CHAPTER IX.
THE WORLD OF POSTULATES.
Das beständige Wetzen der Messer ist langweilig, wenn man Nichts zu schneiden vorhat. — Lotze, Metaphysik.
What’s so false as truth is
False to thee?
Browning.
If the reader has become thoroughly weary of the
world of doubt, we are only glad of the fact. Armed
with a gemiine philosophy, a man may indeed go
back to that world, and find in it an expression of
ideal truth in empirical form. We hope to have
such a right ourselves in time; but, without a well
thought out philosophy, a man venturing into the
world of empirical facts to find there any religious
significance actually discovers himself to be in a nest
of hornets; and he deserves as much. We desired
to bring the reader to feel this with us; else our
own prudent flight from that world to another might
seem to him unnecessary. Now we are ready to
come nearer to our former question. What right
has any one to assume that empirical external world
at all as having any absolute truth? “O thou that
hast troubled us,” we may say, “what art thou at
bottom more than our own assumption?” What
right has that external world to be the sole region where we could seek the religious truth, when
perchance the external world, as we assumed it, is not
a truth at all? Let us consider once more our steps.
Perchance the religiously inspiring reality is in some
higher world. If we are only skeptical enough,
perchance we shall find that Reality. Then, indeed,
the old assumption of an external world of empirical
facts may remain a part of our future thought,
but it will get a new sense, and occupy a new place.
The first answer that occurs to this our question
about the meaning of the external world that has
so far troubled us, is this: The assumed world is
no fixed datum, to which we are bound to submit at
all hazards, but a postulate, which is made to
satisfy certain familiar human needs. If this postulate
is found to have no religious significance, we may
supplement the doubt thus arising by remembering
that we who postulated once have the right to
postulate again. Our religiously satisfactory truth may
be reached, not by hypotheses about powers in the
empirical world, but by a deeper faith in something
that is eternal, and behind or above the world of the
senses.
This view gives us a new world, the world of the
Postulates. We cannot be content to remain in this
world, but we must pass through it on our way
upwards. Let us hear it described.
I.
The world of Doubt has passed before us, a huge
mass of inexplicable facts. Here and there we find a connection; we hope that we shall soon find more
connection; but still the vast plan, if indeed there
be a plan, we search for in vain. But now, strangely
enough, all this doubt affects in no wise the willing
trustfulness of our devotion to the interests, not only
of common life, but also of science. The doubt
confuses us only when we talk of leligion. That the
world as a whole is dark, nobody admits more
cheerfully than does the modern scientific man, even when
he looks to his science for all his religious consolation.
For he seeks no consolation save what the
phenomena as such furnish. But his philosophical
doubt about the ultimate foundation of science is
no check to his scientific ambition. He believes in
science just as ardently as if he did not in the very
first breath of each new philosophical dispute
declare that the real world is unknowable. His faith
in the methods of his specialty is as firm as his
indifference to all extra-scientific speculation. His
work is in fact done with a kind of instinctive
confidence in himself and his fellows. The instinct is
no doubt highly trained, but it remains an instinct,
and a delightful one it is to him. The untrained
instincts of the unscientific man must indeed be
criticised and altered in many respects ere they can
serve the purposes of science; but, after all the
criticisms and alterations, the instinct remains with
almost all men an instinct, — useful, pleasing, yes,
indispensable; but its philosophical justification few
people care to know, while its self-confidence every
scientific essay, or lecture, or instructor will attest.
Why now is it that, trusting as we all do this scientific instinct, we all feel it hard to give a like trust
to the religious instinct, whose most general tendency
is to have some sort of faith in the goodness of
things? Why is it that the doubtfulness and the
contradictions of the real world seem to everybody
to throw a cloud upon religion, even when it is not
supernatural religion, but to have no significance
whatever for the bases of science? This scientific
notion of a world of law, all of whose facts could
conceivably be predicted by one formula, why does
that remain in our minds untouched by the doubts
of the skeptical philosophers, while the same
skepticism at once seems to remove from us that trust in
the moral goodness of things which religion has
tried to establish in our hearts? Shall the world
be indifferent to one set of our ideals, and not to
another? Shall the moral value of things be dark,
and not also their value for the purposes of science?
Why is the one doctrine so different from the other?
You are placed in a world of confusion, and you
assert that in its ultimate and eternal nature it answers
your moral needs. That seems presumptuous. You
did not make that world. How do you know whether
it cares for your moral ideals? Very well then, be
impartial. You are placed in a world of confusion,
and you assert that it answers your intellectual
needs, namely, that it is a world of order, whose
facts could be reduced to some rational and
intelligible unity. What business have you to do that? In
both cases you transcend experience. Nature gives
you in experience partial evil that you cannot in all
cases perceive to be universal good. Nature also gives you in experience partial chaos that you
cannot in all cases perceive to be universal order. But
unwaveringly you insist that nature is orderly, that
the chaos is an illusion; and still you do not feel
ready to insist that the partial evil is universal good.
Why is this so? Is the ethical side of reality less
important than the other? Or is it the very
importance of the religious aspect of things that makes
us more ready to doubt the truth of this aspect?
Such questions occur to us as suggesting a possible
way out of our difficulties. It is not exactly our
desired way, but is it not possibly a good way?
Science, namely, uses a certain kind of faith, whenever
such faith is practically necessary. This scientific
faith is indeed no faith in particular uninvestigated
facts, but it is a faith in general methods and
principles. The creed of science knows of no dogmas
about unexperienced single facts, as such; but it does
know of dogmas about the general form of the laws
that must be assumed to govern all experience. Now
why may not religion be reduced to certain essential
general and fundamental moral demands, that we
must make in the presence of reality? Why are not
these a legitimate, yes, a morally necessary object of
faith? Why, as the scientific man postulates a
theoretical rationality in the world, may not we
postulate a moral rationality in the world? These
questions stand in our path. Might not the answer to
them transform our barren doubts into something
less disheartening?
We see what all this supposed religious faith
would mean. It would not be a faith in any particular facts of experience that might have for us
personally a selfish value, whether greater or less. It
would be, like the scientific faith, wholly general. It
would demand that the world in its entirety should
be regarded as in some higher sense morally
rational. It would say: The real world must be,
whatever its true nature, at least as high in the moral
scale as my highest ideals of goodness. Have we a
right to such a faith? Let us cautiously consider
this point.
