{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_51525/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_51525","id":"gutenberg_51525","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51525","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Evolution","Philosophy","Pragmatism"],"text":"THE INFLUENCE OF\n  DARWIN ON PHILOSOPHY\n\n  And Other Essays in Contemporary\n  Thought\n\n  BY\n  JOHN DEWEY\n  _Professor of Philosophy in Columbia University_\n\n  [Illustration]\n\n  NEW YORK\n  HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY\n\n\n\n\n  COPYRIGHT, 1910,\n  BY\n  HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY\n\n\n  _Published April, 1910_\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\nAn elaborate preface to a philosophic work usually impresses one as a\nlast desperate effort on the part of its author to convey what he feels\nhe has not quite managed to say in the body of his book. Nevertheless,\na collection of essays on various topics written during a series\nof years may perhaps find room for an independent word to indicate\nthe kind of unity they seem, to their writer, to possess. Probably\nevery one acquainted with present philosophic thought--found, with\nsome notable exceptions, in periodicals rather than in books--would\nterm it a philosophy of transition and reconstruction. Its various\nrepresentatives agree in what they oppose--the orthodox British\nempiricism of two generations ago and the orthodox Neo-Kantian idealism\nof the last generation--rather than in what they proffer.\n\nThe essays of this volume belong, I suppose, to what has come\nto be known (since the earlier of them were written) as the\npragmatic phase of the newer movement. Now a recent German critic\nhas described pragmatism as, \u201cEpistemologically, nominalism;\npsychologically, voluntarism; cosmologically, energism; metaphysically,\nagnosticism; ethically, meliorism on the basis of the Bentham-Mill\nutilitarianism.\u201d[1] It may be that pragmatism will turn out to be all\nof this formidable array; but even should it, the one who thus defines\nit has hardly come within earshot of it. For whatever else pragmatism\nis or is not, the pragmatic spirit is primarily a revolt against that\nhabit of mind which disposes of anything whatever--even so humble an\naffair as a new method in Philosophy--by tucking it away, after this\nfashion, in the pigeon holes of a filing cabinet. There are other vital\nphases of contemporary transition and revision; there are, for example,\na new realism and naturalistic idealism. When I recall that I find\nmyself more interested (even though their representatives might decline\nto reciprocate) in such phases than in the systems marked by the labels\nof our German critic, I am confirmed in a belief that after all it is\nbetter to view pragmatism quite vaguely as part and parcel of a general\nmovement of intellectual reconstruction. For otherwise we seem to have\nno recourse save to define pragmatism--as does our German author--in\nterms of the very past systems against which it is a reaction; or, in\nescaping that alternative, to regard it as a fixed rival system making\nlike claim to completeness and finality. And if, as I believe, one of\nthe marked traits of the pragmatic movement is just the surrender of\nevery such claim, how have we furthered our understanding of pragmatism?\n\nClassic philosophies have to be revised because they must be squared\nup with the many social and intellectual tendencies that have\nrevealed themselves since those philosophies matured. The conquest\nof the sciences by the experimental method of inquiry; the injection\nof evolutionary ideas into the study of life and society; the\napplication of the historic method to religions and morals as well\nas to institutions; the creation of the sciences of \u201corigins\u201d and\nof the cultural development of mankind--how can such intellectual\nchanges occur and leave philosophy what it was and where it was? Nor\ncan philosophy remain an indifferent spectator of the rise of what\nmay be termed the new individualism in art and letters, with its\nnaturalistic method applied in a religious, almost mystic spirit to\nwhat is primitive, obscure, varied, inchoate, and growing in nature\nand human character. The age of Darwin, Helmholtz, Pasteur, Ibsen,\nMaeterlinck, Rodin, and Henry James must feel some uneasiness until\nit has liquidated its philosophic inheritance in current intellectual\ncoin. And to accuse those who are concerned in this transaction of\nignorant contempt for the classic past of philosophy is to overlook\nthe inspiration the movement of translation draws from the fact that\nthe history of philosophy has become only too well understood.\n\nAny revision of customary notions with its elimination--instead of\n\u201csolution\u201d--of many traditionary problems cannot hope, however, for\nany unity save that of tendency and operation. Elaborate and imposing\nsystem, the regimenting and uniforming of thoughts, are, at present,\nevidence that we are assisting at a stage performance in which\nborrowed--or hired--figures are maneuvering. Tentatively and piecemeal\nmust the reconstruction of our stock notions proceed. As a contribution\nto such a revision, the present collection of essays is submitted. With\none or two exceptions, their order is that of a reversed chronology,\nthe later essays coming first. The facts regarding the conditions of\ntheir first appearance are given in connection with each essay. I\nwish to thank the Editors of the _Philosophical Review_, of _Mind_,\nof the _Hibbert Journal_, of the _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology,\nand Scientific Methods_, and of the _Popular Science Monthly_, and\nthe Directors of the Press of Chicago and Columbia Universities,\nrespectively, for permission to reprint such of the essays as appeared\noriginally under their several auspices.\n\n            JOHN DEWEY\n\n      COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY,\n  NEW YORK CITY, March 1, 1910.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n                                                          PAGE\n  THE INFLUENCE OF DARWINISM ON PHILOSOPHY                   1\n\n  NATURE AND ITS GOOD: A CONVERSATION                       20\n\n  INTELLIGENCE AND MORALS                                   46\n\n  THE EXPERIMENTAL THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE                      77\n\n  THE INTELLECTUALIST CRITERION FOR TRUTH                  112\n\n  A SHORT CATECHISM CONCERNING TRUTH                       154\n\n  BELIEFS AND EXISTENCES                                   169\n\n  EXPERIENCE AND OBJECTIVE IDEALISM                        198\n\n  THE POSTULATE OF IMMEDIATE EMPIRICISM                    226\n\n  \u201cCONSCIOUSNESS\u201d AND EXPERIENCE                           242\n\n  THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE             271\n\n\n\n\nTHE INFLUENCE OF DARWINISM ON PHILOSOPHY[2]\n\n\nI\n\nThat the publication of the \u201cOrigin of Species\u201d marked an epoch in\nthe development of the natural sciences is well known to the layman.\nThat the combination of the very words origin and species embodied\nan intellectual revolt and introduced a new intellectual temper is\neasily overlooked by the expert. The conceptions that had reigned\nin the philosophy of nature and knowledge for two thousand years,\nthe conceptions that had become the familiar furniture of the mind,\nrested on the assumption of the superiority of the fixed and final;\nthey rested upon treating change and origin as signs of defect and\nunreality. In laying hands upon the sacred ark of absolute permanency,\nin treating the forms that had been regarded as types of fixity and\nperfection as originating and passing away, the \u201cOrigin of Species\u201d\nintroduced a mode of thinking that in the end was bound to transform\nthe logic of knowledge, and hence the treatment of morals, politics,\nand religion.\n\nNo wonder, then, that the publication of Darwin\u2019s book, a half century\nago, precipitated a crisis. The true nature of the controversy is\neasily concealed from us, however, by the theological clamor that\nattended it. The vivid and popular features of the anti-Darwinian row\ntended to leave the impression that the issue was between science\non one side and theology on the other. Such was not the case--the\nissue lay primarily within science itself, as Darwin himself early\nrecognized. The theological outcry he discounted from the start,\nhardly noticing it save as it bore upon the \u201cfeelings of his\nfemale relatives.\u201d But for two decades before final publication he\ncontemplated the possibility of being put down by his scientific peers\nas a fool or as crazy; and he set, as the measure of his success,\nthe degree in which he should affect three men of science: Lyell in\ngeology, Hooker in botany, and Huxley in zoology.\n\nReligious considerations lent fervor to the controversy, but they did\nnot provoke it. Intellectually, religious emotions are not creative but\nconservative. They attach themselves readily to the current view of\nthe world and consecrate it. They steep and dye intellectual fabrics\nin the seething vat of emotions; they do not form their warp and woof.\nThere is not, I think, an instance of any large idea about the world\nbeing independently generated by religion. Although the ideas that rose\nup like armed men against Darwinism owed their intensity to religious\nassociations, their origin and meaning are to be sought in science and\nphilosophy, not in religion.\n\n\nII\n\nFew words in our language foreshorten intellectual history as much\nas does the word species. The Greeks, in initiating the intellectual\nlife of Europe, were impressed by characteristic traits of the life of\nplants and animals; so impressed indeed that they made these traits the\nkey to defining nature and to explaining mind and society. And truly,\nlife is so wonderful that a seemingly successful reading of its mystery\nmight well lead men to believe that the key to the secrets of heaven\nand earth was in their hands. The Greek rendering of this mystery,\nthe Greek formulation of the aim and standard of knowledge, was in\nthe course of time embodied in the word species, and it controlled\nphilosophy for two thousand years. To understand the intellectual\nface-about expressed in the phrase \u201cOrigin of Species,\u201d we must, then,\nunderstand the long dominant idea against which it is a protest.\n\nConsider how men were impressed by the facts of life. Their eyes fell\nupon certain things slight in bulk, and frail in structure. To every\nappearance, these perceived things were inert and passive. Suddenly,\nunder certain circumstances, these things--henceforth known as seeds\nor eggs or germs--begin to change, to change rapidly in size, form,\nand qualities. Rapid and extensive changes occur, however, in many\nthings--as when wood is touched by fire. But the changes in the living\nthing are orderly; they are cumulative; they tend constantly in one\ndirection; they do not, like other changes, destroy or consume, or\npass fruitless into wandering flux; they realize and fulfil. Each\nsuccessive stage, no matter how unlike its predecessor, preserves\nits net effect and also prepares the way for a fuller activity on\nthe part of its successor. In living beings, changes do not happen\nas they seem to happen elsewhere, any which way; the earlier changes\nare regulated in view of later results. This progressive organization\ndoes not cease till there is achieved a true final term, a \u03c4\u03b5\u03bb\u1f78\u03c2, a\ncompleted, perfected end. This final form exercises in turn a plenitude\nof functions, not the least noteworthy of which is production of germs\nlike those from which it took its own origin, germs capable of the same\ncycle of self-fulfilling activity.\n\nBut the whole miraculous tale is not yet told. The same drama is\nenacted to the same destiny in countless myriads of individuals so\nsundered in time, so severed in space, that they have no opportunity\nfor mutual consultation and no means of interaction. As an old\nwriter quaintly said, \u201cthings of the same kind go through the same\nformalities\u201d--celebrate, as it were, the same ceremonial rites.\n\nThis formal activity which operates throughout a series of changes and\nholds them to a single course; which subordinates their aimless flux to\nits own perfect manifestation; which, leaping the boundaries of space\nand time, keeps individuals distant in space and remote in time to a\nuniform type of structure and function: this principle seemed to give\ninsight into the very nature of reality itself. To it Aristotle gave\nthe name, \u03b5\u1fd6\u03b4\u03bf\u03c2. This term the scholastics translated as _species_.\n\nThe force of this term was deepened by its application to everything\nin the universe that observes order in flux and manifests constancy\nthrough change. From the casual drift of daily weather, through the\nuneven recurrence of seasons and unequal return of seed time and\nharvest, up to the majestic sweep of the heavens--the image of eternity\nin time--and from this to the unchanging pure and contemplative\nintelligence beyond nature lies one unbroken fulfilment of ends.\nNature as a whole is a progressive realization of purpose strictly\ncomparable to the realization of purpose in any single plant or animal.\n\nThe conception of \u03b5\u1fd6\u03b4\u03bf\u03c2, species, a fixed form and final cause,\nwas the central principle of knowledge as well as of nature. Upon\nit rested the logic of science. Change as change is mere flux and\nlapse; it insults intelligence. Genuinely to know is to grasp a\npermanent end that realizes itself through changes, holding them\nthereby within the metes and bounds of fixed truth. Completely to\nknow is to relate all special forms to their one single end and good:\npure contemplative intelligence. Since, however, the scene of nature\nwhich directly confronts us is in change, nature as directly and\npractically experienced does not satisfy the conditions of knowledge.\nHuman experience is in flux, and hence the instrumentalities of\nsense-perception and of inference based upon observation are condemned\nin advance. Science is compelled to aim at realities lying behind and\nbeyond the processes of nature, and to carry on its search for these\nrealities by means of rational forms transcending ordinary modes of\nperception and inference.\n\nThere are, indeed, but two alternative courses. We must either find the\nappropriate objects and organs of knowledge in the mutual interactions\nof changing things; or else, to escape the infection of change, we\n_must_ seek them in some transcendent and supernal region. The human\nmind, deliberately as it were, exhausted the logic of the changeless,\nthe final, and the transcendent, before it essayed adventure on the\npathless wastes of generation and transformation. We dispose all too\neasily of the efforts of the schoolmen to interpret nature and mind in\nterms of real essences, hidden forms, and occult faculties, forgetful\nof the seriousness and dignity of the ideas that lay behind. We dispose\nof them by laughing at the famous gentleman who accounted for the\nfact that opium put people to sleep on the ground it had a dormitive\nfaculty. But the doctrine, held in our own day, that knowledge of the\nplant that yields the poppy consists in referring the peculiarities\nof an individual to a type, to a universal form, a doctrine so firmly\nestablished that any other method of knowing was conceived to be\nunphilosophical and unscientific, is a survival of precisely the same\nlogic. This identity of conception in the scholastic and anti-Darwinian\ntheory may well suggest greater sympathy for what has become unfamiliar\nas well as greater humility regarding the further unfamiliarities that\nhistory has in store.\n\nDarwin was not, of course, the first to question the classic philosophy\nof nature and of knowledge. The beginnings of the revolution are in\nthe physical science of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.\nWhen Galileo said: \u201cIt is my opinion that the earth is very noble\nand admirable by reason of so many and so different alterations and\ngenerations which are incessantly made therein,\u201d he expressed the\nchanged temper that was coming over the world; the transfer of interest\nfrom the permanent to the changing. When Descartes said: \u201cThe nature\nof physical things is much more easily conceived when they are beheld\ncoming gradually into existence, than when they are only considered as\nproduced at once in a finished and perfect state,\u201d the modern world\nbecame self-conscious of the logic that was henceforth to control\nit, the logic of which Darwin\u2019s \u201cOrigin of Species\u201d is the latest\nscientific achievement. Without the methods of Copernicus, Kepler,\nGalileo, and their successors in astronomy, physics, and chemistry,\nDarwin would have been helpless in the organic sciences. But prior\nto Darwin the impact of the new scientific method upon life, mind,\nand politics, had been arrested, because between these ideal or moral\ninterests and the inorganic world intervened the kingdom of plants and\nanimals. The gates of the garden of life were barred to the new ideas;\nand only through this garden was there access to mind and politics. The\ninfluence of Darwin upon philosophy resides in his having conquered the\nphenomena of life for the principle of transition, and thereby freed\nthe new logic for application to mind and morals and life. When he said\nof species what Galileo had said of the earth, _e pur si muove_, he\nemancipated, once for all, genetic and experimental ideas as an organon\nof asking questions and looking for explanations.\n\n\nIII\n\nThe exact bearings upon philosophy of the new logical outlook are, of\ncourse, as yet, uncertain and inchoate. We live in the twilight of\nintellectual transition. One must add the rashness of the prophet to\nthe stubbornness of the partizan to venture a systematic exposition of\nthe influence upon philosophy of the Darwinian method. At best, we can\nbut inquire as to its general bearing--the effect upon mental temper\nand complexion, upon that body of half-conscious, half-instinctive\nintellectual aversions and preferences which determine, after all, our\nmore deliberate intellectual enterprises. In this vague inquiry there\nhappens to exist as a kind of touchstone a problem of long historic\ncurrency that has also been much discussed in Darwinian literature.\nI refer to the old problem of design _versus_ chance, mind _versus_\nmatter, as the causal explanation, first or final, of things.\n\nAs we have already seen, the classic notion of species carried with it\nthe idea of purpose. In all living forms, a specific type is present\ndirecting the earlier stages of growth to the realization of its own\nperfection. Since this purposive regulative principle is not visible\nto the senses, it follows that it must be an ideal or rational force.\nSince, however, the perfect form is gradually approximated through the\nsensible changes, it also follows that in and through a sensible realm\na rational ideal force is working out its own ultimate manifestation.\nThese inferences were extended to nature: (_a_) She does nothing in\nvain; but all for an ulterior purpose. (_b_) Within natural sensible\nevents there is therefore contained a spiritual causal force, which\nas spiritual escapes perception, but is apprehended by an enlightened\nreason. (_c_) The manifestation of this principle brings about a\nsubordination of matter and sense to its own realization, and this\nultimate fulfilment is the goal of nature and of man. The design\nargument thus operated in two directions. Purposefulness accounted for\nthe intelligibility of nature and the possibility of science, while\nthe absolute or cosmic character of this purposefulness gave sanction\nand worth to the moral and religious endeavors of man. Science was\nunderpinned and morals authorized by one and the same principle, and\ntheir mutual agreement was eternally guaranteed.\n\nThis philosophy remained, in spite of sceptical and polemic outbursts,\nthe official and the regnant philosophy of Europe for over two thousand\nyears. The expulsion of fixed first and final causes from astronomy,\nphysics, and chemistry had indeed given the doctrine something of\na shock. But, on the other hand, increased acquaintance with the\ndetails of plant and animal life operated as a counterbalance and\nperhaps even strengthened the argument from design. The marvelous\nadaptations of organisms to their environment, of organs to the\norganism, of unlike parts of a complex organ--like the eye--to the\norgan itself; the foreshadowing by lower forms of the higher; the\npreparation in earlier stages of growth for organs that only later had\ntheir functioning--these things were increasingly recognized with the\nprogress of botany, zoology, paleontology, and embryology. Together,\nthey added such prestige to the design argument that by the late\neighteenth century it was, as approved by the sciences of organic life,\nthe central point of theistic and idealistic philosophy.\n\nThe Darwinian principle of natural selection cut straight under this\nphilosophy. If all organic adaptations are due simply to constant\nvariation and the elimination of those variations which are harmful\nin the struggle for existence that is brought about by excessive\nreproduction, there is no call for a prior intelligent causal force\nto plan and preordain them. Hostile critics charged Darwin with\nmaterialism and with making chance the cause of the universe.\n\nSome naturalists, like Asa Gray, favored the Darwinian principle\nand attempted to reconcile it with design. Gray held to what may be\ncalled design on the installment plan. If we conceive the \u201cstream of\nvariations\u201d to be itself intended, we may suppose that each successive\nvariation was designed from the first to be selected. In that case,\nvariation, struggle, and selection simply define the mechanism of\n\u201csecondary causes\u201d through which the \u201cfirst cause\u201d acts; and the\ndoctrine of design is none the worse off because we know more of its\n_modus operandi_.\n\nDarwin could not accept this mediating proposal. He admits or rather he\nasserts that it is \u201cimpossible to conceive this immense and wonderful\nuniverse including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and\nfar into futurity as the result of blind chance or necessity.\u201d[3] But\nnevertheless he holds that since variations are in useless as well as\nuseful directions, and since the latter are sifted out simply by the\nstress of the conditions of struggle for existence, the design argument\nas applied to living beings is unjustifiable; and its lack of support\nthere deprives it of scientific value as applied to nature in general.\nIf the variations of the pigeon, which under artificial selection give\nthe pouter pigeon, are not preordained for the sake of the breeder, by\nwhat logic do we argue that variations resulting in natural species are\npre-designed?[4]\n\n\nIV\n\nSo much for some of the more obvious facts of the discussion of design\n_versus_ chance, as causal principles of nature and of life as a whole.\nWe brought up this discussion, you recall, as a crucial instance. What\ndoes our touchstone indicate as to the bearing of Darwinian ideas\nupon philosophy? In the first place, the new logic outlaws, flanks,\ndismisses--what you will--one type of problems and substitutes for\nit another type. Philosophy forswears inquiry after absolute origins\nand absolute finalities in order to explore specific values and the\nspecific conditions that generate them.\n\nDarwin concluded that the impossibility of assigning the world to\nchance as a whole and to design in its parts indicated the insolubility\nof the question. Two radically different reasons, however, may be\ngiven as to why a problem is insoluble. One reason is that the problem\nis too high for intelligence; the other is that the question in its\nvery asking makes assumptions that render the question meaningless.\nThe latter alternative is unerringly pointed to in the celebrated\ncase of design _versus_ chance. Once admit that the sole verifiable\nor fruitful object of knowledge is the particular set of changes that\ngenerate the object of study together with the consequences that then\nflow from it, and no intelligible question can be asked about what,\nby assumption, lies outside. To assert--as is often asserted--that\nspecific values of particular truth, social bonds and forms of beauty,\nif they can be shown to be generated by concretely knowable conditions,\nare meaningless and in vain; to assert that they are justified only\nwhen they and their particular causes and effects have all at once been\ngathered up into some inclusive first cause and some exhaustive final\ngoal, is intellectual atavism. Such argumentation is reversion to the\nlogic that explained the extinction of fire by water through the formal\nessence of aqueousness and the quenching of thirst by water through the\nfinal cause of aqueousness. Whether used in the case of the special\nevent or that of life as a whole, such logic only abstracts some\naspect of the existing course of events in order to reduplicate it as\na petrified eternal principle by which to explain the very changes of\nwhich it is the formalization.\n\nWhen Henry Sidgwick casually remarked in a letter that as he grew older\nhis interest in what or who made the world was altered into interest in\nwhat kind of a world it is anyway, his voicing of a common experience\nof our own day illustrates also the nature of that intellectual\ntransformation effected by the Darwinian logic. Interest shifts from\nthe wholesale essence back of special changes to the question of\nhow special changes serve and defeat concrete purposes; shifts from\nan intelligence that shaped things once for all to the particular\nintelligences which things are even now shaping; shifts from an\nultimate goal of good to the direct increments of justice and happiness\nthat intelligent administration of existent conditions may beget and\nthat present carelessness or stupidity will destroy or forego.\n\nIn the second place, the classic type of logic inevitably set\nphilosophy upon proving that life _must_ have certain qualities and\nvalues--no matter how experience presents the matter--because of some\nremote cause and eventual goal. The duty of wholesale justification\ninevitably accompanies all thinking that makes the meaning of special\noccurrences depend upon something that once and for all lies behind\nthem. The habit of derogating from present meanings and uses prevents\nour looking the facts of experience in the face; it prevents serious\nacknowledgment of the evils they present and serious concern with the\ngoods they promise but do not as yet fulfil. It turns thought to the\nbusiness of finding a wholesale transcendent remedy for the one and\nguarantee for the other. One is reminded of the way many moralists and\ntheologians greeted Herbert Spencer\u2019s recognition of an unknowable\nenergy from which welled up the phenomenal physical processes without\nand the conscious operations within. Merely because Spencer labeled his\nunknowable energy \u201cGod,\u201d this faded piece of metaphysical goods was\ngreeted as an important and grateful concession to the reality of the\nspiritual realm. Were it not for the deep hold of the habit of seeking\njustification for ideal values in the remote and transcendent, surely\nthis reference of them to an unknowable absolute would be despised in\ncomparison with the demonstrations of experience that knowable energies\nare daily generating about us precious values.\n\nThe displacing of this wholesale type of philosophy will doubtless not\narrive by sheer logical disproof, but rather by growing recognition\nof its futility. Were it a thousand times true that opium produces\nsleep because of its dormitive energy, yet the inducing of sleep in\nthe tired, and the recovery to waking life of the poisoned, would not\nbe thereby one least step forwarded. And were it a thousand times\ndialectically demonstrated that life as a whole is regulated by a\ntranscendent principle to a final inclusive goal, none the less truth\nand error, health and disease, good and evil, hope and fear in the\nconcrete, would remain just what and where they now are. To improve our\neducation, to ameliorate our manners, to advance our politics, we must\nhave recourse to specific conditions of generation.\n\nFinally, the new logic introduces responsibility into the intellectual\nlife. To idealize and rationalize the universe at large is after\nall a confession of inability to master the courses of things that\nspecifically concern us. As long as mankind suffered from this\nimpotency, it naturally shifted a burden of responsibility that\nit could not carry over to the more competent shoulders of the\ntranscendent cause. But if insight into specific conditions of value\nand into specific consequences of ideas is possible, philosophy must\nin time become a method of locating and interpreting the more serious\nof the conflicts that occur in life, and a method of projecting ways\nfor dealing with them: a method of moral and political diagnosis and\nprognosis.\n\nThe claim to formulate _a priori_ the legislative constitution of the\nuniverse is by its nature a claim that may lead to elaborate dialectic\ndevelopments. But it is also one that removes these very conclusions\nfrom subjection to experimental test, for, by definition, these results\nmake no differences in the detailed course of events. But a philosophy\nthat humbles its pretensions to the work of projecting hypotheses for\nthe education and conduct of mind, individual and social, is thereby\nsubjected to test by the way in which the ideas it propounds work out\nin practice. In having modesty forced upon it, philosophy also acquires\nresponsibility.\n\nDoubtless I seem to have violated the implied promise of my earlier\nremarks and to have turned both prophet and partizan. But in\nanticipating the direction of the transformations in philosophy to\nbe wrought by the Darwinian genetic and experimental logic, I do not\nprofess to speak for any save those who yield themselves consciously\nor unconsciously to this logic. No one can fairly deny that at present\nthere are two effects of the Darwinian mode of thinking. On the one\nhand, there are making many sincere and vital efforts to revise our\ntraditional philosophic conceptions in accordance with its demands. On\nthe other hand, there is as definitely a recrudescence of absolutistic\nphilosophies; an assertion of a type of philosophic knowing distinct\nfrom that of the sciences, one which opens to us another kind of\nreality from that to which the sciences give access; an appeal through\nexperience to something that essentially goes beyond experience. This\nreaction affects popular creeds and religious movements as well as\ntechnical philosophies. The very conquest of the biological sciences by\nthe new ideas has led many to proclaim an explicit and rigid separation\nof philosophy from science.\n\nOld ideas give way slowly; for they are more than abstract\nlogical forms and categories. They are habits, predispositions,\ndeeply engrained attitudes of aversion and preference. Moreover,\nthe conviction persists--though history shows it to be a\nhallucination--that all the questions that the human mind has asked\nare questions that can be answered in terms of the alternatives that\nthe questions themselves present. But in fact intellectual progress\nusually occurs through sheer abandonment of questions together with\nboth of the alternatives they assume--an abandonment that results from\ntheir decreasing vitality and a change of urgent interest. We do not\nsolve them: we get over them. Old questions are solved by disappearing,\nevaporating, while new questions corresponding to the changed attitude\nof endeavor and preference take their place. Doubtless the greatest\ndissolvent in contemporary thought of old questions, the greatest\nprecipitant of new methods, new intentions, new problems, is the one\neffected by the scientific revolution that found its climax in the\n\u201cOrigin of Species.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nNATURE AND ITS GOOD: A CONVERSATION[5]\n\n\nA group of people are scattered near one another, on the sands of an\nocean beach; wraps, baskets, etc., testify to a day\u2019s outing. Above the\nhum of the varied conversations are heard the mock sobs of one of the\nparty.\n\n_Various voices._ What\u2019s the matter, Eaton?\n\n_Eaton._ Matter enough. I was watching a beautiful wave; its lines were\nperfect; at its crest, the light glinting through its infinitely varied\nand delicate curves of foam made a picture more ravishing than any\ndream. And now it has gone; it will never come back. So I weep.\n\n_Grimes._ That\u2019s right, Eaton; give it to them. Of course well-fed and\nwell-read persons--with their possessions of wealth and of knowledge\nboth gained at the expense of others--finally get bored; then they\nwax sentimental over their boredom and are worried about \u201cNature\u201d and\nits relation to life. Not everybody takes it out that way, of course;\nsome take motor cars and champagne for that tired feeling. But the\nrest--those who aren\u2019t in that class financially, or who consider\nthemselves too refined for that kind of relief--seek a new sensation in\nspeculating why that brute old world out there will not stand for what\nyou call spiritual and ideal values--for short, your egotisms.\n\nThe fact is that the whole discussion is only a symptom of the leisure\nclass disease. If you had to work to the limit and beyond, to keep\nsoul and body together, and, more than that, to keep alive the soul of\nyour family in its body, you would know the difference between your\nartificial problems and the genuine problem of life. Your philosophic\nproblems about the relation of \u201cthe universe to moral and spiritual\ngood\u201d exist only in the sentimentalism that generates them. The\ngenuine question is why social arrangements will not permit the amply\nsufficient body of natural resources to sustain all men and women in\nsecurity and decent comfort, with a margin for the cultivation of their\nhuman instincts of sociability, love of knowledge and of art.\n\nAs I read Plato, philosophy began with some sense of its essentially\npolitical basis and mission--a recognition that its problems were those\nof the organization of a just social order. But it soon got lost in\ndreams of another world; and even those of you philosophers who pride\nyourselves on being so advanced that you no longer believe in \u201canother\nworld,\u201d are still living and thinking with reference to it. You may\nnot call it supernatural; but when you talk about a realm of spiritual\nor ideal values in general, and ask about its relation to Nature in\ngeneral, you have only changed the labels on the bottles, not the\ncontents in them. For what makes anything transcendental--that is,\nin common language, supernatural--is simply and only aloofness from\npractical affairs--which affairs in their ultimate analysis are the\nbusiness of making a living.\n\n_Eaton._ Yes; Grimes has about hit off the point of my little\nparable--in one of its aspects at least. In matters of daily life you\nsay a man is \u201coff,\u201d more or less insane, when he deliberately goes\non looking for a certain kind of result from conditions which he has\nalready found to be such that they cannot possibly yield it. If he\nkeeps on looking, and then goes about mourning because stage money\nwon\u2019t buy beefsteaks, or because he cannot keep himself warm by burning\nthe sea-sands here, you dismiss him as a fool or a hysteric. If you\nwould condescend to reason with him at all, you would tell him to look\nfor the conditions that will yield the results; to occupy himself\nwith some of the countless goods of life for which, by intelligently\ndirected search, adequate means may be found.\n\nWell, before lunch, Moore was reiterating the old tale. \u201cModern science\nhas completely transformed our conceptions of Nature. It has stripped\nthe universe bare not only of all the moral values which it wore alike\nto antique pagan and to our medieval ancestors, but also of any regard,\nany preference, for such values. They are mere incidents, transitory\naccidents, in her everlasting redistribution of matter in motion; like\nthe rise and fall of the wave I lament, or like a single musical note\nthat a screeching, rumbling railway train might happen to emit.\u201d This\nis a one-sided view; but suppose it were all so, what is the moral?\nSurely, to change our standpoint, our angle of vision; to stop looking\nfor results among conditions that we know will not yield them; to turn\nour gaze to the goods, the values that exist actually and indubitably\nin experience; and consider by what natural conditions these particular\nvalues may be strengthened and widened.\n\nInsist, if you please, that Nature as a whole does not stand for good\nas a whole. Then, in heaven\u2019s name, just because good is both so plural\n(so \u201cnumerous\u201d) and so partial, bend your energies of intelligence\nand of effort to selecting the specific plural and partial natural\nconditions which will at least render values that we do have more\nsecure and more extensive. Any other course is the way of madness; it\nis the way of the spoilt child who cries at the seashore because the\nwaves do not stand still, and who cries even more frantically in the\nmountains because the hills do not melt and flow.\n\nBut no. Moore and his school will not have it so: we must \u201cgo back of\nthe returns.\u201d All this science, after all, is a mode of knowledge.\nExamine knowledge itself and find it implies a complete all-inclusive\nintelligence; and then find (by taking another tack) that intelligence\ninvolves sentiency, feeling, and also will. Hence your very physical\nscience, if you will only criticise it, examine it, shows that its\nobject, mechanical nature, is itself an included and superseded element\nin an all-embracing spiritual and ideal whole. And there you are.\n\nWell, I do not now insist that all this is mere dialectic\nprestidigitation. No; accept it; let it go at its face value. But\nwhat of it? Is any value more concretely and securely in life than it\nwas before? Does this perfect intelligence enable us to correct one\nsingle mis-step, one paltry error, here and now? Does this perfect\nall-inclusive goodness serve to heal one disease? Does it rectify one\ntransgression? Does it even give the slightest inkling of how to go to\nwork at any of these things? No; it just tells you: Never mind, for\nthey are already eternally corrected, eternally healed in the eternal\nconsciousness which alone is really Real. Stop: there is one evil, one\npain, which the doctrine mitigates--the hysteric sentimentalism which\nis troubled because the universe as a whole does not sustain good as a\nwhole. But that is the only thing it alters. The \u201cpathetic fallacy\u201d of\nRuskin magnified to the _n_th power is the _motif_ of modern idealism.\n\n_Moore._ Certainly nobody will accuse Eaton of\ntender-mindedness--except in his logic, which, _as_ certainly, is not\ntough-minded. His excitement, however, convinces me that he has at\nleast an inkling that he is begging the question; and like the true\npragmatist that he is, is trying to prevent by action (to wit, his\nflood of speech) his false logic from becoming articulate to him. The\nquestion being whether the values we seem to apprehend, the purposes\nwe entertain, the goods we possess, are anything more than transitory\nwaves, Eaton meets it by saying: \u201cOh, of course, they are waves; but\ndon\u2019t think about that--just sit down hard on the wave or get another\nwave to buttress it with!\u201d No wonder he recommends action instead\nof thinking! Men have tried this method before, as a counsel of\ndesperation or as cynical pessimism. But it remained for contemporary\npragmatism to label the drowning of sorrow in the intoxication of\nthoughtless action, the highest achievement of philosophic method, and\nto preach wilful restlessness as a doctrine of hope and illumination.\nMeantime, I prefer to be tender-minded in my attitude toward Reality,\nand to make that attitude more reasonable by a tough-minded logic.\n\n_Eaton._ I am willing to be quiet long enough for you to translate your\nmetaphor into logic, and show how I have begged the question.\n\n_Moore._ It is plain enough. You bid us turn to the cultivation, the\nnurture, of certain values in human life. But the question is whether\nthese are or are not values. And that is a question of their relation\nto the Universe--to Reality. If Reality substantiates them, then indeed\nthey are values; if it mocks and flouts them--as it surely does if what\nmechanical science calls Nature be ultimate and absolute--then they are\n_not_ values. You and your kind are really the sentimentalists, because\nyou are sheer subjectivists. You say: Accept the dream as real; do not\nquestion about it; add a little iridescence to its fog and extend it\ntill it obscure even more of Reality than it naturally does, and all\nis well! I say: Perhaps the dream is no dream but an intimation of the\nsolidest and most ultimate of all realities; and a thorough examination\nof what the positivist, the materialist, accepts as solid, namely,\nscience, reveals as its own aim, standard, and presupposition that\nReality is one all-exhaustive spiritual Being.\n\n_Eaton._ This is about the way I thought my begging of the question\nwould turn out. You insist upon translating my position into terms of\nyour own; I am not then surprised to hear that it would be a begging\nof the question for _you_ to hold my views. My point is precisely\nthat it is only as long as you take the position that some Reality\nbeyond--some metaphysical or transcendental reality--is necessary to\nsubstantiate empirical values that you can even discuss whether the\nlatter are genuine or illusions. Drop the presupposition that you read\ninto everything I say, the idea that the reality of things as they are\nis dependent upon something beyond and behind, and the facts of the\ncase just stare you in the eyes: Goods _are_, a multitude of them--but,\nunfortunately, evils also _are_; and all grades, pretty much, of both.\nNot the contrast and relation of experience _in toto_ to something\nbeyond experience drives men to religion and then to philosophy; but\nthe contrast _within_ experience of the better and the worse, and the\nconsequent problem of how to substantiate the former and reduce the\nlatter. Until you set up the notion of a transcendental reality at\nlarge, you cannot even raise the question of whether goods and evils\nare, or only seem to be. The trouble and the joy, the good and the\nevil, is _that_ they are; the hope is that they may be regulated,\nguided, increased in one direction and minimized in another. Instead\nof neglecting thought, we (I mean the pragmatists) exalt it, because\nwe say that intelligent discrimination of means and ends is the sole\nfinal resource in this problem of all problems, the control of the\nfactors of good and ill in life. We say, indeed, not merely that that\nis what intelligence _does_, but rather what it _is_.\n\nHistorically, it is quite possible to show how under certain social\nconditions this human and practical problem of the relation of good and\nintelligence generated the notion of the transcendental good and the\npure reason. As Grimes reminded us, Plato----\n\n_Moore._ Yes, and Protagoras--don\u2019t forget him; for unfortunately we\nknow both the origin and the consequences of your doctrine that being\nand seeming are the same. We know quite well that pure empiricism leads\nto the identification of being and seeming, and that is just why every\ndeeply moral and religious soul from the time of Plato and Aristotle to\nthe present has insisted upon a transcendent reality.\n\n_Eaton._ Personally I don\u2019t need an absolute to enable me to\ndistinguish between, say, the good of kindness and the evil of slander,\nor the good of health and the evil of valetudinarianism. In experience,\nthings bear their own specific characters. Nor has the absolute\nidealist as yet answered the question of _how_ the absolute reality\nenables him to distinguish between being and seeming in one single\nconcrete case. The trouble is that for him _all_ Being is on the other\nside of experience, and _all_ experience is seeming.\n\n_Grimes._ I think I heard you mention history. I wish both of you\nwould drop dialectics and go to history. You would find history to be\na struggle for existence--for bread, for a roof, for protected and\nnourished offspring. You would find history a picture of the masses\nalways going under--just missing--in the struggle, because others have\ncaptured the control of natural resources, which in themselves, if not\nas benign as the eighteenth century imagined, are at least abundantly\nample for the needs of all. But because of the monopolization of Nature\nby a few persons, most men and women only stick their heads above the\nwelter just enough to catch a glimpse of better things, then to be\nshoved down and under. The only problem of the relation of Nature to\nhuman good which is real is the economic problem of the exploitation\nof natural resources in the equal interests of all, instead of in the\nunequal interests of a class. The problem you two men are discussing\nhas no existence--and never had any--outside of the heads of a few\nmetaphysicians. The latter would never have amounted to anything,\nwould never have had any career at all, had not shrewd monopolists\nor tyrants (with the skill that characterizes them) have seen that\nthese speculations about reality and a transcendental world could be\ndistilled into opiates and distributed among the masses to make them\nless rebellious. That, if you would know, Eaton, is the real historic\norigin of the ideal world beyond. When you realize that, you will\nperceive that the pragmatists are only half-way over. You will see\nthat practical questions _are_ practical, and are not to be solved\nmerely by having a theory _about_ theory different from the traditional\none--which is all your pragmatism comes to.\n\n_Moore._ If you mean that your own crass Philistinism is all that\npragmatism comes to, I fancy you are about right. Forget that the\nonly end of action is to bring about an approximation to the complete\ninclusive consciousness; make, as the pragmatists do, consciousness\na means to action, and one form of external activity is just as\ngood as another. Art, religion, all the generous reaches of science\nwhich do not show up immediately in the factory--these things become\nmeaningless, and all that remains is that hard and dry satisfaction of\neconomic wants which is Grimes\u2019s ideal.\n\n_Grimes._ An ideal which exists, by the way, only in your imagination.\nI know of no more convincing proof of the futile irrelevancy of\nidealism than the damning way in which it narrows the content of actual\ndaily life in the minds of those who uphold idealism. I sometimes think\nI am the only true idealist. If the conditions of an equitable and\nample physical existence for all were once secured, I, for one, have\nno fears as to the bloom and harvest of art and science, and all the\n\u201chigher\u201d things of leisure. Life is interesting enough for me; give it\na show for all.\n\n_Arthur._ I find myself in a peculiar position in respect to this\ndiscussion. An analysis of what is involved in this peculiarity may\nthrow some light on the points at issue, for I have to believe that\nanalysis and definition of what exists is the essential matter both\nin resolution of doubts and in steps at reform. For brevity, not from\nconceit, I will put the peculiarity to which I refer in a personal\nform. I do not believe for a moment in some different Reality beyond\nand behind Nature. I do not believe that a manipulation of the logical\nimplications of science can give results which are to be put in the\nplace of those which Science herself yields in her direct application.\nI accept Nature as something which is, not seems, and Science as her\nfaithful transcript. Yet because I believe these things, not in spite\nof them, I believe in the existence of purpose and of good. How Eaton\ncan believe that fulfilment and the increasing realization of purpose\ncan exist in human consciousness unless they first exist in the world\nwhich is revealed in that consciousness is as much beyond me as how\nMoore can believe that a manipulation of the method of knowledge can\nyield considerations of a totally different order from those directly\nobtained by use of the method. If purpose and fulfilment exist as\nnatural goods, then, and only then, can consciousness itself be a\nfulfilment of Nature, and be also a natural good. Any other view is\ninexplicable to sound thinking--save, historically, as a product of\nmodern political individualism and literary romanticism which have\ncombined to produce that idealistic philosophy according to which the\nmind in knowing the universe creates it.\n\nThe view that purpose and realization are profoundly natural,\nand that consciousness--or, if you will, experience--is itself a\nculmination and climax of Nature, is not a new view. Formulated by\nAristotle, it has always persisted wherever the traditions of sound\nthinking have not been obscured by romanticism. The modern scientific\ndoctrine of evolution confirms and specifies the metaphysical insight\nof Aristotle. This doctrine sets forth in detail, and in verified\ndetail, as a genuine characteristic of existence, the tendency toward\ncumulative results, the definite trend of things toward culmination and\nachievement. It describes the universe as possessing, in terms of and\nby right of its own subject-matter (not as an addition of subsequent\nreflection), differences of value and importance--differences,\nmoreover, that exercise selective influence upon the course of things,\nthat is to say, genuinely determine the events that occur. It tells us\nthat consciousness itself is such a cumulative and culminating natural\nevent. Hence it is relevant to the world in which it dwells, and its\ndeterminations of value are not arbitrary, not _obiter dicta_, but\ndescriptions of Nature herself.\n\nRecall the words of Spencer which Moore quoted this morning: \u201cThere is\nno pleasure in the consciousness of being an infinitesimal bubble on\na globe that is infinitesimal compared with the totality of things.\nThose on whom the unpitying rush of changes inflicts sufferings which\nare often without remedy, find no consolation in the thought that\nthey are at the mercy of blind forces,--which cause indifferently\nnow the destruction of a sun and now the death of an animalcule.\nContemplation of a universe which is without conceivable beginning or\nend and without intelligible purpose, yields no satisfaction.\u201d I am\nna\u00efve enough to believe that the only question is whether the object\nof our \u201cconsciousness,\u201d of our \u201cthought,\u201d of our \u201ccontemplation,\u201d\nis or is not as the quotation states it to be. If the statement be\ncorrect, pragmatism, like subjectivism (of which I suspect it is\nonly a variation, putting emphasis upon will instead of idea), is an\ninvitation to close our eyes to what is, in order to encourage the\ndelusion that things are other than they are. But the case is not so\ndesperate. Speaking dogmatically, the account given of the universe\nis just--not true. And the doctrine of evolution of which Spencer\nprofessedly made so much is the evidence. A universe describable in\nevolutionary terms is a universe which shows, not indeed design, but\ntendency and purpose; which exhibits achievement, not indeed of a\nsingle end, but of a multiplicity of natural goods at whose apex is\nconsciousness. No account of the universe in terms _merely_ of the\nredistribution of matter in motion is complete, no matter how true as\nfar as it goes, for it ignores the cardinal fact that the character\nof matter in motion and of its redistribution is such as cumulatively\nto achieve ends--to effect the world of values we know. Deny this\nand you deny evolution; admit it and you admit purpose in the only\nobjective--that is, the only intelligible--sense of that term. I do not\nsay that in addition to the mechanism there are other ideal causes or\nfactors which intervene. I only insist that the whole story be told,\nthat the character of the mechanism be noted--namely, that it is such\nas to produce and sustain good in a multiplicity of forms. Mechanism is\nthe mechanism of achieving results. To ignore this is to refuse to open\nour eyes to the total aspects of existence.\n\nAmong these multiple natural goods, I repeat, is consciousness itself.\nOne of the ends in which Nature genuinely terminates is just awareness\nof itself--of its processes and ends. For note the implication as to\nwhy consciousness is a natural good: not because it is cut off and\nexists in isolation, nor yet because we may, pragmatically, cut off and\ncultivate certain values which have no existence beyond it; but because\nit _is_ good that things should be known in their own characters. And\nthis view carries with it a precious result: to know things as they are\nis to know them as culminating in consciousness; it is to know that the\nuniverse genuinely achieves and maintains its own self-manifestation.\n\nA final word as to the bearing of this view upon Grimes\u2019s position.\nTo conceive of human history as a scene of struggle of classes for\ndomination, a struggle caused by love of power or greed for gain,\nis the very mythology of the emotions. What we call history is\nlargely non-human, but so far as it is human, it is dominated by\nintelligence: history is the history of increasing consciousness. Not\nthat intelligence is actually sovereign in life, but that at least it\nis sovereign over stupidity, error, and ignorance. The acknowledgment\nof things as they are--that is the causal source of every step in\nprogress. Our present system of industry is not the product of greed\nor tyrannic lust of power, but of physical science giving the mastery\nover the mechanism of Nature\u2019s energy. If the existing system is ever\ndisplaced, it will be displaced not by good intentions and vague\nsentiments, but by a more extensive insight into Nature\u2019s secrets.\n\nModern sentimentalism is revolted at the frank naturalism of Aristotle\nin saying that some are slaves by nature and others free by nature.