CHAPTER XI.
THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR.
On ne sert dignement la philosophie qu’avec le même feu qu’on sent pour une maîtresse. — Rousseau, Nouvelle Heloïse.
We have before us our theorem, and an outline
of its proof. We are here to expand this argument.
We have some notion of the magnitude of the
issues that are at stake. We had found ourselves
baffled in our search for a certainty by numerous
difficulties. We had found only one way remaining
so far quite clear. That was the way of postulating
what the moral consciousness seems to demand
about the world beyond experience. For many
thinkers since Kant, that way has seemed in fact
the only one. They live in a world of action.
“Doubt,” they say, “clouds all theory. One must
act as if the world were the supporter of our moral
demands. One must have faith. One must make
the grand effort, one must risk all for the sake of
the great prize. If the world is against us, still we
will not admit the fact until we are crushed. If the
cold reality cares naught for our moral efforts, so be
it when we come to know the fact, but meanwhile
we will act as if legions of angels were ready to
support our demand for whatever not our selfish
interest, but the great interest of the Good, requires.” Such is the view of the men whose religion is founded
upon a Postulate.
We, too, felt that such faith is religious. We
were willing to accept it, if nothing better could be
found. But we were not content with it. Life has
its unheroic days, when mere postulates fail us. At
such times we grow weary of toiling, evil seems
actually triumphant, and, worse than all, the sense
that there really is any perfect goodness yet
unattained, that there is any worth or reason in our
fight for goodness, seems to desert us. And then it
will indeed be well if we can get for ourselves something
more and better than mere postulates. If we
cannot, we shall not seek to hide the fact. Better
eternal despondency than a deliberate lie about our
deepest thoughts and their meaning. If we are not
honest, at least in our philosophy, then are we wholly
base. To try once more is not dishonest.
So we did make the effort, and, in the last chapter,
we sketched a result that seemed nearly within
our reach. An unexpected result this, because it
springs from the very heart of skepticism itself.
We doubted to the last extremity. We let everything
go, and then all of a sudden we seemed to find
that we could not lose one priceless treasure, try as
we would. Our wildest doubt assumed this, namely,
that error is possible. And so our wildest doubt
assumed the actual existence of those conditions that
make error possible. The conditions that determine
the logical possibility of error must themselves be
absolute truth, that was the treasure that remained
to us amid all our doubts. And how rich that treasure is, we dimly saw in the last discussion. That
dim insight we must now try to make clearer. Perhaps
our previous discussion has shown us that the
effort is worth making.
Yet of one thing the reader shall be warned. The
path that we travel is hereabouts very thorny and
stony. It is a path of difficult philosophical
investigation. Nobody ought to follow it who does not
desire to. We hope that the reader will skip the
whole of this chapter unless he wants to find even
more of dullness than the rest of this sleepy book
has discovered to him. For us, too, the arid way
would seem hard, were it not for the precious prize
at the end of it.
I.
The story of the following investigation shall first
be very briefly told. The author had long sought,
especially in the discussions of Kant’s “Kritik,” and
in the books of the post-Kantians, for help in
seeing the ultimate principles that lie at the basis of
knowledge. He had found the old and well-known
troubles. Experience of itself can give no certainty
about general principles. We must therefore, said
Kant, bring our own principles with us to
experience. We know then of causation, because
causation is a fundamental principle of our thought,
whereby we set our experience to rights. And so
long as we think, we shall think into experience the
connection of cause and effect, which otherwise would
not be there. But hereupon the questions arose that
have so often been asked of Kant and the Kantians. Why just these principles and no others? “That
is inexplicable,” replies Kant. Very well, then,
suppose we give up applying to experience those
arbitrary principles of ours. Suppose we choose to
stop thinking of experience as causally connected.
What then? “But you cannot stop,” says Kant,
“Your thought, being what it is, must follow this
one fashion forever.” Nay, we reply, how knowest
thou that, Master? Why may not our thought get
a new fashion some day? And then what is now
a necessary principle, for example, that every event
has a cause, would become unnecessary or even
nonsensical. Do we then know a priori that our
a priori principles must always remain such? If so,
how come we by this new knowledge?
So Kant leaves us still uncertain about any
fundamental principles upon which a sure knowledge
of the world can be founded.
Let us, then, examine a little deeper. Are there
any certain judgments possible at all? If one is
skeptical in a thorough-going way, as the author
tried to be, he is apt to reach, through an effort to
revise Kant’s view, a position something like the
following, — a provisional position of course, but one
that results from the effort to accept nothing
without criticism: “Kant’s result is that our judgments
about the real world are founded on an union of
thought and sense, thought giving the appearance of
necessity to our judgment, sense giving the material.
The necessity of any judgment amounts then only to
what may be summed up in the words: So the
present union of thought and sense makes things appear. If either thought or sense altered its
character, truth would alter. Hence every sincere
judgment is indeed true for the moment in which it is
made, but not necessarily true for other moments.
We only postulate that it is true for other moments.”
“And so,” to continue this view, “it is only by
means of postulates that our thought even seems to
have any unity from moment to moment. We live
in the present. If our thought has other truth or
falsity than this, we do not know it. Past and
future exist not for this present. They are only
postulated. Save as postulated, they have no present
meaning.”
When he held and expressed this view, the author
is free to admit that he was not always clear whether
he ought to call it the doctrine of the relativity of
truth or not. It might have avoided the absurdities
of total relativity by taking form as a doctrine that
the present moment’s judgment is really true or
false, for a real past and future, but that we, being
limited to present moments, can never compare our
judgments with reality to find whether our
judgments are true or false. But although this
interpretation is possible, this view often did express
itself for the author as the doctrine of the total
relativity of truth. The latter doctrine to be sure has
no real meaning, but the author used with many
others to fancy that it had.
To apply the view to the case of causal relations.
“We continually postulate,” the author used to
point out, “we demand, without being able to prove
it, that nature in future shall be uniform.” So, carrying out this thought, the author used to say: "In fact future nature is not given to us, just as the past is not given to us. Sense-data and thought unite at every instant afresh to form a new judgment and a new postulate. Only in the present has any judgment evident validity. And our postulate of causal relation is just a way of looking at this world of conceived past and future data. Such postulates avoid being absurd efforts to regulate independent facts of sense, because, and only because, we have in experience no complete series of facts of sense at all, only from moment to moment single facts, about which we make single judgments. All the rest we must postulate or else do without them." Thus one reaches a skepticism as nearly complete as is possible to any one with earnest activity of thought in him. From moment to moment one can be sure of each moment. All else is postulate.
From the depths of this imperfectly defined skepticism, which seemed to him provisionally the only view he could adopt, the author escaped only by asking the one question more: "If everything beyond the present is doubtful, then how can even that doubt be possible?" With this question that bare relativity of the present moment is given up. What are the conditions that make doubt logically intelligible? These conditions really transcend the present moment. Plainly doubt implies that the statement doubted may be false. So here we have at least one supposed general truth, namely, "All but the immediate content of the present moment’s judgment, being doubtful, we may be in error about it." But what then is an error? This becomes at once a
problem of exciting interest. Attacking it, the
author was led through the wilderness of the following
argument.
II.