But at once we must distinguish the proposed
religious faith from what we should call mere blind
faith. Blind faith in what we cannot establish is
indeed inadmissible. But then, is there not another
kind of faith, the kind that Kant used in his
practical philosophy? To this may we not now turn?
Perhaps the world of the powers, approached in the
usual way, is dark, but the world for the practical
reason may be opened in another way. Kant said, in
effect: “Such and such supersensual realities, of
religious significance, cannot be theoretically proven;
but we can see why we ought to postulate their
existence, that is, we can see why we ought to act as
if they existed. Behind the veil of sense, we must
postulate that there is an intelligible world, in which
all is harmony, and in which the highest good is
realized.” May we not also try with Kant to do
this?
We shall in any case find this effort, an effort
that has been so often made since Kant, a subject
well worth our study and careful examination. In
truth it is not by itself satisfactory; but we shall see that it enters as one moment into the higher
view that we shall hereafter reach. So, in our own
way, we shall now try to answer the question
suggested to us by Kant’s method. Does not then the
religious aspect of the world lie in the fact that,
despite the contradictions of the world of sense, we
may, and indeed, morally speaking, must postulate,
that the Eternal, of which this world is the mere
show, is in itself absolutely righteous? We shall
not be able to answer this question with a simple
affirmative; but still, postulates must enter in some
wise into every moment of our lives, and must
therefore have some value in religion.
II.
In the last chapter we sought for a demonstration
of religious truth, and found none. But perhaps it
was not demonstration that we should have sought.
Possibly religion may be content to rest on
postulates.
A postulate is a mental way of behavior. In so
far it is like all other thought. In general, to
believe that a thing exists is to act as if it existed.
But the act may be forced upon one, or it may be
freely chosen. One cannot fail to act upon the
principle that 2 + 2 = 4, so soon as he perceives it. But
one may voluntarily determine to act in a given way,
not being rationally forced so to do, and well
knowing the risk. In such cases one voluntarily takes
to himself the form of belief called a postulate.
Thus, apart from any philosophic theory, we all postulate a certain kind of uniformity in nature. We
do so, whenever we reflect upon the matter,
voluntarily. For we then say that surprises are always
possible, and that any law may have exceptions, but
that we must act as if we knew certain laws to have
no possible exceptions. Postulates, however, are not
blind faith. Postulates are voluntary assumptions
of a risk, for the sake of a higher end. Passive faith
dares not face doubt. The postulate faces doubt,
and says: “So long as thou canst not make thyself
an absolute and certain negative, I propose to act as
if thou wert worthless, although I do well see thy
force.” Blind faith is emotion, and often cowardly
emotion. The postulate is deliberate and courageous
volition. Blind faith says: “I dare not question.”
The postulate says: “I dare be responsible for
assuming.” Examples of both are very common.
Blind faith the fond parent has, who says of bis
wicked son: “I know that he must be good, hence
I will not suspect him, nor train him; I will not
watch him, nor warn others against him.” A
postulate the wise parent makes, who sends his
full-grown son boldly out into the world, with the best
attainable safeguards, saying: “It is useless to keep
him longer in leading-strings, or to protect him from
the world. It is now his place to fight his own
battles, since I have done what I could to get him ready.
I postulate that he will win the fight; I treat him,
and must treat him, as if he were sure to win,
although I well know the risks.” The sea-captain
beginning his voyage postulates that he can get
through. The general postulates that he will be victorious. The Prime Minister of a country
postulates that he can do his country better service than
could the Opposition. We all postulate that our
lives are worth the trouble. Yet we all know
perfectly well that many just such postulates must in
the nature of things be blunders. But they imply
not blind faith, but active faith. With blind faith
little good is done in the world; without active faith,
expressed in postulates, very little practical good
can be done from day to day. Blind faith is the
ostrich behind the bush. The postulate stands out
like the lion against the hunters. The wise shall live
by postulates.
III.
But how is this postulating activity actually
related to our knowledge of reality? Much more
closely than one might suppose. Very much of our
thought naturally rests upon a blind faith, or upon
what many take to be a blind faith; but this, when
we reflect upon it with due attention to the office it
fills, is transformed before our eyes into practically
unavoidable postulates. Such are the assumptions
upon which our science rests in forming its ideal of
an “universal formula.” There may indeed be some
deeper basis for these postidates of science. But
most men know nothing of this basis. And so, when
we accepted in our last chapter these postulates, we
had to admit that they are a kind of faith. If we
then nevertheless objected to certain religious
doctrines that they rest on insufficient evidence, we did
this because they set themselves up as dogmas. With further consideration, we might come to accept
some one of them again in the form, not of a
demonstrable dogma, but of a practically unavoidable
postulate, uncertain of course, but taken and to be taken
on risk; just as every one of us goes through the
world taking all sorts of risks day by day.
Anything not contradictory may be a possible object of
postulates ; although, again, every postulate is to be
assumed only after careful criticism, and only
because we cannot do better.
To do justice then to the proper office of
postulates in our religious theory, we must sooner or later
consider in what cases they naturally arise, what is
the proper extent of their use, what is the basis upon
which they can be made, in any special case, to rest;
and, finally, whether, in view of all this, we can give
them any important place in our religious doctrine.
We confess at once that we want something much
better than a postulate as the basis of our religion,
in case we can get it. If postulates are to have any
part in our religion, we want them to be justified by
some ultimate religious certainty that is more than
a postulate. We shall investigate all that in time.
We shall see what we shall see. Meanwhile, what
is the work of postulates in the actual daily life of
human thought?
Popular belief about an external world is for the
first an active assumption or acknowledgment of
something: more than the data of consciousness.
What is directly given in our minds is not external.
All direct data are internal facts; and in the
strictest sense all data are direct. Suppose a merely passive acceptance of what is in consciousness, and you
have no belief in an external world. An addition to
the data of consciousness, a more or less clearly
voluntary reaction, is involved in your idea of external
reality. The truth of this principle appears when
your belief in any particular object is called in
question. You hold that you see yonder a snowy
mountain. Your companion insists that beyond the wide
misty valley there is to be seen only a gray cloud.
You reassert your belief, and in the reassertion feel
more definitely than at first the active addition of
your own belief to the meagre data of sense. The
addition existed, however, in your first assertion.
Or again, one man is trying, perchance in sport, to
make another doubt the existence of material
objects. “There is no external matter,” says the first.
“There are but these states of consciousness in our
minds. Nothing beyond them corresponds to them.”