\nBut let socialism come to-morrow and somebody--not anybody, but\n_some_body--will be managing its machinery and somebody else will be\nmanaged by the machinery. I do not wonder that my socialistic friends\nalways imagine themselves active in the first capacity--perhaps by\nway of compensation for doing all of the imagining and none of the\nexecutive management at present. But those who are managed, who are\ncontrolled, deserve at least a moment\u2019s attention. Would you not at\nonce agree that if there is any justice at all in these positions of\nrelative inferiority and superiority, it is because those who are\ncapable by insight deserve to rule, and those who are incapable on\naccount of ignorance, deserve to be ruled? If so, how do you differ,\nsave verbally, from Aristotle?\n\nOr do you think that all that men want in order to _be_ men is to have\ntheir bellies filled, with assurance of constant plenty and without too\nmuch antecedent labor? No; believe me, Grimes, men _are_ men, and hence\ntheir aspiration is for the divine--even when they know it not; their\ndesire is for the ruling element, for intelligence. Till they achieve\nthat they will still be discontented, rebellious, unruly--and hence\nruled--shuffle your social cards as much as you may.\n\n_Grimes_ (after shrugging his shoulders contemptuously, finally says):\nThere is one thing I like about Arthur: he is frank. He comes out\nwith what you in all your hearts really believe--theory, supreme and\nsublime. All is to the good in this best of all possible worlds, if\nonly some one be defining and classifying and syllogizing, according to\nthe lines already laid down. Aristotle\u2019s God of pure intelligence (as\n_he_ well knew) was the glorification of leisure; and Arthur\u2019s point of\nview, if Arthur but knew it, is as much the intellectual snobbery of a\nleisure class economy, as the luxury and display he condemns are its\nmaterial snobbery. There is really nothing more to be said.\n\n_Moore._ To get back into the game which Grimes despises. Doesn\u2019t\nArthur practically say that the universe is good because it culminates\nin intelligence, and that intelligence is good because it perceives\nthat the universe culminates in--itself? And, on this theory, are\nignorance and error, and consequent evil, any less genuine achievements\nof Nature than intelligence and good? And on what basis does he\ncall by the titles of achievement and end that which at best is an\ninfinitesimally fragmentary and transitory episode? I said Eaton\nbegged the question. Arthur seems to regard it as proof of a superior\nintelligence (one which realistically takes things as they are) to beg\nthe question. What is this Nature, this universe in which evil is as\nstubborn a fact as good, in which good is constantly destroyed by the\nvery power that produces it, in which there resides a temporary bird of\npassage--consciousness doomed to ultimate extinction--what is such a\nNature (all that Arthur offers us) save the problem, the contradiction\noriginally in question? A complacent optimism may gloss over its\nintrinsic self-contradictions, but a more serious mind is forced to go\nbehind and beyond this scene to a permanent good which includes and\ntranscends goods defeated and hopes suborned. Not because idealists\nhave refused to note the facts as they are, but precisely because\nNature is, on its face, such a scene as Arthur describes, idealists\nhave always held that it is but Appearance, and have attempted to mount\nthrough it to Reality.\n\n_Stair._ I had not thought to say anything. My attitude is so different\nfrom that of any one of you that it seemed unnecessary to inject\nanother varying opinion where already disagreement reigns. But when\nArthur was speaking, I felt that perhaps this disagreement exists\nprecisely because the solvent word had not been uttered. For, at\nbottom, all of you agree with Arthur, and that is the cause of your\ndisagreement with him and one another. You have agreed to make reason,\nintellect in some sense, the final umpire. But reason, intellect, is\nthe principle of analysis, of division, of discord. When I appeal\nto feeling as the ultimate organ of unity, and hence of truth, you\nsmile courteously; say--or think--mysticism; and the case for you is\ndismissed. Words like feeling, sensation, immediate appreciation,\nself-communication of Being, I must indeed use when I try to tell\nthe truth I see. But I well know how inadequate the words are. And\nwhy? Because language is the chosen tool of intelligence, and hence\ninevitably bewrayeth the truth it would convey. But remember that words\nare but symbols, and that intelligence must dwell in the realm of\nsymbols, and you realize a way out. These words, sensation, feeling,\netc., as I utter them are but invitations to woo you to put yourselves\ninto the one attitude that reveals truth--an attitude of direct vision.\n\nThe beatific vision? Yes, and No. No, if you mean something rare,\nextreme, almost abnormal. Yes, if you mean the commonest and most\nconvincing, the _only_ convincing self-impartation of the ultimate\ngood in the scale of goods; the vision of blessedness in God. For\nthis doctrine is empirical; mysticism is the heart of all positive\nempiricism, of all empiricism which is not more interested in denying\nrationalism than in asserting itself. The mystical experience marks\nevery man\u2019s realization of the supremacy of good, and hence measures\nthe distance that separates him from pure materialism. And since the\nunmitigated materialist is the rarest of creatures, and the man with\nfaith in an unseen good the commonest, every man is a mystic--and the\nmost so in his best moments.\n\nWhat an idle contradiction that Moore and Arthur should try to\nadduce proofs of the supremacy of ideal values in the universe! The\nsole possible proof is the proof that actually exists--the direct\nunhindered realization of those values. For each value brings with it\nof necessity its own depth of being. Let the pride of intellect and\nthe pride of will cease their clamor, and in the silences Being speaks\nits own final word, not an argument or external ground of belief, but\nthe self-impartation of itself to the soul. Who are the prophets and\nteachers of the ages? Those who have been accessible at the greatest\ndepths to these communications.\n\n_Grimes._ I suppose that poverty--and possibly disease--are specially\ncompetent ministers to the spiritual vision? The moral is obvious.\nEconomic changes are purely irrelevant, because purely material and\nexternal. Indeed, upon the whole, efforts at reform are undesirable,\nfor they distract attention from the fact that the final thing, the\nvision of good, is totally disconnected from external circumstance.\nI do not say, Stair, you personally believe this; but is not such a\nquietism the logical conclusion of all mysticism?\n\n_Stair._ This is not so true as to say that in your efforts at reform\nyou are really inspired by the divine vision of justice; and that this\nmystic vision and not the mere increase of quantity of eatables and\ndrinkables is your animating motive.\n\n_Grimes_. Well, to my mind this whole affair of mystical values and\nexperiences comes down to a simple straight-away proposition. The\nsubmerged masses do not occupy themselves with such questions as those\nyou are discussing. They haven\u2019t the time even to consider whether\nthey want to consider them. Nor does the occasional free citizen\nwho even now exists--a sporadic reminder and prophecy of ultimate\ndemocracy--bother himself about the relation of the cosmos to value.\nWhy? Not from mystic insight any more than from metaphysical proof;\nbut because he has so many other interests that are worth while.\nHis friends, his vocation and avocations, his books, his music, his\nclub--these things engage him and they reward him. To multiply such\nmen with such interests--that is the genuine problem, I repeat; and\nit is a problem to be solved only through an economic and material\nredistribution.\n\n_Eaton_. Gladly, Stair, do all of us absolve ourselves from the\nresponsibility of having to create the goods that life--call it God\nor Nature or Chance--provides. But we cannot, if we would, absolve\nourselves from responsibility for maintaining and extending these\ngoods when they have happened. To find it very wonderful--as Arthur\ndoes--that intelligence perceives values as they are is trivial, for\nit is only an elaborate way of saying that they have happened. To\ninvite us, ceasing struggle and effort, to commune with Being through\nthe moments of insight and joy that life provides, is to bid us to\nself-indulgence--to enjoyment at the expense of those upon whom the\nburden of conducting life\u2019s affairs falls. For even the mystics still\nneed to eat and drink, be clothed and housed, and somebody must do\nthese unmystic things. And to ignore others in the interest of our own\nperfection is not conducive to genuine unity of Being.\n\nIntelligence is, indeed, as you say, discrimination, distinction.\nBut why? Because we have to _act_ in order to keep secure amid the\nmoving flux of circumstance, some slight but precious good that Nature\nhas bestowed; and because, in order to act successfully, we must act\nafter conscious selection--after discrimination of means and ends.\nOf course, all goods arrive, as Arthur says, as natural results, but\nso do all bads, and all grades of good and bad. To label the results\nthat occur culminations, achievements, and then argue to a quasi-moral\nconstitution of Nature because she effects such results, is to employ\na logic which applies to the life-cycle of the germ that, in achieving\nitself, kills man with malaria, as well as to the process of human\nlife that in reaching its fullness cuts short the germ-fulfilment. It\nis putting the cart before the horse to say that because Nature is\nso constituted as to produce results of all types of value, therefore\nNature is actuated by regard for differences of value, Nature, till it\nproduces a being who strives and who thinks in order that he may strive\nmore effectively, does not know whether it cares more for justice\nor for cruelty, more for the ravenous wolf-like competition of the\nstruggle for existence, or for the improvements incidentally introduced\nthrough that struggle. Literally it has no mind of its own. Nor would\nthe mere introduction of a consciousness that pictured indifferently\nthe scene out of which consciousness developed, add one iota of reason\nfor attributing eulogistically to Nature regard for value. But when the\nsentient organism, having experienced natural values, good and bad,\nbegins to select, to prefer, and to make battle for its preference; and\nin order that it may make the most gallant fight possible picks out\nand gathers together in perception and thought what is favorable to\nits aims and what hostile, then and there Nature has at last achieved\nsignificant regard for good. And this is the same thing as the birth\nof intelligence. For the holding an end in view and the selecting\nand organizing out of the natural flux, on the basis of this end,\nconditions that are means, _is_ intelligence. Not, then, when Nature\nproduces health or efficiency or complexity does Nature exhibit regard\nfor value, but only when it produces a living organism that has settled\npreferences and endeavors. The mere happening of complexity, health,\nadjustment, is all that Nature effects, as rightly called accident as\npurpose. But when Nature produces an intelligence--ah, then, indeed\nNature has achieved something. Not, however, because this intelligence\nimpartially pictures the nature which has produced it, but because\nin human consciousness Nature becomes genuinely partial. Because in\nconsciousness an end is preferred, is selected for maintenance, and\nbecause intelligence pictures not a world just as it is _in toto_,\nbut images forth the conditions and obstacles of the continued\nmaintenance of the selected good. For in an experience where values\nare demonstrably precarious, an intelligence that is not a principle\nof emphasis and valuation (an intelligence which defines, describes,\nand classifies merely for the sake of knowledge,) is a principle of\nstupidity and catastrophe.\n\nAs for Grimes, it is indeed true that problems are solved only where\nthey arise--namely, in action, in the adjustments of behavior. But,\nfor good or for evil, they can be solved there only with method; and\nultimately method is intelligence, and intelligence is method. The\nlarger, the more human, the less technical the problem of practice,\nthe more open-eyed and wide-viewing must be the corresponding method.\nI do not say that all things that have been called philosophy\nparticipate in this method; I do say, however, that a catholic and\nfar-sighted theory of the adjustment of the conflicting factors of\nlife _is_--whatever it be called--philosophy. And unless technical\nphilosophy is to go the way of dogmatic theology, it must loyally\nidentify itself with such a view of its own aim and destiny.\n\n\n\n\nINTELLIGENCE AND MORALS[6]\n\n\n\u201cExcept the blind forces of nature,\u201d said Sir Henry Maine, \u201cnothing\nmoves in this world which is not Greek in its origin.\u201d And if we ask\nwhy this is so, the response comes that the Greek discovered the\nbusiness of man to be pursuit of good, and intelligence to be central\nin this quest. The utmost to be said in praise of Plato and Aristotle\nis not that they invented excellent moral theories, but that they rose\nto the opportunity which the spectacle of Greek life afforded. For\nAthens presented an all but complete microcosm for the study of the\ninteraction of social organization and individual character. A public\nlife of rich diversity in concentrated and intense splendor trained\nthe civic sense. Strife of faction and the rapid oscillations of types\nof polity provided the occasion for intellectual inquiry and analysis.\nThe careers of dramatic personalities, habits of discussion, ease of\nlegislative change, facilities for personal ambitions, distraction by\npersonal rivalries, fixed attention upon the elements of character,\nand upon consideration of the effect of individual character on\nsocial vitality and stability. Happy exemption from ecclesiastic\npreoccupations, susceptibility to natural harmony, and natural piety\nconspired with frank and open observation to acknowledgment of the r\u00f4le\nplayed by natural conditions. Social instability and shock made equally\npertinent and obvious the remark that only intelligence can confirm\nthe values that natural conditions generate, and that intelligence is\nitself nurtured and matured only in a free and stable society.\n\nIn Plato the resultant analysis of the mutual implications of the\nindividual, the social and the natural, converged in the ideas that\nmorals and philosophy are one: namely, a love of that wisdom which\nis the source of secure and social good; that mathematics and the\nnatural sciences focused upon the problem of the perception of the good\nfurnish the materials of moral science; that logic is the method of the\npregnant organization of social conditions with respect to good; that\npolitics and psychology are sciences of one and the same human nature,\ntaken first in the large and then in the little. So far that large and\nexpansive vision of Plato.\n\nBut projection of a better life must be based upon reflection of the\nlife already lived. The inevitable limitations of the Greek city-state\nwere inevitably wrought into the texture of moral theory.\n\nThe business of thought was to furnish a substitute for customs which\nwere then relaxing from the pressure of contact and intercourse without\nand the friction of strife within. Reason was to take the place of\ncustom as a guide of life; but it was to furnish rules as final, as\nunalterable as those of custom. In short, the thinkers were fascinated\nby the afterglow of custom. They took for their own ideal the\ndistillation from custom of its essence--ends and laws which should be\nrigid and invariable. Thus Morals was set upon the track which it dared\nnot leave for nigh twenty-five hundred years: search for _the_ final\ngood, and for _the_ single moral force.\n\nAristotle\u2019s assertions that the state exists by nature, and that in the\nstate alone does the individual achieve independence and completeness\nof life, are indeed pregnant sayings. But as uttered by Aristotle they\nmeant that, in an isolated state, the Greek city-state, set a garlanded\nisland in the waste sea of _barbaroi_, a community indifferent when not\nhostile to all other social groupings, individuals attain their full\nend. In a social unity which signified social contraction, contempt,\nand antagonism, in a social order which despised intercourse and\nglorified war, is realized the life of excellence!\n\nThere is likewise a profound saying of Aristotle\u2019s that the individual\nwho otherwise than by accident is not a member of a state is either a\nbrute or a god. But it is generally forgotten that elsewhere Aristotle\nidentified the highest excellence, the chief virtue, with pure thought,\nand identifying this with the divine, isolated it in lonely grandeur\nfrom the life of society. That man, so far as in him lay, should be\ngodlike, meant that he should be non-social, because supra-civic.\nPlato the idealist had shared the belief that reason is the divine;\nbut he was also a reformer and a radical and he would have those who\nattained rational insight descend again into the civic cave, and in\nits obscurity labor patiently for the enlightenment of its blear-eyed\ninhabitants. Aristotle, the conservative and the definer of what is,\ngloried in the exaltation of intelligence in man above civic excellence\nand social need; and thereby isolated the life of truest knowledge\nfrom contact with social experience and from responsibility for\ndiscrimination of values in the course of life.\n\nMoral theory, however, accepted from social custom more than its\ncataleptic rigidity, its exclusive area of common good, and its\nunfructified and irresponsible reason. The city-state was a superficial\nlayer of cultured citizens, cultured through a participation in affairs\nmade possible by relief from economic pursuits, superimposed upon\nthe dense mass of serfs, artizans, and laborers. For this division,\nmoral philosophy made itself spiritual sponsor, and thus took it up\ninto its own being. Plato wrestled valiantly with the class problem;\nbut his outcome was the necessity of decisive demarcation, after\neducation, of the masses in whom reason was asleep and appetite much\nawake, from the few who were fit to rule because alertly wise. The most\ngenerously imaginative soul of all philosophy could not far outrun the\ninstitutional practices of his people and his times. This might have\nwarned his successors of the danger of deserting the sober path of a\ncritical discernment of the better and the worse within contemporary\nlife for the more exciting adventure of a final determination of\nabsolute good and evil. It might have taught the probability that some\nbrute residuum or unrationalized social habit would be erected into an\napotheosis of pure reason. But the lesson was not learned. Aristotle\npromptly yielded to the besetting sin of all philosophers, the\nidealization of the existent: he declared that the class distinctions\nof superiority and inferiority as between man and woman, master and\nslave, liberal-minded and base mechanic, exist and are justified by\nnature--a nature which aims at embodied reason.\n\nWhat, finally, is this Nature to which the philosophy of society and\nthe individual so bound itself? It is the nature which figures in\nGreek customs and myth; the nature resplendent and adorned which\nconfronts us in Greek poetry and art: the animism of savage man purged\nof grossness and generalized by unerring esthetic taste into beauty\nand system. The myths had told of the loves and hates, the caprices\nand desertions of the gods, and behind them all, inevitable Fate.\nPhilosophy translated these tales into formul\u00e6 of the brute fluctuation\nof rapacious change held in bounds by the final and supreme end: the\nrational good. The animism of the popular mind died to reappear as\ncosmology.\n\nRepeatedly in this course we have heard of sciences which began as\nparts of philosophy and which gradually won their independence. Another\nstatement of the same history is that both science and philosophy began\nin subjection to mythological animism. Both began with acceptance of\na nature whose irregularities displayed the meaningless variability\nof foolish wants held within the limits of order and uniformity by an\nunderlying movement toward a final and stable purpose. And when the\nsciences gradually assumed the task of reducing irregular caprice to\nregular conjunction, philosophy bravely took upon itself the task of\nsubstantiating, under the caption of a spiritual view of the universe,\nthe animistic survival. Doubtless Socrates brought philosophy to earth;\nbut his injunction to man to know himself was incredibly compromised\nin its execution by the fact that later philosophers submerged man in\nthe world to which philosophy was brought: a world which was the heavy\nand sunken center of hierarchic heavens located in their purity and\nrefinement as remotely as possible from the gross and muddy vesture of\nearth.\n\nThe various limitations of Greek custom, its hostile indifference to\nall outside the narrow city-state, its assumption of fixed divisions of\nwise and blind among men, its inability socially to utilize science,\nits subordination of human intention to cosmic aim--all of these\nthings were worked into moral theory. Philosophy had no active hand in\nproducing the condition of barbarism in Europe from the fifth to the\nfifteenth centuries. By an unwitting irony which would have shocked\nnone so much as the lucid moralists of Athens, their philosophic\nidealization, under captions of Nature and Reason, of the inherent\nlimitations of Athenian society and Greek science, furnished the\nintellectual tools for defining, standardizing, and justifying all\nthe fundamental clefts and antagonisms of feudalism. When practical\nconditions are not frozen in men\u2019s imagination into crystalline truths,\nthey are naturally fluid. They come and go. But when intelligence fixes\nfluctuating circumstances into final ideals, petrifaction is likely to\noccur; and philosophy gratuitously took upon itself the responsibility\nfor justifying the worst defects of barbarian Europe by showing their\nnecessary connection with divine reason.\n\nThe division of mankind into the two camps of the redeemed and the\ncondemned had not needed philosophy to produce it. But the Greek\ncleavage of men into separate kinds on the basis of their position\nwithin or without the city-state was used to rationalize this harsh\nintolerance. The hierarchic organization of feudalism, within church\nand state, of those possessed of sacred rule and those whose sole\nexcellence was obedience, did not require moral theory to generate\nor explain it. But it took philosophy to furnish the intellectual\ntools by which such chance episodes were emblazoned upon the cosmic\nheavens as a grandiose spiritual achievement. No; it is all too easy\nto explain bitter intolerance and desire for domination. Stubborn as\nthey are, it was only when Greek moral theory had put underneath them\nthe distinction between the irrational and the rational, between divine\ntruth and good and corrupt and weak human appetite, that intolerance\non system and earthly domination for the sake of eternal excellence\nwere philosophically sanctioned. The health and welfare of the body and\nthe securing for all of a sure and a prosperous livelihood were not\nmatters for which medieval conditions fostered care in any case. But\nmoral philosophy was prevailed upon to damn the body on principle,\nand to relegate to insignificance as merely mundane and temporal the\nproblem of a just industrial order. Circumstances of the times bore\nwith sufficient hardness upon successful scientific investigation; but\nphilosophy added the conviction that in any case truth is so supernal\nthat it must be supernaturally revealed, and so important that it must\nbe authoritatively imparted and enforced. Intelligence was diverted\nfrom the critical consideration of the natural sources and social\nconsequences of better and worse into the channel of metaphysical\nsubtleties and systems, acceptance of which was made essential\nto participation in the social order and in rational excellence.\nPhilosophy bound the once erect form of human endeavor and progress to\nthe chariot wheels of cosmology and theology.\n\nSince the Renaissance, moral philosophy has repeatedly reverted to\nthe Greek ideal of natural excellence realized in social life, under\nthe fostering care of intelligence in action. The return, however,\nhas taken place under the influence of democratic polity, commercial\nexpansion, and scientific reorganization. It has been a liberation\nmore than a reversion. This combined return and emancipation, having\ntransformed our practice of life in the last four centuries, will not\nbe content till it has written itself clear in our theory of that\npractice. Whether the consequent revolution in moral philosophy be\ntermed pragmatism or be given the happier title of the applied and\nexperimental habit of mind is of little account. What is of moment is\nthat intelligence has descended from its lonely isolation at the remote\nedge of things, whence it operated as unmoved mover and ultimate good,\nto take its seat in the moving affairs of men. Theory may therefore\nbecome responsible to the practices that have generated it; the good be\nconnected with nature, but with nature naturally, not metaphysically,\nconceived, and social life be cherished in behalf of its own immediate\npossibilities, not on the ground of its remote connections with a\ncosmic reason and an absolute end.\n\nThere is a notion, more familiar than correct, that Greek thought\nsacrificed the individual to the state. None has ever known better\nthan the Greek that the individual comes to himself and to his own\nonly in association with others. But Greek thought subjected, as we\nhave seen, both state and individual to an external cosmic order; and\nthereby it inevitably restricted the free use in doubt, inquiry, and\nexperimentation, of the human intelligence. The _anima libera_, the\nfree mind of the sixteenth century, of Galileo and his successors, was\nthe counterpart of the disintegration of cosmology and its animistic\nteleology. The lecturer on political economy reminded us that his\nsubject began, in the Middle Ages, as a branch of ethics, though,\nas he hastened to show, it soon got into better association. Well,\nthe same company was once kept by all the sciences, mathematical and\nphysical as well as social. According to all accounts it was the\nintegrity of the number one and the rectitude of the square that\nattracted the attention of Pythagoras to arithmetic and geometry as\npromising fields of study. Astronomy was the projected picture book of\na cosmic object lesson in morals, Dante\u2019s transcript of which is none\nthe less literal because poetic. If physics alone remained outside the\nmoral fold, while noble essences redeemed chemistry, occult forces\nblessed physiology, and the immaterial soul exalted psychology, physics\nis the exception that proves the rule: matter was so inherently immoral\nthat no high-minded science would demean itself by contact with it.\n\nIf we do not join with many in lamenting the stripping from nature\nof those idealistic properties in which animism survived, if we do\nnot mourn the secession of the sciences from ethics, it is because\nthe abandonment by intelligence of a fixed and static moral end was\nthe necessary precondition of a free and progressive science of both\nthings and morals; because the emancipation of the sciences from ready\nmade, remote, and abstract values was necessary to make the sciences\navailable for creating and maintaining more and specific values here\nand now. The divine comedy of modern medicine and hygiene is one of\nthe human epics yet to be written; but when composed it may prove no\nunworthy companion of the medieval epic of other worldly beatific\nvisions. The great ideas of the eighteenth century, that expansive\nepoch of moral perception which ranks in illumination and fervor\nalong with classic Greek thought, the great ideas of the indefinitely\ncontinuous progress of humanity and of the power and significance of\nfreed intelligence, were borne by a single mother--experimental inquiry.\n\nThe growth of industry and commerce is at once cause and effect of\nthe growth in science. Democritus and other ancients conceived the\nmechanical theory of the universe. The notion was not only blank and\nrepellent, because it ignored the rich social material which Plato and\nAristotle had organized into their rival idealistic views; but it was\nscientifically sterile, a piece of dialectics. Contempt for machines as\nthe accouterments of despised mechanics kept the mechanical conception\naloof from these specific and controllable experiences which alone\ncould fructify it. This conception, then, like the idealistic, was\ntranslated into a speculative cosmology and thrown like a vast net\naround the universe at large, as if to keep it from coming to pieces.\nIt is from respect for the lever, the pulley, and the screw that modern\nexperimental and mathematical mechanics derives itself. Motion, traced\nthrough the workings of a machine, was followed out into natural\nevents and studied just as motion, not as a poor yet necessary device\nfor realizing final causes. So studied, it was found to be available\nfor new machines and new applications, which in creating new ends\nalso promoted new wants, and thereby stimulated new activities, new\ndiscoveries, and new inventions. The recognition that natural energy\ncan be systematically applied, through experimental observation, to\nthe satisfaction and multiplication of concrete wants is doubtless the\ngreatest single discovery ever imported into the life of man--save\nperhaps the discovery of language. Science, borrowing from industry,\nrepaid the debt with interest, and has made the control of natural\nforces for the aims of life so inevitable that for the first time\nman is relieved from overhanging fear, with its wolflike scramble to\npossess and accumulate, and is freed to consider the more gracious\nquestion of securing to all an ample and liberal life. The industrial\nlife had been condemned by Greek exaltation of abstract thought and by\nGreek contempt for labor, as representing the brute struggle of carnal\nappetite for its own satiety. The industrial movement, offspring of\nscience, restored it to its central position in morals. When Adam Smith\nmade economic activity the moving spring of man\u2019s unremitting effort,\nfrom the cradle to the grave, to better his own lot, he recorded this\nchange. And when he made sympathy the central spring in man\u2019s conscious\nmoral endeavor, he reported the effect which the increasing intercourse\nof men, due primarily to commerce, had in breaking down suspicion and\njealousy and in liberating man\u2019s kindlier impulses.\n\nDemocracy, the crucial expression of modern life, is not so much an\naddition to the scientific and industrial tendencies as it is the\nperception of their social or spiritual meaning. Democracy is an\nabsurdity where faith in the individual as individual is impossible;\nand this faith is impossible when intelligence is regarded as a cosmic\npower, not an adjustment and application of individual tendencies.\nIt is also impossible when appetites and desires are conceived to be\nthe dominant factor in the constitution of most men\u2019s characters, and\nwhen appetite and desire are conceived to be manifestations of the\ndisorderly and unruly principle of nature. To put the intellectual\ncenter of gravity in the objective cosmos, outside of men\u2019s own\nexperiments and tests, and then to invite the application of individual\nintelligence to the determination of society, is to invite chaos.\nTo hold that want is mere negative flux and hence requires external\nfixation by reason, and then to invite the wants to give free play to\nthemselves in social construction and intercourse, is to call down\nanarchy. Democracy is estimable only through the changed conception of\nintelligence, that forms modern science, and of want, that forms modern\nindustry. It is essentially a changed psychology. The substitution, for\n_a priori_ truth and deduction, of fluent doubt and inquiry meant trust\nin human nature in the concrete; in individual honesty, curiosity,\nand sympathy. The substitution of moving commerce for fixed custom\nmeant a view of wants as the dynamics of social progress, not as the\npathology of private greed. The nineteenth century indeed turned sour\non that somewhat complacent optimism in which the eighteenth century\nrested: the ideas that the intelligent self-love of individuals would\nconduce to social cohesion, and competition among individuals usher in\nthe kingdom of social welfare. But the conception of a social harmony\nof interests in which the achievement by each individual of his own\nfreedom should contribute to a like perfecting of the powers of all,\nthrough a fraternally organized society, is the permanent contribution\nof the industrial movement to morals--even though so far it be but the\ncontribution of a problem.\n\nIntellectually speaking, the centuries since the fourteenth are the\ntrue middle ages. They mark the transitional period of mental habit,\nas the so-called medieval period represents the petrifaction, under\nchanged outward conditions, of Greek ideas. The conscious articulation\nof genuinely modern tendencies has yet to come, and till it comes the\nethic of our own life must remain undescribed. But the system of morals\nwhich has come nearest to the reflection of the movements of science,\ndemocracy, and commerce, is doubtless the utilitarian. Scientific,\nafter the modern mode, it certainly would be. Newton\u2019s influence dyes\ndeep the moral thought of the eighteenth century. The arrangements of\nthe solar system had been described in terms of a homogeneous matter\nand motion, worked by two opposed and compensating forces: all because\na method of analysis, of generalization by analogy, and of mathematical\ndeduction back to new empirical details had been followed. The\nimagination of the eighteenth century was a Newtonian imagination; and\nthis no less in social than in physical matters. Hume proclaims that\nmorals is about to become an experimental science. Just as, almost in\nour own day, Mill\u2019s interest in a method for social science led him to\nreformulate the logic of experimental inquiry, so all the great men of\nthe Enlightenment were in search for the organon of morals which should\nrepeat the physical triumphs of Newton. Bentham notes that physics has\nhad its Bacon and Newton; that morals has had its Bacon in Helv\u00e9tius,\nbut still awaits its Newton; and he leaves us in no doubt that at the\nmoment of writing he was ready, modestly but firmly, to fill the\nwaiting niche with its missing figure.\n\nThe industrial movement furnished the concrete imagery for this ethical\nrenovation. The utilitarians borrowed from Adam Smith the notion that\nthrough industrial exchange in a free society the individual pursuing\nhis own good is led, under the guidance of the \u201cinvisible hand,\u201d to\npromote the general good more effectually than if he had set out to do\nit. This idea was dressed out in the atomistic psychology which Hartley\nbuilt out from Locke--and was returned at usurious rates to later\neconomists.\n\nFrom the great French writers who had sought to justify and promote\ndemocratic individualism, came the conception that, since it is\nperverted political institutions which deprave individuals and bring\nthem into hostility, nation against nation, class against class,\nindividual against individual, the great political problem is such a\nreform of law and legislation, civil and criminal, of administration,\nand of education as will force the individual to find his own interests\nin pursuits conducing to the welfare of others.\n\nTremendously effective as a tool of criticism, operative in\nabolition and elimination, utilitarianism failed to measure up to\nthe constructive needs of the time. Its theoretical equalization of\nthe good of each with that of every other was practically perverted\nby its excessive interest in the middle and manufacturing classes.\nIts speculative defect of an atomistic psychology combined with this\nnarrowness of vision to make light of the constructive work that\nneeds to be done by the state, before all can have, otherwise than in\nname, an equal chance to count in the common good. Thus the age-long\nsubordination of economics to politics was revenged in the submerging\nof both politics and ethics in a narrow theory of economic profit; and\nutilitarianism, in its orthodox descendants, proffered the disjointed\npieces of a mechanism, with a monotonous reiteration that looked at\naright they form a beautifully harmonious organism.\n\nPrevision, and to some extent experience, of this failure, conjoined\nwith differing social traditions and ambitions, evoked German idealism,\nthe transcendental morals of Kant and his successors. German thought\nstrove to preserve the traditions which bound culture to the past,\nwhile revising these traditions to render them capable of meeting\nnovel conditions. It found weapons at hand in the conceptions borrowed\nby Roman law from Stoic philosophy, and in the conceptions by which\nProtestant humanism had re-edited scholastic Catholicism. Grotius had\nmade the idea of natural law, natural right and obligation, the central\nidea of German morals, as thoroughly as Locke had made the individual\ndesire for liberty and happiness the focus of English and then of\nFrench speculation. Materialized idealism is the happy monstrosity in\nwhich the popular demand for vivid imagery is most easily reconciled\nwith the equally strong demand for supremacy of moral values; and the\ncomplete idealistic materialism of Stoicism has always given its ideas\na practical influence out of all proportion to their theoretical vogue\nas a system. To the Protestant, that is the German, humanist, Natural\nLaw, the bond of harmonious reason in nature, the spring of social\nintercourse among men, the inward light of individual conscience,\nunited Cicero, St. Paul, and Luther in blessed union; gave a rational,\nnot superrational basis for morals, and provided room for social\nlegislation which at the same time could easily be held back from too\nruthless application to dominant class interests.\n\nKant saw the mass of empirical and hence irrelevant detail that had\nfound refuge within this liberal and diffusive reason. He saw that the\nidea of reason could be made self-consistent only by stripping it naked\nof these empirical accretions. He then provided, in his critiques, a\nsomewhat cumbrous moving van for transferring the resultant pure or\nnaked reason out of nature and the objective world, and for locating\nit in new quarters, with a new stock of goods and new customers. The\nnew quarters were particular subjects, individuals; the stock of goods\nwere the forms of perception and the functions of thought by which\nempirical flux is woven into durable fabrics; the new customers were a\nsociety of individuals in which all are ends in themselves. There ought\nto be an injunction issued that Kant\u2019s saying about Hume\u2019s awakening of\nhim should not be quoted save in connection with his other saying that\nRousseau brought him to himself, in teaching him that the philosopher\nis of less account than the laborer in the fields unless he contributes\nto human freedom. But none the less, the new tenant, the universal\nreason, and the old homestead, the empirical tumultuous individual,\ncould not get on together. Reason became a mere voice which, having\nnothing in particular to say, said Law, Duty, in general, leaving to\nthe existing social order of the Prussia of Frederick the Great the\ncongenial task of declaring just what was obligatory in the concrete.\nThe marriage of freedom and authority was thus celebrated with the\nunderstanding that sentimental primacy went to the former and practical\ncontrol to the latter.\n\nThe effort to force a universal reason that had been used to the broad\ndomains of the cosmos into the cramped confines of individuality\nconceived as merely \u201cempirical,\u201d a highly particularized creature of\nsense, could have but one result: an explosion. The products of that\nexplosion constitute the Post-Kantian philosophies. It was the work of\nHegel to attempt to fill in the empty reason of Kant with the concrete\ncontents of history. The voice sounded like the voice of Aristotle,\nThomas of Aquino, and Spinoza translated into Swabian German; but the\nhands were as the hands of Montesquieu, Herder, Condorcet, and the\nrising historical school. The outcome was the assertion that history\nis reason, and reason is history: the actual is rational, the rational\nis the actual. It gave the pleasant appearance (which Hegel did not\nstrenuously discourage) of being specifically an idealization of the\nPrussian nation, and incidentally a systematized apologetic for the\nuniverse at large. But in intellectual and practical effect, it lifted\nthe idea of process above that of fixed origins and fixed ends, and\npresented the social and moral order, as well as the intellectual, as a\nscene of becoming, and it located reason somewhere within the struggles\nof life.\n\nUnstable equilibrium, rapid fermentation, and a succession of explosive\nreports are thus the chief notes of modern ethics. Scepticism and\ntraditionalism, empiricism and rationalism, crude naturalisms and\nall-embracing idealisms, flourish side by side--all the more flourish,\none suspects, because side by side. Spencer exults because natural\nscience reveals that a rapid transit system of evolution is carrying\nus automatically to the goal of perfect man in perfect society; and\nhis English idealistic contemporary, Green, is so disturbed by the\nremoval from nature of its moral qualities, that he tries to show that\nthis makes no difference, since nature in any case is constituted and\nknown through a spiritual principle which is as permanent as nature is\nchanging. An Amiel genteelly laments the decadence of the inner life,\nwhile his neighbor Nietzsche brandishes in rude ecstasy the banner of\nbrute survival as a happy omen of the final victory of nobility of\nmind. The reasonable conclusion from such a scene is that there is\ntaking place a transformation of attitude towards moral theory rather\nthan mere propagation of varieties among theories. The classic theories\nall agreed in one regard. They all alike assumed the existence of\n_the_ end, the _summum bonum_, the final goal; and of _the_ separate\nmoral force that moves to that goal. Moralists have disputed as to\nwhether the end is an aggregate of pleasurable state of consciousness,\nenjoyment of the divine essence, acknowledgment of the law of duty,\nor conformity to environment. So they have disputed as to the path by\nwhich the final goal is to be reached: fear or benevolence? reverence\nfor pure law or pity for others? self-love or altruism? But these very\ncontroversies implied that there was but the one end and the one means.\n\nThe transformation in attitude, to which I referred, is the growing\nbelief that the proper business of intelligence is discrimination\nof multiple and present goods and of the varied immediate means of\ntheir realization; not search for the one remote aim. The progress of\nbiology has accustomed our minds to the notion that intelligence is not\nan outside power presiding supremely but statically over the desires\nand efforts of man, but is a method of adjustment of capacities and\nconditions within specific situations. History, as the lecturer on\nthat subject told us, has discovered itself in the idea of process.\nThe genetic standpoint makes us aware that the systems of the past are\nneither fraudulent impostures nor absolute revelations; but are the\nproducts of political, economic, and scientific conditions whose change\ncarries with it change of theoretical formulations. The recognition\nthat intelligence is properly an organ of adjustment in difficult\nsituations makes us aware that past theories were of value so far as\nthey helped carry to an issue the social perplexities from which they\nemerged. But the chief impact of the evolutionary method is upon the\npresent. Theory having learned what it cannot do, is made responsible\nfor the better performance of what needs to be done, and what only a\nbroadly equipped intelligence can undertake: study of the conditions\nout of which come the obstacles and the resources of adequate life,\nand developing and testing the ideas that, as working hypotheses, may\nbe used to diminish the causes of evil and to buttress and expand the\nsources of good. This program is indeed vague, but only unfamiliarity\nwith it could lead one to the conclusion that it is less vague than the\nidea that there is a single moral ideal and a single moral motive force.\n\nFrom this point of view there is no separate body of moral rules; no\nseparate system of motive powers; no separate subject-matter of moral\nknowledge, and hence no such thing as an isolated ethical science.\nIf the business of morals is not to speculate upon man\u2019s final end\nand upon an ultimate standard of right, it is to utilize physiology,\nanthropology, and psychology to discover all that can be discovered of\nman, his organic powers and propensities. If its business is not to\nsearch for the one separate moral motive, it is to converge all the\ninstrumentalities of the social arts, of law, education, economics,\nand political science upon the construction of intelligent methods of\nimproving the common lot.\n\nIf we still wish to make our peace with the past, and to sum up the\nplural and changing goods of life in a single word, doubtless the term\nhappiness is the one most apt. But we should again exchange free morals\nfor sterile metaphysics, if we imagine that \u201chappiness\u201d is any less\nunique than the individuals who experience it; any less complex than\nthe constitution of their capacities, or any less variable than the\nobjects upon which their capacities are directed.\n\nTo many timid, albeit sincere, souls of an earlier century, the decay\nof the doctrine that all true and worthful science is knowledge of\nfinal causes seemed fraught with danger to science and to morals. The\nrival conception of a wide open universe, a universe without bounds in\ntime or space, without final limits of origin or destiny, a universe\nwith the lid off, was a menace. We now face in moral science a similar\ncrisis and like opportunity, as well as share in a like dreadful\nsuspense. The abolition of a fixed and final goal and causal force in\nnature did not, as matter of fact, render rational conviction less\nimportant or less attainable. It was accompanied by the provision of\na technique of persistent and detailed inquiry in all special fields\nof fact, a technique which led to the detection of unsuspected forces\nand the revelation of undreamed of uses. In like fashion we may\nanticipate that the abolition of _the_ final goal and _the_ single\nmotive power and _the_ separate and infallible faculty in morals, will\nquicken inquiry into the diversity of specific goods of experience, fix\nattention upon their conditions, and bring to light values now dim and\nobscure. The change may relieve men from responsibility for what they\ncannot do, but it will promote thoughtful consideration of what they\nmay do and the definition of responsibility for what they do amiss\nbecause of failure to think straight and carefully. Absolute goods\nwill fall into the background, but the question of making more sure\nand extensive the share of all men in natural and social goods will be\nurgent, a problem not to be escaped nor evaded.\n\nMorals, philosophy, returns to its first love; love of the wisdom that\nis nurse, as nature is mother, of good. But it returns to the Socratic\nprinciple equipped with a multitude of special methods of inquiry and\ntesting; with an organized mass of knowledge, and with control of the\narrangements by which industry, law, and education may concentrate upon\nthe problem of the participation by all men and women, up to their\ncapacity of absorption, in all attained values. Morals may then well\nleave to poetry and to art, the task (so unartistically performed by\nphilosophy since Plato) of gathering together and rounding out, into\none abiding picture, the separate and special goods of life. It may\nleave this task with the assurance that the resultant synthesis will\nnot depict any final and all-inclusive good, but will add just one more\nspecific good to the enjoyable excellencies of life.\n\nHumorous irony shines through most of the harsh glances turned towards\nthe idea of an experimental basis and career for morals. Some shiver\nin the fear that morals will be plunged into anarchic confusion--a\nview well expressed by a recent writer in the saying that if the _a\npriori_ and transcendental basis of morals be abandoned \u201cwe shall have\nmerely the same certainty that now exists in physics and chemistry\u201d!\nElsewhere lurks the apprehension that the progress of scientific method\nwill deliver the purposive freedom of man bound hand and foot to the\nfatal decrees of iron necessity, called natural law. The notion that\nlaws govern and forces rule is an animistic survival. It is a product\nof reading nature in terms of politics in order to turn around and then\nread politics in the light of supposed sanctions of nature. This idea\npassed from medieval theology into the science of Newton, to whom the\nuniverse was the dominion of a sovereign whose laws were the laws of\nnature. From Newton it passed into the deism of the eighteenth century,\nwhence it migrated into the philosophy of the Enlightenment, to make\nits last stand in Spencer\u2019s philosophy of the fixed environment and the\nstatic goal.\n\nNo, nature is not an unchangeable order, unwinding itself majestically\nfrom the reel of law under the control of deified forces. It is an\nindefinite congeries of changes. Laws are not governmental regulations\nwhich limit change, but are convenient formulations of selected\nportions of change followed through a longer or shorter period of\ntime, and then registered in statistical forms that are amenable to\nmathematical manipulation. That this device of shorthand symbolization\npresages the subjection of man\u2019s intelligent effort to fixity of law\nand environment is interesting as a culture survival, but is not\nimportant for moral theory. Savage and child delight in creating\nbogeys from which, their origin and structure being conveniently\nconcealed, interesting thrills and shudders may be had. Civilized\nman in the nineteenth century outdid these bugaboos in his image of\na fixed universe hung on a cast-iron framework of fixed, necessary,\nand universal laws. Knowledge of nature does not mean subjection to\npredestination, but insight into courses of change; an insight which is\nformulated in \u201claws,\u201d that is, methods of subsequent procedure.\n\nKnowledge of the process and conditions of physical and social\nchange through experimental science and genetic history has one\nresult with a double name: increase of control, and increase of\nresponsibility; increase of power to direct natural change, and\nincrease of responsibility for its equitable direction toward fuller\ngood. Theory located within progressive practice instead of reigning\nstatically supreme over it, means practice itself made responsible\nto intelligence; to intelligence which relentlessly scrutinizes the\nconsequences of every practice, and which exacts liability by an\nequally relentless publicity. As long as morals occupies itself with\nmere ideals, forces and conditions as they are will be good enough for\n\u201cpractical\u201d men, since they are then left free to their own devices\nin turning these to their own account. As long as moralists plume\nthemselves upon possession of the domain of the categorical imperative\nwith its bare precepts, men of executive habits will always be at\ntheir elbows to regulate the concrete social conditions through which\nthe form of law gets its actual filling of specific injunctions. When\nfreedom is conceived to be transcendental, the coercive restraint of\nimmediate necessity will lay its harsh hand upon the mass of men.\n\nIn the end, men do what they can do. They refrain from doing what they\ncannot do. They do what their own specific powers in conjunction with\nthe limitations and resources of the environment permit. The effective\ncontrol of their powers is not through precepts, but through the\nregulation of their conditions. If this regulation is to be not merely\nphysical or coercive, but moral, it must consist of the intelligent\nselection and determination of the environments in which we act; and\nin an intelligent exaction of responsibility for the use of men\u2019s\npowers. Theorists inquire after the \u201cmotive\u201d to morality, to virtue and\nthe good, under such circumstances. What then, one wonders, is their\nconception of the make-up of human nature and of its relation to virtue\nand to goodness? The pessimism that dictates such a question, if it be\njustified, precludes any consideration of morals.\n\nThe diversion of intelligence from discrimination of plural and\nconcrete goods, from noting their conditions and obstacles, and from\ndevising methods for holding men responsible for their concrete use\nof powers and conditions, has done more than brute love of power\nto establish inequality and injustice among men. It has done more,\nbecause it has confirmed with social sanctions the principle of feudal\ndomination. All men require moral sanctions in their conduct: the\nconsent of their kind. Not getting it otherwise, they go insane to\nfeign it. No man ever lived with the exclusive approval of his own\nconscience. Hence the vacuum left in practical matters by the remote\nirrelevancy of transcendental morals has to be filled in somehow.\nIt is filled in. It is filled in with class-codes, class-standards,\nclass-approvals--with codes which recommend the practices and habits\nalready current in a given circle, set, calling, profession, trade,\nindustry, club, or gang. These class-codes always lean back upon\nand support themselves by the professed ideal code. This latter\nmeets them more than half-way. Being in its pretense a theory for\nregulating practice, it must demonstrate its practicability. It is\nuneasy in isolation, and travels hastily to meet with compromise and\naccommodation the actual situation in all its brute unrationality.\nWhere the pressure is greatest--in the habitual practice of the\npolitical and economic chieftains--there it accommodates the most.