_ of being\non an adventurous voyage, was the living fact; the rest was dead\nreckoning. Where one\u2019s gift is, there will one\u2019s faith be also; and to\nthis poet appearance was the only reality.\n\nThis sentiment, which always lay at the back of his mind, reached\nsomething like formal expression in his latest writings, where he\nsketched what he called radical empiricism. The word experience is like\na shrapnel shell, and bursts into a thousand meanings. Here we must no\nlonger think of its setting, its discoveries, or its march; to treat it\nradically we must abstract its immediate objects and reduce it to pure\ndata. It is obvious (and the sequel has already proved) that experience\nso understood would lose its romantic signification, as a personal\nadventure or a response to the shocks of fortune. \u201cExperience\u201d would\nturn into a cosmic dance of absolute entities created and destroyed _in\nvacuo_ according to universal laws, or perhaps by chance. No minds would\ngather this experience, and no material agencies would impose it; but\nthe immediate objects present to any one would simply be parts of the\nuniversal fireworks, continuous with the rest, and all the parts, even\nif not present to anybody, would have the same status. Experience would\nthen not at all resemble what Shakespeare reports or what James himself\nhad described in his psychology. If it could be experienced as it flows\nin its entirety (which is fortunately impracticable), it would be a\nperpetual mathematical nightmare. Every whirling atom, every changing\nrelation, and every incidental perspective would be a part of it. I am\nfar from wishing to deny for a moment the scientific value of such a\ncosmic system, if it can be worked out; physics and mathematics seem to\nme to plunge far deeper than literary psychology into the groundwork of\nthis world; but human experience is the stuff of literary psychology; we\ncannot reach the stuff of physics and mathematics except by arresting or\neven hypostatising some elements of appearance, and expanding them on an\nabstracted and hypothetical plane of their own. Experience, as memory\nand literature rehearse it, remains nearer to us than that: it is\nsomething dreamful, passionate, dramatic, and significative.\n\nCertainly this personal human experience, expressible in literature and\nin talk, and no cosmic system however profound, was what James knew best\nand trusted most. Had he seen the developments of his radical\nempiricism, I cannot help thinking he would have marvelled that such\nlogical mechanisms should have been hatched out of that egg. The\nprincipal problems and aspirations that haunted him all his life long\nwould lose their meaning in that cosmic atmosphere. The pragmatic nature\nof truth, for instance, would never suggest itself in the presence of\npure data; but a romantic mind soaked in agnosticism, conscious of its\nown habits and assuming an environment the exact structure of which can\nnever be observed, may well convince itself that, for experience, truth\nis nothing but a happy use of signs\u2014which is indeed the truth of\nliterature. But if we once accept _any_ system of the universe as\nliterally true, the value of convenient signs to prepare us for such\nexperience as is yet absent cannot be called truth: it is plainly\nnothing but a necessary inaccuracy. So, too, with the question of the\nsurvival of the human individual after death. For radical empiricism a\nhuman individual is simply a certain cycle or complex of terms, like any\nother natural fact; that some echoes of his mind should recur after the\nregular chimes have ceased, would have nothing paradoxical about it. A\nmathematical world is a good deal like music, with its repetitions and\ntranspositions, and a little trill, which you might call a person, might\nwell peep up here and there all over a vast composition. Something of\nthat sort may be the truth of spiritualism; but it is not what the\nspiritualists imagine. Their whole interest lies not in the experiences\nthey have, but in the interpretation they give to them, assigning them\nto troubled spirits in another world; but both another world and a\nspirit are notions repugnant to a radical empiricism.\n\nI think it is important to remember, if we are not to misunderstand\nWilliam James, that his radical empiricism and pragmatism were in his\nown mind only methods; his doctrine, if he may be said to have had one,\nwas agnosticism. And just because he was an agnostic (feeling\ninstinctively that beliefs and opinions, if they had any objective\nbeyond themselves, could never be sure they had attained it), he seemed\nin one sense so favourable to credulity. He was not credulous himself,\nfar from it; he was well aware that the trust he put in people or ideas\nmight betray him. For that very reason he was respectful and pitiful to\nthe trustfulness of others. Doubtless they were wrong, but who were we\nto say so? In his own person he was ready enough to face the mystery of\nthings, and whatever the womb of time might bring forth; but until the\ncurtain was rung down on the last act of the drama (and it might have no\nlast act!) he wished the intellectual cripples and the moral hunchbacks\nnot to be jeered at; perhaps they might turn out to be the heroes of the\nplay. Who could tell what heavenly influences might not pierce to these\nsensitive half\u2010flayed creatures, which are lost on the thick\u2010skinned,\nthe sane, and the duly goggled? We must not suppose, however, that James\nmeant these contrite and romantic suggestions dogmatically. The\nagnostic, as well as the physician and neurologist in him, was never\nquite eclipsed. The hope that some new revelation might come from the\nlowly and weak could never mean to him what it meant to the early\nChristians. For him it was only a right conceded to them to experiment\nwith their special faiths; he did not expect such faiths to be\ndiscoveries of absolute fact, which everybody else might be constrained\nto recognise. If any one had made such a claim, and had seemed to have\nsome chance of imposing it universally, James would have been the first\nto turn against him; not, of course, on the ground that it was\n_impossible_ that such an orthodoxy should be true, but with a profound\nconviction that it was to be feared and distrusted. No: the degree of\nauthority and honour to be accorded to various human faiths was a moral\nquestion, not a theoretical one. All faiths were what they were\nexperienced as being, in their capacity of faiths; these faiths, not\ntheir objects, were the hard facts we must respect. We cannot pass,\nexcept under the illusion of the moment, to anything firmer or on a\ndeeper level. There was accordingly no sense of security, no joy, in\nJames\u2019s apology for personal religion. He did not really believe; he\nmerely believed in the right of believing that you might be right if you\nbelieved.\n\nIt is this underlying agnosticism that explains an incoherence which we\nmight find in his popular works, where the story and the moral do not\nseem to hang together. Professedly they are works of psychological\nobservation; but the tendency and suasion in them seems to run to\ndisintegrating the idea of truth, recommending belief without reason,\nand encouraging superstition. A psychologist who was not an agnostic\nwould have indicated, as far as possible, whether the beliefs and\nexperiences he was describing were instances of delusion or of rare and\nfine perception, or in what measure they were a mixture of both. But\nJames\u2014and this is what gives such romantic warmth to these writings of\nhis\u2014disclaims all antecedent or superior knowledge, listens to the\ntestimony of each witness in turn, and only by accident allows us to\nfeel that he is swayed by the eloquence and vehemence of some of them\nrather than of others. This method is modest, generous, and impartial;\nbut if James intended, as I think he did, to picture the _drama_ of\nhuman belief, with its risks and triumphs, the method was inadequate.\nDramatists never hesitate to assume, and to let the audience perceive,\nwho is good and who bad, who wise and who foolish, in their pieces;\notherwise their work would be as impotent dramatically as\nscientifically. The tragedy and comedy of life lie precisely in the\ncontrast between the illusions or passions of the characters and their\ntrue condition and fate, hidden from them at first, but evident to the\nauthor and the public. If in our diffidence and scrupulous fairness we\nrefuse to take this judicial attitude, we shall be led to strange\nconclusions. The navigator, for instance, trusting his \u201cexperience\u201d\n(which here, as in the case of religious people, means his imagination\nand his art), insists on believing that the earth is spherical; he has\nsailed round it. That is to say, he has seemed to himself to steer\nwestward and westward, and has seemed to get home again. But how should\nhe know that home is now where it was before, or that his past and\npresent impressions of it come from the same, or from any, material\nobject? How should he know that space is as trim and tri\u2010dimensional as\nthe discredited Euclidians used to say it was? If, on the contrary, my\nworthy aunt, trusting to her longer and less ambiguous experience of her\ngarden, insists that the earth is flat, and observes that the theory\nthat it is round, which is only a theory, is much less often tested and\nfound useful than her own perception of its flatness, and that moreover\nthat theory is pedantic, intellectualistic, and a product of academies,\nand a rash dogma to impose on mankind for ever and ever, it might seem\nthat on James\u2019s principle we ought to agree with her. But no; on James\u2019s\nreal principles we need not agree with her, nor with the navigator\neither. Radical empiricism, which is radical agnosticism, delivers us\nfrom so benighted a choice. For the quarrel becomes unmeaning when we\nremember that the earth is _both_ flat and round, if it is experienced\nas being both. The substantive fact is not a single object on which both\nthe perception and the theory are expected to converge; the substantive\nfacts are the theory and the perception themselves. And we may note in\npassing that empiricism, when it ceases to value experience as a means\nof discovering external things, can give up its ancient prejudice in\nfavour of sense as against imagination, for imagination and thought are\nimmediate experiences as much as sensation is: they are therefore, for\nabsolute empiricism, no less actual ingredients of reality.\n\nIn _The Varieties of Religious Experience_ we find the same apologetic\nintention running through a vivid account of what seems for the most\npart (as James acknowledged) religious disease. Normal religious\nexperience is hardly described in it. Religious experience, for the\ngreat mass of mankind, consists in simple faith in the truth and benefit\nof their religious traditions. But to James something so conventional\nand rationalistic seemed hardly experience and hardly religious; he was\nthinking only of irruptive visions and feelings as interpreted by the\nmystics who had them. These interpretations he ostensibly presents, with\nmore or less wistful sympathy for what they were worth; but emotionally\nhe wished to champion them. The religions that had sprung up in America\nspontaneously\u2014communistic, hysterical, spiritistic, or medicinal\u2014were\ndespised by select and superior people. You might inquire into them, as\nyou might go slumming, but they remained suspect and distasteful. This\npicking up of genteel skirts on the part of his acquaintance prompted\nWilliam James to roll up his sleeves\u2014not for a knock\u2010out blow, but for a\nthorough clinical demonstration. He would tenderly vivisect the\nexperiences in question, to show how living they were, though of course\nhe could not guarantee, more than other surgeons do, that the patient\nwould survive the operation. An operation that eventually kills may be\ntechnically successful, and the man may die cured; and so a description\nof religion that showed it to be madness might first show how real and\nhow warm it was, so that if it perished, at least it would perish\nunderstood.\n\nI never observed in William James any personal anxiety or enthusiasm for\nany of these dubious tenets. His conception even of such a thing as\nfree\u2010will, which he always ardently defended, remained vague; he avoided\ndefining even what he conceived to be desirable in such matters. But he\nwished to protect the weak against the strong, and what he hated beyond\neverything was the _non possumus_ of any constituted authority.\nPhilosophy for him had a Polish constitution; so long as a single vote\nwas cast against the majority, nothing could pass. The suspense of\njudgement which he had imposed on himself as a duty, became almost a\nnecessity. I think it would have depressed him if he had had to confess\nthat any important question was finally settled. He would still have\nhoped that something might turn up on the other side, and that just as\nthe scientific hangman was about to despatch the poor convicted\nprisoner, an unexpected witness would ride up in hot haste, and prove\nhim innocent. Experience seems to most of us to lead to conclusions, but\nempiricism has sworn never to draw them.\n\nIn the discourse on \u201cThe Energies of Men,\u201d certain physiological marvels\nare recorded, as if to suggest that the resources of our minds and\nbodies are infinite, or can be infinitely enlarged by divine grace. Yet\nJames would not, I am sure, have accepted that inference. He would,\nunder pressure, have drawn in his mystical horns under his scientific\nshell; but he was not naturalist enough to feel instinctively that the\nwonderful and the natural are all of a piece, and that only our degree\nof habituation distinguishes them. A nucleus, which we may poetically\ncall the soul, certainly lies within us, by which our bodies and minds\nare generated and controlled, like an army by a government. In this\nnucleus, since nature in a small compass has room for anything, vast\nquantities of energy may well be stored up, which may be tapped on\noccasion, or which may serve like an electric spark to let loose energy\npreviously existing in the grosser parts. But the absolute autocracy of\nthis central power, or its success in imposing extraordinary trials on\nits subjects, is not an obvious good. Perhaps, like a democratic\ngovernment, the soul is at its best when it merely collects and\ncoordinates the impulses coming from the senses. The inner man is at\ntimes a tyrant, parasitical, wasteful, and voluptuous. At other times he\nis fanatical and mad. When he asks for and obtains violent exertions\nfrom the body, the question often is, as with the exploits of conquerors\nand conjurers, whether the impulse to do such prodigious things was not\ngratuitous, and the things nugatory. Who would wish to be a mystic?\nJames himself, who by nature was a spirited rather than a spiritual man,\nhad no liking for sanctimonious transcendentalists, visionaries, or\nascetics; he hated minds that run thin. But he hastened to correct this\nmanly impulse, lest it should be unjust, and forced himself to overcome\nhis repugnance. This was made easier when the unearthly phenomenon had a\nhealing or saving function in the everyday material world; miracle then\nre\u2010established its ancient identity with medicine, and both of them were\nhumanised. Even when this union was not attained, James was reconciled\nto the miracle\u2010workers partly by his great charity, and partly by his\nhunter\u2019s instinct to follow a scent, for he believed discoveries to be\nimminent. Besides, a philosopher who is a teacher of youth is more\nconcerned to give people a right start than a right conclusion. James\nfell in with the hortatory tradition of college sages; he turned his\npsychology, whenever he could do so honestly, to purposes of\nedification; and his little sermons on habit, on will, on faith, and\nthis on the latent capacities of men, were fine and stirring, and just\nthe sermons to preach to the young Christian soldier. He was much less\nsceptical in morals than in science. He seems to have felt sure that\ncertain thoughts and hopes\u2014those familiar to a liberal\nProtestantism\u2014were every man\u2019s true friends in life. This assumption\nwould have been hard to defend if he or those he habitually addressed\nhad ever questioned it; yet his whole argument for voluntarily\ncultivating these beliefs rests on this assumption, that they are\nbeneficent. Since, whether we will or no, we cannot escape the risk of\nerror, and must succumb to some human or pathological bias, at least we\nmight do so gracefully and in the form that would profit us most, by\nclinging to those prejudices which help us to lead what we all feel is a\ngood life. But what is a good life? Had William James, had the people\nabout him, had modern philosophers anywhere, any notion of that? I\ncannot think so. They had much experience of personal goodness, and love\nof it; they had standards of character and right conduct; but as to what\nmight render human existence good, excellent, beautiful, happy, and\nworth having as a whole, their notions were utterly thin and barbarous.\nThey had forgotten the Greeks, or never known them.\n\nThis argument accordingly suffers from the same weakness as the similar\nargument of Pascal in favour of Catholic orthodoxy. You should force\nyourself to believe in it, he said, because if you do so and are right\nyou win heaven, while if you are wrong you lose nothing. What would\nProtestants, Mohammedans, and Hindus say to that? Those alternatives of\nPascal\u2019s are not the sole nor the true alternatives; such a\nwager\u2014betting on the improbable because you are offered big odds\u2014is an\nunworthy parody of the real choice between wisdom and folly. There is no\nheaven to be won in such a spirit, and if there was, a philosopher would\ndespise it. So William James would have us bet on immortality, or bet on\nour power to succeed, because if we win the wager we can live to\ncongratulate ourselves on our true instinct, while we lose nothing if we\nhave made a mistake; for unless you have the satisfaction of finding\nthat you have been right, the dignity of having been right is apparently\nnothing. Or if the argument is rather that these beliefs, whether true\nor false, make life better in this world, the thing is simply false. To\nbe boosted by an illusion is not to live better than to live in harmony\nwith the truth; it is not nearly so safe, not nearly so sweet, and not\nnearly so fruitful. These refusals to part with a decayed illusion are\nreally an infection to the mind. Believe, certainly; we cannot help\nbelieving; but believe rationally, holding what seems certain for\ncertain, what seems probable for probable, what seems desirable for\ndesirable, and what seems false for false.\n\nIn this matter, as usual, James had a true psychological fact and a\ngenerous instinct behind his confused moral suggestions. It is a\npsychological fact that men are influenced in their beliefs by their\nwill and desires; indeed, I think we can go further and say that in its\nessence belief is an expression of impulse, of readiness to act. It is\nonly peripherally, as our action is gradually adjusted to things, and\nour impulses to our possible or necessary action, that our ideas begin\nto hug the facts, and to acquire a true, if still a symbolic,\nsignificance. We do not need a will to believe; we only need a will to\nstudy the object in which we are inevitably believing. But James was\nthinking less of belief in what we find than of belief in what we hope\nfor: a belief which is not at all clear and not at all necessary in the\nlife of mortals. Like most Americans, however, only more lyrically,\nJames felt the call of the future and the assurance that it could be\nmade far better, totally other, than the past. The pictures that\nreligion had painted of heaven or the millennium were not what he\nprized, although his Swedenborgian connection might have made him tender\nto them, as perhaps it did to familiar spirits. It was the moral succour\noffered by religion, its open spaces, the possibility of miracles _in\nextremis_, that must be retained. If we recoiled at the thought of being\ndupes (which is perhaps what nature intended us to be), were we less\nlikely to be dupes in disbelieving these sustaining truths than in\nbelieving them? Faith was needed to bring about the reform of faith\nitself, as well as all other reforms.\n\nIn some cases faith in success could nerve us to bring success about,\nand so justify itself by its own operation. This is a thought typical of\nJames at his worst\u2014a worst in which there is always a good side. Here\nagain psychological observation is used with the best intentions to\nhearten oneself and other people; but the fact observed is not at all\nunderstood, and a moral twist is given to it which (besides being\nmorally questionable) almost amounts to falsifying the fact itself. Why\ndoes belief that you can jump a ditch help you to jump it? Because it is\na symptom of the fact that you _could_ jump it, that your legs were fit\nand that the ditch was two yards wide and not twenty. A rapid and just\nappreciation of these facts has given you your confidence, or at least\nhas made it reasonable, manly, and prophetic; otherwise you would have\nbeen a fool and got a ducking for it. Assurance is contemptible and\nfatal unless it is self\u2010knowledge. If you had been rattled you might\nhave failed, because that would have been a symptom of the fact that you\nwere out of gear; you would have been afraid because you trembled, as\nJames at his best proclaimed. You would never have quailed if your\nsystem had been reacting smoothly to its opportunities, any more than\nyou would totter and see double if you were not intoxicated. Fear is a\nsensation of actual nervousness and disarray, and confidence a sensation\nof actual readiness; they are not disembodied feelings, existing for no\nreason, the devil Funk and the angel Courage, one or the other of whom\nmay come down arbitrarily into your body, and revolutionise it. That is\nchildish mythology, which survives innocently enough as a figure of\nspeech, until a philosopher is found to take that figure of speech\nseriously. Nor is the moral suggestion here less unsound. What is good\nis not the presumption of power, but the possession of it: a clear head,\naware of its resources, not a fuddled optimism, calling up spirits from\nthe vasty deep. Courage is not a virtue, said Socrates, unless it is\nalso wisdom. Could anything be truer both of courage in doing and of\ncourage in believing? But it takes tenacity, it takes _reasonable_\ncourage, to stick to scientific insights such as this of Socrates or\nthat of James about the emotions; it is easier to lapse into the\ntraditional manner, to search natural philosophy for miracles and moral\nlessons, and in morals proper, in the reasoned expression of preference,\nto splash about without a philosophy.