Yet before we undertake this special examination of the nature of error, the reader must pardon us for adding yet another explanatory word. The difficulty of the whole discussion will lie in the fact that we shall be studying the possibility of the plainest and most familiar of commonplaces. Common sense hates to do such things, because common sense thinks that the whole matter is sure from the outset. Common sense is willing to ask whether God exists, but unwilling to inquire how it is possible that there can exist an error about anything. But foreseeing that something is to follow from all this, we must beg common sense to be patient. We have not the shadow of doubt ourselves about the possibility of error. That is the steadfast rock on which we build. Our inquiry, ultra-skeptical as it may at moments seem, is into the question: How is the error possible? Or, in other words: What is an error? Now there can be little doubt that common sense is not ready with any general answer to such a question. Error is a word with many senses. By error we often mean just a statement that arouses our antipathy. Yet we all admit upon reflection, that our antipathy can neither make nor be used to define real error. Adam Smith declares, with common sense on his side, in his “Theory of the Moral Sentiments,” that: “To approve or disapprove of the opinions of
others is acknowledged, by everybody, to mean no
more than to observe their agreement or disagreement
with our own.” Yet no one would accept as a
definition of error the statement that: Error is any
opinion that I personally do not like. Error has
thus a very puzzling character. For common sense
will readily admit that if a statement is erroneous,
it must appear erroneous to every “right mind” that
is in possession of the facts. Hence the personal
taste of one man is not enough to define it. Else
there might be as many sorts of error as there are
minds. It is only the “right mind” whose personal
taste shall decide what is an error in any particular
case. But what then is a normal mind? Who is the
right-minded judge? There seems to be danger that
common sense shall run at this point into an infinite
regress. I say: That opinion is an error. What
do I mean? Do I mean that I do not like that
opinion? Nay, I mean more. I mean that I ought
not to like or to accept it. Why ought I not?
Because the ideally right-minded person would not,
seeing the given facts, hold that opinion about them.
But who is the ideally right-minded person? Well,
common sense may answer. It is my ideal person,
the right-minded man as I conceive him. But why
is my ideal the true ideal? Because I like it? —
Nay, because, to the ideal judge, that kind of mind
would seem the ideal. But who is the ideal judge?
And so common sense is driven from point to point,
unable to get to anything definite.
So much, then, to show in general that common sense does not know what an error is, and needs
more light upon the subject. Let common sense not
disturb us, then, in our further search, by the
constant and indignant protest that error must somehow
exist, and that doubt on that subject is nonsense.
Nobody has any doubts on that subject. We ask
only how error exists and how it can exist.
For the rest, what follows is not any effort to
demonstrate in fair and orderly array, from any one
principle or axiom, what must be the nature of
error, but to use every and any device that may offer
itself, general analysis, special example, comparison
and contrast of cases, — anything that shall lead us
to the insight into what an error is and implies.
For at last, immediate insight must decide.
We shall study our problem thus. We shall
take either some accepted definition of error, or
some special class of cases, and we shall ask: How
is error in that case, or in accordance with that
definition, possible? Since error plainly is possible in
some way, we shall have only to inquire: What are
the logical conditions that make it possible? We
shall take up the ordinary suppositions that
common sense seems to make about what here
determines the possibility of error. We shall show that
these suppositions are inadequate. Then the result
will be that, on the ordinary suppositions, error
would be impossible. But that result would be
absurd, if these were the only possible suppositions.
Hence the ordinary suppositions must somehow be
supplemented. When, therefore, we seem to say in
the following that error is impossible, we shall mean only, impossible under the ordinary suppositions of
common sense. What supplement we need to these
suppositions, our argument will show us. In sum
we shall find the state of the case to be this:
Common sense regards an assertion as true or as false
apart from any other assertion or thought, and solely
in reference to its own object. For common sense
each judgment, as a separate creation, stands out
alone, looking at its object, and trying to agree with
it. If it succeeds, we have truth. If the judgment
fails, we have error. But, as we shall find, this view
of common sense is unintelligible. A judgment
cannot have an object and fail to agree therewith,
unless this judgment is part of an organism of thought.
Alone, as a separate fact, a judgment has no
intelligible object beyond itself. And therefore the
presuppositions of common sense must be supplemented
or else abandoned. Either then there is no error,
or else judgments are true or false only in reference
to a higher inclusive thought, which they presuppose,
and which must, in the last analysis, be assumed as
Infinite and all-inclusive. This result we shall reach
by no mystical insight, by no revelation, nor yet by
any mere postulate such as we used in former
discussions, but by a simple, dry analysis of the
meaning of our own thought.
The most formidable opponent of our argument
will be, after all, however, not common sense, but
that thought mentioned in the last chapter, — the
thought that may try to content itself with
somewhat plausible jargon, and to say that: “There is
no real difference between truth and error at all, only a kind of opinion or consensus of men about
a conventional distinction between what they choose
to call truth and what they choose to call error.”
This view, as the author has confessed, he once tried
to hold. Still this meaningless doctrine of relativity
is not the same as the view that contents itself
with the postulates before discussed. That view
might take, and for the author at one time did take,
the possible and intelligible form thus expressible:
“Truth and error, though really distinguishable,
are for us distinguished only through our postulates,
in so far as relates to past and future time.”
Such views, while not denying that there is real
truth, despair of the attainability for us of more than
momentary truth. But the doctrine of Total
Relativity, this view above expressed, differs from
genuine skepticism. It tries to put even skepticism to
rest, by declaring the opinion, that there is error, to
be itself an error. This is not merely a moderate
expression of human limitations, but jargon, and
therefore formidable, because jargon is always
unanswerable. When the famous Cretan declared all
statements made by Cretans to be in all cases lies,
his declaration was hard to refute, because it was
such honest-seeming nonsense. Even so with the
statement that declares the very existence of error
to be an erroneously believed fancy. No consensus
of men can make an error erroneous. We can only
find or commit an error, not create it. When we
commit an error, we say what was an error already.
If our skeptical view in previous chapters seemed to
regard truth and error as mere objects of our postulates, that was only because, to our skepticism, the
real truth, the real error, about any real past and
future, seemed beyond our reach, so that we had
to content ourselves with postulates. But that real
error exists is absolutely indubitable.
This being the case, it is evident that even the
most thorough-going skepticism is full of
assumptions. If I say, “There may be no money in that
purse yonder,” I assume the existence of the purse
yonder in order to make just that particular doubt
possible. Of course, however, just that doubt may
be rendered meaningless by the discovery of the
actual non-existence of that particular purse. If
there is no purse yonder, then it is nonsensical either
to affirm or to deny that it contains money. And
so if the purse of which I speak is an hallucination
of mine, then the doubt about whether, as an
actually existent purse, it has money in it, is deprived
of sense. My real error in that case would lie in
supposing the purse itself to exist. If, however, I
abandon the first doubt, and go on to doubt the real
existence of the purse, I equally assume a room, or
some other environment, or at all events the universe,
as existent, in order to give sense to my question
whether the purse has any being in this environment
or in this universe. But if I go yet further, and
doubt whether there is any universe at all outside of
my thought, what does my doubt yet mean? If it
is to be a doubt with any real sense, it must be a
doubt still with an object before it. It seems then
to imply an assumed order of being, in which there
are at least two elements, my lonely thought about an universe, and an empty environment of this
thought, in which there is, in fact, no universe.
But this empty environment, whose nature is such
that my thought does wrong to suppose it to be an
universe, what is that? Surely if the doubt is to
have meaning, this idea needs further examination.
The absolute skepticism is thus full of assumptions.
The first European thinker who seems to have
discussed our present problem was Plato, in a
too-much-neglected passage of the “Theætetus,” where
Socrates, replying to the second definition of
knowledge given by Theætetus, namely, knowledge is
True Opinion, answers that his great difficulty has
often been to see how any opinion can possibly be
false. The conclusion reached by Plato is no very
definite one, but the discussion is deeply suggestive.
And we cannot do better here than to pray that the
shade of the mighty Greek may deign to save us
now in our distress, and to show us the true nature
of error.
III.