\n\nClass-codes of morals are sanctions, under the caption of ideals, of\nuncriticised customs; they are recommendations, under the head of\nduties, of what the members of the class are already most given to\ndoing. If there are to obtain more equable and comprehensive principles\nof action, exacting a more impartial exercise of natural power and\nresource in the interests of a common good, members of a class must\nno longer rest content in responsibility to a class whose traditions\nconstitute its conscience, but be made responsible to a society whose\nconscience is its free and effectively organized intelligence.\n\nIn such a conscience alone will the Socratic injunction to man to know\nhimself be fulfilled.\n\n\n\n\nTHE EXPERIMENTAL THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE[7]\n\n\nIt should be possible to discern and describe a knowing as one\nidentifies any object, concern, or event. It must have its own marks;\nit must offer characteristic features--as much so as a thunder-storm,\nthe constitution of a State, or a leopard. In the search for this\naffair, we are first of all desirous for something which is for itself,\ncontemporaneously with its occurrence, a cognition, not something\ncalled knowledge by another and from without--whether this other be\nlogician, psychologist, or epistemologist. The \u201cknowledge\u201d may turn\nout false, and hence no knowledge; but this is an after-affair; it may\nprove to be rich in fruitage of wisdom, but if this outcome be only\nwisdom after the event, it does not concern us. What we want is just\nsomething which takes itself as knowledge, rightly or wrongly.\n\n\nI\n\nThis means a specific case, a sample. Yet instances are proverbially\ndangerous--so na\u00efvely and graciously may they beg the questions at\nissue. Our recourse is to an example so simple, so much on its face\nas to be as innocent as may be of assumptions. This case we shall\ngradually complicate, mindful at each step to state just what new\nelements are introduced. Let us suppose a smell, just a floating\nodor. This odor may be anchored by supposing that it moves to action;\nit starts changes that end in picking and enjoying a rose. This\ndescription is intended to apply to the course of events witnessed and\nrecounted from without. What sort of a course must it be to constitute\na knowledge, or to have somewhere within its career that which\ndeserves this title? The smell, _imprimis_, is there; the movements\nthat it excites are there; the final plucking and gratification are\nexperienced. But, let us say, the smell is not the smell of the rose;\nthe resulting change of the organism is not a sense of walking and\nreaching; the delicious finale is not the fulfilment of the movement,\nand, through that, of the original smell; \u201cis not,\u201d in each case\nmeaning is \u201cnot experienced as\u201d such. We may take, in short, these\nexperiences in a brutely serial fashion. The smell, _S_, is replaced\n(and displaced) by a felt movement, _K_, this is replaced by the\ngratification, _G_. Viewed from without, as we are now regarding it,\nthere is _S-K-G_. But from within, for itself, it is now _S_, now\n_K_, now _G_, and so on to the end of the chapter. Nowhere is there\nlooking before and after; memory and anticipation are not born. Such an\nexperience neither is, in whole or in part, a knowledge, nor does it\nexercise a cognitive function.\n\nHere, however, we may be halted. If there is anything present in\n\u201cconsciousness\u201d at all, we may be told (at least we constantly are so\ntold) there must be knowledge of it as present--present, at all events,\nin \u201cconsciousness.\u201d There is, so it is argued, knowledge at least\nof a simple apprehensive type, knowledge of the acquaintance order,\nknowledge _that_, even though not knowledge _what_. The smell, it is\nadmitted, does not know _about_ anything else, nor is anything known\n_about_ the smell (the same thing, perhaps); but the smell is known,\neither by itself, or by the mind, or by some subject, some unwinking,\nunremitting eye. No, we must reply; there is no apprehension without\nsome (however slight) context; no acquaintance which is not either\nrecognition or expectation. Acquaintance is presence honored with an\nescort; presence is introduced as familiar, or an associate springs up\nto greet it. Acquaintance always implies a little friendliness; a trace\nof re-knowing, of anticipatory welcome or dread of the trait to follow.\n\nThis claim cannot be dismissed as trivial. If valid, it carries with\nit the distance between being and knowing: and the recognition of\nan element of mediation, that is, of art, in all knowledge. This\ndisparity, this transcendence, is not something which holds of _our_\nknowledge, of finite knowledge, just marking the gap between our\ntype of consciousness and some other with which we may contrast it\nafter the manner of the agnostic or the transcendentalist (who hold\nso much property in joint ownership!), but exists because knowing is\nknowing, that way of bringing things to bear upon things which we call\nreflection--a manipulation of things experienced in the light one of\nanother.\n\n\u201cFeeling,\u201d I read in a recent article, \u201cfeeling is immediately\nacquainted with its own quality, with its own subjective being.\u201d[8] How\nand whence this duplication in the inwards of feeling into feeling\nthe knower and feeling the known? into feeling as being and feeling\nas acquaintance? Let us frankly deny such monsters. Feeling _is_\nits own quality; is its own _specific_ (whence and why, once more,\n_subjective_?) being. If this statement be dogmatism, it is at least\nworth insistent declaration, were it only by way of counter-irritant\nto that other dogmatism which asserts that being in \u201cconsciousness\u201d is\nalways presence for or in knowledge. So let us repeat once more, that\nto be a smell (or anything else) is one thing, to be _known_ as smell,\nanother; to be a \u201cfeeling\u201d one thing, to be _known_ as a \u201cfeeling\u201d\nanother.[9] The first is thinghood; existence indubitable, direct;\nin this way all things _are_ that are in \u201cconsciousness\u201d at all.[10]\nThe second is _reflected_ being, things indicating and calling for\nother things--something offering the possibility of truth and hence\nof falsity. The first is genuine immediacy; the second is (in the\ninstance discussed) a pseudo-immediacy, which in the same breath that\nit proclaims its immediacy smuggles in another term (and one which\nis unexperienced both in itself and in its relation) the subject or\n\u201cconsciousness,\u201d to which the immediate is related.[11]\n\nBut we need not remain with dogmatic assertions. To be acquainted\nwith a thing or with a person has a definite empirical meaning; we\nhave only to call to mind what it is to be genuinely and empirically\nacquainted, to have done forever with this uncanny presence which,\nthough bare and simple presence, is yet known, and thus is clothed\nupon and complicated. To be acquainted with a thing is to be assured\n(from the standpoint of the experience itself) that it is of such and\nsuch a character; that it will behave, if given an opportunity, in\nsuch and such a way; that the obviously and flagrantly present trait\nis associated with fellow traits that will show themselves, if the\nleadings of the present trait are followed out. To be acquainted is\nto anticipate to some extent, on the basis of prior experience. I am,\nsay, barely acquainted with Mr. Smith: then I have no extended body of\nassociated qualities along with those palpably present, but at least\nsome one suggested trait occurs; his nose, his tone of voice, the\nplace where I saw him, his calling in life, an interesting anecdote\nabout him, etc. To be acquainted is to know what a thing is _like_ in\nsome particular. If one is acquainted with the smell of a flower it\nmeans that the smell is not just smell, but reminds one of some other\nexperienced thing which stands in continuity with the smell. There is\nthus supplied a condition of control over or purchase upon what is\npresent, the possibility of translating it into terms of some other\ntrait not now sensibly present.\n\nLet us return to our example. Let us suppose that _S_ is not just\ndisplaced by _K_ and then by _G_. Let us suppose it persists; and\npersists not as an unchanged _S_ alongside _K_ and _G_, nor yet as\nfused with them into a new further quale _J_. For in such events, we\nhave only the type already considered and rejected. For an observer\nthe new quale might be more complex, or fuller of meaning, than the\noriginal _S_, _K_, or _G_, but might not be experienced as complex. We\nmight thus suppose a composite photograph which should suggest nothing\nof the complexity of its origin and structure. In this case we should\nhave simply another picture.\n\nBut we may also suppose that the blur of the photograph suggests\nthe superimposition of pictures and something of their character.\nThen we get another, and for our problem, much more fruitful kind of\npersistence. We will imagine that the final _G_ assumes this form:\nGratification-terminating-movement-induced-by-smell. The smell is still\npresent; it has persisted. It is not present in its original form,\nbut is represented with a quality, an office, that of having excited\nactivity and thereby terminating its career in a certain quale of\ngratification. It is not _S_, but \u03a3; that is _S_ with an increment of\nmeaning due to maintenance and fulfilment through a process. _S_ is no\nlonger just smell, but smell which has excited and thereby secured.\n\nHere we have a cognitive, but not a cognitional thing. In saying that\nthe smell is finally experienced as _meaning_ gratification (through\nintervening handling, seeing, etc.) and meaning it not in a hapless\nway, but in a fashion which operates to effect what is meant, we\nretrospectively attribute intellectual force and function to the\nsmell--and this is what is signified by \u201ccognitive.\u201d Yet the smell is\nnot cognitional, because it did not knowingly intend to mean this; but\nis found, after the event, to have meant it. Nor again is the final\nexperience, the \u03a3 or transformed _S_, a knowledge.\n\nHere again the statement may be challenged. Those who agree with the\ndenial that bare presence of a quale in \u201cconsciousness\u201d constitutes\nacquaintance and simple apprehension, may now turn against us, saying\nthat experience of fulfilment of meaning is just what we mean by\nknowledge, and this is just what the \u03a3 of our illustration is. The\npoint is fundamental. As the smell at first was presence or being, less\nthan knowing, so the fulfilment is an experience that is more than\nknowing. Seeing and handling the flower, enjoying the full meaning of\nthe smell as the odor of just this beautiful thing, is not knowledge\nbecause it is more than knowledge.\n\nAs this may seem dogmatic, let us suppose that the fulfilment,\nthe realization, experience, is a knowledge. Then how shall it be\ndistinguished from and yet classed with other things called knowledge,\nviz., reflective, discursive cognitions? Such knowledges are what\nthey are precisely because they are not fulfilments, but intentions,\naims, schemes, symbols of overt fulfilment. Knowledge, perceptual and\nconceptual, of a hunting dog is prerequisite in order that I may really\nhunt with the hounds. The hunting in turn may increase my knowledge of\ndogs and their ways. But the knowledge of the dog, _qua_ knowledge,\nremains characteristically marked off from the use of that knowledge\nin the fulfilment experience, the hunt. The hunt is a _realization_ of\nknowledge; it alone, if you please, verifies, validates, knowledge, or\nsupplies tests of truth. The prior knowledge of the dog, was, if you\nwish, hypothetical, lacking in assurance or categorical certainty. The\nhunting, the fulfilling, realizing experience alone _gives_ knowledge,\nbecause it alone completely assures; makes faith good in works.\n\nNow there is and can be no objection to this definition of knowledge,\n_provided it is consistently adhered to_. One has as much right to\nidentify knowledge with complete assurance, as I have to identify it\nwith anything else. Considerable justification in the common use of\nlanguage, in common sense, may be found for defining knowledge as\ncomplete assurance. But even upon this definition, the fulfilling\nexperience is not, as such, complete assurance, and hence not a\nknowledge. Assurance, cognitive validation, and guaranteeship, follow\nfrom it, but are not coincident with its occurrence. It _gives_,\nbut _is_ not, assurance. The concrete construction of a story, the\nmanipulation of a machine, the hunting with the dogs, is not, so far as\nit _is_ fulfilment, a confirmation of meanings previously entertained\nas cognitional; that is, is not contemporaneously experienced as\nsuch. To think of prior schemes, symbols, meanings, as fulfilled in a\nsubsequent experience, is reflectively to present in their relations\nto one another both the meanings and the experiences in which they\nare, as a matter of fact, embodied. This reflective attitude cannot\nbe identical with the fulfilment experience itself; it occurs only\nin retrospect when the worth of the meanings, or cognitive ideas, is\ncritically inspected in the light of their fulfilment; or it occurs\nas an interruption of the fulfilling experience. The hunter stops\nhis hunting as a fulfilment to reflect that he made a mistake in his\nidea of his dog, or again, that his dog is everything he thought he\nwas--that his notion of him is confirmed. Or, the man stops the actual\nconstruction of his machine and turns back upon his plan in correction\nor in admiring estimate of its value. _The fulfilling experience is not\nof itself knowledge_, then, even if we identify knowledge with fulness\nof assurance or guarantee. Moreover it gives, affords, assurance only\nin reference to a situation which we have not yet considered.[12]\n\nBefore the category of confirmation or refutation can be introduced,\nthere must be something which _means_ to mean something and which\ntherefore can be guaranteed or nullified by the issue--and this\nis precisely what we have not as yet found. We must return to our\ninstance and introduce a further complication. Let us suppose that\nthe smell quale recurs at a later date, and that it recurs neither\nas the original _S_ nor yet as the final \u03a3 but as an _S_\u2019 which is\nfated or charged with the sense of the possibility of a fulfilment\nlike unto \u03a3. The _S_\u2019 that recurs is aware of something else which\nit means, which it intends to effect through an operation incited\nby it and without which its own presence is abortive, and, so to\nsay, unjustified, senseless. Now we have an experience which is\n_cognitional_, not merely cognitive; which is contemporaneously aware\nof meaning something beyond itself, instead of having this meaning\nascribed by another at a later period. _The odor knows the rose; the\nrose is known by the odor; and the import of each term is constituted\nby the relationship in which it stands to the other._ That is, the\nimport of the smell is the indicating and demanding relation which it\nsustains to the enjoyment of the rose as its fulfilling experience;\nwhile this enjoyment is just the content or definition of what the\nsmell consciously meant, _i.e._, meant to mean. Both the thing\nmeaning and the thing meant are elements in the same situation. Both\nare present, but both are not present in the same way. In fact, one\nis present as-_not_-present-in-the-same-way-in-which-the-other-is.\nIt is present as something to be rendered present in the same way\nthrough the intervention of an operation. We must not balk at a purely\nverbal difficulty. It suggests a verbal inconsistency to speak of\na thing present-as-absent. But all ideal contents, all aims (that\nis, things aimed at) are present in just such fashion. Things can\nbe presented as absent, just as they can be presented as hard or\nsoft, black or white, six inches or fifty rods away from the body.\nThe assumption that an ideal content must be either totally absent,\nor else present _in just the same fashion_ as it will be when it is\nrealized, is not only dogmatic, but self-contradictory. The only\nway in which an ideal content can be experienced at all is to be\npresented as _not-present-in-the-same-way_ in which something else is\npresent, the latter kind of presence affording the standard or type\nof _satisfactory_ presence. When present in the same way it ceases to\nbe an ideal content. Not a contrast of bare existence over against\nnon-existence, or of present consciousness over against reality out of\npresent consciousness, but of a satisfactory with an unsatisfactory\nmode of presence makes the difference between the \u201creally\u201d and the\n\u201cideally\u201d present.\n\nIn terms of our illustration, handling and enjoying the rose are\npresent, but they are not present in the same way that the smell is\npresent. They are present as _going_ to be there in the same way,\nthrough an operation which the smell stands sponsor for. The situation\nis inherently an uneasy one--one in which everything hangs upon the\nperformance of the operation indicated; upon the adequacy of movement\nas a connecting link, or real adjustment of the thing meaning and\nthe thing meant. Generalizing from the instance, we get the following\ndefinition: An experience is a knowledge, if in its quale there is an\nexperienced distinction and connection of two elements of the following\nsort: _one means or intends the presence of the other in the same\nfashion in which itself is already present, while the other is that\nwhich, while not present in the same fashion, must become so present\nif the meaning or intention of its companion or yoke-fellow is to be\nfulfilled through the operation it sets up_.\n\n\nII\n\nWe now return briefly to the question of knowledge as acquaintance, and\nat greater length to that of knowledge as assurance, or as fulfilment\nwhich confirms and validates. With the recurrence of the odor as\nmeaning something beyond itself, there is apprehension, knowledge\n_that_. One may now say I know what a _rose_ smells like; or I know\nwhat _this_ smell is like; I am acquainted with the rose\u2019s agreeable\nodor. In short, on the basis of a present quality, the odor anticipates\nand forestalls some further trait.\n\nWe have also the conditions of knowledge of the confirmation and\nrefutation type. In the working out of the situation just described,\nin the transformation, self-indicated and self-demanded, of the\ntensional into a harmonious or satisfactory situation, fulfilment\n_or_ disappointment results. The odor either does or does not fulfil\nitself in the rose. The smell as intention is borne out by the facts,\nor is nullified. As has already been pointed out, the subsequent\nexperience of the fulfilment type is not primarily a confirmation or\nrefutation. Its import is too vital, too urgent to be reduced _in\nitself_ just to the value of testing an intention or meaning.[13]\nBut it gets _in reflection_ just such verificatory significance.\nIf the smell\u2019s intention is unfulfilled, the discrepancy may throw\none back, in reflection, upon the original situation. Interesting\ndevelopments then occur. The smell meant a rose; and yet it did not\n(so it turns out) mean a rose; it meant another flower, or something,\none can\u2019t just tell what. Clearly there is _something else_ which\nenters in; something else beyond the odor as it was first experienced\ndetermined the validity of its meaning. Here then, perhaps, we have a\ntranscendental, as distinct from an experimental reference? _Only if\nthis something else makes no difference, or no detectable difference,\nin the smell itself._ If the utmost observation and reflection can find\nno difference in the smell quales that fail and those that succeed\nin executing their intentions, then there is an outside controlling\nand disturbing factor, which, since it is outside of the situation,\ncan never be utilized in knowledge, and hence can never be employed\nin any concrete testing or verifying. In this case, knowing depends\nupon an extra-experimental or transcendental factor. But this very\ntranscendental quality makes both confirmation and refutation,\ncorrection, criticism, of the pretensions or meanings of things,\nimpossible. For the conceptions of truth and error, we must, upon\nthe transcendental basis, substitute those of accidental success or\nfailure. Sometimes the intention chances upon one, sometimes upon\nanother. Why or how, the gods only know--and they only if to them\nthe extra-experimental factor is not extra-experimental, but makes\na concrete difference in the concrete smell. But fortunately the\nsituation is not one to be thus described. The factor that determines\nthe success or failure, does institute a difference in the thing which\nmeans the object, and this difference is detectable, once attention,\nthrough failure, has been called to the need of its discovery. At the\nvery least, it makes this difference: the smell is infected with an\nelement of uncertainty of meaning--and this as a part of the thing\nexperienced, not for an observer. This additional _awareness_ at least\nbrings about an additional _wariness_. Meaning is more critical, and\noperation more cautious.\n\nBut we need not stop here. Attention may be fully directed to the\nsubject of smells. Smells may become the object of knowledge. They\nmay take, _pro tempore_,[14] the place which the rose formerly\noccupied. One may, that is, observe the cases in which odors mean\nother things than just roses, may voluntarily produce new cases for\nthe sake of further inspection, and thus account for the cases where\nmeanings had been falsified in the issue; discriminate more carefully\nthe peculiarities of those meanings which the event verified, and\nthus safeguard and bulwark to some extent the employing of similar\nmeanings in the future. Superficially, it may then seem as if odors\nwere treated after the fashion of Locke\u2019s simple ideas, or Hume\u2019s\n\u201cdistinct ideas which are separate existences.\u201d Smells apparently\nassume an independent, isolated status during this period of\ninvestigation. \u201cSensations,\u201d as the laboratory psychologist and the\nanalytic psychologist generally studies them, are examples of just\nsuch detached things. But egregious error results if we forget that\nthis seeming isolation and detachment is the outcome of a deliberate\nscientific device--that it is simply a part of the scientific technique\nof an inquiry directed upon securing _tested_ conclusions. Just and\nonly because odors (or any group of qualities) are parts of a connected\nworld are they signs of things beyond themselves; and only because they\nare signs is it profitable and necessary to study them _as if_ they\nwere complete, self-enclosed entities.\n\nIn the reflective determination of things with reference to their\nspecifically meaning other things, experiences of fulfilment,\ndisappointment, and going astray inevitably play an important and\nrecurrent _r\u00f4le_. They also are realistic facts, related in realistic\nways to the things that intend to mean other things and to the things\nintended. When these fulfilments and refusals _are reflected upon_\nin the determinate relations in which they stand to their relevant\nmeanings, they obtain a quality which is quite lacking to them in their\nimmediate occurrence as just fulfilments or disappointments; viz.,\nthe property of affording assurance and correction--of confirming\nand refuting. Truth and falsity are not properties of any experience\nor thing, in and of itself or in its first intention; _but of things\nwhere the problem of assurance consciously enters in_. _Truth and\nfalsity present themselves as significant facts only in situations\nin which specific meanings and their already experienced fulfilments\nand non-fulfilments are intentionally compared and contrasted with\nreference to the question of the worth, as to reliability of meaning,\nof the given meaning or class of meanings._ Like knowledge itself,\ntruth is an experienced relation of things, and it has no meaning\noutside of such relation,[15] any more than such adjectives as\ncomfortable applied to a lodging, correct applied to speech, persuasive\napplied to an orator, etc., have worth apart from the _specific_ things\nto which they are applied. It would be a great gain for logic and\nepistemology, if we were always to translate the noun \u201ctruth\u201d back into\nthe adjective \u201ctrue,\u201d and this back into the adverb \u201ctruly\u201d; at least,\nif we were to do so until we have familiarized ourselves thoroughly\nwith the fact that \u201ctruth\u201d is an abstract noun, summarizing a quality\npresented by specific affairs in their own specific contents.\n\n\nIII\n\nI have attempted, in the foregoing pages, a description of the function\nof knowledge in its own terms and on its merits--a description which\nin intention is realistic, if by realistic we are content to mean\nnaturalistic, a description undertaken on the basis of what Mr.\nSantayana has well called \u201cfollowing the lead of the subject-matter.\u201d\nUnfortunately at the present time all such undertakings contend with\na serious extraneous obstacle. Accomplishing the undertaking has\ndifficulties enough of its own to reckon with; and first attempts\nare sure to be imperfect, if not radically wrong. But at present the\nattempts are not, for the most part, even listened to on their own\naccount, they are not examined and criticised as naturalistic attempts.\n_They are compared with undertakings of a wholly different nature, with\nan epistemological theory of knowledge, and the assumptions of this\nextraneous theory are taken as a ready-made standard by which to test\ntheir validity._ Literally of course, \u201cepistemology\u201d means only theory\nof knowledge; the term _might_ therefore have been employed simply as\na synonym for a descriptive logic; for a theory that takes knowledge\nas it finds it and attempts to give the same kind of an account of it\nthat would be given of any other natural function or occurrence. But\nthe mere mention of what _might_ have been only accentuates what is.\nThe things that pass for epistemology all assume that knowledge is not\na natural function or event, but a mystery.\n\nEpistemology starts from the assumption that certain conditions lie\nback of knowledge. The mystery would be great enough if knowledge\nwere constituted by non-natural conditions back of knowledge, but the\nmystery is increased by the fact that the conditions are defined so\nas to be incompatible with knowledge. Hence the primary problem of\nepistemology is: How is knowledge _\u00fcberhaupt_, knowledge at large,\n_possible_? Because of the incompatibility between the concrete\noccurrence and function of knowledge and the conditions back of it to\nwhich it must conform, a second problem arises: How is knowledge in\ngeneral, knowledge _\u00fcberhaupt_, _valid_? Hence the complete divorce\nin contemporary thought between epistemology as theory of knowledge\nand logic as an account of the specific ways in which particular\nbeliefs that are better than other alternative beliefs regarding the\nsame matters are formed; and also the complete divorce between a\nnaturalistic, a biological and social psychology, setting forth how\nthe function of knowledge is evolved out of other natural activities,\nand epistemology as an account of how knowledge is possible anyhow.\n\nIt is out of the question to set forth in this place in detail the\ncontrast between transcendental epistemology and an experimental theory\nof knowledge. It may assist the understanding of the latter, however,\nif I point out, baldly and briefly, how, _out of the distinctively\nempirical situation_, there arise those assumptions which make\nknowledge a mystery, and hence a topic for a peculiar branch of\nphilosophizing.\n\nAs just pointed out, epistemology makes the possibility of knowledge a\nproblem, because it assumes back of knowledge conditions incompatible\nwith the obvious traits of knowledge as it empirically exists. These\nassumptions are that the organ or instrument of knowledge is not a\nnatural object, but some ready-made state of mind or consciousness,\nsomething purely \u201csubjective,\u201d a peculiar kind of existence which\nlives, moves, and has its being in a realm different from things to\nbe known; and that the ultimate goal and content of knowledge is a\nfixed, ready-made thing which has no organic connections with the\norigin, purpose, and growth of the attempt to know it, some kind of\n_Ding-an-sich_ or absolute, extra-empirical \u201cReality.\u201d\n\n(1) It is not difficult to see at what point in the development\nof natural knowledge, or the signifying of one thing by another,\nthere arises the notion of the knowing medium as something radically\ndifferent in the order of existence from the thing to be known. It\narises subsequent to the repeated experience of non-fulfilment, of\nfrustration and disappointment. The odor did not after all mean the\nrose; it meant something quite different; and yet its indicative\nfunction was exercised so forcibly that we could not help--or at least\n_did_ not help--believing in the existence of the rose. This is a\nfamiliar and typical kind of experience, one which very early leads\nto the recognition that \u201cthings are not what they seem.\u201d There are\ntwo contrasted methods of dealing with this recognition: one is the\nmethod indicated above (p. 93). We go more thoroughly, patiently, and\ncarefully into the facts of the case. We employ all sorts of methods,\ninvented for the purpose, of examining the things that are signs and\nthe things that are signified, and we experimentally produce various\nsituations, in order that we may tell _what_ smells mean roses _when_\nroses are meant, what it is about the smell and the rose that led us\ninto error; and that we may be able to discriminate those cases in\nwhich a suspended conclusion is all that circumstances admit. We simply\ndo the best we can to regulate our system of signs so that they become\nas instructive as possible, utilizing for this purpose (as indicated\nabove) all possible experiences of success and of failure, and\ndeliberately instituting cases which will throw light on the specific\nempirical causes of success and failure.\n\nNow it so happens that when the facts of error were consciously\ngeneralized and formulated, namely in Greek thought, such a technique\nof specific inquiry and rectification did not exist--in fact, it hardly\ncould come into existence until _after_ error had been seized upon as\nconstituting a fundamental anomaly. Hence the method just outlined of\ndealing with the situation was impossible. We can imagine disconsolate\nghosts willing to postpone any professed solution of the difficulty\ntill subsequent generations have thrown more light on the question\nitself; we can hardly imagine passionate human beings exercising\nsuch reserve. At all events, Greek thought provided what seemed a\nsatisfactory way out: there are two orders of existence, one permanent\nand complete, the noumenal region, to which alone the characteristic\nof Being is properly applicable, the other transitory, phenomenal,\nsensible, a region of non-Being, or at least of mere Coming-to-be, a\nregion in which Being is hopelessly mixed with non-Being, with the\nunreal. The former alone is the domain of knowledge, of truth; the\nlatter is the territory of opinion, confusion, and error. In short, the\ncontrast _within_ experience of the cases in which things successfully\nand unsuccessfully maintained and executed the meanings of other things\nwas erected into a wholesale difference of status in the intrinsic\ncharacters of the things involved in the two types of cases.\n\nWith the beginnings of modern thought, the region of the \u201cunreal,\u201d the\nsource of opinion and error, was located exclusively in the individual.\nThe object was _all_ real and _all_ satisfactory, but the \u201csubject\u201d\ncould approach the object only through his own subjective states,\nhis \u201csensations\u201d and \u201cideas.\u201d The Greek conception of two orders of\nexistence was retained, but instead of the two orders characterizing\nthe \u201cuniverse\u201d itself, one _was_ the universe, the other was the\nindividual mind trying to know that universe. This scheme would\nobviously easily account for error and hallucination; but how could\n_knowledge_, truth, ever come about such a basis? The Greek problem of\nthe possibility of error became the modern problem of the possibility\nof knowledge.\n\nPutting the matter in terms that are independent of history,\nexperiences of failure, disappointment, non-fulfilment of the\nfunction of meaning and contention may lead the individual to the\npath of science--to more careful and extensive investigation of\nthe things themselves, with a view to detecting specific sources\nof error, and guarding against them, and regulating, so far as\npossible, the conditions under which objects are bearers of meanings\nbeyond themselves. But impatient of such slow and tentative methods\n(which insure not infallibility but increased probability of\nvalid conclusions), by reason of disappointment a person may turn\nepistemologist. He may then take the discrepancy, the failure of the\nsmell to execute its own intended meaning, as a wholesale, rather\nthan as a specific fact: as evidence of a contrast in general between\nthings meaning and things meant, instead of as evidence of the need\nof a more cautious and thorough inspection of odors and execution of\noperations indicated by them. One may then say: Woe is me; smells are\nonly _my_ smells, subjective states existing in an order of being made\nout of consciousness, while roses exist in another order made out of a\nradically different sort of stuff; or, odors are made out of \u201cfinite\u201d\nconsciousness as their stuff, while the real things, the objects which\nfulfil them, are made out of an \u201cinfinite\u201d consciousness as their\nmaterial. Hence some purely metaphysical tie has to be called in to\nbring them into connection with each other. And yet this tie does not\nconcern knowledge; it does not make the meaning of one odor any more\ncorrect than that of another, nor enable us to discriminate relative\ndegrees of correctness. As a principle of control, this transcendental\nconnection is related to all alike, and hence condemns and justifies\nall alike.[16]\n\nIt is interesting to note that the transcendentalist almost invariably\nfirst falls into the psychological fallacy; and then having himself\ntaken the psychologist\u2019s attitude (the attitude which is interested in\nmeanings as themselves self-inclosed \u201cideas\u201d) accuses the empiricist\nwhom he criticises of having confused mere psychological existence\nwith logical validity. That is, he begins by supposing that the smell\nof our illustration (and all the cognitional objects for which this\nis used as a symbol) is a purely mental or psychical state, so that\nthe question of logical reference or intention is the problem of how\nthe merely mental can \u201cknow\u201d the extra-mental. But from a strictly\nempirical point of view, the smell which knows is no more merely mental\nthan is the rose known. We may, if we please, say that the smell when\ninvolving conscious meaning or intention is \u201cmental,\u201d but this term\n\u201cmental\u201d does not denote some separate type of existence--existence\nas a state of consciousness. It denotes only the fact that the smell,\na real and non-psychical object, now exercises an intellectual\n_function_. This new property involves, as James has pointed out, an\n_additive_ relation--a new property possessed by a non-mental object,\nwhen that object, occurring in a new context, assumes a further\noffice and use.[17] To be \u201cin the mind\u201d means to be in a situation\nin which the function of intending is directly concerned.[18] Will\nnot some one who believes that the knowing experience is _ab origine_\na strictly \u201cmental\u201d thing, explain how, as matter of fact, it does\nget a specific, extra-mental reference, capable of being tested,\nconfirmed, or refuted? Or, if he believes that viewing it as merely\nmental expresses only the form it takes for psychological analysis,\nwill he not explain why he so persistently attributes the inherently\n\u201cmental\u201d characterization of it to the empiricist whom he criticises?\nAn object _becomes_ meaning when used empirically in a certain way;\nand, under certain circumstances, the exact character and worth of\nthis meaning _becomes_ an object of solicitude. But the transcendental\nepistemologist with his purely psychical \u201cmeanings\u201d and his purely\nextra-empirical \u201ctruths\u201d assumes a _Deus ex Machina_ whose mechanism\nis preserved a secret. And as if to add to the arbitrary character of\nhis assumption, he has to admit that the transcendental _a priori_\nfaculty by which mental states get objective reference does not in the\nleast help us to discriminate, _in the concrete_, between an objective\nreference that is false and one that is valid.\n\n(2) The counterpart assumption to that of pure aboriginal \u201cmental\nstates\u201d is, of course, that of an Absolute Reality, fixed and complete\nin itself, of which our \u201cmental states\u201d are bare transitory hints,\ntheir true meaning and their transcendent goal being the Truth _in\nrerum natura_. If the organ and medium of knowing is a self-inclosed\norder of existence different in kind from the Object to be known,\nthen that Object must stand out there in complete aloofness from the\nconcrete purpose and procedure of knowing it. But if we go back to\nthe knowing as a natural occurrence, capable of description, we find\nthat just as a smell does not mean Rose in general (or anything else\nat large), but means a _specific_ group of qualities whose experience\nis intended and anticipated, so the function of knowing is always\nexpressed in connections between a given experience and a specific\npossible wanted experience. The \u201crose\u201d that is meant in a particular\nsituation _is_ the rose of that situation. When this experience is\nconsummated, it is achieved as the fulfilment of the conditions in\nwhich just _that_ intention was entertained--not as the fulfilment of\na faculty of knowledge or a meaning in general. Subsequent meanings\nand subsequent fulfilments may increase, may enrich the consummating\nexperience; the object or content of the rose as known may be other and\nfuller next time and so on. But we have no right to set up \u201ca rose\u201d at\nlarge or in general as the object of the knowing odor; the object of a\nknowledge is always strictly correlative to that particular thing which\nmeans it. It is not something which can be put in a wholesale way over\nagainst that which cognitively refers to it, as when the epistemologist\nputs the \u201creal\u201d rose (object) over against a merely phenomenal or\nempirical rose which _this_ smell happens to mean. As the meaning gets\nmore complex, fuller, more finely discriminated, the object which\nrealizes or fulfils the meaning grows similarly in quality. But we\ncannot set up a rose, an object of fullest, complete, and exhaustive\ncontent as that which is really meant by any and every odor of a\nrose, whether it consciously meant to mean it or not. The test of\nthe cognitional rectitude of the odor lies in the _specific_ object\nwhich it sets out to secure. This is the meaning of the statement that\nthe import of _each_ term is found in its relationship to the other.\nIt applies to object meant as well as to the meaning. Fulfilment,\ncompletion are always relative terms. _Hence the criterion of the truth\nor falsity of the meaning, of the adequacy, of the cognitional thing\nlies within the relationships of the situation and not without._ The\nthing that means another by means of an intervening operation either\nsucceeds or fails in accomplishing the operation indicated, while this\noperation either gives or fails to give the object meant. Hence the\ntruth or falsity of the original cognitional object.\n\n\nIV\n\nFrom this excursion, I return in conclusion to a brief general\ncharacterization of those situations in which we are aware that\nthings mean other things and are so critically aware of it that, in\norder to increase the probability of fulfilment and to decrease the\nchance of frustration, all possible pains are taken to regulate the\nmeanings that attach to things. These situations define that type of\nknowing which we call _scientific_. There are things that claim to\nmean other experiences; in which the trait of meaning other objects\nis not discovered _ab extra_, and after the event, but is part of the\nthing itself. This trait of the thing is as realistic, as specific,\nas any other of its traits. It is, therefore, as open to inspection\nand determination as to its nature, as is any other trait. Moreover,\nsince it is upon this trait that assurance (as distinct from accident)\nof fulfilment depends, an especial interest, an absorbing interest,\nattaches to its determination. Hence the scientific type of knowledge\nand its growing domination over other sorts.\n\nWe _employ_ meanings in all intentional constructions of experience--in\nall anticipations, whether artistic, utilitarian or technological,\nsocial or moral. The success of the anticipation is found to depend\nupon the character of the meaning. Hence the stress upon a right\ndetermination of these meanings. Since they are the instruments upon\nwhich fulfilment depends _so far as that is controlled_ or other than\naccidental, they become themselves objects of surpassing interest. For\nall persons at some times, and for one class of persons (scientists)\nat almost all times, the determination of the meanings employed in\nthe control of fulfilments (of acting upon meanings) is central. The\nexperimental or pragmatic theory of knowledge explains the dominating\nimportance of science; it does not depreciate it or explain it away.\n\nPossibly pragmatic writers are to blame for the tendency of their\ncritics to assume that the practice they have in mind is utilitarian\nin some narrow sense, referring to some preconceived and inferior\nuse--though I cannot recall any evidence for this admission. But\nwhat the pragmatic theory has in mind is precisely the fact that\nall the affairs of life which need regulation--_all values of all\ntypes_--depend upon utilizations of meanings. Action is not to be\nlimited to anything less than the carrying out of ideas, than the\nexecution, whether strenuous or easeful, of meanings. Hence the\nsurpassing importance which comes to attach to the careful, impartial\nconstruction of the meanings, and to their constant survey and resurvey\nwith reference to their value as evidenced by experiences of fulfilment\nand deviation.\n\nThat truth denotes _truths_, that is, specific verifications,\ncombinations of meanings and outcomes reflectively viewed, is,\none may say, the central point of the experimental theory. Truth,\nin general or in the abstract, is a just name for an experienced\nrelation among the things of experience: that sort of relation in\nwhich intents are retrospectively viewed from the standpoint of the\nfulfilment which they secure through their own natural operation\nor incitement. Thus the experimental theory explains directly and\nsimply the absolutistic tendency to translate concrete true things\ninto the general relationship, Truth, and then to hypostatize this\nabstraction into identity with real being, Truth _per se_ and _in se_,\nof which all transitory things and events--that is, all experienced\nrealities--are only shadowy futile approximations. This type of\nrelationship is central for man\u2019s will, for man\u2019s conscious endeavor.\nTo select, to conserve, to extend, to propagate those meanings which\nthe course of events has generated, to note their peculiarities, to\nbe in advance on the alert for them, to search for them anxiously, to\nsubstitute them for meanings that eat up our energy in vain, defines\nthe aim of rational effort and the goal of legitimate ambition. The\nabsolutistic theory is the transfer of this moral or voluntary law of\nselective action into a quasi-physical (that is, metaphysical) law of\nindiscriminate being. Identify metaphysical being with _significant\nexcellent_ being--that is, with those relationships of things which, in\nour moments of deepest insight and largest survey, we would continue\nand reproduce--and the experimentalist, rather than the absolutist,\nis he who has a right to proclaim the supremacy of Truth, and the\nsuperiority of the life devoted to Truth for its own sake over that of\n\u201cmere\u201d activity. But to read back into an order of things which exists\nwithout the participation of our reflection and aim, the quality which\ndefines the purpose of our thought and endeavor is at one and the same\nstroke to mythologize reality and to deprive the life of thoughtful\nendeavor of its ground for being.\n\n\n\n\nTHE INTELLECTUALIST CRITERION FOR TRUTH[19]\n\n\nI\n\nAmong the influences that have worked in contemporary philosophy\ntowards disintegration of intellectualism of the epistemological type,\nand towards the substitution of a philosophy of experience, the work of\nMr. Bradley must be seriously counted. One has, for example, only to\ncompare his metaphysics with the two fundamental contentions of T.\u00a0H.\nGreen, namely, that reality is a single, eternal, and all-inclusive\nsystem of relations, and that this system of relations is one in kind\nwith that process of relating which constitutes our thinking, to be\ninstantly aware of a changed atmosphere. Much of Bradley\u2019s writings\nis a sustained and deliberate polemic against intellectualism of the\nNeo-Kantian type. When, however, we find conjoined to this criticism\nan equally sustained contention that the philosophic conception of\nreality must be based on an exclusively intellectual criterion, a\ncriterion belonging to and confined to theory, we have a situation\nthat is thought-provoking. The situation grows in interest when it is\nremembered that there is a general and growing tendency among those\nwho appeal in philosophy to a strictly intellectualistic _method_ of\ndefining \u201creality,\u201d to insist that the reality reached by this method\nhas a super-intellectual _content_: that intellectual, affectional,\nand volitional features are all joined and fused in \u201cultimate\u201d\nreality. The curious character of the situation is that Reality is\nan \u201cabsolute experience\u201d of which the intellectual is simply one\npartial and transmuted moment. Yet this reality is attained unto,\nin philosophic method, by exclusive emphasis upon the intellectual\naspect of present experience and by systematic exclusion of exactly\nthe emotional, volitional features which with respect to content are\ninsisted upon! Under such circumstances the cynically-minded are moved\nto wonder whether this tremendous insistence upon one factor in present\nexperience at the expense of others, is not because this is the only\nway to maintain the notion of \u201cAbsolute Experience,\u201d and to prevent\nit from collapsing into ordinary everyday experience. This paradox is\nnot peculiar to Mr. Bradley. Looking at the Neo-Kantian movement in\nthe broad in its modern form, one might almost say that its prominent\nfeature is its insistence upon reaching a \u201cReality\u201d that includes\nextra-intellectual factors and phases, traits that are ideal in a moral\nand emotional sense, by an exclusive recognition of the function of\nknowledge in its isolation.\n\nSuch being the case, an examination of Mr. Bradley\u2019s method and\ncriterion may have far-reaching implications. First, let us set\nbefore ourselves the general points of Mr. Bradley\u2019s indictment of\nintellectualism.[20] Knowledge or judgment works by means of thought;\nit is predication of idea (meaning) of existence as its subject. Its\nfinal aim is to effect a complete union or harmony of existence and\nmeaning. But it is fore-doomed to failure, for in realizing its end\nit must employ means which contradict its own purpose. This inherent\nincapacity lurks in judgment with respect to subject, predicate, and\ncopula. The predicate or meaning necessary to complete the reality\npresented in the subject can be referred to the latter and united with\nit only by being itself alienated from existence. It heals the wounds\nor deficiencies of its own subject (and in the end all deficiencies are\nto the modern idealist discrepancies) only on condition of inflicting\nanother wound,--only by sundering meaning from a prior union with\nexistence in some other phase. This latter existence, therefore, is\nalways left out in the cold. It is as if we wanted to get all the cloth\nin the world into one garment and our only way of accomplishing this\nwere to tear off a portion from one piece of goods in order to patch it\non to another.\n\nThe subject of the judgment, moreover, as well as the predicate,\nstands in the way of judgment fulfilling its own task. It has\n\u201csensuous infinitude\u201d and it has \u201cimmediacy,\u201d but these two traits\ncontradict each other. The details of the subject always go beyond\nitself, being indefinitely related to something beyond. \u201cIn its given\ncontent it has relations which do not terminate within that content\u201d\n(_ibid._, p. 176), while in its immediacy it presents an undivided\nunion of existence and meaning. No subject can be mere existence any\nmore than it can be mere meaning. It is always existent or embodied\nmeaning. As such it claims individuality or the character of a single\nsubsistent whole. But this indispensable claim is inconsistent with its\nragged-edged character, its indefinite external reference, which is\nindispensable to it as subject that it may require and receive further\nmeaning from predication.\n\nWith respect to the copula the following quotation from the\n\u201cPrinciples\u201d of Logic (p. 10) may serve: \u201cJudgment proper is the\n_act_ which refers the ideal content (recognized as such) to the\nreality beyond the act.\u201d In other words, judgment as act (and it is\nthe act which is expressed in the copula) must always fall outside\nof the content of knowledge as such; yet since this act certainly\nfalls within reality, it would have to be recognized and stated by\nany knowledge pretending to competency with respect to reality as a\nwhole. These considerations, stated in this way, are highly technical\nand presuppose a knowledge not merely of Mr. Bradley\u2019s own logic, but\nalso of the logical analysis of knowledge initiated by Kant and carried\non by Herbart, Lotze, and others. Their main import may, however, be\nstated in comparatively non-technical form. Human experience is full of\ndiscrepancies. Were experience purely a matter of brute existence (such\nas we sometimes imagine the animals\u2019 experience to be) it would be\ntotally lacking in meaning and there would be no problems, no thinking,\nno occasion for thinking, and hence no philosophy. On the other hand,\nif experience were a complete, tight-jointed union of existence and\nmeaning, there would be no dissatisfaction, no problems, no cause for\nefforts to patch up defects and contradictions. Existences, things,\nwould embody all the meanings that they suggest; while abstract\nmeanings, values that are _merely_ ideal, that are projected or thought\nof but not fulfilled, would be totally unheard of. But our experience\nstands in marked contrast to both these types of experience. It\nis neither an affair of meaningless existence nor of existence\nself-luminous with fulfilled meaning. All things that we experience\nhave _some_ meaning, but that meaning is always so partially embodied\nin things that we cannot rest in them. They point beyond themselves;\nthey indicate meanings which they do not fulfil; they suggest values\nwhich they fail to embody, and when we go to other things for the\nfruition of what is denied, we either find the same situation of\ndivision over again, or we find even more positive disappointment\nand frustration--we find contrary meanings set up. Now all thinking\ngrows out of this discrepancy between existence and the meaning which\nit partially embodies and partially refuses, which it suggests but\ndeclines to express. Yet thinking, the mode of bringing existence and\nmeaning into harmony with each other, always works by selection, by\nabstraction; it sets up and projects meanings which are ideal only,\nfootless, in the air, matters of thought only, not of sentiency or\nimmediate existence. It emphasizes the ideal of a completed union\nof existence and meaning, but is helpless to effect it. And this\nhelplessness (according to Mr. Bradley) is not due to external pressure\nbut to the very structure of thought itself.\n\nFrom every point of view knowledge operates under conditions, (and\nthese not externally imposed but inherent in its own nature as\njudgment,) that render it incapable of realizing its aim of complete\nunion of existence and meaning. Granted the argument, and it is\ndifficult to imagine a more serious indictment against the pretensions\nof philosophy to reach \u201cReality\u201d _via_ the exclusive path of knowledge.\n\nThe presence of contradiction is Mr. Bradley\u2019s criterion for\n\u201cappearance,\u201d just as its absence is his criterion for \u201creality.\u201d It\nthus goes without saying that knowledge and truth which we can attain\nare matters of appearance. Contradiction between existence and meaning\nis its last word. This is not merely a logical deduction from Mr.\nBradley\u2019s position, but is expressly stated by him. \u201cThus the truth\nbelongs to existence, but it does not as such exist.... Truth shows\na dissection but never an actual life\u201d (\u201cAppearance and Reality,\u201d p.\n167). Again, \u201cevery truth is appearance since in it we have divorce\nof quality from being\u201d (_ibid._, p. 187). \u201cEven absolute truth seems\nin the end to turn out erroneous.... Internal discrepancy belongs\nirremovably to truth\u2019s proper character.... Truth is one aspect of\nexperience and is therefore made imperfect and limited by what it fails\nto include\u201d (_ibid._, pp. 544-545). Nothing could be more explicit as\nto the inherently contradictory character of truth, both as an ideal\nand as an accomplished fact; nothing more positive as to the unreality\nor appearance-character of truth. We cannot, on Mr. Bradley\u2019s method,\nstop here. Not only is knowledge--working as it does through thought\nwhich is always partial, selective, abstractive--doomed to failure\nin accomplishing its task, but the existence of the contradiction\nbetween the suggestion of meanings by existence and this realization in\nexistence is itself due to thought.\n\nSpeaking of thought he says: \u201cThe relational form is a compromise on\nwhich thought stands and which it develops.