The second, maintaining the position of the man of
common sense, retorts sharply: “Doubtless I cannot
refute altogether your fine-spun arguments; but they
are nevertheless nonsense. For I persist in believing
in this world of sense. I live in it, I work for it, my
fellows believe in it, our hearts are bound up in it,
our success depends upon our faith. Only dreamers
doubt it. I am not a dreamer. Here is a stone;
I hit it. Here is a precipice; I fear and shun it.
My strongest conviction is concerned with the
existence of this world of sense. Do your worst; I am
not afraid of talk.” Thus then by every device of
the active spirit, by reminding himself of his most
cherished interests, of his affections and hatreds, by arousing his social sentiments, by bodily acts, the
practical man preserves himself from fantastical
speculation. When better-trained thinkers call the belief
in an external reality “a natural conviction, to be
retained until we are compelled to abandon it,” or “a
convenient working hypothesis, to be received on the
testimony of consciousness, testimony assumed to be
trustworthy until the opposite is proven,” what are
these but similar practical considerations, appeals to
the will? Concerning data of immediate consciousness
such remarks would be wholly out of place.
That I see a certain color at this moment is not a
“convenient working hypothesis.” Is consciousness
merely a “presumably trustworthy witness” when it
testifies to the pangs of toothache? Nobody could
balance evidence as to the reality of his sensation
quâ sensation when consciousness is filled with the
sound of a street-organ. Sound, color, pang, these
are data, not merely things believed in. But the
external world — that is actively accepted as being
symbolized or indicated by the present consciousness,
not as being given in the present consciousness.
In short, the popular assertion of an external
world, being an assertion of something beyond the
data of consciousness, must begin in an activity of
judgment that does more than merely reduce present
data to order. Such an assertion must be an active
construction of non-data. We do not receive in our
senses, but we posit through our judgment, whatever
external world there may for us be. If there is
really a deeper basis for this postulate of ours, still,
at the outset, it is just a postulate.
All theories, all hypotheses as to the external
world, ought to face this fact of thought. If the
history of popular speculation on these topics could be
written, how much of cowardice and shuffling would
be found in the behavior of the natural mind before
the question: “How dost thou know of an external
reality?” Instead of simply and plainly answering:
“I mean by the external world in the first place
something that I accept or demand, that I posit,
postulate, actively construct on the basis of sense-data,”
the natural man gives us all kinds of vague
compromise answers: “I believe in the external
reality with a reasonable degree of confidence; the
experience of mankind renders the existence of
external reality ever more and more probable; the
Creator cannot have intended to deceive us; it is
unnatural to doubt as to external reality; only young
people and fantastic persons doubt the existence of
the external world; no man in his senses doubts the
external reality of the world; science would be
impossible were there no external world; morality is
undermined by doubts as to the external world; the
immovable confidence that we all have in the
principle of causality implies the fixity of our belief in
an external cause of our sensations.” Where shall
these endless turnings and twistings have an end?
The habits of the law-courts as condensed into “rules
of evidence,” the traditional rules of debate, the
fashion of appealing to the “good sense” of honorable
gentlemen opposite, the motives of shame and
fear, the dread of being called “fantastical,” Philistine
desire to think with the majority, Philistine terror of all revolutionary suggestions, the fright or
the anger of a man at finding some metaphysician
trying to question what seem to be the foundations
upon which one’s bread winning depends, — all these
lesser motives are appealed to, and the one ultimate
motive is neglected. The ultimate motive with the
man of every-day life is the will to have an external
world. Whatever consciousness contains, reason
will persist in spontaneously adding the thought:
“But there shall ba something beyond this.” The
external reality as such (e.g. the space beyond the
farthest star, any space not accessible, even whatever
is not at any moment given in so far as it is viewed
from that moment, in particular every past event) is
never a datum. We construct but do not receive
the external reality. The “immovable certainty” is
not such a dead passive certainty as that with which
we receive a pain or an electric shock. The
popular assurance of an external world is the fixed
determination to make one, now and henceforth.
In the general popular conceptions of reality we
find then the first use of postulates. We have as yet
no justification for them. But even thus we get no
adequate idea of their use and of their number. We
must look at the facts of every-day mental life a
little more closely. For there is a curious tendency
of many to make these postulates appear something
else than what they are. Often they are interpreted
as if they were no postulates at all, but data of
sense. Often, again, their active nature is
disregarded in yet another way, and they appear as blind
passive faith. Such in fact they must appear if we reflect upon their mere content, and not upon the
processes by which we get them. But if we interpret
them rightly, we shall see that they ought to be
regarded as beliefs, taken for the first on risk, and
because the risk is worth taking.
IV.
Sometimes we hear men asserting that their
beliefs are independent of their will. Such a man
will express himself in some such way as the following: —
“I try to conquer prejudice; but having done
this, I can do no more. My belief, whatever it is,
forms itself in me. I look on. My will has
nothing to do with the matter. I can will to walk or
eat; but I cannot will to believe. I might as well
will that my blood should circulate.”
But is this expression a fair one? Does such a
man really remain passive in the struggle that goes
on within him? We think not. These beliefs in
such a man have resulted, we hold, from a sort of
struggle between him and the surrounding world.
The world has tried sometimes to check his thought,
and to confine it to one channel; sometimes to
confuse his thought, and to scatter it into spray before
the quick, heavy blows of innumerable, disconnected
sense apparitions. But the man, if he is a man of
energy, has controlled the current of his thought.
He has fought hard, now for freedom from oppressive
narrowness of thought, now for wholeness and
unity of thought; and perhaps he has in so far conquered as to be the master of a manly and many-sided
system of doctrine. We think him responsible
for this system; and we hold that any such man
ought to admit the responsibility.
To study briefly the nature of the process involved
in all such cases will be important for our whole
doctrine. We shall see thereby how much our
theory of the world must itself tend to fall under the
head of the purely practical. We shall appreciate
also the limitations of ordinary thought, and the
need of some higher ideal standard to rescue us from
the pure subjectivity of mere postulates. And we
shall be contributing by the way to a question of
applied ethics, the question of the morality of belief.
Every one recognizes that at least our more
abstract knowledge depends largely upon our own
mental activity. Knowing is not mere passive
reception of facts or of truths. Learning is not solely
an affair of the memory. The man that without
reflection commits things to memory is justly
compared to a parrot, and might yet more justly be
compared to the sponge of Hamlet’s figure: “It is
but squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry
again.” No knowledge, then, without active
hospitality in the mind that receives the knowledge.