Logicians are agreed that single ideas, thoughts viewed apart from judgments, are neither true nor false. Only a judgment can be false. And if a reasoning process is said to be false, the real error lies still in an actual or suppressed assertion. A fallacy is a false assertion that a certain conclusion follows from certain premises. Error is therefore generally defined as a judgment that does not agree with its object. In the erroneous judgment, subject and predicate are so combined as, in the object,
the corresponding elements are not combined. And
thus the judgment comes to be false. Now, in this
definition, nothing is doubtful or obscure save the
one thing, namely, the assumed relation between the
judgment and its object. The definition assumes as
quite clear that a judgment has an object, wherewith
it can agree or not agree. And what is meant by
the agreement would not be obscure, if we could see
what is meant by the object, and by the possession of
this object implied in the pronoun its. What then
is meant by its object? The difficulties involved in
this phrase begin to appear as soon as you look
closer. First then the object of the assertion is as
such supposed to be neither the subject nor the
predicate thereof. It is external to the judgment. It
has a nature of its own. Furthermore, not all judgments
have the same object, so that objects are very
numerous. But from the infinity of real or of
possible objects the judgment somehow picks out its
own. Thus then for a judgment to have an object,
there must be something about the judgment that
shows what one of the external objects that are
beyond itself this judgment does pick out as its own.
But this something that gives the judgment its
object can only be the intention wherewith the
judgment is accompanied. A judgment has as object
only what it intends to have as object. It has to
conform only to that to which it wants to conform.
But the essence of an intention is the knowledge of
what one intends. One can, for instance, intend a
deed or any of its consequences only in so far as he foresees them. I cannot be said to intend the
accidental or the remote or even the immediate
consequences of anything that I do, unless I foresaw that
they would follow; and this is true however much
the lawyers and judges may find it practically necessary
to hold me responsible for these consequences.
Even so we all find it practically useful to regard
one of our fellows as in error in case his assertions,
as we understand them, seem to us to lead to
consequences that we do not approve. But our criticisms
of his opinions, just like legal judgments of his acts,
are not intended to be exact. Common sense will
admit that, unless a man is thinking of the object of
which I suppose him to be thinking, he makes no
real error by merely failing to agree with the object
that I have in mind. If the knights in the fable
judge each other to be wrong, that is because each
knight takes the other’s shield to be identical with
the shield as he himself has it in mind. In fact
neither of them is in error, unless his assertion is
false for the shield as he intended to make it his
object.
So then judgments err only by disagreeing with
their intended objects, and they can intend an object
only in so far forth as this object is known to the
thought that makes the judgment. Such, it would
seem, is the consequence of the common-sense view.
But in this case a judgment can be in error only
if it is knowingly in error. That also, as it seems,
follows from the common-sense suppositions. Or, if
we will have it in syllogistic form: —
Everything intended is something known. The object even of an erroneous judgment is intended.
∴ The object even of an error is something known.
Or: Only what is known can be erred about.
Nor can we yet be content with what common sense
will at once reply, namely, that our syllogism uses
known ambiguously, and that the object of an
erroneous judgment is known enough to constitute it the
object, and not enough to prevent the error about it.
This must no doubt be the fact, but it is not of itself
clear; on the contrary, just here is the problem. As
common sense conceives the matter, the object of a
judgment is not as such the whole outside world of
common sense, with all its intimate interdependence
of facts, with all its unity in the midst of diversity.
On the contrary, the object of any judgment is just
that portion of the then conceived world, just that
fragment, that aspect, that element of a supposed
reality, which is seized upon for the purposes of just
this judgment. Only such a momentarily grasped
fragment of the truth can possibly be present in any
one moment of thought as the object of a single
assertion. Now it is hard to say how within this
arbitrarily chosen fragment itself there can still be room
for the partial knowledge that is sufficient to give to
the judgment its object, but insufficient to secure to
the judgment its accuracy. If I aim at a mark with
my gun, I can fail to hit it, because choosing and
hitting a mark are totally distinct acts. But, in the
judgment, choosing and knowing the object seem
inseparable. No doubt somehow our difficulty is
soluble, but we are here trying first to show that it is a
difficulty. To illustrate here by a familiar case, when we
speak of things that are solely matters of personal
preference, such as the pleasure of a sleigh-ride, the
taste of olives, or the comfort of a given room, and
when we only try to tell how these things appear to
us, then plainly our judgments, if sincere, cannot be
in error. As these things are to us, so they are.
We are their measure. To doubt our truthfulness
in these cases is to doubt after the fashion of the
student who wondered whether the star that the
astronomers call Uranus may not be something else
after all, and not really Uranus. Surely science does
not progress very far or run into great danger of
error so long as it employs itself in discovering such
occult mysteries as the names of the stars. But our
present question is, How do judgments that can be
and that are erroneous differ in nature from these
that cannot be erroneous? If astronomers would be
equally right in case they should agree to call
Uranus Humpty Dumpty, why are not all judgments
equally favored? Since the judgment chooses its
own object, and has it only in so far as it chooses it,
how can it be in that partial relation to its object
which is implied in the supposition of an erroneous
assertion?
Yet again, to illustrate the difficulty in another
aspect, we can note that not only is error impossible
about the perfectly well-known, but that error is
equally impossible, save in the form of direct
self-contradiction, about what is absolutely unknown.
Spite of the religious awe of some people in presence
of the Unknowable, it is safe to say, somewhat irreverently, that about a really Unknowable nobody
could make any sincere and self-consistent assertions
that could be errors. For self-consistent assertions
about the Unknowable would of necessity be
meaningless. And being meaningless, they could not well
be false. For instance, one could indeed not say
that the Unknowable contemplates war with France,
or makes sunspots, or will be the next Presidential
candidate, because that would be contradicting one’s
self. For if the Unknowable did any of these things,
it would no longer be the Unknowable, but would
become either the known or the discoverable. But
avoid such self-contradiction, and you cannot err
about the Unknowable. For the Unknowable is
simply our old friend Abracadabra, a word that has no
meaning, and by hypothesis never can get any. So
if I say that the Unknowable dines in vacuo with
the chimera, or is Humpty Dumpty, I talk nonsense,
and am therefore unable to make a mistake.
Nonsense is error only when it involves self-contradiction.
Avoid that, and nonsense cannot blunder, having no
object outside of itself with which it must agree.
But all this illustrates from the other side our
difficulty. Is not the object of a judgment, in so far as
it is unknown to that judgment, like the Unknowables
for that judgment? To be in error about the
application of a symbol, you must have a symbol that
symbolizes something. But in so far as the thing
symbolized is not known through the symbol, how
is it symbolized by that symbol? Is it not, like the
Unknowable, once for all out of the thought, so that
one cannot just then be thinking about it at all, and so cannot, in this thought at least, be making blunders
about it? But in so far as the thing symbolized
is, through the symbol, in one’s thought, why is it
not known, and so correctly judged? All this
involves that old question of the nature of symbols.
They are to mean for us more than we know that
they mean. How can that be? No doubt ail that
is really possible, but how?
IV.
We follow our difficulty into another department.
Let us attempt a sort of provisional psychological
description of a judgment as a state of mind. So
regarded, a judgment is simply a fact that occurs in
somebody’s thought. If we try to describe it as an
occurrence, without asking whence it came, we shall
perhaps find in it three elements, — elements which
are in some fashion described in Ueberweg’s
well-known definition of a judgment as the “Consciousness
about the objective validity of a subjective
union of ideas.” Our interpretation of them shall be
this: The elements are: The Subject, with the
accompanying shade of curiosity about it; the
Predicate, with the accompanying sense of its worth in
satisfying a part of our curiosity about the subject;
and the Sense of Dependence, whereby we feel the
value of this act to lie, not in itself, but in its
agreement with a vaguely felt Beyond, that stands out
there as Object.
Now this analysis of the elements of a judgment is
no explanation of our difficulties; and in fact for the moment only embarrasses us more. But the
nature of the difficulty may come home to us somewhat
more clearly, if we try to follow the thread of this
analysis a little further. Even if it is a very
imperfect account, it may serve to lead us up to the true
insight that we seek into the nature of error. Let
us make the analysis a little more detailed.