\u201d And all the particular\nantinomies which he discusses are interpreted as having their basis\nin the category of relation (_ibid._, p. 180). In his section on\nAppearance he goes through various aspects and distinctions of the\nworld, such as primary and secondary qualities, substance and its\nproperties, relation and qualitative elements, space and time, motion\nand change, causation, etc., pointing out irreconcilable discrepancies\nin them. He does not, in a _generalized_ way, expressly refer them\nto any common source or root. But it seems a fair inference that the\nrelational character of thought is at the bottom of the whole trouble:\nso that we have in the cases mentioned precisely the same situation\n_in concreto_ which is set forth _in abstracto_ in the discussion of\nthought. The contradictions brought up are in every case resolved\ninto the fundamental discrepancy supposed to exist between relations\nand elements related. In each case there is the ideal of a final\nunity in which relations and elements as such disappear, while in\nevery case the nature of relation is such as to prevent the desired\nconsummation. In at least one place, it is expressly declared that it\nis the knowledge function which is responsible for the degradation of\nreality to appearance. \u201cWe do not suggest that the thing always itself\nis an appearance. We mean its character is such _that it becomes one as\nsoon as we judge it_. And this character we have seen throughout our\nwork, is ideality. Appearance consists in the looseness of content from\nexistence.... And we have found that everywhere throughout the world\nsuch ideality prevails\u201d (_ibid._, p. 486, italics not in the original).\nIt is not then strictly true that the divorce of meaning and existence\ninstigates thought; rather thought is the unruly member that creates\nthe divorce and then engages in the task (in which it is self-condemned\nto failure) of trying to establish the unity which it has gratuitously\ndestroyed. Thinking, self-consciousness, is disease of the na\u00efve unity\nof thoughtless experience.\n\nOn the one hand there is a systematic discrediting of the ultimate\nclaims of the knowledge function, and this not from external\nphysiological or psychological reasons such as are sometimes alleged\nagainst its capacity, but on the basis of its own interior logic. But\non the other hand, a strictly logical criterion is deliberately adopted\nand employed as the fundamental and final criterion for the philosophic\nconception of reality. Long familiarity has not dulled my astonishment\nat finding exactly the same set of considerations which in the earlier\nportion of the book are employed to condemn things as experienced by us\nto the region of Appearance, employed in the latter portion of the book\nto afford a triumphant demonstration of the existence and character of\nAbsolute Reality. The argument I take up first on its formal side, and\nthen with reference to material considerations.[21]\n\nThe positive conception of Reality is reached by the conception that\n\u201cultimate reality must be such that it does not contradict itself;\nhere is an absolute criterion. And it is proved absolute by the fact\nthat either in endeavoring to deny it or even in attempting to doubt\nit, we tacitly assume its validity\u201d (_ibid._, pp. 136-137). That is\nto say, when one sets out to think one must avoid self-contradiction;\nthis avoidance, or, put positively, the attainment of consistency,\nharmony, is the basic law of all thinking. Since in thinking we\nset out to attain reality, it follows that reality itself must be\nself-consistent, and that its self-consistency determines the law\nof thought. Or, as Mr. Bradley again puts the matter, \u201cIn order to\nthink at all you must subject yourself to the standard, a standard\nwhich implies an absolute knowledge of reality; and while you doubt\nthis, you accept it, and obey, while you rebel\u201d (_ibid._, p. 153). The\nabsolute knowledge referred to is, of course, the knowledge of the\nthoroughly self-consistent, non-contradictory character of reality.\nEvery reader of Mr. Bradley\u2019s book knows how he goes on from this point\nto supply positive content to reality; to give an outline sketch of the\ncharacters it must possess and the way in which it must possess them\nin order to maintain its thoroughly self-consistent character. It is,\nhowever, only the strictly formal aspect of the matter that I am here\nconcerned with.\n\nOn this side we reach, I think, the heart of the matter by asking,\nin reference to the first quotation: Absolute _for what_? Surely\nabsolute for the process under consideration, that is absolute for\nthought. But the significance of this absolute for thought is, one\nmay say, \u201cabsolutely\u201d (since we are here confessedly in the realm\njust of thought) determined by the nature of thought itself. Now\nthis nature has been already referred by considerations \u201cbelonging\nirremovably to truth\u2019s proper character,\u201d to the world of appearance\nand of internal discrepancy. Yes, one may say (speaking formally),\nthe criterion of thought is absolute--that is to say absolute or final\nfor thought; but how can one imagine that this in any way alters the\nessential nature and value of thought? If knowledge works by thought,\nand thought institutes appearance over against reality, any further\nfact about thought--such as a statement of its criterion--falls wholly\nwithin the limits of this situation. It is comical to suppose that a\n_special_ trait of thought can be employed to alter the fundamental and\nessential nature of thought. The criterion of thought must be infected\nby the nature of thought, instead of being a redeeming angel which at\na critical juncture transforms the fragile creature, thought, into an\nambassador with power plenipotentiary to the court of the Absolute.\n\nThere really seems to be ground for supposing that the whole argument\nturns on an ambiguity in the use of the word \u201cabsolute.\u201d Keeping\nstrictly within the limits of the argument, it means nothing more than\nthat thinking has a certain principle, a law of its own; that it has\nan appropriate mode of procedure which must not be violated. It means,\nin short, whatever is finally controlling for the thought-function.\nBut Mr. Bradley immediately takes the word to mean absolute in the\nsense of describing a reality which by its very nature is totally\ncontradistinguished from appearance--that is to say, from the realm\nof thought. Upon the ambiguity of a word, the systematic indictment\nof intellectualism becomes the cornerstone of a systematically\nintellectualistic method of conceiving reality!\n\nMr. Bradley has himself recognized the seeming contradiction between\nhis indictment of thought and his use of the criterion of thought as\nthe exclusive path to a philosophic notion of the real. In dealing\nwith it, he (to my mind) comes within an ace of stating a truer\ndoctrine, and also exhibits even more clearly the weakness of his own\nposition. He goes so far as to put the following words into the mouth\nof an objector, and to accept their general import: \u201cAll axioms, as\na matter of fact, are practical ... for none of them in the end can\namount to more than the impulse to behave in a certain way. And they\ncannot express more than this impulse, together with the impossibility\nof satisfaction unless it is complied with\u201d (p. 151). After accepting\nthis (p. 152) he goes on to say: \u201cTake for example the law of avoiding\ncontradiction. When two elements will not remain quietly together,\nbut collide and struggle, we cannot rest satisfied with that state.\nOur impulse is to alter it and, on the theoretical side, to bring\nthe content to such shape that the variety remains peaceably in one.\nAnd this inability to rest otherwise and this tendency to alter in a\ncertain way and direction is, _when reflected upon and made explicit_,\nour axiom and our intellectual standard\u201d (p. 152; italics mine).\n\nThe retort is obvious: if _the_ intellectual criterion, the principle\nof non-contradiction on which his whole Absolute Reality rests, is\nitself a practical principle, then surely the ultimate criterion for\nregulating intellectual undertakings is practical. To this obvious\nanswer Mr. Bradley makes reply as follows: \u201cYou may call the intellect,\nif you like, a mere tendency to a movement, but you must remember that\nit is a movement of a _very special kind_.... Thinking is the attempt\nto satisfy a _special_ impulse, and the attempt implies an assumption\nabout reality.... But why, it may be objected, is this assumption\nbetter than what holds for practice? Why is the theoretical to be\nsuperior to the practical end? I have never said that this is so, only\n_here_, that is, in _metaphysics_, I must be allowed to reply, we are\nacting theoretically.... The _theoretical standard within theory must\nsurely be absolute_\u201d (p. 153. The italics again are mine; compare with\nthe quotation this, from p. 485: \u201cOur attitude, however, in metaphysics\nmust be theoretical.\u201d So, also, p. 154, \u201cSince metaphysics is mere\ntheory and since theory from its nature must be made by the intellect,\nit is here the intellect alone which is to be satisfied\u201d).\n\nGrant that intellect is a special movement or mode of practice; grant\nthat we are not merely acting (are we ever _merely_ acting?) but are\n\u201cspecially occupied and therefore subject to special conditions,\u201d\nand the problem remains _what_ special kind of activity is thinking?\nwhat is its experienced differentia from other kinds? what is its\ncommerce with them? When the problem is _what_ special kind of an\nactivity is thinking and of _what_ nature is the consistency which\nis its criterion, somehow we do not get forward by being told that\nthinking _is_ a special mode of practice and that its criterion _is_\nconsistency. The unquestioned presupposition of Mr. Bradley is that\nthinking is such a wholly separate activity (the \u201cintellect _alone_\u201d\nwhich has to be satisfied), that to give it autonomy is to say that it,\nand its criterion, have nothing to do with other activities; that it is\n\u201cindependent\u201d as to criterion, in a way which excludes interdependence\nin function and outcome. Unless the term \u201cspecial\u201d be interpreted to\nmean _isolated_, to say that thinking is a _special_ mode of activity\nno more nullifies the proposition that it arises in a practical contest\nand operates for practical ends, than to say that blacksmithing is a\n_special_ activity, negates its being one connected mode of industrial\nactivity.\n\nHis underlying presupposition of the separate character of thought\ncomes out in the passage last quoted. \u201cOur impulse,\u201d he says, \u201cis to\nalter the conflicting situation and, _on the theoretical side_, to\nbring its contents into peaceable unity.\u201d If one substitutes for the\nword \u201con\u201d the word \u201cthrough,\u201d one gets a conception of theory and of\nthinking that does justice to the autonomy of the operation and yet so\nconnects it with other activities as to give it a serious business,\nreal purpose, and concrete responsibility and hence testibility.\nFrom this point of view the theoretical activity is simply the form\nthat certain practical activities take after colliding, as the most\neffective and fruitful way of securing their own harmonization.\nThe collision is not theoretical; the issue in \u201cpeaceable unity\u201d\nis not theoretical. But theory names the type of activity by which\nthe transformation from war to peace is most amply and securely\neffected.[22]\n\nAdmit, however, the force of Mr. Bradley\u2019s contention on its own terms\nand see how futile is the result. It is quite true, as Mr. Bradley\nsays (p. 153), that if a man sits down to play the metaphysical game,\nhe must abide by the rules of thinking; but if thinking be already,\nwith respect to reality, an idle and futile game, simply abiding by\nthe rules does not give additional value to its stakes. Grant the\npremises as to the character of thought, and the assertion of the\nfinal character of the theoretical standard within metaphysics--since\nmetaphysics is a form of theory--is a warning against metaphysics. If\nthe intellect involves self-contradiction, it is either impossible that\nit should be satisfied, or else self-contradiction is its satisfaction.\n\n\nII\n\nLet us, however, turn from Mr. Bradley\u2019s formal proof that the\ncriterion of philosophic truth must be exclusively a canon of formal\nthought. Let us ignore the contradiction involved in first making the\nwork of thought to be the producing of appearance and then making\nthe law of this thought the law of an Absolute Reality. What about\nthe intellectualist criterion? The intellectualism of Mr. Bradley\u2019s\nphilosophy is represented in the statement that it is \u201cthe theoretical\nstandard which guarantees that reality is a self-consistent system\u201d\n(p. 148). But how can the fact that the criterion of thinking is\nconsistency be employed to determine the nature of the consistency of\nits object? Consistency in one sense, consistency of reasoning with\nitself, we know; but what is the nature of the consistency of reality\nwhich this consistency necessitates? Thinking without doubt must be\nlogical; but does it follow from this that the reality about which\none thinks, and about which one must think consistently if one is to\nthink to any purpose, must itself be already logical? The pivot of\nthe argument is, of course, the old ontological argument, stripped of\nall theological irrelevancies and reduced to its fighting weight as\na metaphysical proposition. Those who question this basic principle\nof intellectualism will, of course, question it here. They will urge\nthat, instead of the consistency of \u201creality\u201d resting on the basis of\nconsistency in the reasoning process the latter derives its meaning\nfrom the material consistency at which it aims. They will say that\nthe definition of the nature of the consistency which is the end of\nthinking and which prescribes its technique is to be reached from\ninquiry into such questions as these: What sort of an activity in the\nconcrete is thinking? what are the specific conditions which it has\nto fulfil? what is its use; its relevancy; its purport in present\nconcrete experiences? The more it is insisted that the theoretical\nstandard--consistency--is final within theory, the more germane and\nthe more urgent is the question: What then in the concrete is theory?\nand of what nature _is_ the material consistency which is the test of\nits formal consistency?[23]\n\nTake the instance of a man who wishes to deny the criterion of\nself-consistency in thinking. Is he refuted by pointing to the \u201cfact\u201d\nthat eternal reality is eternally self-consistent? Would not his\nobvious answer to such a mode of refutation be: \u201cWhat of it? What is\nthe relevancy of that proposition to my procedure in thinking here\nand now? Doubtless absolute reality may be a great number of things,\npossibly very sublime and precious things; but what I am concerned with\nis a particular job of thinking, and until you show me the intermediate\nterms which link that job to the asserted self-consistent character\nof absolute reality, I fail to see what difference this doubtless\nwholly amiable trait of reality has to make in what I am here and now\nconcerned with. You might as well quote any other irrelevant fact, such\nas the height of the Empress of China.\u201d We take another tack in dealing\nwith the man in question. We call his attention to his specific aim in\nthe situation with reference to which he is thinking, and point out the\nconditions that have to be observed if that aim is to fulfil itself. We\nshow that if he does not observe the conditions imposed by his aim his\nthinking will go on so wildly as to defeat itself. It is to consistency\nof means with the end of the concrete activity that we appeal. \u201cTry\nthinking,\u201d we tell such a man, \u201cexperiment with it, taking pains\nsometimes to have your reasonings consistent with one another, and at\nother times deliberately introducing inconsistencies; then see what\nyou get in the two cases and how the result reached is related to your\npurpose in thinking.\u201d We point out that since that purpose is to reach\na settled conclusion, that purpose will be defeated unless the steps of\nreasoning are kept consistent with one another. We do not appeal from\nthe mere consistency of the reasoning process--the intellectual aspect\nof the matter--to an absolute self-consistent reality; but we appeal\nfrom the material character of the end to be reached to the type of the\nformal procedure necessary to accomplish it.\n\nWith all our heart, then, the standard of thinking is absolute\n(that is final) within thinking. But what is thinking? The standard\nof blacksmithing must be absolute within blacksmithing, but what is\nblacksmithing? No prejudice prevents acknowledging that blacksmithing\nis one practical activity existing as a distinct and relevant member\nof a like system of activities: that it is because men use horses to\ntransport persons and goods that horses need to be shod. The ultimate\ncriterion of blacksmithing is producing a good shoe, but the nature\nof a good shoe is fixed, not by blacksmithing, but by the activities\nin which horses are used. The end is ultimate (absolute) for the\noperation, but this very finality is evidence that the operation is not\nabsolute and self-inclosed, but is related and responsible. Why must\nthe fact that the end of thinking is ultimate for thought stand on any\ndifferent footing?\n\nLet us then, by way of experiment, follow this suggestion. Let us\nassume that among real objects in their values and significances, real\noppositions and incompatibilities exist; that these conflicts are both\ntroublesome in themselves, and the source of all manner of further\ndifficulties--so much so that they may be suspected of being the source\nof all man\u2019s woe, of all encroachment upon and destruction of value,\nof good. Suppose that thinking is, not accidentally but essentially,\na way, and the only way that proves adequate, of dealing with these\npredicaments--that being \u201cin a hole,\u201d in difficulty, is the fundamental\n\u201cpredicament\u201d of intelligence. Suppose when effort is made in a brute\nway to remove these oppositions and to secure an arrangement of things\nwhich means satisfaction, fulfilment, happiness, that the method of\nbrute attack, of trying directly to force warrings into peace fails;\nsuppose then an effort to effect the transformation by an indirect\nmethod--by inquiry into the disordered state of affairs and by framing\nviews, conceptions, of what the situation would be like were it reduced\nto harmonious order. Finally, suppose that upon this basis a plan of\naction is worked out, and that this plan, when carried into overt\neffect, succeeds infinitely better than the brute method of attack in\nbringing about the desired consummation. Suppose again this indirection\nof activity is precisely what we mean by thinking. Would it not hold\nthat harmony is the end and the test of thinking? that observations are\npertinent and ideas correct just in so far as, overtly acted upon, they\nsucceed in removing the undesirable, the inconsistent.\n\nBut, it is said, the very process of thinking makes a certain\nassumption regarding the nature of reality, viz., that reality is\nself-consistent. This statement puts the end for the beginning. The\nassumption is not that \u201creality\u201d _is_ self-consistent, but that by\nthinking it may, for some special purpose, or as respects some\nconcrete problem, attain greater consistency. Why should the assumption\nregarding \u201creality\u201d be other than that specific realities with which\nthought is concerned are _capable of receiving_ harmonization? To say\nthat thought must assume, in order to go on, that reality already\npossesses harmony is to say that thought must begin by contradicting\nits own direct data, and by assuming that its concrete aim is vain and\nillusory. Why put upon thought the onus of introducing discrepancies\ninto reality in order just to give itself exercise in the gymnastic\nof removing them? The assumption that concrete thinking makes about\n\u201creality\u201d is that things just as they exist may acquire _through\nactivity, guided by thinking_, a certain character which it is\nexcellent for them to possess; and may acquire it more liberally and\neffectively than by other methods. One might as well say that the\nblacksmith could not think to any effect concerning iron, without a\nPlatonic archetypal horseshoe, laid up in the heavens. His thinking\nalso makes an assumption about present, given reality, viz., that\nthis piece of iron, through the exercise of intelligently directed\nactivity, may be shaped into a satisfactory horseshoe. The assumption\nis practical: the assumption that a specific thing may take on in a\nspecific way a specific needed value. The test, moreover, of this\nassumption is practical; it consists in acting upon it to see if it\nwill do what it pretends it can do, namely, guide activities to the\nrequired result. The assumption about reality is not something in\naddition to the idea, which an idea already in existence makes; some\nassumption about the possibility of a change in the state of things as\nexperienced _is_ the idea--and its test or criterion is whether this\npossible change can be effected when the idea is acted upon in good\nfaith.\n\nIn any case, how much simpler the case becomes when we stick by the\nempirical facts. According to them there is no wholesale discrepancy\nof existence and meaning; there is simply a \u201cloosening\u201d of the two\nwhen objects do not fulfil our plans and meet our desires; or when we\nproject inventions and cannot find immediately the means for their\nrealization. The \u201ccollisions\u201d are neither physical, metaphysical, nor\nlogical; they are moral and practical. They exist between an aim and\nthe means of its execution. Consequently the object of thinking is\nnot to effect some wholesale and \u201cAbsolute\u201d reconciliation of meaning\nand existence, but to make a specific adjustment of things to our\npurposes and of our purposes to things at just the crucial point of\nthe crisis. Making the utmost concessions to Mr. Bradley\u2019s account\nof the discrepancy of meaning and existence in our experience, to\nhis statement of the relation of this to the function of judgment\n(as involving namely an explicit _statement_ at once of the actual\nsundering and the ideal union) and to his account of consistency as\nthe goal and standard, there is still not a detail of the account\nthat is not met amply and with infinitely more empirical warrant by\nthe conception that the \u201ccollision\u201d in which thinking starts and the\n\u201cconsistency\u201d in which it terminates are practical and human.\n\n\nIII\n\nThis brings us explicitly to the question of truth, \u201ctruth\u201d being\nconfessedly the end and standard of thinking. I confess to being much\nat a loss to realize just what the intellectualists conceive to be the\nrelation of truth to ideas on one side and to \u201creality\u201d on the other.\nMy difficulty occurs, I think, because they describe so little in\nanalytical detail; in writing of truth they seem rather to be under a\nstrong emotional influence--as if they were victims of an uncritical\npragmatism--which leaves much of their thought to be guessed at. The\nimplication of their discussions assigns three distinct values to the\nterm \u201ctruth.\u201d On the one hand, truth is something which characterizes\nideas, theories, hypotheses, beliefs, judgments, propositions,\nassertions, etc.,--anything whatsoever involving _intellectual_\nstatement. From this standpoint a criterion of truth means the test\nof the worth of the intellectual intent, import, or claim of any\nintellectual statement as intellectual. This is an intelligible sense\nof the term truth. In the second place, it seems to be assumed that\na certain kind of reality is already, apart from ideas or meanings,\nTruth, and that _this_ Truth is the criterion of that lower and more\nunworthy kind of truth that may be possessed or aimed at by ideas.\nBut we do not stop here. The conception that _all_ truth must have a\ncriterion haunts the intellectualist, so that the reality, which, as\ncontrasted with ideas, is taken to be The Truth (and the criterion\nof _their_ truth) is treated as if it itself had to have support and\nwarrant from some other Reality, lying back of it, which is _its_\ncriterion. This, then, gives the third type of truth, _The Absolute\nTruth_. (Just why this process should not go on indefinitely is not\nclear, but the necessity of infinite regress may be emotionally\nprevented by always referring to this last type of truth as Absolute).\nNow this scheme may be \u201ctrue,\u201d but it is not self-explanatory or even\neasily apprehensible. In just what sense, truth is (1) that to which\nideas as ideas lay claim and yet is (2) Reality which as reality is\nthe criterion of truth of ideas, and yet again is (3) a Reality which\ncompletely annuls and transcends all reference to ideas, is not in the\nleast clear to me: nor, till better informed, shall I believe it to be\nclear to any one.\n\nIn his more strictly logical discussions, Mr. Bradley sets out from\nthe notion that truth refers to intellectual statements and positions\nas such. But the Truth soon becomes a sort of transcendent essence\non its own account. The identification of reality and truth on page\n146 may be a mere casual phrase, but the distinction drawn between\nvalidity and absolute truth (p. 362), and the discussion of Degrees\nof Truth and Reality, involve assumptions of an identity of truth and\nreality. Truth in this sense turns out to be the criterion for the\ntruth, the truth, that is, of ideas. But, again (p. 545), a distinction\nis made between \u201cFinite Truth,\u201d that is, a view of reality which would\ncompletely satisfy intelligence as such, and \u201cAbsolute Truth,\u201d which is\nobtained only by _passing beyond intelligence_--only when intelligence\nas such is absorbed in some Absolute in which it loses its distinctive\ncharacter.\n\nIt would advance the state of discussion, I am sure, if there were\nmore explicit statements regarding the relations of \u201ctrue idea,\u201d\n\u201ctruth,\u201d \u201cthe criterion of truth\u201d and \u201creality,\u201d to one another. A\nmore explicit exposition also of the view that is held concerning the\nrelation of verification and truth could hardly fail to be of value.\nNot infrequently the intellectualist admits that the process of\nverification is experimental, consisting in setting on foot various\nactivities that express the intent of the idea and confirm or refute\nit according to the changes effected. This seems to mean that truth\nis simply the tested or verified belief as such. But then a curious\nreservation is introduced; the experimental process _finds_, it is\nsaid, that an idea is true, while the error of the pragmatist is to\ntake the process by which truth is _found_ as one by which it is made.\nThe claim of \u201cmaking truth\u201d is treated as blasphemy against the very\nnotion of truth: such are the consequences of venturing to translate\nthe Latin \u201cverification\u201d into the English \u201cmaking true.\u201d\n\nIf we face the bogie thus called up, it will be found that the horror\nis largely sentimental. Suppose we stick to the notion that truth is a\ncharacter which belongs to a meaning so far as tested through action\nthat carries it to successful completion. In this case, to make an idea\ntrue is to modify and transform it until it reaches this successful\noutcome: until it initiates a mode of response which in its issue\nrealizes its claim to be the method of harmonizing the discrepancies of\na given situation. The meaning is remade by constantly acting upon it,\nand by introducing into its content such characters as are indicated\nby any resulting failures to secure harmony. From this point of view,\nverification and truth are two names for the same thing. We call it\n\u201cverification\u201d when we regard it as process; when the development of\nthe idea is strung out and exposed to view in all that makes it true.\nWe call it \u201ctruth\u201d when we take it as product, as process telescoped\nand condensed.\n\nSuppose the idea to be an invention, say of the telephone. In this\ncase, is not the verification of the idea and the construction of\nthe device which carries out its intent one and the same? In this\ncase, does the truth of the idea mean anything else than that the\nissue proves the idea can be carried into effect? There are certain\nintellectualists who are not of the absolutist type; who do not believe\nthat all of men\u2019s aims, designs, projects, that have to do with action,\nwhether industrial, social, or moral in scope, have been from all\neternity registered as already accomplished in reality. How do such\npersons dispose of this problem of the truth of practical ideas?\n\nIs not the truth of _such_ ideas an affair of _making_ them true by\nconstructing, through appropriate behavior, a condition that satisfies\nthe requirements of the case? If, in this case, truth means the\neffective capacity of the idea \u201cto make good,\u201d what is there in the\nlogic of the case to forbid the application of analogous considerations\nto any idea?\n\nI hear a noise in the street. It suggests as its meaning a street-car.\nTo test this idea I go to the window and through listening and\nlooking intently--the listening and the looking being modes of\nbehavior--organize into a single situation elements of existence and\nmeaning which were previously disconnected. In this way an idea is made\ntrue; that which was a proposal or hypothesis is no longer merely a\npropounding or a guess. If I had not reacted in a way appropriate to\nthe idea it would have remained a mere idea; at most a candidate for\ntruth that, unless acted upon upon the spot, would always have remained\na theory. Now in such a case--where the end to be accomplished is the\ndiscovery of a certain order of facts--would the intellectualist claim\nthat apart from the forming and entertaining of some interpretation,\nthe category of truth has either existence or meaning? Will he claim\nthat without an original practical uneasiness introducing a practical\naim of inquiry there must have been, whether or no, an idea? Must\nthe world for some purely intellectual reason be intellectually\nreduplicated? Could not that occurrence which I now identify as a noisy\nstreet-car have retained, so far as pure intelligence is concerned,\nits unidentified status of being mere physical alteration in a vast\nunidentified complex of matter-in-motion? Was there any _intellectual_\nnecessity that compelled the event to arouse just this judgment,\nthat it meant a street-car? Was there any physical or metaphysical\nnecessity? Was there any necessity save a need of characterizing\nit for some purpose of our own? And why should we be mealy-mouthed\nabout calling this need practical? If the necessity which led to the\nformation and development of an intellectual judgment was purely\nobjective (whether physical or metaphysical) why should not the thing\nhave also to be characterized in countless millions of other ways; for\nexample, as to its distance from some crater in the moon, or its effect\nupon the circulation of my blood, or upon my irascible neighbor\u2019s\ntemper, or bearing upon the Monroe Doctrine? In short, do not\nintellectual positions and statements mean new and significant events\nin the treatment of things?\n\nIt is perhaps dangerous to attempt to follow the inner workings of\nthe processes by which truth is first identified with some superior\ntype of Reality, and then this Truth is taken as the criterion of the\ntruth of ideas; while all the time it is held that truth is something\nalready possessed by ideas as purely intellectual. But there seems\nto be some ground for believing that this identification is due to a\ntwofold confusion, one having to do with ideas, and the other with\nthings. As to the first point: After an idea is made true, we naturally\nsay, in retrospect, \u201cit _was_ true all the time.\u201d Now this truism is\nquite innocuous as a truism, being just a restatement of the fact that\nthe idea has, as matter of fact, worked successfully. But it may be\nregarded not as a truism but as furnishing some additional knowledge;\nas if it were, indeed, the dawning of a revelation regarding truth.\nThen it is said that the idea worked or was verified because it was\nalready inherently, just as idea, the truth; the pragmatist, so it\nis said, making the error of supposing that it is true because it\nworks. If one remembers that what the experimentalist means is that\nthe effective working of an idea and its truth are one and the same\nthing--this working being neither the cause nor the evidence of truth\nbut its nature--it is hard to see the point of this statement. A\nman under peculiarly precarious circumstances has been rescued from\ndrowning. A by-stander remarks that now he is a saved man. \u201cYes,\u201d\nreplies some one, \u201cbut he was a saved man all the time, and the process\nof rescuing, while it gives evidence of that fact, does not constitute\nit.\u201d Now even such a statement as pure tautology, as characterizing the\nentire process in terms of its issue, is objectionable only in the fact\nthat, like all tautology, it seems to say something but does not. But\nif it be regarded as revealing the earlier condition of affairs, apart\nfrom the active process by which it was carried to a happy conclusion,\nsuch a statement would be monstrously false; and would declare its\nfalsity in the fact that, if acted upon, the man would have been left\nto drown. In like fashion, to say, _after the event_, that a given\nidea was true all the time, is to lose sight of what makes an idea an\nidea, its hypothetical character; and thereby deliberately to transform\nit into brute dogma--something to which no canon of verification can\never be applied. The intellectualist almost always treats the pragmatic\naccount as if it were, from the standpoint of the pragmatist as well as\nfrom his own, a denial of the existence of truth, while it is nothing\nbut a statement of its nature. When the intellectualist realizes this,\nhe will, I hope, ask himself: What, then, on the pragmatic basis is\nmeant by the proposition that an idea is true all the time? If the\nstatement that an idea was true all the time has no meaning except that\nthe idea was one which as matter of fact succeeded through action in\nachieving its intent, mere reiteration that the idea was true all the\ntime or it could not have succeeded, does not take us far.[24]\n\nOn the side of things, _reality_ is identified with truth; then on the\nprinciple that two things that are equal to the same thing are equal\nto each other, truth as idea and truth as reality are taken to be one\nand the same thing. Wherever there is an improved or tested idea, an\nidea which has made good, there is a concrete existence in the way of a\ncompleted or harmonized situation. The same activity which proves the\nidea constructs an inherently satisfied situation out of an inherently\ndissentient one,--for it is precisely the capacity of the idea as an\naim and method of action to determine such transformation that is the\ncriterion of its truth. Now unless all the elements in the situation\nare held steadily in view, the specific way in which the harmonized\nreality affords the criterion of truth (namely, through its function of\nbeing the last term of a process of active determination) is lost from\nsight; and the achieved existence in its merely existent character,\napart from its practical or fulfilment character, is treated as The\nTruth. But when the reality is thus separated from the process by which\nit is achieved, when it is taken just as given, it is neither truth\nnor a criterion of truth. It is a state of facts like any other. The\nachieved telephone is a criterion of the validity of a certain prior\nidea in so far as it is the fulfilment of activities that embody the\nnature of that idea, but just as telephone, as a machine actually in\nexistence, it is no more truth nor criterion of truth than is a crack\nin the wall or a cobble-stone on the street.\n\nThe intervening term that mediates and completes the confusion of truth\nwith ideas on one hand and \u201creality\u201d on the other, is, I think, the\nfact that ideas after they have been tested in action are employed\nin the development and grounding of further beliefs. There are cases\nin which an idea ceases to exist as idea as soon as it is made true;\nthis is so as matter of fact and it is impossible to conceive any\nreason why it should not be so in point of theory. Such is the case, I\ntake it, with a large part--possibly the major portion--of the ideas\nthat mediate the smaller and transient crises of daily practice.\nI cannot imagine the situation in which the truth to which I have\nreferred above--the verification of a certain idea about a certain\nnoise--would ever function again as truth--save as I have given it a\nfunction in this paper by using it as a corroboration of a certain\ntheory. Such ideas mostly cease, giving way to a matter-of-fact status:\nsay, the perception of the noisy street-car. One at the time may say\n\u201cMy idea regarding that noise was a true idea\u201d; or one may not even\ngo so far as that, he may just stop with the eventual perception.\nBut the tested idea need not ever recur as a factor of proof in any\nother problem. Such, however, is conspicuously not the case with\nour scientific ideas. In its first value, the idea or hypothesis of\ngravitation entertained by Newton, stood, when verified, on exactly\nthe same level as the hypothesis regarding the noise in the street.\nTheoretically, that truth might have been so isolated that its truth\ncharacter would disappear from thought as soon as a certain factual\ncondition was ascertained. But practically quite the opposite has\nhappened. The idea operates in many other inquiries, and operates no\nlonger as mere idea, but as _proved_ idea. Such truths get an \u201ceternal\u201d\nstatus;--one irrespective of application just now and here, because\nthere are so many nows and heres in which they are useful. Just as to\nsay an idea was true all the time is a way of saying _in retrospect_\nthat it has come out in a certain fashion, so to say that an idea is\n\u201ceternally true\u201d is to indicate _prospective_ modes of application\nwhich are indefinitely anticipated. Its meaning, therefore, is\nstrictly pragmatic. It does not indicate a property inherent in the\nidea as intellectualized existence, but denotes a property of use and\nemployment. Always at hand when needed is a good enough eternal for\nreasonably minded persons.\n\n\nIV\n\nI have gone from the very general considerations which occupied us in\nthe earlier portions of this article to matters which relatively at\nleast are specific. I conclude with a summary in the hope that it may\nbind together the earlier and the later parts of this paper.\n\n1. The condition which antecedes and provokes any particular exercise\nof reflective knowing is always one of discrepancy, struggle,\n\u201ccollision.\u201d This condition is practical, for it involves the habits\nand interests of the organism, an agent. This does not mean that the\nstruggle is merely personal, or subjective, or psychological. The\nagent or individual is one factor in the situation--not the situation\nsomething subsisting in the individual. The individual has to be\nidentified in the situation, before any situation can be referred--as\nin psychology--to the individual. But the discrepancy calls out and\ncontrols reflective knowing only as the fortunes of an agent are\nimplicated in the crisis. Certain elements stand out as obstacles,\nas interferences, as deficiencies--in short as unsatisfactory and as\nrequiring something for their completion. Other elements stand out\nas wanted--as required, as a satisfaction which does not exist. This\nclash (an accompaniment of all desire) between the given and the\nwanted, between the present and the absent, is at once the root and\nthe type of that peculiar paradoxical relation between existence and\nmeaning which Bradley insists upon as the essence of judgment. It\nis not irrational in the sense that we are dealing with appearance\nwholesale, but it is non-rational--an evidence that we are dealing with\na practical affair.\n\n2. The intellectual or reflective and logical is a _statement_ of\nthis conflict: an attempt to describe and define it. It is, as it\nwere, the practical clash held off at arm\u2019s length for inspection\nand investigation. In this way brute blind reaction against the\nunsatisfactoriness of the situation is suspended. Action is turned\ninto the channel of observing, of inferring, of reasoning, or defining\nmeans and end. It is this change in the quality of activity, from\ndirectly overt, to indirect, or inquiring with view to stating, that\nconstitutes the _specific_ nature of reflective practice to which Mr.\nBradley calls attention. The discovery of the nature of the conflict\nsupplies materials for the fact or existence side of the judgement.\nThe conception or projection of the object in which the conflict\nwould be terminated furnishes material for the meaning side of the\njudgment. It is ideal because anticipatory, just as the fact side\nis existential, because reminiscent or recording. Hence the two are\nnecessarily both distinguished from and yet referred to each other:\nonly through location of a problem can a solution be conceived; only\nin reference to the intent of finding a solution can the elements of\na problem be selected and interpreted. In origin and in destiny, this\ncorrelative determination of existence and meaning is tentative and\nexperimental. The aim of the subject of the judgment is not to include\nall possible reality, but to select those elements of a reality that\nare useful in locating the source and nature of the difficulty in\nhand. The aim of the predicate is not to bunch all possible meaning\nand refer it in one final act indiscriminately to all existence, but\nto state the standpoint and method through which the difficulty of the\nparticular situation may most effectively be dealt with. The selection\nof what is relevant to the characterization of the problem and the\nprojection of the method of dealing with it are theoretic, hypothetic,\nintellectual:--that is, they are tentative ways of viewing the matter\nfor the sake of guiding, economizing, and freeing the activities\nthrough which it may _really_ be dealt with.\n\n3. The criterion of the worth of the idea is thus the capacity of\nthe idea (as a definition of the end or outcome in terms of what is\nlikely to be serviceable as a method) to operate in fulfilling the\nobject for the sake of which it was projected. Capacity of operation\nin this fashion is the test, measure, or criterion of truth. Hence the\ncriterion is practical in the most overt sense of that term. We may,\nif we choose, regard the object in which the idea terminates through\nits use in guiding action, as the criterion; but if we so choose, it is\nat our peril that we forget that this object serves as criterion in its\ncapacity of fulfilment and not as sheer objective existence.\n\n4. Difficulties overlap; problems recur which resemble each other\nin the kind of treatment they demand for solution. Various modes of\nactivity with their respective ends, going on at some time more or\nless independently, get organized into single comprehensive systems of\nbehavior. The solution of one problem is found to create difficulties\nelsewhere; or the truth that is made in the solution of one problem\nis found to afford an effective method of dealing with questions\narising apparently from unallied sources. Thus certain tested ideas\nin performing a constant or recurrent function secure a certain\npermanent status. The prospective use of such truths, the satisfaction\nthat we anticipate in their employ, the assurance of control that we\nfeel in their possession, becomes relatively much more important than\nthe circumstances under which they were first made true. In becoming\npermanent resources, such tested ideas get a generalized energy of\nposition. They are truths in general, truths \u201cin themselves\u201d or in the\nabstract, truths to which positive value is assigned on their own\naccount. Such truths are the \u201ceternal truths\u201d of current discussion.\nThey naturally and properly add to their intellectual and to their\npractical worth a certain esthetic quality. They are interesting to\ncontemplate, and their contemplation arouses emotions of admiration\nand reverence. To make these emotions the basis of assigning peculiar\ninherent sanctity to them apart from their warrant in use, is simply\nto give way to that mood which in primitive man is the cause of\nattributing magical efficacy to physical things. Esthetically such\ntruths are more than instrumentalities. But to ignore both the\ninstrumental and the esthetic aspect, and to ascribe values due to an\ninstrumental and esthetic character to some interior and _a priori_\nconstitution of truth is to make fetishes of them.\n\nWe may not exaggerate the permanence and stability of such truths with\nrespect to their recurring and prospective use. It is only relatively\nthat they are unchanging. When applied to new cases, used as resources\nfor coping with new difficulties, the oldest of truths are to some\nextent remade. Indeed it is only through such application and such\nremaking that truths retain their freshness and vitality. Otherwise\nthey are relegated to faint reminiscences of an antique tradition. Even\nthe truth that two and two make four has gained a new meaning, has had\nits truth in some degree remade, in the development of the modern\ntheory of number. If we put ourselves in the attitude of a scientific\ninquirer in asking what is the meaning of truth _per se_, there spring\nup before us those ideas which are actively employed in the mastery\nof new fields, in the organization of new materials. This is the\nessential difference between truth and dogma; between the living and\nthe dead and decaying. Above all, it is in the region of moral truth\nthat this perception stands out. Moral truths that are not recreated in\napplication to the urgencies of the passing hour, no matter how true\nin the place and time of their origin, are pernicious and misleading,\n_i.e._, false. And it is perhaps through emphasizing this fact,\nembodied in one form or another in every system of morals and in every\nreligion of moral import, that one most readily realizes the character\nof truth.\n\n\n\n\nA SHORT CATECHISM CONCERNING TRUTH[25]\n\n\n_Pupil._ I am desirous, respected teacher, of forming an independent\njudgment concerning the novel theory of truth that you are said to\nprofess. My eagerness is whetted because the theory as expounded\nto me by my old teacher, Professor Purus Intellectus, so obviously\ncontravenes common sense, science, and philosophy that I do not\nunderstand how it can be advanced in good faith by any reasonable man.\n\n_Teacher._ As you are already somewhat acquainted with the theory (or\nat least with what it purports to be), perhaps if you will set forth\nin order your objections, it will appear that the theory that you are\nacquainted with is not advanced by any reasonable persons, and that by\nunderstanding the theory as it is you will also be led to embrace it.\n\n_Pupil: Objection One._ Pragmatism makes truth a subjective affair,\nnamely the satisfaction afforded individuals by ideas, while everybody\nknows that the truth of ideas depends upon their relation to things.\n\n_Teacher: Reply._ If I were to reply that I hold to existences\nindependent of ideas, existences prior to, synchronous with, and\nsubsequent to ideas, that might seem to you to express only my personal\nopinion and to have no logical connection with pragmatism. So I beg\nto remind you that, according to pragmatism, ideas (judgments and\nreasonings being included for convenience in this term) are attitudes\nof response taken toward extra-ideal, extra-mental things. Instinct and\nhabit express, for instance, modes of response, but modes inadequate\nfor a progressive being, or for adaptation to an environment presenting\nnovel and unmastered features. Under such conditions, ideas are\ntheir surrogates. The origin of an idea is thus in some empirical,\nextra-mental situation which provokes ideas as modes of response, while\ntheir meaning is found in the modifications--the \u201cdifferences\u201d--they\nmake in this extra-mental situation. Their validity is in turn measured\nby their capacity to effect the transformation they intend. Origin,\ncontent, and value--all alike are extra-ideational. The satisfaction\nupon which the pragmatist dwells is just the better adjustment of\nliving beings to their environment effected by transformations of the\nenvironment through forming and applying ideas.\n\n_Pupil: Objection Two._ But, as I understand it and as you have\nyourself confessed in your language, these external things, while they\nmay be external to the particular idea in question, are _empirical_;\nthey are just other experiences and so mental after all. You hold, I\nhave been informed, that truth is an _experienced_ relation, instead\nof a relation between experience and what transcends it; why then be\nmealy-mouthed (pardon my eagerness if it leads me astray) in admitting\nthat the whole business is intra-mental?\n\n_Teacher: Reply._ Your objection combines and confuses two things.\nTo disentangle them is to answer the objection. (1) The notion of\ntranscendence has a double meaning; first, it denotes that which lies\ninherently and essentially beyond experience. It is interesting to note\nthat the opponents of pragmatism have been forced by the exigencies\nof their hostility to resuscitate a doctrine supposedly dead: the\ndoctrine of unexperienceable, unknowable \u201cThings in Themselves.\u201d And\nas if this were not enough, they identify Truth with relationship to\nthis unknowable. Thereby in behalf of the notion of Truth in general,\nthey land in scepticism with reference to the possibility of any truth\nin particular. The pragmatist _is_ bound to deny _such_ transcendence.\n(2) That he is thereby landed in pure subjectivism or the reduction of\nevery existence to the purely mental, follows only if experience means\nonly mental states. The critic appears to hold the Humian doctrine\nthat experience is made up of states of mind, of sensations and\nideas. It is then for _him_ to decide how, on _his_ basis, he escapes\nsubjective idealism, or \u201cmentalism.\u201d The pragmatist starts from a\nmuch more commonplace notion of experience, that of the plain man who\nnever dreams that to experience a thing is first to destroy the thing\nand then to substitute a mental state for it. More particularly, the\npragmatist has insisted that experience is a matter of functions and\nhabits, of active adjustments and re-adjustments, of co-ordinations\nand activities, rather than of states of consciousness. To criticise\nthe pragmatist by reading into him exactly the notion of experience\nthat he denies and replaces, may be psychological and unregenerately\n\u201cpragmatic,\u201d but it is hardly \u201cintellectual.\u201d\n\n_Pupil: Objection Three._ You remind me, curiously enough, of a\ncontention of my old instructor to the effect that the pragmatist,\nwhen criticised, always shifts his ground. To avoid solipsism and\nsubjectivism, he falls back on things independent of ideas, adducing\nthem in order to pass upon the truth or falsity of the latter. But\nthereby he only covertly recognizes the intellectualistic standard.\nThus he swings unevenly between a denial of science and a clamorous\nreiteration, in new phraseology, of what all philosophers hold.\n\n_Teacher: Reply._ Your words have indeed a familiar sound. Apparently,\nthe average intellectualist has got so accustomed to taking truth as a\nRelation at Large, without specification or analysis, that any attempt\nat a concrete statement of just what the relationship is appears to\nbe a denial of the relation itself; in which case, he interprets an\noccasional reminder from the pragmatist that the latter is, after all,\nattempting to specify the nature of the relation, to be a surrender of\nthe pragmatist\u2019s own case, since it admits after all that there is some\nrelation!\n\nHowever that may be, the pragmatist holds that the relation in\nquestion is one of correspondence between existence and thought;\nbut he holds that correspondence instead of being an ultimate and\nunanalyzable mystery, to be defined by iteration, is precisely a\nmatter of cor-respondence in its plain, familiar sense. A condition of\ndubious and conflicting tendencies calls out thinking as a method of\nhandling it. This condition produces its own appropriate consequences,\nbearing its own fruits of weal and woe. The thoughts, the estimates,\nintents, and projects it calls out, just because they are attitudes\nof response and of attempted adjustment (_not_ mere \u201cstates of\nconsciousness\u201d), produce their effects also. The kind of interlocking,\nof interadjustment that then occurs between these two sorts of\nconsequences constitutes the correspondence that makes truth, just as\nfailure to respond to each other, to work together, constitutes mistake\nand error--mishandling and wandering. This account may, of course, be\nwrong--may involve a maladjustment of consequences--but the error in\nthe account, if it exists, must be specific and empirical, and cannot\nbe located by general epistemological accusations.\n\n_Pupil: Objection Four._ Well, even admitting this version of\npragmatism, you cannot deny it still contravenes common sense; for,\naccording to you, the correspondence that constitutes truth does not\nexist till _after_ ideas have worked, while common sense perceives and\nknows that it is the antecedent agreement of the ideas with reality\nthat enables them to work. If you make the truth of the existence of a\nCarboniferous age, or the landing of Columbus in 1492, depend upon a\nfuture working of an idea about them, you commit yourself to the most\nfantastic of philosophies.