\n\nWilliam James shared the passions of liberalism. He belonged to the\nleft, which, as they say in Spain, is the side of the heart, as the\nright is that of the liver; at any rate there was much blood and no gall\nin his philosophy. He was one of those elder Americans still disquieted\nby the ghost of tyranny, social and ecclesiastical. Even the beauties of\nthe past troubled him; he had a puritan feeling that they were tainted.\nThey had been cruel and frivolous, and must have suppressed far better\nthings. But what, we may ask, might these better things be? It may do\nfor a revolutionary politician to say: \u201cI may not know what I\nwant\u2014except office\u2014but I know what I don\u2019t want\u201d; it will never do for a\nphilosopher. Aversions and fears imply principles of preference, goods\nacknowledged; and it is the philosopher\u2019s business to make these goods\nexplicit. Liberty is not an art, liberty must be used to bring some\nnatural art to fruition. Shall it be simply eating and drinking and\nwondering what will happen next? If there is some deep and settled need\nin the heart of man, to give direction to his efforts, what else should\na philosopher do but discover and announce what that need is?\n\nThere is a sense in which James was not a philosopher at all. He once\nsaid to me: \u201cWhat a curse philosophy would be if we couldn\u2019t forget all\nabout it!\u201d In other words, philosophy was not to him what it has been to\nso many, a consolation and sanctuary in a life which would have been\nunsatisfying without it. It would be incongruous, therefore, to expect\nof him that he should build a philosophy like an edifice to go and live\nin for good. Philosophy to him was rather like a maze in which he\nhappened to find himself wandering, and what he was looking for was the\nway out. In the presence of theories of any sort he was attentive,\npuzzled, suspicious, with a certain inner prompting to disregard them.\nHe lived all his life among them, as a child lives among grown\u2010up\npeople; what a relief to turn from those stolid giants, with their\nprohibitions and exactions and tiresome talk, to another real child or a\nnice animal! Of course grown\u2010up people are useful, and so James\nconsidered that theories might be; but in themselves, to live with, they\nwere rather in the way, and at bottom our natural enemies. It was well\nto challenge one or another of them when you got a chance; perhaps that\nchallenge might break some spell, transform the strange landscape, and\nsimplify life. A theory while you were creating or using it was like a\nstory you were telling yourself or a game you were playing; it was a\nwarm, self\u2010justifying thing then; but when the glow of creation or\nexpectation was over, a theory was a phantom, like a ghost, or like the\nminds of other people. To all other people, even to ghosts, William\nJames was the soul of courtesy; and he was civil to most theories as\nwell, as to more or less interesting strangers that invaded him. Nobody\never recognised more heartily the chance that others had of being right,\nand the right they had to be different. Yet when it came to\nunderstanding what they meant, whether they were theories or persons,\nhis intuition outran his patience; he made some brilliant\nimpressionistic sketch in his fancy and called it by their name. This\nsketch was as often flattered as distorted, and he was at times the dupe\nof his desire to be appreciative and give the devil his due; he was too\nimpulsive for exact sympathy; too subjective, too romantic, to be just.\nLove is very penetrating, but it penetrates to possibilities rather than\nto facts. The logic of opinions, as well as the exact opinions\nthemselves, were not things James saw easily, or traced with pleasure.\nHe liked to take things one by one, rather than to put two and two\ntogether. He was a mystic, a mystic in love with life. He was comparable\nto Rousseau and to Walt Whitman; he expressed a generous and tender\nsensibility, rebelling against sophistication, and preferring daily\nsights and sounds, and a vague but indomitable faith in fortune, to any\nsettled intellectual tradition calling itself science or philosophy.\n\nA prophet is not without honour save in his own country; and until the\nreturn wave of James\u2019s reputation reached America from Europe, his\npupils and friends were hardly aware that he was such a distinguished\nman. Everybody liked him, and delighted in him for his generous,\ngullible nature and brilliant sallies. He was a sort of Irishman among\nthe Brahmins, and seemed hardly imposing enough for a great man. They\nlaughed at his erratic views and his undisguised limitations. Of course\na conscientious professor ought to know everything he professes to know,\nbut then, they thought, a dignified professor ought to seem to know\neverything. The precise theologians and panoplied idealists, who exist\neven in America, shook their heads. What sound philosophy, said they to\nthemselves, could be expected from an irresponsible doctor, who was not\neven a college graduate, a crude empiricist, and vivisector of frogs? On\nthe other hand, the solid men of business were not entirely reassured\nconcerning a teacher of youth who seemed to have no system in\nparticular\u2014the ignorant rather demand that the learned should have a\nsystem in store, to be applied at a pinch; and they could not quite\nswallow a private gentleman who dabbled in hypnotism, frequented\nmediums, didn\u2019t talk like a book, and didn\u2019t write like a book, except\nlike one of his own. Even his pupils, attached as they invariably were\nto his person, felt some doubts about the profundity of one who was so\nvery natural, and who after some interruption during a lecture\u2014and he\nsaid life was a series of interruptions\u2014would slap his forehead and ask\nthe man in the front row \u201cWhat _was_ I talking about?\u201d Perhaps in the\nfirst years of his teaching he felt a little in the professor\u2019s chair as\na military man might feel when obliged to read the prayers at a funeral.\nHe probably conceived what he said more deeply than a more scholastic\nmind might have conceived it; yet he would have been more comfortable if\nsome one else had said it for him. He liked to open the window, and look\nout for a moment. I think he was glad when the bell rang, and he could\nbe himself again until the next day. But in the midst of this routine of\nthe class\u2010room the spirit would sometimes come upon him, and, leaning\nhis head on his hand, he would let fall golden words, picturesque, fresh\nfrom the heart, full of the knowledge of good and evil. Incidentally\nthere would crop up some humorous characterisation, some candid\nconfession of doubt or of instinctive preference, some pungent scrap of\nlearning; radicalisms plunging sometimes into the sub\u2010soil of all human\nphilosophies; and, on occasion, thoughts of simple wisdom and wistful\npiety, the most unfeigned and manly that anybody ever had.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\u2014JOSIAH ROYCE\n\n\nMeantime the mantle of philosophical authority had fallen at Harvard\nupon other shoulders. A young Californian, Josiah Royce, had come back\nfrom Germany with a reputation for wisdom; and even without knowing that\nhe had already produced a new proof of the existence of God, merely to\nlook at him you would have felt that he was a philosopher; his great\nhead seemed too heavy for his small body, and his portentous brow,\ncrowned with thick red hair, seemed to crush the lower part of his face.\n\u201cRoyce,\u201d said William James of him, \u201chas an indecent exposure of\nforehead.\u201d There was a suggestion about him of the benevolent ogre or\nthe old child, in whom a preternatural sharpness of insight lurked\nbeneath a grotesque mask. If you gave him any cue, or even without one,\nhe could discourse broadly on any subject; you never caught him napping.\nWhatever the text\u2010books and encyclop\u00e6dias could tell him, he knew; and\nif the impression he left on your mind was vague, that was partly\nbecause, in spite of his comprehensiveness, he seemed to view everything\nin relation to something else that remained untold. His approach to\nanything was oblique; he began a long way off, perhaps with the American\npreface of a funny story; and when the point came in sight, it was at\nonce enveloped again in a cloud of qualifications, in the parliamentary\njargon of philosophy. The tap once turned on, out flowed the stream of\nsystematic disquisition, one hour, two hours, three hours of it,\naccording to demand or opportunity. The voice, too, was merciless and\nharsh. You felt the overworked, standardised, academic engine, creaking\nand thumping on at the call of duty or of habit, with no thought of\nsparing itself or any one else. Yet a sprightlier soul behind this\nperforming soul seemed to watch and laugh at the process. Sometimes a\nmerry light would twinkle in the little eyes, and a bashful smile would\ncreep over the uncompromising mouth. A sense of the paradox, the irony,\nthe inconclusiveness of the whole argument would pierce to the surface,\nlike a white\u2010cap bursting here and there on the heavy swell of the sea.\n\nHis procedure was first to gather and digest whatever the sciences or\nthe devil might have to say. He had an evident sly pleasure in the\ndegustation and savour of difficulties; biblical criticism, the struggle\nfor life, the latest German theory of sexual insanity, had no terrors\nfor him; it was all grist for the mill, and woe to any tender thing, any\nbeauty or any illusion, that should get between that upper and that\nnether millstone! He seemed to say: If I were not Alexander how gladly\nwould I be Diogenes, and if I had not a system to defend, how easily I\nmight tell you the truth. But after the sceptic had ambled quizzically\nover the ground, the prophet would mount the pulpit to survey it. He\nwould then prove that in spite of all those horrors and contradictions,\nor rather because of them, the universe was absolutely perfect. For\nbehind that mocking soul in him there was yet another, a devout and\nheroic soul. Royce was heir to the Calvinistic tradition; piety, to his\nmind, consisted in trusting divine providence and justice, while\nemphasising the most terrifying truths about one\u2019s own depravity and the\nsinister holiness of God. He accordingly addressed himself, in his chief\nwritings, to showing that all lives were parts of a single divine life\nin which all problems were solved and all evils justified.\n\nIt is characteristic of Royce that in his proof of something sublime,\nlike the existence of God, his premiss should be something sad and\ntroublesome, the existence of error. Error exists, he tells us, and\ncommon sense will readily agree, although the fact is not\nunquestionable, and pure mystics and pure sensualists deny it. But if\nerror exists, Royce continues, there must be a truth from which it\ndiffers; and the existence of truth (according to the principle of\nidealism, that nothing can exist except for a mind that knows it)\nimplies that some one knows the truth; but as to know the truth\nthoroughly, and supply the corrective to every possible error, involves\nomniscience, we have proved the existence of an omniscient mind or\nuniversal thought; and this is almost, if not quite, equivalent to the\nexistence of God.\n\nWhat carried Royce over the evident chasms and assumptions in this\nargument was his earnestness and passionate eloquence. He passed for an\neminent logician, because he was dialectical and fearless in argument\nand delighted in the play of formal relations; he was devoted to chess,\nmusic, and mathematics; but all this show of logic was but a screen for\nhis heart, and in his heart there was no clearness. His reasoning was\nnot pure logic or pure observation; it was always secretly enthusiastic\nor malicious, and the result it arrived at had been presupposed. Here,\nfor instance, no unprejudiced thinker, not to speak of a pure logician,\nwould have dreamt of using the existence of error to found the being of\ntruth upon. Error is a biological accident which may any day cease to\nexist, say at the extinction of the human race; whereas the being of\ntruth or fact is involved indefeasibly and eternally in the existence of\nanything whatever, past, present, or future; every event of itself\nrenders true or false any proposition that refers to it. No one would\nconceive of such a thing as error or suspect its presence, unless he had\nalready found or assumed many a truth; nor could anything be an error\nactually unless the truth was definite and real. All this Royce of\ncourse recognised, and it was in some sense the heart of what he meant\nto assert and to prove; but it does not need proving and hardly\nasserting. What needed proof was something else, of less logical\nimportance but far greater romantic interest, namely, that the truth was\nhovering over us and about to descend into our hearts; and this Royce\nwas not disinclined to confuse with the being of truth, so as to bring\nit within the range of logical argument. He was tormented by the\nsuspicion that he might be himself in the toils of error, and fervently\naspired to escape from it. Error to him was no natural, and in itself\nharmless, incident of finitude; it was a sort of sin, as finitude was\ntoo. It was a part of the problem of evil; a terrible and urgent problem\nwhen your first postulate or dogma is that moral distinctions and moral\nexperience are the substance of the world, and not merely an incident in\nit. The mere being of truth, which is all a logician needs, would not\nhelp him in this wrestling for personal salvation; as he keenly felt and\noften said, the truth is like the stars, always laughing at us. Nothing\nwould help him but _possession_ of the truth, something eventual and\nterribly problematic. He longed to believe that all his troubles and\nquestions, some day and somewhere, must find their solution and quietus;\nif not in his own mind, in some kindred spirit that he could, to that\nextent, identify with himself. There must be not only cold truth, not\neven cold truth personified, but victorious _knowledge_ of the truth,\nbreaking like a sun\u2010burst through the clouds of error. The nerve of his\nargument was not logical at all; it was a confession of religious\nexperience, in which the agonised consciousness of error led to a strong\nimaginative conviction that the truth would be found at last.\n\nThe truth, as here conceived, meant the whole truth about everything;\nand certainly, if any plausible evidence for such a conclusion could be\nadduced, it would be interesting to learn that we are destined to become\nomniscient, or are secretly omniscient already. Nevertheless, the\naspiration of all religious minds does not run that way. Aristotle tells\nus that there are many things it is better not to know; and his sublime\ndeity is happily ignorant of our errors and of our very existence; more\nemphatically so the even sublimer deities of Plotinus and the Indians.\nThe omniscience which our religion attributes to God as the searcher of\nhearts and the judge of conduct has a moral function rather than a\nlogical one; it prevents us from hiding our sins or being unrecognised\nin our merits; it is not conceived to be requisite in order that it may\nbe true that those sins or merits have existed. Atheists admit the\nfacts, but they are content or perhaps relieved that they should pass\nunobserved. But here again Royce slipped into a romantic equivocation\nwhich a strict logician would not have tolerated. Knowledge of the\ntruth, a passing psychological possession, was substituted for the truth\nknown, and this at the cost of rather serious ultimate confusions. It is\nthe truth itself, the facts in their actual relations, that honest\nopinion appeals to, not to another opinion or instance of knowledge; and\nif, in your dream of warm sympathy and public corroboration, you lay up\nyour treasure in some instance of knowledge, which time and doubt might\ncorrupt, you have not laid up your treasure in heaven. In striving to\nprove the being of truth, the young Royce absurdly treated it as\ndoubtful, setting a bad example to the pragmatists; while in striving to\nlend a psychological quality to this truth and turning it into a\nproblematical instance of knowledge, he unwittingly deprived it of all\nauthority and sublimity. To personify the truth is to care less for\ntruth than for the corroboration and sympathy which the truth, become\nhuman, might bring to our opinions. It is to set up another thinker,\nourself enlarged, to vindicate us; without considering that this second\nthinker would be shut up, like us, in his own opinions, and would need\nto look to the truth beyond him as much as we do.\n\nTo the old problem of evil Royce could only give an old answer, although\nhe rediscovered and repeated it for himself in many ways, since it was\nthe core of his whole system. Good, he said, is essentially the struggle\nwith evil and the victory over it; so that if evil did not exist, good\nwould be impossible. I do not think this answer set him at rest; he\ncould hardly help feeling that all goods are not of that bellicose\ndescription, and that not all evils produce a healthy reaction or are\nswallowed up in victory; yet the fact that the most specious solution to\nthis problem of evil left it unsolved was in its way appropriate; for if\nthe problem had been really solved, the struggle to find a solution and\nthe faith that there was one would come to an end; yet perhaps this\nfaith and this struggle are themselves the supreme good. Accordingly the\ntrue solution of this problem, which we may all accept, is that no\nsolution can ever be found.\n\nHere is an example of the difference between the being of truth and the\nultimate solution of all our problems. There is certainly a truth about\nevil, and in this case not an unknown truth; yet it is no solution to\nthe \u201cproblem\u201d which laid the indomitable Royce on the rack. If a younger\nson asks why he was not born before his elder brother, that question may\nrepresent an intelligible state of his feelings; but there is no answer\nto it, because it is a childish question. So the question why it is\nright that there should be any evil is itself perverse and raised by\nfalse presumptions. To an unsophisticated mortal the existence of evil\npresents a task, never a problem. Evil, like error, is an incident of\nanimal life, inevitable in a crowded and unsettled world, where one\nspontaneous movement is likely to thwart another, and all to run up\nagainst material impossibilities. While life lasts this task is\nrecurrent, and every creature, in proportion to the vitality and\nintegrity of his nature, strives to remove or abate those evils of which\nhe is sensible. When the case is urgent and he is helpless, he will cry\nout for divine aid; and (if he does not perish first) he will soon see\nthis aid coming to him through some shift in the circumstances that\nrenders his situation endurable. Positive religion takes a naturalistic\nview of things, and requires it. It parts company with a scientific\nnaturalism only in accepting the authority of instinct or revelation in\ndeciding certain questions of fact, such as immortality or miracles. It\nrouses itself to crush evil, without asking why evil exists. What could\nbe more intelligible than that a deity like Jehovah, a giant inhabitant\nof the natural world, should be confronted with rivals, enemies, and\nrebellious children? What could be more intelligible than that the\ninertia of matter, or pure chance, or some contrary purpose, should mar\nthe expression of any platonic idea exercising its magic influence over\nthe world? For the Greek as for the Jew the task of morals is the same:\nto subdue nature as far as possible to the uses of the soul, by whatever\nagencies material or spiritual may be at hand; and when a limit is\nreached in that direction, to harden and cauterise the heart in the face\nof inevitable evils, opening it wide at the same time to every sweet\ninfluence that may descend to it from heaven. Never for a moment was\npositive religion entangled in a sophistical optimism. Never did it\nconceive that the most complete final deliverance and triumph would\n_justify_ the evils which they abolished. As William James put it, in\nhis picturesque manner, if at the last day all creation was shouting\nhallelujah and there remained one cockroach with an unrequited love,\n_that_ would spoil the universal harmony; it would spoil it, he meant,\nin truth and for the tender philosopher, but probably not for those\nexcited saints. James was thinking chiefly of the present and future,\nbut the same scrupulous charity has its application to the past. To\nremove an evil is not to remove the fact that it has existed. The tears\nthat have been shed were shed in bitterness, even if a remorseful hand\nafterwards wipes them away. To be patted on the back and given a\nsugar\u2010plum does not reconcile even a child to a past injustice. And the\ncase is much worse if we are expected to make our heaven out of the\nfoolish and cruel pleasures of contrast, or out of the pathetic\nobfuscation produced by a great relief. Such a heaven would be a lie,\nlike the sardonic heavens of Calvin and Hegel. The existence of any evil\nanywhere at any time absolutely ruins a total optimism.\n\nNevertheless philosophers have always had a royal road to complete\nsatisfaction. One of the purest of pleasures, which they cultivate above\nall others, is the pleasure of understanding. Now, as playwrights and\nnovelists know, the intellect is no less readily or agreeably employed\nin understanding evil than in understanding good\u2014more so, in fact, if in\nthe intellectual man, besides his intelligence, there is a strain of\ncoarseness, irony, or desire to belittle the good things others possess\nand he himself has missed. Sometimes the philosopher, even when above\nall meanness, becomes so devoted a naturalist that he is ashamed to\nremain a moralist, although this is what he probably was in the\nbeginning; and where all is one vast cataract of events, he feels it\nwould be impertinent of him to divide them censoriously into things that\nought to be and things that ought not to be. He may even go one step\nfarther. Awestruck and humbled before the universe, he may insensibly\ntransform his understanding and admiration of it into the assertion that\nthe existence of evil is no evil at all, but that the order of the\nuniverse is in every detail necessary and perfect, so that the mere\nmention of the word evil is blind and blasphemous.\n\nThis sentiment, which as much as any other deserves the name of\npantheism, is often expressed incoherently and with a false afflatus;\nbut when rationally conceived, as it was by Spinoza, it amounts to this:\nthat good and evil are relations which things bear to the living beings\nthey affect. In itself nothing\u2014much less this whole mixed universe\u2014can\nbe either good or bad; but the universe wears the aspect of a good in so\nfar as it feeds, delights, or otherwise fosters any creature within it.