But as soon as we recognize in mental life this our
power to modify our knowledge by means of our own
activity, just so soon do all the old comparisons of
the mind to a wax tablet, to a sheet of paper, or to
other like passive subjects of impression, lose for us
their meaning. Mental life becomes for us, in view
of these facts, a field of constant activity. The commonest processes of knowledge acquire a new
significance.
Two kinds of activity are concerned in the
attainment of knowledge. One kind consists in simply
receiving impressions from without, such as sensations,
or, on a higher plane, statements of truth; the
other consists in modifying and in organizing these
impressions. The receptive activity is partly a
physical activity, since the one who receives information
must use his eyes and ears, must keep awake, must
at times move about; and this receptive activity is
also partly made up of the mechanical processes of
the memory. Association by contiguity, or learning
by rote, is in the main a receptive process, though
this process of reception requires some active effort
on the part of the receiver. Committing words and
sentences to memory is often hard labor, as we all
of us learned when we first were tortured with
ill-wrought geographies and grammars, or with
merciless Latin declensions and conjugations. But of the
whole of this receptive activity we shall make no
further mention in this connection. Simply
receiving, keeping your mind in a submissive attitude,
turning your eyes in the proper direction, using your
ears, writing down your notes, memorizing whatever
needs memorizing — all this is essential to
knowledge, but has no reactive effect, does not modify the
form or the matter of your knowledge. Secondly,
however, knowledge is determined for each of us
by his own reaction upon what he receives; and
this second mentioned kind of mental activity, that
which forms our topic at present, consists in a modification as well as in an organization of what we have
received from without. All processes of reasoning,
and so all original discoveries in science and in
philosophy, all speculations, theories, dogmas,
controversies, and not only these complex processes, but, as
we shall see, even simple judgments, commonplace
beliefs, momentary acts of attention, involve such
independent reaction upon the material furnished to
us from without. The nature of this reaction we
are further to examine.
Let us consider simpler forms of knowledge.
Sense-impressions constantly suggest to us thoughts;
in fact, we have few thoughts that are not either
immediately suggested by sense-impressions, or else
sustained in their course by a continuous stream of
suitable sense-impressions. To carry on even a train
of abstract reasoning, sense-impressions either
present or repeated seem necessary as supports. But
when sense-impressions come to us, what transforms
them into thought?
The answer is, First of all, attention, an active
mental process. The sense-impression is itself not
yet knowledge. A sense-impression to which we
give no attention slips through consciousness as a
man’s hand through water. Nothing grasps and
retains it. Little effect is produced by it. It is
unknown. You cannot even tell what it is. For to
know what such an unnoticed impression is would
be to pay attention to it. But let us now consider
some familiar examples of the working of attention.
A simple instance will bring home to us how the
boundaries of our consciousness are crowded with unknown impressions — unknown, because not attended
to; but yet in some inexplicable way a part of our
consciousness, since an effort of attention serves to
bring them, any one of them, clearly into mental
vision. At this instant you are looking at
something. Now, without moving your eyes, try, by
merely attending to your visual impressions, to say
what is now in the field of vision, and where is the
boundary line of the field of vision. The
experiment is a little hard, because our eyes, condensed
embodiments as they are of tireless curiosity, are
always restless, and rebel when you try to hold them
fast. But conquer them for an instant, and watch
the result. As your attention roams about the
artificially fixed visual field, you will at first, indeed, be
confused by the vagueness of all but the centre; but
soon you will find, to your surprise, that there are
more different impressions in the field than you at
first can distinguish. One after another, many
various impressions will appear. But notice: you can
keep your attention fixed on only a portion of the
field at a time. The rest of the field is always lost
in a dim haze. You must be receiving impressions
all the time from all points of the field. But all of
these, except the few to which you pay attention,
nearly or quite disappear in the dim thickets that
seem to surround the little forest-clearing made by
our attentive consciousness. A like experiment can
be tried with the sense of hearing, when you are in
a large room full of people who are talking all around
you in many independent groups. A mass of sound
comes to your ear. Consciousness interferes to make you pick out one or another of the series of sounds,
an act which is indeed made possible by the natural
analytic tendency of the human auditory sense, but
which does not take place without a noticeable effort
of attention. When you are learning a foreign
language, and are for a while much among those who
speak it, there comes a time when your ear and
mind are well enough trained to follow and
understand ordinary speakers with only a little effort of
attention; but yet, at this stage, you are able, by
simply withdrawing your attention a mere trifle, to
let very common phrases run through your sense
without your understanding them one whit. You
can thus, by a slight change of attention, convert
the foreign language from a jargon into a familiar
speech, and back again into a jargon, just as, in the
fixed visual field, you can make yourself see an
object pretty plainly, or lose it altogether, by ceasing
to give attention.
All these instances, which could be indefinitely
multiplied, prove, first, that what we call attention
modifies the knowledge that we at any moment get;
and secondly, that this modification, through attention,
may take place without any change in the
impressions that at any moment come from without.
The first stage in getting knowledge from bare
sense-impressions is therefore the modification of sense by
attention — a process belonging wholly to the
subjective side; i.e. to our own minds.
But what is attention? and how does it modify
sensation? Apparently, attention in the previous
instances has been merely a power to increase or to diminish the intensity of impressions. But is this
all that attention does? No: there are many cases
in which attention directly affects the quality, at
least of our complex impressions. This direct
modification is commonly attended by some alteration of
our emotional state. It is a familiar fact, that in
listening to a series of regular and even beats, such
as the strokes of an engine, or of a pendulum, or the
ticking of a watch, we have a tendency to modify
the impressions by introducing into their series the
more elaborate regularity of rhythm. In paying
attention to them, we increase, at our pleasure, the
intensity of every third or fourth beat as heard, and
so make a rhythm, or series of measures, out of the
actually monotonous impressions. Now attention,
which here first acts by modifying the intensity of
impressions, soon produces the effect of qualitatively
modifying our total impression of the whole series.