\n\n_Teacher: Reply._ May I recall to your attention the accusation of\n\u201cshifting ground\u201d when hard pressed? The intellectualist began, if I\nremember correctly, with conceiving truth as a relation of thought\nand existence; has he not, in your last objection, substituted for\nthis conception an identification of the bare existence or event with\ntruth? Which does he mean? How will he have it? The existence of the\nCarboniferous age, the discovery of America by Columbus are not\ntruths; they are events. Some conviction, some belief, some judgment\nwith reference to them is necessary to introduce the category of truth\nand falsity. And since the conviction, the judgment, is as matter of\nfact subsequent to the event, how can its truth consist in the kind of\nblank, wholesale relationship the intellectualist contends for? How\ncan the present belief jump out of its present skin, dive into the\npast, and land upon just the one event (that _as_ past is gone forever)\nwhich, by definition, constitutes its truth? I do not wonder the\nintellectualist has much to say about \u201ctranscendence\u201d when he comes to\ndealing with the truth of judgments about the past; but why does he not\ntell us how we manage to know when one thought lands straight on the\ndevoted head of something past and gone, while another thought comes\ndown on the wrong thing in the past?\n\n_Pupil._ Well, of course, knowledge of the past is very mysterious, but\nhow is the pragmatist any better off?\n\n_Teacher._ The reply to that may be inferred from what has already been\nsaid. The past event has left effects, consequences, that are present\nand that will continue in the future. Our belief about it, if genuine,\nmust also modify action in _some_ way and so have objective effects. If\nthese two sets of effects interlock harmoniously, then the judgment is\ntrue. If perchance the past event had no discoverable consequences or\nour thought of it can work out to no assignable difference anywhere,\nthen there is no possibility of genuine judgment.\n\n_Pupil._ You have, perhaps, anticipated my next objection, which was\nthat upon the pragmatic theory (by which truth is constituted by future\nconsequences) there are no truths about what is past and gone, since\nin respect to that ideas can make no difference. For, I suppose, you\nwould say that the difference made is in the effects that continue,\nsince ideas may work out to facilitate or to confuse our relations to\nthese effects. Nevertheless, I am not quite satisfied. For when I say\nit is true that it rained yesterday, surely the object of my judgment\nis something past, not future, while pragmatism makes all objects of\njudgment future.\n\n_Teacher: Reply._ You confuse the content of a judgment with\nthe _reference_ of that content. The content of any idea about\nyesterday\u2019s rain certainly involves past time, but the distinctive or\ncharacteristic aim of judgment is none the less to give this content a\nfuture reference and function.\n\n_Pupil: Objection Five._ But your argument requires an absurd\nidentification of truth and verification. To verify ideas is to find\nout that they were already true; or possessed of the truth relation\nprior to its discovery in verification. But the pragmatist holds that\nthe act of finding out that ideas are true creates the thing that is\nfound. In short, you confuse the psychology of finding out with the\nreality found out.\n\n_Teacher: Reply._ Many intellectualists have now gone so far as\nto admit that _verification_ is the testing of a judgment by the\nconsequence it imports, the difference it makes--its working. But\nthey still deny any organic connection between the \u201cantecedent\u201d truth\nproperty of ideas and the verification (or \u201cmaking true\u201d) process.\nSurely they admit either too much or too little. (i) If an idea\nabout a past event is already true because of some mysterious static\ncorrespondence that it possesses to that past event, how in the world\ncan its truth be _proved_ by the _future consequences_ of that idea?\nWhy is it that the intellectualist has not produced any positive\ntheory about the relation of verification to his notion of truth?\n(ii) Moreover, if verification consists in the experimental working\nout of a belief, the intellectualist thereby admits that his _own_\ntheory of truth can be _known_ to be true only as it is verified by\nits workings. But if the theory that truth is a ready-made static\nproperty of judgments _is_ true, how in the world _can_ it be verified\nby making any specific differences in the course of events? Everywhere\nwe have to proceed _as if_ the pragmatic theory were the right one.\n(iii) If he admits that the pragmatic theory of verification is true,\nwhat meaning remains to the statement that the idea had the truth\nproperty in advance? Why, simply that it had the property of _ability\nto work_--an ability revealed by its actual working. How can a given\nfact be an objection to the pragmatic theory when that fact has a\ndefinitely assignable meaning on the pragmatic theory, while upon\nthe anti-pragmatic theory it just has to be accepted as an ultimate,\nunanalyzable fact?\n\nAs to your remark about verification being merely psychological, I have\nsomething to say. Colleagues of mine are steadily at work in various\nlaboratories on various researches, forming hypotheses, experimenting,\ntesting, corroborating, refuting, modifying ideas. One of them, for\nexample, recently put an immense pendulum in place in order to repeat\nand test Foucault\u2019s experiment with reference to the earth\u2019s rotation.\nDo you regard such verification processes as merely psychological?\n\n_Pupil._ I don\u2019t know. Why do you ask?\n\n_Teacher._ Because if the objector means that such experimental\nprovings are _merely_ psychological, he has of course relegated to the\nmerely psychological (wherever that may be) all the technique of all\nthe physical sciences--a rather high price to pay for the confutation\nof the pragmatist. The intellectualist is thus in the dilemma either\nof conceding to the pragmatist the whole sphere of concrete scientific\nlogic or else of himself regarding all science as merely subjective?\nWhich horn does he choose?\n\n_Pupil: Objection Six._ I noticed a moment ago that you spoke of the\npragmatic theory of truth being true. Surely the pragmatist does not\nlive up to his reputation of having a sense of humor when he claims\nassent to his theory on the ground that it is true. What is this but to\nadmit intellectualism?\n\n_Teacher: Reply._ My son, we are evidently nearing the end. Naturally,\nthe pragmatist claims his theory to be true in the pragmatic sense of\ntruth: it works, it clears up difficulties, removes obscurities, puts\nindividuals into more experimental, less dogmatic, and less arbitrarily\nsceptical relations to life; aligns philosophic with scientific\nmethod; does away with self-made problems of epistemology; clarifies\nand reorganizes logical theory, etc. He is quite content to have the\ntruth of his theory consist in its working in these various ways, and\nto leave to the intellectualist the proud possession of a static,\nunanalyzable, unverifiable, unworking property.\n\n_Pupil: Objection Seven._ Nevertheless, the pragmatist is always\nappealing to the judgments of others to corroborate his own judgment.\nSurely this admits the principle of a judgment that is correct, true,\n_in se_.\n\n_Teacher: Reply._ The pragmatist says that judgment _is_ pragmatic,\n_i.e._, originated under conditions of need for a survey and statement,\nand tested by efficiency in meeting this need. And then you think\nyou have refuted him by saying that any appeal to judgment is\nintellectualistic! Such begging of the question convinces me that the\nradical difficulty of the intellectualist is that he conceives of the\npragmatist as beginning with a theory of truth, when in reality the\nlatter begins with a theory about judgments and meanings of which the\ntheory of truth is a corollary.\n\n_Pupil: Objection Eight._ Nevertheless, you are endeavoring to convert\nyour opponent to a certain theory. Surely that is an intellectual\nundertaking, and in theory (at least) the theoretical criterion, as Mr.\nBradley has well said, must be supreme.\n\n_Teacher: Reply._ A little reflection will convince you that you are\ngoing around in the same old circle. Since men have to act together,\nsince the individual subsists in social bonds and activities, to\nconvert another to a certain way of looking at things is to make social\nties and functions better adapted, more prosperous in their workings.\nOnly if the pragmatist held the _intellectualist\u2019s_ position, would\nhe appeal to other than what is ultimately a practical need and a\npractical criterion in endeavoring to convert others.\n\n_Pupil: Objection Nine._ Still the pragmatic criterion, being\nsatisfactory working, is purely personal and subjective. Whatever works\nso as to please me is true. Either this is your result (in which case\nyour reference to social relations only denotes at bottom a _number_ of\npurely subjectivistic satisfactions) or else you unconsciously assume\nan intellectual department of our nature that has to be satisfied; and\nwhose satisfaction is truth. Thereby you admit the intellectualistic\ncriterion.\n\n_Teacher: Reply._ We seem to have got back to our starting-point, the\nnature of satisfaction. The intellectualist seems to think that because\nthe pragmatist insists upon the factor of human want, purpose, and\nrealization in the making and testing of judgments, the impersonal\nfactor is therefore denied. But what the pragmatist does is to insist\nthat the human factor must work itself out in _co-operation_ with\nthe environmental factor, and that their co-adaptation _is_ both\n\u201ccorrespondence\u201d and \u201csatisfaction.\u201d As long as the human factor\nis ignored and denied, or is regarded as _merely_ psychological\n(whatever, once more, that means), this human factor will assert\nitself in irresponsible ways. So long as, particularly in philosophy,\na flagrantly unchastened pragmatism reigns, we shall find, as at\npresent, the most ambitious intellectualistic systems accepted simply\nbecause of the personal comfort they yield those who contrive and\naccept them. Once recognize the human factor, and pragmatism is at\nhand to insist that the believer must accept the full consequences of\nhis beliefs, and that his beliefs must be tried out, through acting\nupon them, to discover what is their meaning or consequence. Till so\ntested, he insists that beliefs, no matter how noble and seemingly\nedifying, are dogmas, not truths. Till the testing has been worked out\nvery completely and patiently, he holds his beliefs as but provisional,\nas working hypotheses, as methods:--and he recognizes the probability\nthat, as additional modes of testing develop, more and more so-called\ntruths will be relegated to the category of working hypotheses--till\nthe dogmatic mind is crowded out and starved out. At present, the\nignoring by philosophers of the part played by personal education,\ntemperament, and preference in their philosophies is the chief source\nof pretentiousness and insincerity in their systems, and is the ground\nof the popular disregard for them.\n\n_Pupil._ What you say calls to mind something of Chesterton\u2019s that I\nread recently: \u201cI agree with the pragmatists that apparent objective\ntruth is not the whole matter; that there is an authoritative need to\nbelieve the things that are necessary to the human mind. But I say\nthat one of those necessities precisely is a belief in objective truth.\nPragmatism is a matter of human needs and one of the first of human\nneeds is to be something more than a pragmatist.\u201d You would say, if I\nunderstand you aright, that to fall back upon a supposed necessity of\nthe \u201chuman mind\u201d to believe in certain absolute truths, is to evade a\nproper demand for testing the human mind and all its works.\n\n_Teacher._ My son, I am glad to leave the last word with you. This\n_enfant terrible_ of intellectualism has revealed that the chief\nobjection of absolutists to the pragmatic doctrine of the personal (or\n\u201csubjective\u201d) factor in belief is that the pragmatist has spilled the\npersonal milk in the absolutist\u2019s cocoanut.\n\n\n\n\nBELIEFS AND EXISTENCES[26]\n\n\nI\n\nBeliefs look both ways, towards persons and toward things. They are\nthe original Mr. Facing-both-ways. They form or judge--justify or\ncondemn--the agents who entertain them and who insist upon them. They\nare of things whose immediate meanings form their content. To believe\nis to ascribe value, impute meaning, assign import. The collection and\ninteraction of these appraisals and assessments is the world of the\ncommon man,--that is, of man as an individual and not as a professional\nbeing or class specimen. Thus things are characters, not mere entities;\nthey behave and respond and provoke. In the behavior that exemplifies\nand tests their character, they help and hinder; disturb and pacify;\nresist and comply; are dismal and mirthful, orderly and deformed, queer\nand commonplace; they agree and disagree; are better and worse.\n\nThus the human world, whether or no it have core and axis, has presence\nand transfiguration. It means here and now, not in some transcendent\nsphere. It moves, of itself, to varied incremental meaning, not to some\nfar off event, whether divine or diabolic. Such movement constitutes\nconduct, for conduct is the working out of the commitments of belief.\nThat believed better is held to, asserted, affirmed, acted upon. The\nmoments of its crucial fulfilment are the natural \u201ctranscendentals\u201d;\nthe decisive, the critical, standards of further estimation, selection,\nand rejection. That believed worse is fled, resisted, transformed into\nan instrument for the better. Characters, in being condensations of\nbelief, are thus at once the reminders and the prognostications of\nweal and woe; they concrete and they regulate the terms of effective\napprehension and appropriation of things. This general regulative\nfunction is what we mean in calling them characters, forms.\n\nFor beliefs, made in the course of existence, reciprocate by making\nexistence still farther, by developing it. Beliefs are not made\n_by_ existence in a mechanical or logical or psychological sense.\n\u201cReality\u201d naturally instigates belief. It appraises itself and\nthrough this self-appraisal manages its affairs. As things are\nsurcharged valuations, so \u201cconsciousness\u201d means ways of believing and\ndisbelieving. It is interpretation; not merely existence aware of\nitself as fact, but existence discerning, judging itself, approving and\ndisapproving.\n\nThis double outlook and connection of belief, its implication, on one\nside, with beings who suffer and endeavor, and, its complication on\nthe other, with the meanings and worths of things, is its glory or\nits unpardonable sin. We cannot keep connection on one side and throw\nit away on the other. We cannot preserve significance and decline the\npersonal attitude in which it is inscribed and operative, any more than\nwe can succeed in making things \u201cstates\u201d of a \u201cconsciousness\u201d whose\nbusiness is to be an interpretation of things. Beliefs are personal\naffairs, and personal affairs are adventures, and adventures are, if\nyou please, shady. But equally discredited, then, is the universe of\nmeanings. For the world has meaning as somebody\u2019s, somebody\u2019s at a\njuncture, taken for better or worse, and you shall not have completed\nyour metaphysics till you have told whose world is meant and how and\nwhat for--in what bias and to what effect. Here is a cake that is had\nonly by eating it, just as there is digestion only _for_ life as well\nas _by_ life.\n\nSo far the standpoint of the common man. But the professional man,\nthe philosopher, has been largely occupied in a systematic effort\nto discredit the standpoint of the common man, that is, to disable\nbelief as an ultimately valid principle. Philosophy is shocked at\nthe frank, almost brutal, evocation of beliefs by and in natural\nexistence, like witches out of a desert heath--at a mode of production\nwhich is neither logical, nor physical, nor psychological, but just\nnatural, empirical. For modern philosophy is, as every college senior\nrecites, epistemology; and epistemology, as perhaps our books and\nlectures sometimes forget to tell the senior, has absorbed Stoic dogma.\nPassionless imperturbability, absolute detachment, complete subjection\nto a ready-made and finished reality--physical it may be, mental it\nmay be, logical it may be--is its professed ideal. Forswearing the\nreality of affection, and the gallantry of adventure, the genuineness\nof the incomplete, the tentative, it has taken an oath of allegiance to\nReality, objective, universal, complete; made perhaps of atoms, perhaps\nof sensations, perhaps of logical meanings. This ready-made reality,\nalready including everything, must of course swallow and absorb\nbelief, must produce it psychologically, mechanically, or logically,\naccording to its own nature; must in any case, instead of acquiring\naid and support from belief, resolve it into one of its own preordained\ncreatures, making a desert and calling it harmony, unity, totality.[27]\n\nPhilosophy has dreamed the dream of a knowledge which is other than\nthe propitious outgrowth of beliefs that shall develop aforetime their\nulterior implications in order to recast them, to rectify their errors,\ncultivate their waste places, heal their diseases, fortify their\nfeeblenesses:--the dream of a knowledge that has to do with objects\nhaving no nature save to be known.\n\nNot that their philosophers have admitted the concrete realizability\nof their scheme. On the contrary, the assertion of the absolute\n\u201cReality\u201d of what is empirically unrealizable is a part of the scheme;\nthe ideal of a universe of pure, cognitional objects, fixed elements\nin fixed relations. Sensationalist and idealist, positivist and\ntranscendentalist, materialist and spiritualist, defining this object\nin as many differing ways as they have different conceptions of the\nideal and method of knowledge, are at one in their devotion to an\nidentification of Reality with something that connects monopolistically\nwith passionless knowledge, belief purged of all personal reference,\norigin, and outlook.[28]\n\nWhat is to be said of this attempt to sever the cord which naturally\nbinds together personal attitudes and the meaning of things? This much\nat least: the effort to extract meanings, values, from the beliefs that\nascribe them, and to give the former absolute metaphysical validity\nwhile the latter are sent to wander as scapegoats in the wilderness\nof mere phenomena, is an attempt, which, as long as \u201cour interest\u2019s\non the dangerous edge of things,\u201d will attract an admiring, even if\nsuspicious, audience. Moreover, we may admit that the attempt to\ncatch the universe of immediate experience, of action and passion,\ncoming and going, to damn it in its present body in order expressly\nto glorify its spirit to all eternity, to validate the meaning of\nbeliefs by discrediting their natural existence, to attribute absolute\nworth to the intent of human convictions just because of the absolute\nworthlessness of their content--that the performance of this feat\nof virtuosity has developed philosophy to its present wondrous, if\nformidable, technique.\n\nBut can we claim more than a _succ\u00e8s d\u2019estime_? Consider again the\nnature of the effort. The world of immediate meanings, of the world\nempirically sustained in beliefs, is to be sorted out into two\nportions, metaphysically discontinuous, one of which shall alone be\ngood and true \u201cReality,\u201d the fit material of passionless, beliefless\nknowledge; while the other part, that which is excluded, shall be\nreferred exclusively to belief and treated as mere appearance,\npurely subjective, impressions or effects in consciousness, or as\nthat ludicrously abject modern discovery--an epiphenomenon. And this\ndivision into the real and the unreal is accomplished by the very\nindividual whom his own \u201cabsolute\u201d results reduce to phenomenality,\nin terms of the very immediate experience which is infected with\nworthlessness, and on the basis of preference, of selection that are\ndeclared to be unreal! Can the thing be done?\n\nAnyway, the snubbed and excluded factor may always reassert itself.\nThe very pushing it out of \u201cReality\u201d may but add to its potential\nenergy, and invoke a more violent recoil. When affections and\naversions, with the beliefs in which they record themselves and the\nefforts they exact, are reduced to epiphenomena, dancing an idle\nattendance upon a reality complete without them, to which they vainly\nstrive to accommodate themselves by mirroring, then may the emotions\nflagrantly burst forth with the claim that, as a friend of mine puts\nit, reason is _only_ a fig leaf for _their_ nakedness. When one\nman says that need, uncertainty, choice, novelty, and strife have\nno place in Reality, which is made up wholly of established things\nbehaving by foregone rules, then may another man be provoked to reply\nthat all such fixities, whether named atoms or God, whether they be\nfixtures of a sensational, a positivistic, or an idealistic system,\nhave existence and import only in the problems, needs, struggles, and\ninstrumentalities of conscious agents and patients. For home rule may\nbe found in the unwritten efficacious constitution of experience.\n\nThat contemporaneously we are in the presence of such a reaction is\napparent. Let us, in pursuit of our topic, inquire how it came about\nand why it takes the form that it takes. This consideration may not\nonly occupy the hour, but may help diagram some future parallelogram\nof forces. The account calls for some sketching (1) of the historical\ntendencies which have shaped the situation in which a Stoic theory of\nknowledge claims metaphysical monopoly, and (2) of the tendencies that\nhave furnished the despised principle of belief opportunity and means\nof reassertion.\n\n\nII\n\nImagination readily travels to a period when a gospel of intense,\nand, one may say, deliberate passionate disturbance appeared to be\nconquering the Stoic ideal of passionless reason; when the demand\nfor individual assertion by faith against the established, embodied\nobjective order was seemingly subduing the idea of the total\nsubordination of the individual to the universal. By what course\nof events came about the dramatic reversal, in which an ethically\nconquered Stoicism became the conqueror, epistemologically, of\nChristianity?\n\nHow are our imaginations haunted by the idea of what might have\nhappened if Christianity had found ready to its hand intellectual\nformulations corresponding to its practical proclamations!\n\nThat the ultimate principle of conduct is affectional and volitional;\nthat God is love; that access to the principle is by faith, a personal\nattitude; that belief, surpassing logical basis and warrant, works\nout through its own operation its own fulfilling evidence: such was\nthe implied moral metaphysic of Christianity. But this implication\nneeded to become a theory, a theology, a formulation; and in this\nneed, it found no recourse save to philosophies that had identified\ntrue existence with the proper object of logical reason. For, in Greek\nthought, after the valuable meanings, the meanings of industry and art\nthat appealed to sustained and serious choice, had given birth and\nstatus to reflective reason, reason denied its ancestry of organized\nendeavor, and proclaimed itself in its function of self-conscious\nlogical thought to be the author and warrant of all genuine things.\nYet how nearly Christianity had found prepared for it the needed means\nof its own intellectual statement! We recall Aristotle\u2019s account\nof moral knowing, and his definition of man. Man as man, he tells\nus, is a principle that may be termed either desiring thought or\nthinking desire. Not as pure intelligence does _man_ know, but as an\norganization of desires effected through reflection upon their own\nconditions and consequences. What if Aristotle had only assimilated\nhis idea of theoretical to his notion of practical knowledge! Because\npractical thinking was so human, Aristotle rejected it in favor of\npure, passionless cognition, something superhuman. Thinking desire is\nexperimental, is tentative, not absolute. It looks to the future and\nto the past for help in the future. It is contingent, not necessary.\nIt doubly relates to the individual: to the individual thing as\nexperienced by an individual agent; not to the universal. Hence\ndesire is a sure sign of defect, of privation, of non-being, and\nseeks surcease in something which knows it not. Hence desiring reason\nculminating in beliefs relating to imperfect existence, stands forever\nin contrast with passionless reason functioning in pure knowledge,\nlogically complete, of perfect being.\n\nI need not remind you how through Neo-Platonism, St. Augustine, and the\nScholastic renaissance, these conceptions became imbedded in Christian\nphilosophy; and what a reversal occurred of the original practical\nprinciple of Christianity. Belief is henceforth important because\nit is the mere antecedent in a finite and fallen world, a temporal\nand phenomenal world infected with non-being, of true knowledge to\nbe achieved only in a world of completed Being. Desire is but the\nself-consciousness of defect striving to its own termination in\nperfect possession, through perfect knowledge of perfect being. I\nneed not remind you that the _prima facie_ subordination of reason to\nauthority, of knowledge to faith, in the medieval code, is, after all,\nbut the logical result of the doctrine that man as man (since only\nreasoning desire) is merely phenomenal; and has his reality in God, who\nas God is the complete union of rational insight and being--the term\nof man\u2019s desire, and the fulfilment of his feeble attempts at knowing.\nAuthority, \u201cfaith\u201d as it then had to be conceived, meant just that this\nBeing comes externally to the aid of man, otherwise hopelessly doomed\nto misery in long drawn out error and non-being, and disciplines him\ntill, in the next world under more favoring auspices, he may have his\ndesires stilled in good, and his faith may yield to knowledge:--for we\nforget that the doctrine of immortality was not an appendage, but an\nintegral part of the theory that since knowledge is the _true_ function\nof man, happiness is attained only in knowledge, which itself exists\nonly in achievement of perfect Being or God.\n\nFor my part, I can but think that medieval absolutism, with its\nprovision for authoritative supernatural assistance in this world and\nassertion of supernatural realization in the next, was more logical,\nas well as more humane, than the modern absolutism, that, with the\nsame logical premises, bids man find adequate consolation and support\nin the fact that, after all, his strivings are already eternally\nfulfilled, his errors already eternally transcended, his partial\nbeliefs already eternally comprehended.\n\nThe modern age is marked by a refusal to be satisfied with the\npostponement of the exercise and function of reason to another and\nsupernatural sphere, and by a resolve to practise itself upon its\npresent object, nature, with all the joys thereunto appertaining. The\npure intelligence of Aristotle, thought thinking itself, expresses\nitself as free inquiry directed upon the present conditions of its\nown most effective exercise. The principle of the inherent relation\nof thought to being was preserved intact, but its practical locus was\nmoved down from the next world to this. Spinoza\u2019s \u201cGod or Nature\u201d is\nthe logical outcome; as is also his strict correlation of the attribute\nof matter with the attribute of thought; while his combination of\nthorough distrust of passion and faith with complete faith in reason\nand all-absorbing passion for knowledge is so classic an embodiment of\nthe whole modern contradiction that it may awaken admiration where less\nthorough-paced formulations call out irritation.\n\nIn the practical devotion of present intelligence to its present\nobject, nature, science was born, and also its philosophical\ncounterpart, the theory of knowledge. Epistemology only generalized in\nits loose, although narrow and technical way, the question practically\nurgent in Europe: How is science possible? How can intelligence\nactively and directly get at its object?\n\nMeantime, through Protestantism the values, the meanings formerly\ncharacterizing the next life (the opportunity for full perception\nof perfect being), were carried over into present-day emotions and\nresponses.\n\nThe dualism between faith authoritatively supported as the principle of\nthis life, and knowledge supernaturally realized as the principle of\nthe next, was transmuted into the dualism between intelligence now and\nhere occupied with natural things, and the affections and accompanying\nbeliefs, now and here realizing spiritual worths. For a time this\ndualism operated as a convenient division of labor. Intelligence, freed\nfrom responsibility for and preoccupation with supernatural truths,\ncould occupy itself the more fully and efficiently with the world\nthat now is; while the affections, charged with the values evoked in\nthe medieval discipline, entered into the present enjoyment of the\ndelectations previously reserved for the saints. Directness took the\nplace of systematic intermediation; the present of the future; the\nindividual\u2019s emotional consciousness of the supernatural institution.\nBetween science and faith, thus conceived, a bargain was struck.\nHands off; each to his own, was the compact; the natural world to\nintelligence, the moral, the spiritual world to belief. This (natural)\nworld for knowledge; that (supernatural) world for belief. Thus the\nantithesis, unexpressed, ignored, _within experience_, between belief\nand knowledge, between the purely objective values of thought and the\npersonal values of passion and volition, was more fundamental, more\ndetermining, than the opposition, explicit and harassing, _within\nknowledge_, between subject and object, mind and matter.\n\nThis latent antagonism worked out into the open. In scientific detail,\nknowledge encroached upon the historic traditions and opinions with\nwhich the moral and religious life had identified itself. It made\nhistory to be as natural, as much its spoil, as physical nature. It\nturned itself upon man, and proceeded remorselessly to account for\nhis emotions, his volitions, his opinions. Knowledge, in its general\ntheory, as philosophy, went the same way. It was pre-committed to\nthe old notion: the absolutely real is the object of _knowledge_,\nand hence is something universal and impersonal. So, whether by the\nroad of sensationalism or rationalism, by the path of mechanicalism\nor objective idealism, it came about that concrete selves, specific\nfeeling and willing beings, were relegated with the beliefs in which\nthey declare themselves to the \u201cphenomenal.\u201d\n\n\nIII\n\nSo much for the situation against which some contemporary tendencies\nare a deliberate protest.\n\nWhat of the positive conditions that give us not mere protest, like\nthe unreasoning revolt of heart against head found at all epochs, but\nsomething articulate and constructive? The field is only too large,\nand I shall limit myself to the evolution of the knowledge standpoint\nitself. I shall suggest, first, that the progress of intelligence\ndirected upon natural materials has evolved a procedure of knowledge\nthat renders untenable the inherited conception of knowledge; and,\nsecondly, that this result is reinforced by the specific results of\nsome of the special sciences.\n\n1. First, then, the very use of the knowledge standpoint, the very\nexpression of the knowledge preoccupation, has produced methods and\ntests that, when formulated, intimate a radically different conception\nof knowledge, and of its relation to existence and belief, than the\northodox one.\n\nThe one thing that stands out is that thinking is inquiry, and that\nknowledge as science is the outcome of systematically directed inquiry.\nFor a time it was natural enough that inquiry should be interpreted\nin the old sense, as just change of subjective attitudes and opinions\nto make them square up with a \u201creality\u201d that is already there in\nready-made, fixed, and finished form. The rationalist had one notion\nof the reality, _i.e._, that it was of the nature of laws, genera,\nor an ordered system, and so thought of concepts, axioms, etc.,\nas the indicated modes of representation. The empiricist, holding\nreality to be a lot of little discrete particular lumps, thought of\ndisjointed sensations as its appropriate counterpart. But both alike\nwere thorough conformists. If \u201creality\u201d is already and completely\ngiven, and if knowledge is just submissive acceptance, then, of\ncourse, inquiry is only a subjective change in the human \u201cmind\u201d or in\n\u201cconsciousness,\u201d--these being subjective and \u201cunreal.\u201d\n\nBut the very development of the sciences served to reveal a peculiar\nand intolerable paradox. Epistemology, having condemned inquiry once\nfor all to the region of subjectivity in an invidious sense, finds\nitself in flat opposition in principle and in detail to the assumption\nand to the results of the sciences. Epistemology is bound to deny to\nthe results of the special sciences in detail any ulterior objectivity\njust because they always _are_ in a process of inquiry--_in_ solution.\nWhile a man may not be halted at being told that his mental activities,\nsince his, are not genuinely real, many men will draw violently back\nat being told that all the discoveries, conclusions, explanations,\nand theories of the sciences share the same fate, being the products\nof a discredited mind. And, in general, epistemology, in relegating\nhuman thinking as inquiry to a merely phenomenal region, makes concrete\napproximation and conformity to objectivity hopeless. Even if it did\nsquare itself up to and by \u201creality\u201d it never could be sure of it.\nThe ancient myth of Tantalus and his effort to drink the water before\nhim seems to be ingeniously prophetic of modern epistemology. The\nthirstier, the needier of truth the human mind, and the intenser the\nefforts put forth to slake itself in the ocean of being just beyond\nthe edge of consciousness, the more surely the living waters of truth\nrecede!\n\nWhen such self-confessed sterility is joined with consistent derogation\nof all the special results of the special sciences, some one is sure to\nraise the cry of \u201cdog in the manger,\u201d or of \u201csour grapes.\u201d A revision\nof the theory of thinking, of inquiry, would seem to be inevitable;\na revision which should cease trying to construe knowledge as an\nattempted approximation to a reproduction of reality under conditions\nthat condemn it in advance to failure; a revision which should start\nfrankly from the fact of thinking as inquiring, and purely external\nrealities as terms in inquiries, and which should construe validity,\nobjectivity, truth, and the test and system of truths, on the basis of\nwhat they actually mean and do within inquiry.\n\nSuch a standpoint promises ample revenge for the long damnation and\nlonger neglect to which the principle of belief has been subjected.\nThe whole procedure of thinking as developed in those extensive and\nintensive inquiries that constitute the sciences, is but rendering\ninto a systematic technique, into an art deliberately and delightfully\npursued, the rougher and cruder means by which practical human beings\nhave in all ages worked out the implications of their beliefs, tested\nthem, and endeavored in the interests of economy, efficiency, and\nfreedom, to render them coherent with one another. Belief, sheer,\ndirect, unmitigated belief, reappears as the working hypothesis; action\nthat at once develops and tests belief reappears in experimentation,\ndeduction, demonstration; while the machinery of universals, axioms,\n_a priori_ truths, etc., becomes a systematization of the way in which\nmen have always worked out, in anticipation of overt action, the\nimplications of their beliefs, with a view to revising them, in the\ninterests of obviating unfavorable, and securing welcome consequences.\nObservation, with its machinery of sensations, measurements, etc.,\nis the resurrection of the way in which agents have always faced and\ntried to define the problems that face them; truth is the union of\nabstract postulated meanings and of concrete brute facts in a way that\ncircumvents the latter by judging them from a new standpoint, while it\ntests concepts by using them as methods in the same active experience.\nIt all comes to experience personally conducted and personally\nconsummated.\n\nLet consciousness of these facts dawn a little more brightly over the\nhorizon of epistemological prejudices, and it will be seen that nothing\nprevents admitting the genuineness both of thinking activities and of\ntheir characteristic results, except the notion that belief itself is\nnot a genuine ingredient of existence--a notion which itself is not\nonly a belief, but a belief which, unlike the convictions of the common\nman and the hypotheses of science, finds its proud proof in the fact\nthat it does not demean itself so unworthily as to work.\n\nOnce believe that beliefs themselves are as \u201creal\u201d as anything else\ncan ever be, and we have a world in which uncertainty, doubtfulness,\nreally inhere; and in which personal attitudes and responses are real\nboth in their own distinctive existence, and as the only ways in which\nan as yet undetermined factor of reality takes on shape, meaning,\nvalue, truth. If \u201cto wilful men the injuries that they themselves\nprocure, must be their schoolmasters\u201d--and all beliefs are wilful--then\nby the same token the propitious evolutions of meaning, which wilful\nmen secure to an expectant universe, must be their compensation and\ntheir justification. In a doubtful and needy universe elements must be\nbeggarly, and the development of personal beliefs into experimentally\nexecuted systems of actions, is the organized bureau of philanthropy\nwhich confers upon a travailing universe the meaning for which it cries\nout. The apostrophe of the poet is above all to man the thinker, the\ninquirer, the knower:\n\n    O Dreamer! O Desirer, goer down\n    Unto untraveled seas in untried ships,\n    O crusher of the unimagined grape,\n    On unconceiv\u00e8d lips.\n\n2. Biology, psychology, and the social sciences proffer an imposing\nbody of concrete facts that also point to the rehabilitation of\nbelief--to the interpretation of knowledge as a human and practical\noutgrowth of belief, not to belief as the state to which knowledge is\ncondemned in a merely finite and phenomenal world. I need not, as I\ncannot, here summarize the psychological revision which the notions of\nsensation, perception, conception, cognition in general have undergone,\nall to one intent. \u201cMotor\u201d is writ large on their face. The testimony\nof biology is unambiguous to the effect that the organic instruments\nof the whole intellectual life, the sense-organs and brain and their\nconnections, have been developed on a definitely practical basis and\nfor practical aims, for the purpose of such control over conditions\nas will sustain and vary the meanings of life. The historic sciences\nare equally explicit in their evidence that knowledge as a system of\ninformation and instruction is a co\u00f6perative social achievement, at\nall times socially toned, sustained, and directed; and that logical\nthinking is a reweaving through individual activity of this social\nfabric at such points as are indicated by prevailing needs and aims.\n\nThis bulky and coherent body of testimony is not, of course, of itself\nphilosophy. But it supplies, at all events, facts that have scientific\nbacking, and that are as worthy of regard as the facts pertinent to any\nscience. At the present time these facts seem to have some peculiar\nclaim just because they present traits largely ignored in prior\nphilosophic formulations, while those belonging to mathematics and\nphysics have so largely wrought their sweet will on systems. Again, it\nwould seem as if in philosophies built deliberately upon the knowledge\nprinciple, any body of known facts should not have to clamor for\nsympathetic attention.\n\nSuch being the case, the reasons for ruling psychology and sociology\nand allied sciences out of competency to give philosophic testimony\nhave more significance than the bare denial of jurisdiction. They are\nevidences of the deep-rooted preconception that whatever concerns a\nparticular conscious agent, a wanting, struggling, satisfied and\ndissatisfied being, must of course be only \u201cphenomenal\u201d in import.\n\nThis aversion is the more suggestive when the professed idealist\nappears as the special champion of the virginity of pure knowledge.\nThe idealist, so content with the notion that consciousness determines\nreality, provided it be done once for all, at a jump and in lump, is\nso uneasy in presence of the idea that empirical conscious beings\ngenuinely determine existences now and here! One is reminded of the\nstory told, I think, by Spencer. Some committee had organized and\ncontended, through a long series of parliaments, for the passage of\na measure. At last one of their meetings was interrupted with news\nof success. Consternation was the result. What was to become of the\noccupation of the committee? So, one asks, what is to become of\nidealism at large, of the wholesale unspecifiable determination of\n\u201creality\u201d by or in \u201cconsciousness,\u201d if specific conscious beings, John\nSmiths, and Susan Smiths (to say nothing of their animal relations),\nbeings with bowels and brains, are found to exercise influence upon the\ncharacter and existence of reals?\n\nOne would be almost justified in construing idealism as a Pickwickian\nscheme, so willing is it to idealize the principle of intelligence\nat the expense of its specific undertakings, were it not that this\nreluctance is the necessary outcome of the Stoic basis and tenor of\nidealism--its preoccupation with logical contents and relations in\nabstraction from their _situs_ and function in conscious living beings.\n\n\nIV\n\nI have suggested to you the na\u00efve conception of the relation of beliefs\nto realities: that beliefs are themselves real without discount,\nmanifesting their reality in the usual proper way, namely, by modifying\nand shaping the reality of other things, so that they connect the bias,\nthe preferences and affections, the needs and endeavors of personal\nlives with the values, the characters ascribed to things:--the latter\nthus becoming worthy of human acquaintance and responsive to human\nintercourse. This was followed by a sketch of the history of thought,\nindicating how beliefs and all they insinuate were subjected to\npreconceived notions of knowledge and of \u201creality\u201d as a monopolistic\npossession of pure intellect. Then I traced some of the _motifs_ that\nmake for reconsideration of the supposed uniquely exclusive relation\nof logical knowledge and \u201creality\u201d; _motifs_ that make for a less\ninvidiously superior attitude towards the convictions of the common man.\n\nIn concluding, I want to say a word or two to mitigate--for escape is\nimpossible--some misunderstandings. And, to begin with, while possible\ndoubts inevitably troop with actual beliefs, the doctrine in question\nis not particularly sceptical. The radical empiricist, the humanist,\nthe pragmatist, label him as you will, believes not in fewer but in\nmore \u201crealities\u201d than the orthodox philosophers warrant. He is not\nconcerned, for example, in discrediting objective realities and logical\nor universal thinking; he is interested in such a reinterpretation of\nthe sort of \u201creality\u201d which these things possess as will accredit,\nwithout depreciation, concrete empirical conscious centers of action\nand passion.\n\nMy second remark is to the opposite effect. The intent is not\nespecially credulous, although it starts from and ends with the radical\ncredulity of all knowledge. To suppose that because the sciences are\nultimately instrumental to human beliefs, we are therefore to be\ncareless of the most exact possible use of extensive and systematic\nscientific methods, is like supposing that because a watch is made to\ntell present time, and not to be an exemplar of transcendent, absolute\ntime, watches might as well be made of cheap stuffs, casually wrought\nand clumsily put together. It is the task of telling present time, with\nall its urgent implications, that brings home, steadies, and enlarges\nthe responsibility for the best possible use of intelligence, the\ninstrument.\n\nFor one, I have no interest in the old, old scheme of derogating from\nthe worth of knowledge in order to give an uncontrolled field for some\n_special_ beliefs to run riot in,--be these beliefs even faith in\nimmortality, in some special sort of a Deity, or in some particular\nbrand of freedom. Any one of our beliefs is subject to criticism,\nrevision, and even ultimate elimination through the development of its\nown implications by intelligently directed action. Because reason is\na scheme of working out the meanings of convictions in terms of one\nanother and of the consequences they import in further experience,\nconvictions are the more, not the less, amenable and responsible to the\nfull exercise of reason.[29]\n\nThus we are put on the road to that most desirable thing,--the union\nof acknowledgment of moral powers and demands with thoroughgoing\nnaturalism. No one really wants to lame man\u2019s practical nature; it is\nthe supposed exigencies of natural science that force the hand. No one\nreally bears a grudge against naturalism for the sake of obscurantism.\nIt is the need of some sacred reservation for moral interests that\ncoerces. We all want to be as naturalistic as we can be. But the \u201ccan\nbe\u201d is the rub. If we set out with a fixed dualism of belief and\nknowledge, then the uneasy fear that the natural sciences are going\nto encroach and destroy \u201cspiritual values\u201d haunts us. So we build\nthem a citadel and fortify it; that is, we isolate, professionalize,\nand thereby weaken beliefs. But if beliefs are the most natural, and\nin that sense, the most metaphysical of all things, and if knowledge\nis an organized technique for working out their implications and\ninterrelations, for directing their formation and employ, how\nunnecessary, how petty the fear and the caution. Because freedom of\nbelief is ours, free thought may exercise itself; the freer the thought\nthe more sure the emancipation of belief. Hug some special belief and\none fears knowledge; believe in belief and one loves and cleaves to\nknowledge.\n\nWe have here, too, the possibility of a common understanding, in\nthought, in language, in outlook, of the philosopher and the common\nman. What would not the philosopher give, did he not have to part\nwith some of his common humanity in order to join a class? Does he\nnot always, when challenged, justify himself with the contention that\nall men naturally philosophize, and that he but does in a conscious\nand orderly way what leads to harm when done in an indiscriminate\nand irregular way? If philosophy be at once a natural history _and_\na logic--an art--of beliefs, then its technical justification is at\none with its human justification. The natural attitude of man, said\nEmerson, is believing; \u201cthe philosopher, after some struggle, having\nonly reasons for believing.\u201d Let the struggle then enlighten and\nenlarge beliefs; let the reasons kindle and engender new beliefs.\n\nFinally, it is not a solution, but a problem which is presented. As\nphilosophers, our disagreements as to conclusions are trivial compared\nwith our disagreement as to problems. To see the problem another\nsees, in the same perspective and at the same angle--that amounts to\nsomething. Agreement in solutions is in comparison perfunctory. To\nexperience the same problem another feels--that perhaps is agreement.\nIn a world where distinctions are as invidious as comparisons are\nodious, and where intellect works only by comparison and distinction,\npray what is one to do?\n\nBut beliefs are personal matters, and the person, we may still\nbelieve, is social. To be a man is to be thinking desire; and the\nagreement of desires is not in oneness of intellectual conclusion,\nbut in the sympathies of passion and the concords of action:--and yet\nsignificant union in affection and behavior may depend upon a consensus\nin thought that is secured only by discrimination and comparison.\n\n\n\n\nEXPERIENCE AND OBJECTIVE IDEALISM[30]\n\n\nI\n\nIdealism as a philosophic system stands in such a delicate relation\nto experience as to invite attention. In its subjective form, or\nsensationalism, it claims to be the last word of empiricism. In its\nobjective, or rational form, it claims to make good the deficiencies of\nthe subjective type, by emphasizing the work of thought that supplies\nthe factors of objectivity and universality lacking in sensationalism.\nWith reference to experience _as it now is_, such idealism is half\nopposed to empiricism and half committed to it,--antagonistic, so\nfar as existing experience is regarded as tainted with a sensational\ncharacter; favorable, so far as this experience is even now prophetic\nof some final, all-comprehensive, or absolute experience, which in\ntruth is one with reality.\n\nThat this combination of opposition to present experience with devotion\nto the cause of experience in the abstract leaves objective idealism\nin a position of unstable equilibrium from which it can find release\nonly by euthanasia in a thorough-going empiricism seems evident.\nSome of the reasons for this belief may be readily approached by\na summary sketch of three historic episodes in which have emerged\nimportant conceptions of experience and its relation to reason. The\nfirst takes us to classic Greek thought. Here experience means the\npreservation, through memory, of the net result of a multiplicity of\nparticular doings and sufferings; a preservation that affords positive\nskill in maintaining further practice, and promise of success in new\nemergencies. The craft of the carpenter, the art of the physician\nare standing examples of its nature. It differs from instinct and\nblind routine or servile practice because there is some knowledge of\nmaterials, methods, and aims, in their adjustment to one another.\nYet the marks of its passive, habitual origin are indelibly stamped\nupon it. On the knowledge side it can never aspire beyond opinion,\nand if true opinion be achieved, it is only by happy chance. On the\nactive side it is limited to the accomplishment of a special work or\na particular product, following some unjustified, because assumed,\nmethod. Thus it contrasts with the true knowledge of reason, which\nis direct apprehension, self-revealing and self-validating, of an\neternal and harmonious content. The regions in which experience and\nreason respectively hold sway are thus explained. Experience has to do\nwith production, which, in turn, is relative to decay. It deals with\ngeneration, becoming, not with finality, being. Hence it is infected\nwith the trait of relative non-being, of mere imitativeness; hence its\nmultiplicity, its logical inadequacy, its relativity to a standard and\nend beyond itself. Reason, _per contra_, has to do with meaning, with\nsignificance (ideas, forms), that is eternal and ultimate. Since the\nmeaning of anything is the worth, the good, the end of that thing,\nexperience presents us with partial and tentative efforts to achieve\nthe embodiment of purpose, under conditions that doom the attempt to\ninconclusiveness. It has, however, its meed of reality in the degree in\nwhich its results _participate_ in meaning, the good, reason.\n\nFrom this classic period, then, comes the antithesis of experience as\nthe historically achieved _embodiments_ of meaning, partial, multiple,\ninsecure, to reason as the source, author, and container of _meaning_,\npermanent, assured, unified. Idealism means ideality, experience means\nbrute and broken facts. That things exist because of and for the\nsake of meaning, and that experience gives us meaning in a servile,\ninterrupted, and inherently deficient way--such is the standpoint.\nExperience gives us meaning in process of becoming; special and\nisolated instances in which it _happens_, temporally, to appear, rather\nthan meaning pure, undefiled, independent. Experience presents purpose,\nthe good, struggling against obstacles, \u201cinvolved in matter.\u201d\n\nJust how much the vogue of modern neo-Kantian idealism, professedly\nbuilt upon a strictly epistemological instead of upon a cosmological\nbasis, is due, in days of a declining theology, to a vague sense that\naffirming the function of reason in the constitution of a knowable\nworld (which in its own constitution as logically knowable may be,\nmorally and spiritually, anything you please), carries with it an\nassurance of the superior reality of the good and the beautiful as\nwell as of the \u201ctrue,\u201d it would be hard to say. Certainly unction\nseems to have descended upon epistemology, in apostolic succession,\nfrom classic idealism; so that neo-Kantianism is rarely without a tone\nof edification, as if feeling itself the patron of man\u2019s spiritual\ninterests in contrast to the supposed crudeness and insensitiveness\nof naturalism and empiricism. At all events, we find here one element\nin our problem: Experience considered as the summary of past episodic\nadventures and happenings in relation to fulfilled and adequately\nexpressed meaning.\n\nThe second historic event centers about the controversy of innate\nideas, or pure concepts. The issue is between empiricism and\nrationalism as theories of the origin and validation of scientific\nknowledge. The empiricist is he who feels that the chief obstacle\nwhich prevents scientific method from making way is the belief in\npure thoughts, not derived from particular observations and hence not\nresponsible to the course of experience. His objection to the \u201chigh _a\npriori_ road\u201d is that it introduces in irresponsible fashion a mode\nof presumed knowledge which may be used at any turn to stand sponsor\nfor mere tradition and prejudice, and thus to nullify the results of\nscience resting upon and verified by observable facts. Experience\nthus comes to mean, to use the words of Peirce, \u201cthat which is forced\nupon a man\u2019s recognition will-he, nill-he, and shapes his thoughts\nto something quite different from what they naturally would have\ntaken.\u201d[31] The same definition is found in James, in his chapter on\nNecessary Truths: \u201cExperience means experience of something foreign\nsupposed to impress us whether spontaneously or in consequence of our\nown exertions and acts.