\nIf we define the intellect as the power to see things as they are, it is\nclear that in so far as the philosopher is a pure intellect the universe\nwill be a pure good to the philosopher; everything in it will give play\nto his exclusive passion. Wisdom counsels us therefore to become\nphilosophers and to concentrate our lives as much as possible in pure\nintelligence, that we may be led by it into the ways of peace. Not that\nthe universe will be proved thereby to be intrinsically good (although\nin the heat of their intellectual egotism philosophers are sometimes\nbetrayed into saying so), but that it will have become in that measure a\ngood to us, and we shall be better able to live happily and freely in\nit. If intelligibility appears in things, it does so like beauty or use,\nbecause the mind of man, in so far as it is adapted to them, finds its\njust exercise in their society.\n\nThis is an ancient, shrewd, and inexpugnable position. If Royce had been\nable to adhere to it consistently, he would have avoided his gratuitous\nproblem of evil without, I think, doing violence to the sanest element\nin his natural piety, which was joy in the hard truth, with a touch of\nhumour and scorn in respect to mortal illusions. There was an observant\nand docile side to him; and as a child likes to see things work, he\nliked to see processions of facts marching on ironically, whatever we\nmight say about it. This was his sense of the power of God. It attached\nhim at first to Spinoza and later to mathematical logic. No small part\nof his life\u2010long allegiance to the Absolute responded to this sentiment.\n\nThe outlook, however, was complicated and half reversed for him by the\ntranscendental theory of knowledge which he had adopted. This theory\nregards all objects, including the universe, as merely terms posited by\nthe will of the thinker, according to a definite grammar of thought\nnative to his mind. In order that his thoughts may be addressed to any\nparticular object, he must first choose and create it of his own accord;\notherwise his opinions, not being directed upon any object in particular\nwithin his ken, cannot be either true or false, whatever picture they\nmay frame. What anything external may happen to be, when we do not mean\nto speak of it, is irrelevant to our discourse. If, for instance, the\nreal Royce were not a denizen and product of my mind\u2014of my deeper self\u2014I\ncould not so much as have a wrong idea of him. The need of this initial\nrelevance in our judgements seems to the transcendentalist to drive all\npossible objects into the fold of his secret thoughts, so that he has\ntwo minds, one that seeks the facts and another that already possesses\nor rather constitutes them.\n\nPantheism, when this new philosophy of knowledge is adopted, seems at\nfirst to lose its foundations. There is no longer an external universe\nto which to bow; no little corner left for us in the infinite where,\nafter making the great sacrifice, we may build a safe nest. The\nintellect to which we had proudly reduced ourselves has lost its\npreeminence; it can no longer be called the faculty of seeing things as\nthey are. It has become what psychological critics of intellectualism,\nsuch as William James, understand by it: a mass of human propensities to\nabstraction, construction, belief, or inference, by which imaginary\nthings and truths are posited in the service of life. It is therefore on\nthe same plane exactly as passion, music, or \u00e6sthetic taste: a mental\ncomplication which may be an index to other psychological facts\nconnected with it genetically, but which has no valid intent, no ideal\ntranscendence, no assertive or cognitive function. Intelligence so\nconceived understands nothing: it is a buzzing labour in the fancy\nwhich, by some obscure causation, helps us to live on.\n\nTo discredit the intellect, to throw off the incubus of an external\nreality or truth, was one of the boons which transcendentalism in its\nbeginnings brought to the romantic soul. But although at first the sense\nof relief (to Fichte, for instance) was most exhilarating, the freedom\nachieved soon proved illusory: the terrible Absolute had been simply\ntransplanted into the self. You were your own master, and omnipotent;\nbut you were no less dark, hostile, and inexorable to yourself than the\ngods of Calvin or of Spinoza had been before. Since every detail of this\nmock world was your secret work, you were not only wiser but also more\ncriminal than you knew. You were stifled, even more than formerly, in\nthe arms of nature, in the toils of your own unaccountable character,\nwhich made your destiny. Royce never recoiled from paradox or from\nbitter fact; and he used to say that a mouse, when tormented and torn to\npieces by a cat, was realising his own deepest will, since he had\nsub\u2010consciously chosen to be a mouse in a world that should have cats in\nit. The mouse really, in his deeper self, wanted to be terrified,\nclawed, and devoured. Royce was superficially a rationalist, with no\ntenderness for superstition in detail and not much sympathy with\ncivilised religions; but we see here that in his heart he was loyal to\nthe aboriginal principle of all superstition: reverence for what hurts.\nHe said to himself that in so far as God was the devil\u2014as daily\nexperience and Hegelian logic proved was largely the case\u2014devil\u2010worship\nwas true religion.\n\nA protest, however, arose in his own mind against this doctrine. Strong\nearly bonds attached him to moralism\u2014to the opinion of the Stoics and of\nKant that virtue is the only good. Yet if virtue were conceived after\ntheir manner, as a heroic and sublimated attitude of the will, of which\nthe world hardly afforded any example, how should the whole whirligig of\nlife be good also? How should moralism, that frowns on this wicked\nworld, be reconciled with pantheism and optimism, that hug it to their\nbosom? By the ingenious if rather melodramatic notion that we should hug\nit with a bear\u2019s hug, that virtue consisted (as Royce often put it) in\nholding evil by the throat; so that the world was good because it was a\ngood world to strangle, and if we only managed to do so, the more it\ndeserved strangling the better world it was. But this Herculean feat\nmust not be considered as something to accomplish once for all; the\nlabours of Hercules must be not twelve but infinite, since his virtue\nconsisted in performing them, and if he ever rested or was received into\nOlympus he would have left virtue\u2014the only good\u2014behind. The wickedness\nof the world was no reason for quitting it; on the contrary, it invited\nus to plunge into all its depths and live through every phase of it;\nvirtue was severe but not squeamish. It lived by endless effort, turbid\nvitality, and _Sturm und Drang_. Moralism and an apology for evil could\nthus be reconciled and merged in the praises of tragic experience.\n\nThis had been the burden of Hegel\u2019s philosophy of life, which Royce\nadmired and adopted. Hegel and his followers seem to be fond of\nimagining that they are moving in a tragedy. But because Aeschylus and\nSophocles were great poets, does it follow that life would be cheap if\nit did not resemble their fables? The life of tragic heroes is not good;\nit is misguided, unnecessary, and absurd. Yet that is what romantic\nphilosophy would condemn us to; we must all strut and roar. We must lend\nourselves to the partisan earnestness of persons and nations calling\ntheir rivals villains and themselves heroes; but this earnestness will\nbe of the histrionic German sort, made to order and transferable at\nshort notice from one object to another, since what truly matters is not\nthat we should achieve our ostensible aim (which Hegel contemptuously\ncalled ideal) but that we should carry on perpetually, if possible with\na _crescendo_, the strenuous experience of living in a gloriously bad\nworld, and always working to reform it, with the comforting speculative\nassurance that we never can succeed. We never can succeed, I mean, in\nrendering reform less necessary or life happier; but of course in any\nspecific reform we may succeed half the time, thereby sowing the seeds\nof new and higher evils, to keep the edge of virtue keen. And in reality\nwe, or the Absolute in us, are succeeding all the time; the play is\nalways going on, and the play\u2019s the thing.\n\nIt was inevitable that Royce should have been at home only in this\ncircle of Protestant and German intuitions; a more refined existence\nwould have seemed to him to elude moral experience. Although he was born\nin California he had never got used to the sunshine; he had never tasted\npeace. His spirit was that of courage and labour. He was tender in a\nbashful way, as if in tenderness there was something pathological, as\nindeed to his sense there was, since he conceived love and loyalty to be\ndivine obsessions refusing to be rationalised; he saw their essence in\nthe child who clings to an old battered doll rather than accept a new\nand better one. Following orthodox tradition in philosophy, he insisted\non seeing reason at the bottom of things as well as at the top, so that\nhe never could understand either the root or the flower of anything. He\nwatched the movement of events as if they were mysterious music, and\ninstead of their causes and potentialities he tried to divine their\n_motif_. On current affairs his judgements were highly seasoned and\nlaboriously wise. If anything escaped him, it was only the simplicity of\nwhat is best. His reward was that he became a prophet to a whole class\nof earnest, troubled people who, having discarded doctrinal religion,\nwished to think their life worth living when, to look at what it\ncontained, it might not have seemed so; it reassured them to learn that\na strained and joyless existence was not their unlucky lot, or a\nconsequence of their solemn folly, but was the necessary fate of all\ngood men and angels. Royce had always experienced and seen about him a\ngroping, burdened, mediocre life; he had observed how fortune is\ncontinually lying in ambush for us, in order to bring good out of evil\nand evil out of good. In his age and country all was change,\npreparation, hurry, material achievement; nothing was an old and\nsufficient possession; nowhere, or very much in the background, any\nleisure, simplicity, security, or harmony. The whole scene was filled\nwith arts and virtues which were merely useful or remedial. The most\npressing arts, like war and forced labour, presuppose evil, work immense\nhavoc, and take the place of greater possible goods. The most\nindispensable virtues, like courage and industry, do likewise. But these\nseemed in Royce\u2019s world the only honourable things, and he took them to\nbe typical of all art and virtue\u2014a tremendous error. It is very true,\nhowever, that in the welter of material existence no concrete thing can\nbe good or evil in every respect; and so long as our rough arts and\nvirtues do more good than harm we give them honourable names, such as\nunselfishness, patriotism, or religion; and it remains a mark of good\nbreeding among us to practise them instinctively. But an absolute love\nof such forced arts and impure virtues is itself a vice; it is, as the\ncase may be, barbarous, vain, or fanatical. It mistakes something\nspecific\u2014some habit or emotion which may be or may have been good in\nsome respect, or under some circumstances the lesser of two evils\u2014for\nthe very principle of excellence. But good and evil, like light and\nshade, are ethereal; all things, events, persons, and conventional\nvirtues are in themselves utterly valueless, save as an immaterial\nharmony (of which mind is an expression) plays about them on occasion,\nwhen their natures meet propitiously, and bathes them in some tint of\nhappiness or beauty. This immaterial harmony may be made more and more\nperfect; the difficulties in the way of perfection, either in man, in\nsociety, or in universal nature, are physical not logical. Worship of\nbarbarous virtue is the blackest conservatism; it shuts the gate of\nheaven, and surrenders existence to perpetual follies and crimes,\nMoralism itself is a superstition. In its abstract form it is moral, too\nmoral; it adores the conventional conscience, or perhaps a morbid one.\nIn its romantic form, moralism becomes barbarous and actually immoral;\nit obstinately craves action and stress for their own sake, experience\nin the gross, and a good\u2010and\u2010bad way of living.\n\nRoyce sometimes conceded that there might be some pure goods, music, for\ninstance, or mathematics; but the impure moral goods were better and\ncould not be spared. Such a concession, however, if it had been taken to\nheart, would have ruined his whole moral philosophy. The romanticist\nmust maintain that _only_ what is painful can be noble and _only_ what\nis lurid bright. A taste for turbid and contrasted values would soon\nseem perverse when once anything perfect had been seen and loved. Would\nit not have been better to leave out the worst of the crimes and plagues\nthat have heightened the tragic value of the world? But if so, why stop\nbefore we had deleted them all? We should presently be horrified at the\nmere thought of passions that before had been found necessary by the\nbarbarous tragedian to keep his audience awake; and the ear at the same\ntime would become sensitive to a thousand harmonies that had been\ninaudible in the hurly\u2010burly of romanticism. The romanticist thinks he\nhas life by virtue of his confusion and torment, whereas in truth that\ntorment and confusion are his incipient death, and it is only the\nmodicum of harmony he has achieved in his separate faculties that keeps\nhim alive at all. As Aristotle taught, unmixed harmony would be\nintensest life. The spheres might make a sweet and perpetual music, and\na happy God is at least possible.\n\nIt was not in this direction, however, that Royce broke away on occasion\nfrom his Hegelian ethics; he did so in the direction of ethical\ndogmatism and downright sincerity. The deepest thing in him personally\nwas conscience, firm recognition of duty, and the democratic and\nAmerican spirit of service. He could not adopt a moral bias\nhistrionically, after the manner of Hegel or Nietzsche. To those\nhardened professionals any r\u00f4le was acceptable, the more commanding the\nbetter; but the good Royce was like a sensitive amateur, refusing the\nr\u00f4le of villain, however brilliant and necessary to the play. In\ncontempt of his own speculative insight, or in an obedience to it which\nforgot it for the time being, he lost himself in his part, and felt that\nit was infinitely important to be cast only for the most virtuous of\ncharacters. He retained inconsistently the Jewish allegiance to a God\nessentially the vindicator of only one of the combatants, not in this\nworld often the victor; he could not stomach the providential scoundrels\nwhich the bad taste of Germany, and of Carlyle and Browning, was wont to\nglorify. The last notable act of his life was an illustration of this,\nwhen he uttered a ringing public denunciation of the sinking of the\n_Lusitania_. Orthodox Hegelians might well have urged that here, if\nanywhere, was a plain case of the providential function of what, from a\nfinite merely moral point of view, was an evil in order to make a higher\ngood possible\u2014the virtue of German self\u2010assertion and of American\nself\u2010assertion in antithesis to it, synthesised in the concrete good of\nwar and victory, or in the perhaps more blessed good of defeat. What\ncould be more unphilosophical and _gedankenlos_ than the intrusion of\nmere morality into the higher idea of world\u2010development? Was not the\nUniversal Spirit compelled to bifurcate into just such Germans and just\nsuch Americans, in order to attain self\u2010consciousness by hating,\nfighting against, and vanquishing itself? Certainly it was American duty\nto be angry, as it was German duty to be ruthless. The Idea liked to see\nits fighting\u2010cocks at it in earnest, since that was what it had bred\nthem for; but both were good cocks. Villains, as Hegel had observed in\ndescribing Greek tragedy, were not less self\u2010justified than heroes; they\nwere simply the heroes of a lower stage of culture. America and England\nremained at the stage of individualism; Germany had advanced to the\nhigher stage of organisation. Perhaps this necessary war was destined,\nthrough the apparent defeat of Germany, to bring England and America up\nto the German level. Of course; and yet somehow, on this occasion, Royce\npassed over these profound considerations, which life\u2010long habit must\nhave brought to his lips. A Socratic demon whispered No, No in his ear;\nit would have been better for such things never to be. The murder of\nthose thousand passengers was not a providential act, requisite to\nspread abroad a vitalising war; it was a crime to execrate altogether.\nIt would have been better for Hegel, or whoever was responsible for it,\nif a millstone had been hanged about his neck and he, and not those\nlittle ones, had been drowned at the bottom of the sea. Of this\nterrestrial cock\u2010pit Royce was willing to accept the agony, but not the\nignominy. The other cock was a wicked bird.\n\nThis honest lapse from his logic was habitual with him at the sight of\nsin, and sin in his eyes was a fearful reality. His conscience spoiled\nthe pantheistic serenity of his system; and what was worse (for he was\nperfectly aware of the contradiction) it added a deep, almost remorseful\nunrest to his hard life. What calm could there be in the double\nassurance that it was really right that things should be wrong, but that\nit was really wrong not to strive to right them? There was no conflict,\nhe once observed, between science and religion, but the real conflict\nwas between religion and morality. There could indeed be no conflict in\nhis mind between faith and science, because his faith began by accepting\nall facts and all scientific probabilities in order to face them\nreligiously. But there was an invincible conflict between religion as he\nconceived it and morality, because morality takes sides and regards one\nsort of motive and one kind of result as better than another, whereas\nreligion according to him gloried in everything, even in the evil, as\nfulfilling the will of God. Of course the practice of virtue was not\nexcluded; it was just as needful as evil was in the scheme of the whole;\nbut while the effort of morality was requisite, the judgements of\nmorality were absurd. Now I think we may say that a man who finds\nhimself in such a position has a divided mind, and that while he has\nwrestled with the deepest questions like a young giant, he has not won\nthe fight. I mean, he has not seen his way to any one of the various\npossibilities about the nature of things, but has remained entangled,\nsincerely, nobly, and pathetically, in contrary traditions stronger than\nhimself. In the goodly company of philosophers he is an intrepid martyr.\n\nIn metaphysics as in morals Royce perpetually laboured the same points,\nyet they never became clear; they covered a natural complexity in the\nfacts which his idealism could not disentangle. There was a voluminous\nconfusion in his thought; some clear principles and ultimate\npossibilities turned up in it, now presenting one face and now another,\nlike chips carried down a swollen stream; but the most powerful currents\nwere below the surface, and the whole movement was hard to trace. He had\nborrowed from Hegel a way of conceiving systems of philosophy, and also\nthe elements of his own thought, which did not tend to clarify them. He\ndid not think of correcting what incoherence there might remain in any\nview, and then holding it in reserve, as one of the possibilities, until\nfacts should enable us to decide whether it was true or not. Instead he\nclung to the incoherence as if it had been the heart of the position, in\norder to be driven by it to some other position altogether, so that\nwhile every view seemed to be considered, criticised, and in a measure\nretained (since the argument continued on the same lines, however\nill\u2010chosen they might have been originally), yet justice was never done\nto it; it was never clarified, made consistent with itself, and then\naccepted or rejected in view of the evidence. Hence a vicious and\nperplexing suggestion that philosophies are bred out of philosophies,\nnot out of men in the presence of things. Hence too a sophistical effort\nto find everything self\u2010contradictory, and in some disquieting way both\ntrue and false, as if there were not an infinite number of perfectly\nconsistent systems which the world might have illustrated.\n\nConsider, for instance, his chief and most puzzling contention, that all\nminds are parts of one mind. It is easy, according to the meaning we\ngive to the word mind, to render this assertion clear and true, or clear\nand false, or clear and doubtful (because touching unknown facts), or\nutterly absurd. It is obvious that all minds are parts of one flux or\nsystem of experiences, as all bodies are parts of one system of bodies.\nAgain, if mind is identified with its objects, and people are said to be\n\u201cof one mind\u201d when they are thinking of the same thing, it is certain\nthat many minds are often identical in part, and they would all be\nidentical with portions of an omniscient mind that should perceive all\nthat they severally experienced. The question becomes doubtful if what\nwe mean by oneness of mind is unity of type; our information or\nplausible guesses cannot assure us how many sorts of experience may\nexist, or to what extent their development (when they develop) follows\nthe same lines of evolution. The animals would have to be consulted, and\nthe other planets, and the infinite recesses of time. The straitjacket\nwhich German idealism has provided is certainly far too narrow even for\nthe varieties of human imagination. Finally, the assertion becomes\nabsurd when it is understood to suggest that an actual instance of\nthinking, in which something, say the existence of America, is absent or\ndenied, can be part of another actual instance of thinking in which it\nis present and asserted. But this whole method of treating the\nmatter\u2014and we might add anything that observation might warrant us in\nadding about multiple personalities\u2014would leave out the problem that\nagitated Royce and that bewildered his readers. He wanted all minds to\nbe one in some way which should be logically and morally necessary, and\nwhich yet, as he could not help feeling, was morally and logically\nimpossible.