If I have taken the fancy to listen to the even
strokes in quadruple time, intensifying by my own
act every fourth stroke, the character of the series is
changed for me. The impressions are less
monotonous, and they arouse new associations. They seem
to be caused by some force that rhythmically
increases and decreases. Perhaps a melody, or some
phrase of a few words, arises in my mind, and
persists in associating itself with the strokes. Probably
some vague feeling, as of rhythmic motion through
the air, or of pleasure or of displeasure in the
presence of some rhythmically moving living being, is
awakened. Qualitatively, my consciousness is thus
altered through my attention. I seem to be experiencing something that, as an objective reality, I do
not experience. More striking becomes this qualitative
alteration of experience through attention,
in case you bring two watches of different beat, or
a watch and a clock, and listen to both at once at
the distance of a few inches, first, perhaps, stopping
one ear to avoid confusion. Here, by attention,
you make or try to make a compound rhythm,
and this effort alters a good deal the total impression
that you derive from the sound. If the two
series are such that a simple small multiple of the
interval of one gives you a simple small multiple of
the other’s interval, you can combine the two series
into one rhythm, and then there is an immediate
impression as if the two series were really but the
complex ticking of one source of sound. But if the
series will not agree, there is an odd sense of something
wrong, a disappointed effort to combine,
joined, perhaps, with a tendency to hasten one of the
series, so as to make it agree with the other.
Another case where attention alters the quality of total
impressions, and not merely the intensity of any
part, appears in certain psychological laboratory
experiments, described by Wundt in his “Physiologische
Psychologie.” Here, for the sake of determining
the actual time taken by an act of attention,
an observer is to make an electric signal as soon as
he becomes conscious of a certain impression, while
the impression itself is produced by an assistant at a
time exactly determined. The source of the
impression is the ringing of a bell, the flash of an electric
spark, or something of the kind agreed upon at the outset. To distinguish from one another the various
causes of the delay of the signal, the conditions of
experiment are variously modified. In one set of
experiments, the observer does not know beforehand
whether he is to experience a flash of light, or a
sound, or some sensation of touch, nor how intense
the sensation will be, nor when it will come; but he
knows that he is to be on the lookout for one of the
three kinds of sensation. He waits, with attention
all aroused. In this case, it always takes him longer
to signal than if he knew beforehand the kind and
the strength of the coming sensation. Moreover, his
attention now makes him uneasy; the coming sensation
is expected, with signs of excitement, and is
often received with a start. Here the feeling of effort
that accompanies attention affects by its strength
the character of the impression received. Moreover,
in many of these experiments there appear phenomena
that show that attention alters our perception
of time, not merely as to length, but also as to sequence;
so that under circumstances, an impression
that really precedes another can appear in consciousness
as succeeding it. Yet more: attention sometimes
serves to combine two sets of simultaneous
impressions, and to make them seem as if proceeding
from one source.
So much for the influence of attention alone. But
what is attention? We reply, evidently an active
process. When impressions are modified by
attention, they are actively modified. And if you ask
about the nature of this active process, the reply is,
attention, in its most elementary forms, is the same activity that in a more developed shape we commonly
call will. We attend to one thing rather than to
another, because we will to do so, and our will is
here the elementary impulse to know. Our attention
leads us at times into error. But this error is merely
an accompaniment, the result of our will activity.
We want to intensify an impression, to bring it
within the sphere of knowledge. But in carrying
out our impulse, we do more than we meant. We not
only bring something into clearer consciousness that
was before out of clear consciousness, but we
qualitatively modify this thing in attending to it. I want
to observe a series of beats, and in observing it, I
make one beat in three or four seem heavier than the
others, or I even alter the apparent length of one interval
in three or four, by making it seem longer
than the others. I observe a series of visual impressions,
and at the same time a series of auditory
impressions; if there is a certain agreement between
them, I irresistibly unite these two series by my act
of attention into one series, and refer them to a common
cause. And so in the other cases. Attention
seems to defeat, in part, its own object. Bringing
something into the field of knowledge seems to be
a modifying, if not a transforming, process.
We all know how this same law works on a higher
plane. Giving our whole attention for a time to a
particular subject seems necessary for the growth of
our knowledge. Yet such attention, if long kept up,
always modifies our power to know, affects our whole
mental condition, and thus injures our power to
appreciate the relations between the subject of our study and the other things in the world. Constant
attention to one thing narrows our minds, until we
fail to see the very thing we are looking at. Our
lives are thus really passed in a constant flitting
from one more or less partial and distorted view of
things to another, from this one-sided judgment to
that. Change the book you are reading, and your
whole notion of the universe suffers some momentary
change also. Think this week in the fashion of
Carlyle, attending to things as he brings them to
your attention, and human life — in fact, the whole
world of being as you thought of it last week, when
you were following some other guide — becomes
momentarily clouded. This truth seems out of relation
to that. Your change of attention qualitatively alters
your apprehension of truth. Attending now even to
the same things, you view them in new lights. The
alteration of mental attitude becomes confusing to
yourself. But refuse to make any such changes,
settle down steadfastly to some one way of regarding
all things, and your world becomes yet more misty.
You see only a few things, and those in such a bad
light that you are in danger of utter darkness.
Frequent change of mental view (we of course do not
mean constant change of creed or of occupation, but
only frequent alteration of the direction of our
thought) is essential to mental health. Yet this
alteration implies at least some temporary change in
our knowing powers, and so some change in our
appreciation of truth.
Before going on to speak of the effect of our own
activity upon our knowledge, when attention is combined with active recognition of impressions, we
want to formulate the law that governs the action
of attention upon sense-impressions apart from
recognition. This law seems pretty well established by
experience, and is, at all events, quite simple. It is
this: Any act of attention tends, first, to strengthen
the particular set of impressions to which it is at the
moment adapted; and secondly, to modify those
impressions in such a way as shall make the total
impression derived from them all as simple an
impression as possible. These two statements could be
reduced to one, thus: Attention constantly tends
to make our consciousness more definite and less
complex; that is, less confused and more united.
More definite, less confused attention tends to make
consciousness; since, out of many vague impressions,
attention fixes upon one or a few, and helps them
to crowd out the others. Less complex and more
united or integrated attention makes the impressions
attended to; as when, for the indefinite multiplicity
of the successive even beats of a watch or of an
engine, attention substitutes the simpler form of a
rising and falling rhythm of more and less emphatic
beats, or as when two parallel series of impressions
are reduced to one, by combination. If impressions
are so complex and so imperative in their demands
as to impede greatly the simplifying and clarifying
efforts of attention, the result is a disagreeable
feeling of confusion, that may increase to violent pain.
This law, that our consciousness constantly tends
to the minimum of complexity and to the maximum
of definiteness, is of great importance for all our knowledge. Here we have a limitation that cannot
be overleaped. Whatever we come to know,
whatever opinions we come to hold, our attention it is
that makes all our knowing and all our believing
possible; and the laws followed by this, our own
activity of attention will thus determine what we are
to know and what we are to believe. If things have
more than a certain complexity, not only will our
limited powers of attention forbid us to unravel this
complexity, but we shall strongly desire to believe
the things actually much simpler than they are. For
our thoughts about them will have a constant
tendency to become as simple and definite as possible.