In its typical form then, the judgment as a mental
state seems to us to begin with a relatively
incomplete or unstable or disconnected mass of
consciousness, which we have called the Subject, as it first
begins to be present to us. This subject-idea is
attended by some degree of effort, namely, of attention,
whose tendency is to complete this incomplete
subject by bringing it into closer connection with
more familiar mental life. This more familiar life is
represented by the predicate-idea. If the effort is
successful, the subject has new elements united to it,
assumes in consciousness a definiteness, a coherency
with other states, a familiarity, which it lacked at the
outset of the act of judgment; and this coherency it
gets through its union with the predicate. All this
is accompanied further by what one for short may
call a sense of dependence. The judgment feels
itself not alone, but looks to a somewhat indefinite
object as the model after which the present union of
ideas is to be fashioned. And in this way we
explain how the judgment is, in those words of
Ueberweg’s definition, “the consciousness about the
objective validity of a subjective union of ideas.”
Now as a mere completion of subject-idea through
the addition of a predicate-idea, the judgment is simply a mental phenomenon, having interest only to
the person that experiences it, and to a psychologist.
But as true or as false the judgment must be viewed
in respect to the indefinite object of what we have
called the sense of dependence, whereby the
judgment is accompanied. Seldom in any ordinary
judgment does this object become perfectly full and
clear; for to make it so would often require many,
perhaps an infinite, series of judgments. Yet, for the
one judgment, the object, whether full and clear or
not, exists as object only in so far forth as the sense
of dependence has defined it. And the judgment is
true or false only with reference to this undefined
object. The intention to agree with the object is
contained in the sense of dependence upon the object,
and remains for this judgment incomplete, like the
object itself. Somewhat vaguely this single act
intends to agree with this vague object.
Such being the case, how can the judgment, as
thus described, fairly be called false? As mere
psychological combination of ideas it is neither true nor
false. As accompanied by the sense of dependence
upon an object, it would be false if it disagreed with
its imperfectly defined object. But, as described,
the only object that the judgment has is this
imperfectly defined one. With this, in so far as it is for
the moment defined, the judgment must needs agree.
In so far as it is not defined, it is however not object
for this judgment at all, but for some other one.
What the imperfect sense of dependence would
further imply if it existed in a complete instead of in
an incomplete state, nobody can tell, any more than one can tell what towns would grow up by a given
rain-pool, if it were no pool, but a great lake. The
object of a single judgment, being what it is, namely,
a vaguely defined object, present to this judgment, is
just what it is for this judgment, and the judgment
seems once for all to be true, in case it is sincere.
Some one may here at once answer that we neglect
in this description the close interdependence of
various judgments. Thought, some one may say, is
an organic unity. Separated from all else but its
own incompletely defined object, a single judgment
cannot be erroneous. Only in the organic unity of
a series of judgments, having a common object, is
the error of one of them possible. We reply that
all this will turn out to be just our result. But the
usual supposition at the outset is that any judgment
has by itself its own object, so that thereby alone,
apart from other judgments, it stands or falls. And
thus far we have tried to show that this natural
supposition leads us into difficulty. We cannot see
how a single sincere judgment should possibly fail
to agree with its own chosen object. But enough of
our problem in general. We must consider certain
classes of errors more in detail. Let us see how, in
these special classes of cases, we shall succeed in
verifying the natural presupposition of common sense,
which regards error as possible only when our object
is not wholly present to mind, and which assumes
that a judgment can have an object that is yet only
partially present to mind. In choosing the classes of
cases, we shall first follow common sense as to their
definition. We shall take just the assumptions of daily life, and shall show that they lead us into
difficulty. We are not for the first bound to explain
why these assumptions are made. That common
sense makes them is enough.
But let the reader remember: The whole value of
our argument lies in its perfect generality. However
much we dwell on particular classes of errors,
we care nothing for the proof that just those errors
are inexplicable, but only for the fact that they
illustrate how, without some entirely new hypothesis,
absolutely all error becomes impossible. This or
that class of judgments may be one in which all the
judgments are relative, but the total relativity of
our thought implies an incomprehensible and
contradictory state of things. Any hypothesis about error
that makes total relativity the only admissible view,
must therefore give place to some new hypothesis.
And our illustrations in the following are intended
to show that just what constitutes the difficulty in
respect of these illustrations, makes the existence of
any error inexplicable without some new hypothesis.
V.
The class of errors that we shall first take seems,
to common sense, common enough. It is the class
known as errors about our neighbor’s states of mind.
Let us then, for argument’s sake, assume without
proof that our neighbors do exist. For we are not
here concerned to answer Solipsism, but merely to
exemplify the difficulties about the nature of error.
If our neighbors did not exist, then the nature of the error that would lie in saying that they do exist
would present almost exactly the same difficulties.
We prefer, however, to begin with the common-sense
assumption about ourselves and our neighbors as
separate individuals, and to ask how error can then
arise in judging of our neighbors’ minds.
In the first place then: Who is my neighbor?
Surely, on the assumptions that we all make, and
that we made all through the ethical part of our
discussion, he is no one of my thoughts, nor is any part
of him ever any part of my thought. He is not my
object, but, in Professor Clifford’s phrase, an “eject,”
wholly outside of my ideas. He is no “thing in my
dream,” just as I am not in his dream.
Yet I make judgments about him, and he makes
them about me. And when I make judgments about
him, I do so by having in my thought some set of my
own ideas that, although not himself, do yet, as I
say, represent him. A kind of dummy, a symbol, a
graven image of my own thought’s creation, a
phantom of mine, stands there in me as the representative
of his mind; and all I say about my neighbor’s
inner life refers directly to this representative. The
Scottish philosophy has had much to say to the world
about what it calls direct or presentative, as opposed
to representative, knowledge of objects. But surely
the most obstinate Scottish philosopher that ever ate
oatmeal cannot hold so tenaciously by his national
doctrine as to say that I have, according to common
sense, anything but a representative knowledge of
my neighbor’s thoughts and feelings. That is the
only sort of knowledge that common sense will regard as possible to me, if so much as that is possible.
But bow I can know about this outside being is not
now our concern. We notice only that our difficulty
about error comes back to us in a new form. For
bow can I err about my neighbor, since, for this
common-sense view, he is not even partly in my thoughts?
How can I intend that as the object of my thought
which never can be object for me at all?
But not everybody will at once feel the force of
this question. We must be more explicit. Let us
take the now so familiar suggestion of our great
humorist about the six people that take part in every
conversation between two persons. If John and
Thomas are talking together, then the real John and
Thomas, their respective ideas of themselves, and
their ideas of each other, are all parties to the
conversation. Let us consider four of these persons,
namely, the real John, the real Thomas, John as
Thomas conceives him, and Thomas as John
conceives him. When John judges, of whom does he
think? Plainly of that which can be an object to
his thoughts, namely, of his Thomas. About whom
then can he err? About his Thomas? No, for he
knows him too well. His conception of Thomas is
his conception, and what he asserts it to be, that it
is for him. About the real Thomas? No, for it
should seem, according to common sense, that he has
nothing to do with the real Thomas in his thought,
since that Thomas never becomes any part of his
thought at all. “But,” says one, “there must be
some fallacy here, since we are sure that John can
err about the real Thomas.” Indeed he can, say we; but ours is not this fallacy. Common sense has
made it. Common sense has said: “Thomas never
is in John’s thought, and yet John can blunder
about Thomas.” How shall we unravel the knot?
One way suggests itself. Mayhap we have been
too narrow in our definition of object. Common
sense surely insists that objects are outside of our
thought. If, then, I have a judgment, and another
being sees both my judgment and some outside
object that was not in my thought, and sees how that
thought is unlike the object in some critical respect,
this being could say that my assertion was an error.
So then with John and Thomas. If Thomas could
know John’s thoughts about him, then Thomas could
possibly see John’s error. That is what is meant
by the error in John’s thought.
But mere disagreement of a thought with any
random object does not make the thought erroneous.
The judgment must disagree with its chosen object.