\u201d[32] As Peirce points out, this notion of\nexperience as the foreign element that forces the hand of thought and\ncontrols its efficacy, goes back to Locke. Experience is \u201cobservation\nemployed either about external sensible objects, or about the internal\noperations of our minds\u201d[33]--as furnishing in short all the valid\ndata and tests of thinking and knowledge. This meaning, thinks Peirce,\nshould be accepted \u201cas a landmark which it would be a crime to disturb\nor displace.\u201d\n\nThe contention of idealism, here bound up with rationalism, is that\nperception and observation cannot guarantee knowledge in its honorific\nsense (science); that the peculiar differentia of scientific knowledge\nis a constancy, a universality, and necessity that contrast at every\npoint with perceptual data, and that indispensably require the\nfunction of conception.[34] In short, _qualitative transformation_\nof _facts_ (data of perception), not their mechanical subtraction\nand recombination, is the difference between scientific and\nperceptual knowledge. Here the problem which emerges is, of course,\nthe significance of perception and of conception in respect to\nexperience.[35]\n\nThe third episode reverses in a curious manner (which confuses present\ndiscussion) the notion of experience as a foreign, alien, coercive\nmaterial. It regards experience as a fortuitous association, by merely\npsychic connections, of individualistic states of consciousness.\nThis is due to the Humian development of Locke. The \u201cobjects\u201d\nand \u201coperations,\u201d which to Locke were just given and secured in\nobservation, become shifting complexes of subjective sensations and\nideas, whose apparent permanency is due to discoverable illusions.\nThis, of course, is the empiricism which made Kant so uneasily toss\nin his dogmatic slumbers (a tossing that he took for an awakening);\nand which, by reaction, called out the conception of thought as a\nfunction operating both to elevate perceptual data to scientific\nstatus, and also to confer objective status, or knowable character,\nupon even sensational data and their associative combinations.[36]\nHere emerges the third element in our problem: The function of thought\nas furnishing objectivity to any experience that claims cognitive\nreference or capacity.\n\nSumming up the matter, idealism stands forth with its assertion of\nthought or reason as (1) the sponsor for all significance, ideality,\npurpose, in experience,--the author of the good and the beautiful\nas well as the true; (2) the power, located in pure conceptions,\nrequired to elevate perceptive or observational material to the plane\nof science; and (3) the constitution that gives objectivity, even the\nsemblance of order, system, connection, mutual reference, to sensory\ndata that without its assistance are mere subjective flux.\n\n\nII\n\nI begin the discussion with the last-named function. Thought is\nhere conceived as _a priori_, not in the sense of particular innate\nideas, but of a function that constitutes the very possibility\nof any objective experience, any experience involving reference\nbeyond its own mere subjective happening. I shall try to show that\nidealism is condemned to move back and forth between two inconsistent\ninterpretations of this _a priori_ thought. It is taken to mean both\nthe organized, the regulated, the informed, established character\nof experience, an order immanent and constitutional; and an agency\nwhich organizes, regulates, forms, synthesizes, a power operative and\nconstructive. And the oscillation between and confusion of these two\ndiverse senses is necessary to Neo-Kantian idealism.\n\nWhen Kant compared his work in philosophy to that of the men who\nintroduced construction into geometry, and experimentation into physics\nand chemistry, the point of his remarks depends upon taking the _a\npriori_ worth of thought in a regulative, directive, controlling sense,\nthought as consciously, intentionally, making an experience _different_\nin a _determinate_ sense and manner. But the point of his answer to\nHume consists in taking the _a priori_ in the other sense, as something\nwhich is _already_ immanent in _any_ experience, and which accordingly\nmakes no determinate difference to any one experience as compared with\nany other, or with any past or future form of itself. The concept is\ntreated first as that which makes an experience actually different,\ncontrolling its evolution towards consistency, coherency, and objective\nreliability; then, it is treated as that which has already effected\nthe organization of any and every experience that comes to recognition\nat all. The fallacy from which he never emerges consists in vibrating\nbetween the definition of a concept as a rule of constructive synthesis\nin a _differential_ sense, and the definition of it as a static\nendowment lurking in \u201cmind,\u201d and giving automatically a hard and fixed\nlaw for the determination of every experienced object. The _a priori_\nconceptions of Kant as immanent fall, like the rain, upon the just and\nthe unjust; upon error, opinion, and hallucination. But Kant slides\ninto these _a priori_ functions the preferential values exercised\nby empirical reflective thought. The concept of triangle, taken\ngeometrically, means doubtless a determinate method of construing space\nelements; but to Kant it also means something that exists in the mind\n_prior_ to all such geometrical constructions and that unconsciously\nlays down the law not only for their conscious elaboration, but also\nfor any space perception, even for that which takes a rectangle to\nbe a triangle. The first of the meanings is intelligible, and marks a\ndefinite contribution to the logic of science. But it is not \u201cobjective\nidealism\u201d; it is a contribution to a revised empiricism. The second is\na dark saying.\n\nThat organization of some sort exists in every experience I make no\ndoubt. That isolation, discrepancy, the fragmentary, the incompatible,\nare brought to recognition and to logical function only with reference\nto some prior existential mode of organization seems clear. And\nit seems equally clear that reflection goes on with profit only\nbecause the materials with which it deals have already some degree\nof organization, or exemplify various relationships. As against\nHume, or even Locke, we may be duly grateful to Kant for enforcing\nacknowledgment of these facts. But the acknowledgment means simply an\nimproved and revised empiricism.\n\nFor, be it noted, this organization, first, is not the work of reason\nor thought, unless \u201creason\u201d be stretched beyond all identification;\nand, secondly, it has no sacrosanct or finally valid and worthful\ncharacter. (1) Experience always carries with it and within it certain\nsystematized arrangements, certain classifications (using the term\nwithout intellectualistic prejudice), coexistent and serial. If we\nattribute these to \u201cthought\u201d then the structure of the brain of a\nMozart which hears and combines sounds in certain groupings, the\npsycho-physical visual habit of the Greek, the locomotor apparatus of\nthe human body in the laying-out and plotting of space is \u201cthought.\u201d\nSocial institutions, established political customs, effect and\nperpetuate modes of reaction and of perception that compel a certain\ngrouping of objects, elements, and values. A national constitution\nbrings about a definite arrangement of the factors of human action\nwhich holds even physical things together in certain determinate\norders. Every successful economic process, with its elaborate divisions\nand adjustments of labor, of materials and instruments, is just such\nan objective organization. Now it is one thing to say that thought has\nplayed a part in the origin and development of such organizations, and\ncontinues to have a r\u00f4le in their judicious employment and application;\nit is another to say that these organizations _are_ thought, or\nare its exclusive product. Thought that functions in these ways is\ndistinctively _reflective_ thought, thought as practical, volitional,\ndeliberately exercised for specific aims--thought as an act, an art of\nskilled mediation. As _reflective_ thought, its end is to terminate its\nown first and experimental forms, and to secure an organization which,\nwhile it may evoke new reflective thinking, puts an end to the thinking\nthat secured the organization. _As organizations_, as established,\neffectively controlling arrangements of objects in experience, their\nmark is that they are not thoughts, but habits, customs of action.[37]\n\nMoreover, such reflective thought as does intervene in the formation\nand maintenance of these practical organizations harks back to prior\npractical organizations, biological and social in nature. It serves\nto _valuate_ organizations already existent as biological functions\nand instincts, while, as itself a biological activity, it redirects\nthem to new conditions and results. Recognize, for example, that a\ngeometric concept is a practical locomotor function of arranging\nstimuli in reference to maintenance of life activities _brought into\nconsciousness_, and then serving as a center of reorganization of\nsuch activities to freer, more varied flexible and valuable forms;\nrecognize this, and we have the truth of the Kantian idea, without\nits excrescences and miracles. The concept is the practical activity\ndoing consciously and artfully what it had aforetime done blindly and\naimlessly, and thereby not only doing it better but opening up a freer\nworld of significant activities. Thought as such a reorganization\nof natural functions does naturally what Kantian forms and\nschematizations do only supernaturally. In a word, the constructive\nor organizing activity of \u201cthought\u201d does not inhere in thought as a\ntranscendental function, a form or mode of some supra-empirical ego,\nmind, or consciousness, but in thought as itself vital activity. And\nin any case we have passed to the idea of thought as reflectively\nreconstructive and directive, and away from the notion of thought as\nimmanently constitutional and organizational. To make this passage\nand yet to ignore its existence and import is essential to objective\nidealism.\n\n(2) No final or ultimate validity attaches to these original\narrangements and institutionalizations in any case. Their value is\nteleological and experimental, not fixedly ontological. \u201cLaw and\norder\u201d are good things, but not when they become rigidity, and create\nmechanical uniformity or routine. Prejudice is the acme of the _a\npriori_. Of the _a priori_ in this sense we may say what is always\nto be said of habits and institutions: They are good servants, but\nharsh and futile masters. Organization as already effected is always\nin danger of becoming a _mortmain_; it may be a way of sacrificing\nnovelty, flexibility, freedom, creation to static standards. The\ncurious inefficiency of idealism at this point is evident in the fact\nthat genuine thought, empirical reflective thought, is required\nprecisely for the purpose of re-forming established and set formations.\n\nIn short, (_a_) _a priori_ character is no exclusive function of\nthought. Every biological function, every motor attitude, every vital\nimpulse as the carrying vehicle of experience is thus _apriorily_\nregulative in prospective reference; what we call apperception,\nexpectation, anticipation, desire, demand, choice, are pregnant with\nthis constitutive and organizing power. (_b_) In so far as \u201cthought\u201d\ndoes exercise such reorganizing power, it is because thought is itself\nstill a _vital_ function. (_c_) Objective idealism depends not only\nupon ignoring the existence and capacity of vital functions, but upon a\nprofound confusion of the constitutional _a priori_, the unconsciously\ndominant, with empirically reflective thought. In the sense in which\nthe _a priori_ is worth while as an attribute of thought, thought\ncannot be what the objective idealist defines it as being. Plain,\nordinary, everyday empirical reflections, operating as centers of\ninquiry, of suggestion, of experimentation, exercise the valuable\nfunction of regulation, in an auspicious direction, of subsequent\nexperiences.\n\nThe categories of accomplished systematization cover alike the just\nand the unjust, the false and the true, while (unlike God\u2019s rain) they\nexercise no _specific_ or _differential_ activity of stimulation and\ncontrol. Error and inefficiency, as well as value and energy, are\nembodied in our objective institutional classifications. As a special\nfavor, will not the objective idealist show how, in some one single\ninstance, his immanent \u201creason\u201d makes any difference as respects\nthe detection and elimination of error, or gives even the slightest\nassistance in discovering and validating the truly worthful? This\npractical work, the life blood of intelligence in everyday life and\nin critical science, is done by the despised and rejected matter of\nconcrete empirical contexts and functions. Generalizing the issue: If\nthe immanent organization be ascribed to thought, why should its work\nbe such as to demand continuous correction and revision? If specific\nreflective thought, as empirical, be subject to all the limitations\nsupposed to inhere in experience as such, how can it assume the burden\nof making good, of supplementing, reconstructing, and developing\nmeanings? The logic of the case seems to be that Neo-Kantian idealism\ngets its status against empiricism by first accepting the Humian idea\nof experience, while the express import of its positive contribution\nis to show the _non-existence_ (not merely the cognitive invalidity)\nof anything describable as mere states of subjective consciousness.\nThus in the end it tends to destroy itself and to make way for a more\nadequate empiricism.\n\n\nIII\n\nIn the above discussion, I have unavoidably anticipated the second\nproblem: the relation of conceptual thought to perceptual data.\nA distinct aspect still remains, however. Perception, as well as\napriority, is a term harboring a fundamental ambiguity. It may mean\n(1) a distinct type of activity, predominantly practical in character,\nthough carrying at its heart important cognitive and esthetic\nqualities; or (2) a distinctively cognitional experience, the function\nof observation as explicitly logical--a factor in science _qua_ science.\n\nIn the first sense, as recent functional empiricism (working in\nharmony with psychology, but not itself peculiarly psychological) has\nabundantly shown, perception is primarily an act of adjustment of\norganism and environment, differing from a mere reflex or instinctive\nadaptation in that, in order to compensate for the failure of the\ninstinctive adjustment, it requires an objective or discriminative\npresentation of conditions of action: the negative conditions or\nobstacles, and the positive conditions or means and resources.[38]\nThis, of course, is its cognitive phase. In so far as the material\nthus presented not only serves as a direct cue to further successful\nactivity (successful in the overcoming of obstacles to the maintenance\nof the function entered upon) but presents auxiliary collateral\nobjects and qualities that give additional range and depth of meaning\nto the activity of adjustment, perceiving is esthetic as well as\nintellectual.[39]\n\nNow such perception cannot be made antithetical to thought, for it may\nitself be surcharged with any amount of imaginatively supplied and\nreflectively sustained ideal factors--such as are needed to determine\nand select relevant stimuli and to suggest and develop an appropriate\nplan and course of behavior. The amount of such saturating intellectual\nmaterial depends upon the complexity and maturity of the behaving\nagent. Such perception, moreover, is strictly teleological, since it\narises from an experienced need and functions to fulfil the purpose\nindicated by this need. The cognitional content is, indeed, carried by\naffectional and intentional contexts.\n\nThen we have perception as scientific observation. This involves the\ndeliberate, artful exclusion of affectional and purposive factors as\nexercising mayhap a vitiating influence upon the cognitive or objective\ncontent; or, more strictly speaking, a transformation of the more\nordinary or \u201cnatural\u201d emotional and purposive concomitants, into what\nBain calls \u201cneutral\u201d emotion, and a purpose of finding out what the\npresent conditions of the problem are. (The practical feature is not\nthus denied or eliminated, but the overweening influence of a present\ndominating end is avoided, so that _change of the character of the end_\nmay be effected, if found desirable.) Here observation may be opposed\nto thought, in the sense that exact and minute description may be set\nover against interpretation, explanation, theorizing, and inference.\nIn the wider sense of thought as equaling reflective process, the work\nof observation and description forms a constituent division of labor\n_within_ thought. The impersonal demarcation and accurate registration\nof what is objectively there or present occurs for the sake (_a_) of\neliminating meaning which is habitually but uncritically referred, and\n(_b_) of getting a basis for a meaning (at first purely inferential\nor hypothetical) that may be consistently referred; and that (_c_),\nresting upon examination and not upon mere _a priori_ custom, may\nweather the strain of subsequent experiences. But in so far as\nthought is identified with the conceptual phase as such of the entire\nlogical function, observation is, of course, set over against thought:\ndeliberately, purposely, and artfully so.\n\nIt is not uncommon to hear it said that the Lockeian movement was\nall well enough for psychology, but went astray because it invaded\nthe field of logic. If we mean by psychology a natural history of\nwhat at any time _passes_ for knowledge, and by logic conscious\ncontrol in the direction of grounded assurance, this remark appears\nto reverse the truth. As a natural history of knowledge in the sense\nof opinion and belief, Locke\u2019s account of discrete, simple ideas or\nmeanings, which are compounded and then distributed, does palpable\nviolence to the facts. But every line of Locke shows that he was\ninterested in knowledge in its honorific sense--controlled certainty,\nor, where this is not feasible, measured probability. And to logic\nas an account of the way in which we by art build up a _tested_\nassurance, a rationalized conviction, Locke makes an important positive\ncontribution. The pity is that he inclined to take it for the whole\nof the logic of science,[40] not seeing that it was but a correlative\ndivision of labor to the work of hypotheses or inference; and that he\ntended to identify it with a natural history or psychology. The latter\ntendency exposed Locke to the Humian interpretation, and permanently\nsidetracked the positive contribution of his theory to logic, while it\nled to that confusion of an untrue psychology with a logic valid within\nlimits, of which Mill is the standard example.\n\nIn analytic observation, it is a positive object to strip off all\ninferential meaning so far as may be--to reduce the facts as nearly\nas may be to derationalized data, in order to make possible a new and\nbetter rationalization. In and because of this process, the perceptual\ndata approach the limit of a disconnected manifold, of the brutely\ngiven, of the merely sensibly present; while meaning stands out as\na searched for principle of unification and explanation, that is,\nas a thought, a concept, an hypothesis. The extent to which this is\ncarried depends wholly upon the character of the specific situation and\nproblem; but, speaking generally, or of limiting tendencies, one may\nsay it is carried to mere observation, pure brute description, on the\none side, and to mere thought, that is hypothetical inference, on the\nother.\n\nSo far as Locke ignored this instrumental character of observation, he\nnaturally evoked and strengthened rationalistic idealism; he called\nforth its assertion of the need of reason, of concepts, of universals,\nto constitute knowledge in its eulogistic sense. But two contrary\nerrors do not make a truth, although they suggest and determine the\nnature of some relevant truth. This truth is the empirical origin, in\na determinate type of situation, of the contrast of observation and\nconception; the empirical relevancy and the empirical worth of this\ncontrast in controlling the character of subsequent experiences. To\nsuppose that perception as it concretely exists, either in the early\nexperiences of the animal, the race, or the individual, or in its\nlater refined and expanded experiences, is identical with the sharply\nanalyzed, objectively discriminated and internally disintegrated\nelements of scientific observation, is a perversion of experience; a\nperversion for which, indeed, professed empiricists set the example,\nbut which idealism must perpetuate if it is not to find its end in an\nimproved, functional empiricism.[41]\n\n\nIV\n\nWe come now to the consideration of the third element in our problem;\nideality, important and normative value, in relation to experience;\nthe antithesis of experience as a tentative, fragmentary, and\nineffectual embodiment of meaning over against the perfect, eternal\nsystem of meanings which experience suggests even in nullifying and\nmutilating.\n\nThat from the _memory_ standpoint experience presents itself as a\nmultiplicity of episodic events with just enough continuity among\nthem to suggest principles true \u201con the whole\u201d or usually, but\nwithout furnishing instruction as to their exact range and bearing,\nseems obvious enough. Why should it not? The motive which leads to\nreflection on _past_ experience could be satisfied in no other way.\nContinuities, connecting links, dynamic transitions drop out because,\nfor the purpose of the recollection, they would be hindrances if now\nrepeated; or because they are now available only when themselves\nobjectified in definite terms and thus given a _quasi_ independent, a\n_quasi_ atomistic standing of their own. This is the only alternative\nto what the psychologists term \u201ctotal reminiscence,\u201d which, so far\nas total, leave us with an elephant on our hands. Unless we are\ngoing to have a wholesale revivification of the past, giving us just\nanother embarrassing present experience, illusory because irrelevant,\nmemory must work by retail--by summoning _distinct_ cases, events,\nsequences, precedents. Dis-membering is a positively necessary part\nof re-membering. But the resulting _disjecta membra_ are in no sense\nexperience as it was or is; they are simply elements held apart, and\nyet tentatively implicated together, in present experience for the\nsake of its most favorable evolution; evolution in the direction of\nthe most excellent meaning or value conceived. If the remembering is\nefficacious and pertinent, it reveals the possibilities of the present;\nthat is to say, it clarifies the transitive, transforming character\nthat belongs inherently to the present. The dismembering of the vital\npresent into the disconnected past is correlative to an anticipation,\nan idealization of the future.\n\nMoreover, the contingent character of the principle or rule that\nemerges from a survey of cases, instances, as distinct from a fixed or\nnecessary character, secures just what is wanted in the exigency of\na prospective idealization, or refinement of excellence. It is just\nthis character that secures flexibility and variety of outlook, that\nmakes possible a consideration of alternatives and an attempt to select\nand to execute the more worthy among them. The fixed or necessary law\nwould mean a future like the past--a dead, an unidealized future. It\nis exasperating to imagine how completely different would have been\nAristotle\u2019s valuation of \u201cexperience\u201d with respect to its contingency,\nif he had but once employed the function of developing and perfecting\nvalue, instead of the function of knowing an unalterable object, as the\nstandard by which to estimate and measure intelligence.\n\nThe one constant trait of experience from its crudest to its most\nmature forms is that its contents undergo change of meaning, and\nof meaning in the sense of excellence, value. Every experience\nis in-course,[42] in course of becoming worse or better as to\nits contents, or in course of conscious endeavor to sustain some\nsatisfactory level of value against encroachment or lapse. In this\neffort, both precedent, the reduction of the present idealization,\nthe anticipation of the possible, though doubtful, future, emerge.\nWithout idealization, that is, without conception of the favorable\nissue that the present, defined in terms of precedents, may portend in\nits transition, the recollection of precedents, and the formulation\nof tentative rules is nonsense. But without the identification of\nthe present in terms of elements suggested by the past, without\nrecognition, the ideal, the value projected as end, remains inert,\nhelpless, sentimental, without means of realization. Resembling cases\nand anticipation, memory and idealization, are the corresponding terms\nin which a present experience has its transitive force analyzed into\nreciprocally pertinent means and ends.\n\n_That_ an experience will change in content and value is the one thing\ncertain. _How_ it will change is the one thing naturally uncertain.\nHence the import of the art of reflection and invention. Control of\nthe character of the change in the direction of the worthful is the\ncommon business of theory and practice. Here is the province of the\nepisodic recollection of past history and of the idealized foresight\nof possibilities. The irrelevancy of an objective idealism lies in the\nfact that it totally ignores the position and function of ideality in\nsustained and serious endeavor. Were values automatically injected and\nkept in the world of experience by any force not reflected in human\nmemories and projects, it would make no difference whether this force\nwere a Spencerian environment or an Absolute Reason. Did purpose ride\nin a cosmic automobile toward a predestined goal, it would not cease to\nbe physical and mechanical in quality because labeled Divine Idea, or\nPerfect Reason. The moral would be \u201clet us eat, drink, and be merry,\u201d\nfor to-morrow--or if not this to-morrow, then upon some to-morrow,\nunaffected by our empirical memories, reflections, inventions, and\nidealizations--the cosmic automobile arrives. Spirituality, ideality,\nmeaning as purpose, would be the last things to present themselves if\nobjective idealism were true. Values cannot be both ideal and given,\nand their \u201cgiven\u201d character is emphasized, not transformed, when they\nare called eternal and absolute. But natural values become ideal the\nmoment their maintenance is dependent upon the intentional activities\nof an empirical agent. To suppose that values are ideal because\nthey are so eternally given is the contradiction in which objective\nidealism has intrenched itself. Objective ontological teleology\nspells machinery. Reflective and volitional, experimental teleology\nalone spells ideality.[43] Objective, rationalistic idealism breaks\nupon the fact that it can have no intermediary between a brutally\nachieved embodiment of meaning (physical in character or else of that\npeculiar quasi-physical character which goes generally by the name\nof metaphysical) and a total opposition of the given and the ideal,\nconnoting their mutual indifference and incapacity. An empiricism\nthat acknowledges the transitive character of experience, and that\nacknowledges the possible control of the character of the transition\nby means of intelligent effort, has abundant opportunity to celebrate\nin productive art, genial morals, and impartial inquiry the grace and\nthe severity of the ideal.\n\n\n\n\nTHE POSTULATE OF IMMEDIATE EMPIRICISM[44]\n\n\nThe criticisms made upon that vital but still unformed movement\nvariously termed radical empiricism, pragmatism, humanism,\nfunctionalism, according as one or another aspect of it is uppermost,\nhave left me with a conviction that the _fundamental_ difference is\nnot so much in matters overtly discussed as in a presupposition that\nremains tacit: a presupposition as to what experience is and means. To\ndo my little part in clearing up the confusion, I shall try to make\nmy own presupposition explicit. The object of this paper is, then, to\nset forth what I understand to be the postulate and the criterion of\n_immediate empiricism_.[45]\n\nImmediate empiricism postulates that things--anything, everything, in\nthe ordinary or non-technical use of the term \u201cthing\u201d--are what they\nare experienced as. Hence, if one wishes to describe anything truly,\nhis task is to tell what it is experienced as being. If it is a horse\nthat is to be described, or the _equus_ that is to be defined, then\nmust the horse-trader, or the jockey, or the timid family man who\nwants a \u201csafe driver,\u201d or the zoologist or the paleontologist tell us\nwhat the horse is which is experienced. If these accounts turn out\ndifferent in some respects, as well as congruous in others, this is\nno reason for assuming the content of one to be exclusively \u201creal,\u201d\nand that of others to be \u201cphenomenal\u201d; for each account of what is\nexperienced will manifest that it is the account _of_ the horse-dealer,\nor _of_ the zoologist, and hence will give the conditions requisite\nfor understanding the differences as well as the agreements of the\nvarious accounts. And the principle varies not a whit if we bring in\nthe psychologist\u2019s horse, the logician\u2019s horse, or the metaphysician\u2019s\nhorse.\n\nIn each case, the nub of the question is, _what sort of experience_ is\ndenoted or indicated: a concrete and determinate experience, varying,\nwhen it varies, in specific real elements, and agreeing, when it\nagrees, in specific real elements, so that we have a contrast, not\nbetween _a_ Reality, and various approximations to, or phenomenal\nrepresentations of Reality, but between different reals of experience.\nAnd the reader is begged to bear in mind that from this standpoint,\nwhen \u201can experience\u201d or \u201csome sort of experience\u201d is referred to, \u201csome\nthing\u201d or \u201csome sort of thing\u201d is always meant.\n\nNow, this statement that things are what they are experienced to be\nis usually translated into the statement that things (or, ultimately,\nReality, Being) _are_ only and just what they are _known_ to be or that\nthings are, or Reality _is_, what it is for a conscious knower--whether\nthe knower be conceived primarily as a perceiver or as a thinker\nbeing a further, and secondary, question. This is the root-paralogism\nof all idealisms, whether subjective or objective, psychological\nor epistemological. By our postulate, things are what they are\nexperienced to be; and, unless knowing is the sole and only genuine\nmode of experiencing, it is fallacious to say that Reality is just and\nexclusively what it is or would be to an all-competent all-knower; or\neven that it _is_, relatively and piecemeal, what it is to a finite\nand partial knower. Or, put more positively, knowing is one mode of\nexperiencing, and the primary philosophic demand (from the standpoint\nof immediatism) is to find out _what_ sort of an experience knowing\nis--or, concretely how things are experienced when they are experienced\n_as_ known things.[46] By concretely is meant, obviously enough\n(among other things), such an account of the experience of things as\nknown that will bring out the characteristic traits and distinctions\nthey possess as things of a knowing experience, as compared with\nthings experienced esthetically, or morally, or economically, or\ntechnologically. To assume that, because from the _standpoint of\nthe knowledge experience_ things _are_ what they are known to be,\ntherefore, metaphysically, absolutely, without qualification,\neverything in its reality (as distinct from its \u201cappearance,\u201d or\nphenomenal occurrence) is what a knower would find it to be, is, from\nthe immediatist\u2019s standpoint, if not the root of all philosophic evil,\nat least one of its main roots. For this leaves out of account what\nthe knowledge standpoint is itself _experienced as_.\n\nI start and am flustered by a noise heard. Empirically, that noise\n_is_ fearsome; it _really_ is, not merely phenomenally or subjectively\nso. That _is what_ it is experienced as being. But, when I experience\nthe noise as a _known_ thing, I find it to be innocent of harm. It\nis the tapping of a shade against the window, owing to movements of\nthe wind. The experience has changed; that is, the thing experienced\nhas changed--not that an unreality has given place to a reality, nor\nthat some transcendental (unexperienced) Reality has changed,[47]\nnot that truth has changed, but just and only the concrete reality\nexperienced has changed. I now feel ashamed of my fright; and the noise\nas fearsome is changed to noise as a wind-curtain fact, and hence\npractically indifferent to my welfare. This is a change of experienced\nexistence effected through the medium of cognition. The content of the\nlatter experience cognitively regarded is doubtless _truer_ than the\ncontent of the earlier; but it is in no sense more real. To call it\ntruer, moreover, must, from the empirical standpoint, mean a concrete\n_difference_ in actual things experienced.[48] Again, in many cases,\nonly in retrospect is the prior experience cognitionally regarded at\nall. In such cases, it is only in regard to contrasted content _in_ a\nsubsequent experience that the determination \u201ctruer\u201d has force.\n\nPerhaps some reader may now object that as matter of fact the entire\nexperience _is_ cognitive, but that the earlier parts of it are only\nimperfectly so, resulting in a phenomenon that is not real; while\nthe latter part, being a more complete cognition, results in what\nis relatively, at least, more real.[49] In short, a critic may say\nthat, when I was frightened by the noise, I _knew_ I was frightened;\notherwise there would have been no experience at all. At this point, it\nis necessary to make a distinction so simple and yet so all-fundamental\nthat I am afraid the reader will be inclined to pooh-pooh it away as\na mere verbal distinction. But to see that to the empiricist this\ndistinction is not verbal, but genuine, is the precondition of any\nunderstanding of him. The immediatist must, by his postulate, ask\nwhat is the fright experienced _as_. Is what is actually experienced,\nI-know-I-am-frightened, or I-_am_-frightened? I see absolutely no\nreason for claiming that the experience _must_ be described by the\nformer phrase. In all probability (and all the empiricist logically\nneeds is just one case of this sort) the experience is simply and just\nof fright-at-the-noise. Later one may (or may not) have an experience\ndescribable _as_ I-know-I-am-(or-was) and improperly or properly,\nfrightened. But this is a different experience--that is, a different\n_thing_. And if the critic goes on to urge that the person \u201c_really_\u201d\nmust have known that he was frightened, I can only point out that the\ncritic is shifting the venue. He may be right, but, if so, it is only\nbecause the \u201creally\u201d is something not concretely experienced (whose\nnature accordingly is the critic\u2019s business); and this is to depart\nfrom the empiricist\u2019s point of view, to attribute to him a postulate he\nexpressly repudiates.\n\nThe material point may come out more clearly if I say that we must\nmake a distinction between a thing as _cognitive_, and one as\n_cognized_.[50] I should define a cognitive experience as one that has\ncertain bearings or implications which induce, and fulfil themselves\nin, a subsequent experience in which the relevant thing is experienced\n_as_ cognized, _as_ a known object, and is thereby transformed, or\nreorganized. The fright-at-the-noise in the case cited is obviously\n_cognitive_, in this sense. By description, it induces an investigation\nor inquiry in which both noise and fright are objectively stated or\npresented--the noise as a shade-wind fact, the fright as an organic\nreaction to a sudden acoustic stimulus, a reaction that under the\ngiven circumstances was useless or even detrimental, a maladaptation.\nNow, pretty much all of experience is of this sort (the \u201cis\u201d meaning,\nof course, is experienced _as_), and the empiricist is false to his\nprinciple if he does not duly note this fact.[51] But he is equally\nfalse to his principle if he permits himself to be confused as to the\nconcrete differences in the two things experienced.\n\nThere are two little words through explication of which the\nempiricist\u2019s position may be brought out--\u201c_as_\u201d and \u201c_that_.\u201d We may\nexpress his presupposition by saying that things are what they are\nexperienced _as_ being; or that to give a just account of anything\nis to tell what _that_ thing is experienced to be. By these words I\nwant to indicate the absolute, final, irreducible, and inexpugnable\nconcrete _quale_ which everything experienced not so much _has_ as\n_is_. To grasp this aspect of empiricism is to see what the empiricist\nmeans by objectivity, by the element of control. Suppose we take,\nas a crucial case for the empiricist, an out and out illusion, say\nof Z\u00f6llner\u2019s lines. These are experienced as convergent; they are\n\u201ctruly\u201d parallel. If things are what they are experienced as being,\nhow can the distinction be drawn between illusion and the true state\nof the case? There is no answer to this question except by sticking\nto the fact that the experience of the lines as divergent is a\nconcrete qualitative thing or _that_. It is _that_ experience which\nit is, and no other. And if the reader rebels at the iteration of\nsuch obvious tautology, I can only reiterate that the realization of\nthe _meaning_ of this tautology is the key to the whole question of\nthe objectivity of experience, as that stands to the empiricist. The\nlines of _that_ experience _are_ divergent; not merely _seem_ so. The\nquestion of truth is not as to whether Being or Non-Being, Reality or\nmere Appearance, is experienced, but as to the _worth_ of a certain\nconcretely experienced thing. The only way of passing upon this\nquestion is by sticking in the most uncompromising fashion to _that_\nexperience as real. _That_ experience is that two lines with certain\ncross-hatchings are apprehended as convergent; only by taking that\nexperience as real and as fully real, is there any basis for, or way of\ngoing to, an experienced knowledge that the lines are parallel. It is\nin the concrete thing _as experienced_ that all the grounds and clues\nto its own intellectual or logical rectification are contained. It is\nbecause this thing, afterwards adjudged false, is a concrete _that_,\nthat it develops into a corrected experience (that is, experience of a\ncorrected thing--we reform things just as we reform ourselves or a bad\nboy) whose full content is not a whit more real, but which is true or\ntruer.[52]\n\nIf _any_ experience, then a _determinate_ experience; and this\ndeterminateness is the only, and is the adequate, principle of\ncontrol, or \u201cobjectivity.\u201d The experience may be of the vaguest sort.\nI may not see anything which I can identify as a familiar object--a\ntable, a chair, etc. It may be dark; I may have only the vaguest\nimpression that there is something which looks like a table. Or I may\nbe completely befogged and confused, as when one rises quickly from\nsleep in a pitch-dark room. But this vagueness, this doubtfulness,\nthis confusion is the thing experienced, and, _qua_ real, is as \u201cgood\u201d\na reality as the self-luminous vision of an Absolute. It is not just\nvagueness, doubtfulness, confusion, at large or in general. It is\n_this_ vagueness, and no other; absolutely unique, absolutely what\n_it_ is.[53] Whatever gain in clearness, in fullness, in trueness of\ncontent is experienced must grow out of some element in the experience\nof _this_ experienced _as_ what it is. To return to the illusion: If\nthe experience of the lines as convergent is illusory, it is because of\nsome elements in the thing as experienced, not because of something\ndefined in terms of externality to this particular experience. If the\nillusoriness can be detected, it is because the thing experienced\nis real, having within its experienced reality elements whose _own\nmutual_ tension effects its reconstruction. Taken concretely, the\nexperience of convergent lines contains within itself the elements\nof the transformation of its own content. It is _this_ thing, and\nnot some separate truth, that clamors for its own reform. There is,\nthen, from the empiricist\u2019s point of view, no need to search for some\naboriginal _that_ to which all successive experiences are attached,\nand which is somehow thereby undergoing continuous change. Experience\nis always of _thats_; and the most comprehensive and inclusive\nexperience of the universe that the philosopher himself can obtain\nis the experience of a characteristic _that_. From the empiricist\u2019s\npoint of view, this is as true of the exhaustive and complete insight\nof a hypothetical all-knower as of the vague, blind experience of the\nawakened sleeper. As reals, they stand on the same level. As trues,\nthe latter has by definition the better of it; but if this insight is\nin any way the truth of the blind awakening, it is because the latter\nhas, in its _own_ determinate _quale_, elements of real continuity\nwith the former; it is, _ex hypothesi_, transformable through a series\nof experienced reals without break of continuity, into the absolute\nthought-experience. There is no need of logical manipulation to effect\nthe transformation, nor _could_ any logical consideration effect it.\nIf effected at all it is just by immediate experiences, each of which\nis just as real (no more, no less) as either of the two terms between\nwhich they lie. Such, at least, is the meaning of the empiricist\u2019s\ncontention. So, when he talks of experience, he does not mean some\ngrandiose, remote affair that is cast like a net around a succession\nof fleeting experiences; he does not mean an indefinite total,\ncomprehensive experience which somehow engirdles an endless flux; he\nmeans that _things_ are what they are experienced to be, and that every\nexperience is _some_ thing.\n\nFrom the postulate of empiricism, then (or, what is the same thing,\nfrom a _general_ consideration of the concept of experience), nothing\ncan be deduced, not a single philosophical proposition.[54] The\nreader may hence conclude that all this just comes to the truism that\nexperience is experience, or is what it is. If one attempts to draw\nconclusions from the bare concept of experience, the reader is quite\nright. But the real significance of the principle is that of a method\nof philosophical analysis--a method identical in kind (but differing\nin problem and hence in operation) with that of the scientist. If you\nwish to find out what subjective, objective, physical, mental, cosmic,\npsychic, cause, substance, purpose, activity, evil, being, quality--any\nphilosophic term, in short--means, go to experience and see what the\nthing is experienced _as_.\n\nSuch a method is not spectacular; it permits of no offhand\ndemonstrations of God, freedom, immortality, nor of the exclusive\nreality of matter, or ideas, or consciousness, etc. But it supplies a\nway of telling what all these terms mean. It may seem insignificant,\nor chillingly disappointing, but only upon condition that it be not\nworked. Philosophic conceptions have, I believe, outlived their\nusefulness considered as stimulants to emotion, or as a species of\nsanctions; and a larger, more fruitful and more valuable career awaits\nthem considered as specifically experienced meanings.\n\n    [NOTE: The reception of this essay proved that I was unreasonably\n    sanguine in thinking that the foot-note of warning, appended\n    to the title, would forfend radical misapprehension. I see now\n    that it was unreasonable to expect that the word \u201cimmediate\u201d\n    in a philosophic writing could be generally understood to\n    apply to anything except _knowledge_, even though the body of\n    the essay is a protest against such limitation. But I venture\n    to repeat that the essay is not a denial of the necessity of\n    \u201cmediation,\u201d or reflection, in knowledge, but is an assertion\n    that the inferential factor must _exist_, or must occur, and\n    that all existence is direct and vital, so that philosophy can\n    pass upon its nature--as upon the nature of all of the rest of\n    its subject-matter--only by first ascertaining what it exists or\n    occurs _as_.\n\n    I venture to repeat also another statement of the text: I do not\n    mean by \u201cimmediate experience\u201d any aboriginal stuff out of which\n    things are evolved, but I use the term to indicate the necessity\n    of employing in philosophy the direct descriptive method that\n    has now made its way in all the natural sciences, with such\n    modifications, of course, as the subject itself entails.\n\n    There is nothing in the text to imply that things exist\n    in experience atomically or in isolation. When it is said\n    that a thing as cognized is _different_ from an earlier\n    non-cognitionally experienced thing, the saying no more implies\n    lack of continuity between the things, than the obvious remark\n    that a seed is different from a flower or a leaf denies their\n    continuity. The amount and kind of continuity or discreteness\n    that exists is to be discovered by recurring to what actually\n    occurs in experience.\n\n    Finally, there is nothing in the text that denies the existence\n    of things temporally prior to human experiencing of them.\n    Indeed, I should think it fairly obvious that we experience most\n    things _as_ temporally prior to our experiencing of them. The\n    import of the article is to the effect that we are not entitled\n    to draw philosophic (as distinct from scientific) conclusions\n    as to the meaning of prior temporal existence till we have\n    ascertained what it is to experience a thing as past. These four\n    disclaimers cover, I think, all the misapprehensions disclosed in\n    the four or five controversial articles (noted below) that the\n    original essay evoked. One of these articles (that of Professor\n    Woodbridge), raised a point of fact, holding that cognitional\n    experience tells us, without alteration, just what the things\n    of other types of experience are, and in that sense transcends\n    other experiences. This is too fundamental an issue to discuss\n    in a note, and I content myself with remarking that with respect\n    to it, the bearing of the article is that the issue must be\n    settled by a careful descriptive survey of things as experienced,\n    to see whether modifications do not occur in existences when\n    they are experienced _as_ known; _i.e._, as true or false in\n    character. The reader interested in following up this discussion\n    is referred to the following articles: Vol. II. of the _Journal\n    of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods_, two articles\n    by Bakewell, p. 520 and p. 687; one by Bode, p. 658; one by\n    Woodbridge, p. 573; Vol. III. of the same Journal, by Leighton,\n    p. 174.]\n\n\n\n\n\u201cCONSCIOUSNESS\u201d AND EXPERIENCE[55]\n\n\nEvery science in its final standpoint and working aims is controlled\nby conditions lying outside itself--conditions that subsist in the\npractical life of the time. With no science is this as obviously true\nas with psychology. Taken without nicety of analysis, no one would\ndeny that psychology is specially occupied with the individual; that\nit wishes to find out those things that proceed peculiarly from the\nindividual, and the mode of their connection with him. Now, the way\nin which the individual is conceived, the value that is attributed to\nhim, the things in his make-up that arouse interest, are not due at the\noutset to psychology. The scientific view regards these matters in a\nreflected, a borrowed, medium. They are revealed in the light of social\nlife. An autocratic, an aristocratic, a democratic society propound\nsuch different estimates of the worth and place of individuality;\nthey procure for the individual as an individual such different sorts\nof experience; they aim at arousing such different impulses and\nat organizing them according to such different purposes, that the\npsychology arising in each must show a different temper.\n\nIn this sense, psychology is a political science. While the professed\npsychologist, in his conscious procedure, may easily cut his\nsubject-matter loose from these practical ties and references, yet the\nstarting point and goal of his course are none the less socially set.\nIn this conviction I venture to introduce to an audience that could\nhardly be expected to be interested in the technique of psychology, a\ntechnical subject, hoping that the human meaning may yet appear.\n\nThere is at present a strong, apparently a growing tendency to conceive\nof psychology as an account of the consciousness of the individual,\nconsidered as something in and by itself; consciousness, the assumption\nvirtually runs, being of such an order that it may be analyzed,\ndescribed, and explained in terms of just itself. The statement, as\ncommonly made, is that psychology is an account of consciousness, _qua_\nconsciousness; and the phrase is supposed to limit psychology to a\ncertain definite sphere of fact that may receive adequate discussion\nfor scientific purposes, without troubling itself with what lies\noutside. Now if this conception be true, there is no intimate, no\nimportant connection of psychology and philosophy at large. That\nphilosophy, whose range is comprehensive, whose problems are catholic,\nshould be held down by a discipline whose voice is as partial as its\nmaterial is limited, is out of the range of intelligent discussion.\n\nBut there is another possibility. If the individual of whom psychology\ntreats be, after all, a social individual, any absolute setting off and\napart of a sphere of consciousness as, even for scientific purposes,\nself-sufficient, is condemned in advance. All such limitation, and\nall inquiries, descriptions, explanations that go with it, are only\npreliminary. \u201cConsciousness\u201d is but a symbol, an anatomy whose life is\nin natural and social operations. To know the symbol, the psychical\nletter, is important; but its necessity lies not within itself, but\nin the need of a language for reading the things signified. If this\nview be correct, we cannot be so sure that psychology is without large\nphilosophic significance. Whatever meaning the individual has for the\nsocial life that he both incorporates and animates, that meaning has\npsychology for philosophy.\n\nThis problem is too important and too large to suffer attack in\nan evening\u2019s address. Yet I venture to consider a portion of it,\nhoping that such things as appear will be useful clues in entering\nwider territory. We may ask what is the effect upon psychology of\nconsidering its material as something so distinct as to be capable\nof treatment without involving larger issues. In this inquiry we\ntake as representative some such account of the science as this:\nPsychology deals with consciousness \u201cas such\u201d in its various modes and\nprocesses. It aims at an isolation of each such as will permit accurate\ndescription: at statement of its place in the serial order such as will\nenable us to state the laws by which one calls another into being,\nor as will give the natural history of its origin, maturing, and\ndissolution. It is both analytic and synthetic--analytic in that it\nresolves each state into its constituent elements; synthetic in that it\ndiscovers the processes by which these elements combine into complex\nwholes and series. It leaves alone--it shuts out--questions concerning\nthe validity, the objective import of these modifications: of their\nvalue in conveying truth, in effecting goodness, in constituting\nbeauty. For it is just with such questions of worth, of validity, that\nphilosophy has to do.\n\nSome such view as this is held by the great majority of working\npsychologists to-day. A variety of reasons have conspired to bring\nabout general acceptance. Such a view seems to enroll one in the ranks\nof the scientific men rather than of the metaphysicians--and there are\nthose who distrust the metaphysicians. Others desire to take problems\npiecemeal and in detail, avoiding that excursion into ultimates, into\nthat never-ending panorama of new questions and new possibilities\nthat seems to be the fate of the philosopher. While no temperate\nmind can do other than sympathize with this view, it is hardly more\nthan an expedient. For, as Mr. James remarks, after disposing of\nthe question of free-will by relegating it to the domain of the\nmetaphysician:--\u201cMetaphysics means only an unusually obstinate attempt\nto think clearly and consistently\u201d--and clearness and consistency are\nnot things to be put off beyond a certain point. When the metaphysician\nchimes in with this new-found modesty of the psychologist, so different\nfrom the disposition of Locke and Hume and the Mills, salving his\nmetaphysical conscience with the remark--it hardly possesses the\ndignity of a conviction--that the partial sciences, just because they\nare partial, are not expected to be coherent with themselves nor with\none another; when the metaphysician, I say, praises the psychologist\nfor sticking to his last, we are reminded that another motive is\nalso at work. There is a half-conscious irony in this abnegation of\npsychology. It is not the first time that science has assumed the work\nof Cinderella; and, since Mr. Huxley has happily reminded her, she is\nnot altogether oblivious, in her modesty, of a possible future check to\nthe pride of her haughty sister, and of a certain coronation that shall\nmark her coming to her own.\n\nBut, be the reasons as they may, there is little doubt of the fact.\nAlmost all our working psychologists admit, nay, herald this limitation\nof their work. I am not presumptuous enough to set myself against this\narray. I too proclaim myself of those who believe that psychology has\nto do (at a certain point, that is) with \u201cconsciousness as such.\u201d But\nI do not believe that the limitation is final. Quite the contrary:\nif \u201cconsciousness\u201d or \u201cstate of consciousness\u201d be given intelligible\nmeaning, I believe that this conception is the open gateway into the\nfair fields of philosophy. For, note you, the phrase is an ambiguous\none. It may mean one thing to the metaphysician who proclaims: Here\nfinally we have psychology recognizing her due metes and bounds,\ngiving bonds to trespass no more. It may mean quite another thing to\nthe psychologist in his work--whatever he may happen to say about it.