Put a man into a perfect chaos of phenomena, sights,
sounds, feelings; and if the man continued to exist,
and to be rational at all, his attention would
doubtless soon find for him a way to make up some kind
of rhythmic regularity, which he would impute to the
things about him, so as to imagine that he had
discovered some law of sequence in this mad new world.
And thus, in every case where we fancy ourselves
sure of a simple law of Nature, we must remember
that a good deal of the fancied simplicity may be due
in the given case not to Nature, but to the
ineradicable prejudice of our own minds in favor of
regularity and simplicity. All our thought is determined,
in great measure, by this law of least effort, as it is
found exemplified in our activity of attention.
But attention is not the only influence that goes
to transform sense-impressions into knowledge.
Attention never works alone, but always in company
with the active process of recognizing the present as in some way familiar, and of constructing in the
present ideas of what is not present. At these two
other active processes we must very briefly glance.
Recognition is involved in all knowledge. Recognition
does not always mean a definite memory of a
particular past experience that resembles a present
one. On the contrary, recognition is frequently
only a sense of familiarity with something now
present, coupled with a more or less distinct applying of
some predicate to this present thing. I recognize a
horse, a landscape, a star, a friend, a piece of music,
a book, when I feel more or less familiar with the
impression of the object in question, and when, at
the same time, I predicate more or less distinctly
something of it. This, I say, is my friend, or the
north star, or Webster’s Dictionary, or Smith’s
horse. Or, perhaps, in recognizing, I recognize, not
merely the whole object, but one of its qualities,
or of its relation to other things. Then I say, this
is large or small, good or bad, equal or unequal to
another thing, and so on. In all these cases,
recognition involves a lively reaction of my mind upon
external impressions. Recognition is not found apart
from attention, though attention may exist more or
less completely without recognition. Recognition
completes what attention begins. The attentive
man wants to know, the recognizing man knows, or
thinks that he knows. Recognition implies
accompanying attention. Attention without recognition
implies wonder, curiosity, perplexity, perhaps terror.
But what is the law of this process of recognition?
Does the process affect the impressions themselves that are the basis of the recognition? The answer
is: Very distinctly, recognition does affect the
impressions. The activity involved in recognition
alters the data of sense, and that in almost every case.
Two of the ways in which this alteration occurs
are these: (1.) In recognizing, we complete present
data by remembered past data, and so seem to
experience more than is actually given to our senses.
Thus, then, in reading, we read over misprints (even
against our own will), thinking that we see words
when we do not see them, or when we see only parts
of them. Again: in listening to an indistinct
speaker we often supply what is lacking in the sounds
he makes, and seem to hear whole words when we
really hear but fragments of words. Or, merely
whistling a few notes, we recall to ourselves, and
seem to have present, the complex instrumental
harmony of some music that we have heard played.
Or, in dim twilight, we imagine the form of a man,
and seem to see it plainly in detail, when, in fact, a
mass of shrubbery, or a coat on a chair, is the one
source of our impressions. In all these cases, the
activity of recognition alters the data of sense, by
adding to them, by fiUing out the sketch made by
them. (2.) However, even the qualities of sense-impressions
are altered according to the way in which
we recognize their objects. The colors of a landscape
are dimmer, and less significant as colors, so long
as we recognize the objects in the landscape. Look
under your arm, with head inverted, and the colors
flash out with unwonted brilliancy. For when you
so look, you lose sight of the objects as such, and give your attention solely to the colors. Mistake a
few brown leaves in some dark corner of a garden
for some little animal, and the leaves take on for the
moment the distinctive familiar color of the animal;
and when you discover your blunder, you can catch
the colors in the very act of fading into their dull,
dry-leaf insignificance. Many facts of this sort are
recorded by psychologists and by artists, and can be
observed by any of us if we choose. To separate a
sensation from its modifications that are produced
by recognition is not a little difficult.
Now, in both these kinds of alteration a law is
observed, very similar to the one previously noted.
The alterations of the data of sense in the moment of
recognition are alterations in the direction of simplicity
and definiteness of consciousness. The present
is assimilated to the past; the new is made to seem
as familiar as possible. This reaction of the mind
upon new impressions is easily seen in our thoughts
and words in the first moment of great surprise or
fright. When Macbeth turns from his door to the
table, and sees the ghost of Banquo in his chair, his
first words are not the “Avaunt, and quit my sight!”
wherewith he greets the second appearance
of the ghost, nor yet even the “Which of you have done this?”
that he utters as soon as he recovers
himself. No: his first conscious reaction, in presence
of the horrible impression, is a quiet remark,
“The table’s full.” And when they tell him that
there is a place reserved, he persists with a
“Where?” In this scene, Shakespeare’s instinct
is perfectly accurate. Our effort always is to make the new as familiar as possible, even when this new
is inconceivably strange. It takes us some time to
realize, as we say, a great change of any sort.
Recognition, however, is yet further modified by the
interest with which we at any moment attend to things.
But when we speak of interest, we are led to the
third kind of active modification by which our minds
determine for us what we know.
At every moment we are not merely receiving,
attending, and recognizing, but we are constructing.
Out of what from moment to moment comes to us,
we are building up our ideas of past and future, and
of the world of reality. Mere dead impressions are
given. We turn them by our own act into symbols
of a real universe. We thus constantly react upon
what is given, and not only modify it, but even give
it whatever significance it comes to possess. Now
this reaction takes a multitude of forms, and cannot
be fully discussed without far more than our present
space. But we can name one or two prominent
modes of reaction of mind upon sense-data in this
province of mental life.
1. Definite memory is possible only through present
active construction from the data of feeling.
Nothing can come to us certifying for itself that it
formed a part of our previous experience. When
we know a thing as past, we actively project our
idea of it into a conceived past time. Without this
active interference of our own minds, everything
would be but a present, and there would be no time
for us, only fleeting life from moment to moment.
2. Definite belief in external reality is possible only through this active addition of something of
our own to the impressions that are actually given
to us. No external reality is given to us in the mere
sense-impressions. What is outside of us cannot be
at the same time within us. But out of what is in
us, we construct an idea of an external world. To
be sure this belief needs higher justification, like all
other beliefs. But at the outset it is just an activity
of ours.