If John never has Thomas in thought at all, how
can John choose the real Thomas as his object? If
I judge about a penholder that is in this room, and
if the next room is in all respects like this, save for
a penholder in it, with which my assertion does not
agree, who, looking at that penholder in that other
room, can say that my judgment is false? For I
meant not that penholder when I spoke, but this
one. I knew perhaps nothing about that one, had
it not in mind, and so could not err about it. Even
so, suppose that outside of John there is a real
Thomas, similar, as it happens, to John’s ideal
Thomas, but lacking some thought or affection that John attributes to his ideal Thomas. Does that
make John’s notion an error? No, for he spoke and
could speak only of his ideal Thomas. The real
Thomas was the other room, that he knew not of,
the other side of the shield, that he never could
conceive. His Thomas was his phantom Thomas. This
phantom it is that he judges and thinks about, and
his thoughts may have their own consistency or
inconsistency. But with the real other person they
have nothing to do. The real other is not his
object, and how can he err about what is not object
for him?
Absurd, indeed, some one will reply to us. John
and Thomas have to deal with representative
phantoms of each other, to be sure; but that only makes
each more apt to err about the real other. And the
test that they can err is a very simple one. Suppose
a spectator, a third person, to whom John and
Thomas were both somehow directly present, so that
he as it were included both of them. Then John’s
judgment of his phantom Thomas would be by this
spectator at once compared with the real Thomas,
and even so would Thomas’s judgment of John be
treated. If now John’s phantom Thomas agreed
with the real Thomas, then John’s ideas would be
declared in so far truthful; otherwise they would be
erroneous. And this explains what is meant by
John’s power to err about Thomas.
The explanation is fair enough for its own purpose,
and we shall need it again before long. But
just now we cannot be content with it. For what
we want to know is not what the judgment of a third thinker would be in case these two were
somehow not independent beings at all, but things in
this third being’s thought. For we have started out
with the supposition of common sense that John
and Thomas are not dreams or thoughts of some
higher third being, but that they are independent
beings by themselves. Our supposition may have
to be given up hereafter, but for the present we
want to hold fast to it. And so John’s judgment,
which we had supposed to be about the independently
existing Thomas, has now turned out to be
only a judgment about John’s idea of Thomas. But
judgments are false only in case they disagree with
their intended objects. What, however, is the
object of John’s judgment when he thinks about
Thomas? Not the real Thomas, who could not
possibly be an object in another man’s thoughts. John’s
real object being an ideal Thomas, he cannot, if
sincere, and if fully conscious of what he means by
Thomas, fail to agree in his statements with his own
ideal. In short, on this our original supposition,
John and Thomas are independent entities, each of
which cannot possibly enter in real person into the
thoughts of the other. Each may be somehow
represented in the other’s thoughts by a phantom, and
only this phantom can be intended by the other
when he judges about the first. For unless one talks
nonsense, it should seem as if one could mean only
what one has in mind.
Thus, like the characters in a certain Bab ballad,
real John, real Thomas, the people in this simple
tale, are total strangers to each other. You might as well ask a blind man to make true or false
judgments about the real effects of certain combinations
of colors, as to ask either John or Thomas, defined
as common sense defines them, to make any
judgments about each other. Common sense will assert
that a blind man can learn and repeat verbally
correct statements about color, or verbally false
statements about color, but, according to the common-sense
view, in no case can he err about color-ideas
as such, which are never present to him. You will
be quite ready to say that a dog can make mistakes
about the odors of the numberless tracks on the
highway. You will assure us, however, that you
cannot make mistakes about them because these
odors do not exist for you. According to the
common-sense view, a mathematician can make blunders
in demonstrating the properties of equations. A
Bushman cannot, for he can have no ideas corresponding
to equations. But how then can John or Thomas
make errors about each other, when neither is more
present to the other than is color to the blind man,
the odor of the tracks on the highway to the dog’s
master, or the idea of an equation to a Bushman?
Here common sense forsakes us, assuring us that
there is such error, but refusing to define it.
The inconsistency involved in all this common-sense
view, and the consequences of the inconsistency,
will appear yet better with yet further illustration.
A dream is false in so far as it contains the judgment
that such and such things exist apart from us; but
at least in so far as we merely assert in our dreams
about the objects as we conceive them, we make true assertions. But is not our actual life of assertions
about actual fellow-beings much like a dream to
which there should happen to correspond some real
scene or event in the world? Such correspondence
would not make the dream really “true,” nor yet
false. It would be a coincidence, remarkable for an
outside observer, but none the less would the dreamer
be thinking in his dream not about external objects,
but about the things in his dream. But is not our
supposed Thomas so and only so in the thought of
John as he would be if John chanced to dream of
a Thomas that was, to an external spectator, like the
real one? Is not then the phantom Thomas, John’s
only direct object, actually a thing in John’s thought?
Is then the independent Thomas an object for John
in any sense?
Yet again. Let us suppose that two men are shut
up, each in a closed room by himself, and for his
whole life; and let us suppose that by a lantern
contrivance each of them is able at times to produce on
the wall of the other’s room a series of pictures.
But neither of them can ever know what pictures he
produces in the other’s room, and neither can know
anything of the other’s room, as such, but only of
the pictures. Let the two remain forever in this
relation. One of them. A, sees on his wall pictures,
which resemble more or less what he has seen in his
own room at other times. Yet he perceives these to
be only pictures, and he supposes them to represent
what goes on in another room, which he conceives as
like his own. He is interested, he examines the
phenomena, he predicts their future changes, he passes judgment upon them. He may, if you like to
continue the hypothesis, find some way of affecting
them, by himself acting in a way mysterious to
himself so as to produce changes in B’s actual room,
which again affect the pictures that the real B
produces in A’s room. Thus A might hold what he
would call communication with his phantom room.
Even so, B lives with pictures before him that are
produced from A’s room. Now one more supposition,
namely, that A and B have absolutely no other
means of communication, that both are shut up
altogether and always have been, that neither has any
objects before him but his own thoughts and the
changing pictures on the wall of his room. In this
case what difference does it make whether or no the
pictures in A’s room are actually like the things
that could be seen in B’s room? Will that make
A’s judgments either true or false? Even if A,
acting by means that he himself cannot understand,
is able to control the pictures on his wall by some
alteration that he unconsciously produces in B’s
room and its pictures, still A cannot be said to have
any knowledge of the real B and his room at all.
And, for the same reason, A cannot make mistakes
about the real room of B, for he will never even
think of that real room. He will, like a man in a
dream, think and be able to think only of the
pictures on his wall. And when he refers them to an
outside cause, he does not mean by this cause the real
B and his real room, for he has never dreamed of the
real B, but only of the pictures and of his own
interpretation of them. He can therefore make no false judgments about B’s room, any more than a Bushman
can make false judgments about the integral calculus.
If to our present world there does correspond a
second world somewhere off in space, a world exactly
like this, where just the same events at every instant
do actually take place, still the judgments that we
make about our world are not actually true or false
with reference to that world, for we mean this world,
not that one, when we judge. Why are not John’s
Thomas and the real Thomas related like this world
and that second world in distant space? Why are
not both like the relation of A’s conceived phantom
room and B’s real room? Nothing of either real
room is ever present to the other. Each prisoner
can make true or false judgments if at all, then,
only about the pictures on his wall; but neither
has even the suggestion that could lead him to make
a blunder about the other’s real room, of which he
has and can have not the faintest idea.
One reason why we fail to see at once this fact
lies in the constant tendency to regard the matter
from the point of view of a third person, instead of
from the point of view that we still implicitly
attribute to A and B themselves. If A could get outside
of his room once and see B’s room, then he could
say: “My picture was a good one,” or the reverse.
But, in the supposed case, he not only never sees B’s
room, but he never sees anything but his own
pictures, never gets out of his room at all for any
purpose. Hence, his sole objects of assertion being his
pictures, he is innocent of any power to err about
B’s room as it is in itself, even as the man born blind is innocent of any power to err about the relations
of colors.