\n\nFor pure transcendentalism, which was Royce\u2019s technical method, the\nquestion does not arise at all. Transcendentalism is an attitude or a\npoint of view rather than as system. Its Absolute is thinking \u201cas such,\u201d\nwherever thought may exert itself. The notion that there are separate\ninstances of thought is excluded, because space, time, and number belong\nto the visionary world posited by thought, not to the function of\nthinking; individuals are figments of constructive fancy, as are\nmaterial objects. The stress of moral being is the same wherever it may\nfall, and there are no finite selves, or relations between thinkers;\nalso no infinite self, because on this principle the Absolute is not an\nexistent being, a psychological monster, but a station or office; its\nessence is a task. Actual thinking is therefore never a part of the\nAbsolute, but always the Absolute itself. Thinkers, finite or infinite,\nwould be existing persons or masses of feelings; such things are dreamt\nof only. _Any_ system of existences, _any_ truth or matter of fact\nwaiting to be recognised, contradicts the transcendental insight and\nstultifies it. The all\u2010inclusive mind is my mind as I think, mind in its\nliving function, and beyond that philosophy cannot go.\n\nRoyce, however, while often reasoning on this principle, was incapable\nof not going beyond it, or of always remembering it. He could not help\nbelieving that constructive fancy not only feigns individuals and\ninstances of thought, but is actually seated in them. The Absolute, for\ninstance, must be not merely the abstract subject or transcendental self\nin all of us (although it was that too), but an actual synthetic\nuniversal mind, the God of Aristotle and of Christian theology. Nor was\nit easy for Royce, a sincere soul and a friend of William James, not to\nbe a social realist; I mean, not to admit that there are many collateral\nhuman minds, in temporal existential relations to one another, any of\nwhich may influence another, but never supplant it nor materially\ninclude it. Finite experience was not a mere element in infinite\nexperience; it was a tragic totality in itself. I was not God looking at\nmyself, I was myself looking for God. Yet this strain was utterly\nincompatible with the principles of transcendentalism; it turned\nphilosophy into a simple anticipation of science, if not into an\nindulgence in literary psychology. Knowledge would then have been only\nfaith leaping across the chasm of coexistence and guessing the presence\nand nature of what surrounds us by some hint of material influence or\nbrotherly affinity. Both the credulity and the finality which such\nnaturalism implies were offensive to Royce, and contrary to his\nsceptical and mystical instincts. Was there some middle course?\n\nThe audience in a theatre stand in a transcendental relation to the\npersons and events in the play. The performance may take place to\u2010day\nand last one hour, while the fable transports us to some heroic epoch or\nto an age that never existed, and stretches through days and perhaps\nyears of fancied time. Just so transcendental thinking, while actually\ntimeless and not distributed among persons, might survey infinite time\nand rehearse the passions and thoughts of a thousand characters.\nThought, after all, needs objects, however fictitious and ideal they may\nbe; it could not think if it thought nothing. This indispensable world\nof appearance is far more interesting than the reality that evokes it;\nthe qualities and divisions found in the appearance diversify the\nmonotonous function of pure thinking and render it concrete. Instances\nof thought and particular minds may thus be introduced consistently into\na transcendental system, provided they are distinguished not by their\nown times and places, but only by their themes. The transcendental mind\nwould be a pure poet, with no earthly life, but living only in his\nworks, and in the times and persons of his fable. This view, firmly and\nconsistently held, would deserve the name of absolute idealism, which\nRoyce liked to give to his own system. But he struggled to fuse it with\nsocial realism, with which it is radically incompatible. Particular\nminds and the whole process of time, for absolute idealism, are _ideas_\nonly; they are thought of and surveyed, they never think or lapse\nactually. For this reason genuine idealists can speak so glibly of the\nmind of a nation or an age. It is just as real and unreal to them as the\nmind of an individual; for within the human individual they can trace\nunities that run through and beyond him, so that parts of him, identical\nwith parts of other people, form units as living as himself; for it is\nall a web of themes, not a concourse of existences. This is the very\nessence and pride of idealism, that knowledge is not knowledge of the\nworld but is the world itself, and that the units of discourse, which\nare interwoven and crossed units, are the only individuals in being. You\nmay call them persons, because \u201cperson\u201d means a mask; but you cannot\ncall them souls. They are knots in the web of history. They are words in\ntheir context, and the only spirit in them is the sense they have for\nme.\n\nRoyce, however, in saying all this, also wished not to say it, and his\ntwo thick volumes on _The World and the Individual_ leave their subject\nwrapped in utter obscurity. Perceiving the fact when he had finished, he\nvery characteristically added a \u201cSupplementary Essay\u201d of a hundred more\npages, in finer print, in which to come to the point. Imagine, he said,\nan absolutely exhaustive map of England spread out upon English soil.\nThe map would be a part of England, yet would reproduce every feature of\nEngland, including itself; so that the map would reappear on a smaller\nscale within itself an infinite number of times, like a mirror reflected\nin a mirror. In this way we might be individuals within a larger\nindividual, and no less actual and complete than he. Does this solve the\nproblem? If we take the illustration as it stands, there is still only\none individual in existence, the material England, all the maps being\nparts of its single surface; nor will it at all resemble the maps, since\nit will be washed by the sea and surrounded by foreign nations, and not,\nlike the maps, by other Englands enveloping it. If, on the contrary, we\nequalise the status of all the members of the series, by making it\ninfinite in both directions, then there would be no England at all, but\nonly map within map of England. There would be no absolute mind\ninclusive but not included, and the Absolute would be the series as a\nwhole, utterly different from any of its members. It would be a series\nwhile they were maps, a truth while they were minds; and if the Absolute\nfrom the beginning had been regarded as a truth only, there never would\nhave been any difficulty in the existence of individuals under it.\nMoreover, if the individuals are all exactly alike, does not their exact\nsimilarity defeat the whole purpose of the speculation, which was to\nvindicate the equal reality of the whole and of its _limited_ parts? And\nif each of us, living through infinite time, goes through precisely the\nsame experiences as every one else, why this vain repetition? Is it not\nenough for this insatiable world to live its life once? Why not admit\nsolipsism and be true to the transcendental method? Because of\nconscience and good sense? But then the infinite series of maps is\nuseless, England is herself again, and the prospect opens before us of\nan infinite number of supplementary essays.\n\nRoyce sometimes felt that he might have turned his hand to other things\nthan philosophy. He once wrote a novel, and its want of success was a\nsilent disappointment to him. Perhaps he might have been a great\nmusician. Complexity, repetitions, vagueness, endlessness are hardly\nvirtues in writing or thinking, but in music they might have swelled and\nswelled into a real sublimity, all the more that he was patient, had a\nvoluminous meandering memory, and loved technical devices. But rather\nthan a musician\u2014for he was no artist\u2014he resembled some great\u2010hearted\nmedi\u00e6val peasant visited by mystical promptings, whom the monks should\nhave adopted and allowed to browse among their theological folios; a\nDuns Scotus earnest and studious to a fault, not having the lightness of\nsoul to despise those elaborate sophistries, yet minded to ferret out\ntheir secret for himself and walk by his inward light. His was a gothic\nand scholastic spirit, intent on devising and solving puzzles, and\nhonouring God in systematic works, like the coral insect or the spider;\neventually creating a fabric that in its homely intricacy and fulness\narrested and moved the heart, the web of it was so vast, and so full of\nmystery and yearning.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\u2014LATER SPECULATIONS\n\n\nA question which is curious in itself and may become important in the\nfuture is this: How has migration to the new world affected\nphilosophical ideas? At first sight we might be tempted, perhaps, to\ndismiss this question altogether, on the ground that no such effect is\ndiscernible. For what do we find in America in the guise of philosophy?\nIn the background, the same Protestant theology as in Europe and the\nsame Catholic theology; on the surface, the same adoption of German\nidealism, the same vogue of evolution, the same psychology becoming\nmetaphysics, and lately the same revival of a mathematical or logical\nrealism. In no case has the first expression of these various tendencies\nappeared in America, and no original system that I know of has arisen\nthere. It would seem, then, that in philosophy, as in letters generally,\npolite America has continued the common tradition of Christendom, in\npaths closely parallel to those followed in England; and that modern\nspeculation, which is so very sensitive to changed times, is quite\nindifferent to distinctions of place.\n\nPerhaps; but I say advisedly _polite_ America, for without this\nqualification what I have been suggesting would hardly be true. Polite\nAmerica carried over its household gods from puritan England in a spirit\nof consecration, and it has always wished to remain in communion with\nwhatever its conscience might value in the rest of the world. Yet it has\nbeen cut off by distance and by revolutionary prejudice against things\nancient or foreign; and it has been disconcerted at the same time by the\ninsensible shifting of the ground under its feet: it has suffered from\nin\u2010breeding and an\u00e6mia. On the other hand, a crude but vital America has\nsprung up from the soil, undermining, feeding, and transforming the\nAmerica of tradition.\n\nThis young America was originally composed of all the prodigals,\ntruants, and adventurous spirits that the colonial families produced: it\nwas fed continually by the younger generation, born in a spacious,\nhalf\u2010empty world, tending to forget the old straitened morality and to\nreplace it by another, quite jovially human. This truly native America\nwas reinforced by the miscellany of Europe arriving later, not in the\nhope of founding a godly commonwealth, but only of prospering in an\nuntrammelled one. The horde of immigrants eagerly accepts the external\narrangements and social spirit of American life, but never hears of its\noriginal austere principles, or relegates them to the same willing\noblivion as it does the constraints which it has just escaped\u2014Jewish,\nIrish, German, Italian, or whatever they may be. We should be seriously\ndeceived if we overlooked for a moment the curious and complex relation\nbetween these two Americas.\n\nLet me give one illustration. Professor Norton, the friend of Carlyle,\nof Burne\u2010Jones, and of Matthew Arnold, and, for the matter of that, the\nfriend of everybody, a most urbane, learned, and exquisite spirit, was\ndescended from a long line of typical New England divines: yet he was\nloudly accused, in public and in private, of being un\u2010American. On the\nother hand, a Frenchman of ripe judgement, who knew him perfectly, once\nsaid to me: \u201cNorton wouldn\u2019t like to hear it, but he is a terrible\nYankee.\u201d Both judgements were well grounded. Professor Norton\u2019s mind was\ndeeply moralised, discriminating, and sad; and these qualities rightly\nseemed American to the French observer of New England, but they rightly\nseemed un\u2010American to the politician from Washington.\n\nPhilosophical opinion in America is of course rooted in the genteel\ntradition. It is either inspired by religious faith, and designed to\ndefend it, or else it is created somewhat artificially in the larger\nuniversities, by deliberately proposing problems which, without being\nvery pressing to most Americans, are supposed to be necessary problems\nof thought. Yet if you expected academic philosophers in America,\nbecause the background of their minds seems perfunctory, to resemble\nacademic philosophers elsewhere, you would be often mistaken. There is\nno prig\u2019s paradise in those regions. Many of the younger professors of\nphilosophy are no longer the sort of persons that might as well have\nbeen clergymen or schoolmasters: they have rather the type of mind of a\ndoctor, an engineer, or a social reformer; the wide\u2010awake young man who\ncan do most things better than old people, and who knows it. He is less\neloquent and apostolic than the older generation of philosophers, very\nprofessional in tone and conscious of his _Fach_; not that he would deny\nfor a moment the many\u2010sided ignorance to which nowadays we are all\nreduced, but that he thinks he can get on very well without the things\nhe ignores. His education has been more pretentious than thorough; his\nstyle is deplorable; social pressure and his own great eagerness have\ncondemned him to over\u2010work, committee meetings, early marriage,\npremature authorship, and lecturing two or three times a day under\nforced draught. He has no peace in himself, no window open to a calm\nhorizon, and in his heart perhaps little taste for mere scholarship or\npure speculation. Yet, like the plain soldier staggering under his\nclumsy equipment, he is cheerful; he keeps his faith in himself and in\nhis allotted work, puts up with being toasted only on one side, remains\nopen\u2010minded, whole\u2010hearted, appreciative, helpful, confident of the\nfuture of goodness and of science. In a word, he is a cell in that\nteeming democratic body; he draws from its warm, contagious activities\nthe sanctions of his own life and, less consciously, the spirit of his\nphilosophy.\n\nIt is evident that such minds will have but a loose hold on tradition,\neven on the genteel tradition in American philosophy. Not that in\ngeneral they oppose or dislike it; their alienation from it is more\nradical; they forget it. Religion was the backbone of that tradition,\nand towards religion, in so far as it is a private sentiment or\npresumption, they feel a tender respect; but in so far as religion is a\npolitical institution, seeking to coerce the mind and the conscience,\none would think they had never heard of it. They feel it is as much\nevery one\u2019s right to choose and cherish a religion as to choose and\ncherish a wife, without having his choice rudely commented upon in\npublic. Hitherto America has been the land of universal good\u2010will,\nconfidence in life, inexperience of poisons. Until yesterday it believed\nitself immune from the hereditary plagues of mankind. It could not\ncredit the danger of being suffocated or infected by any sinister\nprinciple. The more errors and passions were thrown into the\nmelting\u2010pot, the more certainly would they neutralise one another and\nwould truth come to the top. Every system was met with a frank gaze.\n\u201cCome on,\u201d people seemed to say to it, \u201cshow us what you are good for.\nWe accept no claims; we ask for no credentials; we just give you a\nchance. Plato, the Pope, and Mrs. Eddy shall have one vote each.\u201d After\nall, I am not sure that this toleration without deference is not a cruel\ntest for systematic delusions: it lets the daylight into the stage.\n\nPhilosophic tradition in America has merged almost completely in German\nidealism. In a certain sense this system did not need to be adopted:\nsomething very like it had grown up spontaneously in New England in the\nform of transcendentalism and unitarian theology. Even the most\nemancipated and positivistic of the latest thinkers\u2014pragmatists, new\nrealists, pure empiricists\u2014have been bred in the atmosphere of German\nidealism; and this fact should not be forgotten in approaching their\nviews. The element of this philosophy which has sunk deepest, and which\nis reinforced by the influence of psychology, is the critical attitude\ntowards knowledge, subjectivism, withdrawal into experience, on the\nassumption that experience is something substantial. Experience was\nregarded by earlier empiricists as a method for making real discoveries,\na safer witness than reasoning to what might exist in nature; but now\nexperience is taken to be in itself the only real existence, the\nultimate object that all thought and theory must regard. This empiricism\ndoes not look to the building up of science, but rather to a more\nthorough criticism and disintegration of conventional beliefs, those of\nempirical science included. It is in the intrepid prosecution of this\ncriticism and disintegration that American philosophy has won its wings.\n\nIt may seem a strange Nemesis that a critical philosophy, which on\nprinciple reduces everything to the consciousness of it, should end by\nreducing consciousness itself to other things; yet the path of this\nboomerang is not hard to trace. The word consciousness originally meant\nwhat Descartes called thought or cogitation\u2014the faculty which attention\nhas of viewing together objects which may belong together neither in\ntheir logical essence nor in their natural existence. It colours events\nwith memories and facts with emotions, and adds images to words. This\nsynthetic and transitive function of consciousness is a positive fact\nabout it, to be discovered by study, like any other somewhat recondite\nfact. You will discover it if you institute a careful comparison and\ncontrast between the way things hang together in thought and the way\nthey hang together in nature. To have discerned the wonderful\nperspectives both of imagination and of will seems to me the chief\nservice done to philosophy by Kant and his followers. It is the\npositive, the non\u2010malicious element in their speculation; and in the\nmidst of their psychologism in logic and their egotism about nature and\nhistory, consciousness seems to be the one province of being which they\nhave thrown true light upon. But just because this is a positive\nprovince of being, an actual existence to be discovered and dogmatically\nbelieved in, it is not what a malicious criticism of knowledge can end\nwith. Not the nature of consciousness, but the data of consciousness,\nare what the critic must fall back upon in the last resort; and Hume had\nbeen in this respect a more penetrating critic than Kant. One cannot, by\ninspecting consciousness, find consciousness itself as a passive datum,\nbecause consciousness is cogitation; one can only take note of the\nimmediate objects of consciousness, in such private perspective as sense\nor imagination may present.\n\nPhilosophy seems to be richer in theories than in words to express them\nin; and much confusion results from the necessity of using old terms in\nnew meanings. In this way, when consciousness is disregarded, in the\nproper sense of cogitation, the name of consciousness can be transferred\nto the stream of objects immediately present to consciousness; so that\nconsciousness comes to signify the evolving field of appearances\nunrolled before any person.\n\nThis equivocation is favoured by the allied ambiguity of an even\ncommoner term, idea. It is plausible to say that consciousness is a\nstream of ideas, because an idea may mean an opinion, a cogitation, a\nview taken of some object. And it is also plausible to say that ideas\nare objects of consciousness, because an idea may mean an image, a\npassive datum. Passive data may be of any sort you like\u2014things,\nqualities, relations, propositions\u2014but they are never cogitations; and\nto call _them_ consciousness or components of consciousness is false and\ninexcusable. The ideas that may be so called are not these passive\nobjects, but active thoughts. Indeed, when the psychological critic has\nmade this false step, he is not able to halt: his method will carry him\npresently from this position to one even more paradoxical.\n\nIs memory knowledge of a past that is itself absent and dead, or is it a\npresent experience? A complete philosophy would doubtless reply that it\nis both; but psychological criticism can take cognisance of memory only\nas a mass of present images and presumptions. The experience remembered\nmay indeed be exactly recovered and be present again; but the fact that\nit was present before cannot possibly be given now; it can only be\nsuggested and believed.\n\nIt is evident, therefore, that the historical order in which data flow\nis not contained bodily in any one of them. This order is conceived; the\nhypothesis is framed instinctively and instinctively credited, but it is\nonly an hypothesis. And it is often wrong, as is proved by all the\nconstitutional errors of memory and legend. Belief in the order of our\npersonal experiences is accordingly just as dogmatic, daring, and\nrealistic as the parallel belief in a material world. The psychological\ncritic must attribute both beliefs to a mere tendency to feign; and if\nhe is true to his method he must discard the notion that the objects of\nconsciousness are arranged in psychological sequences, making up\nseparate minds. In other words, he must discard the notion of\nconsciousness, not only in the sense of thought or cogitation, but in\nthe sense he himself had given it of a stream of ideas. Actual objects,\nhe will now admit, not without a certain surprise, are not ideas at all:\nthey do not lie in the mind (for there is no mind to be found) but in\nthe medium that observably surrounds them. Things are just what they\nseem to be, and to say they are consciousness or compose a consciousness\nis absurd. The so\u2010called appearances, according to a perfected criticism\nof knowledge, are nothing private or internal; they are merely those\nportions of external objects which from time to time impress themselves\non somebody\u2019s organs of sense and are responded to by his nervous\nsystem.\n\nSuch is the doctrine of the new American realists, in whose devoted\npersons the logic of idealism has worked itself out and appropriately\nturned idealism itself into its opposite. Consciousness, they began by\nsaying, is merely a stream of ideas; but then ideas are merely the parts\nof objects which happen to appear to a given person; but again, a person\n(for all you or he can discover) is nothing but his body and those parts\nof other objects which appear to him; and, finally, to appear, in any\ndiscoverable sense, cannot be to have a ghostly sort of mental\nexistence, but merely to be reacted upon by an animal body. Thus we come\nto the conclusion that objects alone exist, and that consciousness is a\nname for certain segments or groups of these objects.