\nIt may be that the psychologist deals with states of consciousness\nas the significant, the analyzable and describable form, to which he\nreduces the things he is studying. Not that they _are_ that existence,\nbut that they are its indications, its clues, in shape for handling\nby scientific methods. So, for example, does the paleontologist\nwork. Those curiously shaped and marked forms to which he is devoted\nare not life, nor are they the literal termini of his endeavor; but\nthrough them as signs and records he construes a life. And again, the\npainter-artist might well say that he is concerned only with colored\npaints as such. Yet none the less through them as registers and\nindices, he reveals to us the mysteries of sunny meadow, shady forest,\nand twilight wave. These are the things-in-themselves of which the oils\non his palette are phenomena.\n\nSo the preoccupation of the psychologist with states of consciousness\nmay signify that they are the media, the concrete conditions to which\nhe purposely reduces his material, in order, _through them_, as\nmethodological helps, to get at and understand that which is anything\nbut a state of consciousness. To him, however, who insists upon the\nfixed and final limitation of psychology, the state of consciousness is\nnot the shape some fact takes from the exigency of investigation; it\nis literally the full fact itself. It is not an intervening term; it\nbounds the horizon. Here, then, the issue defines itself. I conceive\nthat states of consciousness (and I hope you will take the phrase\nbroadly enough to cover all the specific data of psychology) have no\nexistence before the psychologist begins to work. He brings them into\nexistence. What we are really after is the process of experience, the\nway in which it arises and behaves. We want to know its course, its\nhistory, its laws. We want to know its various typical forms; how\neach originates; how it is related to others; the part it plays in\nmaintaining an inclusive, expanding, connected course of experience.\nOur problem as psychologists is to learn its _modus operandi_, its\nmethod.\n\nThe paleontologist is again summoned to our aid. In a given district\nhe finds a great number and variety of footprints. From these he goes\nto work to construct the structure and the life habits of the animals\nthat made them. The tracks exist undoubtedly; they are there; but yet\nhe deals with them not as final existences but as signs, phenomena in\nthe literal sense. Imagine the hearing that the critic would receive\nwho should inform the paleontologist that he is transcending his\nfield of scientific activity; that his concern is with footprints\nas such, aiming to describe each, to analyze it into its simplest\nforms, to compare the different kinds with one another so as to detect\ncommon elements, and finally, thereby, to discover the laws of their\narrangement in space!\n\nYet the immediate data are footprints, and footprints only. The\npaleontologist does in a way do all these things that our imaginary\ncritic is urging upon him. The difference is not that he arbitrarily\nlugs in other data; that he invents entities and faculties that are\nnot there. The difference is in his standpoint. His interest is in\nthe animals, and the data are treated in whatever way seems likely to\nserve this interest. So with the psychologist. He is continually and\nperforce occupied with minute and empirical investigation of special\nfacts--states of consciousness, if you please. But these neither define\nnor exhaust his scientific problem. They are his footprints, his\nclues through which he places before himself the life-process he is\nstudying--with the further difference that his footprints are not after\nall given to him, but are developed by his investigation.[56]\n\nThe supposition that these states are somehow existent by themselves\nand in this existence provide the psychologist with ready-made\nmaterial is just the supreme case of the \u201cpsychological fallacy\u201d: the\nconfusion of experience as it is to the one experiencing with what the\npsychologist makes out of it with his reflective analysis.\n\nThe psychologist begins with certain operations, acts, functions as\nhis data. If these fall out of sight in the course of discussion, it\nis only because having been taken for granted, they remain to control\nthe whole development of the inquiry, and to afford the sterling medium\nof redemption. Acts such as perceiving, remembering, intending, loving\ngive the points of departure; they alone are concrete experiences.\nTo understand these experiences, under what conditions they arise,\nand what effects they produce, analysis into states of consciousness\noccurs. And the modes of consciousness that are figured remain\nunarranged and unimportant, save as they may be translated back into\nacts.\n\nTo remember is to do something, as much as to shoe a horse, or to\ncherish a keepsake. To propose, to observe, to be kindly affectioned,\nare terms of value, of practice, of operation; just as digestion,\nrespiration, locomotion express functions, not observable \u201cobjects.\u201d\nBut there is an object that may be described: lungs, stomach,\nleg-muscles, or whatever. Through the structure we present to\nourselves the function; it appears laid out before us, spread forth\nin detail--objectified in a word. The anatomist who devotes himself\nto this detail may, if he please (and he probably does please to\nconcentrate his devotion) ignore the function: to discover what\nis there, to analyze, to measure, to describe, gives him outlet\nenough. But nevertheless it is the function that fixed the point\nof departure, that prescribed the problem and that set the limits,\nphysical as well as intellectual, of subsequent investigation.\nReference to function makes the details discovered other than a\njumble of incoherent trivialities. One might as well devote himself\nto the minute description of a square yard of desert soil were it not\nfor this translation. States of consciousness are the morphology of\ncertain functions.[57] What is true of analysis, of description, is\ntrue equally of classification. Knowing, willing, feeling, name states\nof consciousness not in terms of themselves, but in terms of acts,\nattitudes, found in experience.[58]\n\nExplanation, even of an \u201cempirical sort\u201d is as impossible as\ndetermination of a \u201cstate\u201d and its classification, when we\nrigidly confine ourselves to modifications of consciousness as\na self-existent. Sensations are always defined, classified, and\nexplained by reference to conditions which, according to the theory,\nare extraneous--sense-organs and stimuli. The whole physiological\nside assumes a ludicrously anomalous aspect on this basis.[59] While\nexperimentation is retained, and even made much of, it is at the cost\nof logical coherence. To experiment with reference to a bare state\nof consciousness is a performance of which one cannot imagine the\nnature, to say nothing of doing it; while to experiment with reference\nto acts and the conditions of their occurrence is a natural and\nstraightforward undertaking. Such simple processes as association are\nconcretely inexplicable when we assume states of consciousness as\nexistences by themselves. As recent psychology testifies, we again have\nto resort to conditions that have no place nor calling on the basis\nof the theory--the principle of habit, of neural action, or else some\nconnection in the object.[60]\n\nWe have only to note that there are two opposing schools in psychology\nto see in what an unscientific status is the subject. We have only\nto consider that these two schools are the result of assuming states\nof consciousness as existences _per se_ to locate the source of\nthe scientific scandal. No matter what the topic, whether memory\nor association or attention or effort, the same dualisms present\nthemselves, the same necessity of choosing between two schools. One,\nlost in the distinctions that it has developed, denies the function\nbecause it can find objectively presented only states of consciousness.\nSo it abrogates the function, regarding it as a mere aggregate of\nsuch states, or as a purely external and factitious relation between\nthem. The other school, recognizing that this procedure explains away\nrather than explains, the values of experience, attempts to even up\nby declaring that certain functions are themselves immediately given\ndata of consciousness, existing side by side with the \u201cstates,\u201d but\nindefinitely transcending them in worth, and apprehended by some higher\norgan. So against the elementary contents and external associations of\nthe analytic school in psychology, we have the complicated machinery\nof the intellectualist school, with its pure self-consciousness as a\nsource of ultimate truths, its hierarchy of intuitions, its ready-made\nfaculties. To be sure, these \u201cspiritual faculties\u201d are now largely\nreduced to some one comprehensive form--Apperception, or Will, or\nAttention, or whatever the fashionable term may be. But the principle\nremains the same; the assumption of a function as a given existent,\ndistinguishable in itself and acting upon other existences--as if\nthe functions digestion and vision were regarded as separate from\norganic structures, somehow acting upon them from the outside so as\nto bring co-operation and harmony into them![61] This division into\npsychological schools is as reasonable as would be one of botanists\ninto rootists and flowerists; of those proclaiming the root to be\nthe rudimentary and essential structure, and those asserting that\nsince the function of seed-bearing is the main thing, the flower is\nreally the controlling \u201csynthetic\u201d principle. Both sensationalist and\nintellectualist suppose that psychology has some special sphere of\n\u201creality\u201d or of experience marked off for it within which the data are\njust lying around, self-existent and ready-made, to be picked up and\nassorted as pebbles await the visitor on the beach. Both alike fail to\nrecognize that the psychologist first has experience to deal with; the\nsame experience that the zoologist, geologist, chemist, mathematician,\nand historian deal with, and that what characterizes his specialty is\nnot some data or existences which he may call uniquely his own; but the\nproblem raised--the problem of the _course_ of the acts that constitute\nexperiencing.\n\nHere psychology gets its revenge upon those who would rule it out of\npossession of important philosophical bearing. As a matter of fact,\nthe larger part of the questions that are being discussed in current\nepistemology and what is termed metaphysic of logic and ethic arise\nout of (and are hopelessly compromised by) this original assumption\nof \u201cconsciousness as such\u201d--in other words, are provoked by the exact\nreason that is given for denying to psychology any essential meaning\nfor epistemology and metaphysic. Such is the irony of the situation.\nThe epistemologist\u2019s problem is, indeed, usually put as the question of\nhow the subject can so far \u201ctranscend\u201d itself as to get valid assurance\nof the objective world. The very phraseology in which the problem is\nput reveals the thoroughness of the psychologist\u2019s revenge. Just and\nonly because experience has been reduced to \u201cstates of consciousness\u201d\nas independent existences, does the question of self-transcendence\nhave any meaning. The entire epistemological industry is one--shall\nI say it--of a Sisyphean nature. _Mutatis mutandis_, the same holds\nof the metaphysic of logic, ethic, and esthetic. In each case, the\nbasic problem has come to be how a mere state of consciousness can be\nthe vehicle of a system of truth, of an objectively valid good, of\nbeauty which is other than agreeable feeling. We may, indeed, excuse\nthe psychologist for not carrying on the special inquiries that are\nthe business of logical, ethical, and esthetical philosophy; but can\nwe excuse ourselves for forcing his results into such a shape as to\nmake philosophic problems so arbitrary that they are soluble only by\narbitrarily wrenching scientific facts?\n\nUndoubtedly we are between two fires. In placing upon psychology\nthe responsibility of discovering the method of experience, as a\nsequence of acts and passions, do we not destroy just that limitation\nto concrete detail which now constitutes it a science? Will not the\npsychologist be the first to repudiate this attempt to mix him up\nin matters philosophical? We need only to keep in mind the specific\nfacts involved in the term Course or Process of Experience to avoid\nthis danger. The immediate preoccupation of the psychologist is with\nvery definite and empirical facts--questions like the limits of\naudition, of the origin of pitch, of the structure and conditions of\nthe musical scale, etc. Just so the immediate affair of the geologist\nis with particular rock-structures, of the botanist with particular\nplants, and so on. But through the collection, description, location,\nclassification of rocks the geologist is led to the splendid story\nof world-forming. The limited, fixed, and separate piece of work is\ndissolved away in the fluent and dynamic drama of the earth. So, the\nplant leads with inevitableness to the whole process of life and its\nevolution.\n\nIn form, the botanist still studies the genus, the species, the\nplant--hardly, indeed, that; rather the special parts, the structural\nelements, of the plant. In reality, he studies life itself; the\nstructures are the indications, the signature through which he\nrenders transparent the mystery of life growing in the changing\nworld. It was doubtless necessary for the botanist to go through the\nLinnean period--the period of engagement with rigid detail and fixed\nclassifications; of tearing apart and piecing together; of throwing\nall emphasis upon peculiarities of number, size, and appearance of\nmatured structure; of regarding change, growth, and function as\nexternal, more or less interesting, attachments to form. Examination\nof this period is instructive; there is much in contemporary\ninvestigation and discussion that is almost unpleasantly reminiscent in\nits suggestiveness. The psychologist should profit by the intervening\nhistory of science. The conception of evolution is not so much an\nadditional law as it is a face-about. The fixed structure, the separate\nform, the isolated element, is henceforth at best a mere stepping-stone\nto knowledge of process, and when not at its best, marks the end of\ncomprehension, and betokens failure to grasp the problem.\n\nWith the change in standpoint from self-included existence to including\nprocess, from structural unit of composition to controlling unity\nof function, from changeless form to movement in growth, the whole\nscheme of values is transformed. Faculties are definite directions of\ndevelopment; elements are products that are starting-points for new\nprocesses; bare facts are indices of change; static conditions are\nmodes of accomplished adjustment. Not that the concrete, empirical\nphenomenon loses in worth, much less that unverifiable \u201cmetaphysical\u201d\nentities are impertinently introduced; but that our aim is the\ndiscovery of a process of actions in its adaptations to circumstance.\nIf we apply this evolutionary logic in psychology, where shall we\nstop? Questions of limits of stimuli in a given sense, say hearing,\nare in reality questions of temporary arrests, adjustments marking the\nfavorable equilibrium of the whole organism; they connect with the\nquestion of the use of sensation in general and auditory sensations\nin particular for life-habits; of the origin and use of localized and\ndistinguished perception; and this, in turn, involves within itself\nthe whole question of space and time recognition; the significance\nof the thing-and-quality experience, and so on. And when we are told\nthat the question of the origin of space experience has nothing at all\nto do with the question of the nature and significance of the space\nexperienced, the statement is simply evidence that the one who makes\nit is still at the static standpoint; he believes that things, that\nrelations, have existence and significance apart from the particular\nconditions under which they come into experience, and apart from the\nspecial service rendered in those particular conditions.\n\nOf course, I am far from saying that every psychologist must make the\nwhole journey. Each individual may contract, as he pleases, for any\nsection or subsection he prefers; and undoubtedly the well-being of\nthe science is advanced by such division of labor. But psychology\ngoes over the whole ground from detecting every distinct act of\nexperiencing, to seeing what need calls out the special organ fitted to\ncope with the situation, and discovering the machinery through which it\noperates to keep a-going the course of action.\n\nBut, I shall be told, the wall that divides psychology from philosophy\ncannot be so easily treated as non-existent. Psychology is a matter of\nnatural history, even though it may be admitted that it is the natural\nhistory of the course of experience. But philosophy is a matter of\nvalues; of the criticism and justification of certain validities. One\ndeals, it is said, with genesis, with conditions of temporal origin\nand transition; the other with analysis, with eternal constitution. I\nshall have to repeat that just this rigid separation of genesis and\nanalysis seems to me a survival from a pre-evolutionary, a pre-historic\nage. It indicates not so much an assured barrier between philosophy\nand psychology as the distance dividing philosophy from all science.\nFor the lesson that mathematicians first learned, that physics and\nchemistry pondered over, in which the biological disciplines were\nfinally tutored, is that sure and delicate analysis is possible only\nthrough the patient study of conditions of origin and development.\nThe method of analysis in mathematics is the method of construction.\nThe experimental method is the method of making, of following the\nhistory of production; the term \u201ccause\u201d that has (when taken as an\nexistent entity) so hung on the heels of science as to impede its\nprogress, has universal meaning when read as condition of appearance\nin a process. And, as already intimated, the conception of evolution\nis no more and no less the discovery of a general law of life than it\nis the generalization of all scientific method. Everywhere analysis\nthat cannot proceed by examining the successive stages of its subject,\nfrom its beginning up to its culmination, that cannot control this\nexamination by discovering the conditions under which successive stages\nappear, is only preliminary. It may further the invention of proper\ntools of inquiry, it may help define problems, it may serve to suggest\nvaluable hypotheses. But as science it breathes an air already tainted.\nThere is no way to sort out the results flowing from the subject-matter\nitself from those introduced by the assumptions and presumptions of\nour own reflection. Not so with natural history when it is worthy of\nits name. Here the analysis is the unfolding of the existence itself.\nIts distinctions are not pigeon-holes of our convenience; they are\nstakes that mark the parting of the ways in the process itself. Its\nclassifications are not a grasp at factors resisting further analysis;\nthey are the patient tracings of the paths pursued. Nothing is more\nout of date than to suppose that interest in genesis is interest in\nreducing higher forms to cruder ones: it is interest in locating the\nexact and objective conditions under which a given fact appears, and\nin relation to which accordingly it has its meaning. Nothing is more\nna\u00efve than to suppose that in pursuing \u201cnatural history\u201d (term of scorn\nin which yet resides the dignity of the world-drama) we simply learn\nsomething of the temporal conditions under which a given value appears,\nwhile its own eternal essential quality remains as opaque as before.\nNature knows no such divorce of quality and circumstance. Things come\nwhen they are wanted and as they are wanted; their quality is precisely\nthe response they give to the conditions that call for them, while\nthe furtherance they afford to the movement of their whole is their\nmeaning. The severance of analysis and genesis, instead of serving as\na ready-made test by which to try out the empirical, temporal events\nof psychology from the rational abiding constitution of philosophy,\nis a brand of philosophic dualism: the supposition that values are\nexternally obtruded and statically set in irrelevant rubbish.\n\nThere are those who will admit that \u201cstates of consciousness\u201d are\nbut the cross-sections of flow of behavior, arrested for inspection,\nmade in order that we may reconstruct experience in its lifehistory.\nYet in the knowledge of the course and method of our experience,\nthey will hold that we are far from the domain proper of philosophy.\nExperience, they say, is just the historic achievement of finite\nindividuals; it tells the tale of approach to the treasures of truth,\nof partial victory, but larger defeat, in laying hold of the treasure.\nBut, they say, reality is not the path to reality, and record of\ndevious wanderings in the path is hardly a safe account of the goal.\nPsychology, in other words, may tell us something of how we mortals\nlay hold of the world of things and truths; of how we appropriate\nand assimilate its contents; and of how we react. It may trace the\nissues of such approaches and apprehensions upon the course of our\nown individual destinies. But it cannot wisely ignore nor sanely deny\nthe distinction between these individual strivings and achievements,\nand the \u201cReality\u201d that subsists and supports its own structure\noutside these finite futilities. The processes by which we turn over\nThe Reality into terms of our fragmentary unconcluded, inconclusive\nexperiences are so extrinsic to the Reality itself as to have no\nrevealing power with reference to it. There is the _ordo ad universum_,\nthe subject of philosophy; there is the _ordo ad individuum_, the\nsubject of psychology.\n\nSome such assumption as this lies latent, I am convinced, in all\nforswearings of the kinship of psychology and philosophy. Two\nconceptions hang together. The opinion that psychology is an account\nonly and finally of states of consciousness, and therefore can throw\nno light upon the objects with which philosophy deals, is twin to\nthe doctrine that the whole conscious life of the individual is not\norganic to the world. The philosophic basis and scope of this doctrine\nlie beyond examination here. But even in passing one cannot avoid\nremarking that the doctrine is almost never consistently held; the\ndoctrine logically carried out leads so directly to intellectual and\nmoral scepticism that the theory usually prefers to work in the dark\nbackground as a disposition and temper of thought rather than to make a\nfrank statement of itself. Even in the half-hearted expositions of the\nprocess of human experience as something merely annexed to the reality\nof the universe, we are brought face to face to the consideration with\nwhich we set out: the dependence of theories of the individual upon\nthe position at a given time of the individual practical and social.\nThe doctrine of the accidental, futile, transitory significance of the\nindividual\u2019s experience as compared with eternal realities; the notion\nthat at best the individual is simply realizing for and in himself\nwhat already has fixed completeness in itself is congruous only with\na certain intellectual and political scheme and must modify itself as\nthat shifts. When such rearrangement comes, our estimate of the nature\nand importance of psychology will mirror the change.\n\nWhen man\u2019s command of the methods that control action was precarious\nand disturbed; when the tools that subject the world of things and\nforces to use and operation were rare and clumsy, it was unavoidable\nthat the individual should submit his perception and purpose blankly to\nthe blank reality beyond. Under such circumstances, external authority\nmust reign; the belief that human experience in itself is approximate,\nnot intrinsic, is inevitable. Under such circumstances, reference to\nthe individual, to the subject, is a resort only for explaining error,\nillusion, and uncertainty. The necessity of external control and\nexternal redemption of experience reports itself in a low valuation of\nthe self, and of all the factors and phases of experience that spring\nfrom the self. That the psychology of medievalism should appear only as\na portion of its theology of sin and salvation is as obvious as that\nthe psychology of the Greeks should be a chapter of cosmology.\n\nAs against all this, the assertion is ventured that psychology,\nsupplying us with knowledge of the behavior of experience, is a\nconception of democracy. Its postulate is that since experience\nfulfils itself in individuals, since it administers itself through\ntheir instrumentality, the account of the course and method of this\nachievement is a significant and indispensable affair.\n\nDemocracy is possible only because of a change in intellectual\nconditions. It implies tools for getting at truth in detail, and day\nby day, as we go along. Only such possession justifies the surrender\nof fixed, all-embracing principles to which, as universals, all\nparticulars and individuals are subject for valuation and regulation.\nWithout such possession, it is only the courage of the fool that would\nundertake the venture to which democracy has committed itself--the\nordering of life in response to the needs of the moment in accordance\nwith the ascertained truth of the moment. Modern life involves the\ndeification of the here and the now; of the specific, the particular,\nthe unique, that which happens once and has no measure of value save\nsuch as it brings with itself. Such deification is monstrous fetishism,\nunless the deity be there; unless the universal lives, moves, and has\nits being in experience as individualized.[62] This conviction of the\nvalue of the individualized finds its further expression in psychology,\nwhich undertakes to show how this individualization proceeds, and in\nwhat aspect it presents itself.\n\nOf course, such a conception means something for philosophy as well\nas for psychology; possibly it involves for philosophy the larger\nmeasure of transformation. It involves surrender of any claim on\nthe part of philosophy to be the sole source of some truths and the\nexclusive guardian of some values. It means that philosophy be a\nmethod; not an assurance company, nor a knight errant. It means an\nalignment with science. Philosophy may not be sacrificed to the\npartial and superficial clamor of that which sometimes officiously\nand pretentiously exhibits itself as Science. But there is a sense\nin which philosophy must go to school to the sciences; must have no\ndata save such as it receives at their hands; and be hospitable to no\nmethod of inquiry or reflection not akin to those in daily use among\nthe sciences. As long as it claims for itself special territory of\nfact, or peculiar modes of access to truth, so long must it occupy a\ndubious position. Yet this claim it has to make until psychology comes\nto its own. There is something in experience, something in things,\nwhich the physical and the biological sciences do not touch; something,\nmoreover, which is not just more experiences or more existences;\nbut without which their materials are inexperienced, unrealized.\nSuch sciences deal only with what _might_ be experienced; with the\ncontent of experience, provided and assumed there be experience. It is\npsychology which tells us how this possible experience loses its barely\nhypothetical character, and is stamped with categorical unquestioned\nexperiencedness; how, in a word, it becomes here and now in some\nuniquely individualized life. Here is the necessary transition of\nscience into philosophy; a passage that carries the verified and solid\nbody of the one into the large and free form of the other.\n\n    [NOTE: I have let this paper stand much as written, though now\n    conscious that much more is crowded into it than could properly\n    be presented in one paper. The drift of the ten years from \u201999 to\n    \u201909 has made, I venture to believe, for increased clearness in\n    the main positions of the paper: The revival of a naturalistic\n    realism, the denial of the existence of \u201cconsciousness,\u201d the\n    development of functional and dynamic psychology (accompanied\n    by aversion to interpretation of functions as faculties of a\n    soul-substance)--all of these tendencies are sympathetic with\n    the aim of the paper. There is another reason for letting it\n    stand: the new functional and pragmatic empiricism proffered\n    in this volume has been constantly objected to on the ground\n    that its conceptions of knowledge and verification lead only\n    to subjectivism and solipsism. The paper may indicate that the\n    identification of experience with bare states of consciousness\n    represents the standpoint of the critic, not of the empiricism\n    criticised, and that it is for him, not for me, to fear the\n    subjective implications of such a position. The paper also\n    clearly raises the question as to how far the isolation of\n    \u201cconsciousness\u201d from nature and social life, which characterizes\n    the procedure of many psychologists of to-day, is responsible for\n    keeping alive quite unreal problems in philosophy.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE[63]\n\n\nIt is now something over a century since Kant called upon philosophers\nto cease their discussion regarding the nature of the world and the\nprinciples of existence until they had arrived at some conclusion\nregarding the nature of the knowing process. But students of philosophy\nknow that Kant formulated the question \u201chow knowledge is possible\u201d\nrather than created it. As matter of fact, reflective thought for two\ncenturies before Kant had been principally interested in just this\nproblem, although it had not generalized its own interest. Kant brought\nto consciousness the controlling motive. The discussion, both in Kant\nhimself and in his successors, often seems scholastic, lost in useless\nsubtlety, scholastic argument, and technical distinctions. Within the\nlast decade in particular there have been signs of a growing weariness\nas to epistemology, and a tendency to turn away to more fertile\nfields. The interest shows signs of exhaustion.\n\nStudents of philosophy will recognize what I mean when I say that this\ngrowing conviction of futility and consequent distaste are associated\nwith the outcome of the famous dictum of Kant, that perception without\nconception is blind, while conception without perception is empty. The\nwhole course of reflection since Kant\u2019s time has tended to justify this\nremark. The sensationalist and the rationalist have worked themselves\nout. Pretty much all students are convinced that we can reduce\nknowledge neither to a set of associated sensations, nor yet to a\npurely rational system of relations of thought. Knowledge is judgment,\nand judgment requires both a material of sense perception and an\nordering, regulating principle, reason; so much seems certain, but we\ndo not get any further. Sensation and thought themselves seem to stand\nout more rigidly opposed to each other in their own natures than ever.\nWhy both are necessary, and how two such opposed factors co\u00f6perate in\nbringing about the unified result of science, becomes more and more of\na mystery. It is the continual running up against this situation which\naccounts for the flagging of interest and the desire to direct energy\nwhere it will have more outcome.\n\nThis situation creates a condition favorable to taking stock of the\nquestion as it stands; to inquiring what this interest, prolonged\nfor over three centuries, in the possibility and nature of knowledge,\nstands for; what the conviction as to the necessity of the union of\nsensation and thought, together with the inability to reach conclusions\nregarding the nature of the union, signifies.\n\nI propose then to raise this evening precisely this question: What\nis the meaning of the problem of knowledge? What is its meaning, not\nsimply for reflective philosophy or in terms of epistemology itself,\nbut what is its meaning in the historical movement of humanity and as\na part of a larger and more comprehensive experience? My thesis is\nperhaps sufficiently indicated in the mere taking of this point of\nview. It implies that the abstractness of the discussion of knowledge,\nits remoteness from everyday experience, is one of form, rather than of\nsubstance. It implies that the problem of knowledge is not a problem\nthat has its origin, its value, or its destiny within itself. The\nproblem is one which social life, the organized practice of mankind,\nhas had to face. The seemingly technical and abstruse discussion of the\nphilosophers results from the formulation and statement of the question.\n\nI suggest that the problem of the possibility of knowledge is but\nan aspect of the question of the relation of knowing to acting, of\ntheory to practice. The distinctions which the philosophers raise, the\noppositions which they erect, the weary treadmill which they pursue\nbetween sensation and thought, subject and object, mind and matter, are\nnot invented _ad hoc_, but are simply the concise reports and condensed\nformula of points of view and practical conflicts having their source\nin the very nature of modern life, conflicts which must be met and\nsolved if modern life is to go on its way untroubled, with clear\nconsciousness of what it is about. As the philosopher has received his\nproblem from the world of action, so he must return his account there\nfor auditing and liquidation.\n\nMore especially, I suggest that the tendency of all the points at issue\nto precipitate in the opposition of sensationalism and rationalism\nis due to the fact that sensation and reason stand for the two\nforces contending for mastery in social life: the radical and the\nconservative. The reason that the contest does not end, the reason for\nthe necessity of the combination of the two in the resultant statement,\nis that both factors are necessary in action; one stands for stimulus,\nfor initiative; the other for control, for direction.\n\nI cannot hope, in the time at my command this evening, to justify\nthese wide and sweeping assertions regarding either the origin, the\nwork, or the final destiny of philosophic reflection. I simply hope,\nby reference to some of the chief periods of the development of\nphilosophy, to illustrate to you something of what I mean.\n\nAt the outset we take a long scope in our survey and present to\nourselves the epoch when philosophy was still consciously, and not\nsimply by implication, human, when reflective thought had not developed\nits own technique of method, and was in no danger of being caught in\nits own machinery--the time of Socrates. What does the assertion of\nSocrates that an unexamined life is not one fit to be led by man; what\ndoes his injunction \u201cKnow thyself\u201d mean? It means that the corporate\nmotives and guarantees of conduct are breaking down. We have got away\nfrom the time when the individual could both regulate and justify his\ncourse of life by reference to the ideals incarnate in the habits of\nthe community of which he is a member. The time of direct and therefore\nunconscious union with corporate life, finding therein stimuli, codes,\nand values, has departed. The development of industry and commerce, of\nwar and politics, has brought face to face communities with different\naims and diverse habits; the development of myth and animism into crude\nbut genuine scientific observation and imagination has transformed\nthe physical widening of the horizon, brought about by commerce\nand intercourse, into an intellectual and moral expansion. The old\nsupports fail precisely at the time when they are most needed--before\na widening and more complex scene of action. Where, then, shall the\nagent of action turn? The \u201cKnow thyself\u201d of Socrates is the reply to\nthe practical problem which confronted Athens in his day. Investigation\ninto the true ends and worths of human life, sifting and testing of all\ncompeting ends, the discovery of a method which should validate the\ngenuine and dismiss the spurious, had henceforth to do for man what\nconsolidated and incorporate custom had hitherto presented as a free\nand precious gift.\n\nWith Socrates the question is as direct and practical as the question\nof making one\u2019s living or of governing the state; it is indeed the\nsame question put in its general form. It is a question that the flute\nplayer, the cobbler, and the politician must face no more and no less\nthan the reflective philosopher. The question is addressed by Socrates\nto every individual and to every group with which he comes in contact.\nBecause the question is practical it is individual and direct. It is a\nquestion which every one must face and answer for himself, just as in\nthe Protestant scheme every individual must face and solve for himself\nthe question of his final destiny.\n\nYet the very attitude of Socrates carried with it the elements of its\nown destruction. Socrates could only raise the question, or rather\ndemand of every individual that he raise it for himself. Of the answer\nhe declared himself to be as ignorant as was any one. The result\ncould be only a shifting of the center of interest. If the question is\nso all-important, and yet the wisest of all men must confess that he\nonly knows his own ignorance as to its answer, the inevitable point\nof further consideration is the discovery of a method which shall\nenable the question to be answered. This is the significance of Plato.\nThe problem is the absolutely inevitable outgrowth of the Socratic\nposition; and yet it carried with it just as inevitably the separation\nof philosopher from shoemaker and statesman, and the relegation of\ntheory to a position remote for the time being from conduct.\n\nIf the Socratic command, \u201cKnow thyself,\u201d runs against the dead wall of\ninability to conduct this knowledge, some one must take upon himself\nthe discovery of how the requisite knowledge may be obtained. A new\nprofession is born, that of the thinker. At this time the means,\nthe discovery of how the aims and worths of the self may be known\nand measured, becomes, for this class, an end in itself. Theory is\nultimately to be applied to practice; but in the meantime the theory\nmust be worked out as theory or else no application. This represents\nthe peculiar equilibrium and the peculiar point of contradiction in\nthe Platonic system. All philosophy is simply for the sake of the\norganization and regulation of social life; and yet the philosophers\nmust be a class by themselves, working out their peculiar problems\nwith their own particular tools.\n\nWith Aristotle the attempted balance failed. Social life is\ndisintegrating beyond the point of hope of a successful reorganization,\nand thinking is becoming a fascinating pursuit for its own sake. The\nworld of practice is now the world of compromise and of adjustment.\nIt is relative to partial aims and finite agents. The sphere of\nabsolute and enduring truth and value can be reached only in and\nthrough thought. The one who acts compromises himself with the animal\ndesire that inspires his action and with the alien material that forms\nits stuff. In two short generations the divorce of philosophy from\nlife, the isolation of reflective theory from practical conduct, has\ncompleted itself. So great is the irony of history that this sudden and\neffective outcome was the result of the attempt to make thought the\ninstrument of action, and action the manifestation of truth reached by\nthinking.\n\nBut this statement must not be taken too literally. It is impossible\nthat men should really separate their ideas from their acts. If we\nlook ahead a few centuries we find that the philosophy of Plato and\nAristotle has accomplished, in an indirect and unconscious way,\nwhat perhaps it could never have effected by the more immediate and\npractical method of Socrates. Philosophy became an organ of vision,\nan instrument of interpretation; it furnished the medium through which\nthe world was seen and the course of life estimated. Philosophy died\nas philosophy, to rise as the set and bent of the human mind. Through\na thousand and devious and roundabout channels, the thoughts of the\nphilosophers filtered through the strata of human consciousness and\nconduct. Through the teachings of grammarians, rhetoricians, and a\nvariety of educational schools, they were spread in diluted form\nthrough the whole Roman Empire and were again precipitated in the\ncommon forms of speech. Through the earnestness of the moral propaganda\nof the Stoics they became the working rules of life for the more\nstrenuous and earnest spirits. Through the speculations of the Sceptics\nand Epicureans they became the chief reliance and consolation of a\nlarge number of highly cultured individuals amid social turmoil and\npolitical disintegration. All these influences and many more finally\nsummed themselves up in the two great media through which Greek\nphilosophy finally fixed the intellectual horizon of man, determined\nthe values of its perspective, and meted out the boundaries and\ndivisions of the scene of human action.\n\nThese two influences were the development of Christian theology\nand moral theory, and the organization of the system of Roman\njurisprudence. There is perhaps no more fascinating chapter in\nthe history of humanity than the slow and tortuous processes by\nwhich the ideas set in motion by that Athenian citizen who faced\ndeath as serenely as he conversed with a friend, finally became the\nintellectually organizing centers of the two great movements that\nbridge the span between ancient civilization and modern. As the\npersonal and immediate force and enthusiasm of the movement initiated\nby Jesus began to grow fainter and the commanding influence of his own\npersonality commenced to dim, the ideas of the world and of life, of\nGod and of man, elaborated in Greek philosophy, served to transform\nmoral enthusiasm and personal devotion to the redemption of humanity,\ninto a splendid and coherent view of the universe; a view that resisted\nall disintegrating influences and gathered into itself the permanent\nideas and progressive ideals thus far developed in the history of man.\n\nWe have only a faint idea of how this was accomplished, or of the\nthoroughness of the work done. We have perhaps even more inadequate\nconceptions of the great organizing and centralizing work done by Greek\nthought in the political sphere. When the military and administrative\ngenius of Rome brought the whole world in subjection to itself, the\nmost pressing of practical problems was to give unity of practical\naim and harmony of working machinery to the vast and confused\nmass of local custom and tradition, religious, social, economic,\nand intellectual, as well as political. In this juncture the great\nadministrators and lawyers of Rome seized with avidity upon the\nresults of the intellectual analysis of social and political relations\nelaborated in Greek philosophy. Caring naught for these results in\ntheir reflective and theoretical character, they saw in them the\npossible instrument of introducing order into chaos and of transforming\nthe confused and conflicting medley of practice and opinion into a\nharmonious social structure. Roman law, that formed the vertebral\ncolumn of civilization for a thousand years, and which articulated the\nouter order of life as distinctly as Christianity controlled the inner,\nwas the outcome.\n\nThought was once more in unity with action, philosophy had become the\ninstrument of conduct. Mr. Bosanquet makes the pregnant remark \u201cthat\nthe weakness of medieval science and philosophy are connected rather\nwith excess of practice than with excess of theory. The subordination\nof philosophy to theology is a subordination of science to a formulated\nconception of human welfare. Its essence is present, not wherever there\nis metaphysics but wherever the spirit of truth is subordinated to any\npreconceived practical intent.\u201d (\u201cHistory of Esthetics,\u201d p. 146.)\n\nOnce more the irony of history displays itself. Thought has become\npractical, it has become the regulator of individual conduct and\nsocial organization, but at the expense of its own freedom and power.\nThe defining characteristic of medievalism in state and in church, in\npolitical and spiritual life, is that truth presents itself to the\nindividual only through the medium of organized authority.\n\nThere was a historical necessity on the external as well as the\ninternal side. We have not the remotest way of imagining what the\noutcome would finally have been if, at the time when the intellectual\nstructure of the Christian church and the legal structure of the\nRoman Empire had got themselves thoroughly organized, the barbarians\nhad not made their inroads and seized upon all this accumulated and\nconsolidated wealth as their own legitimate prey. But this was what did\nhappen. As a result, truths originally developed by the freest possible\ncriticism and investigation became external, and imposed themselves\nupon the mass of individuals by the mere weight of authoritative law.\nThe external, transcendental, and supernatural character of spiritual\ntruth and of social control during the Middle Ages is naught but\nthe mirror, in consciousness, of the relation existing between the\neager, greedy, undisciplined horde of barbarians on one side, and the\nconcentrated achievements of ancient civilization on the other. There\nwas no way out save that the keen barbarian whet his appetite upon\nthe rich banquet spread before him. But there was equally no way out\nso far as the continuity of civilization was concerned save that the\nvery fullness and richness of this banquet set limits to the appetite,\nand finally, when assimilated and digested, it be transformed into the\nflesh and blood, the muscles and sinew of him who sat at the feast.\nThus the barbarian ceased to be a barbarian and a new civilization\narose.\n\nBut the time came when the work of absorption was fairly complete.\nThe northern barbarians had eaten the food and drunk the wine of\nGr\u00e6co-Roman civilization. The authoritative truth embodied in medieval\nstate and church succeeded, in principle, in disciplining the untrained\nmasses. Its very success issued its own death warrant. To say that it\nhad succeeded means that the new people had finally eaten their way\ninto the heart of the ideas offered them, had got from them what they\nwanted, and were henceforth prepared to go their own way and make their\nown living. Here a new rhythm of the movement of thought and action\nbegins to show itself.\n\nThe beginning of this change in the swing of thought and action forms\nthe transition from the Middle Ages to the modern times. It is the\nepoch of the Renaissance. The individual comes to a new birth and\nasserts his own individuality and demands his own rights in the way\nof feeling, doing, and knowing for himself. Science, art, religion,\npolitical life, must all be made over on the basis of recognizing the\nclaims of the individual.\n\nPardon me these commonplaces, but they are necessary to the course of\nthe argument. By historic fallacy we often suppose, or imagine that\nwe suppose, that the individual had been present as a possible center\nof action all through the Middle Ages, but through some external\nand arbitrary interference had been weighted down by political and\nintellectual despotism. All this inverts the true order of the case.\nThe very possibility of the individual making such unlimited demands\nfor himself, claiming to be the legitimate center of all action and\nstandard for all organization, was dependent, as I have already\nindicated, upon the intervening medievalism. Save as having passed\nthrough this period of tremendous discipline, and having gradually\nworked over into his own habits and purposes the truths embodied in\nthe church and state that controlled his conduct, the individual could\nbe only a source of disorder and a disturber of civilization. The very\nmaintenance of the spiritual welfare of mankind was bound up in the\nextent to which the claim of truth and reality to be universal and\nobjective, far above all individual feeling and thought, could make\nitself valid. The logical realism and universalism of scholastic\nphilosophy simply reflect the actual subjection of the individual to\nthat associated and corporate life which, in conserving the past,\nprovided the principle of control.\n\nBut the eager, hungry barbarian was there, implicated in this\nuniversalism. He must be active in receiving and in absorbing the\ntruth authoritatively doled out to him. Even the most rigid forms of\nmedieval Christianity could not avoid postulating the individual will\nas having a certain initiative with reference to its own salvation. The\nimpulses, the appetite, the instinct of the individual were all assumed\nin medieval morals, religion, and politics. The imagined medieval\ntyranny took them for granted as completely as does the modern herald\nof liberty and equality. But the medieval civilization knew that the\ntime had not come when these appetites and impulses could be trusted to\nwork themselves out. They must be controlled by the incorporate truths\ninherited from Athens and Rome.\n\nThe very logic of the relationship, however, required that the time\ncome when the individual makes his own the objective and universal\ntruths. He is now the incorporation of truth. He now has the control as\nwell as the stimulus of action within himself. He is the standard and\nthe end, as well as the initiator and the effective force of execution.\nJust because the authoritative truth of medievalism has succeeded, has\nfulfilled its function, the individual can begin to assert himself.\n\nContrast this critical period, finding its expression equally in\nthe art of the Renaissance, the revival of learning, the Protestant\nReformation, and political democracy, with Athens in the time of\nSocrates. Then individuals felt their own social life disintegrated,\ndissolving under their very feet. The problem was how the value of that\nsocial life was to be maintained against the external and internal\nforces that were threatening it. The problem was on the side neither\nof the individual nor of progress; save as the individual was seen\nto be an intervening instrument in the reconstruction of the social\nunity. But with the individual of the fourteenth century, it was not\nhis own intimate community life which was slipping away from him. It\nwas an alien and remote life which had finally become his own; which\nhad passed over into his own inner being. The problem was not how a\nunity of social life should be conserved, but what the individual\nshould do with the wealth of resources of which he found himself the\nrightful heir and administrator. The problem looked out upon the\nfuture, not back to the past. It was how to create a new order, both\nof modes of individual conduct and forms of social life that should\nbe the appropriate manifestations of the vigorous and richly endowed\nindividual.\n\nHence the conception of progress as a ruling idea; the conception of\nthe individual as the source and standard of rights; and the problem\nof knowledge, were all born together. Given the freed individual, who\nfeels called upon to create a new heaven and a new earth, and who\nfeels himself gifted with the power to perform the task to which he is\ncalled:--and the demand for science, for a method of discovering and\nverifying truth, becomes imperious. The individual is henceforth to\nsupply control, law, and not simply stimulation and initiation. What\ndoes this mean but that instead of any longer receiving or assimilating\ntruth, he is now to search for and create it? Having no longer the\ntruth imposed by authority to rely upon, there is no resource save\nto secure the authority of truth. The possibility of getting at and\nutilizing this truth becomes therefore the underlying and conditioning\nproblem of modern life. Strange as it may sound, the question which\nwas formulated by Kant as that of the possibility of knowledge, is the\nfundamental political problem of modern life.\n\nScience and metaphysics or philosophy, though seeming often to be at\nwar, with their respective adherents often throwing jibes and slurs\nat each other, are really the most intimate allies. The philosophic\nmovement is simply the coming to consciousness of this claim of the\nindividual to be able to discover and verify truth for himself,\nand thereby not only to direct his own conduct, but to become an\ninfluential and decisive factor in the organization of life itself.\nModern philosophy is the formulation of this creed, both in general and\nin its more specific implications. We often forget that the technical\nproblem \u201c_how_ knowledge is possible,\u201d also means \u201chow _knowledge_ is\npossible\u201d; how, that is, shall the individual be able to back himself\nup by truth which has no authority save that of its own intrinsic\ntruthfulness. Science, on the other hand, is simply this general faith\nor creed asserting itself in detail; it is the practical faith at work\nengaged in subjugating the foreign territory of ignorance and falsehood\nstep by step. If the ultimate outcome depends upon this detailed and\nconcrete work, we must not forget that the earnestness and courage, as\nwell as the intelligence and clearness with which the task has been\nundertaken, have depended largely upon the wider, even if vaguer,\noperation of philosophy.\n\nBut the student of philosophy knows more than that the problem of\nknowledge has been with increasing urgency and definiteness the\npersistent and comprehensive problem. So conscious is he of the two\nopposed theories regarding the nature of science, that he often forgets\nthe underlying bond of unity of which we have been speaking. These two\nopposing schools are those which we know as the sensationalist and the\nintellectualist, the empiricist and the rationalist. Admitting that the\ndominance of the question of the possibility and nature of knowledge is\nat bottom a fundamental question of practice and of social direction,\nis _this_ distinction anything more than the clash of scholastic\nopinions, a rivalry of ideas meaningless for conduct?