Now this relation of A and B, as they were
supposed to dwell in their perpetual imprisonment, is
essentially like the relation that we previously
postulated between two independent subjects. If I
cannot have you in my thought at all, but only a picture
produced by you, I am in respect to you like A
confined to the pictures produced from B’s room.
However much I may fancy that I am talking of you, I
am really talking about my idea of you, which for
me can have no relation whatever to the real you.
And so John and Thomas remain shut up in their
prisons. Each thinks of his phantom of the other.
Only a third person, who included them both, who
in fact treated them as, in the Faust-Epilogue, the
Pater Seraphicus treats the selige Knaben (Er
nimmt sie in sich, says the stage direction) — only
such an inclusive thought could compare the
phantoms with the real, and only in him, not in
themselves, would John and Thomas have any ideas of
each other at all, true or false.
This result is foreign to our every-day thought,
because this every-day thought really makes innocent
use of two contradictory views of the relations of
conscious beings. On the one hand we regard them
as utterly remote from one another, as what
Professor Clifford called ejects; and then we speak of
them as if the thoughts of one could as such become
thoughts of the other, or even as if one of them
could as an independent being still become object
in the thought of the other. No wonder that, with such contradictory assumptions as to the nature of
our relations to our neighbors, we find it very easy
to make absurd statements about the meaning of
error. The contradiction of common sense has in
fact just here much to do with the ethical illusion
that we called the illusion of selfishness. To clear
up this point will be useful to us, therefore, in more
ways than one.
VI.
Disappointed once more in our efforts to understand
how error is possible, we turn to another class
of cases, which lie in a direction where, at least for
this once, all will surely be plain. Errors about
matters of fact or experience are certainly clear
enough in nature. And as this class of errors is
practically most important, the subtleties of our
previous investigation may be dismissed with light heart
so soon as we have gotten rid of the few little
questions that will now beset us. It is to be noted that
all errors about material objects, about the laws
of nature, about history, and about the future, are
alike errors about our actual or possible experiences.
We expect or postulate an experience that at the
given time, or under the given conditions, turns out
to be other than it was postulated or expected to be.
Now since our experiences not now present are
objective facts, and capable of clear definition, it would
seem clear that error concerning them is an easily
comprehensible thing.
But alas! again we are disappointed. That errors
in matters of experience are common enough is indubitable, but equally evident becomes the
difficulty of defining what they are and how they are
possible. Take the case of error about an expected
future. What do we mean by a future time? How
do we identify a particular time? Both these
questions plunge us into the sea of problems about the
nature of time itself. When I say, Thus and so
will it be at such and such a future moment, I
postulate certain realities not now given to my
consciousness. And singular realities they are. For
they have now no existence at all. Yet I postulate
that I can err about them. This their non-existence
is a peculiar kind of non-existence, and requires me
to make just such and such affirmations about it.
If I fail to correspond to the true nature of this
non-existent reality, I make an error; and it is
postulated not merely that my present statement will
in that case hereafter turn out false or become false,
but also that it is now false, is at this moment an
error, even though the reality with which it is to
agree is centuries off in the future. But this is not
all the difficulty. I postulate also that an error in
prediction can be discovered when the time comes
by the failure of the prediction to verify itself. I
postulate then that I can look back and say: Thus
and thus I predicted about this moment, and thus
and thus it has come to pass, and this event
contradicts that expectation. But can I in fact ever
accomplish this comparison at all? And is the
comparison very easily intelligible? For when the event
comes to pass, the expectation no longer exists. The
two thoughts, namely, expectation and actual experience, are separate thoughts, far apart in time.
How can I bring them together to compare them, so
as to see if they have the same object? It will not
do to appeal to memory for the purpose; for the
same question would recur about the memory in its
relation to the original thought. How can a past
thought, being past, be compared to a present thought
to see whether they stand related? The past thought
lived in itself, had its own ideas of what it then
called future, and its own interpretation thereof.
How can you show, or intelligently affirm, that the
conception which the past expectation had of its
future moment is so identical with the conception
which this present thought has of this present
moment, as to make these two conceived moments one
and the same? Here in short we have supposed two
different ideas, one of an expected future, the other
of an experienced present, and we have supposed
the two ideas to be widely separated in time, and by
hypothesis they are not together in one consciousness
at all. Now how can one say that in fact they relate
to the same moment at all? How is it intelligible
to say that they do? How, in fine, can a not-given
future be a real object of any thought; and how,
when it is once the object thereof, can any
subsequent moment be identified with this object?
A present thought and a past thought are in fact
separate, even as were John and Thomas. Each
one means the object that it thinks. How can they
have a common object? Are they not once for all
different thoughts, each with its own intent? But
in order to render intelligible the existence of error about matters of fact, we must make the unintelligible
assumption, so it would seem, that these two
different thoughts have the same intent, and are but
one. And such is the difficulty that we find in our
second great class of cases.
VII.
So much for the problem, both in general and in
some particular instances. But now may not the
reader insist, after all, that there can be in this wise
no errors whatever? Contradictory as it seems, have
we not, after all, put our judgments into a position
whence escape for us is impossible? If every
judgment is thus by its nature bound up in a closed
circle of thought, with no outlook, can any one come
afterwards and give it an external object? Perhaps,
then, there is a way out of our difficulty by frankly
saying that our thoughts may be neither truths nor
errors beyond themselves, but just occurrences, with
a meaning wholly subjective.
We desire the reader to try to realize this view of
total relativity once more in the form in which, with
all its inherent absurdities, it now comes back to us
for the last time. It says, “Every judgment, A is
B. in fact does agree and can agree only with its
own object, which is present in mind when it is made.
With no external object can it agree or fail to agree.
It stands alone, with its own object. It has neither
truth nor error beyond itself. It fulfills all its
intentions, and is true, if it agrees with what was present
to it when it was thought. Only in this sense is
there any truth or falsity possible for our thought.” But once more, this inviting way out of the
difficulty needs only to be tried to reveal its own
contradictions. The thought that says, “No judgment is
true beyond itself,” is that thought true beyond
itself or not? If it is true beyond itself, then we have
the possibility of other truth than the merely
subjective or relative truth. If it is false, then equally we
have objective falsity. If it is neither true nor false,
then the doctrine of relativity has not been affirmed
at all as a truth. One sets up an idea of a world of
separate, disorganized thoughts, and then says, “Each
of them deals only with its own object, and they have
no unity that could make them true or false.” But
still this world that one thus sets up must be the
true world. Else is there no meaning in the
doctrine of relativity. Twist as one will, one gets not
out of the whirlpool of thought. Error must be real,
and yet, as common sense arranges these judgments
and their relations to one another, error cannot be
real. There is so far no escape.
The perfectly general character of the argument
must be understood. One might escape it if it
applied to any one class of errors only. Then one
would say: “In fact, the class of cases in question
may be cases that exclude the possibility of both
truth and error.” But no, that cannot be urged
against us, for our argument applies equally to all
possible errors. In short, either no error at all is
possible, or else there must be possible an infinite
mass of error. For the possibilities of thought being
infinite, either all thought is excluded once for all
from the possibility of error, or else to every possible truth there can be opposed an infinite mass of
error. All this infinite mass is at stake upon the
issue of our investigation. Total relativity, or else
an infinite possibility of truth and error; that is
the alternative before us. And total relativity of
thought involves self-contradiction.
Every way but one has been tried to lead us out
of our difficulty. Shall we now give up the whole
matter, and say that error plainly exists, but baffles
definition? This way may please most people, but
the critical philosophy knows of no unanswerable
problem affecting the work of thought in itself
considered. Here we need only patience and reflection,
and we are sure to be some day rewarded. And
indeed our solution is not far off, but very nigh us.