\n\nI think we may conjecture why this startling conclusion, that\nconsciousness does not exist, a conclusion suggested somewhat hurriedly\nby William James, has found a considerable echo in America, and why the\nsystem of Avenarius, which makes in the same direction, has been studied\nthere sympathetically. To deny consciousness is to deny a pre\u2010requisite\nto the obvious, and to leave the obvious standing alone. That is a\nrelief to an overtaxed and self\u2010impeded generation; it seems a blessed\nsimplification. It gets rid of the undemocratic notion that by being\nvery reflective, circumspect, and subtle you might discover something\nthat most people do not see. They can go on more merrily with their work\nif they believe that by being so subtle, circumspect, and reflective you\nwould only discover a mare\u2019s nest. The elimination of consciousness not\nonly restores the obvious, but proves all parts of the obvious to be\nequally real. Not only colours, beauties, and passions, but all things\nformerly suspected of being creatures of thought, such as laws,\nrelations, and abstract qualities, now become components of the existing\nobject, since there is no longer any mental vehicle by which they might\nhave been created and interposed. The young American is thus reassured:\nhis joy in living and learning is no longer chilled by the contempt\nwhich idealism used to cast on nature for being imaginary and on science\nfor being intellectual. All fictions and all abstractions are now\ndeclared to be parcels of the objective world; it will suffice to live\non, to live forward, in order to see everything as it really is.\n\nIf we look now at these matters from a slightly different angle, we\nshall find psychological criticism transforming the notion of truth much\nas it has transformed the notion of consciousness. In the first place,\nthere is a similar ambiguity in the term. The truth properly means the\nsum of all true propositions, what omniscience would assert, the whole\nideal system of qualities and relations which the world has exemplified\nor will exemplify. The truth is all things seen under the form of\neternity. In this sense, a psychological criticism cannot be pertinent\nto the truth at all, the truth not being anything psychological or\nhuman. It is an ideal realm of being properly enough not discussed by\npsychologists; yet so far as I know it is denied by nobody, not even by\nProtagoras or the pragmatists. If Protagoras said that whatever appears\nto any man at any moment is true, he doubtless meant true on that\nsubject, true of that appearance: because for a sensualist objects do\nnot extend beyond what he sees of them, so that each of his perceptions\ndefines its whole object and is infallible. But in that case the truth\nabout the universe is evidently that it is composed of these various\nsensations, each carrying an opinion impossible for it to abandon or to\nrevise, since to revise the opinion would simply be to bring a fresh\nobject into view. The truth would further be that these sensations and\nopinions stand to one another in certain definite relations of\ndiversity, succession, duration, _et c\u00e6tera_, whether any of them\nhappens to assert these relations or not. In the same way, I cannot find\nthat our contemporary pragmatists, in giving their account of what truth\nis (in a different and quite abstract sense of the word truth), have\never doubted, or so much as noticed, what in all their thinking they\nevidently assume to be the actual and concrete truth: namely, that there\nare many states of mind, many labouring opinions more or less useful and\ngood, which actually lead to others, more or less expected and\nsatisfactory. Surely every pragmatist, like every thinking man, always\nassumes the reality of an actual truth, comprehensive and largely\nundiscovered, of which he claims to be reporting a portion. What he\nrather confusingly calls truth, and wishes to reduce to a pragmatic\nfunction, is not this underlying truth, the sum of all true\npropositions, but merely the abstract quality which all true\npropositions must have in common, to be called true. By truth he means\nonly correctness. The possibility of correctness in an idea is a great\npuzzle to him, on account of his idealism, which identifies ideas with\ntheir objects; and he asks himself how an idea can ever come to be\ncorrect or incorrect, as if it referred to something beyond itself.\n\nThe fact is, of course, that an idea can be correct or incorrect only if\nby the word idea we mean not a datum but an opinion; and the abstract\nrelation of correctness, by virtue of which any opinion is true, is\neasily stated. An opinion is true if what it is talking about is\nconstituted as the opinion asserts it to be constituted. To test this\ncorrectness may be difficult or even impossible in particular cases; in\nthe end we may be reduced to believing on instinct that our fundamental\nopinions are true; for instance, that we are living through time, and\nthat the past and future are not, as a consistent idealism would assert,\nmere notions in the present. But what renders such instinctive opinions\ntrue, if they are true, is the fact affirmed being as it is affirmed to\nbe. It is not a question of similarity or derivation between a passive\ndatum and a hidden object; it is a question of identity between the fact\nasserted and the fact existing. If an opinion could not freely leap to\nits object, no matter how distant or hypothetical, and assert something\nof that chosen object, an opinion could not be so much as wrong; for it\nwould not be an opinion about anything.\n\nPsychologists, however, are not concerned with what an opinion asserts\nlogically, but only with what it is existentially; they are asking what\nexistential relations surround an idea when it is called true which are\nabsent when it is called false. Their problem is frankly insoluble; for\nit requires us to discover what makes up the indicative force of an idea\nwhich by hypothesis is a passive datum; as if a grammarian should\ninquire how a noun in the accusative case could be a verb in the\nindicative mood.\n\nIt was not idly that William James dedicated his book on Pragmatism to\nthe memory of John Stuart Mill. The principle of psychological\nempiricism is to look for the elements employed in thinking, and to\nconclude that thought is nothing but those elements arranged in a\ncertain order. It is true that since the days of Mill analysis has\nsomewhat extended the inventory of these elements, so as to include\namong simples, besides the data of the five senses, such things as\nfeelings of relation, sensations of movement, vague ill\u2010focused images,\nand perhaps even telepathic and instinctive intuitions. But some series\nor group of these immediate data, kept in their crude immediacy, must\naccording to this method furnish the whole answer to our question: the\nsupposed power of an idea to have an object beyond itself, or to be true\nof any other fact, must be merely a name for a certain position which\nthe given element occupies in relation to other elements in the routine\nof experience. Knowledge and truth must be forms of contiguity and\nsuccession.\n\nWe must not be surprised, under these circumstances, if the problem is\nshifted, and another somewhat akin to it takes its place, with which the\nchosen method can really cope. This subterfuge is not voluntary; it is\nan instinctive effect of fidelity to a point of view which has its\nspecial validity, though naturally not applicable in every sphere. We do\nnot observe that politicians abandon their party when it happens to have\nbrought trouble upon the country; their destiny as politicians is\nprecisely to make effective all the consequences, good or evil, which\ntheir party policy may involve. So it would be too much to expect a\nschool of philosophers to abandon their method because there are\nproblems it cannot solve; their business is rather to apply their method\nto everything to which it can possibly be applied; and when they have\nreached that limit, the very most we can ask, if they are superhumanly\nmodest and wise, is that they should make way gracefully for another\nschool of philosophers.\n\nNow there is a problem, not impossible to confuse with the problem of\ncorrectness in ideas, with which psychological criticism can really\ndeal; it is the question of the relation between a sign and the thing\nsignified. Of this relation a genuinely empirical account can be given;\nboth terms are objects of experience, present or eventual, and the\npassage between them is made in time by an experienced transition. Nor\nneed the signs which lead to a particular object be always the same, or\nof one sort; an object may be designated and announced unequivocally by\na verbal description, without any direct image, or by images now of one\nsense and now of another, or by some external relation, such as its\nplace, or by its proper name, if it possesses one; and these\ndesignations all convey knowledge of it and may be true signs, if in\nyielding to their suggestion we are brought eventually to the object\nmeant.\n\nHere, if I am not mistaken, is the genuine application of what the\npragmatists call their theory of truth. It concerns merely what links a\nsign to the thing signified, and renders it a practical substitute for\nthe same. But this empirical analysis of signification has been\nentangled with more or less hazardous views about truth, such as that an\nidea is true so long as it is believed to be true, or that it is true if\nit is good and useful, or that it is not true until it is verified. This\nlast suggestion shows what strange reversals a wayward personal\nphilosophy may be subject to. Empiricism used to mean reliance on the\npast; now apparently all empirical truth regards only the future, since\ntruth is said to arise by the verification of some presumption.\nPresumptions about the past can evidently never be verified; at best\nthey may be corroborated by fresh presumptions about the past, equally\ndependent for their truth on a verification which in the nature of the\ncase is impossible. At this point the truly courageous empiricist will\nperhaps say that the real past only means the ideas of the past which we\nshall form in the future. Consistency is a jewel; and, as in the case of\nother jewels, we may marvel at the price that some people will pay for\nit. In any case, we are led to this curious result: that radical\nempiricism ought to deny that any idea of the past can be true at all.\n\nSuch dissolving views, really somewhat like those attributed to\nProtagoras, do not rest on sober psychological analysis: they express\nrather a certain impatience and a certain despairing democracy in the\nfield of opinion. Great are the joys of haste and of radicalism, and\nyoung philosophers must not be deprived of them. We may the more justly\npass over these small scandals of pragmatism in that William James and\nhis American disciples have hardly cared to defend them, but have turned\ndecidedly in the direction of a universal objectivism.\n\nThe spirit of these radical views is not at all negative: it is hopeful,\nrevolutionary, inspired entirely by love of certitude and clearness. It\nis very sympathetic to science, in so far as science is a personal\npursuit and a personal experience, rather than a body of doctrine with\nmoral implications. It is very close to nature, as the lover of nature\nunderstands the word. If it denies the existence of the cognitive energy\nand the colouring medium of mind, it does so only in a formal sense; all\nthe colours with which that medium endows the world remain painted upon\nit; and all the perspectives and ideal objects of thought are woven into\nthe texture of things. Not, I think, intelligibly or in a coherent\nfashion; for this new realism is still immature, and if it is ever\nrendered adequate it will doubtless seem much less original. My point is\nthat in its denial of mind it has no bias against things intellectual,\nand if it refuses to admit ideas or even sensations, it does not blink\nthe sensible or ideal objects which ideas and sensations reveal, but\nrather tries to find a new and (as it perhaps thinks) a more honourable\nplace for them; they are not regarded as spiritual radiations from the\nnatural world, but as parts of its substance.\n\nThis may have the ring of materialism; but the temper and faith of these\nschools are not materialistic. Systematic materialism is one of the\nphilosophies of old age. It is a conviction that may overtake a few\nshrewd and speculative cynics, who have long observed their own\nirrationality and that of the world, and have divined its cause; by such\nmen materialism may be embraced without reserve, in all its rigour and\npungency. But the materialism of youth is part of a simple faith in\nsense and in science; it is not exclusive; it admits the co\u2010operation of\nany other forces\u2014divine, magical, formal, or vital\u2014if appearances\nanywhere seem to manifest them. The more we interpret the ambiguities or\ncrudities of American writers in this sense, the less we shall\nmisunderstand them.\n\nIt seems, then, that the atmosphere of the new world has already\naffected philosophy in two ways. In the first place, it has accelerated\nand rendered fearless the disintegration of conventional categories; a\ndisintegration on which modern philosophy has always been at work, and\nwhich has precipitated its successive phases. In the second place, the\nyounger cosmopolitan America has favoured the impartial assemblage and\nmutual confrontation of all sorts of ideas. It has produced, in\nintellectual matters, a sort of happy watchfulness and insecurity. Never\nwas the human mind master of so many facts and sure of so few\nprinciples. Will this suspense and fluidity of thought crystallise into\nsome great new system? Positive gifts of imagination and moral heroism\nare requisite to make a great philosopher, gifts which must come from\nthe gods and not from circumstances. But if the genius should arise,\nthis vast collection of suggestions and this radical analysis of\npresumptions which he will find in America may keep him from going\nastray. Nietzsche said that the earth has been a mad\u2010house long enough.\nWithout contradicting him we might perhaps soften the expression, and\nsay that philosophy has been long enough an asylum for enthusiasts. It\nis time for it to become less solemn and more serious. We may be\nfrightened at first to learn on what thin ice we have been skating, in\nspeculation as in government; but we shall not be in a worse plight for\nknowing it, only wiser to\u2010day and perhaps safer to\u2010morrow.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\u2014MATERIALISM AND IDEALISM IN AMERICAN LIFE\n\n\nThe language and traditions common to England and America are like other\nfamily bonds: they draw kindred together at the greater crises in life,\nbut they also occasion at times a little friction and fault\u2010finding. The\ngroundwork of the two societies is so similar, that each nation, feeling\nalmost at home with the other, and almost able to understand its speech,\nmay instinctively resent what hinders it from feeling at home\naltogether. Differences will tend to seem anomalies that have slipped in\nby mistake and through somebody\u2019s fault. Each will judge the other by\nhis own standards, not feeling, as in the presence of complete\nforeigners, that he must make an effort of imagination and put himself\nin another man\u2019s shoes.\n\nIn matters of morals, manners, and art, the danger of comparisons is not\nmerely that they may prove invidious, by ranging qualities in an order\nof merit which might wound somebody\u2019s vanity; the danger is rather that\ncomparisons may distort comprehension, because in truth good qualities\nare all different in kind, and free lives are different in spirit.\nComparison is the expedient of those who cannot reach the heart of the\nthings compared; and no philosophy is more external and egotistical than\nthat which places the essence of a thing in its relation to something\nelse. In reality, at the centre of every natural being there is\nsomething individual and incommensurable, a seed with its native\nimpulses and aspirations, shaping themselves as best they can in their\ngiven environment. Variation is a consequence of freedom, and the slight\nbut radical diversity of souls in turn makes freedom requisite. Instead\nof instituting in his mind any comparisons between the United States and\nother nations, I would accordingly urge the reader to forget himself\nand, in so far as such a thing may be possible for him or for me, to\ntransport himself ideally with me into the outer circumstances of\nAmerican life, the better to feel its inner temper, and to see how\ninevitably the American shapes his feelings and judgements, honestly\nreporting all things as they appear from his new and unobstructed\nstation.\n\nI speak of the American in the singular, as if there were not millions\nof them, north and south, east and west, of both sexes, of all ages, and\nof various races, professions, and religions. Of course the one American\nI speak of is mythical; but to speak in parables is inevitable in such a\nsubject, and it is perhaps as well to do so frankly. There is a sort of\npoetic ineptitude in all human discourse when it tries to deal with\nnatural and existing things. Practical men may not notice it, but in\nfact human discourse is intrinsically addressed not to natural existing\nthings but to ideal essences, poetic or logical terms which thought may\ndefine and play with. When fortune or necessity diverts our attention\nfrom this congenial ideal sport to crude facts and pressing issues, we\nturn our frail poetic ideas into symbols for those terrible irruptive\nthings. In that paper money of our own stamping, the legal tender of the\nmind, we are obliged to reckon all the movements and values of the\nworld. The universal American I speak of is one of these symbols; and I\nshould be still speaking in symbols and creating moral units and a false\nsimplicity, if I spoke of classes pedantically subdivided, or\nindividuals ideally integrated and defined. As it happens, the symbolic\nAmerican can be made largely adequate to the facts; because, if there\nare immense differences between individual Americans\u2014for some Americans\nare black\u2014yet there is a great uniformity in their environment, customs,\ntemper, and thoughts. They have all been uprooted from their several\nsoils and ancestries and plunged together into one vortex, whirling\nirresistibly in a space otherwise quite empty. To be an American is of\nitself almost a moral condition, an education, and a career. Hence a\nsingle ideal figment can cover a large part of what each American is in\nhis character, and almost the whole of what most Americans are in their\nsocial outlook and political judgements.\n\nThe discovery of the new world exercised a sort of selection among the\ninhabitants of Europe. All the colonists, except the negroes, were\nvoluntary exiles. The fortunate, the deeply rooted, and the lazy\nremained at home; the wilder instincts or dissatisfaction of others\ntempted them beyond the horizon. The American is accordingly the most\nadventurous, or the descendant of the most adventurous, of Europeans. It\nis in his blood to be socially a radical, though perhaps not\nintellectually. What has existed in the past, especially in the remote\npast, seems to him not only not authoritative, but irrelevant, inferior,\nand outworn. He finds it rather a sorry waste of time to think about the\npast at all. But his enthusiasm for the future is profound; he can\nconceive of no more decisive way of recommending an opinion or a\npractice than to say that it is what everybody is coming to adopt. This\nexpectation of what he approves, or approval of what he expects, makes\nup his optimism. It is the necessary faith of the pioneer.\n\nSuch a temperament is, of course, not maintained in the nation merely by\ninheritance. Inheritance notoriously tends to restore the average of a\nrace, and plays incidentally many a trick of atavism. What maintains\nthis temperament and makes it national is social contagion or\npressure\u2014something immensely strong in democracies. The luckless\nAmerican who is born a conservative, or who is drawn to poetic subtlety,\npious retreats, or gay passions, nevertheless has the categorical\nexcellence of work, growth, enterprise, reform, and prosperity dinned\ninto his ears: every door is open in this direction and shut in the\nother; so that he either folds up his heart and withers in a corner\u2014in\nremote places you sometimes find such a solitary gaunt idealist\u2014or else\nhe flies to Oxford or Florence or Montmartre to save his soul\u2014or perhaps\nnot to save it.\n\nThe optimism of the pioneer is not limited to his view of himself and\nhis own future: it starts from that; but feeling assured, safe, and\ncheery within, he looks with smiling and most kindly eyes on everything\nand everybody about him. Individualism, roughness, and self\u2010trust are\nsupposed to go with selfishness and a cold heart; but I suspect that is\na prejudice. It is rather dependence, insecurity, and mutual jostling\nthat poison our placid gregarious brotherhood; and fanciful passionate\ndemands upon people\u2019s affections, when they are disappointed, as they\nsoon must be, breed ill\u2010will and a final meanness. The milk of human\nkindness is less apt to turn sour if the vessel that holds it stands\nsteady, cool, and separate, and is not too often uncorked. In his\naffections the American is seldom passionate, often deep, and always\nkindly. If it were given me to look into the depths of a man\u2019s heart,\nand I did not find good\u2010will at the bottom, I should say without any\nhesitation, You are not an American. But as the American is an\nindividualist his good\u2010will is not officious. His instinct is to think\nwell of everybody, and to wish everybody well, but in a spirit of rough\ncomradeship, expecting every man to stand on his own legs and to be\nhelpful in his turn. When he has given his neighbour a chance he thinks\nhe has done enough for him; but he feels it is an absolute duty to do\nthat. It will take some hammering to drive a coddling socialism into\nAmerica.\n\nAs self\u2010trust may pass into self\u2010sufficiency, so optimism, kindness, and\ngood\u2010will may grow into a habit of doting on everything. To the good\nAmerican many subjects are sacred: sex is sacred, women are sacred,\nchildren are sacred, business is sacred, America is sacred, Masonic\nlodges and college clubs are sacred. This feeling grows out of the good\nopinion he wishes to have of these things, and serves to maintain it. If\nhe did not regard all these things as sacred he might come to doubt\nsometimes if they were wholly good. Of this kind, too, is the idealism\nof single ladies in reduced circumstances who can see the soul of beauty\nin ugly things, and are perfectly happy because their old dog has such\npathetic eyes, their minister is so eloquent, their garden with its\nthree sunflowers is so pleasant, their dead friends were so devoted, and\ntheir distant relations are so rich.