\n\nI think it is. Having made so many sweeping assertions I must venture\none more. Fanciful and forced as it may seem, I would say that the\nsensational and empirical schools represent in conscious and reflective\nform the continuation of the principle of the northern and barbarian\nside of medieval life; while the intellectualist and the rationalist\nstand for the conscious elaboration of the principle involved in the\nGr\u00e6co-Roman tradition.\n\nOnce more, as I cannot hope to prove, let me expand and illustrate.\nThe sensationalist has staked himself upon the possibility of\nexplaining and justifying knowledge by conceiving it as the grouping\nand combination of the qualities directly given us in sensation. The\nspecial reasons advanced in support of this position are sufficiently\ntechnical and remote. But the motive which has kept the sensationalist\nat work, which animated Hobbes and Locke, Hume and John Stuart Mill,\nVoltaire and Diderot, was a human not a scholastic one. It was the\nbelief that only in sensation do we get any personal contact with\nreality, and hence, any genuine guarantee of vital truth. Thought is\npale, and remote from the concrete stuff of knowledge and experience.\nIt only formulates and duplicates; it only divides and recombines that\nfullness of vivid reality got directly and at first hand in sense\nexperience. Reason, compared with sense, is indirect, emasculate, and\nfaded.\n\nMoreover, reason and thought in their very generality seem to lie\nbeyond and outside the individual. In this remoteness, when they claim\nany final value, they violate the very first principle of the modern\nconsciousness. What is the distinguishing characteristic of modern\nlife, unless it be precisely that the individual shall not simply\nget, and reason about, truth in the abstract, but shall make it his\nown in the most intimate and personal way? He has not only to know\nthe truth in the sense of knowing about it, but he must feel it. What\nis sensation but the answer to this demand for the most individual\nand intimate contact with reality? Show me a sensationalist and I\nwill show you not only one who believes that he is on the side of\nconcreteness and definiteness, as against washed-out abstractions and\nmisty general notions: but also one who believes that he is identified\nwith the cause of the individual as distinct from that of external\nauthority. We have only to go to our Locke and our Mill to see that\nopposition to the innate and the _a priori_ was felt to be opposition\nto the deification of hereditary prejudice and to the reception of\nideas without examination or criticism. Personal contact with reality\nthrough sensation seemed to be the only safeguard from opinions which,\nwhile masquerading in the guise of absolute and eternal truth, were in\nreality but the prejudices of the past become so ingrained as to insist\nupon being standards of truth and action.\n\nPositively as well as negatively, the sensationalists have felt\nthemselves to represent the side of progress. In its supposed eternal\ncharacter, a general notion stands ready made, fixed forever, without\nreference to time, without the possibility of change or diversity.\nAs distinct from this, the sensation represents the never-failing\neruption of the new. It is the novel, the unexpected, that which\ncannot be reasoned out in eternal formula, but must be hit upon in the\never-changing flow of our experience. It thus represents stimulation,\nexcitation, momentum onwards. It gives a constant protest against the\nassumption of any theory or belief to possess finality; and it supplies\nthe ever-renewed presentation of material out of which to build up new\nobjects and new laws.\n\nThe sensationalist appears to have a good case. He stands for\nvividness and definiteness against abstraction; for the engagement\nof the individual in experience as against the remote and general\nthought about experience; and for progress and for variety against the\neternal fixed monotony of the concept. But what says the rationalist?\nWhat value has experience, he inquires, if it is simply a chaos of\ndisintegrated and floating d\u00e9bris? What is the worth of personality and\nindividuality when they are reduced to crudity of brute feeling and\nsheer intensity of impulsive reaction? What is there left in progress\nthat we should desire it, when it has become a mere unregulated flux of\ntransitory sensations, coming and going without reasonable motivation\nor rational purpose?\n\nThus the intellectualist has endeavored to frame the structure of\nknowledge as a well-ordered economy, where reason is sovereign, where\nthe permanent is the standard of reference for the changing, and where\nthe individual may always escape from his own mere individuality\nand find support and reinforcement in a system of relations that\nlies outside of and yet gives validity to his own passing states of\nconsciousness. Thus the rationalists hold that we must find in a\nuniversal intelligence a source of truth and guarantee of value that is\nsought in vain in the confused and flowing mass of sensations.\n\nThe rationalist, in making the concept or general idea the\nall-important thing in knowledge, believes himself to be asserting the\ninterests of order as against destructive caprice and the license of\nmomentary whim. He finds that his cause is bound up with that of the\ndiscovery of truth as the necessary instrument and method for action.\nOnly by reference to the general and the rational can the individual\nfind perspective, secure direction for his appetites and impulses, and\nescape from the uncontrolled and ruinous reactions of his own immediate\ntendency.\n\nThe concept, once more, in its very generality, in its elevation above\nthe intensities and conflicts of momentary passions and interests, is\nthe conserver of the experience of the past. It is the wisdom of the\npast put into capitalized and funded form to enable the individual to\nget away from the stress and competition of the needs of the passing\nmoment. It marks the difference between barbarism and civilization,\nbetween continuity and disintegration, between the sequence of\ntradition that is the necessity of intelligent thought and action, and\nthe random and confused excitation of the hour.\n\nWhen we thus consider not the details of the positions of the\nsensationalist and rationalist, but the motives that have induced them\nto assume these positions, we discover what is meant in saying that the\nquestion is still a practical, a social one, and that the two schools\nstand for certain one-sided factors of social life. If we have on one\nside the demand for freedom, for personal initiation into experience,\nfor variety and progress, we have on the other side the demand for\ngeneral order, for continuous and organized unity, for the conservation\nof the dearly bought resources of the past. This is what I mean by\nsaying that the sensationalist abstracts in conscious form the position\nand tendency of the Germanic element in modern civilization, the\nfactor of appetite and impulse, of keen enjoyment and satisfaction, of\nstimulus and initiative. Just so the rationalist erects into conscious\nabstraction the principle of the Gr\u00e6co-Roman world, that of control, of\nsystem, of order and authority.\n\nThat the principles of freedom and order, of past and future, or\nconservation and progress, of incitement to action and control of that\nincitation, are correlative, I shall not stop to argue. It may be\nworth while, however, to point out that exactly the same correlative\nand mutually implicating connection exists between sensationalism and\nrationalism, considered as philosophical accounts of the origin and\nnature of knowledge.\n\nThe strength of each school lies in the weakness of its opponent.\nThe more the sensationalist appears to succeed in reducing knowledge\nto the associations of sensation, the more he creates a demand for\nthought to introduce background and relationship. The more consistent\nthe sensationalist, the more openly he reveals the sensation in its\nown nakedness crying aloud for a clothing of value and meaning which\nmust be borrowed from reflective and rational interpretation. On the\nother hand, the more reason and the system of relations that make up\nthe functioning of reason are magnified, the more is felt the need of\nsensation to bring reason into some fruitful contact with the materials\nof experience. Reason must have the stimulus of this contact in order\nto be incited to its work and to get materials to operate with. The\ncause, then, why neither school can come to rest in itself is precisely\nthat each abstracts one essential factor of conduct.\n\nThis suggests, finally, that the next move in philosophy is precisely\nto transfer attention from the details of the position assumed, and\nthe arguments used in these two schools, to the practical motives that\nhave unconsciously controlled the discussion. The positions have been\nsufficiently elaborated. Within the past one hundred years, within\nespecially the last generation, each has succeeded in fully stating\nits case. The result, if we remain at this point, is practically a\ndeadlock. Each can make out its case against the other. To stop at such\na point is a patent absurdity. If we are to get out of the cul-de-sac\nit must be by bringing into consciousness the tacit reference to action\nthat all the time has been the controlling factor.\n\nIn a word, another great rhythmic movement is seen to be approaching\nits end. The demand for science and philosophy was the demand for\ntruth and a sure standard of truth which the new-born individual might\nemploy in his efforts to build up a new world to afford free scope\nto the powers stirring within him. The urgency and acuteness of this\ndemand caused, for the time being, the transfer of attention from the\nnature of practice to that of knowledge. The highly theoretical and\nabstract character of modern epistemology, combined with the fact that\nthis highly abstract and theoretic problem has continuously engaged the\nattention of thought for more than three centuries, is, to my mind,\nproof positive that the question of knowledge was for the time being\nthe point in which the question of practice centered, and through which\nit must find outlet and solution.\n\nWe return, then, to our opening problem: the meaning of the question\nof the possibility of knowledge raised by Kant a century ago, and of\nhis assertion that sensation without thought is blind, thought without\nsensation empty. Once more I recall to the student of philosophy\nhow this assertion of Kant has haunted and determined the course of\nphilosophy in the intervening years--how his solution at once seems\ninevitable and unsatisfactory. It is inevitable in that no one can\nfairly deny that both sense and reason are implicated in every fruitful\nand significant statement of the world; unconvincing because we are\nafter all left with these two opposed things still at war with each\nother, plus the miracle of their final combination.\n\nWhen I say that the only way out is to place the whole modern industry\nof epistemology in relation to the conditions that gave it birth and\nthe function it has to fulfil, I mean that the unsatisfactory character\nof the entire neo-Kantian movement lies in its assumption that\nknowledge gives birth to itself and is capable of affording its own\njustification. The solution that is always sought and never found so\nlong as we deal with knowledge as a self-sufficing purveyor of reality,\nreveals itself when we conceive of knowledge as a statement of action,\nthat statement being necessary, moreover, to the successful ongoing of\naction.\n\nThe entire problem of medieval philosophy is that of absorption,\nof assimilation. The result was the creation of the individual.\nHence the problem of modern life is that of reconstruction, reform,\nreorganization. The entire content of experience needs to be passed\nthrough the alembic of individual agency and realization. The\nindividual is to be the bearer of civilization; but this involves a\nremaking of the civilization that he bears. Thus we have the dual\nquestion: How can the individual become the organ of corporate action?\nHow can he make over the truth authoritatively embodied in institutions\nof church and state into frank, healthy, and direct expressions of\nthe simple act of free living? On the other hand, how can civilization\npreserve its own integral value and import when subordinated to the\nagency of the individual instead of exercising supreme sway over him?\n\nThe question of knowledge, of the discovery and statement of truth,\ngives the answer to this question; and it alone gives the answer.\nAdmitting that the practical problem of modern life is the maintenance\nof the moral values of civilization through the medium of the insight\nand decision of the individual, the problem is foredoomed to futile\nfailure save as the individual in performing his task can work with\na definite and controllable tool. This tool is science. But this\nvery fact, constituting the dignity of science and measuring the\nimportance of the philosophic theory of knowledge, conferring upon\nthem the religious value once attaching to dogma and the disciplinary\nsignificance once belonging to political rules, also sets their limit.\nThe servant is not above his master.\n\nWhen a theory of knowledge forgets that its value rests in solving the\nproblem out of which it has arisen, viz., that of securing a method of\naction; when it forgets that it has to work out the conditions under\nwhich the individual may freely direct himself without loss to the\nhistoric values of civilization--when it forgets these things it begins\nto cumber the ground. It is a luxury, and hence a social nuisance and\ndisturber. Of course, in the very nature of things, every means or\ninstrument will for a while absorb attention so that it becomes the\nend. Indeed it is the end when it is an indispensable condition of\nonward movement. But when once the means have been worked out they must\noperate as such. When the nature and method of knowledge are fairly\nunderstood, then interest must transfer itself from the possibility of\nknowledge to the possibility of its application to life.\n\nThe sensationalist has played his part in bringing to effective\nrecognition the demand in valid knowledge for individuality of\nexperience, for personal participation in materials of knowledge.\nThe rationalist has served his time in making it clear once for all\nthat valid knowledge requires organization, and the operation of a\nrelatively permanent and general factor. The Kantian epistemologist\nhas formulated the claims of both schools in defining judgment as\nthe relation of perception and conception. But when it goes on to\nstate that this relation is itself knowledge, or can be found in\nknowledge, it stultifies itself. Knowledge can define the percept and\nelaborate the concept, but their union can be found only in action. The\nexperimental method of modern science, its erection into the ultimate\nmode of verification, is simply this fact obtaining recognition. Only\naction can reconcile the old, the general, and the permanent with the\nchanging, the individual, and the new. It is action as progress, as\ndevelopment, making over the wealth of the past into capital with which\nto do an enlarging and freer business, that alone can find its way\nout of the cul-de-sac of the theory of knowledge. Each of the older\nmovements passed away because of its own success, failed because it did\nits work, died in accomplishing its purpose. So also with the modern\nphilosophy of knowledge; there must come a time when we have so much\nknowledge in detail, and understand so well its method in general,\nthat it ceases to be a problem. It becomes a tool. If the problem of\nknowledge is not intrinsically meaningless and absurd it must in course\nof time be solved. Then the dominating interest becomes the _use_ of\nknowledge; the conditions under which and ways in which it may be most\norganically and effectively employed to direct conduct.\n\nThus the Socratic period recurs; but recurs with the deepened meaning\nof the intervening weary years of struggle, confusion, and conflict\nin the growth of the recognition of the need of patient and specific\nmethods of interrogation. So, too, the authoritative and institutional\ntruth of scholasticism recurs, but recurs borne up upon the vigorous\nand conscious shoulders of the freed individual who is aware of his\nown intrinsic relations to truth, and who glories in his ability to\ncarry civilization--not merely to carry it, but to carry it on. Thus\nanother swing in the rhythm of theory and practice begins.\n\nHow does this concern us as philosophers? For the world it means that\nphilosophy is henceforth a method and not an original fountain head of\ntruth, nor an ultimate standard of reference. But what is involved for\nphilosophy itself in this change? I make no claims to being a prophet,\nbut I venture one more and final unproved statement, believing, with\nall my heart, that it is justified both by the moving logic of the\nsituation, and by the signs of the times. I refer to the growing\ntransfer of interest from metaphysics and the theory of knowledge to\npsychology and social ethics--including in the latter term all the\nrelated concrete social sciences, so far as they may give guidance to\nconduct.\n\nThere are those who see in psychology only a particular science\nwhich they are pleased to term purely empirical (unless it happen to\nrestate in changed phraseology the metaphysics with which they are\nfamiliar). They see in it only a more or less incoherent mass of facts,\ninteresting because relating to human nature, but below the natural\nsciences in point of certainty and definiteness, as also far below\npure philosophy as to comprehensiveness and ability to deal with\nfundamental issues. But if I may be permitted to dramatize a little\nthe position of the psychologist, he can well afford to continue\npatiently at work, unmindful of the occasional supercilious sneers of\nthe epistemologist. The cause of modern civilization stands and falls\nwith the ability of the individual to serve as its agent and bearer.\nAnd psychology is naught but the account of the way in which individual\nlife is thus progressively maintained and reorganized. Psychology\nis the attempt to state in detail the machinery of the individual\nconsidered as the instrument and organ through which social action\noperates. It is the answer to Kant\u2019s demand for the formal phase of\nexperience--how experience as such is constituted. Just because the\nwhole burden and stress, both of conserving and advancing experience is\nmore and more thrown upon the individual, everything which sheds light\nupon how the individual may weather the stress and assume the burden is\nprecious and imperious.\n\nSocial ethics in inclusive sense is the correlative science. Dealing\nnot with the form or mode or machinery of action, it attempts rather\nto make out its filling and make up the values that are necessary to\nconstitute an experience which is worth while. The sociologist, like\nthe psychologist, often presents himself as a camp follower of genuine\nscience and philosophy, picking up scraps here and there and piecing\nthem together in somewhat of an aimless fashion--fortunate indeed, if\nnot vague and over-ambitious. Yet social ethics represents the attempt\nto translate philosophy from a general and therefore abstract method\ninto a working and specific method; it is the change from inquiring\ninto the nature of value in general to inquiring as to the _particular_\nvalues that ought to be realized in the life of every one, and as to\nthe conditions which render possible this realization.\n\nThere are those who will see in this conception of the outcome of a\nfour-hundred-year discussion concerning the nature and possibility\nof knowledge a derogation from the high estate of philosophy. There\nare others who will see in it a sign that philosophy, after wandering\naimlessly hither and yon in a wilderness without purpose or outcome,\nhas finally come to its senses--has given up metaphysical absurdities\nand unverifiable speculations, and become a purely positive science\nof phenomena. But there are yet others who will see in this movement\nthe fulfilment of its vocation, the clear consciousness of a function\nthat it has always striven to perform; and who will welcome it as a\njustification of the long centuries when it appeared to sit apart, far\nfrom the common concerns of man, busied with discourse of essence and\ncause, absorbed in argument concerning subject and object, reason and\nsensation. To such this outcome will appear the inevitable sequel of\nthe saying of Socrates that \u201can unexamined life is not one fit to be\nled by man\u201d; and a better response to his injunction \u201cKnow thyself.\u201d\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n\nINDEX\n\n\n  Absolutism, 18, 25, 98, 102, 109-110, 121-123, 130-132;\n    _Essay IV._, 142-153, 176, 180-181\n\n  Acquaintance, and knowledge, 79-82\n\n  Action, and problem of knowledge, _Essay XI._, 271-304\n\n  _A priori_, 206-213, 292-294\n\n  Appearance, and reality, 26-28, 118-121\n\n  Aristotle, referred to, 5, 32, 35, 37, 48, 50, 78, 221, 278\n\n  Assurance, 85-88\n\n  Awareness, 93\n\n\n  Behavior, and intelligence, 44\n\n  Belief, _Essay VI._, 169-197\n\n  Bosanquet, B., 281\n\n  Bradley, F. H., _Essay IV._, 112-153\n\n\n  Change, its supposed unreality, 1;\n    in modern science, 8-9;\n    and law, 72;\n    and thought, 133;\n    of truth, 153;\n    of experience, 222-224, 259-260;\n\n  Christianity, metaphysic of, 178\n\n  Cognitive, 84-85, 230-233\n\n  Conflict, and thinking, 116-117, 126-127, 132, 148-149\n\n  Consistency, as criterion, 128-136\n\n  Consciousness, as end of nature, 34-35;\n    is partial, 43;\n    and knowledge, 79-80, 102, 171;\n    _Essay X._, 242-270;\n    non-existence of, 247-248\n\n  Correspondence, 158\n\n  Cosmology, and morals, 54\n\n  Custom, as background of morals, 48, 52\n\n\n  Darwin, his influence on philosophy, _Essay I._, 1-19;\n    quoted, 2, 12\n\n  Democracy, moral meaning of, 59-60, 266-267\n\n  Descartes, 8\n\n  Design, _see_ Teleology\n\n\n  Economic Struggle, 21, 29, 35, 41, 50\n\n  Economics, influences on morals, 57-59\n\n  Empiricism, 200-202;\n    _Essay IX._, 226-241, 289-291\n\n  Epistemology, _versus_ logic, 95-107, 172, 185, 201, 296-298\n\n  Error, and becoming, 100\n\n  Evolution, of species, 1, 8;\n    and design, 12-13;\n    and teleology, 32-35;\n    and intelligence, 42-43\n\n  Experience, _Essay VII._, 198-225\n\n  Experiment, and knowledge, _Essay IV._, 77-111\n\n  Feeling, 80-81\n\n\n  Final Cause, _see_ Teleology\n\n  Functions, true data of psychology, 250-255\n\n\n  Galileo, 8\n\n  Genesis, and value, 261-264\n\n  Good, is concrete and plural, 15-17, 23, 27;\n    of Nature, _Essay II._, 20-45;\n    and evolution, 31-35, 43;\n    and mysticism, 39, 42;\n    Greek view of, 46-50;\n    medieval view of, 52-54;\n    as fixed, 67\n\n  Gordon, K., 215 n.\n\n  Gray, Asa, on evolution and design, 12\n\n\n  Happiness, nature of, 69\n\n  Hegel, 65, 174 n.\n\n  Hobbes, 203 n.\n\n  Hume, 82 n., 204 n.\n\n\n  Idealism, 28, 38, 191;\n    _Essay VII._, 198-225, 228\n\n  Ideality, 89, 120, 219-225\n\n  Ideas, nature of, 134, 155;\n    their verification, 141 ff.;\n    are hypothetical, 144, 150-151, 187\n\n  Individual, 244, 265-68, 285, 297\n\n  Intellectualism, _Essay IV._, 112-153, 159\n\n  Intelligence, is discriminative, 39, 42, 75;\n    is the good of nature, 44;\n    and Morals, _Essay III._, 46-76;\n    cosmic and personal, 55, 59;\n    as biological instrument, 68;\n    indirection of activity, 133, 149\n\n  Introspection, 250 n.\n\n\n  James, Wm., 104, 194 n., 202, 222 n., 246\n\n  Judgment, Bradley\u2019s theory of, 114-117;\n    of the past, 160-61, 165;\n    Kant\u2019s theory of, 272\n\n\n  Kant, 63-65, 206-213, 271\n\n  Knowledge, its proper object, 6, 10, 14;\n    and nature, 41;\n    and freedom, 73;\n    The Experimental Theory of, _Essay IV._, 77-111;\n    defined, 90;\n    and inquiry, 184-189;\n    _Essay XI._, problem of, 271-304\n\n\n  Locke, 93, 202-204, 217-218\n\n\n  Maine, Sir Henry, quoted, 46\n\n  Meaning, and knowledge, 87-90;\n    and judgment, 116-117, 200\n\n  Mechanism, 23, 34, 57\n\n  Memory, 220\n\n  Moore, A. W., 91 n.\n\n  Morals, _Essay III._, 46-76\n\n  Mysticism, 38-40, 42\n\n\n  Naturalism, 195\n\n  Nature, teleology of, 10;\n    The Good of, _Essay II._, 20-45;\n    animistic character of, 51;\n    change in, 72\n\n  Newton, influence of, 61, 72\n\n\n  Organization, of experience, 208-211\n\n\n  Perception, ambiguity of term, 214-219\n\n  Philosophy, changes in, 14-19;\n    political nature of, 21;\n    defined, 45;\n    and science, 51;\n    and psychology, 189-191;\n    _Essay X._, 242-270\n\n  Plato, 21, 47, 49, 72, 219 n., 278\n\n  Pragmatism, 25, 31, 33, 55, 95 n., 109, 130 n., 144;\n    _Essay V._, 154-168, 193\n\n  Psychical, 81 n., 104\n\n  Psychology, and philosophy, _Essay X._, 242-270, 301\n\n\n  Rationalism, _Essay XI._, 271-304\n\n  \u201cReality,\u201d 98, 105, 113, 129, 169 n., 172, 228, 264\n\n  Relation, and appearance, 119-120\n\n\n  Santayana, G., 96, 224 n.\n\n  Sciences, developed out of morals, 56;\n    and industry, 57-58;\n    as mode of knowledge, 108;\n    and philosophy, 268-270, 287\n\n  Sensation, 94, 262 n.\n\n  Sensationalism, _Essay XI._, 271-304\n\n  Social Ethics, 302-304\n\n  Socrates, 51, 76, 275, 304\n\n  Species, equivalent to scholastic form, 3-4;\n    as eternal and teleological, 4-5;\n    basis of knowledge, 6-7\n\n  Spencer, Herbert, 16, 33, 66\n\n  Spinoza, 181\n\n  Stoicism, 172, 279\n\n  Stuart, H. W., 214 n.\n\n  Subjective, 98, 155, 204 n., 270\n\n\n  Teleology, of life, 4;\n    of nature, 10, 32;\n    basis of idealism, 11;\n    concrete, 15, 22;\n    and evolution, 32-35;\n    subjective, 223-224\n\n  Theory, 124-127\n\n  Thinking, practical character of, 124-127\n\n  Tolstoi, 173 n.\n\n  Transcendence, of knowledge, 103 n., 156-157\n\n  Transcendental, and supernatural, 22, 29, 282;\n    view of knowledge, 24, 27;\n    freedom, 74\n\n  Truth, criterion of, 92, 95, 107-111;\n    _Essay IV._, 112-153;\n    absolute, 137;\n    identified with existence, 138, 145;\n    eternal, 147, 152;\n    _Essay V._, 154-168;\n    230-231, 237, 282\n\n\n  Utilitarianism, 62\n\n\n  Verification, making true, 139 ff., 162-164\n\n\n  Woodbridge, F. J. E., 104 n., 240 n.\n\n\n\n\nFOOTNOTES\n\n\n[1] The affair is even more portentous in the German with its\ncapital letters and series of _muses_: \u201cGewiss ist der Pragmatismus\nerkenntnisstheoretisch Nominalismus, psychologisch Voluntarismus,\nnaturphilosophisch Energismus, metaphysisch Agnosticismus, ethisch\nMeliorismus auf Grundlage des Bentham-Millschen Utilitarismus.\u201d\n\n[2] A lecture in a course of public lectures on \u201cCharles Darwin and His\nInfluence on Science,\u201d given at Columbia University in the winter and\nspring of 1909. Reprinted from the _Popular Science Monthly_ for July,\n1909.\n\n[3] \u201cLife and Letters,\u201d Vol. I., p. 282; cf. 285.\n\n[4] \u201cLife and Letters,\u201d Vol. II., pp. 146, 170, 245; Vol. I., pp.\n283-84. See also the closing portion of his \u201cVariations of Animals and\nPlants under Domestication.\u201d\n\n[5] Reprinted from the _Hibbert Journal_, Vol. VII., No. 4, July, 1909.\n\n[6] A public lecture delivered at Columbia University in March, 1908,\nunder the title of \u201cEthics,\u201d in a series of lectures on \u201cScience,\nPhilosophy, and Art.\u201d Reprinted from a monograph published by the\nColumbia University Press.\n\n[7] Reprinted, with considerable change in the arrangement and in the\nmatter of the latter portion, from _Mind_, Vol. XV., N.S., July, 1906.\n\n[8] I must remind the reader again of a point already suggested. It\nis the identification of presence in consciousness with knowledge as\nsuch that leads to setting up _a_ mind (_ego_, subject) which has the\npeculiar property of knowing (only so often it knows wrong!), or else\nthat leads to supplying \u201csensations\u201d with the peculiar property of\nsurveying their own entrails. Given the correct feeling that knowledge\ninvolves relationship, there being, by supposition, no other _thing_ to\nwhich the thing in consciousness is related, it is forthwith related\nto a soul substance, or to its ghostly offspring, a \u201csubject,\u201d or to\n\u201cconsciousness\u201d itself.\n\n[9] Let us further recall that this theory requires either that things\npresent shall already be psychical things (feelings, sensations,\netc.), in order to be assimilated to the knowing mind, subject to\nconsciousness; or else translates genuinely na\u00efve realism into the\nmiracle of a mind that gets outside itself to lay its ghostly hands\nupon the things of an external world.\n\n[10] This means that things may be present _as_ known, just as they\nbe present as hard or soft, agreeable or disgusting, hoped for or\ndreaded. The mediacy, or the art of intervention, which characterizes\nknowledge, indicates precisely the way in which known things as known\nare immediately present.\n\n[11] If Hume had had a tithe of the interest in the _flux_ of\nperceptions and in _habit_--principles of continuity and of\norganization--which he had in distinct and isolated existences, he\nmight have saved us both from German _Erkenntnisstheorie_, and from\nthat modern miracle play, the psychology of elements of consciousness,\nthat under the \u00e6gis of science, does not hesitate to have psychical\nelements compound and breed, and in their agile intangibility put to\nshame the performances of their less acrobatic cousins, physical atoms.\n\n[12] In other words, the situation as described is not to be confused\nwith the case of hunting on purpose to test an idea regarding the dog.\n\n[13] Dr. Moore, in an essay in \u201cContributions to Logical Theory\u201d has\nbrought out clearly, on the basis of a criticism of the theory of\nmeaning and fulfilment advanced in Royce\u2019s \u201cWorld and Individual,\u201d the\nfull consequences of this distinction. I quote one sentence (p. 350):\n\u201cSurely there is a pretty discernible difference between experience as\na purposive idea, and the experience which fulfils this purpose. To\ncall them both \u2018ideas\u2019 is at least confusing.\u201d The text above simply\nadds that there is also a discernible and important difference between\nexperiences which, _de facto_, are purposing and fulfilling (that is,\nare seen to be such _ab extra_), and those which meant to be such, and\nare found to be what they meant.\n\n[14] The association of science and philosophy with leisure, with a\ncertain economic surplus, is not accidental. It is practically worth\nwhile to postpone practice; to substitute theorizing, to develop a new\nand fascinating mode of practice. But it is the excess achievement of\npractice which makes this postponement and substitution possible.\n\n[15] It is the failure to grasp the coupling of truth of meaning with\na _specific_ promise, undertaking, or intention expressed by a thing\nwhich underlies, so far as I can see, the criticisms passed upon the\nexperimental or pragmatic view of the truth. It is the same failure\nwhich is responsible for the wholly _at large_ view of truth which\ncharacterizes the absolutists.\n\n[16] The belief in the _metaphysical_ transcendence of the object of\nknowledge seems to have its real origin in an _empirical_ transcendence\nof a very specific and describable sort. The thing meaning is one\nthing; the thing meant is another thing, and is (as already pointed\nout) a thing presented as not given in the same way as is the thing\nwhich means. It is something _to be_ so given. No amount of careful\nand thorough inspection of the indicating and signifying things can\nremove or annihilate this gap. The _probability_ of correct meaning may\nbe increased in varying degrees--and this is what we mean by control.\nBut final certitude can never be reached except experimentally--except\nby performing the operations indicated and discovering whether or\nno the intended meaning is fulfilled _in propria persona_. In this\nexperimental sense, truth or the object of any given meaning is always\nbeyond or outside of the cognitional thing that means it. Error as well\nas truth is a necessary function of knowing. But the non-empirical\naccount of this transcendent (or beyond) relationship puts _all_ the\nerror in one place (_our_ knowledge), and _all_ the truth in another\n(absolute consciousness or else a thing-in-itself).\n\n[17] Compare his essay, \u201cDoes Consciousness Exist?\u201d in the _Journal of\nPhilosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods_, Vol. I., p. 480.\n\n[18] Compare the essay on the \u201cProblem of Consciousness,\u201d by Professor\nWoodbridge, in the Garman Memorial Volume, entitled \u201cStudies in\nPhilosophy and Psychology.\u201d\n\n[19] Reprinted, with many changes, from an article in _Mind_, Vol.\nXVI., N.S., July 1907. Although the changes have been made to render\nthe article less technical, it still remains, I fear, too technical\nto be intelligible to those not familiar with recent discussions of\nlogical theory.\n\n[20] I follow chiefly Chapter XV. of \u201cAppearance and Reality\u201d--the\nchapter on \u201cThought and Reality.\u201d\n\n[21] The crux of the argument is contained in Chapters XIII. and XIV.,\non the \u201cGeneral Nature of Reality.\u201d\n\n[22] The same point comes out in Mr. Bradley\u2019s treatment of the way in\nwhich the practical demand for the good or satisfaction is to be taken\naccount of in a philosophical conception of the nature of reality.\nHe admits that it comes in; but holds that it enters not directly,\nbut because if left outside it indirectly introduces a feature of\n\u201cdiscontent\u201d on the intellectual side (see p. 155). This, as an\nargument for the supremacy of the isolated theoretical standard, loses\nall its force if we cease to conceive of intellect as from the start an\nindependent function, and realize that intellectual discontent is the\npractical conflict becoming deliberately aware of itself as the most\neffective means of its own rectification.\n\n[23] This suggests that many of the stock arguments against pragmatism\nfail to take its contention seriously enough. They proceed from the\nassumption that it is an account of truth which leaves untouched\ncurrent notions of the nature of intelligence. But the essential\npoint of pragmatism is that it bases its changed account of truth on\na changed conception of the nature of intelligence, both as to its\nobjective and its method. Now this different account of intelligence\nmay be wrong, but controversy which leaves standing the conventionally\ncurrent theories about thought and merely discusses \u201ctruth\u201d will not\ngo far. Since truth is the adequate fulfilment of the function of\nintelligence, the question turns on the nature of the latter.\n\n[24] Such a statement as, for example, Mr. Bradley\u2019s (_Mind_, Vol.\nXIII., No. 51, N.S., p. 3, article on \u201cTruth and Practice\u201d) \u201cThe idea\nworks ... but is able to work because I have chosen the right idea\u201d\nsurely loses any argumentative force it may seem to have, when it is\nrecalled that, upon the theory argued against, ability to work and\nrightness are one and the same thing. If the wording is changed to\nread \u201cThe idea is able to work because I have chosen an idea which is\nable to work\u201d the question-begging character of the implied criticism\nis evident. The change of phraseology also may suggest the crucial and\npregnant question: How does any one know that an idea is able to work\nexcepting by setting it at work?\n\n[25] A paper read in the spring of 1909 before the Philosophical Club\nof Smith College and not previously published.\n\n[26] Read as the Presidential Address at the fifth annual meeting of\nthe American Philosophical Association, at Cambridge, December 28,\n1905, and reprinted with verbal revisions from the _Philosophical\nReview_, Vol. XV., March, 1906. The substitution of the word\n\u201cExistences\u201d for the word \u201cRealities\u201d (in the original title) is due\nto a subsequent recognition on my part that the eulogistic historic\nassociations with the word \u201cReality\u201d (against which the paper was a\nprotest) infected the interpretation of the paper itself, so that the\nuse of some more colorless word was desirable.\n\n[27] Since writing the above I have read the following words of a\ncandidly unsympathetic friend of philosophy: \u201cNeither philosophy nor\nscience can institute man\u2019s relation to the universe, because such\nreciprocity must have existed before any kind of science or philosophy\ncan begin; since each investigates phenomena by means of the intellect,\nand independent of the position and feeling of the investigator;\nwhereas the relation of man to the universe is defined, not by the\nintellect alone, but by his sensitive perception aided by all his\nspiritual powers. However much one may assure and instruct a man that\nall real existence is an idea, that matter is made up of atoms, that\nthe essence of life is corporality or will, that heat, light, movement,\nelectricity, are different manifestations of one and the same energy,\none cannot thereby explain to a being with pains, pleasures, hopes, and\nfears his position in the universe.\u201d Tolstoi, essay on \u201cReligion and\nMorality,\u201d in \u201cEssays, Letters, and Miscellanies.\u201d\n\n[28] Hegel may be excepted from this statement. The habit of\ninterpreting Hegel as a Neo-Kantian, a Kantian enlarged and purified,\nis a purely Anglo-American habit. This is no place to enter into the\nintricacies of Hegelian exegesis, but the subordination of both logical\nmeaning and of mechanical existence to _Geist_, to life in its own\ndeveloping movement, would seem to stand out in any unbiased view of\nHegel. At all events, I wish to recognize my own personal debt to Hegel\nfor the view set forth in this paper, without, of course, implying that\nit represents Hegel\u2019s own intention.\n\n[29] There will of course come in time with the development of this\npoint of view an organon of beliefs. The signs of a genuine as against\na simulated belief will be studied; belief as a vital personal reaction\nwill be discriminated from habitual, incorporate, unquestioned\n(because unconsciously exercised) traditions of social classes and\nprofessions. In his \u201cWill to Believe\u201d Professor James has already\nlaid down two traits of genuine belief (viz., \u201cforced option,\u201d and\nacceptance of responsibility for results) which are almost always\nignored in criticisms (really caricatures) of his position. In the\nlight of such an organon, one might come to doubt whether _belief_\nin, say, immortality (as distinct from hope on one side and a sort\nof intellectual balance of probability of opinion on the other) can\ngenuinely exist at all.\n\n[30] Reprinted, with slight verbal changes, from the _Philosophical\nReview_, Vol. XV. (1906).\n\n[31] C. S. Peirce, _Monist_, Vol. XVI., p. 150.\n\n[32] _Psychology_, Vol. II., p. 618.\n\n[33] \u201cEssay concerning Human Understanding,\u201d Book II., Chapter II., \u00a7\n2. Locke doubtless derived this notion from Bacon.\n\n[34] It is hardly necessary to refer to the stress placed upon\nmathematics, as well as upon fundamental propositions in logic, ethics,\nand cosmology.\n\n[35] Of course there are internal historic connections between\nexperience as effective \u201cmemory,\u201d and experience as \u201cobservation.\u201d\nBut the motivation and stress, the problem, has quite shifted. It\nmay be remarked that Hobbes still writes under the influence of the\nAristotelian conception. \u201cExperience is nothing but Memory\u201d (\u201cElements\nof Philosophy,\u201d Part I., Chapter I., \u00a7 2), and hence is opposed to\nscience.\n\n[36] There are, of course, anticipations of Hume in Locke. But to\nregard Lockeian experience as equivalent to Humian is to pervert\nhistory. Locke, as he was to himself and to the century succeeding him,\nwas not a subjectivist, but in the main a common sense objectivist.\nIt was this that gave him his historic influence. But so completely\nhas the Hume-Kant controversy dominated recent thinking that it is\nconstantly projected backward. Within a few weeks I have seen three\narticles, all insisting that the meaning of the term experience must\nbe subjective, and stating or implying that those who take the term\nobjectively are subverters of established usage! But a casual study of\nthe dictionary will reveal that experience has always meant \u201c_what_\nis experienced,\u201d observation as a source of knowledge, as well as the\nact, fact, or mode of experiencing. In the Oxford Dictionary, the\n(obsolete) sense of \u201cexperimental testing,\u201d of actual \u201cobservation\nof facts and events,\u201d and \u201cthe fact of being consciously affected by\nan act\u201d have almost contemporaneous datings, viz., 1384, 1377, and\n1382 respectively. A usage almost more objective than the second, the\nBaconian use, is \u201cwhat has been experienced; the events that have taken\nplace within the knowledge of an individual, a community, mankind at\nlarge, either during a particular period or generally.\u201d This dates back\nto 1607. Let us have no more captious criticisms and plaints based\non ignorance of linguistic usage. [This pious wish has not been met.\nJ.\u00a0D., 1909.]\n\n[37] The relationship of organization and thought is precisely that\nwhich we find psychologically typified by the rhythmic functions of\nhabit and attention, attention being always, _ab quo_, a sign of the\nfailure of habit, and, _ad quem_, a reconstructive modification of\nhabit.\n\n[38] Compare, for example, Dr. Stuart\u2019s paper in the \u201cStudies in\nLogical Theory,\u201d pp. 253-256. I may here remark that I remain\ntotally unable to see how the _interpretation_ of objectivity to\nmean controlling conditions of action (negative and positive as\nabove) derogates at all from its na\u00efve objectivity, or how it\nconnotes cognitive subjectivity, or is in any way incompatible with a\ncommon-sense realistic theory of perception.\n\n[39] For this suggested interpretation of the esthetic as surprising,\nor unintended, gratuitous collateral reinforcement, see Gordon,\n\u201cPsychology of Meaning.\u201d\n\n[40] This, however, is not strictly true, since Locke goes far\nto supply the means of his own correction in his account of the\n\u201cworkmanship of the understanding.\u201d\n\n[41] Plato, especially in his \u201cThe\u00e6tetus,\u201d seems to have begun the\nprocedure of blasting the good name of perceptive experience by\nidentifying a late and instrumental distinction, having to do with\nlogical control, with all experience whatsoever.\n\n[42] Compare James, \u201cContinuous transition is one sort of conjunctive\nrelation; and to be a radical empiricist means to hold fast to this\nconjunctive relation of all others, for this is the strategic point,\nthe position through which, if a hole be made, all the corruptions\nof dialectics and all the metaphysical fictions pour into our\nphilosophy.\u201d--_Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific\nMethods_, Vol. I., p. 536.\n\n[43] One of the not least of the many merits of Santayana\u2019s \u201cLife of\nReason\u201d is the consistency and vigor with which is upheld the doctrine\nthat significant idealism means idealization.\n\n[44] Reprinted, with very slight change, from the _Journal of\nPhilosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods_, Vol. II., No. 15,\nJuly, 1905.\n\n[45] All labels are, of course, obnoxious and misleading. I hope,\nhowever, the term will be taken by the reader in the sense in which\nit is forthwith explained, and not in some more usual and familiar\nsense. Empiricism, as herein used, is as antipodal to sensationalistic\nempiricism, as it is to transcendentalism, and for the same reason.\nBoth of these systems fall back on something which is defined in\nnon-directly-experienced terms in order to justify that which is\ndirectly experienced. Hence I have criticised such empiricism\n(_Philosophical Review_, Vol. XI., No. 4, p. 364) as essentially\nabsolutistic in character; and also (\u201cStudies in Logical Theory,\u201d\npp. 30, 58) as an attempt to build up experience in terms of certain\nmethodological checks and cues of attaining _certainty_.\n\n[46] I hope the reader will not therefore assume that from the\nempiricist\u2019s standpoint knowledge is of small worth or import. On the\ncontrary, from the empiricist\u2019s standpoint it has _all_ the worth which\nit is concretely experienced as possessing--which is simply tremendous.\nBut the exact _nature_ of this worth is a thing to be found out in\ndescribing what we mean by experiencing objects as known--the actual\ndifferences made or found in experience.\n\n[47] Since the non-empiricist believes in things-in-themselves (which\nhe may term \u201catoms,\u201d \u201csensations,\u201d transcendental unities, _a priori_\nconcepts, _an_ absolute experience, or whatever), and since he finds\nthat the empiricist makes much of change (as he must, since change is\ncontinuously experienced) he assumes that the empiricist means _his\nown_ non-empirical Realities are in continual flux, and he naturally\nshudders at having his divinities so violently treated. But, once\nrecognize that the empiricist doesn\u2019t have any such Realities at all,\nand the entire problem of the relation of change to reality takes a\nvery different aspect.\n\n[48] It would lead us aside from the point to try to tell just what\nis the nature of the experienced difference we call truth. Professor\nJames\u2019s recent articles may well be consulted. The point to bear in\nmind here is just what sort of a thing the empiricist must mean by\ntrue, or truer (the noun Truth is, of course, a generic name for all\ncases of \u201cTrues\u201d). The adequacy of any particular account is not a\nmatter to be settled by general reasoning, but by finding out what sort\nof an experience the truth-experience actually is.\n\n[49] I say \u201crelatively,\u201d because the transcendentalist still holds\nthat finally the cognition is imperfect, giving us only some symbol\nor phenomenon of Reality (which _is_ only in the Absolute or in some\nThing-in-Itself)--otherwise the curtain-wind fact would have as\nmuch ontological reality as the existence of the Absolute itself: a\nconclusion at which the non-empiricist perhorresces, for no reason\nobvious to me--save that it would put an end to his transcendentalism.\n\n[50] In general, I think the distinction between -_ive_ and -_ed_ one\nof the most fundamental of philosophic distinctions, and one of the\nmost neglected. The same holds of -_tion_ and -_ing_.\n\n[51] What is criticised, now as \u201cgeneticism\u201d (if I may coin the word)\nand now as \u201cpragmatism\u201d is, in its truth, just the fact that the\nempiricist does take account of the experienced \u201cdrift, occasion, and\ncontexture\u201d of things experienced--to use Hobbes\u2019s phrase.\n\n[52] Perhaps the point would be clearer if expressed in this way:\nExcept as subsequent estimates of _worth_ are introduced, \u201creal\u201d\nmeans only existent. The eulogistic connotation that makes the term\nReality equivalent to _true_ or _genuine_ being has great pragmatic\nsignificance, but its confusion with reality as existence is the point\naimed at in the above paragraph.\n\n[53] One does not so easily escape medieval Realism as one thinks.\nEither every experienced thing has its own determinateness, its own\nunsubstitutable, unredeemable reality, or else \u201cgenerals\u201d _are_\nseparate existences after all.\n\n[54] Excepting, of course, some negative ones. One could say that\ncertain views are certainly _not_ true, because, by hypothesis,\nthey refer to nonentities, _i.e._, non-empiricals. But even here\nthe empiricist must go slowly. From his own standpoint, even the\nmost professedly transcendental statements are, after all, real as\nexperiences, and hence negotiate some transaction with facts. For\nthis reason, he cannot, in theory, reject them _in toto_, but has to\nshow concretely how they arose and how they are to be corrected. In a\nword, his logical relationship to statements that profess to relate to\nthings-in-themselves, unknowables, inexperienced substances, etc., is\nprecisely that of the psychologist to the Z\u00f6llner lines.\n\n[55] Delivered as a public address before the Philosophic Union of the\nUniversity of California, with the title \u201cPsychology and Philosophic\nMethod,\u201d May, 1899, and published in the _University Chronicle_ for\nAugust, 1899. Reprinted, with slight verbal changes, mostly excisions.\n\n[56] This is a fact not without its bearings upon the question of the\nnature and value of introspection. The objection that introspection\n\u201calters\u201d the reality and hence is untrustworthy, most writers dispose\nof by saying that, after all, it need not alter the reality so very\nmuch--not beyond repair--and that, moreover, memory assists in\nrestoring the ruins. It would be simpler to admit the fact: that the\npurpose of introspection is precisely to effect the right sort of\nalteration. If introspection should give us the original experience\nagain, we should just be living through the experience over again in\ndirect fashion; as psychologists we should not be forwarded one bit.\nReflection upon this obvious proposition may bring to light various\nother matters worthy of note.\n\n[57] Thus to divorce \u201cstructure psychology\u201d from \u201cfunction psychology\u201d\nis to leave us without possibility of scientific comprehension of\nfunction, while it deprives us of all standard of reference in\nselecting, observing, and explaining the structure.\n\n[58] The following answer may fairly be anticipated: \u201cThis is true of\nthe operations cited, but only because complex processes have been\nselected. Such a term as \u2018knowing\u2019 does of course express a function\ninvolving a system of intricate references. But, for that very reason,\nwe go back to the sensation which is the genuine type of the \u2018state of\nconsciousness\u2019 as such, pure and unadulterate and unsophisticated.\u201d The\npoint is large for a footnote, but the following considerations are\ninstructive: (1) The same psychologist will go on to inform us that\nsensations, as we experience them, are networks of reference--they\nare perceptual, and more or less conceptual even. From which it\nwould appear that whatever else they are or are not, the sensations,\nfor which self-inclosed existence is claimed, are _not_ states of\nconsciousness. And (2) we are told that these are reached by scientific\nabstraction in order to account for complex forms. From which it would\nappear that they are hypothecated as products of interpretation and for\npurposes of further interpretation. Only the delusion that the more\ncomplex forms are just aggregates (instead of being acts, like seeing,\nhoping, etc.) prevents recognition of the point in question--that the\n\u201cstate of consciousness\u201d is an instrument of inquiry or methodological\nappliance.\n\n[59] On the other hand, if what we are trying to get at is just the\ncourse and procedure of experiencing, of course any consideration that\nhelps distinguish and make comprehensible that process is thoroughly\npertinent.\n\n[60] It may avoid misunderstanding if I anticipate here a subsequent\nremark: that my point is not in the least that \u201cstates of\nconsciousness\u201d require some \u201csynthetic unity\u201d or faculty of substantial\nmind to effect their association. Quite the contrary; for this theory\nalso admits the \u201cstates of consciousness\u201d as existences in themselves\nalso. My contention is that the \u201cstate of consciousness\u201d as such is\nalways a methodological product, developed in the course and for the\npurposes of psychological analysis.\n\n[61] The \u201cfunctions\u201d are in truth ordinary everyday acts and attitudes:\nseeing, smelling, talking, listening, remembering, hoping, loving,\nfearing.\n\n[62] This is perhaps a suitable moment to allude to the absence, in\nthis discussion, of reference to what is sometimes termed rational\npsychology--the assumption of a separate, substantialized ego, soul,\nor whatever, existing side by side with particular experiences and\n\u201cstates of consciousness,\u201d acting upon them and acted upon by them. In\nignoring this and confining myself to the \u201cstates of consciousness\u201d\ntheory and the \u201cnatural history\u201d theory, I may appear not only to have\nunduly narrowed the concerns at issue, but to have weakened my own\npoint, as this doctrine seems to offer a special vantage ground whence\nto defend the close relationship of psychology and philosophy. The\n\u201cnarrowing,\u201d if such it be, will have to pass--from limits of time and\nother matters. But the other point I cannot concede. The independently\nexisting soul restricts and degrades individuality, making of it a\nseparate thing outside of the full flow of things, alien to things\nexperienced and consequently in either mechanical or miraculous\nrelations to them. It is vitiated by just the quality already objected\nto--that psychology has a separate piece of reality apportioned to\nit, instead of occupying itself with the manifestation and operation\nof any and all existences in reference to concrete action. From this\npoint of view, the \u201cstates of consciousness\u201d attitude is a much more\nhopeful and fruitful one. It ignores certain considerations, to be\nsure; and when it turns its ignoring into denial, it leaves us with\ncurious hieroglyphics. But after all, there is a key; these symbols\ncan be read; they may be translated into terms of the course of\nexperience. When thus translated, selfhood, individuality, is neither\nwiped out nor set up as a miraculous and foreign entity; it is seen as\nthe unity of reference and function involved in all things when fully\nexperienced--the pivot about which they turn.\n\n[63] Delivered before the Philosophical Club of the University of\nMichigan, in the winter of 1897, and reprinted with slight change from\na monograph in the \u201cUniversity of Chicago Contributions to Philosophy,\u201d\n1897.\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber\u2019s Notes\n\n\nPunctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a\npredominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not\nchanged.\n\nSimple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced\nquotation marks retained.\n\nAmbiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.\n\nIndex not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references.\n\nPage 24: \u201ctransgression\u201d was misprinted as \u201ctrangression\u201d; changed here.\n\nPage 39: \u201cbewrayeth\u201d was printed that way.\n\nPage 158: \u201ccor-respondence\u201d was printed with the hyphen.","title":"The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, and other essays in contemporary thought","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":69894}