We have indicated it all along. To explain how
one could be in error about his neighbor’s thoughts,
we suggested the case where John and Thomas
should be present to a third thinker whose thought
should include them both. We objected to this
suggestion that thus the natural presupposition that John
and Thomas are separate self-existent beings would
be contradicted. But on this natural presupposition
neither of these two subjects could become object to
the other at all, and error would here be impossible.
Suppose then that we drop the natural presupposition,
and say that John and Thomas are both
actually present to and included in a third and higher
thought. To explain the possibility of error about
matters of fact seemed hard, because of the natural
postulate that time is a pure succession of separate
moments, so that the future is now as future nonexistent, and so that judgments about the future lack
real objects, capable of identification. Let us then
drop this natural postulate, and declare time once
for all present in all its moments to an universal
all-inclusive thought. And to sum up, let us
overcome all our difficulties by declaring that all the
many Beyonds, which single significant judgments
seem vaguely and separately to postulate, are
present as fully realized intended objects to the unity
of an all-inclusive, absolutely clear, universal, and
conscious thought, of which all judgments, true or
false, are but fragments, the whole being at once
Absolute Truth and Absolute Knowledge. Then all
our puzzles will disappear at a stroke, and error will
be possible, because any one finite thought, viewed
in relation to its own intent, may or may not be seen
by this higher thought as successful and adequate in
this intent.
How this absolute thought is to be related to
individual thoughts, we can in general very simply
define. When one says: “This color now before me
is red, and to say that it is blue would be to make a
blunder,” one represents an including consciousness.
One includes in one’s present thought three distinct
elements, and has them present in the unity of a
single moment of insight. These elements are, first,
the perception of red; secondly, the reflective
judgment whose object is this perception, and whose
agreement with the object constitutes its own truth;
and, thirdly, the erroneous reflection, This is blue,
which is in the same thought compared with the
perception and rejected as error. Now, viewed as separate acts of thought, apart from the unity of an
including thought, these three elements would give rise
to the same puzzles that we have been considering.
It is their presence in a higher and inclusive thought
that makes their relations plain. Even so we must
conceive the relation of John’s thought to the united
total of thought that includes him and Thomas.
Real John and his phantom Thomas, real Thomas
and his phantom John, are all present as elements in
the including consciousness, which completes the
incomplete intentions of both the individuals,
constitutes their true relations, and gives the thought
of each about the other whatever of truth or of
error it possesses. In short, error becomes possible
as one moment or element in a higher truth, that
is, in a consciousness that makes the error a part of
itself, while recognizing it as error.
So far then we propose this as a possible solution
for our puzzles. But now we may insist upon it as
the only possible solution. Either there is no such
thing as error, which statement is a flat self-contradiction,
or else there is an infinite unity of conscious
thought to which is present all possible truth. For
suppose that there is error. Then there must be an
infinite mass of error possible. If error is possible
at all, then as many errors are possible as you please,
since, to every truth, an indefinite mass of error may
be opposed. Nor is this mere possibility enough.
An error is possible for us when we are able to make
a false judgment. But in order that the judgment
should be false when made, it must have been false
before it was made. An error is possible only when the judgment in which the error is to be expressed
always was false. Error, if possible, is then
eternally actual. Each error so possible implies a
judgment whose intended object is beyond itself, and is
also the object of the corresponding true judgment.
But two judgments cannot have the same object save
as they are both present to one thought. For as
separate thoughts they would have separate
subjects, predicates, intentions, and objects, even as we
have previously seen in detail. So that every error
implies a thought that includes it and the
corresponding truth in the unity of one thought with the
object of both of them. Only as present to an
including thought are they either true or false. Thus
then we are driven to assume an infinite thought,
judging truth and error. But that this infinite
thought must also be a rational unity, not a mere
aggregate of truths, is evident from the fact that
error is possible not only as to objects, but as to the
relations of objects, so that all the possible relations
of all the objects in space, in time, or in the world
of the barely possible, must also be present to the
all-including thought. And to know all relations at
once is to know them in absolute rational unity, as
forming in their wholeness one single thought.
What, then, is an error? An error, we reply, is
an incomplete thought, that to a higher thought,
which includes it and its intended object, is known
as having failed in the purpose that it more or less
clearly had, and that is fully realized in this higher
thought. And without such higher inclusive thought,
an assertion has no external object, and is no error.
VIII.
If our argument were a Platonic dialogue, there
would be hereabouts an interruption from some
impatient Thrasymachus or Callicles or Polus, who
would have been watching us, threatening and
muttering, during aU of the latter part of our discussion.
At last, perhaps, συστρέψας ἑαυτὸν ὥσπερ θηρίον, he
would spring upon us, and would say: “Why, you
nonsense-mongers, have you not bethought you of
the alternative that represents the reality in this
question of yours? Namely, an error is an error,
neither to the thought that thinks it, nor of necessity
to any higher inclusive thought, but only to a possible
critical thought that should undertake afterwards
to compare it with its object. An error is a thought
such that if a critical thought did come and compare
it with its object, it would be seen to be false. And
it has an object for such a critical thought. This
critical thought need not be real and actually include
it, but may be only a possible judge of its truth.
Hence your Infinite all-knower is no reality, only a
logical possibility; and your insight amounts to this,
that if all were known to an all-knower, he would
judge error to be mistaken. And so error is what
he would perceive to be error. What does all that
amount to but worthless tautology?”
This argument of our Thrasymachus is the only
outwardly plausible objection that we fear to the
foregoing analysis, because it is the only objection
that fully expresses the old-established view of
common sense about such problems. Though common sense never formulates our present difficulty,
common sense still dimly feels that to some possible
(not actual) judge of truth, appeal is made when
we say that a thing is false not merely for us, but
in very truth. And this possible judge of common
sense we have now unhesitatingly declared to be an
Infinite Actuality, absolutely necessary to constitute
the relation of truth and error. Without it there
is for our view no truth or error conceivable. The
words, This is true, or This is false, mean nothing,
we declare, unless there is the inclusive thought for
which the truth is true, the falsehood false. No
barely possible judge, who would see the error if he
were there, will do for us. He must be there, this
judge, to constitute the error. Without him nothing
but total subjectivity would be possible; and thought
would then become purely a pathological phenomenon,
an occurrence without truthfulness or falsity,
an occurrence that would interest anybody if it
could be observed; but that, unfortunately, being
only a momentary phantom, could not be observed
at all from without, but must be dimly felt from
within. Our thought needs the Infinite Thought in
order that it may get, through this Infinite judge,
the privilege of being so much as even an error.
This, it will be said, is but reassertion. But how
do we maintain this view against our Thrasymachus?
Our answer is only a repetition of things that we
have already had to say, in the argument for what
we here reassert. If the judgment existed alone,
without the inclusive thought to judge it, then, as it
existed alone, it either had an object, or had none. But if it had none, it was no error. If it had one,
then either it knew what its object actually was, or it
did not know what its object was, or it partially knew
and partially did not know what its object actually
was. In the first case the judgment must have been
an identical one, like the judgment A pain is a pain.
Such a judgment knows its own object, therefore
cannot fail to agree with it, and cannot be an error. If
the judgment knew not its own object at all, then it
had no meaning, and so could not have failed to agree
with the object that it had not. If, however, this
separate judgment knew its object enough to intend
just that object, but not enough to insure agreement
with it, all our difficulties return. The possible
judge cannot give the judgment its complete object
until he becomes its actual judge. Yet as fair judge
he must then give it the object that it already had
without him. Meanwhile, however, the judgment
remains in the unintelligible attitude previously
studied at length. It is somehow possessed of just the
object it intends, but yet does not know in reality
what it does intend, else it would avoid error. Its
object, in so far as unknown to it, is no object for
it; and yet only in so far as the object is thus
unknown can it be erred about. What helps in all
this the barely possible judge? The actual judge
must be there; and for him the incomplete intention
must be complete. He knows what is really this
judgment’s object, for he knows what is imperfectly
meant in it. He knows the dream, and the interpretation
thereof. He knows both the goal and the
way thither. But all this is, to the separate judgment
as such, a mystery. In fact, the separate judgments, waiting for the
possible judge to test them, are like a foolish man
wandering in a wood, who is asked whether he has
lost his way. “I may have lost it,” he answers.