3. All abstract ideas, all general truths, all knowledge
of necessary laws, all acceptance of doctrines,
begin in like fashion, through an active process
coming from within. Change the fashions of our
mental activity, and nobody can tell how radically you
would change our whole conception of the universe.
4. All this active construction from sense-impressions
expresses certain fundamental interests that
our human spirit takes in reality. We want to have
a world of a particular character; and so, from
sense-impressions, we are constantly trying to build
up such a world. We are prejudiced in favor of
regularity, necessity, and simplicity in the world;
and so we continually manipulate the data of sense
for the sake of building up a notion of a regular,
necessary, and simple universe. And so, though it
is true that our knowledge of the world is determined
by what is given to our senses, it is equally
true that our idea of the world is determined quite
as much by our own active combination, completion,
anticipation of sense experience. Thus all knowing
is, in a very deep sense, acting; it is, in fact, reacting
and creation. The most insignificant knowledge is in some sense an original product of the man who
knows. In it is expressed his disposition, his power
of attention, his skill in recognition, his interest in
reality, his creative might. Exact knowledge is, in
fact, best illustrated by cases where we ourselves
make what we know. So only is mathematical
knowledge possible; mathematical ideas are all
products of a constructive imagination. And so it is in
all other thought-life. Mentally produce, and thou
shalt know thy product. But we must remember,
for what we produce we are in some sense morally
responsible ; and thus, in discussing the nature of
knowledge, we are trespassing on the border-land of
ethics.
To sum up all in a few words: Plainly, since
active inner processes are forever modifpng and
building our ideas; since our interest in what we wish to
find does so much to determine what we do find;
since we could not if we would reduce ourselves to
mere registering machines, but remain always
builders of our own little worlds, — it becomes us to
consider well, and to choose the spirit in which we shall
examine our experience. Every one is certain to be
prejudiced, simply because he does not merely
receive experience, but himself acts, himself makes
experience. One great question for every truth-seeker
is: In what sense, to what degree, with what motive,
for what end, may I and should I be prejudiced?
Most of us get our prejudices wholly from the
fashions of other men. This is cowardly. We are
responsible for our own creed, and must make it by
our own hard work. Therefore, the deepest and most important of all questions is the one,
“For what art thou at work?” It is useless to reply,
“I am merely noting down what I find in the world.
I am not responsible for the facts.” The answer is,
“A mere note-book thou art not, but a man. These
are never simply notes; thy thoughts are always
transformed reality, never mere copies of reality.
For thy transforming activity, as well as for thy
skill in copying, thou art answerable.”
V.
It is not then that postulates occur here and
there in our thoughts, but that, without postulates,
both practical life and the commonest results of
theory, from the simplest impressions to the most
valuable beliefs, would be for most if not all of us
utterly impossible; this it is which makes active faith
so prominent a subject for philosophical
consideration. An imperfect reflection makes that appear as
blind faith which ought to appear as postulate.
Instead of saying that he takes all these things on
risk, and because they are worth the risk, the
natural man is persuaded by such imperfect reflection to
say that he trusts very ardently that he is running
no risk at all. Or again: the natural man is moved
to fear any examination into the bases of his thought,
because he does not wish to discover that there is
any risk there. And so we live dishonestly with
our thoughts. Where there is a deeper basis, that
involves more than mere risk, let us find it if we can.
But where we have nothing better than active faith, let us discover the fact, and see clearly just why it
is worth while to act in this way.
To speak more particularly of the postulates of
developed science. The ancient discussions about
the basis of physical knowledge of all sorts have
had at least this as outcome, that it is useless to
pretend to make science of any sort do without
assumptions, and equally useless to undertake the
demonstration of these assumptions by experience alone.
No one has ever succeeded in accomplishing such a
thing, and the only difference among thinkers about
these assumptions is that some think it worth while
to seek a transcendental basis for them all, while
others insist that a transcendental basis is as
impossible as a purely experimental basis is inadequate,
and that in consequence we can only use the form of
threat and say: Unless you make these assumptions,
the spirit of science is not in you. As for the exact
form that in more elaborate scientific work ought
to be taken by these postulates, opinion differs very
much, but an approximation to their sense may be
attempted very briefly as follows.
In addition to those postulates that, as we have
seen, accompany and condition all thinking alike,
science may be considered as making a more special
assumption. This assumption has been well defined
by Professor Avenarius, in his well-known essay on
“Die Philosophie als Denken der Welt Gemäss dem
Princip des kleinsten Kraftmasses.” He regards it
as an outcome of the general law of parsimony that
governs all mental work. The world of phenomena
is conceived at any stage in the simplest form, and the reality that we accept is for us at any time the
simplest description of the phenomena as known to
us. To put this view in our own way, we might
say that the world is scientifically viewed as a
perfectly united whole, which would, if fully known,
fully satisfy our highest mental desire for continuity
and perfect regularity of conception. Therefore it
is that the “universal formula” of the last chapter
is a conception that expresses the scientific ideal.
With less perfection, harmony, and unity of thought
about the world, science will never rest content so
long as she continues to be science. But for this
very reason science postulates that this perfect order
must be already realized in the world. It is not
merely that this order is the practically unattainable
but still necessary ideal for our reason; but we
must postulate that this order is already present in
things, far off as our thought is from it. This
postulate gives life to our scientific thought. Without
it our search for an order that need not exist is
meaningless play.
This postulated order, however, if found, would
mean for us relative simplicity and economy of
conception. The infinite mass of phenomena would be
conceived as one whole. The maximum of wealth
of facts would be grasped with the minimum of
mental effort. We postulate after this fashion that the
world loves parsimony, even as we do.
To illustrate by the case of one science. A great
master of mechanical science has called it the science
which gives the simplest possible description of the
motions in the world. If we accept this account of mechanics, we are at once puzzled by the fact that
most mechanical theories make assumptions about
the forces at work in the world, and that all of them
predict coming facts. But forces form no part of
the experience or of the mere description of motion.
And the future is not yet given to be described.