\n\nConsider now the great emptiness of America: not merely the primitive\nphysical emptiness, surviving in some regions, and the continental\nspacing of the chief natural features, but also the moral emptiness of a\nsettlement where men and even houses are easily moved about, and no one,\nalmost, lives where he was born or believes what he has been taught. Not\nthat the American has jettisoned these impedimenta in anger; they have\nsimply slipped from him as he moves. Great empty spaces bring a sort of\nfreedom to both soul and body. You may pitch your tent where you will;\nor if ever you decide to build anything, it can be in a style of your\nown devising. You have room, fresh materials, few models, and no\ncritics. You trust your own experience, not only because you must, but\nbecause you find you may do so safely and prosperously; the forces that\ndetermine fortune are not yet too complicated for one man to explore.\nYour detachable condition makes you lavish with money and cheerfully\nexperimental; you lose little if you lose all, since you remain\ncompletely yourself. At the same time your absolute initiative gives you\npractice in coping with novel situations, and in being original; it\nteaches you shrewd management. Your life and mind will become dry and\ndirect, with few decorative flourishes. In your works everything will be\nstark and pragmatic; you will not understand why anybody should make\nthose little sacrifices to instinct or custom which we call grace. The\nfine arts will seem to you academic luxuries, fit to amuse the ladies,\nlike Greek and Sanskrit; for while you will perfectly appreciate\ngenerosity in men\u2019s purposes, you will not admit that the execution of\nthese purposes can be anything but business. Unfortunately the essence\nof the fine arts is that the execution should be generous too, and\ndelightful in itself; therefore the fine arts will suffer, not so much\nin their express professional pursuit\u2014for then they become practical\ntasks and a kind of business\u2014as in that diffused charm which qualifies\nall human action when men are artists by nature. Elaboration, which is\nsomething to accomplish, will be preferred to simplicity, which is\nsomething to rest in; manners will suffer somewhat; speech will suffer\nhorribly. For the American the urgency of his novel attack upon matter,\nhis zeal in gathering its fruits, precludes meanderings in primrose\npaths; devices must be short cuts, and symbols must be mere symbols. If\nhis wife wants luxuries, of course she may have them; and if he has\nvices, that can be provided for too; but they must all be set down under\nthose headings in his ledgers.\n\nAt the same time, the American is imaginative; for where life is\nintense, imagination is intense also. Were he not imaginative he would\nnot live so much in the future. But his imagination is practical, and\nthe future it forecasts is immediate; it works with the clearest and\nleast ambiguous terms known to his experience, in terms of number,\nmeasure, contrivance, economy, and speed. He is an idealist working on\nmatter. Understanding as he does the material potentialities of things,\nhe is successful in invention, conservative in reform, and quick in\nemergencies. All his life he jumps into the train after it has started\nand jumps out before it has stopped; and he never once gets left behind,\nor breaks a leg. There is an enthusiasm in his sympathetic handling of\nmaterial forces which goes far to cancel the illiberal character which\nit might otherwise assume. The good workman hardly distinguishes his\nartistic intention from the potency in himself and in things which is\nabout to realise that intention. Accordingly his ideals fall into the\nform of premonitions and prophecies; and his studious prophecies often\ncome true. So do the happy workmanlike ideals of the American. When a\npoor boy, perhaps, he dreams of an education, and presently he gets an\neducation, or at least a degree; he dreams of growing rich, and he grows\nrich\u2014only more slowly and modestly, perhaps, than he expected; he dreams\nof marrying his Rebecca and, even if he marries a Leah instead, he\nultimately finds in Leah his Rebecca after all. He dreams of helping to\ncarry on and to accelerate the movement of a vast, seething, progressive\nsociety, and he actually does so. Ideals clinging so close to nature are\nalmost sure of fulfilment; the American beams with a certain\nself\u2010confidence and sense of mastery; he feels that God and nature are\nworking with him.\n\nIdealism in the American accordingly goes hand in hand with present\ncontentment and with foresight of what the future very likely will\nactually bring. He is not a revolutionist; he believes he is already on\nthe right track and moving towards an excellent destiny. In\nrevolutionists, on the contrary, idealism is founded on dissatisfaction\nand expresses it. What exists seems to them an absurd jumble of\nirrational accidents and bad habits, and they want the future to be\nbased on reason and to be the pellucid embodiment of all their maxims.\nAll their zeal is for something radically different from the actual and\n(if they only knew it) from the possible; it is ideally simple, and they\nlove it and believe in it because their nature craves it. They think\nlife would be set free by the destruction of all its organs. They are\ntherefore extreme idealists in the region of hope, but not at all, as\npoets and artists are, in the region of perception and memory. In the\natmosphere of civilised life they miss all the refraction and all the\nfragrance; so that in their conception of actual things they are apt to\nbe crude realists; and their ignorance and inexperience of the moral\nworld, unless it comes of ill\u2010luck, indicates their incapacity for\neducation. Now incapacity for education, when united with great inner\nvitality, is one root of idealism. It is what condemns us all, in the\nregion of sense, to substitute perpetually what we are capable of\nimagining for what things may be in themselves; it is what condemns us,\nwherever it extends, to think _a priori_; it is what keeps us bravely\nand incorrigibly pursuing what we call the good\u2014that is, what would\nfulfil the demands of our nature\u2014however little provision the fates may\nhave made for it. But the want of insight on the part of revolutionists\ntouching the past and the present infects in an important particular\ntheir idealism about the future; it renders their dreams of the future\nunrealisable. For in human beings\u2014this may not be true of other animals,\nmore perfectly preformed\u2014experience is necessary to pertinent and\nconcrete thinking; even our primitive instincts are blind until they\nstumble upon some occasion that solicits them; and they can be much\ntransformed or deranged by their first partial satisfactions. Therefore\na man who does not idealise his experience, but idealises _a priori_, is\nincapable of true prophecy; when he dreams he raves, and the more he\ncriticises the less he helps. American idealism, on the contrary, is\nnothing if not helpful, nothing if not pertinent to practicable\ntransformations; and when the American frets, it is because whatever is\nuseless and impertinent, be it idealism or inertia, irritates him; for\nit frustrates the good results which he sees might so easily have been\nobtained.\n\nThe American is wonderfully alive; and his vitality, not having often\nfound a suitable outlet, makes him appear agitated on the surface; he is\nalways letting off an unnecessarily loud blast of incidental steam. Yet\nhis vitality is not superficial; it is inwardly prompted, and as\nsensitive and quick as a magnetic needle. He is inquisitive, and ready\nwith an answer to any question that he may put to himself of his own\naccord; but if you try to pour instruction into him, on matters that do\nnot touch his own spontaneous life, he shows the most extraordinary\npowers of resistance and oblivescence; so that he often is remarkably\nexpert in some directions and surprisingly obtuse in others. He seems to\nbear lightly the sorrowful burden of human knowledge. In a word, he is\nyoung.\n\nWhat sense is there in this feeling, which we all have, that the\nAmerican is young? His country is blessed with as many elderly people as\nany other, and his descent from Adam, or from the Darwinian rival of\nAdam, cannot be shorter than that of his European cousins. Nor are his\nideas always very fresh. Trite and rigid bits of morality and religion,\nwith much seemly and antique political lore, remain axiomatic in him, as\nin the mind of a child; he may carry all this about with an\nunquestioning familiarity which does not comport understanding. To keep\ntraditional sentiments in this way insulated and uncriticised is itself\na sign of youth. A good young man is naturally conservative and loyal on\nall those subjects which his experience has not brought to a test;\nadvanced opinions on politics, marriage, or literature are comparatively\nrare in America; they are left for the ladies to discuss, and usually to\ncondemn, while the men get on with their work. In spite of what is\nold\u2010fashioned in his more general ideas, the American is unmistakably\nyoung; and this, I should say, for two reasons: one, that he is chiefly\noccupied with his immediate environment, and the other, that his\nreactions upon it are inwardly prompted, spontaneous, and full of\nvivacity and self\u2010trust. His views are not yet lengthened; his will is\nnot yet broken or transformed. The present moment, however, in this, as\nin other things, may mark a great change in him; he is perhaps now\nreaching his majority, and all I say may hardly apply to\u2010day, and may\nnot apply at all to\u2010morrow. I speak of him as I have known him; and\nwhatever moral strength may accrue to him later, I am not sorry to have\nknown him in his youth. The charm of youth, even when it is a little\nboisterous, lies in nearness to the impulses of nature, in a quicker and\nmore obvious obedience to that pure, seminal principle which, having\nformed the body and its organs, always directs their movements, unless\nit is forced by vice or necessity to make them crooked, or to suspend\nthem. Even under the inevitable crust of age the soul remains young,\nand, wherever it is able to break through, sprouts into something green\nand tender. We are all as young at heart as the most youthful American,\nbut the seed in his case has fallen upon virgin soil, where it may\nspring up more bravely and with less respect for the giants of the wood.\nPeoples seem older when their perennial natural youth is encumbered with\nmore possessions and prepossessions, and they are mindful of the many\nthings they have lost or missed. The American is not mindful of them.\n\nIn America there is a tacit optimistic assumption about existence, to\nthe effect that the more existence the better. The soulless critic might\nurge that quantity is only a physical category, implying no excellence,\nbut at best an abundance of opportunities both for good and for evil.\nYet the young soul, being curious and hungry, views existence _a priori_\nunder the form of the good; its instinct to live implies a faith that\nmost things it can become or see or do will be worth while. Respect for\nquantity is accordingly something more than the childish joy and wonder\nat bigness; it is the fisherman\u2019s joy in a big haul, the good uses of\nwhich he can take for granted. Such optimism is amiable. Nature cannot\nafford that we should begin by being too calculating or wise, and she\nencourages us by the pleasure she attaches to our functions in advance\nof their fruits, and often in excess of them; as the angler enjoys\ncatching his fish more than eating it, and often, waiting patiently for\nthe fish to bite, misses his own supper. The pioneer must devote himself\nto preparations; he must work for the future, and it is healthy and\ndutiful of him to love his work for its own sake. At the same time,\nunless reference to an ultimate purpose is at least virtual in all his\nactivities, he runs the danger of becoming a living automaton, vain and\nignominious in its mechanical constancy. Idealism about work can hide an\nintense materialism about life. Man, if he is a rational being, cannot\nlive by bread alone nor be a labourer merely; he must eat and work in\nview of an ideal harmony which overarches all his days, and which is\nrealised in the way they hang together, or in some ideal issue which\nthey have in common. Otherwise, though his technical philosophy may call\nitself idealism, he is a materialist in morals; he esteems things, and\nesteems himself, for mechanical uses and energies. Even sensualists,\nartists, and pleasure\u2010lovers are wiser than that, for though their\nidealism may be desultory or corrupt, they attain something ideal, and\nprize things only for their living effects, moral though perhaps\nfugitive. Sensation, when we do not take it as a signal for action, but\narrest and peruse what it positively brings before us, reveals something\nideal\u2014a colour, shape, or sound; and to dwell on these presences, with\nno thought of their material significance, is an \u00e6sthetic or dreamful\nidealism. To pass from this idealism to the knowledge of matter is a\ngreat intellectual advance, and goes with dominion over the world; for\nin the practical arts the mind is adjusted to a larger object, with more\ndepth and potentiality in it; which is what makes people feel that the\nmaterial world is real, as they call it, and that the ideal world is\nnot. Certainly the material world is real; for the philosophers who deny\nthe existence of matter are like the critics who deny the existence of\nHomer. If there was never any Homer, there must have been a lot of other\npoets no less Homeric than he; and if matter does not exist, a\ncombination of other things exists which is just as material. But the\nintense reality of the material world would not prevent it from being a\ndreary waste in our eyes, or even an abyss of horror, if it brought\nforth no spiritual fruits. In fact, it does bring forth spiritual\nfruits, for otherwise we should not be here to find fault with it, and\nto set up our ideals over against it. Nature is material, but not\nmaterialistic; it issues in life, and breeds all sorts of warm passions\nand idle beauties. And just as sympathy with the mechanical travail and\nturmoil of nature, apart from its spiritual fruits, is moral\nmaterialism, so the continual perception and love of these fruits is\nmoral idealism\u2014happiness in the presence of immaterial objects and\nharmonies, such as we envisage in affection, speculation, religion, and\nall the forms of the beautiful.\n\nThe circumstances of his life hitherto have necessarily driven the\nAmerican into moral materialism; for in his dealings with material\nthings he can hardly stop to enjoy their sensible aspects, which are\nideal, nor proceed at once to their ultimate uses, which are ideal too.\nHe is practical as against the poet, and worldly as against the clear\nphilosopher or the saint. The most striking expression of this\nmaterialism is usually supposed to be his love of the almighty dollar;\nbut that is a foreign and unintelligent view. The American talks about\nmoney, because that is the symbol and measure he has at hand for\nsuccess, intelligence, and power; but as to money itself he makes,\nloses, spends, and gives it away with a very light heart. To my mind the\nmost striking expression of his materialism is his singular\npreoccupation with quantity. If, for instance, you visit Niagara Falls,\nyou may expect to hear how many cubic feet or metric tons of water are\nprecipitated per second over the cataract; how many cities and towns\n(with the number of their inhabitants) derive light and motive power\nfrom it; and the annual value of the further industries that might very\nwell be carried on by the same means, without visibly depleting the\nworld\u2019s greatest wonder or injuring the tourist trade. That is what I\nconfidently expected to hear on arriving at the adjoining town of\nBuffalo; but I was deceived. The first thing I heard instead was that\nthere are more miles of asphalt pavement in Buffalo than in any city in\nthe world. Nor is this insistence on quantity confined to men of\nbusiness. The President of Harvard College, seeing me once by chance\nsoon after the beginning of a term, inquired how my classes were getting\non; and when I replied that I thought they were getting on well, that my\nmen seemed to be keen and intelligent, he stopped me as if I was about\nto waste his time. \u201cI meant,\u201d said he, \u201c_what is the number_ of students\nin your classes.\u201d\n\nHere I think we may perceive that this love of quantity often has a\nsilent partner, which is diffidence as to quality. The democratic\nconscience recoils before anything that savours of privilege; and lest\nit should concede an unmerited privilege to any pursuit or person, it\nreduces all things as far as possible to the common denominator of\nquantity. Numbers cannot lie: but if it came to comparing the ideal\nbeauties of philosophy with those of Anglo\u2010Saxon, who should decide? All\nstudies are good\u2014why else have universities?\u2014but those must be most\nencouraged which attract the greatest number of students. Hence the\nPresident\u2019s question. Democratic faith, in its diffidence about quality,\nthrows the reins of education upon the pupil\u2019s neck, as Don Quixote\nthrew the reins on the neck of Rocinante, and bids his divine instinct\nchoose its own way.\n\nThe American has never yet had to face the trials of Job. Great crises,\nlike the Civil War, he has known how to surmount victoriously; and now\nthat he has surmounted a second great crisis victoriously, it is\npossible that he may relapse, as he did in the other case, into an\napparently complete absorption in material enterprise and prosperity.\nBut if serious and irremediable tribulation ever overtook him, what\nwould his attitude be? It is then that we should be able to discover\nwhether materialism or idealism lies at the base of his character.\nMeantime his working mind is not without its holiday. He spreads humour\npretty thick and even over the surface of conversation, and humour is\none form of moral emancipation. He loves landscape, he loves mankind,\nand he loves knowledge; and in music at least he finds an art which he\nunfeignedly enjoys. In music and landscape, in humour and kindness, he\ntouches the ideal more truly, perhaps, than in his ponderous academic\nidealisms and busy religions; for it is astonishing how much even\nreligion in America (can it possibly be so in England?) is a matter of\nmeetings, building\u2010funds, schools, charities, clubs, and picnics. To be\npoor in order to be simple, to produce less in order that the product\nmay be more choice and beautiful, and may leave us less burdened with\nunnecessary duties and useless possessions\u2014that is an ideal not\narticulate in the American mind; yet here and there I seem to have heard\na sigh after it, a groan at the perpetual incubus of business and shrill\nsociety. Significant witness to such aspirations is borne by those new\nforms of popular religion, not mere variations on tradition, which have\nsprung up from the soil\u2014revivalism, spiritualism, Christian Science, the\nNew Thought. Whether or no we can tap, through these or other channels,\nsome cosmic or inner energy not hitherto at the disposal of man (and\nthere is nothing incredible in that), we certainly may try to remove\nfriction and waste in the mere process of living; we may relax morbid\nstrains, loosen suppressed instincts, iron out the creases of the soul,\ndiscipline ourselves into simplicity, sweetness, and peace. These\nreligious movements are efforts toward such physiological economy and\nhygiene; and while they are thoroughly plebeian, with no great lights,\nand no idea of raising men from the most vulgar and humdrum worldly\nexistence, yet they see the possibility of physical and moral health on\nthat common plane, and pursue it. That is true morality. The dignities\nof various types of life or mind, like the gifts of various animals, are\nrelative. The snob adores one type only, and the creatures supposed by\nhim to illustrate it perfectly; or envies and hates them, which is just\nas snobbish. Veritable lovers of life, on the contrary, like Saint\nFrancis or like Dickens, know that in every tenement of clay, with no\nmatter what endowment or station, happiness and perfection are possible\nto the soul. There must be no brow\u2010beating, with shouts of work or\nprogress or revolution, any more than with threats of hell\u2010fire. What\ndoes it profit a man to free the whole world if his soul is not free?\nMoral freedom is not an artificial condition, because the ideal is the\nmother tongue of both the heart and the senses. All that is requisite is\nthat we should pause in living to enjoy life, and should lift up our\nhearts to things that are pure goods in themselves, so that once to have\nfound and loved them, whatever else may betide, may remain a happiness\nthat nothing can sully. This natural idealism does not imply that we are\nimmaterial, but only that we are animate and truly alive. When the\nsenses are sharp, as they are in the American, they are already half\nliberated, already a joy in themselves; and when the heart is warm, like\nhis, and eager to be just, its ideal destiny can hardly be doubtful. It\nwill not be always merely pumping and working; time and its own pulses\nwill lend it wings.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\u2014ENGLISH LIBERTY IN AMERICA\n\n\nThe straits of Dover, which one may sometimes see across, have sufficed\nso to isolate England that it has never moved quite in step with the\nrest of Europe in politics, morals, or art. No wonder that the Atlantic\nOcean, although it has favoured a mixed emigration and cheap\nintercourse, should have cut off America so effectually that all the\npeople there, even those of Latin origin, have become curiously\ndifferent from any kind of European. In vain are they reputed to have\nthe same religions or to speak the same languages as their cousins in\nthe old world; everything has changed its accent, spirit, and value.\nFlora and fauna have been intoxicated by that untouched soil and fresh\ntonic air, and by those vast spaces; in spite of their hereditary\ndifferences of species they have all acquired the same crude savour and\ndefiant aspect. In comparison with their European prototypes they seem\ntough, meagre, bold, and ugly. In the United States, apart from the fact\nthat most of the early colonists belonged to an exceptional type of\nEnglishman, the scale and speed of life have made everything strangely\nun\u2010English. There is cheeriness instead of doggedness, confidence\ninstead of circumspection; there is a desire to quizz and to dazzle\nrather than a fear of being mistaken or of being shocked; there is a\npervasive cordiality, exaggeration, and farcical humour; and in the\npresence of the Englishman, when by chance he turns up or is thought of,\nthere is an invincible impatience and irritation that his point of view\nshould be so fixed, his mind so literal, and the freight he carries so\nexcessive (when you are sailing in ballast yourself), and that he should\nseem to take so little notice of changes in the wind to which you are\nnervously sensitive.