“But whither are you going?” “That I cannot
tell?” “Have you no goal?” “I may have, but
I have no notion what it is.” “What then do you
mean by saying that you may have lost the way to
this place that you are not seeking? For you seem
to be seeking no place; how then can you have lost
the way thither?” “I mean that some possible
other man, who was wise enough to find whither I
am trying to go, might possibly, in his wisdom, also
perceive that I am not on the way to that place. So
I may be going away from my chosen goal, although
I am unaware what goal it is that I have chosen.”
Such a demented man as this would, fairly
represent the meaningless claim of the separate judgment,
either to truthfulness, or to the chance of error.
In short, though the partial thought may be, as
such, unconscious of its own aim, it can be so
unconscious only in case it is contained in a total thought
as one moment thereof.
It will be seen that wherever we have dealt in the
previous argument with the possibility of error as a
mere possibility, we have had to use the result of the
previous chapter concerning the nature of possibility
itself. The idea of the barely possible, in which
there is no actuality, is an empty idea. If anything
is possible, then, when we say so, we postulate
something as actually existent in order to constitute this
possibility. The conditions of possible error must be actual. Bare possibility is blank nothingness. If
the nature of error necessarily and with perfect
generality demands certain conditions, then these
conditions are as eternal as the erroneousness of error
itself is eternal. And thus the inclusive thought,
which constitutes the error, must be postulated as
existent.
So, finally, let one try to affirm that the infinite
content of the all-including mind does not exist, and
that the foregoing idealism is a mere illusion of ours.
He will find that he is involved in a circle from
which there is no escape. For let him return to the
position of total relativity and so say: “The
infinite thought is unreal for me, and hence you are
wrong.” But then also he admits that we are right,
for in affirming this infinite we affirm, according to
this doctrine of total relativity itself, something that
is just as true as it seems to us to be true. The
opposing argument is thus at each moment of its
progress involved in a contradiction. Or again, let him
insist that our doctrine is not only relatively, but
really false. Then however he will fail to show us
what this real falsity is. In fact he says what all our
previous examination shows to mean, this, namely,
that an infinite thought does exist, and does
experience the truth, and compares our thought with the
truth, and then observes this thought of ours to be
false, that is, it discovers that itself is non-existent.
Whoever likes this result may hold it if he can.
IX.
Now that our argument is completed as an
investigation, let us review it in another way. We started
from the fact of Error. That there is error is
indubitable. What is, however, an error? The
substance of our whole reasoning about the nature of
error amounted to the result that in and of itself
alone, no single judgment is or can be an error.
Only as actually included in a higher thought, that
gives to the first its completed object, and compares
it therewith, is the first thought an error. It
remains otherwise a mere mental fragment, a torso, a
piece of drift-wood, neither true nor false, objectless,
no complete act of thought at all. But the higher
thought must include the opposed truth, to which
the error is compared in that higher thought. The
higher thought is the whole truth, of which the error
is by itself an incomplete fragment.
Now, as we saw with this as a starting-point, there
is no stopping-place short of an Infinite Thought.
The possibilities of error are infinite. Infinite then
must be the inclusive thought. Here is this stick,
this brickbat, this snow-flake: there is an infinite
mass of error possible about any one of them, and
notice, not merely possible is it, but actual. All the
infinite series of blunders that you could make about
them not only would be blunders, but in very truth
now are blunders, though you personally could never
commit them all. You cannot in fact make a truth
or a falsehood by your thought. You only find one.
From all eternity that truth was true, that falsehood false. Very well then, that infinite thought must
somehow have had all that in it from the beginning.
If a man doubts it, let him answer our previous
difficulties. Let him show us how he can make an
error save through the presence of an actual
inclusive thought for which the error always was error
and never became such at all. If he can do that,
let him try. We should willingly accept the result
if he could show it to us. But he cannot. We
have rambled over those barren hills already too
long. Save for Thought there is no truth, no error.
Save for inclusive Thought, there is no truth, no
error, in separate thoughts. Separate thoughts as
such cannot then know or have the distinction
between their own truth and their own falsity in themselves,
and apart from the inclusive thought. There
is then nothing of truth or of error to be found in
the world of separate thoughts as such. All the
thoughts are therefore in the last analysis actually
true or false, only for the all-including Thought, the
Infinite.
We could have reached the same result had we
set out from the problem, What is Truth? We
chose not to do so because our skepticism had the
placid answer ready: “No matter what truth is, for
very likely there is little or no truth at all to be had.
Why trouble one’s mind to define what a fairy or a
brownie is?” “Very well, then,” we said to our
skepticism, “if that is thy play, we know a move that
thou thinkest not of. We will not ask thee of truth,
if thou thinkest there is none. We will ask thee of
error, wherein thou revelest.” And our skepticism very cheerfully, if somewhat incoherently, answers,
that, “if there be little or no truth here below, there
is at least any amount of error, which as skeptics we
have all been detecting ever since we first went to
school.” “We thank thee for that word, oh friend,
but now, what is an error?” Blessed be Socrates
for that question. Upon that rock philosophy can,
if it wants, build we know not yet how much.
It is enough for the moment to sum up the truth
that we have found. It is this: “All reality must
be present to the Unity of the Infinite Thought.”
There is no chance of escape. For all reality is
reality because true judgments can be made about it.
And all reality, for the same reason, can be the
object of false judgments. Therefore, since the false
and the true judgments are all true or false as
present to the infinite thought, along with their objects,
no reality can escape. You and I and all of us, all
good, all evil, all truth, all falsehood, all things
actual and possible, exist as they exist, and are known
for what they are, in and to the absolute thought;
are therefore all judged as to their real character at
this everlasting throne of judgment.
This we have found to be true, because we tried
to doubt everything. We shall try to expound in
the coming chapter the religious value of the conception.
We can however at once see this in it: The
Infinite Thought must, knowing all truth, include also
a knowledge of all wills, and of their conflict. For
him all this conflict, and all the other facts of the
moral world, take place. He then must know the
outcome of the conflict, that Moral Insight of our first book. In him then we have the Judge of our
ideals, and the Judge of our conduct. He must know
the exact value of the Good Will, which for him,
like all other possible truth, must be an actually
realized Fact. And so we cannot pause with a simply
theoretical idealism. Our doctrine is practical too.
We have found not only an infinite Seer of physical
facts, but an infinite Seer of the Good as well as of
the Evil. He knows what we have and what we
lack. In looking for goodness we are in no wise
looking for what the real world does not contain.
This, we say, we have found as a truth, because
we tried to doubt everything. We have taken the
wings of the morning, and we have fled; but
behold, we are in the midst of the Spirit. Truly the
words that some people have thought so fantastic
ought henceforth to be put in the text-books as
commonplaces of logical analysis: —
“They reckon ill that leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings,
I am the doubter and the doubt.” —
Everything finite we can doubt, but not the Infinite.
That eludes even our skepticism. The world-builders,
and the theodicies that were to justify them, we
could well doubt. The apologetic devices wearied
us. All the ontologies of the realistic schools were
just pictures, that we could accept or reject as we
chose by means of postulates. We tried to escape
them all. We forsook all those gods that were yet
no gods; but here we have found something that
abides, and waxes not old, something in which there
is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. No power it is to be resisted, no plan-maker to be foiled
by fallen angels, nothing finite, nothing striving,
seeking, losing, altering, growing weary; the
All-Enfolder it is, and we know its name. Not Heart,
nor Love, though these also are in it and of it;
Thought it is, and all things are for Thought, and in
it we live and move.
Notes
Uncharted Knowledge
Wisdom From Previous Realities
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