How then does all this agree with the definition in
question? Very well indeed. For those who
assume forces to explain given motions, always assume
just those forces that will directly explain, not any
description at random of the motions given in
experience, but the simplest possible description. Any
motion being relative, never for our experience
absolute, we can assume at pleasure any point in the
world as the origin or point of reference that shall
be regarded as at rest, and so we can get an infinite
number of descriptions of any given motions. We
can make any object in the world move at any
desired speed or in any desired direction, simply by
altering the origin to which we shall choose to refer
its motion in our description thereof. But all these
possible descriptions are not equally useful for the
purposes of the science. Some one of them is the
simplest for all the motions of the system in
question; and this we regard as best expressing the
actual natural truth in the matter. The assumption
of just such forces as woidd explain this simplest
system of motions as described, satisfies us. We
say, these forces are the real ones at work. But
still we know that the forces assumed only express
in another form the fact that the description in
question is the simplest. Is this, however, really all that the science does with the given motions? No, one
thing more the science assumes, namely, that if the
system of motions in question is not subject to any
external influence, it will remain fundamentally and
in deepest truth the same in future, that is:
The simplest description of the given motions in a
system of bodies that is wholly independent of the
action of bodies without the system, this description
is permanent for all states of the system. This
assumption is needed before mechanical science can
venture on any prediction, or beyond mere descrip-
tion of past and present motions. This is the pos-
tulate of the uniformity of nature in its mechanical shape.
The complete present description of the
world would reveal the whole future of the world.
What, however, does this postulate of uniformity
express for our thought? What is the philosophical
outcome of it? It expresses for our thought the
demand that nature shall answer our highest
intellectual needs, namely, the need for simplicity and
absolute unity of conception. Mechanical science
can no more do without this assumption than can
any other science.
The ground that we have here very briefly passed
over is known to all readers of modern controversy.
We can only add our conviction that, as far as it
goes, the foregoing view is a perfectly fair one.
Whether or no there be any deeper basis for this postulate, it is sure that science makes the postulate,
and does not give any deeper basis for it. For
natural science it is a faith.
Now this faith, not blind faith but postulate, not
basely submitted to merely because we must submit
to it, but boldly assumed because we think it worth
the risk, wherein does it differ from what our
fundamental religious faith would be if we made of that
also no mere dogmatic creed, but a general
assumption, no mere passive trust, but an active postulate?
Beneath all the beliefs that we could not
demonstrate in our last chapter, lay the determination not
so much to prove one cast-iron system of dogmas,
as to find some element of reality that shoidd have
an infinite worth. The world should be at least as
high as our highest conception of goodness. And
to this end the partial evil should be in deepest
reality universal good, even though our imperfect
eyes could never show to us how this could be, —
could never see through the illusion to the “imageless
truth” beneath. Therefore, although we vainly
sought among the Powers of the world for proof of
all this, may we not still hope to approach the
Eternal Reality with these postulates, and to say:
“Though thou revealest to us nothing, yet we
believe thee good. And we do so because this faith of
ours is a worthy one.” Possibly then our Religion
will be just the highest form of our conduct itself,
our determination to make the world good for
ourselves, whatever baseness experience shows us in it.
Then we can say: Just as science is undaunted by
the vision of the world of confusion, so shall our religious faith be undaunted by the vision of the evil
of the world. We shall war against this evil in the
trust that the highest reality is not against us, but
with us, just as we try to comprehend the world with
the faith that the highest reality is in conformity
with our private reason. In both cases we take the
risk, but we take the risk because it is worth taking,
because to take it is the highest form of activity.
As the faith of science helps to make life rational,
so the religious faith helps to make life in the highest
sense moral, by insisting that the ideal labors of
our moral life are undertaken not alone, but in
harmony with the world as known to the Infinite.
To make the parallel a little clearer, we may say
that science postulates the truth of the description
of the world that, among all the possible
descriptions, at once includes the given phenomena and
attains the greatest simplicity; while religion assumes
the truth of the description of the world that,
without falsifying the given facts, arouses the highest
moral interest and satisfies the highest moral needs.
All this has often been said, but it has not always
been clearly enough joined with the practical
suggestion that if one gives up one of these two faiths,
he ought consistently to give up the other. If one
is weary of the religious postulates, let him by all
means throw them aside. But if he does this, why
does he not throw aside the scientific postulates, and
give up insisting upon it that the world is and must
be rational? Yea, let him be thorough-going, and,
since the very perception of the walls of his room
contains postulates, let him throw away all these postulates too, and dwell in the chaos of sensations
unfriended. There is no reason why he should not
do this unless he sees a deeper foundation for his
postulates. We have no mere dogmas to urge here.
Let one abandon all mere postulates if he has not
the courage to make them, but then let one
consistently give them all up. The religious postulates
are not indeed particular creeds. One may abandon
creeds of many sorts, and yet keep the fundamental
postulate. But if he abandons the fundamental
postulate of religion, namely, that universal goodness
is somehow at the heart of things, then he ought
consistently to cease from the fundamental
postulate of science, namely, that universal, order-loving
reason is somehow the truth of things. And to do
both is to lack the courage of rational and of moral
life.
Such is the way of the postulates. And yet we
desire to find, if we can, a more excellent way.
These postulates must be confirmed if possible, and
then subordinated to higher results. It was the
skeptical work of the last chapter to turn attention
away from false or inconclusive methods of
establishing religious faith. There we saw how much
must seem, according to all the ordinary apologetic
methods, theoretically doubtful. In this chapter we
have seen how postulates, theoretically uncertain,
but practically worth the risk, are at the foundation
of our whole lives. Hereafter we shall seek to dig
beneath these foundations to that other sort of
theoretical certainty whereof we have made mention. If
we get it, then all our work will have been worth while. Our skepticism will have saved us from
antiquated methods, and from worn-out dogmas. Our
faith will have been purified by being reduced to
certain simple postulates that are not identical with
the traditional creeds, although those creeds tried to
express them. And both our skepticism and our
faith will then finally become elements of a broader
Religious Insight.
The dead external reality, into whose darkness we
had to peer in vain for light, has indeed transformed
itself. It is no more merely dead, or merely
external. It is ours and for us. It was a world of doubt
in the last chapter, just because we made it dead
and external. Now that we have seen how it was
the expression of postulates, it seems to have become
plastic and ideal. Yet what it has gained in
plasticity, it has lost in authority. After all, is not this
business of postulating into the void a dangerous
one? Is it not a hollow and empty activity this, if
we really reflect upon it? Courage indeed we must
have; but is religion no more than courage? Nay;
we must have if possible some eternal Truth, that
is not our postulate, to rest upon. Can we not get
some such comfort? And may there not be some
higher relation of our lives to that truth, — such a
relation that the truth shall be neither the arbitrary
product of our subjective postulates, nor a dead
external reality such as was the world of doubt ? We
are bound still to search.
Notes
Uncharted Knowledge
Wisdom From Previous Realities
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