\n\nNevertheless there is one gift or habit, native to England, that has not\nonly been preserved in America unchanged, but has found there a more\nfavourable atmosphere in which to manifest its true nature\u2014I mean the\nspirit of free co\u2010operation. The root of it is free individuality, which\nis deeply seated in the English inner man; there is an indomitable\ninstinct or mind in him which he perpetually consults and reveres, slow\nand embarrassed as his expression of it may be. But this free\nindividuality in the Englishman is crossed and biased by a large residue\nof social servitude. The church and the aristocracy, entanglement in\ncustom and privilege, mistrust and bitterness about particular\ngrievances, warp the inner man and enlist him against his interests in\nalien causes; the straits of Dover were too narrow, the shadow of a\nhostile continent was too oppressive, the English sod was soaked with\ntoo many dews and cut by too many hedges, for each individual, being\nquite master of himself, to confront every other individual without fear\nor prejudice, and to unite with him in the free pursuit of whatever aims\nthey might find that they had in common. Yet this slow co\u2010operation of\nfree men, this liberty in democracy\u2014the only sort that America possesses\nor believes in\u2014is wholly English in its personal basis, its reserve, its\ntenacity, its empiricism, its public spirit, and its assurance of its\nown rightness; and it deserves to be called English always, to whatever\ncountries it may spread.\n\nThe omnipresence in America of this spirit of co\u2010operation,\nresponsibility, and growth is very remarkable. Far from being\nneutralised by American dash and bravura, or lost in the opposite\ninstincts of so many alien races, it seems to be adopted at once in the\nmost mixed circles and in the most novel predicaments. In America social\nservitude is reduced to a minimum; in fact we may almost say that it is\nreduced to subjecting children to their mothers and to a common public\neducation, agencies that are absolutely indispensable to produce the\nindividual and enable him to exercise his personal initiative\neffectually; for after all, whatever metaphysical egotism may say, one\ncannot vote to be created. But once created, weaned, and taught to read\nand write, the young American can easily shoulder his knapsack and\nchoose his own way in the world. He is as yet very little trammelled by\nwant of opportunity, and he has no roots to speak of in place, class, or\nreligion. Where individuality is so free, co\u2010operation, when it is\njustified, can be all the more quick and hearty. Everywhere co\u2010operation\nis taken for granted, as something that no one would be so mean or so\nshort\u2010sighted as to refuse. Together with the will to work and to\nprosper, it is of the essence of Americanism, and is accepted as such by\nall the unkempt polyglot peoples that turn to the new world with the\npathetic but manly purpose of beginning life on a new principle. Every\npolitical body, every public meeting, every club, or college, or\nathletic team, is full of it. Out it comes whenever there is an accident\nin the street or a division in a church, or a great unexpected emergency\nlike the late war. The general instinct is to run and help, to assume\ndirection, to pull through somehow by mutual adaptation, and by seizing\non the readiest practical measures and working compromises. Each man\njoins in and gives a helping hand, without a preconceived plan or a\nprior motive. Even the leader, when he is a natural leader and not a\nprofessional, has nothing up his sleeve to force on the rest, in their\nobvious good\u2010will and mental blankness. All meet in a genuine spirit of\nconsultation, eager to persuade but ready to be persuaded, with a cheery\nconfidence in their average ability, when a point comes up and is\nclearly put before them, to decide it for the time being, and to move\non. It is implicitly agreed, in every case, that disputed questions\nshall be put to a vote, and that the minority will loyally acquiesce in\nthe decision of the majority and build henceforth upon it, without a\nthought of ever retracting it.\n\nSuch a way of proceeding seems in America a matter of course, because it\nis bred in the bone, or imposed by that permeating social contagion\nwhich is so irresistible in a natural democracy. But if we consider\nhuman nature at large and the practice of most nations, we shall see\nthat it is a very rare, wonderful, and unstable convention. It implies a\nrather unimaginative optimistic assumption that at bottom all men\u2019s\ninterests are similar and compatible, and a rather heroic public\nspirit\u2014such that no special interest, in so far as it has to be\noverruled, shall rebel and try to maintain itself absolutely. In America\nhitherto these conditions happen to have been actually fulfilled in an\nunusual measure. Interests have been very similar\u2014to exploit business\nopportunities and organise public services useful to all; and these\nsimilar interests have been also compatible and harmonious. A neighbour,\neven a competitor, where the field is so large and so little pre\u2010empted,\nhas more often proved a resource than a danger. The rich have helped the\npublic more than they have fleeced it, and they have been emulated more\nthan hated or served by the enterprising poor. To abolish millionaires\nwould have been to dash one\u2019s own hopes. The most opposite systems of\nreligion and education could look smilingly upon one another\u2019s\nprosperity, because the country could afford these superficial luxuries,\nhaving a constitutional religion and education of its own, which\neverybody drank in unconsciously and which assured the moral cohesion of\nthe people. Impulses of reason and kindness, which are potential in all\nmen, under such circumstances can become effective; people can help one\nanother with no great sacrifice to themselves, and minorities can\ndismiss their special plans without sorrow, and cheerfully follow the\ncrowd down another road. It was because life in America was naturally\nmore co\u2010operative and more plastic than in England that the spirit of\nEnglish liberty, which demands co\u2010operation and plasticity, could appear\nthere more boldly and universally than it ever did at home.\n\nEnglish liberty is a method, not a goal. It is related to the value of\nhuman life very much as the police are related to public morals or\ncommerce to wealth; and it is no accident that the Anglo\u2010Saxon race\nexcels in commerce and in the commercial as distinguished from the\nartistic side of industry, and that having policed itself successfully\nit is beginning to police the world at large. It is all an eminence in\ntemper, good\u2010will, reliability, accommodation. Probably some other\nraces, such as the Jews and Arabs, make individually better merchants,\nmore shrewd, patient, and loving of their art. Englishmen and Americans\noften seem to miss or force opportunities, to play for quick returns, or\nto settle down into ponderous corporations; for successful men they are\nnot particularly observant, constant, or economical. But the superiority\nof the Oriental is confined to his private craft; he has not the spirit\nof partnership. In English civilisation the individual is neutralised;\nit does not matter so much even in high places if he is rather stupid or\nrather cheap; public spirit sustains him, and he becomes its instrument\nall the more readily, perhaps, for not being very distinguished or\nclear\u2010headed in himself. The community prospers; comfort and science,\ngood manners and generous feelings are diffused among the people,\nwithout the aid of that foresight and cunning direction which sometimes\ngive a temporary advantage to a rival system like the German. In the\nend, adaptation to the world at large, where so much is hidden and\nunintelligible, is only possible piecemeal, by groping with a genuine\nindetermination in one\u2019s aims. Its very looseness gives the English\nmethod its lien on the future. To dominate the world co\u2010operation is\nbetter than policy, and empiricism safer than inspiration. Anglo\u2010Saxon\nimperialism is unintended; military conquests are incidental to it and\noften not maintained: it subsists by a mechanical equilibrium of habits\nand interests, in which every colony, province, or protectorate has a\ndifferent status. It has a commercial and missionary quality, and is\nessentially an invitation to pull together\u2014an invitation which many\nnations may be incapable of accepting or even of understanding, or which\nthey may deeply scorn, because it involves a surrender of absolute\nliberty on their part; but whether accepted or rejected, it is an offer\nof co\u2010operation, a project for a limited partnership, not a complete\nplan of life to be imposed on anybody.\n\nIt is a wise instinct, in dealing with foreigners or with material\nthings (which are foreigners to the mind), to limit oneself in this way\nto establishing external relations, partial mutual adjustments, with a\ngreat residuum of independence and reserve; if you attempt more you will\nachieve less; your interpretations will become chimerical and your\nregimen odious. So deep\u2010seated is this prudent instinct in the English\nnature that it appears even at home; most of the concrete things which\nEnglish genius has produced are expedients. Its spiritual treasures are\nhardly possessions, except as character is a possession; they are rather\na standard of life, a promise, an insurance. English poetry and fiction\nform an exception; the very incoherence and artlessness which they share\nwith so much else that is English lend them an absolute value as an\nexpression. They are the mirror and prattle of the inner man\u2014a boyish\nspirit astray in the green earth it loves, rich in wonder, perplexity,\nvalour, and faith, given to opinionated little prejudices, but withal\nsensitive and candid, and often laden, as in _Hamlet_, with exquisite\nmusic, tender humour, and tragic self\u2010knowledge. But apart from the\nliterature that simply utters the inner man, no one considering the\nEnglish language, the English church, or English philosophy, or\nconsidering the common law and parliamentary government, would take them\nfor perfect realisations of art or truth or an ideal polity.\nInstitutions so jumbled and limping could never have been planned; they\ncan never be transferred to another setting, or adopted bodily; but\nspecial circumstances and contrary currents have given them birth, and\nthey are accepted and prized, where they are native, for keeping the\ndoor open to a great volume and variety of goods, at a moderate cost of\ndanger and absurdity.\n\nOf course no product of mind is _merely_ an expedient; all are\nconcomitantly expressions of temperament; there is something in their\nmanner of being practical which is poetical and catches the rhythm of\nthe heart. In this way anything foreign\u2014and almost all the elements of\ncivilisation in England and America are foreign\u2014when it is adopted and\nacclimatised, takes on a native accent, especially on English lips; like\nthe Latin words in the language, it becomes thoroughly English in\ntexture. The English Bible, again, with its archaic homeliness and\nmajesty, sets the mind brooding, not less than the old ballad most\nredolent of the native past and the native imagination; it fills the\nmemory with solemn and pungent phrases; and this incidental spirit of\npoetry in which it comes to be clothed is a self\u2010revelation perhaps more\npertinent and welcome to the people than the alien revelations it\nprofesses to transmit. English law and parliaments, too, would be very\nunjustly judged if judged as practical contrivances only; they satisfy\nat the same time the moral interest people have in uttering and\nenforcing their feelings. These institutions are ceremonious, almost\nsacramental; they are instinct with a dramatic spirit deeper and more\nvital than their utility. Englishmen and Americans love debate; they\nlove sitting round a table as if in consultation, even when the chairman\nhas pulled the wires and settled everything beforehand, and when each of\nthe participants listens only to his own remarks and votes according to\nhis party. They love committees and commissions; they love public\ndinners with after\u2010dinner speeches, those stammering compounds of\nfacetiousness, platitude, and business. How distressing such speeches\nusually are, and how helplessly prolonged, does not escape anybody; yet\nevery one demands them notwithstanding, because in pumping them up or\nsitting through them he feels he is leading the political life. A public\nman must show himself in public, even if not to advantage. The moral\nexpressiveness of such institutions also helps to redeem their clumsy\nprocedure; they would not be useful, nor work at all as they should, if\npeople did not smack their lips over them and feel a profound pleasure\nin carrying them out. Without the English spirit, without the faculty of\nmaking themselves believe in public what they never feel in private,\nwithout the habit of clubbing together and facing facts, and feeling\nduty in a cautious, consultative, experimental way, English liberties\nforfeit their practical value; as we see when they are extended to a\nvolatile histrionic people like the Irish, or when a jury in France,\ninstead of pronouncing simply on matters of fact and the credibility of\nwitnesses, rushes in the heat of its patriotism to carry out, by its\nverdict, some political policy.\n\nThe practice of English liberty presupposes two things: that all\nconcerned are fundamentally unanimous, and that each has a plastic\nnature, which he is willing to modify. If fundamental unanimity is\nlacking and all are not making in the same general direction, there can\nbe no honest co\u2010operation, no satisfying compromise. Every concession,\nunder such circumstances, would be a temporary one, to be retracted at\nthe first favourable moment; it would amount to a mutilation of one\u2019s\nessential nature, a partial surrender of life, liberty, and happiness,\ntolerable for a time, perhaps, as the lesser of two evils, but involving\na perpetual sullen opposition and hatred. To put things to a vote, and\nto accept unreservedly the decision of the majority, are points\nessential to the English system; but they would be absurd if fundamental\nagreement were not presupposed. Every decision that the majority could\nconceivably arrive at must leave it still possible for the minority to\nlive and prosper, even if not exactly in the way they wished. Were this\nnot the case, a decision by vote would be as alien a fatality to any\nminority as the decree of a foreign tyrant, and at every election the\nright of rebellion would come into play. In a hearty and sound democracy\nall questions at issue must be minor matters; fundamentals must have\nbeen silently agreed upon and taken for granted when the democracy\narose. To leave a decision to the majority is like leaving it to\nchance\u2014a fatal procedure unless one is willing to have it either way.\nYou must be able to risk losing the toss; and if you do you will\nacquiesce all the more readily in the result, because, unless the\nwinners cheated at the game, they had no more influence on it than\nyourself\u2014namely none, or very little. You acquiesce in democracy on the\nsame conditions and for the same reasons, and perhaps a little more\ncheerfully, because there is an infinitesimally better chance of winning\non the average; but even then the enormity of the risk involved would be\nintolerable if anything of vital importance was at stake. It is\ntherefore actually required that juries, whose decisions may really be\nof moment, should be unanimous; and parliaments and elections are never\nmore satisfactory than when a wave of national feeling runs through them\nand there is no longer any minority nor any need of voting.\n\nFree government works well in proportion as government is superfluous.\nThat most parliamentary measures should be trivial or technical, and\nreally devised and debated only in government offices, and that\ngovernment in America should so long have been carried on in the shade,\nby persons of no name or dignity, is no anomaly. On the contrary, like\nthe good fortune of those who never hear of the police, it is all a sign\nthat co\u2010operative liberty is working well and rendering overt government\nunnecessary. Sometimes kinship and opportunity carry a whole nation\nbefore the wind; but this happy unison belongs rather to the dawn of\nnational life, when similar tasks absorb all individual energies. If it\nis to be maintained after lines of moral cleavage appear, and is to be\ncompatible with variety and distinction of character, all further\ndevelopments must be democratically controlled and must remain, as it\nwere, in a state of fusion. Variety and distinction must not become\narbitrary and irresponsible. They must take directions that will not mar\nthe general harmony, and no interest must be carried so far as to lose\nsight of the rest. Science and art, in such a vital democracy, should\nremain popular, helpful, bracing; religion should be broadly national\nand in the spirit of the times. The variety and distinction allowed must\nbe only variety and distinction of service. If they ever became a real\ndistinction and variety of life, if they arrogated to themselves an\nabsolute liberty, they would shatter the unity of the democratic spirit\nand destroy its moral authority.\n\nThe levelling tendency of English liberty (inevitable if plastic natures\nare to co\u2010operate and to make permanent concessions to one another\u2019s\ninstincts) comes out more clearly in America than in England itself. In\nEngland there are still castles and rural retreats, there are still\nsocial islands within the Island, where special classes may nurse\nparticular allegiances. America is all one prairie, swept by a universal\ntornado. Although it has always thought itself in an eminent sense the\nland of freedom, even when it was covered with slaves, there is no\ncountry in which people live under more overpowering compulsions. The\nprohibitions, although important and growing, are not yet, perhaps, so\nmany or so blatant as in some other countries; but prohibitions are less\ngalling than compulsions. What can be forbidden specifically\u2014bigamy, for\ninstance, or heresy\u2014may be avoided by a prudent man without renouncing\nthe whole movement of life and mind which, if carried beyond a certain\npoint, would end in those trespasses against convention. He can indulge\nin hypothesis or gallantry without falling foul of the positive law,\nwhich indeed may even stimulate his interest and ingenuity by suggesting\nsome indirect means of satisfaction. On the other hand, what is exacted\ncuts deeper; it creates habits which overlay nature, and every faculty\nis atrophied that does not conform with them. If, for instance, I am\ncompelled to be in an office (and up to business, too) from early\nmorning to late afternoon, with long journeys in thundering and\nsweltering trains before and after and a flying shot at a quick lunch\nbetween, I am caught and held both in soul and body; and except for the\nfreedom to work and to rise by that work\u2014which may be very interesting\nin itself\u2014I am not suffered to exist morally at all. My evenings will be\ndrowsy, my Sundays tedious, and after a few days\u2019 holiday I shall be\nwishing to get back to business. Here is as narrow a path left open to\nfreedom as is left open in a monastic establishment, where bell and book\nkeep your attention fixed at all hours upon the hard work of\nsalvation\u2014an infinite vista, certainly, if your soul was not made to\nlook another way. Those, too, who may escape this crushing routine\u2014the\ninvalids, the ladies, the fops\u2014are none the less prevented by it from\ndoing anything else with success or with a good conscience; the bubbles\nalso must swim with the stream. Even what is best in American life is\ncompulsory\u2014the idealism, the zeal, the beautiful happy unison of its\ngreat moments. You must wave, you must cheer, you must push with the\nirresistible crowd; otherwise you will feel like a traitor, a soulless\noutcast, a deserted ship high and dry on the shore. In America there is\nbut one way of being saved, though it is not peculiar to any of the\nofficial religions, which themselves must silently conform to the\nnational orthodoxy, or else become impotent and merely ornamental. This\nnational faith and morality are vague in idea, but inexorable in spirit;\nthey are the gospel of work and the belief in progress. By them, in a\ncountry where all men are free, every man finds that what most matters\nhas been settled for him beforehand.\n\nNevertheless, American life _is_ free as a whole, because it is mobile,\nbecause every atom that swims in it has a momentum of its own which is\nfelt and respected throughout the mass, like the weight of an atom in\nthe solar system, even if the deflection it may cause is infinitesimal.\nIn temper America is docile and not at all tyrannical; it has not\npredetermined its career, and its merciless momentum is a passive\nresultant. Like some Mississippi or Niagara, it rolls its myriad drops\ngently onward, being but the suction and pressure which they exercise on\none another. Any tremulous thought or playful experiment anywhere may be\na first symptom of great changes, and may seem to precipitate the\ncataract in a new direction. Any snowflake in a boy\u2019s sky may become the\ncentre for his _boule de neige_, his prodigious fortune; but the monster\nwill melt as easily as it grew, and leaves nobody poorer for having\nexisted. In America there is duty everywhere, but everywhere also there\nis light. I do not mean superior understanding or even moderately wide\nknowledge, but openness to light, an evident joy in seeing things\nclearly and doing them briskly, which would amount to a veritable\ntriumph of art and reason if the affairs in which it came into play were\ncentral and important. The American may give an exorbitant value to\nsubsidiary things, but his error comes of haste in praising what he\npossesses, and trusting the first praises he hears. He can detect sharp\npractices, because he is capable of them, but vanity or wickedness in\nthe ultimate aims of a man, including himself, he cannot detect, because\nhe is ingenuous in that sphere. He thinks life splendid and blameless,\nwithout stopping to consider how far folly and malice may be inherent in\nit. He feels that he himself has nothing to dread, nothing to hide or\napologise for; and if he is arrogant in his ignorance, there is often a\ntwinkle in his eye when he is most boastful. Perhaps he suspects that he\nis making a fool of himself, and he challenges the world to prove it;\nand his innocence is quickly gone when he is once convinced that it\nexists. Accordingly the American orthodoxy, though imperious, is not\nunyielding. It has a keener sense for destiny than for policy. It is\nconfident of a happy and triumphant future, which it would be shameful\nin any man to refuse to work for and to share; but it cannot prefigure\nwhat that bright future is to be. While it works feverishly in outward\nmatters, inwardly it only watches and waits; and it feels tenderly\ntowards the unexpressed impulses in its bosom, like a mother towards her\nunborn young.\n\nThere is a mystical conviction, expressed in Anglo\u2010Saxon life and\nphilosophy, that our labours, even when they end in failure, contribute\nto some ulterior achievement in which it is well they should be\nsubmerged. This Anglo\u2010Saxon piety, in the form of trust and\nadaptability, reaches somewhat the same insight that more speculative\nreligions have reached through asceticism, the insight that we must\nrenounce our wills and deny ourselves. But to have a will remains\nessential to animals, and having a will we must kick against the pricks,\neven if philosophy thinks it foolish of us. The spirit in which parties\nand nations beyond the pale of English liberty confront one another is\nnot motherly nor brotherly nor Christian. Their valorousness and\nmorality consist in their indomitable egotism. The liberty they want is\nabsolute liberty, a desire which is quite primitive. It may be\nidentified with the love of life which animates all creation, or with\nthe pursuit of happiness which all men would be engaged in if they were\nrational. Indeed, it might even be identified with the first law of\nmotion, that all bodies, if left free, persevere in that state of rest,\nor of motion in a straight line, in which they happen to find\nthemselves. The enemies of this primitive freedom are all such external\nforces as make it deviate from the course it is in the habit of taking\nor is inclined to take; and when people begin to reflect upon their\ncondition, they protest against this alien tyranny, and contrast in\nfancy what they would do if they were free with what under duress they\nare actually doing. All human struggles are inspired by what, in this\nsense, is the love of freedom. Even craving for power and possessions\nmay be regarded as the love of a free life on a larger scale, for which\nmore instruments and resources are needed. The apologists of absolute\nwill are not slow, for instance, to tell us that Germany in her\nlaborious ambitions has been pursuing the highest form of freedom, which\ncan be attained only by organising all the resources of the world, and\nthe souls of all subsidiary nations, around one luminous centre of\ndirection and self\u2010consciousness, such as the Prussian government was\neminently fitted to furnish. Freedom to exercise absolute will\nmethodically seems to them much better than English liberty, because it\nknows what it wants, pursues it intelligently, and does not rely for\nsuccess on some measure of goodness in mankind at large. English liberty\nis so trustful! It moves by a series of checks, mutual concessions, and\nlimited satisfactions; it counts on chivalry, sportsmanship, brotherly\nlove, and on that rarest and least lucrative of virtues,\nfair\u2010mindedness: it is a broad\u2010based, stupid, blind adventure, groping\ntowards an unknown goal. Who but an Englishman would think of such a\nthing! A fanatic, a poet, a doctrinaire, a dilettante\u2014any one who has a\nfixed aim and clear passions\u2014will not relish English liberty. It will\nseem bitter irony to him to give the name of liberty to something so\nmuffled, exacting, and oppressive. In fact English liberty is a positive\ninfringement and surrender of the freedom most fought for and most\npraised in the past. It makes impossible the sort of liberty for which\nthe Spartans died at Thermopyl\u00e6, or the Christian martyrs in the arena,\nor the Protestant reformers at the stake; for these people all died\nbecause they would not co\u2010operate, because they were not plastic and\nwould never consent to lead the life dear or at least customary to other\nmen. They insisted on being utterly different and independent and\ninflexible in their chosen systems, and aspired either to destroy the\nsociety round them or at least to insulate themselves in the midst of\nit, and live a jealous, private, unstained life of their own within\ntheir city walls or mystical conclaves. Any one who passionately loves\nhis particular country or passionately believes in his particular\nreligion cannot be content with less liberty or more democracy than\nthat; he must be free to live absolutely according to his ideal, and no\nhostile votes, no alien interests, must call on him to deviate from it\nby one iota. Such was the claim to religious liberty which has played so\nlarge a part in the revolutions and divisions of the western world.\nEvery new heresy professed to be orthodoxy itself, purified and\nrestored; and woe to all backsliders from the reformed faith! Even the\npopes, without thinking to be ironical, have often raised a wail for\nliberty. Such too was the aspiration of those medi\u00e6val cities and barons\nwho fought for their liberties and rights. Such was the aspiration even\nof the American declaration of independence and the American\nconstitution: cast\u2010iron documents, if only the spirit of co\u2010operative\nEnglish liberty had not been there to expand, embosom, soften, or\ntransform them. So the French revolution and the Russian one of to\u2010day\nhave aimed at establishing society once for all on some eternally just\nprinciple, and at abolishing all traditions, interests, faiths, and even\nwords that did not belong to their system. Liberty, for all these\npensive or rabid apostles of liberty, meant liberty for themselves to be\njust so, and to remain just so for ever, together with the most vehement\ndefiance of anybody who might ask them, for the sake of harmony, to be a\nlittle different. They summoned every man to become free in exactly\ntheir own fashion, or have his head cut off.\n\nOf course, to many an individual, life even in any such free city or\nfree church, fiercely jealous of its political independence and moral\npurity, would prove to be a grievous servitude; and there has always\nbeen a sprinkling of rebels and martyrs and scornful philosophers\nprotesting and fuming against their ultra\u2010independent and\nnothing\u2010if\u2010not\u2010protesting sects. To co\u2010operate with anybody seems to\nthese _esprits forts_ contamination, so sensitive are they to any\ndeviation from the true north which their compass might suffer through\nthe neighbourhood of any human magnet. If it is a weakness to be subject\nto influence, it is an imprudence to expose oneself to it; and to be\nsubject to influence seems ignominious to any one whose inward monitor\nis perfectly articulate and determined. A certain vagueness of soul,\ntogether with a great gregariousness and tendency to be moulded by\nexample and by prevalent opinion, is requisite for feeling free under\nEnglish liberty. You must find the majority right enough to live with;\nyou must give up lost causes; you must be willing to put your favourite\nnotions to sleep in the family cradle of convention. Enthusiasts for\ndemocracy, peace, and a league of nations should not deceive themselves;\nthey are not everybody\u2019s friends; they are the enemies of what is\ndeepest and most primitive in everybody. They inspire undying hatred in\nevery untamable people and every absolute soul.\n\nIt is in the nature of wild animal life to be ferocious or patient, and\nin either case heroic and uncompromising. It is inevitable, in the\nbeginning, that each person or faction should come into the lists to\nserve some express interest, which in itself may be perfectly noble and\ngenerous. But these interests are posited alone and in all their\nultimate consequences. The parties meet, however diplomatic their\nprocedure, as buyers and sellers bargain in primitive markets. Each has\na fixed programme or, as he perhaps calls it, an ideal; and when he has\ngot as much as he can get to\u2010day, he will return to the charge\nto\u2010morrow, with absolutely unchanged purpose. All opposed parties he\nregards as sheer enemies to be beaten down, driven off, and ultimately\nconverted or destroyed. Meantime he practises political craft, of which\nthe climax is war; a craft not confined to priests, though they are good\nat it, but common to every missionary, agitator, and philosophical\npolitician who operates in view of some vested interest or inflexible\nplan, in the very un\u2010English spirit of intrigue, cajolery, eloquence,\nand dissimulation. His art is to worm his way forward, using people\u2019s\npassions to further his own ends, carrying them off their feet in a wave\nof enthusiasm, when that is feasible, and when it is not, recommending\nhis cause by insidious half\u2010measures, flattery of private interests,\nconfidence\u2010tricks, and amiable suggestions, until he has put his\nentangled victims in his pocket; or when he feels strong enough,\nbrow\u2010beating and intimidating them into silence. Such is the inevitable\npractice of every prophet who heralds an absolute system, political or\nreligious, and who pursues the unqualified domination of principles\nwhich he thinks right in themselves and of a will which is\nself\u2010justified and irresponsible.\n\nWhy, we may ask, are people so ready to set up absolute claims, when\ntheir resources are obviously so limited that permanent success is\nimpossible, and their will itself, in reality, is so fragile that it\nabandons each of its dreams even before it learns that it cannot be\nrealised? The reason is that the feebler, more ignorant, and more\nchildlike an impulse is, the less it can restrain itself or surrender a\npart of its desire in order the better to attain the rest. In most\nnations and most philosophies the intellect is rushed; it is swept\nforward and enamoured by the first glimpses it gets of anything good.\nThe dogmas thus precipitated seem to relieve the will of all risks and\nto guarantee its enterprises; whereas in fact they are rendering every\nperil tragic by blinding us to it, and every vain hope incorrigible. A\nhappy shyness in the English mind, a certain torpor and lateness in its\nutterance, have largely saved it from this calamity, and just because it\nis not brilliant it is safe. Being reticent, it remains fertile; being\nvague in its destination, it can turn at each corner down the most\ninviting road. In this race the intellect has chosen the part of\nprudence, leaving courage to the will, where courage is indispensable.\nHow much more becoming and fortunate is this balance of faculties for an\nearthly being than an intellect that scales the heavens, refuting and\nproving everything, while the will dares to attempt and to reform\nnothing, but fritters itself away in sloth, petty malice, and irony! In\nthe English character modesty and boldness appear in the right places\nand in a just measure. Manliness ventures to act without pretending to\nbe sure of the issue; it does not cry that all is sure, in order to\ncover up the mortal perils of finitude; and manliness has its reward in\nthe joys of exploration and comradeship.\n\nIt is this massive malleable character, this vigorous moral youth, that\nrenders co\u2010operation possible and progressive. When interests are fully\narticulate and fixed, co\u2010operation is a sort of mathematical problem; up\nto a certain precise limit, people can obviously help one another by\nsumming their efforts, like sailors pulling at a rope, or by a division\nof labour; they can obviously help one another when thereby they are\nhelping themselves. But beyond that, there can be nothing but mutual\nindifference or eternal hostility. This is the old way of the world.\nMost of the lower animals, although they run through surprising\ntransformations during their growth, seem to reach maturity by a\npredetermined method and in a predetermined form. Nature does everything\nfor them and experience nothing, and they live or die, as the case may\nbe, true to their innate character. Mankind, on the contrary, and\nespecially the English races, seem to reach physical maturity still\nmorally immature; they need to be finished by education, experience,\nexternal influences. What so often spoils other creatures improves them.\nIf left to themselves and untrained, they remain all their lives stupid\nand coarse, with no natural joy but drunkenness; but nurseries and\nschools and churches and social conventions can turn them into the most\nrefined and exquisite of men, and admirably intelligent too, in a\ncautious and special fashion. They may never become, for all their\npains, so agile, graceful, and sure as many an animal or _a priori_ man\nis without trouble, but they acquire more representative minds and a\ngreater range of material knowledge. Such completion, in the open air,\nof characters only half\u2010formed in the womb may go on in some chance\ndirection, or it may go on in the direction of a greater social harmony,\nthat is, in whatever direction is suggested to each man by the suasion\nof his neighbours. Society is a second mother to these souls; and the\ninstincts of many animals would remain inchoate if the great instinct of\nimitation did not intervene and enable them to learn by example.\nDevelopment in this case involves assimilation; characters are moulded\nby contagion and educated by democracy. The sphere of unanimity tends to\ngrow larger, and to reduce the margin of diversity to insignificance.\nThe result is an ever\u2010increasing moral unison, which is the simplest\nform of moral harmony and emotionally the most coercive.\n\nDemocracy is often mentioned in the same breath with liberty, as if they\nmeant the same thing; and both are sometimes identified with the sort of\nelective government that prevails in Great Britain and the United\nStates. But just as English liberty seems servitude to some people\nbecause it requires them to co\u2010operate, to submit to the majority, and\nto grow like them, so English democracy seems tyranny to the wayward\nmasses, because it is constitutional, historical, and sacred, narrowing\ndown the power of any group of people at any time to voting for one of\ntwo or three candidates for office, or to saying yes or no to some\nspecific proposal\u2014both the proposals and the candidates being set before\nthem by an invisible agency; and fate was never more inexorable or\nblinder than is the grinding of this ponderous political mill, where\nroutine, nepotism, pique, and swagger, with love of office and money,\nturn all the wheels. And the worst of it is that the revolutionary\nparties that oppose this historical machine repeat all its abuses, or\neven aggravate them. It would be well if people in England and America\nwoke up to the fact that it is in the name of natural liberty and direct\ndemocracy that enemies both within and without are already rising up\nagainst their democracy and their liberty. Just as the Papacy once\nthreatened English liberties, because it would maintain one inflexible\ninternational religion over all men, so now an international democracy\nof the disinherited many, led by the disinherited few, threatens English\nliberties again, since it would abolish those private interests which\nare the factors in any co\u2010operation, and would reduce everybody to\nforced membership and forced service in one universal flock, without\nproperty, family, country, or religion. That life under such a system\nmight have its comforts, its arts, and its atomic liberties, is certain,\njust as under the Catholic system it had its virtues and consolations;\nbut both systems presuppose the universality of a type of human nature\nwhich is not English, and perhaps not human.\n\nThe great advantage of English liberty is that it is in harmony with the\nnature of things; and when living beings have managed to adapt their\nhabits to the nature of things, they have entered the path of health and\nwisdom. No doubt the living will is essentially absolute, both at the\ntop and at the bottom, in the ferocious animal and in the rapt spirit;\nbut it is absolute even then only in its deliverance, in what it asserts\nor demands; nothing can be less absolute or more precarious than the\nliving will in its existence. A living will is the flexible voice of a\nthousand submerged impulses, of which now one and now another comes to\nthe surface; it is responsive, without knowing it, to a complex\nforgotten past and a changing, unexplored environment. The will is a\nmass of passions; when it sets up absolute claims it is both tragic and\nridiculous. It may be ready to be a martyr, but it will have to be one.\nMartyrs are heroic; but unless they have the nature of things on their\nside and their cause can be victorious, their heroism is like that of\ncriminals and madmen, interesting dramatically but morally detestable.\nMadmen and criminals, like other martyrs, appeal to the popular\nimagination, because in each of us there is a little absolute will, or a\ncolony of little absolute wills, aching to be criminal, mad, and heroic.\nYet the equilibrium by which we exist if we are sane, and which we call\nreason, keeps these rebellious dreams under; if they run wild, we are\nlost. Reason is a harmony; and it has been reputed by egotistical\nphilosophers to rule the world (in which unreason of every sort is\nfundamental and rampant), because when harmony between men and nature\nsupervenes at any place or in any measure, the world becomes\nintelligible and safe, and philosophers are able to live in it. The\npassions, even in a rational society, remain the elements of life, but\nunder mutual control, and the life of reason, like English liberty, is a\nperpetual compromise. Absolute liberty, on the contrary, is\nimpracticable; it is a foolish challenge thrown by a new\u2010born insect\nbuzzing against the universe; it is incompatible with more than one\npulse of life. All the declarations of independence in the world will\nnot render anybody really independent. You may disregard your\nenvironment, you cannot escape it; and your disregard of it will bring\nyou moral empoverishment and some day unpleasant surprises. Even\nRobinson Crusoe\u2014whom offended America once tried to imitate\u2014lived on\nwhat he had saved from the wreck, on footprints and distant hopes.\nLiberty to be left alone, not interfered with and not helped, is not\nEnglish liberty. It is the primeval desire of every wild animal or\nbarbarous tribe or jealous city or religion, claiming to live and to\ntramp through the world in its own sweet way. These combative organisms,\nhowever, have only such strength as the opposite principle of\nco\u2010operation lends them inwardly; and the more liberty they assume in\nforeign affairs the less liberty their members can enjoy at home. At\nhome they must then have organisation at all costs, like ancient Sparta\nand modern Germany; and even if the restraints so imposed are not\nirksome and there is spontaneous unison and enthusiasm in the people,\nthe basis of such a local harmony will soon prove too narrow. Nations\nand religions will run up against one another, against change, against\nscience, against all the realities they had never reckoned with; and\nmore or less painfully they will dissolve. And it will not be a normal\nand fruitful dissolution, like that of a man who leaves children and\nheirs. It will be the end of that evolution, the choking of that ideal\nin the sand.\n\nThis collapse of fierce liberty is no ordinary mutation, such as time\nbrings sooner or later to everything that exists, when the circumstances\nthat sustained it in being no longer prevail. It is a deep tragedy,\nbecause the narrower passions and swifter harmonies are more beautiful\nand perfect than the chaos or the dull broad equilibrium that may take\ntheir place. Co\u2010operative life is reasonable and long\u2010winded; but it\nalways remains imperfect itself, while it somewhat smothers the impulses\nthat enter into it. Absolute liberty created these elements;\ninspiration, free intelligence, uncompromising conviction, a particular\nhome and breeding\u2010ground, were requisite to give them birth. Nothing\ngood could arise for co\u2010operation to diffuse or to qualify unless first\nthere had been complete liberty for the artist and an uncontaminated\nperfection in his work. Reason and the principle of English liberty have\nno creative afflatus; they presuppose spontaneity and yet they half\nstifle it; and they can rest in no form of perfection, because they must\nremain plastic and continually invite amendments, in order to continue\nbroadly adjusted to an infinite moving world. Their work is accordingly\nlike those cathedrals at which many successive ages have laboured, each\nin its own style. We may regret, sometimes, that some one design could\nnot have been carried out in its purity, and yet all these secular\naccretions have a wonderful eloquence; a common piety and love of beauty\nhave inspired them; age has fused them and softened their incongruities;\nand an inexpressible magic seems to hang about the composite pile, as if\nGod and man breathed deeply within it. It is a harmony woven out of\naccidents, like every work of time and nature, and all the more profound\nand fertile because no mind could ever have designed it. Some such\nnatural structure, formed and reformed by circumstances, is the\nrequisite matrix and home for every moral being.\n\nAccordingly there seems to have been sober sense and even severe thought\nbehind the rant of Webster when he cried, \u201cLiberty _and_ Union, now and\nfor ever, one and inseparable!\u201d because if for the sake of liberty you\nabandon union and resist a mutual adaptation of purposes which might\ncripple each of them, your liberty loses its massiveness, its\nplasticity, its power to survive change; it ceases to be tentative and\nhuman in order to become animal and absolute. Nature must always produce\nlittle irresponsible passions that will try to rule her, but she can\nnever crown any one of them with more than a theatrical success; the\nwrecks of absolute empires, communisms, and religions are there to prove\nit. But English liberty, because it is co\u2010operative, because it calls\nonly for a partial and shifting unanimity among living men, may last\nindefinitely, and can enlist every reasonable man and nation in its\nservice. This is the best heritage of America, richer than its virgin\ncontinents, which it draws from the temperate and manly spirit of\nEngland. Certainly absolute freedom would be more beautiful if we were\nbirds or poets; but co\u2010operation and a loving sacrifice of a part of\nourselves\u2014or even of the whole, save the love in us\u2014are beautiful too,\nif we are men living together. Absolute liberty and English liberty are\nincompatible, and mankind must make a painful and a brave choice between\nthem. The necessity of rejecting and destroying some things that are\nbeautiful is the deepest curse of existence.\n\nTHE END\n\n_Printed in Great Britain by_ R. & R. Clark, Limited, _Edinburgh_.","title":"Character and Opinion in the United States: With Reminiscences of William James and Josiah Royce and Academic Life in America","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":44958}